let your fingers do the ramblin'
i was e-mailing my lady, Madeline's her name and found myself letting my fingers ramble more than usual. it could be the Claritin-D or the lack of sleep (been a cold lately) but I thought, well, while they're moving I should blog a bit without any sort of conscious thought about what to blog about.
thursday I was finally about to see The Collector, which LiveWire has currently mounted up at The Side Project. i was first impressed by our production staff for putting together such an engaging stage picture. my next impression was the actor play Clegg, Matt Kelly. he puts on one hell of a performance that shouldn't be missed. the script, I've always said, is great literature, but it is either something in it or the staging that lacked a sharpness. the time shifts over a month within the play and while there were elements to suggest and indicate these shifts, some seemed forced while others were completely lost. in the end, I felt like I had spent 2 hours with these characters, which was about as much as I wanted to spend with them, but I think the play would have had a stronger impact on me if I had walked away feeling I spend the entire month.
in Elmina's Kitchen, the show I've been longing to see for a couple years now and finally got to see this Sunday (with my lady), a cast of West Indian characters struggle with their place in Britain's Hackney neighborhood. the cast of the play were all completely engaging and 100% inhabited in their characters. in Chicago's West Loop neighborhood, for 2 and a half hours, I felt like I was in Elmina's Kitchen and feared whatever lurked outside the storefront door. What was going on inside the restaurant was just as heated and while there were a few moments that didn't seem to fit (like the grandfather's calypso singing or the random old man with very little wisdom to put forth) the whole of the story hit me like a ton of bricks. fathers and sons. youth rebellion. love. hate. good. bad. blood clot! [translated, Holy Shit!] while most American plays end happily ever after, Elmina's Kitchen represented what I like most about British theatre...life isn't always a bowl of cherries. Sometimes, life dumps on you a whole lot of shit and shit stinks long after it's dumped if you don't clean it up right quick. the protagonist of Elmina's Kitchen, Deli, learned this the hard way...the way he's been learning his whole life and the way he's gonna keep on learning. Deli's cycle isn't over yet and in Elmina's Kitchen he wasn't able to break it. leaving the audience heartbroken.
i had to miss the third show I was to see on Sunday night due to my cold, but I had the chance to lay on the couch and read some more. since moving my TV to Madeline's house, i've had the chance to pick up some good books & plays I've had on my shelf to read. LiveWire is also in search of good plays for their upcoming season. last night I read an original work by Lawrence Levine called Territory (which has been made into a movie you can rent on netflix, haven't seen it myself) and lacking the ability to sleep, I also picked up Dawn by Elie Wiesel. I'm a huge Wiesel fan and am trying to make it through his cannon. each of his books leaves my wrenched. Dawn tells the story of a soldier who is part of the Israeli resistance during the British occupation and Israelis plight for an homeland in Palestine. another soldier has been captured by the British and is sentenced to death. the resistance takes prisoner a British soldier and marks him for death unless their comrade is released. Elisha, our soldier protagonist, his executioner. The night before the dawn of the execution, Elisha tells us how he's gotten to this place and how everyone that has touched him has made him who he is and his actions are now their actions and their eyes, his eyes...it was as timely as anything out in the theatres now or told on the local news. it is in fact more important than anything out there as well as it tells an uncensored tale, one so believable it is only fiction to the unbelievers. don't beat yourself up. this is war.
other books/plays I've read recently are Maltese Falcon (another Dashiell Hammett detective novel). my second of his books. great stuff. couldn't wait to turn the page. Here by Michael Frayn, he's a brilliant playwright and his dialgoue was both engaging and hilarious. it was a couple piece so that was fun too. I like some of his other stuff better, but it was a good read. Songs of the Dragon by Young Jean Lee. a Korean-American tour-de-force. it made me want to continue being a playwright and not just break the boundries of my craft, but bulldoze them to a fine dust I can create magic with. A Dark Dark House by Neil Labute. one of my favorite playwrights proving once again way he'll go down in history. tackling abuse, brotherhood and what it trully means to be in love. ouch! that's all i've got to say.
what else? is this not enough?
i'm excited by the prospect of being...doing...everyday.
thursday I was finally about to see The Collector, which LiveWire has currently mounted up at The Side Project. i was first impressed by our production staff for putting together such an engaging stage picture. my next impression was the actor play Clegg, Matt Kelly. he puts on one hell of a performance that shouldn't be missed. the script, I've always said, is great literature, but it is either something in it or the staging that lacked a sharpness. the time shifts over a month within the play and while there were elements to suggest and indicate these shifts, some seemed forced while others were completely lost. in the end, I felt like I had spent 2 hours with these characters, which was about as much as I wanted to spend with them, but I think the play would have had a stronger impact on me if I had walked away feeling I spend the entire month.
in Elmina's Kitchen, the show I've been longing to see for a couple years now and finally got to see this Sunday (with my lady), a cast of West Indian characters struggle with their place in Britain's Hackney neighborhood. the cast of the play were all completely engaging and 100% inhabited in their characters. in Chicago's West Loop neighborhood, for 2 and a half hours, I felt like I was in Elmina's Kitchen and feared whatever lurked outside the storefront door. What was going on inside the restaurant was just as heated and while there were a few moments that didn't seem to fit (like the grandfather's calypso singing or the random old man with very little wisdom to put forth) the whole of the story hit me like a ton of bricks. fathers and sons. youth rebellion. love. hate. good. bad. blood clot! [translated, Holy Shit!] while most American plays end happily ever after, Elmina's Kitchen represented what I like most about British theatre...life isn't always a bowl of cherries. Sometimes, life dumps on you a whole lot of shit and shit stinks long after it's dumped if you don't clean it up right quick. the protagonist of Elmina's Kitchen, Deli, learned this the hard way...the way he's been learning his whole life and the way he's gonna keep on learning. Deli's cycle isn't over yet and in Elmina's Kitchen he wasn't able to break it. leaving the audience heartbroken.
i had to miss the third show I was to see on Sunday night due to my cold, but I had the chance to lay on the couch and read some more. since moving my TV to Madeline's house, i've had the chance to pick up some good books & plays I've had on my shelf to read. LiveWire is also in search of good plays for their upcoming season. last night I read an original work by Lawrence Levine called Territory (which has been made into a movie you can rent on netflix, haven't seen it myself) and lacking the ability to sleep, I also picked up Dawn by Elie Wiesel. I'm a huge Wiesel fan and am trying to make it through his cannon. each of his books leaves my wrenched. Dawn tells the story of a soldier who is part of the Israeli resistance during the British occupation and Israelis plight for an homeland in Palestine. another soldier has been captured by the British and is sentenced to death. the resistance takes prisoner a British soldier and marks him for death unless their comrade is released. Elisha, our soldier protagonist, his executioner. The night before the dawn of the execution, Elisha tells us how he's gotten to this place and how everyone that has touched him has made him who he is and his actions are now their actions and their eyes, his eyes...it was as timely as anything out in the theatres now or told on the local news. it is in fact more important than anything out there as well as it tells an uncensored tale, one so believable it is only fiction to the unbelievers. don't beat yourself up. this is war.
other books/plays I've read recently are Maltese Falcon (another Dashiell Hammett detective novel). my second of his books. great stuff. couldn't wait to turn the page. Here by Michael Frayn, he's a brilliant playwright and his dialgoue was both engaging and hilarious. it was a couple piece so that was fun too. I like some of his other stuff better, but it was a good read. Songs of the Dragon by Young Jean Lee. a Korean-American tour-de-force. it made me want to continue being a playwright and not just break the boundries of my craft, but bulldoze them to a fine dust I can create magic with. A Dark Dark House by Neil Labute. one of my favorite playwrights proving once again way he'll go down in history. tackling abuse, brotherhood and what it trully means to be in love. ouch! that's all i've got to say.
what else? is this not enough?
i'm excited by the prospect of being...doing...everyday.
posted by Joshua Aaron Weinstein at 3:20 PM
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