Poets and the Great War

The Almeida production of The Dark Earth and The Light Sky is a rarity.  Nick Dear's play traces the last seven years of the poet Edward Thomas. We see his troubled marriage, compulsive walking and friendship with Robert Frost, who turns him to poetry. We are shown Eleanor Farjeon's adoration of him and the two rich years of productivity before his death in World War I from a shell blast at Arras in 1917.  By all rights it shouldn't be particularly dramatic, especially in the way it's written.  It combines monologues that directly address the audience with vignettes of the poet's life which seems almost entirely comprised of depression and long walks in the country.  But the quality of the writing, acting, and directorial image take real characters - now long dead - and introduce them to the audience anew, making the production fresh and utterly absorbing.

The story is undoubtedly tragic.  Bob Crowley's design evokes both the barren wasteland of the trenches of WWI and the rich soil of England's countryside.  It easily transitions to so many different locations.  In one scene, Helen Thomas actually digs potatoes out of it.  In another, a bomb explodes casting dirt in every direction.  Peter Mumford's lights are simply beautiful.  The rich ambers and purples create beautiful days and sharp spots delineate the reflective monologues, separating them from the narrative in a way that makes you feel like you're sitting alone in a room with the figures portrayed. The country sky is brought to life in all it's varieties with little pins of light creating stars and clouds actually seeming to move across the backdrop.  John Leonard sound design evokes equally and perfectly birdsong and the sounds of war.

The casting here is perfect.  The characters are utterly and painfully believable.  They capture the little dramas of an unhappy marriage and the loss of a friend so dear they seem to have been fated to know you.  Richard Eyre's directorial image fosters this approach to the story and supports the drama of the relationships of a set of average people who happened to be famous as well.  The portrayals are really beautiful.

Ayckbourn's Amateur Hour

Alan Ayckbourn's A Chorus of Disapproval is, I think. inherently funny.  Ayckbourn is a funny man and he wrote a play about an amateur operatic society, which is inherently funny.  But comedy demands to be well played or else the jokes die.  Trevor Nunn's erratically cast and oddly awkward production at the Harold Pinter Theater lacks the timing, sense of company, and ability to project that would constitute a well played production.

Nunn's production takes a somewhat condescending tone toward the endeavors of amateur theater, which is perhaps the choice guiltiest of robbing the play of its comedy.  The play demands to be linked to The Beggar's Opera (the show within the show) and it seems completely disconected not only as a result of lighting design choices that create completely different environments for the overlapping moments but also as a result of the fact that the lyrics are often inaudible.  Guy, the protagonist, is played as an inaudible nonentity, which immediately drains the energy of the script and he's actually one of the best actors.  Dafydd (yes, the character is welsh) is distinctly overplayed and comes across as a little bipolar.  The cast seems totally random (at least Twelfth Night had a sense of cohesion even if it did seem like a bunch of old guys getting together to put on a show) so the relationships seem somewhat forced.  The set also looks somewhat fake; this might work for the scenes in which the cast inhabit The Beggar's Opera but it creates a stagey feel for the scenes that are supposed to take place in the real world.  The walls of pubs don't swing.  There is one somewhat wonderful moment when Dafydd is trying to get through a tech rehearsal with a  lighting designer who is afraid of heights and a plot that's been patched in the most non-linear manner possible, but on the whole the play lacks a sense of cohesiveness and believability.  

Men Playing Women Playing Men

Some are born great; some achieve greatness; and some have greatness thrust upon them.  You'd think it would come from a history play.  It's from Twelfth Night.  Similarly, some men are born to play women; some men achieve the ability to play women; and some men have women's roles thrust upon them.  It comes across as really sad when it's the third one.

Reprising the quadricentennial production ten years later, Mark Rylance and the boys are back in an all male production of Twelfth Night.  Ten years later, a lot of the men are too old to be playing women.  Mark Rylance is a great actor and Olivia can be a very funny character, but Mark Rylance playing Olivia just seems pathetic.  Quite frankly, he's too old.  His mannerisms would be comical on a younger Orsino but come across as desperate when Rylance plays them.  It's impossible to believe that Liam Brennan, who plays a fantastic Orsino, would be attracted to her, especially in her almost kabuki style makeup and incredibly severe wig.  The production suffers from the hair and makeup design; Viola and Sebastian are made to look more alike through makeup and wigs, but they end up looking like ghosts wearing hair pieces made of yarn.  It also suffers a little as a result of casting.  The actors playing Viola and Sebastian should be switched.  The actor playing Sebastian, Samuel Barnett, looks much more feminine and is honestly a better actor.  Johnny Flynn, Viola, looks uncomfortable on stage (he takes some strange beats and conspicuously watches his feet during the dancing) and disconcertingly mannish.  Then again, some men are born to play women.  Or achieve that ability later in life.  Either way, Paul Chahidi, who turns Maria into a plumply roguish figure forever eyeing Sir Toby with lascivious enthusiasm, does yield a very funny performance.  Stephen Fry is almost too good as Malvolio; it's hard to believe that Olivia would spurn his advances.

The costume and set design are positively wonderful.  Even though Mark Rylance's costume reads a little like the old version of Elizabeth I as portrayed in many movies, the outfits are fantastic.  Jenny Tiramani's set – a decorated oak screen, with some of the audience seated in on-stage galleries – suits Twelfth Night wonderfully (it's being performed in rep with Richard III), and recreates the collegiate atmosphere the play must have had when seen at the Inns of Court in 1602.  

It comes together into an alright production.  Perhaps I'm ultimately questioning the directorial image of Tim Carroll.  He chooses to play up the more sombre aspects of Twelfth Night, the longing for an unrequited love and class warfare, as opposed to the funnier aspects, namely mistaken identities and class warfare.  

Experimental, Cinematic, Animated Theater

On the edge of a major metropolis lies the Bayou: a sprawling tenement block of which people say "If you're born in the Bayou, you die in the Bayou."  I drag my parents to some weird productions.

After catching a plane five hours ahead of schedule to beat a weather front so severe the BBC felt it newsworthy, the Eames family touched down in London.  First up: 1927's The Animals and Children Took to the Streets.  It somehow ended up billed as a children's show.  It's not.  It's a really wacked out combination of projected animations, musical theater, and meta story telling.  It's kind of like Adventure Time;  it may be billed for children, but it is not for children.  

The show is somehow performed by three women and a host of animated characters including various rival gangs of children.  Children really are a menace in this show.  The plot has a gang of child-pirates go on  the rampage, take over a middle-class park and even kidnap the mayor's cat before being whisked off in black ice-cream vans and effectively sedated by gumdrops infused with a drugstore's worth of sedatives.  At the beginning Agnes Eaves and her daughter arrive in the hopes of reforming the children through arts and crafts (specifically pasta collage), only to leave when the going gets tough.    It mixes together in something that feels like part silent movie, part social commentary, part Cabaret.  

It is seamlessly synchronized and well worth it.  It's just not really for the kids.  I don't know who got that idea...

A Genius in the Strings Section and in the Ring

This blog has been really negative of late.  I assure you, I don't dislike everything.  For one, Clifford Odets's Golden Boy is an amazing theatrical experience.  

The plot itself is vaguely contrived: the play centers on Joe Bonaparte who faces the choice between becoming a musician and the lure of big money and the distinct possibility of injuring his hands as a boxer. For context, Joe's Italian immigrant father shells out $1200 for a violin for is son's 21st birthday. The play takes place in the late 1930s.  But it never feels that way, which I think is a testament to the dramaturgical abilities of Odets.  The play, which clocks in at about three hours, never feels that way.  It moves and it avoids becoming preachy.  The characters do not engage in protracted conversations about the state of man or about beliefs, which could easily happen in a show whose characters include a philosophizing candy store owner, the kind of father who would shell out $1200 for a violin for his son's 21st birthday, a union organizer older brother, and a Newark native woman whose father drank and beat her mother into suicide.  Magically, the show does not preach.  I actually bought the script I thought it was so good.

Thematically, the play is about finding your passion or what complete's you.  For Joe's manager, that's Lorna.  For Joe's union organizing older brother, it's workplace justice.  For Lorna and Joe, it's up in the air.  Lorna loves Tom Moody, Joe's manager, because they have a peaceful, quiet relationship; but she also loves Joe and tries really hard to convince herself of the contrary.  Joe's internal conflict - music, which makes him feel human and empowered, versus boxing, which is a faster if more violent route to empowerment - is the central plot of the play.  Do you spend your life trying to shine in Capitalist America where you're judged by the dollars in your bank account, or do you fulfill a more satisfying, more humane though humbler destiny?  “Truthful success,” in the words of Joe's father, remains as elusive a goal today as it did when “Golden Boy” first opened on Broadway at the same theater 75 years ago.  

In the new production, Odet's language feels fresh and not at all dated and the powerhouse cast make sure the verbal punches sting as much as the physical ones.  The play is fantastically acted.  Seth Numrich's energy never falters, but it evolves in a fascinating way as the story progresses.  He goes from being a bouncing, boyish fireball to a hardened boxing machine with very little left over for living life.  The actors are no doubt aided by the atmospheric set design which quickly evokes many different locations and the understatedly perfect costumes.  The stark lighting almost makes you feel like, even when you're blocks away from a boxing arena, the actors are still in the ring fighting it out with each other.

Theater on Both Sides - A Night at the Opera

I should begin this by saying that I am perhaps the least qualified person to write this post.  I do not do opera.  I'd like to say I appreciate it, but I probably don't.  I enjoy the music, for whatever that's worth.  I once went to an un-staged performance of Anthony and Cleopatra at Carnegie Hall which is perhaps the best opera experience I've ever had.  Actually going to an opera house and sitting down for three hours isn't really my jam.  That said, I keep this blog half for myself and half because I actually have to blog for school on occasion.

It is pretty supremely cool that we had box seats as a class for Don Giovanni at the Met.  This awe factor wears off after you realize that the box seats are actually pretty damn uncomfortable, but they're still some of the best seats in the house.  Not only can you see the majority of the stage but also the orchestra, and the pit is a lot of fun to watch.  I've also heard that box seats are supposed to be some of the best seats acoustically, but that didn't come from the most reliable of sources.  I especially focused on the orchestra during the overture, as opposed to staring for what felt like many minutes at a block of dimly lit Spanish balconies and a sleeping Leporello.  And Leporello was my favorite part of the night. Almost no one else seemed to act.   I mean everyone had fantastic voices.  This is, after all, The Metropolitan Opera house. But no one seemed all that into their characters.  I give major props to Don Ottavio and Leporello.  Those two dealt with the inconsistencies of the other characters impressively.
I sound negative.  It was good.  I have seen some really bad opera.  But that was in the Ukraine and I was probably stupid to expect better.  The vocal talent was impressive, the music was wonderful, and the sets were impressive.  They really did build a few blocks of a Spanish town (I really want to say Seville, but that's only because I'm reading the original Don Juan text, El Burlador de Sevilla, for my AP Spanish Lit Class).  In the grand scheme of things, my issues with Don Giovanni are really nit-picky issues.  But I didn't really enjoy the whole experience.
Ultimately, my issues stem from the story, not from the performance.  It's The Met.  Everyone is at the top of their game there.  But I have some real reservations about the plot.  I mean Don Giovanni is an asshole - he sleeps around and he admittedly did kill a guy in a duel - but he doesn't deserve to be dragged to hell for it.  Sleeping with 1800 women is pretty damn impressive and it's maybe not the most traditionally moral thing to do, but it's not "get-dragged-to-hell-with-fiery-vengeance" material.  At the very beginning of the play the titular don does kill someone - Donna Anna's father, Commendatore - but he does so in a duel that he didn't even instigate.  It would be one thing if Giovanni instigated the duel, but he didn't.  I'm not saying that the Commendatore is at fault, but he did challenge a much younger man to a duel.  What was he expecting?  

Theater on Both Sides - Cast of Titans

'Tis the season of Mamet. Ben Brantley took care of Anarchist at the John Golden theater, but as for Glengarry Glen Ross, despite having begun previews on Nov. 11, the reviews are not yet out.  This is because it doesn't open until the 8th of December.  Officially this is because of Sandy, unofficially this is because Al Pacino supposedly doesn't know his lines.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure Pacino was the right choice for his role.  In this production, he plays Levine.  He is ageing and failing; he can no longer sell and is grasping at straws.  Al Pacino is ageing, but he reads - to me at least - as a bit too confident for the role.  He really was perfect in the movie as Roma (played excellently in this production by Bobby Cannavale) and Jack Lemmon really was the quintessential Levine.  The other roles of the play are cast perfectly (John C. McGinley is perfect as Moss), but I have some serious reservations about Pacino.  I feel terrible about saying this, but it's the case.  It's just enough to draw me out of the world of the play slightly.
The world of the play is really ingeniously crafted.  The entire first act is set in a Chinese Restaurant, which is brought to life brilliantly with little touches like a child's high-seat or the subtly shifting window (the pattern of a window is cast onto the set in the cool tones of night from a different angle for each scene).  It really is a believable Midwestern Chinese restaurant.  When the action shifts to the office of the real estate company, you really feel like there's something in every filing cabinet.  For me, it called to mind the set of Gatz at The Public which was actually stocked with the theater's tax returns from many years back to make it look like a real office.

The production is certainly worth it.  It features some titans of acting.  But I'm not entirely certain that it is worth the hype of the marquis name.  Al Pacino is doubtless a great actor, but I'm not entirely sure he was right for the part.  The show does not suffer with regard to quality because he is in it, it suffers some with regard to believability.  Al Pacino's Levine doesn't read to me like someone who would take the drastic step of stealing the leads that are so crucial to the action of the play.

Theater on Both Sides - A Repeat Experience

It's amazing what one actor can do for a show.
My second English class took another trip into the city today, this time for Peter and the Starcatcher.  Some readers will know that I have already seen this show (my previous blog post is linked to;  I'm always surprised by how much of a pretentious ass I sound like when I re-read posts...) and they'll know that I loved it.  Or they just refreshed their memories.  Either way, Peter and the Starcatcher was awesome the first time around.  Not so the second time.  I mean it was good.  It was very good.  It was still quite funny.  But some of the humor is a little blunt.  The puns are somewhat obvious.  I hadn't realized that because Christian Borle played them so subtly.  He did not ham it up.  The new Black Stache is a much campier actor; so the show is still funny, but not in the same way.  It felt smarter the last time I saw it.
The staging is still remarkable.  Lighting and Sound America did an interesting piece on the show in their July 2012 issue which informed me on a number of interesting factors (I would link to it, but I can't find it).  The proscenium arch is decorated with what is essentially gold painted trash, which is an interesting touch.  Everything seems a little bit thrown together, like a bunch of people got together in a mostly empty space and decided to put on a play, and the proscenium adds to that.  It looks like part of the gilded interior of the theater, but it's made of hundreds of everyday objects.  Which is really cool.  I'm not sure what that means from a critical perspective, but it's cool.

Perhaps some of my nonplussed reaction to my second trip to the Brooks Atkinson theater stems from my new-found dislike of Peter Pan.  The reason this show was on the schedule for my class was that we read the original version of the book (not the play) recently.  And you know what?  Peter is an asshole.  This play references the original material in interesting ways, but I can't escape from understanding those references.  In the final monologue, they quote, round-about-ly, the last line of the book "so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless".  I understand that reference and it makes me angry.  Peter is a dick to everyone.  He forgets people and kills people and doesn't care.  This is held up as the ideal of the one child who never grew up.  Now, I think you need to grow up a little to be humane.

In any event, the production was very different.  Was it fun?  Yes.  Would I still recommend it?  Probably not...

Theater on Both Sides - Como el muguito en la piedra

Pina Bausch's last work was on stage at the BAM opera house.  For some reason, it felt odd to see a dead woman's choreography.  We see dead dramaturges' plays - Shakespeare, Brecht, Beckett, et al. - but those are written words.  Not movement.  I feel like movement should be more ephemeral.

Setting that minor oddity aside, Como el muguito en la piedra (Like moss on a stone) is a beautiful piece.  After Pina's sudden death, it became a hot commodity and has been touring since.  It takes a lot from Chilean tradition and history, which was especially cool for me as a Spanish speaker.  Setting aside the music which was either instrumental or with lyrics in Spanish (in fact the title of the piece comes from Violeta Parra's "Volver a los 17"), the piece incorporates actual dialogue which I thought was an interesting choice.  Women in jewel tone dresses float across the stage and, often, men in dark suits try to hold them back.  Going through the year in AP Spanish Lit, I have reached a unit of works on machismo y feminismo, so this idea is especially relevant.   The piece begins with a woman on all fours, yelping like a dog as she is first carried in that position by two men, then lifted like a marionette by a group of male dancers.  The interplay between the male and female dancers is fascinating.  The opening scenes of both acts are very male dominated - I have already described the first snippet of the piece and the second act opens with a man greeting women as they enter his home for a party not by name but by descriptors like "the blue one" or "the little one" - to a very harmonious moment where the company is lined up diagonally playing with the hair of the person in front of them to even a moment that seems almost female dominated where the men mirror the movement of the women but always seem one step behind.  

Technically... well, I wasn't really paying attention to the minutia of the tech performance.  I know, readers will be disappointed (assuming that ), but I was really caught up with the dance.  One obvious aspect of the design was the stage.  The stage was completely white and completely bare, but the deck separated to form these wild cracks in the ground.  Inspired by Chile in many ways, it is unclear whether this is seismic activity, the Atacama desert, an Andean glacier, the cracks through which so many fell through during the Pinochet regime (many of the songs used and pieces themselves reference the disappeared), or simply dying earth.  

It was truly beautiful.

Theater on Both Sides - A Voyeur's Delight

Sleep No More is a tough thing to describe.

It enshrines voyeurism in a 1920's speakeasy Macbeth that is and is not the perennial favorite of high school English classes.  I read it my sophomore year, I'm sure you too were assigned it at some point.  It magically fits a town, a hotel, a banquet hall, a military man's private quarters, a hospital out of your favorite horror movie, a forrest, and a grave yard into the McKittrick Hotel which may or may not be a hotel.  It is silent and anonymous.  The audience is robbed of their voices and their faces by skeletal, Venetian carnival masks and a mandate not to speak once they have left the bar.  Absinthe flows.

It's a choose your own adventure.
I followed Macbeth himself for a while at the beginning of the evening.  Before the banquet, he whispered 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 in a grove in the banquet hall.  I was whisked up four floors by a blood covered Lady Macbeth where I found the hospital.  Crosses and little chapels are hidden everywhere.  I followed background characters through a tailor's and a taxidermist's.  At the end of the night I was brought back to the banquet hall where I saw Hecate dance and Macbeth's demise.  The latter I can only describe in terms of what song it inspired to haunt me for the rest of the week: "The Mercy Seat".  It stays with you.

I went with one of my English classes (Theater on Both Sides.  It's about theater.), which allowed me to compare notes with friends over pizza.  It's sort of the only thing you can do at thirty minutes into a new day after having your world rocked by experimental, environmental theater.
It was glorious.

George and Martha, an Analysis

While we're on the topic of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, I wrote this for my psych class:

George and Martha present an interesting case.  They are a middle-aged, married couple – George is 46, Martha is 52 – living in the New England college town of New Carthage.  George is a History Professor and Martha is daughter of the university president. 

Martha married George in a fit of infatuation.  Their love has since turned to empty love.  They are committed to each other, but their relationship lacks intimacy or passion.  Neither has romantic feelings or physical attraction for the other.  Martha seeks to vent her sexual desire by pursuing a series of affairs with younger men.  They were originally drawn together by mutual passion, and – on George’s part – a desire to move up in the History department.  They are no forced together by the commitment of marriage. 

Their frustration with this situation has led to increased aggression.  George and Martha cannot have children, which frustrates them greatly.  Martha is also frustrated with George’s failure to move ahead in life.  She calls him a “bog” in the History department to others and uses “swampy” as a nickname when she is talking to him.  Martha’s frustration and aggression also derive in part from the factor of relative deprivation.  As the daughter of the university president, she thinks she should be able to advance her husband in some way even if he were useless; when she compares herself to the other history department wives and to her expectations for herself, she feels intense deprivation.  This leads to aggression.  George is rejected by Martha.  She taunts him and makes him feel less than human.  This breeds aggression in George.  After years of this treatment combined with the mutual frustration of the relationship, George is out for revenge.  On the night this couple was observed, these situational factors were amplified by the disinhibition bred by alcohol consumption.  George and Martha began drinking at a faculty party around 9:00 PM and continued to drink until 4:30 AM.  They had guests over around 2:00 AM.  The lateness of this night also creates physical discomfort – extreme exhaustion –, which amplifies the aggression between the two even further.

This couple will stay married.  It would be unacceptable for them to separate for a variety of social factors.  But they do not address the main source of their frustration.  They have created an imaginary son to replace the one they could not conceive and they use him as a pawn in their mind games instead of addressing the fact that they have created an imaginary child as a crutch.  Martha, an alcoholic, will continue to drink.  George will continue to submit to Martha’s attacks only to vent in a fit of futile catharsis. On the night this couple was observed, George’s attack came when he killed their imaginary son.  Their aggression will continue to grow and perpetuate itself, each attack bringing a counter attack of greater intensity.

Oh Honey...

This is actually an essay I wrote for English class.  The page numbers refer to my copy of the play.  It is relevant for reasons...

Fifty years after it first opened on Broadway, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? still packs a punch.  One character often relegated to the background even by the others on stage is Honey.  She is in many ways a non-entity.  She does not often participate in the games of George and Martha, and in fact spends a great deal of time in the bathroom being sick.  Honey’s disconnect from the action allows the audience to observe themselves in many ways.  We can watch our experience played out on the stage.  She also serves as a child figure.  She needs caring for and George and Martha use her in the same way that they use their possibly imaginary child.  She is a mirror both for the audience’s experience and for George and Martha’s parenting skills.

            Honey begins the play as a non-entity. Her name in and of itself is a term of endearment not necessarily a name.  There are women out there named “Honey”, but when compared to a name like “Martha” which is definitely a name, it seems inadequate.  Even before we hear her name, Honey is described as “a mousey little type, without any hips, or anything.” (10) When we see her, she does live up to this description.  Her skirt is unflatteringly long, the green of her shirt is unflattering, and her clothes look somewhat too big for her.  This is, of course, intentional, but it really brings out her lack of personality in comparison to the larger than life characters George and Martha.  She is a boxy, mousey type that barely registers in comparison.  As the night wears on, we notice a pattern in Honey’s speech: she repeats.  She often does not add to the conversation instead saying things like “(Idiotically) When’s the little bugger coming home? (Giggles)” (77) She does not register the exchange between George and Martha which hints at troubles to come regarding the existence of their son, but instead repeats “idiotically” a question George posed.  Honey knows the others do not notice her.  After George introduces the fake gun, Honey says, “(Wanting attention) I’ve never been so frightened… never.” (63) Honey has to repeat herself to register to the other partygoers and even then they do not acknowledge her.  In response to this, she retreats within herself.

Honey’s withdrawal and quietness allow George and Martha to paint a picture of the kind of parents they would be on a living, breathing human.  Honey’s removal from the games makes her very childlike; her nondescript personality translates to a kind of innocence.  She is not an innocent and she is not a child; but George and Martha exercise their power over her as though she were a pawn between them, which, because she is younger than both of them, renders her their child and their plaything.  George brings up her hysterical pregnancy in a game called “Get the Guests” (156) to get his revenge on Martha for humiliating him.  George does so in a horrible way without regard for Honey’s feelings.  Her hysterical pregnancy is horribly embarrassing and emotionally charged.  She responds to the story with “hysteria” (163) “outlandish horror” (164), but George does not care.  He shows no remorse.  He shrugs off the incident saying “The patterns of history.” (165) As readers of the play, we are given to believe that Martha would behave the same way when her parenting is described in Act III.  Both George and Martha use their children and their child figures to their own ends.  George uses Honey to get his revenge and to play his own game.  Martha, according to George, acted the same way with their son.  Since Martha’s recriminations indicate that George was guilty of the same games when their son was involved, we as readers have reason to believe that the game of Get the Guests is indicative of the games George and Martha played on their child.  Honey’s apparent, childlike withdrawal allows them to show the audience.

            Because of her character’s detachment, Carrie Coon plays the drunken observer perfectly.  Her performance as Honey balances engagement and withdrawal perfectly.  She withdraws within herself when the other characters ignore her for too long.  However, she does not fully disengage.  Coon peers at the action through slit-like eyes, watching but not involving herself.  In this way, she becomes the audience, albeit a little more intoxicated.  Albee creates a way for the audience to watch itself through the character of Honey.  She calls out “violence… violence!” (151), in many ways asking for a reprieve from the mind games as well as stating the obvious as George and Martha fight physically for the first time.  We as an audience can understand violence.  To a modern audience, it is commonplace.  In 1961 the theatergoers would not be that far removed from war.  Physical aggression is a universal truth.  In the middle of the plan, violence is, in a sick way, a refreshing break from the mind games.  Honey can call out for it, the audience cannot.  Not only is it unacceptable to call out this way in a theater it is also embarrassing; as modern humans, we like to think that we are removed from violence in our daily lives.  To need it is embarrassing.  Yet in this scene we need a break from the mental aggression.  We need violence.  The audience can watch Honey stand on a couch, above the fray, and egg it on and laugh, but secretly that’s what the audience needs.  We know of or know personally abusive relationships where one party is a physical aggressor.  Relationships like George and Martha’s, where the mind games are a part of daily life, are not as familiar.  Seeing this familiar scene grounds us and acts as a breath of fresh air.  But we cannot ask for it.  Honey must do so, and can do so because she is drunk and part of the play.

            Honey’s mousey disengagement allows Albee to show important aspects of the other characters and of humanity as a whole as it is represented by the audience in a theater.  We as audience members can watch two horrible parents play mind games and destroy a younger woman and we can watch ourselves made manifest on stage and released from our inhibitions by brandy.  Honey’s drunkenness turns her into a child and a mirror.  Much of the intensity of Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? derives from the way Albee forces us to engage in the play.  We are Honey.  We are the observer of a wild night of fun and games, sick though they are.  We watch our mirror destroyed by the parenting of George and Martha and we watch Honey call out for the very thing we need.  We can laugh at Honey all we want, but, ultimately, we are one in the same.

Duff Center Symposium 2012: Global Health

For those of you who don't follow me on Twitter, today marked the third annual Duff Center symposium.  The first year, we looked at issues surrounding the BP Oil Spill; last year, we looked at nuclear issues; this year, we looked at global health.  We had an insane number of speakers come this year, so it was great to have such diversity of thought on campus.  Our head of upper school cracked a joke when Jonathan Safran Foer came to visit which I think is still relevant: "The nice thing about having people like this come to GA is that in college you get these same kind of speakers but no one goes.  Here, people do go.  Because it's mandatory."

Our Keynote speaker was Dr. Robert Michler who works closely with Heart Care International (HCI) which is a non-for-profit that brings American doctors and equipment to the developing world to perform pediatric heart surgeries.  One of the many amazing things about this charity is that their patient care statistics match and often improve upon patient care statistics for US hospitals.  What I really liked about Dr. Michler's presentation was the focus he placed on sustainability.  HCI doesn't just pick a country, go there for a few weeks, and leave.  This organization really focuses on training for doctors in the developing world and long term involvement.  They work very closely with governments, the clergy, and local doctors to get the support they need to do the work they need to do.  Recently, they've gotten the funding in the form of the Alison Scholarship to bring local doctors to the states for further training.  One thing they run into in particular is a brain drain.  Many doctors will leave their native countries to practice in the developed world as opposed to staying to work with their communities.  Programs like this encourage doctors to stay and work in their native countries as well as improving on patient care there.  I rarely get excited about these kind of things, but HCI does some really good work in the right way.  They leave a lasting impact and work very closely with the community.  I think it's especially exciting that they work with the clergy since religious leaders can so often be such an important part of a community all across the world.

As for breakout sessions, I attended one that focused on HIV research and one that focused on global health issues in a more local environment.  The session on HIV research was somewhat disheartening.  Retroviruses are scary stuff.  There is some hope - the speaker in that session is working with something called Tetherin which prevents newly formed virus cells from leaving the cell they're formed in - since we understand restriction factors better now than in the '80s when the HIV/AIDS epidemic first appeared on the radar.  But still, scary stuff.  My other breakout session focused on the experience of Dr. Bragg - our speaker - in Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. Elmhurst is the most diverse zip-code in America and it's located near La Guardia and JFK airports, so a lot of interesting cases come through their emergency room door.  They see a lot of crazy things that you don't see in America that often.  To add to my growing germophobia, polio and TB are making a resurgence even in America which is slightly disconcerting.

A lot of interesting work is being done in Global Health.  For more info, I direct you here and to Twitter where you can find the experience of about 12 students under #gasymp.  Enjoy!

Vision or Ass-Hattery?

My school brings an awful lot of interesting speakers to campus.  And, since these assemblies are mandatory, people actually go see these very interesting speakers.
GA kicked off this year's speakers with Jonathan Safran Foer the author of this year's mandatory summer reading: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  And, while he's a good speaker, he's a little full of himself.  Personally, I think he gets to be a little full of himself having had stories published in The New Yorker and in The Paris Review and having become the author of a best seller at 25, but he still seemed a little over full of himself.  Two years ago we had John Irving come to talk to us and he was definitely full of himself, but he's published 19 novels and they're not exactly light weight novels either. He was totally justified in thinking he was awesome.  Foer might have a bit of an inflated opinion of himself.

One of the interesting features of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is what I'll call "stylized pages".  By "stylized pages", I mean he includes pictures, pages with one word or one sentence, and pages with so much text that it becomes a black square surrounded by white margins.  It becomes a very quick read.  So I asked him why he had chosen to put pictures in.  There was a Q&A session at the end, so I took the opportunity.  His answer was "because I like it that way".  Hmm...
That was basically his answer to every question that had to do with the book.  He did things because he wanted to.  According to him he wouldn't care if one of his books was a flop because he had published a thing that he liked.  I can't tell if this is admirable or ass-hat-tastic.  On the one hand, he clearly has an artistic vision.  On the other hand, he sounds ridiculously pompous.

Setting that aside, he was quite a good speaker.  He believes in interpretation and the idea that there isn't one right answer about a novel.  I think this is nice since I've had one too many English teacher that presumed to know everything possible about literature. And he told stories that had a point (unlike Mark Salzman three years ago who told stories of his epileptic dog shitting everywhere in his Colorado home) and that were well told.  He was good to listen to and I didn't feel like I wasted my time, which is always nice.

All Roads Lead To Rome…

Saturday September 1, 2012 – ROME, ITALY

This is not a sign that most people pay attention to.

…but some of them are rather circuitous.  If my dad hadn’t asked a conductor if we were on the right train, I would be in Milan right now.  Luckily, we were able to change trains after one stop and get to the right city.

While the mishap with the trains kind of killed the morning, my plan for the day was more or less unaffected. 

Probably one of my favorite museums in the world, The Capitoline Museum sits perched on Capitol Hill.  Its café on the second floor offers some of the best views of the city.  

Inside, the museum is partially built around the ruins of a temple to Jupiter.  If you’re super cheap, you can actually head down to the basement, see these ruins, and have an unparalleled view of The Forum.  The museum even kindly provides signs that tell you what you’re looking at in the forum, so you don’t even have to wait on the massive lines and pay admission to see the site.  

Upstairs, there’s an amazing collection of busts of emperors and philosophers collected with other sculpture and painting.  While I was there, the museum had a special exhibition on called Lux in Arcana marking the 400^th anniversary of the foundation of the Vatican secret archives.  They actually had selected pieces from the secret archives on display.  They had records of votes from conclave, a letter from Hirohito congratulating Pope Pius XII on becoming pope, the last letter from Mary Queen of Scots to Pope Sixtus V, the actual document excommunicating Martin Luther, the transcript from the trial of Galileo and of the Knights Templar, and letters from Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis to Pope Pius IX along with a ton of other stuff.  There was so much church history in those rooms and that’s just the stuff they’re letting the public see. 

In a similar vein, I crossed the border from Italy to The Holy See to see St. Peter’s Basilica.  Midafternoon is absolutely the time to visit; I have never seen the lines so short.  Incidentally, I was there while mass was on, so I didn’t get down into the grotto (the entrance is way up in the front), but the part that wasn’t closed off to tourists still had plenty to see.  I have apparently been obsessed with the Pieta since I was 5 (that’s the story my mother tells, so I don’t know how seriously to take it), but I do know it’s one of my favorite parts of the Basilica.  No matter how many cathedrals I go to, St. Peter’s Basilica never gets old.  Bernini, without a doubt my favorite sculptor, designed the façade, colonnade, and baldachin at St. Peters, so that’s always a highlight for me.

Finally (because it’s open until 7:30), I walked to the Pantheon.  This is my other favorite building in Rome, but that has a lot to do with the fact that I did a paper in sixth grade on roman engineering and spent a lot of time talking about the dome and oculus of the Pantheon.  The Pantheon is kind of plain looking now because it has suffered some heavy looting over the years.  Hadrian had it built to honor all of the gods and it is a marvel of roman architecture.  The brick of the walls is arranged in arches to distribute the weight of the concrete roof.  The roof is freaking concrete, but has square cutouts to help reduce the weight.  The oculus was constructed so as to use the tension around the opening to help keep the roof up.  Not bad for a civilization that approximated pi to 4.  It was turned into a church by the Christian rulers and seems to still hold services.  It also houses the tombs of the first two kings of unified Italy and Raphael.  The latter’s tomb is inscribed with "Ille hic est Raffael, timuit quo sospite vinci, rerum magna parens et moriente mori," meaning: "Here lies that Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die".  Or something like that.  My Latin’s a little rusty.

This morning, before heading to the airport, I stopped by the Borghese Gallery.  There are some lovely painting upstairs, but I really go for the sculpture on the ground floor.  Among others (the Borgheses were ridiculously wealthy), the gallery features Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, David, Aeneas and Anchises, and The Rape of Persephone.  Aeneas and Anchises depicts Aeneas, his father, and his son fleeing the burning Troy.  His father holds the household gods and his son holds the eternal flame; Aeneas is the founder of Latium, later Italy, and the father of the Romans.  The Rape of Persephone is terrifyingly detailed.  Persephone’s skin actually dimples where Hades grabs her and you can see the tracks of two tears on her face.  David, borrowing Bernini’s own face, shows David about to loose a stone from his sling; this was the first sculpture of David to show him in motion.  Finally, Daphne and Apollo (my favorite), depicts the most dramatic and dynamic moment in one of Ovid's stories in his Metamorphoses. In the story, Apollo, the god of light, scolded Eros, the god of love, for playing with adult weapons. In retribution, Eros wounded Apollo with a golden arrow that induced him to fall madly in love at the sight of Daphne, a water nymph sworn to perpetual virginity, who, in addition, had been struck by Eros with a lead arrow which caused her to harshly spurn Apollo's advances. The sculpture depicts the moment when Apollo finally captures Daphne, yet she has implored her father, the river god, to destroy her beauty and repel Apollo's advances by transforming her into a laurel tree.  This particular part of the story features one of my favorite lines in classical literature, roughly translated: “If you will not be my wife, you will be my tree!”  Firstly, great story.  Secondly, hilariously bad translation forced on our class by my evil Latin III Honors teacher.  The Borghese Gallery is one of the best small museums, and I mean small.  It’s 100% worth it to get there at 9AM when it opens because it gets crowded quickly.

That’s the trip.  I’ll be back home in New York soon and I’ll throw these up on the web along with pictures.

In the Shadow of a Volcano, Part 2

Thursday August 30, 2012 – SORRENTO, ITALY

This morning brought me to the shadow of another Italian volcano: Vesuvius.  Quite literally, in fact.  Instead of spending the day in Sorrento and on the Amalfi Coast, I raced up from the port to the train station and caught the Circumvesuviana train to Naples.  While this is actually my third visit to the area, I had yet to visit the Archeological Museum in Naples.  This has a lot to do with the fact that Naples is kind of a scary city, but this museum houses the vast majority of the Pompeii and Herculaneum frescoes and mosaics.

Going to see the mosaics is definitely worth it.  They are some of the best preserved I’ve ever seen.  Most significantly, the Museum (housed in an old Bourbon Palace) features “The Secret Room” which is 100% Ancient Roman erotica. It used to be that you needed special permission from the king to see the room, but now it’s included with admission.  The Museum also houses the Farnese marbles, which are really quite spectacular.

That’s my day.  I wandered around Sorrento for a bit, but I do much since I didn’t get back until about 3 PM because I caught the slow train by accident.  The two Circumvesuviana trains aren’t that different; the DD will get you to Naples in about 50 minutes while the D train will get you there in 80.  It makes a difference, but not a significant one.

The Amalfi Coast and the coastline from Sorrento to Naples combined form the mythic homes of three of the best-known Odysseus myths: Circe, The Cyclops, and The Sirens.  Well, maybe the Cyclops.  It all depends on how you interpret things.  Some scholars think that the Cyclops were metaphors for the volcanoes of this area; an erupting volcano could easily be called an injured, one-eyed giant.  I don’t know how seriously I take that theory.  Personally, I think it’s more likely that the ancient peoples of the area dug up the scull of a dwarf elephant - which kind of looks like it has one eye - and decided that it belonged to an extinct race of one-eyed giants.  

That, by the way, is the other story on the Cyclops.  A little south, you can find the islands of the Sirens.  What’s cool about this area is that the rocks actually sing when the wind blows through them right, so you can totally see how a bunch of tired sailors might be attracted to the song thinking that it belonged to females.  You can also see the sharp pointy rocks that would have spelled their demise.  A little north, you can find the spot that, based on some creative cartography and study of the Odyssey, scholars figure Circe would have lived.  She’s the lady who tricked Odysseus’s men into eating her food and drinking her wine so that she could turn them into pigs for eating with poor manners after being at sea in a boat with only dudes for years.  Odysseus, with the help of a magic potion, resists her charms, sleeps with her, and convinces her to turn his men back into men.  And she does.

That essentially ends my Odyssey stories.  Tomorrow, I’ll head to Civitavecchia, the port associated with Rome.

The Domain of Aeolus

Wednesday August 29, 2012 – LIPARI, ITALY

What’s that?  You were itching for more mythology?  Fantastic!  Because I have more stories to tell and very little actual travelogue content for this post.

Lipari is one of the Aeolian Islands and, quite frankly, there’s not much to do.  The island is small enough to drive around in about an hour and a half and the main town of Lipari features a somewhat difficult to find archeological museum (which was closed when I was there) and a fortress.  The fortress is really quite nice.  It’s free to get in and it offers some lovely views of picturesque towns near by.  If you’re feeling especially cool, go to a deli and pick up some bread and sandwich fixings and take a small picnic to the amphitheater in the fortress.  

However, I would recommend that you find Le Macine.  

They do pizza and they do pizza so right. I had the Arrabiatta and it was pretty damn amazing.  They also serve some pretty amazing post-meal liquors.  There’s one that’s made from cactus fruit, there’s another that’s some kind of melon, and a third that is a terrifying green something.  Don’t drink the green one.

One of the cool things about the itinerary of this particular trip is that it kind of follows The Odyssey.  Last night, we passed through the Straights of Messina, which, in myth, is known as the passage between Scylla and Charybdis.  That’s a story that everyone knows pretty well.  It’s the origin of the phrase “between a rock and a hard place”.  Of course Odysseus didn’t get to chart a course between the two monsters.  Even after choosing Scylla, Poseidon pushed Odysseus’s ship into Charybdis because he’s a dick.  Also because Odysseus poked the eye out of one of his sons Polyphemus and bragged about it, but mostly because he and most of the Greek gods can be real dicks sometimes.

Early on in his trip Odysseus found himself on the island of Aeolus.  With after a little sweet talkin’ Aeolus, god of the winds, decided to help Odysseus get home.  He bundled all of the difficult winds into a bag and gave it to Odysseus with strict instructions not to open the bag.  Naturally, just when Ithaca is in sight, Odysseus’s crew opens the bag while he’s taking a nap and get themselves blown all the way back to the Tyrrhenian Sea.  Moral: don’t nap near untrustworthy people.

Tomorrow I head off for Sorrento, which means the Sirens, Circe, and the Cyclops!  Also the Neapolitan Archeological Museum, but that’s neither here nor there.

In the Shadow of a Volcano, Part 1

Tuesday, August 28, 2012 – CATANIA, SICILY

Do not kick a Sicilian pigeon.  I swear to god it was an accident, but it is not fun to learn the hard way that Sicilian pigeons fight back.

Today the boat docked in Catania, a bustling fishing town on the eastern coast of Sicily.  Of note in Catania are the fish market and statue of an elephant in the Piazza del Duomo.  

The fish market is a loud, bustling outdoor event.  Vendors shout at each other in Sicilian Italian and shoppers pop between the butchers, ironmongers, cheese, and - of course - fish stalls.  Catania is primarily a fishing town, not a tourist attraction, so the fish market has not yet been overrun with tee shirt and snow globe vendors. You can totally find tee shirt and snow globe vendors scattered throughout the city because this is where most of the cruise ships dock for this area of Sicily, but the fish market functions to sell fish.  It’s pretty neat.  The elephant has a slightly funnier story.  The elephant is the symbol of this particular city and it sports this hilariously creepy smile…

…because it also sports this…

The people of Catania chose the elephant because it was strong and manly, but they couldn’t tell if it was a boy elephant or a girl elephant.  So they made sure that no one would have any questions.

From essentially anywhere on the northeastern coast of the island, you can see Etna.  It’s the highest volcano in Europe and certainly the most active.  The most dramatic eruption took place in 1669 when lava flow partly engulfed Catania, reaching as far as the sea.  Since then, Etna has grumbled several times and remains under constant surveillance.  Monitors can provide 14 days’ warning of an eruption; so if you haven’t heard anything, you can assume the next 14 days will be safe.  I am not ashamed to say that volcanoes kind of freak me out.  This is not my first time on Sicily nor is it my first time in this part of Sicily and I still have zero desire to attempt to climb Etna.  I am perfectly happy to stand and look at it from a safe distance below. 

Because this is not my first visit, I chose not to go back to Taormina.  It’s perfectly nice, but I thought I would hit ancient Syracuse this time.  In the historic quarter of the town, Neapolis, you can find the Archeological Park, which features the best-preserved Greek theater outside of Greece.  Aeschylus premiered some of his plays there during the spring drama festival (I talk more about ancient Greek theater here). The archeological park also features a Roman amphitheater, a football field sized altar to Zeus, and the Orecchio di Dioniso.  That last one is part of the massive limestone quarry just east of the theater.  The story goes that the tyrant king Dionysus eavesdropped on the conversations of the prisoners working the mine and the cut that supposedly looks like a human ear has since been known as the Orecchio di Dioniso.  Up the street about 3 blocks is the Archeological Museum, which is worth the higher ticket price at the park.  It houses a seriously impressive collection of ancient coins and seals from various famous ancients who lived in Syracuse like Plato and Archimedes.