The Evening's Research Reading Yield: Bloody Hell

vampire

1. The reanimated body of a dead person believed to come from the grave at night and suck the blood of persons asleep.

2. One who lives by preying on others.


Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary

"One sign of the vampire is the power of the hand. The slender hand of Mircalla closed like a vise of steel on the General's wrist when he raised the hatchet to strike. But its power is not confined to its grasp; it leaves a numbness in the limb it seizes, which is slowly, if ever, recovered from.
"I may mention, in passing, that the deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenant is a mere melodramatic fiction. They present, in the grave, and when they show themselves in human society, the appearance of healthy life.
"Its horrible lust for living blood supplies the vigour of its waking existence. The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love by particular persons. In pursuit of these it will excercise inexhaustible patience and stratagem, for access to a particular object may be obstructed in a hundred ways. It will never desist until it has satiated its passion, and drained the very life of its coveted victim. But it will in these cases husband and protract its murderous enjoyment with the refinement of an epicure, and heighten it by the gradual approaches of an artful courtship. In these cases it seems to yearn for something like sympathy and consent. In ordinary cases it goes direct to its object, overpowers with violence, and strangles and exhausts often at a single feast."

-from Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (1871)

I think it best to treat the subject of this research as if it were not one with which I am already very familiar, so in support of that interest I do consult the dictionary for a sort of no-nonsense literality, and aim to fill in the holes in my reading on the topic with an anthology of Vampire-fiction (The Dracula Book of Great Vampire Stories) including, and beginning with Carmilla.

I really enjoyed Carmilla. The writing was dripping with Gothic atmosphere (The Introduction to the collection noted that Le Fanu and Bram Stoker were both Dubliners who infused the landscapes of their novels with the brooding gloomy beauty of Ireland), and the Vampire-attacks were put forth with eerie surreality. I was also struck by the way that Carmilla/Millarca/Mircalla was literally charming all who she preyed upon, with very few instances of anger or ferocity displayed. I remember in the folk-stories I read as a child, of the Ban-sidhe, of the Wurdulak, the Vrykolakas, all of them have the Vampires charming their way into their goals, very rarely reacting with ire or fear except when caught in the act and crossed from feeding or returning to its place of rest.

In most current and recent portrayals of Vampires, The Charm aspect is all too often set aside in favour of the "MTV-hiss Factor", which needless to say, dilutes the Magick and gives Vampires a cheezy name...

There is also this from The Giaour (1813), by George Gordon, Lord Byron:

But first, on earth as vampire sent,

Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:

Then ghastly haunt thy native place,

And suck the blood of all thy race;

There from thy daughter, sister, wife,

At midnight drain the stream of life;

Yet loathe the banquet which perforce

Must feed thy livid living corse:

Thy victims ere they yet expire

Shall know the demon for their sire,

As cursing thee, thou cursing them,

Thy flowers are withered on the stem.

Twos-dy

I have had a four-day weekend of social and cultural activity. Friday night I attended a Baby Shower for April Vidal that went late into the evening (those Mothers-to-be sure do like to party!), Saturday I saw Oh What War at HERE (Which was EXCELLENT), and attended a fine after-theatre snack and schmack-fest with tasty treats and an open bar, Sunday we attended a lovely garden party with grilling and Margaritas among cast members of Everything Must Go at Dina Rivera and Matt Gray's place, and Monday (Last Night) was well-spent at The Brick, attending the Penny Dreadful Season Two Fundraiser. Entertainment featured Burlesque by Rita Menweep, Opera by Matt Curran, and Magic by Nelson Lugo, with Fred Backus as The Amazing Viernik, and culminating with the one-night only presentation of Penny Dreadful Episode 6.5: The Future Ain't What It Used To Be with Eric Bland, Gavin Starr Kendall, Katie Brack, Samantha Mason, V. Orion Delwaterman, and Jessica Savage as "Penny". The "mini-episode" was set entirely in 2012 and took place both in the Maximum Security Prison that Penny materialized into from the year 1907 as a result of "The Great Switcheroo", and in an "underground labyrinth" beneath the Prison, the final moments being Penny recoiling in horror from a fresh corpse as a disembodied voice whispered, "Run, Penny, run.", and she did, slipping into darkness... It set the tone of the Serial's Second Season, continued deeply in the vein of its "horror suspense adventure mystery", and definitely created anticipation for the next full installment, Episode 7, due out in October 18th & 19th. I, for one, will Mark my Calendar...

http://www.thirdlows.com/pennydreadful/main.htm

Saturn-day

Home today much of the day until the evening when I will go see Juggernaut Theatre's presentation of Oh What War (conceived and directed by Mallory Catlett, script by Jason Craig of Banana Bag and Bodice, and featuring Craig and fellow BBB'er Jessica Jelliffe performing) @ HERE Arts Centre. It is a riff off of Joan Littlewood's Oh What A Lovely War, and has been in development for some time now. I had occasion to see the earlier version of it a couple years ago (also @ HERE).

Writing today.

Morning Meditation

I sit up here drinking coffee at this early hour, watching the sun come up, listening to We're Only In It For The Money by Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention, while Jasmine lay by my feet grooming herself on the carpet, and I consider current irons in the fire:

• The ongoing writing process for Blue-beard - Part Two is almost at its primary seal, and Part One grows steadily...and I find myself beginning to think of actors for both parts now. I have been seeing a lot of shows lately, and have had the pleasure of discovering some performers whose work was heretofore unknown to me.


• I may direct a workshop of one of Kirk Wood Bromley's new plays, When I met Juliet, beginning sometime sometime soon (as soon as I get the play from him), but he is busy with the rehearsals for another new play, "Untitled', that he is directing, himself.


• Researching a film role as a supernatural predator (!) - this prospect excites me more than anything I've done in a long while...


• The development of Fork YES! as an artistic entity, including the development of Work, and the deepening of relationships with Peers in the community of Work.

Ate too, tooth ows and ate.

The Rain brings rumination, seemingly, without fail. Writing and cleaning today, a welcome day "off" from the day-job (but never a day off from the A-job. The trick: make sure every day-job is an A-job). Working with good people in the open air under the sun by the water to erect a Forum for the burlesque circus that is Spiegelworld. I have been informed by Kevin Bartlett that the Fringe is using the Second Tent space during the Festival for the Burlesque-y acts presented by them this year, while Spiegelworld gets its Big Top together in the Big Tent...The job has been a gift, certainly, and not only for me - I have been able to get work for three others besides myself (Artists and loved ones, all three) - and work in the Summer for such freelancers as we is a blessed precious thing, indeed.

As far as Writing is concerned, the story goes on, deepens, and progresses. The Shape of Part Two from beginning to end (and linking both) came in inspiration and proceeds to inform in intuition as I go on. It will be read-ready very soon. Part One, too, becomes more distinct as I deepen Part Two. They are designed to work independently as individual plays that are also two halves of a greater whole. That design is beginning to be palpable in its manifestation. The Air is thick with It, and I just may have both ready for workshop rehearsal by Winter. Hot.

Up with the Sun

...or at 730am, which is when I noticed its rays enough to distract me from my slumber. Brewing the bean and facing the day ahead with easy expectation. Writing continues (and will continue to continue), with definite forward progress palpable. After much has been researched and osmosed and after much has been written, and after much time off from writing - during whichtime of non-writing, much rumination on the writing has occurred - I am now simply Getting On With It, finishing scenes dangling in composition, and crafting new ones, trimming and cutting, and moving it forward, and "hooray" say I that I am. Most of the day will be writing, then off to see Coyote Love at Under St. Marks tonight.

The MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction For The Stage

The Magnificent Ambersons by Orson Welles: A Reconstruction for the Stage closed Thursday, June 12th to a lovely audience overfilling the Brick, with some at the apron of the stage sitting on mats from Babylon, Babylon!, and others sitting on the edges of risers; all were ready to listen and watch and laugh and take in the tale as Orson intended it to be told.
There is talk and interest among the creatives involved about a possible re-mount in 2009...

HAMLET at the Delacorte.

Last evening I saw the new Hamlet at the Delacorte in the Park. Much of it was good. The cutting of the text was good. The duel at the end of Act Five was good. The actors were all good, some were excellent (Lauren Ambrose as Ophelia, David Harbour as Laertes, Sam Waterston as Polonius, and Jay O. Sanders as The Ghost, The Player King, and The Gravedigger most especially), but I felt that Director Oskar Eustis did not Illuminate the text - what I mean by that is nearly everything was well-spoken, but there was little in the language that was SPECIFICALLY Clear, and there was little in the action as directed that made clear WHY things were happening as they were: So much was done, seemingly, "because that's the way it's always been done". Hamlet treats Polonius badly from the first moments of the "fish-monger scene" but we don't know WHY, Hamlet treats Ophelia awfully in the "nunnery" scene, but we don't know WHY, the Play-within-a-play affects Claudius so powerfully, but we don't really know WHY. The "Advice to the players" was done as it usually is, with Hamlet telling the Players how to do their job, and the Players lovingly listening to him do it (I don't know ANY actors who would react that way - perhaps they were different in Shakespeare's day- but I doubt it, and the text of Hamlet indicates otherwise).

Andre Braugher is one of my favourite actors - I loved him in "Homicide:Life on the Street", so I was really looking forward to his Claudius, and I liked him very much in his scene-work (and particularly in Act IV), but felt that his soliloquies were a bit rushed- I didn't see a man wrestling with "Heaven and Earth" after the Play Scene. Michael Stuhlbarg is a very good actor, but I felt that much of what he was doing as Hamlet was VERY technical, and almost mannered. He seemed to be looking at himself in the role, and almost commenting on it. His best work was in the Gravedigger scene: very simple, very clear, very grounded, and very real.

I saw in the Program Notes that Oskar Eustis saw Hamlet as a man who is "clinically depressed", and that makes some sense of what I saw last night, I suppose, because to reduce the role and the story to such a 21st century diagnosis does both a simplistic disservice.

"...and the rain came hammering down"

Rain, indeed, today. A slick and soggy dreamscape. Non-stop since early on and continuing now into the afternoon. I must enter into its stream soon enough, soon enough as well, while on my way into the day itself, as I errand and meet and move through space and time.

Work progresses. Monday, I filmed Camille Morin's piece, Over Again, based on cuttings from Beckett. Rehearsals continue for The Magnificent Ambersons, and a reading on the 21st of Edward Einhorn's Rudolf II. Today we meet about The Beelzebub Sonata at 3pm with Barbara Vann, in the interests of quiring out a space.

Friday I saw Babylon Babylon at the Brick. I was sucked into the World and the action from the first, as (Author, Director, Actor) Jeff Lewonczyk, as "Logios, a storyteller", brought the audience into the world of Babylon, 539 B.C.E. specifically the Temple of Ishtar, on the eve of the Persian attack led by Cyrus, while the 30-person cast entered in opposite parallel directions to so embody the living rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates. I loved the show. It took me somewhere very specific and very alien and also very familiar, dreamlike almost. The cast was excellent, investing the reality with a wonderful and hermetically-sealed verisimilitude of action form and gesture. Hope Cartelli, Michael Criscuolo and Iracel Rivero, Fred Backus and Gyda Arber, Aaron Baker and Adam Swiderski, Ali Skye Bennet, Danny Bowes and Siobhan Doherty, Robert Pinnock and Roger Nasser, Marguerite French, and the afore-mentioned Jeff Lewonczyk particularly impressed. Lights wonderful and appropriate, Set great - simple and grand (The Lion of Babylon painting is a personal favourite...), and the music and dancing were hypnotic and lovely, Grand and Terrible. Jeff's script is a delight, really. The scope, the simplicity, the parallels to people and places and things that we all know in our lives and world are there, as well as having the permission for "Babylonian-licence", as it were, to justify things that we do not have in the everyday all make for an accessible, challengung (in a good way), and fun piece of writing. A treat of an evening.

Saw Kirk Wood Bromley's latest, Me, on Saturday at the Ohio Theatre. The production was excellent, beautifully costumed and lit, with an environment that is beautiful aesthetically, entirely appropriate and right for the material at hand, and ideal for playing in the Ohio's many-pillared space, seating audience within the pillars creating a thrust stage that is at once both vast and intimate. The actors were excellent, with Sarah Malinda Engelke being the obvious stand-out, making the absolute most out of the opportunity of playing a character that is both natural and supernatural, a trickster-spirit with an edge. She leads the way in for the cast, in terms of energy, focus, facility with language and ideas, emotional truth, and playfulness, setting a nice high bar for all. Bob Laine, Josh Hartung, Annie Scott, Drew Cortese, Brenda Withers, Lora Chio, Marshall York, Dan Renkin, Arthur Aulisi, Paula Wilson, and Erwin Thomas all do outstanding work bringing the work to life with ease and authority and pleasure.

And I'm off...