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

[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!"

[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!

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

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

Awww! It's my secret ambition to one day be Mad Margaret/Despard with somebody. (Not sure whether I'd be Despard or Margaret, character-wise.)

I believe I will have a go at this meme myself, and I hope you'll join in.

[zdenka]

I would join the request to be a G&S character, except I have a sneaking suspicion I already am.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Do you sing choruses in public?

[zdenka]

I do, in fact. (That's mad enough, I think!)