I’m still a little stunned in the wake of our trip with Scranton Fringe to Ballina, Ireland. Although I’m not blessed with Irish ancestors myself, most of the Irish-American in Scranton can trace their roots back to County Mayo in the country’s rural Northwest. In many of these traditional villages, they are bring back use of the traditional Irish Gaelic. We were fortunate to have sightseeing time built into the trip and spent several photogenic hours in Westport and at Downhead Patrick in Ballycastle, the Ballinglen Museum of Art, Ceide Fields neolithic archeological site, and on along the coast to Belmullet. My first time leaving the U.S. after so many years of hardwork, struggle and sacrifice as a single mother, it was personally a soul expanding experience. We saw six rainbows! I always thought the rainbow was a mythological character in old folk tales but in October, the weather changes back and forth from sun to showers so quickly, real rainbow sightings are almost a daily occurrence! Who knew? There are quite a few images and videos from our trip on my social media accounts.
Working at the Ballina Arts Centre and meeting the lovely audiences who came to support our shows was the professional highlight. It’s going to take some time to process the last 10 days. In the meantime, I had to share this lovely bonus prize that came to our attention as our plane landed at JFK yesterday and we turned off Airplane Mode.
They got Maureen and I reversed in the cutline here. I am on the left between the Ballina Mayor and Ireland’s Minister of Culture and Maureen is on the right-hand side, but neither of us could care less about that. The people who know us know who we are and those who met us will remember it was Maureen on the stage and me behind the scenes. It was definitely a career highlight that makes me newly grateful that I didn’t give up my passion for the arts while anchored by the practical choices I’ve had to make to survive.
Thank you, Ireland, for your tremendous hospitality! I hope to see you again before too long.
Two years after opening a file in FadeIn, I finally finished the first episode of The Ferment. This was a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been letting it sit before making some more edits before sharing the script with my colleagues. I’ve been writing episodes two and three simultaneously, so it won’t take too much longer to finish the next two. I’m giving myself until the end of June.
In the meantime, school has been as much work as I’ve come to expect — teaching seven classes for the fourth semester in a row. I am cutting back in the fall. I’ve made a promise to myself and to my art. Not trying to be a downer, but it was my birthday last week and I’m very aware I might not have as much time left as I’d like … maybe dying early from workaholicism is preventable. Or can at least be slowed down.
Trying to take a little break today (burnout is rumbling on the horizon), I made another image in the poster series for The Ferment that I also started two years ago. I’ve had this idea written on a post-it for close to a year.
So … I’m slow. Why is everybody in such a hurry all the time? It’s not a race.
Here’s what I made today and what I made last week. Images for a bit … and then I’ll get back to the words (as soon as the semester is over, unless I use writing as a procrastination tactic.)
After seeing the Scranton Shakespeare production of Troilus and Cressida in summer 2019, I began research to support a (feminist) revisionist (live theatre) story about Cressida / Bresis and women trafficked as slaves during the Trojan War. In Chaucer’s version of the Troilus and Cressida story, she is degraded for her disloyalty to Troilus and for her fickle, inconstant character, in general. It’s not a virtuous way for a woman of that time to behave. The readership knows to judge her. Shakespeare plays with moral questions of wartime but doesn’t free Cressida from “slut shaming.”
Unfortunately, after finishing grad school that same summer, my work schedule grew and grew to the scale that I haven’t had much time to devote to this project since first conceiving of its potential.
Among the seven classes I am teaching this semester are an introductory course in Media Writing and Writing for Social Media. Knowing the momentous impact AI continues to have on the media industry, it would disadvantage my students were I not to learn as much as I can first-hand about the potential dangers and benefits of the uncanny elephant in the room. I have my own moral qualms about typing a single word into any of these digital communications platforms these days but … this is the world we are living in today. Is AI going to go away if we ignore it? Can we reject this technology and still expect to earn a living? How long will it take to build a whole new unplugged underground? Are enough of us willing to confront the digital revolution with a new world order? Perhaps.
While doing research for my class this morning, I was inspired to see what Notebook LM might do with my work on the Cressida Project so far. I’ve accumulated documents including literary research papers, source texts, blog posts and my own notes and creative ideas based on the conviction that we must retell Cressida’s story because she was a trafficked woman, a sex slave traded as a win or loss in a foolishly deadly war waged for no good reason.
After a productive chat and a pretty fantastic “audio overview” was generated, I knew I had to share the results. While these results are AI-generated, they feel very personal and specific to my ideas and viewpoint. I feel a sense of pride in these results even though AI does a lot of heavy lifting here it couldn’t have made sense of my research unless there was something solid here. I fed it 27 sources to support my position and this LM makes it sound like my concept is worth pursuing. I feel re-inspired to finish the work I’ve begun.
The remainder of this post is the content generated by Notebook LM after our detailed conversation. I find it interesting that while the “Audio Overview” leaves out any specific mention of my plans for the revisionist play, the WordPress post I asked Notebook to write did not shy away from my original script in progress. The working title is “Whore Criseyde” which I know is just awful. I’ll change it later LOL.
*The works cited page that supports these footnotes is based on my uploaded sources but also complimented to texts beyond my current download folder. I’m not going to include it here but don’t hesitate to contact me if you are curious.
First: A link to the Audio Overview to help separate the AI that follows from the Alicia who wrote the first half of this post herself.
Audio Overview Logline: “In a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, a woman’s ‘betrayal’ becomes a desperate act of survival in a world where she is both a commodity and a scapegoat for the follies of men.”
WordPress post I asked Notebook LM to write:
“My current project is a deep dive into the complexities of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, but it’s not your typical retelling. I’m not interested in simply rehashing the old story of a ‘true’ lover and a ‘false’ maiden. Instead, I want to reimagine Cressida’s story through a feminist lens, exploring her agency (or lack thereof) within a patriarchal and war-torn world. This isn’t just about making her a victim, though. It’s about understanding how she becomes the object of male projections and how her choices are shaped by the impossible constraints placed on her [1-3].
Drawing inspiration from various sources, including the original play and critical analyses [4, 5], I’m particularly interested in:
Challenging the traditional narratives: I want to move beyond the simplistic ‘true Troilus, false Cressida’ dichotomy and unpack the societal forces that lead to her condemnation [6].
Exploring the idea of Cressida as a commodity: I want to highlight how she is treated as merchandise by men like Pandarus, and how her exchange between the Trojans and Greeks reduces her to an object of political and economic trade [7, 8].
Amplifying the voices of the marginalized: I aim to give voice to the women of Troy, including the chorus and the other refugee women, and offer a more nuanced perspective on the impact of war on women [9, 10].
Examining the cynical lens of the male gaze: Through characters like Ulysses and Thersites, I want to explore the destructive nature of male cynicism and how it shapes the narrative of the play [11-13].
Highlighting the human cost of war: This project is not just about Cressida. It’s about how war dehumanizes individuals and forces them into impossible situations, reflecting a “man-made horror in a godless world” [14-16]. I want the play to be relevant to modern audiences and invite discussion on the timeless themes.
Ultimately, my goal is to create a production that is both faithful to the original text and yet challenges its assumptions, offering a more complete and sympathetic portrayal of Cressida and the women in the play [17]. I am interested in the potential of staging this play with a modern lens, using visual and aural elements to highlight the timeless relevance of its themes [18, 19]. The stage will feature a debris-filled landscape and temporary shelters to emphasise the women’s vulnerability [19, 20]. It will explore the use of hatred as a tool of control [21]. It is a project about what can be ‘taken’ from the experience of the play [22]. I want the play to be an ‘open text’, and I want my production to reflect that.”
–The Grace of Mary Traverse, Timberlake WertenbakerThere are so many marvelous lines and stunning passages in this script, I hesitate to pull out one bit to represent. Put this on your reading list. Better yet, stage the thing. Especially recommended for feminists and women’s studies scholars.
I studied an early, cardstock-bound copy of this book while working on my NeoVaudeville grant presentation back in 2009. It’s a little fact-heavy but boasts a few memorable anectdotes and is a worth $13 for those interested in vaudeville and theatrical history –especially if they’re from Scranton.
I’m personally curious to read the last chapter — as one of the few journalists covering theater in Scranton for the past decade (as well as consistantly working on the production end in my freelance life). and I’ve never met or spoken with the author as far as I can remember but according to her bio she has participated in local cemetery theater productions.
-ag
“If You Can Play Scranton is a theatrical history of America as seen through the famous performers who came to Scranton, Pennsylvania. It discusses performances by the best known actors and actresses of the tragic and comic stage, ethnic performers, vaudevillians, musical comedy, concert, orchestra and band performers from 1871-2010. At the turn of the 20th century, Scranton was one of the most famous try-out towns for legitimate stage productions. The sophisticated taste of its audience, created by extensive exposure to world renown talent, continues to this day.”
Playwright Sarah Ruhl reads excerpts from “75 Essays I Don’t Have the Time to Write” in the Pearn Auditorium at the University of Scranton on Friday, October 21, 2011.
Writing about the perhaps desperately over the top attempts of Broadway theaters to transport its audience to a world more in line with the subject at hand than the privileged bland Americana in which they live their daily lives, Isherwood writes: The drawback to this kind of immersive décor is that it can border on the theme park-ish, turning the specific into the ersatz and treading dangerously close to kitsch. We may be on Broadway, but we are still hip, the furnishings all but scream.
I think the trend is less alarming for its potential aesthetic abuse than it is, well… hilarious. People are paying big bucks to be transported into a safe simulation … supposedly authentic (but not) of the world as others know it. Or knew it. This is an essential function of art. To improve upon reality. To take the foreign that we fear and make it easier to digest.
Broadway is lactose free skim milk? Whatever that is.
This is the blog of Kal Spelletich. CONTACT: Spellkal (at) gmail.com + Art, technology, humans and robots, and, well, the journey http://www.kaltek.org/
–The Grace of Mary Traverse, Timberlake WertenbakerThere are so many marvelous lines and stunning passages in this script, I hesitate to pull out one bit to represent. Put this on your reading list. Better yet, stage the thing. Especially recommended for feminists and women’s studies scholars.
Gregarious Expressions 