Competitive Shakespeare

I do some weird things...

Last Tuesday I had the opportunity to compete in my high school's Shakespeare Competition and this week I'm moving on the the branch competition of the English-Speaking Union's Shakespeare Competition.  I will be performing Timon from Act III sc. vi of Timon of Athens, which (in the words of a friend of mine/my english teacher from last year) is an unusual choice.  This monologue will be coupled with Sonnet 130 in competition.

I'm really excited about this opportunity, crazy though it might be.  My monologue is a grand "F*** you" to Timon's false friends, and my monologue, though perhaps less than complimentary to the woman to whom it is directed, is incredibly sweet and truthful at the end.  And I have the added bonus of clearly playing men in both performances.  I make no attempt to feminize either.

If any of you are in the area, it's in the Cole Auditorium at the Greenwich Library at 3 today (Leap Day, 2012).  It should be really interesting....

Addendum: because of inclement weather, the competition has been rescheduled to March 7. So look for that.

UPDATE: I placed 4th out of 20 competitors.  I won $25!  It's awesome to be paid to act.

The Recruiting Officer

I feel like I should make a few disclaimers to begin this post, just so you take my praise with an appropriate grain of salt.

I love the Donmar.

I am ever so slightly obsessed with Mark Gatiss (I follow him on twitter!).

Steven Moffat was sitting 20 feet away from me when I saw this performed.

The cast is 98% comprised of very good-looking men (there are some women as well).

Good?  Awesome.

This production is the first for the Donmar Warehouse’s new Artistic Director.  Given the quality of the show, I think we need not worry about the regime change.  The audience files in as the actors walk about the stage lighting the many candles surrounding the space.  This, combined with the scenic design, evokes a warm tavern or public house of the late 1600s.  It’s really cool is what I’m saying.  Five of the actors also double as musicians, whose antics add to the fun of this hilarious show.  And it’s a lot of fun.  There’s cross dressing, bawdy humor, and a German doctor named Conundrum from the far away land of Algebra (in the words of Captain Brazen: “I find his place of nativity hard to calculate”).  And that’s just one scene. 

The comedy is tinged with a hint of realism, stemming from the playwright’s experience as a recruiting officer.  Farquhar wrote this play in a time of patriotism and pride in the British army in the aftermath of the War of Spanish Succession.  There was a certain glamour surrounding the officers of the army. But the final scene of the play (I won’t say how) still manages to evoke the horrors of war.  It leaves you with a slightly unsettled feeling in spite of the post-comedy high.  Which I think makes this a really good play.  The acting is wonderful, the lighting (both candle and instrument) is perfect, and the set pulls the whole thing together into a very realistic, mutable environment; but the writing and the directing make the production special.

The House of Bernarda Alba

I’m not usually one for reimaginings, but I thought the Almeida’s production of The House of Bernarda Alba set in modern-ish day Iran was really well chosen and well done.  The play was written on the eve of Franco’s rise to power in Spain and so tyranny and totalitarianism play prominent roles in the production.  It centers on the actions of Bernarda Alba after the death of her husband, specifically the fact that she locks her five daughters and herself within her house for 8 years of mourning.  This house is not a home; it is conjured within the environment of the play as a fortress or a coffin.  Bernarda summons its different elements as a means of reinforcing its boundaries: the unseen love interest of the girls meets his sweethearts through their windows; men and women are separated (men in the yard, women in the house); and the neighbors watch each other without mercy between the shutters.  The women inside the house are connected to the outside world only by gossip and the excellent sound design of Dan Jones.  And I feel so much sympathy for them.  I too live with Bernarda Alba.

Visually too, the play’s palette of black and white may serve to evoke the color scheme of a black and white photograph.  Bernarda insists on everything being scrubbed spotless, yet only wears black.  Her morality too is black and white.  She endorses and upholds a society she condemns as keeping her daughters from enjoying their rightful place in the world.  Bernarda believes herself to be a high-born woman.  Whether this is actually the case is left up to the audience; but, in either case, Bernarda believes her daughters have been cheated out of their rightful place. But this play is built on the premise of negation.  Bernarda’s opening and closing line is “Silence” and she imposes on her daughters a regime of denial.  This is the story, ultimately, of a dynasty, only here Clytemnestra has been conceived as a 60-year-old matriarch for whom social control is inextricably bound up with religious display.  The play was conceived as a statement on tyranny and it wholly succeeds, evoking not only the beginnings of Franco’s Spain but also the conditions against which the protesters of the Arab Spring rebelled.

How to Make a Two Act Play One Act

Last night I had the opportunity to attend Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death by Edward Bond at the Young Vic.  It is not one I particularly relished.  I would love to say there was something about the production I enjoyed, but I really can't.  I don't think I can express to you how absolutely terrible this production is.  It is really, really, really bad.  And I feel terrible saying that because I got to talk to Patrick Stewart (who plays the role of Shakespeare) before the show, and he is just one of the nicest people.  So nice, in fact, that I almost stayed for the second act.  Almost.  But I didn't.


To be perfectly honest, this play is fundamentally incomprehensible.  I may be coming down hard on playwrights, but this really goes too far.  As far as I can tell (and be corroborated by the great sage wikipedia), this is a historical fiction, Marxist interpretation of the last years of Shakespeare's life in which all he wants to do is sit.  I know they say make your characters want something, but I don't think this is what they meant.  The first act of this play also features his daughter (a greedy bitch), an old gardener with the mind of a 12 year old (this is how he is described by his wife), an angry preacher, a "witch" (she's killed for arson and shaking), and Combe (I think he's meant to represent the "establishment").  Let that sink in for a bit.  The script features heavy handed condemnations of violent entertainment (bear-baiting), capitalism, money, success, and the common man.  For being a marxist writer, Bond is incredibly aristocratic. As for the title: "Art has very practical consequences. Most 'cultural appreciation' ignores this and is no more relevant than a game of 'Bingo' and less honest."  If you understand that, please explain in the comments.  Thank you.


So yeah.  I literally can't say anything more than that.  I did not understand a word of what transpired on the stage in front of me.  Stewart is probably very good, but Bond gave him nothing to work with.

Wandering Through a Power Plant

To my mind, the Tate Modern is one of the most interesting spaces for an art museum.  It's inside the old Bankside power station.  Yeah.  Today, I wandered into room 3 of the Energy and Process gallery and the special exhibition called "No Lone Zone".  Of course I wandered into a lot more, but those are the two rooms I'm going to talk about today.


Room 3 of looked specifically at the Arte Povera and Anti-Form movements.  The Italian artists of Arte Povera produced work that explored changing physical states instead of representing things in the world, while in Japan and the United State the Mono Ha and Post-Minimalism movements looked for alternatives to a sleek technological aesthetic. In the late 1960s, many sculptors emphasised the process of making, and explored ideas of energy in their work.  Artists began to use a diverse range of everyday materials - sometimes industrial, sometimes organic - rather than those associated with fine art. These substances were often malleable, volatile or elastic, allowing natural forces and energies such as gravity, electricity, and magnetism to manifest themselves. The process of making was often evident in finished works.  I was specifically interested in five or so works.  First was "8th Paper Octagonal" by Richard Tuttle...

This was admittedly kind of an odd work.  It consists of an octagonal piece of bond paper glued to the wall by wheat paste.  Tuttle intends that the octagon should disappear into the wall as much as possible. Nonetheless, once noticed, the work becomes strangely present. As an object, it is ultra-thin; but it still takes up an awkward place between painting and sculpture.  To me it is interesting, and ultimately slightly unsettling, to make art that is meant to disappear into the wall.  I found that I kept being drawn back to this piece after I had noticed it.  This is of course the kind of art I love to mock, it is a piece of paper stuck to the wall; but I found it strangely compelling, which I think is what art is meant to be.  Strangely compelling.


I was also fascinated by Gilberto Zorio's "Teracotta Circle":

Terracotta Circle looks back to classical ideas about human proportion. The diameter is based on the artist’s arm-span and the circle was moulded as he moved around at floor level. The work also marks out the height of the body, as a glass platform with a thin layer of lead hangs at head height.  To me, this is an interestingly stripped down version of Da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man".  I googled this guy and I found out that many of Zorio’s early sculptures explored energy and change: crystals grew up metallic structures, substances altered colour when damp, live electric elements draped from the wall, and painted surfaces fluoresced under ultra-violet lights, which is pretty cool.  


Third, Kishio Suga's "Ren-Shiki-Tai":

This work is an example of the Mono Ha movement.  For the artist, this work represents the fragile boundary between the interior and exterior world.  For me, I think this work is particularly interesting because, while the work seems to represent a fragile boundary, that fragile boundary seems to defy gravity.  Admittedly gravity is not a particularly strong fundamental force, but it is probably the most popular.  These artists seemed to combine art and science relatively often, which I think adds a really interesting extra dimension to the experience.

Fourth, Grenville Davey's "Ce & Ce":

This rather surprised looking man is the artist himself.  He's rather surprised about the fact that I can't (after a cursory google search) find this particular work.  Oh well; you'll have to imagine.  Although abstract, the informal positioning and steel lips of the circles suggest the lids of vats, or giant paint pots, momentarily set to one side. By subtly altering the geometry of the circle Davey subverts notions of ideal beauty and uniformity. The streaked surface of the two parts of "Ce & Ce", with its traces of poured acid, underscores this subversion of purity. The title suggests a visual pun about looking at a work in which one element partially eclipses the other behind it.  But from you're perspective it might not.  You'll have to trust me on that one.

Last from this room, Direction by Giovani Anselmo:

In the late 1960s, Anselmo began to make sculptures exploring forces such as torsion, gravity, and magnetism. His "Direction" series incorporate compasses that point to the magnetic north pole. This work is made by pushing a glass beaker with a needle inside it against a dampened cloth. "I formed a sort of trail that the energy of the magnetic fields, continuing to orient the needle, kept alive", Anselmo said. Inside the gallery, the work serves as a reminder of the space outside it, and the invisible forces that structure the world.  I nerded out on this one.  Not only did it represent small scale physical forces, but to me it represented earth carving its way through the universe.  So that was awesome.

"No Lone Zone" is a military term designating an area where the presence of just one person is not allowed.  Determined by reasons of both safety and security, this two-person rule - which implies mutual observation - is often applied on nuclear sites, but also in laboratories, banks, and casinos.  However, the phrase can also be used metaphorically to describe a highly sensitive or unstable place, such as those vulnerable environments that proliferate in the context of postcolonial globalization.  This exhibit featured Latin American artists whose works engage with how a particular site and his local history are mediated by the networks of global communication.  Specifically, I want to talk about Teresa Margolles.  Her part of the installation was called "Score Settling" and it incorporated glass fragments from the shot-out windshields left on the asphalt after revenge motivated, drug killings.  She commissions the jewelry they are set in to resemble that worn by the narcos, who shoot their victims in their cars.  I thought this was a really interesting way to memorialize the victims of a war that continues just south of our own borders.  That we, as Americans, know little about.  It's pretty crazy.  It really makes you think.  As art should do.

Hajj Mabrour

The British Museum does special exhibitions right, down to the little things. Like having visitors to their exhibition "Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam" walk through their exhibition in a more or less counterclockwise path.  It's really all about the little things.

I personally found this special exhibition really interesting.  Having gone through Freshman World Cultures at my school, I was more or less familiar with the basics of Islam; but this was really interesting for me.  The exhibition took the visitors through the different steps of the sacred pilgrimage to Mecca from preparation to farewell tawaf.  I found their treatment of the different paths to Mecca particularly interesting.  They took a famous traveler of each road and used their experience to talk about the larger pilgrim experience.  These case studies included Mansa Musa, Queen Zubayda, Sir Richard Francis Burton, and Evliya Çelebi.  I personally found Burton particularly interesting because he was sent by the Royal Geographic Society to explore the hajj experience, which was really interesting because non-Muslims are not allowed into the holy cities.  The colonial hajji experience was also fascinating.  Both the British and the Dutch owned colonies in the Indian Ocean with significant Muslim populations, and it was really interesting to see how they regulated the hajj.  I thought the run down of the different hajj rituals was also well done.  If you're interested a more in depth look at the hajj (which is to say one that is more in depth than the one I could logically provide here), I would direct you to the National Geographic Special Inside Mecca which is also really well done.  All in all, I would wholly recommend the exhibition to anyone who's in the area; it's really well done.

The exhibition also included some interesting, modern, artistic interpretations of the hajj.  Featuring work by Muslim artists of today really brought the whole experience together.  That, combined with quotes at the end of the exhibition regarding the hajj experience from famous Muslims, was a really interesting way to bring the impact of the hajj to the non-Muslims who attended the exhibition.  And of course that was the point; the exhibition was designed to be appreciated by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, which is accomplished with a wonderful spirit of brotherhood.  I'll include some of the works below, as well as some of the quotes.

"They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the most ... I said, the brotherhood! The people of all races, colors, from all over the world coming together as one!  It had proved to me the power of the One God ... All ate as one, and slept as one.  Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One God." - Malcolm X, 1964

"I had come to the center of the universe, where the physical and metaphysical worlds meet.  I was floating in that wonderful sea of humanity, turning like stars in a galaxy, around the house of God ... I had at last found that dimension where human existence ceases to be held by the gravitation of sensual and worldly desires, where the soul is freed in an atmosphere of obedience and peaceful submission to the Divine Presence." - Yusuf Islam, 1980

Excerpts from "You and Only You" by Idris Khan:

I was here for You and only You

Are you leaving as you had come?

Nothing is insurmountable and you will return

What do you do now?

Where are you going now?

Towards home?

Towards the world?

The journey you have taken has shown your devotion

As you leave remember what you have achieved a one ness with this earth and another

Scenes from the London Underground

Contrary to Otto from a Fish Called Wanda, The London Underground is not a political movement, but given the way I'm going to talk about it it might as well be.  

This add is in the St. Paul's Station on the Central Line in London and it's not the only one.  In my extensive googling to find the picture above, I uncovered a bunch of different "Where Do You Stand?" advertisements on topics ranging from a rising China to Iran's nuclear program.  However, "Drone Strikes?" is the one I saw, so it's the one I'm going to talk about.

I've always been a fan of unmanned drone strikes for exactly the reasons listed above.  I am all for a weapon that lowers the risk of civilian injury and increases the accuracy of the strike.  But the add raises a compelling counter argument, namely the "extra-judical assassination" thing.  War is a tough call to make.  People are obviously going to die, so any tactical advantage that reduces the collateral deaths is, I think, fantastic; but in modern warfare collateral damage is almost a given.  We no longer fight wars where both sides face each other on a field and shoot.  That went by the wayside a long time ago (I would pick a war, but my history text book keeps telling me that each new war was the first to feature the extensive use of guerrilla tactics, so I'm not sure).  I think we have passed the age in which we could genuinely avoid massive collateral damage. I'm not saying I'm happy about it, but it's probably true.  The ability to target individuals is also probably a plus, but then again there's the whole "extra-judical assassination" thing.  I guess that's the long way of saying its complicated, but I thought this add was particularly thought provoking and I thought it might be nice to share.

What do you think?