Your incessant monologizing fills the castle with ennui

[sovay]

Hey, I've thought of a meme.

Sparked by the fact that I wouldn't actually want to be a Stoppard character—I'd die in a fire or I'd be A.E. Housman—who would you like to be a character in a play by? Why? Whose plays would you absolutely not want to find yourself in? (Nota bene: to be differentiated from the writers whose plays you feel like you're living in already. Given how most of my friendlist seems to be doing, that way lies Oh, yeah? I'll see your O'Neill and raise you Sarah Kane.) No fair just calling Shakespeare.

Otherwise I've stopped sleeping again, which makes the idea of more frequent posts seem even more remote and exhausting. I should still try.

In the meantime: talk to me about theater!

Comments

[sovay]

we'd use shadow puppets. It would be awesome.

Dude.

I am kind of sorry I can't request you stage Cleansed now.

[timesygn.livejournal.com]

If the prize is dinner with you, I accept.

(On a more serious note, you have found your way onto the acknowledgements page of the hardcopy edition of my novel, due for release shortly. I would be honored if you would allow me to forward you a copy.)

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

I just spent forty-five minutes under a truck getting a cat out of an engine block. Is there a play for that?

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

I would not mind being in a Dodie Smith play.

Do musicals count?

[gwynnega]

I'd like to be in a play by Wilde or Shaw. I'd say Rostand because I love Cyrano, but it might be a drag to actually be Roxane.

[gwynnega]

I think I used to live in a Pinter play!

[sovay]

I would not mind being in a Dodie Smith play.

I should read one. All I know of her work is I Capture the Castle and the Dalmatians novels.

Do musicals count?

Oh, sure! A matinée, a Pinter play, perhaps a piece of Mahler's . . .

[sovay]

I'd like to be in a play by Wilde or Shaw.

Okay, Shaw. His plays are full of mistaken people, but rarely stupid.

I'd say Rostand because I love Cyrano, but it might be a drag to actually be Roxane.

So, who would you rather be?

[sovay]

(On a more serious note, you have found your way onto the acknowledgements page of the hardcopy edition of my novel, due for release shortly. I would be honored if you would allow me to forward you a copy.)

I'm honored. I would love a copy. Thank you!

I don't know when I will next be in the Vancouver area, since the person I know best who currently lives there is moving in June, but I have this mad theory about attending World Fantasy in Toronto next year: if you can make it, we should totally hang out.

[gwynnega]

Hmm, would it be better to be Cyrano, who is awesome but dies anyway, or Roxane, who's the recipient of all that adoration, but winds up alone anyway? No wonder Steve Martin rewrote the ending!

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

Best meme in ages, longest comment ever.

Where I would want to wind up: as a character from Gilbert and Sullivan. Opera must be an option here, because G&S is the only place I would choose to live outside reality. (Do I have to name a character who already exists, or would I be a new character?) Lots of things I care about are SRS BZNZ there (tea, baked goods, ghosts, TRU LUV, piracy, complicated codes of honor, fairyland, poetry). Everybody but me is funny without knowing it or else has a nice delicate sense of humor and irony. Of course, nothing about me would be funny in any way. And all the subjects of satire are handled gently enough to be funny without demolishing them. Also, unless you're Mr. Wells or Bunthorne, you usually wind up falling in love with someone before the end. Really, I want to rent the Dower House at Castle Bunthorne and move in.

There is one Eugene O'Neill play I wouldn't mind being in: Ah, Wilderness! It's like you took Long Day's Journey Into Night and played it all for laughs. Also, Mother isn't an addict anymore, the men of the house aren't drunkards, and the Edmund-equivalent character is a tender-hearted teenage poet whose favorite poem is "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (he pronounces it as in "goalpost"). He quarrels with his girlfriend, his family don't understand him, he unsuccessfully tries to pick up a hooker, he gets beaten up in a bar, and he eventually makes it up with his girlfriend and his family. A Day In The Life Of Nebbishy Poet Lad.

Tons of writers I wouldn't want to be written by. Let me think of one with particular applicability to me. Ah! I have it! I wouldn't want to be a character in Love Suicide at Amijima, a (nineteenth-century?) Japanese play whose background I've never Googled because it annoys me too much. It's about exactly what it says on the wrapper: two lovers Can Never Be Together because he's already married and she's of a different social class than he. So they go off and kill themselves in order to be reborn together. Or possibly just be together in the afterlife--I'm not clear on the beliefs involved.

I hate this ending very, very much. When it was first written there was apparently a fad for plays about love-suicides--and a fad for real love-suicides, as well. Kind of like the German emo boys who killed themselves in imitation of Werther. The reason it still makes me angry--and it's been years--was that the play was beautifully written and full of melodrama. It's a good play if you disregard the message; I was really into it.

And I went along even with the hero's stabbing the heroine and then hanging himself, and then said WAIT STOP WHAT NOT OK and felt like rushing through the fourth wall and slapping some sense into the characters. "Hey lady! Find a dude who wants you in THIS life! Hey dude! Go home to your wife, idiot!"

[timesygn.livejournal.com]

If you would care to send me an address to which I can mail a copy of ECHO, my personal e-mail address is: roadpoet@rock.com

I don't usually hit Cons (or fly much) due to a paucity of funds. However I will be in TO next year. When is the Con? My plans have me in town to visit and play with some jiu-jitsu friends. If things jibe time-wise, I can do both. And you can meet Danny and Ola, recent immigrants from Israel. (And try jiu-jitsu, too, if you're interested ...)

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I used to know all the scenes with RIchard and Eleanor pretty much by heart, so either of them, definitely. But I'm also a big fan of Geoffrey, Henry and Philip--hell, even John gets some pretty great lines. Aalis is definitely the most boring, but that's hardly her fault.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Uneasy truths. http://www.youngjeanlee.org/about

[zdenka]

They tend to be based on a single conceit. Things happen because they are dramatic, and human effort is often futile before fate or the whims of the gods.

For example: a group of English scammers steal an idol's jeweled eye. It does not end well. A group of beggars trick the city into believing they are gods so as to live a life of luxury. It does not end well. Two dead burglars locked outside the gates of Heaven get the bright idea of breaking in. It does not end well and also there is EXISTENTIAL DESPAIR.

I rather like "King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior," but it's not clear that the protagonist and his allies are morally or politically superior to the king he overthrows.

Oh! And I completely love "The Lost Silk Hat," which has a very different tone. A man has quarreled with his sweetheart, and he is going to go off and die in Africa or somewhere, except he has accidentally left his hat inside and he can neither go back in to get it nor be seen in the streets without a hat. He comes up with various ridiculous schemes to get the hat back, "helped" by a random poet, who wants the man to go off and die in Africa because it would be romantic. In the end, he reconciles with the girl, to the poet's utter disgust.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to reflect that I can hardly think of any play I'd like to be a character in. Maybe it's just that my brain's fried from trying and failing to write a proposal for a paper for a conference on the short story in Irish-language literature, but right now it seems as if every play I can think of is one that doesn't have much in the way of happy ending.

There's bound to be something else. Maybe a Wilde play wouldn't be too bad, although there's not much place for folk like me. O'Keefe's The Poor Soldier is full of buffoons, other than the hero and the virtuous captain who arranges for his rival in love to be commissioned because he realises the woman truly loves the man and that's the only way her guardian will permit the match; that said, the songs are nice, and I'd like to see a production, although I question how and where one could find singers capable of doing it justice, cos it's too Irish to be turned to opera or Broadway but most traditional singers haven't the volume for musical theatre. Might be all right to be in a Molière play, depending which one it was--I could probably cheat the Bourgeois Gentilhomme out of a few sous for lessons in something or other, and have a bit of fun doing it.

I'll try to put some more thought into it later tonight, because this really is an interesting meme.

Any road, I hope you can find some sleep soon.

[larryhammer]

I am so sorry.

---L.

[sovay]

Uneasy truths.

I will have to read some of her.

[sovay]

Is there a play for that?

Rube Goldberg.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

just skip a couple of generations and go for The Revenger's Tragedy.

Y'know, I think it was The Revenger's Tragedy that reminded my of how most of the characters in Seven Gothic Tales wish they could be characters in a play, or better yet a puppet play - it's weirdly soothing how *doomed* everyone is, like they're on a track ride that will kill them, but at least they'll never have to deal with boredom or uncertainty; so, yeah, I might be ok living in that one. Especially since my RL is Beckett's Happy Days.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

I think I'd be ok living in Under the Gaslight (Augustin Daly, 1867). It contains what may be the original villain-ties-someone-to-the-train-tracks scene, except it's the heroine who does the rescuing, after hacking her way out of a locked storage shed with an axe. I wouldn't want to be Laura, the heroine, though, because kickass as she is, she still marries Ray, the utter twit of a nominal-hero. However, there's a street-urchin named Peachblossom who, now or later (I can't tell if she's supposed to be a child or a teenager from the script), will probably end up with Joe Snorky, the one-armed Civil War vet who is *way* cooler than Ray. So, yeah, it's the melodrama for me.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

I'm already in Cold Comfort Farm (do filmscripts count?), and I want out. I would rather be in My Fair Lady, as a Pickering or Mrs. Pearce. Sadly, Gilbert & Sullivan's roles for older women are unfunny from the inside. The Wicked Witch of the West would be tremendous fun, right up until some chit threw a bucket of water at me.

Oh, I know. I could be a rude mechanical.

Nine

[sovay]

Opera must be an option here, because G&S is the only place I would choose to live outside reality.

Opera and musicals are fair game; they're theater. I should probably have put up another n.b. to that effect.

(Do I have to name a character who already exists, or would I be a new character?)

Dude, whichever. You could be a character in an operetta G & S never got around to writing, but totally should have.

Lots of things I care about are SRS BZNZ there (tea, baked goods, ghosts, TRU LUV, piracy, complicated codes of honor, fairyland, poetry).

Maybe you should just make this a post.

Also, unless you're Mr. Wells or Bunthorne, you usually wind up falling in love with someone before the end.

You could be one of the couples of sheer awesome à la Lady Sophy/King Paramount or Mad Margaret/Despard.

Really, I want to rent the Dower House at Castle Bunthorne and move in.

Or you could do that.

and the Edmund-equivalent character is a tender-hearted teenage poet whose favorite poem is "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (he pronounces it as in "goalpost"). He quarrels with his girlfriend, his family don't understand him, he unsuccessfully tries to pick up a hooker, he gets beaten up in a bar, and he eventually makes it up with his girlfriend and his family. A Day In The Life Of Nebbishy Poet Lad.

That's awesome. I have no idea how I failed to hear of this play.

And I went along even with the hero's stabbing the heroine and then hanging himself, and then said WAIT STOP WHAT NOT OK and felt like rushing through the fourth wall and slapping some sense into the characters. "Hey lady! Find a dude who wants you in THIS life! Hey dude! Go home to your wife, idiot!"

I have had that reaction to narratives. Several people here have mentioned Cyrano de Bergerac, which I imprinted on very hard in high school; that has never stopped me from wanting to shake Cyrano and tell him to knock off being so in love with the image of his own unlovability and talk to Roxane already, for God's sake.

[edit]

Feel free to perpetrate perpetuate this meme on your own journal!

[sovay]

I think I'd be ok living in Under the Gaslight (Augustin Daly, 1867).

I have never heard of this play at all! Except for the utter twit hero (a problem that plagues drama to this day), it sounds awesome.

"Peachblossom and Joe Snorky" is a webcomic I would read.

[sovay]

Sadly, Gilbert & Sullivan's roles for older women are unfunny from the inside.

Hey, Lady Sophy rocks.

Oh, I know. I could be a rude mechanical.

How do you feel about Shaw?