(the choice of stage over film being appropriately inappropriate and counter-intuitive)
Although because of all the video work, it winds up with filmed passages, and they are beautifully integrated. I think it's the most successful use I've seen of video in a stage production: it contributed close-ups and alternate points of view, communicated simultaneity in a way that enhanced the multiple feeling of the world, and never distracted.
The novel is a weird tribal touch-stone - I have met very few people who have actually read it, and even fewer who would admit to identifying with the story or its characters.
Jay Scheib mentioned that he kept running into "brilliant people who had read Dhalgren when they were fourteen," which is eventually why he read the novel (and promptly decided to adapt it). I wasn't fourteen, but I was in high school; I read my parents' copy. I think I was following from "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones." I should re-read it again, but of course it's in a box . . .
The novel's complexity and ambiguity deny it the kind of communal expression we see with Eclipse or Harry Potter (- Dhalgren fandom does not constitute a huge demographic).
It might be just as well. The Twilight phenomenon has been terrifying. Also, I think if you seriously discuss Samuel R. Delany and Stephenie Meyer in the same sentence, you spontaneously combust.
A Burning Man-type festival would be interesting, but probably also a magnet for vice-squad detectives.
no subject
Although because of all the video work, it winds up with filmed passages, and they are beautifully integrated. I think it's the most successful use I've seen of video in a stage production: it contributed close-ups and alternate points of view, communicated simultaneity in a way that enhanced the multiple feeling of the world, and never distracted.
The novel is a weird tribal touch-stone - I have met very few people who have actually read it, and even fewer who would admit to identifying with the story or its characters.
Jay Scheib mentioned that he kept running into "brilliant people who had read Dhalgren when they were fourteen," which is eventually why he read the novel (and promptly decided to adapt it). I wasn't fourteen, but I was in high school; I read my parents' copy. I think I was following from "Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones." I should re-read it again, but of course it's in a box . . .
The novel's complexity and ambiguity deny it the kind of communal expression we see with Eclipse or Harry Potter (- Dhalgren fandom does not constitute a huge demographic).
It might be just as well. The Twilight phenomenon has been terrifying. Also, I think if you seriously discuss Samuel R. Delany and Stephenie Meyer in the same sentence, you spontaneously combust.
A Burning Man-type festival would be interesting, but probably also a magnet for vice-squad detectives.
This is almost certainly true.
Thanks for taking time to write the review.
You're welcome. I'm glad it was useful.