lucky girl

[zenithblue]

So this week was busy. Yesterday Hodge and I went to see  Fefu and Her Friends, a really intriguing play by Maria Irene Fornes. I thought it was bizarre and incredible both. There was an argument afterwards about whether or not it was a feminist play, which I thought kind of a stupid argument since it comes down to a semantic issue (i.e. you have to answer what feminism is before you can decide if this thing fills the criteria, and good luck with that). Besides which, the play has an active discourse about women in the thirties struggling wildly with their roles as educated and impassioned beings who are still controlled by patriarchal forces. Whether or not the play didactically answers how they should live, it is much more about how they do live, and how they interact with the forces of their lives. That's the best kind of feminist play, if you ask me. I definitely wished te_amo_azul, the watermark feminist in my life, had a chance to see it with me.

Anyway, the other totally awesome thing that happened this week was the lecture at the Ransom Center. Because guess who came and gave a talk about Arthur Miller? Tony freaking Kushner.

Yup. I was in a room with the most important living American playwright, talking about one of the most important dead American playwrights. And it was awesome. He is probably one of the best intellectual/artistic lecturers I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.

Besides that, I've spent the week writing scenes from A Diamond in the Window and trying to finish this stupid S.I. story (it's getting close but I'm just not sure how I want to end it). Also all the other reading and nonsense. I've been doing a lot of collage, which is something I like to do when I've written myself into a corner. Cut and paste is just plain therapeutic (plus putting your faith in the magazine gods gives you a chance to make some connections you might not otherwise have made with regards to a story that isn't working).

The cough and sinus infection are still there. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so hopefully it'll stop slowing me down soon. Otherwise things are pretty much ducky.

Comments

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Your post reminded me of this fascinating article about the Ransom Center.

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

I saw that before the move and didn't get a chance to read it before we hit the road...thanks for the link!

The Ransom Center is pretty unbelievable. I feel vaguely guilty for bogarting the world's literary resources, but also very lucky.

[punkybrister69.livejournal.com]

Quit tempting me with Austin awesomeness!
I hope you start feeling better, yo. I'm down in the sick trenches myself and it ain't even a thing compared to what you've got, I'm sure. Oye ve.

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

Now I have an inhaler! Fun!

Dude, even if you don't decide to come here, you're going to have to make a pilgrimage sooner or later. Um, can you say: hand-scrawled corrections on first typed copy of *A Streetcar Named Desire?*

Did you know Stanley was originally going to be named Harry?

[choogy.livejournal.com]

you rock AND roll! and get some antibiotics in dat ass. or, in your mouth. whichever works.

just sending high fives and a thanks for the reminder to dust off some pj harvey this week. xoxo

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

I have an inhaler! No antibiotics but nice soothing steroids. Huzzah!

PJ Harvey is important to dust off from time to time. She keeps us savage.

[dernogg.livejournal.com]

Hey, I decided to wash my phone and I lost all my phone numbers. Please call me and have Hodge do the same. Thanks.

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

This is unfortunate news, since I lost Hodge's cell phone with all his numbers on it last week (and I don't think I have your number). Do you have his e-mail? It's hplovescats@gmail.com. Email him your number. He's been wanting to call you for two weeks now.

[te-amo-azul.livejournal.com]

Oh geez, I wish I'd been with you. It's been so long since her plays sailed over my head in my wide-eyed drama major at the Univuhsity of Vahginia days. I went to her site and found:

"When first written as performed in a SoHo loft Fornes took advantage of the rooms in the loft space to innovatively divide the audience into four groups for Part 11. Each group moved between the four sets to watch at close hand the simultaneously performed scenes until each group had seen all four scenes. The audience then came together again for Part 111. Fornes has since re-written Fefu so that it can be more readily performed in conventional theatre spaces."

Shall we share a moment of ravaging desire to go back in time and see that production?

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

That would have been incredible...our production separated the four scenes as well, and we had to get up and move to different spaces to see the different scenes. It makes for a sense that the play is about these tenuous links between characters, links you're left to make sense of on your own. I really get attached to art that makes use of spatial oddities, so it worked pretty profoundly on me anyway.

[te-amo-azul.livejournal.com]

I'm pleased as peaches that you had that wonderful spatially and temporally diverse audience experience. I'd make a suitable donation, if it would get me some new superlatives. How lucky are the theatre artists that your particularly brilliant brain's sensemaking has been ambulating about their work. Now my only lingering nostalgia is to feel what it was like for women, back then, when their imaginings of a new way of being were fostered by Fornes' and others' words.

Well, I do have my vague memory of my mom taking me to an ERA rally where we sang from songsheets of songs feministly reworked. Patriotic songs? I wish I could recall it all.