Now is the sun come up from the south
I sang tonight for the first time in public in almost exactly a year. I would have appreciated knowing that I was expected to lead off with the "Anchor Song," since as it was I sat down and took off my coat and was promptly requested to open the song circle accompanied by Benjamin Newman and his guitar, but fortunately I can almost literally do that song in my sleep and later on I had a chance at "Soldier, Soldier," which I had actually brought for the purpose. Other singers including ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
teenybuffalo and ashnistrike did "A Pilgrim's Way," "The Land," "Rimini," "Troopin'," "A Tree Song," "Philadelphia," "The Hyænas," "Hymn of Breaking Strain," and "A Smuggler's Song." A young man I had not heard before did a very good "Danny Deever" and graciously took my request for "Back to the Army Again." I suspect I'm leaving something out, possibly a Leslie Fish setting I didn't know—my Kipling familiarity is almost strictly Peter Bellamy. I closed with "Recessional."
I was not in my best voice. I didn't expect to be: I've been running a throatsore fever since Thursday and talking all weekend in an Arctic-dry hotel. The panel immediately preceding "Songs of Rudyard Kipling" was both in an unmiked room and ran over time; I had no time to warm up and I felt rushed as soon as I came in. ("Canonicity in Theatre" was a genial mess; it did not know whether it was about theater fandom or actual theater, which are two different things, and the moderator did not decide either way. It was fun and it just kind of sprawled.) And I am not sure it mattered. I used to be able to sing—and sing well—short of everything but total loss of voice. Then some things were changed very terribly in my body, against my choice and desire, and everything became much less secure. I've spent half this last year working to change that. It does not feel safe to be hopeful, but I know these were bad circumstances and I do not think I sounded bad. I do not know that my voice will ever feel like my voice again to me, but it did not feel like not mine. It worked. And I enjoyed myself. I think that's important, too.
Just before my panels started, I found the novelization of The Robots of Death (1977) in the dealer's room and although it is a rather skeletal adaptation of a very rich script, it was also three dollars and so now I own it. I read it on the Red Line back from South Station, where I appreciate that I only had to deal with a smell of burning plastic from Porter to Davis.spatch was getting off work at the Somerville Theatre and because it is fifteen degrees Fahrenheit we took a taxi home.
My last two panels tomorrow are readings. After that, sleep.
teenybuffalo and ashnistrike did "A Pilgrim's Way," "The Land," "Rimini," "Troopin'," "A Tree Song," "Philadelphia," "The Hyænas," "Hymn of Breaking Strain," and "A Smuggler's Song." A young man I had not heard before did a very good "Danny Deever" and graciously took my request for "Back to the Army Again." I suspect I'm leaving something out, possibly a Leslie Fish setting I didn't know—my Kipling familiarity is almost strictly Peter Bellamy. I closed with "Recessional."I was not in my best voice. I didn't expect to be: I've been running a throatsore fever since Thursday and talking all weekend in an Arctic-dry hotel. The panel immediately preceding "Songs of Rudyard Kipling" was both in an unmiked room and ran over time; I had no time to warm up and I felt rushed as soon as I came in. ("Canonicity in Theatre" was a genial mess; it did not know whether it was about theater fandom or actual theater, which are two different things, and the moderator did not decide either way. It was fun and it just kind of sprawled.) And I am not sure it mattered. I used to be able to sing—and sing well—short of everything but total loss of voice. Then some things were changed very terribly in my body, against my choice and desire, and everything became much less secure. I've spent half this last year working to change that. It does not feel safe to be hopeful, but I know these were bad circumstances and I do not think I sounded bad. I do not know that my voice will ever feel like my voice again to me, but it did not feel like not mine. It worked. And I enjoyed myself. I think that's important, too.
Just before my panels started, I found the novelization of The Robots of Death (1977) in the dealer's room and although it is a rather skeletal adaptation of a very rich script, it was also three dollars and so now I own it. I read it on the Red Line back from South Station, where I appreciate that I only had to deal with a smell of burning plastic from Porter to Davis.
spatch was getting off work at the Somerville Theatre and because it is fifteen degrees Fahrenheit we took a taxi home.My last two panels tomorrow are readings. After that, sleep.
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The Robots of Death novelization seems like just about the perfect thing to buy at a con dealer's room.
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Thank you. It mattered very much and I was not sure how it was going to go. On the one hand I could have skipped being sick, but on the other hand it was a hell of a test.
The Robots of Death novelization seems like just about the perfect thing to buy at a con dealer's room.
I am honestly delighted with it.
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Thank you! I am actually pretty happy at the moment.
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And, ha, is Robots of Death a Terrance effort? I can't remember if I ever read that one, but I am amused at the idea. (My library growing up had most of them and since even VHS releases weren't available to me, that was how I did most of Classic Who until I finally got the videos, and Terrance Dicks did an awful lot of them. Target readers know all his stock phrases. He's probably to blame for "wheezing and groaning" being the standard description of the TARDIS arrival.)
I hope you are now getting some rest & recovering.
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I read most of mine from the library, but I did pick up some second hand, and it turned out that one of them (The Web of Fear) was signed by Tom Baker in 1979, when he was still the Doctor. (I got it for 5p!)
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That is excellent!
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Thank you. It was good.
*hugs*
And, ha, is Robots of Death a Terrance effort?
It is! "With a wheezing, groaning sound, the blue box faded into nothingness." And I'm wondering if it was done off a draft script, since some of the dialogue is different; I'd love to have Chris Boucher's actual script to compare it with. I may have bought it more talismanically than anything else, but I am happy to have it.
My library growing up had most of them and since even VHS releases weren't available to me, that was how I did most of Classic Who until I finally got the videos, and Terrance Dicks did an awful lot of them.
That makes sense. Would I be correct in assuming this was how most people did their Classic Who until the advent of readily accessible home media?
I hope you are now getting some rest & recovering.
My last two panels were this morning and afternoon and now I am home!
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Yay, LOL! Bless <3 (Because, yes, as you guess, this was how so many of us did Doctor Who until we reached the age of available video!)
And I'm wondering if it was done off a draft script, since some of the dialogue is different; I'd love to have Chris Boucher's actual script to compare it with.
It could be, especially the rehearsal script, which would be nearly-final, but would then have further editing by the script-editor and by director and cast during the rehearsal period (usually two weeks for a 50 min ep, which was the BBC standard - two weeks rehearsal, two days in studio, recording in the afternoon & evening - it's why there was no time for anything other than absolutely necessary retakes). It would be an interesting one to see, because Chris Boucher was always v good, but then so was Robert Holmes who was then DW script editor. I've watched a lot of both of theirs and while they have distinct styles, they overlap quite a bit in dialogue, especially snark and black humour. (The darker the humour, the more likely it is to be Robert Holmes!)
One of my flisters keeps obtaining B7 scripts and looking at them in detail, although mostly that shows the leap from Terry Nation's rehearsal scripts to the Boucher-edited final versions (plus cast additions, always hard to be sure of). Which is almost like exactly the reverse answer to your question, but she does also link to an interview with someone who novelised the first few eps, and they were done from early scripts in order to tie in with release when the show was broadcast. I'm not sure DW ones were done that closely - the order was quite random, but at that point in the 70s, they might have tried it for the current ones. You'll have to check the publication date. (I know
(Some of the novelisations were written by the script writers - well, Terrance was one - he wrote Horror of Fang Rock, which I know has come up before and was script editor for the Pertwee era - and they could be very interesting in additional backstory for their own characters in particular. A lot of the Seven era ones, and Malcolm Hulke's 70s ones in particular. And Ian Marter, who played Harry Sullivan in the series, later did some too.)
I may have bought it more talismanically than anything else, but I am happy to have it.
Aww. I get that. :-D
My last two panels were this morning and afternoon and now I am home!
Recover well, then, I hope! <3
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I had read the poem in passing, but never heard it sung, and it lands even harder performed.
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-Nameseeker
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It doesn't function as such for me, but I can see how it could: I find the idea of being outlasted by the natural world (sea, stars, planets, galaxies) secure and reassuring rather than horrifying.
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You would have been great on this panel. (You could have moderated the hell out of it, too.)
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Hm, I think if I were to be in a discussion/asked to talk about that topic, I'd have a serious case of "how do I know what I think until I hear what I say?" Which would be fascinating! :)
(I definitely have an ongoing different-ends-of-the-spectrum conversation with a couple of T@F folks about when/whether/how a director ought to cut or alter a script, in which I am generally pretty far towards the "canon/the text is sacred!" end, but...on the other hand, I also believe that performing theatre is inherently a transformative work...)
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That might be thematically appropriate: as I pointed out on the panel, I frequently don't know what I think of as canonical until I see a production that's doing it wrong.
when/whether/how a director ought to cut or alter a script, in which I am generally pretty far towards the "canon/the text is sacred!" end, but...on the other hand, I also believe that performing theatre is inherently a transformative work...
So how has this balance worked out in productions of yours in the past?
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With one exception that was still a minor word-edit, but for a different reason: Lanford Wilson's Ludlow Fair contains a couple of not-relevant-to-the-plot offhanded uses of derogatory slang that is way less acceptable in mainstream culture (or, at least, the culture of the audience we were performing for) than it was in the 60s when he wrote it. It would have shocked and offended where it was not intended to do so, and there was no good reason to keep the offensive language. So I changed it, but boy, I felt kind of weird doing so. :)
I have sometimes had actors portray characters whose gender presentation didn't match the actors', but have always kept the character's gender presentation, rather than editing the character to match the actor's own presentation. There exist roles for which I'd choose to change the character's gender, though -- I just haven't yet directed a show for which I felt that was the right choice.
I don't tend to be a crazy-artistic-vision/reinterpretation kind of director; I'm pretty literal-minded. But I consider that a kind of transformation that is within the director's prerogative; it's simply not usually to my taste.
I also have never directed Shakespeare, for which I feel a different set of rules apply, not so much for any logical reason as because of the weight of tradition. :)
However, even for Shakespeare, where I feel that both cutting and radically transforming are fair game, I still draw the line at adding text or radically altering the storyline -- like, that period in history where people were performing Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending? That's wrong. Perfectly okay to write a take-off/retelling/homage/mashup of R&J and do whatever you darn well please, but if you're claiming to be directing R&J by William Shakespeare, you need to do it with his plot and with his words (even if not all of them).
Which...really, this is why I end up so firmly in the "use the text the author wrote!" camp. Because, once you say it's okay to edit somewhat, there's really no bright line you can draw about how much editing is okay to do while still claiming it's X play by Y author. I believe it's the author's job to write the play and the director's job to work with the author's text.
(That said, I also subscribe to the belief that it's okay to ignore stage notes, except the ones that are plot critical, and it's generally obvious which those are. Which is exactly me making the kind of judgement about the text that I just claimed directors shouldn't get to make, but, I suppose, on the other hand, stage notes are the author trying to horn in on the director's territory and tell them how to do their job, so maybe that's why I feel differently about them? Also, stage notes in published scripts are notoriously often just the record of what the original Broadway version looked like and not actually intended to be set in stone. Also, also, some playwrights don't seem to understand what a useful or feasible stage note looks like. I just read an essay by Sarah Ruhl about the writer's side of this particular coin...but I still don't agree with her. :) )
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Thank you!
I wish I had not been sick, but I am otherwise very glad.
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Thank you.
(Today, of course, I am coughing my face off and my voice is right out, but today I don't have to sing!)