To be an active artist, to showcase adventurous artists, and to celebrate the power of critical mass through cross-cultural, genre, and generational exchange has forged a path for me to understand what it means to cultivate a life in art instead of a decidedly singular career trajectory.
What a play is and isn’t according to Tony Kushner (who appears to have abandoned theater for screenwriting, at least for the meantime …)
in playwriting, the argument, the dialectic, is the key. The narrative follows from that, supports that. If you find the right narrative for the battles you’re trying to put onstage, you’ll write a really good play.The story has to have a narrative logic and be plausible. The characters have to have the unpredictableness and independence of mind that human beings have, so they don’t feel like puppets in your puppet play. But an argument is at the deep heart of the thing. There’s not really much else you can do in theater. It can’t create worlds in the way you can do in a film. The thing that you sharpen as a dramatist is conflict. What did this character come onstage to get? Did he or she get it? If not, what stopped them?
via Stage to Screen with Tony Kushner The Santa Barbara Independent.
“When you exceed the standard parameters of storytelling, you get this opportunity to reflect on something that is larger than the art itself, which I think is always something that the art is reaching for,” Mike Daisey says.
via In Small Spaces, Theatermakers Are Telling Big Stories : NPR.
I’m not defending Miley, her choices look like desperation to me and it’s sad she can’t find a more productive way to challenge audiences if that’s what she’s aiming for.
She’s rejecting the burden of being a role model. Flaunting her right to selfishness. And I personally find that a weak, uninspired choice.
She has successfully managed to get everyone talking about her, if that was her goal.
Regardless, the discussion of cultural appropriation is larger than her.
it’s disempowering to continue to portray black culture as a sort of inert, powerless thing that is capable only of fluttering feebly as it’s plundered by privileged white people.
The problem with Miley may not be that she is inspired by “black” culture but that no one believes it. No one complains about Eminem rapping because number one (even if you don’t like him) he is talented and because we believe him. It feels genuine. Miley lacks authenticity, and that’s annoying people. No one likes a poseur.
And somewhere in all of this, I suspect, we are questioning marketplace value. The outrage is the sound of self-respecting, hard working Americans struggling to make ends meet asking, “She’s making millions … for that?”
-ag
via In Defense of Miley Cyrus’s VMAs Performance – Flavorwire.
Every single show will be podcast, free and without restriction. Each night’s show will be up by noon the following day. That means this show isn’t just for people in New York City—it’s free for people everywhere, forever.
via Mike Daisey: A Q&A about our epic 29-night monologue ALL THE FACES OF THE MOON.
This makes so much sense, I’m going to have to read Parker’s book.
-ag
Robert Parker, in his recent authoritative survey, “On Greek Religion,” emphasizes the role of what the Greeks saw as experiences of divine actions in their lives. ”The greatest evidence for the existence of gods is that piety works . . . the converse is that impiety leads to disaster,” with by far the most emphasis given to the perils of ignoring the gods. There were also rituals, associated with the many cults of specific gods, that for some worshippers “created a sense of contact with the divine. One knows that the gods exist because one feels their presence during the drama of the mysteries or the elation of the choral dance.”
really big moth; the breakfast of ants
Washburn Street,
West Scranton
July 30, 2013
Liner notes.
Gregarious Expressions 