I met a shapeshifter

I spent last night in fifteenth-century Italy.

Actually, I spent last night in an unairconditioned room at MIT, which was rather more like certain circles of the Inferno, but I didn't notice too much—I was watching the dress rehearsal of two plays by i Sebastiani (the Greatest Commedia dell' Arte Troupe in the Entire World!), and they were magnificent.

It's not like memorized theater, understand. The scenarios for each scene are scripted. The dialogue and physical interaction, that's all improvised. To add to the mutability, while the names and masks of the traditional characters may remain the same—the young lovers Oratio and Isabella, the more or less clever servants Arlecchino and Franceschina, the widow Olivia and the lawyerly Dottore Graziano, money-loving Pantalone and the inflated Spanish Captain—the actors shift beneath them, and consequently the personalities. Pantalone in Il Duello di Amore (The Duel of Love) is a thunderous blowhard who all but has a heart attack when his prospective son-in-law declares his total disinterest in profit and cash; in Il Figlio Mancante (The Missing Son), he still chokes when he has to get out the word "pay," but he also sidles neurotically offstage when he sees his old flame approaching. Il Dottore Graziano falls in love in the latter play; spends most of the former by turns lecherous, unsuccessful, and unconscious. Franceschina is a nervous magnet for disaster in one; dryly imperturbable in the other. And while Arlecchino will never win prizes for his intellect, unless maybe an Ig Nobel, he only eats paper when it's convenient for the plot. The troupe's website offers perhaps the best explanation of the use of stock characters:

A term used today to describe Commedia's collection of established stage characters. Generally a Commedia scenario tells a story. This story is fleshed out using the characters available to the troupe. If the cast of Gilligan's Island were to present the story of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night using their stock characters, they would still be "Gilligan, the Skipper, A Millionaire and his wife . . ." but their relationships might be different, for example, the Howells might not be a couple, and the Professor might be Mrs. Howell's fussy smarty-pants valet, Gilligan could work for Ginger, and MaryAnn would be dressed like a boy.

Which is a much better summation than I could provide. I also got to see greyselke, whom I had not talked with since at least the winter; and meet her person whose livejournal name I do not know, although he conversed most intelligently on Babylon 5. (I have now received yet another recommendation for Farscape and Firefly. All right, universe, I get it . . .) There was even ice cream. I could have done with a little less tropical humidity, or the sensation when I stepped outside that I'd walked accidentally into someone else's steambath, but it was still an excellent night.

The day before yesterday deserves its own post, but we don't all get what we deserve; I met nineweaving and rushthatspeaks for iced chocolate at Burdick's and then we repaired to nineweaving's to watch Withnail & I (1987) and I Capture the Castle (2003). I had meant to make intelligent comments on both of these movies, but you'll have to settle for my impression that Withnail & I was like a collaboration between Angela Carter and M. John Harrison and that I Capture the Castle would have been much improved if the actors playing the American characters hadn't been made out of pressboard. I still loved the film; it holds up through Bill Nighy and Romola Garai alone. But in a story that turns on a love pentangle, it helps if two corners of that figure are real people, not just three-dimensional bits of plot.

In other news, Cabinet des Fées #1 has been reviewed at Tangent Online. It's a decidedly mixed review, and seems to contain some assumptions about the purposes and values of fiction with which I do not particularly agree (and for God's sake, "The Fool's Doorway" is not based on the Pied Piper! If anything, it's based on Tarot and Elegguá!), but it is a review nonetheless.* And my poem "Crossing the Line" has been accepted by Goblin Fruit, which is both a new market for me and my first real foray into online-only publication. Thanks to time_shark for this slippery slope.

All in all, it's been a good couple of days. And this afternoon I have to make phone calls about insurance, so the balance of the universe rights itself . . .

*The second issue is slated for September; in the meantime, you can read the latest online issue at Scheherezade's Bequest. My current favorites are Amanda Downum's "Brambles" (Soon she will be white-armed winter, inexorable as ice) and Patricia Russo's "Cinder Road" (My fingers fell in love first, then my palms, then the insides of my wrists).