I know , we have 'em along with Fed Ex in the Uk, ------------ a case of you pays your money and offers a silent prayer
This reminds me of something. Some time back I realized the totemic importance of metered parking. You pull up. You make an offering at an alter to give you temporary protection against something bad happening. There's no guarantee that anything bad will happen, but making the offering ensures that it won't. If something bad does happen, you are faced with a decision: you can make another larger offering to show your penitence for not having made the initial (and more modest) offering at the altar, or you can still make no offering. If you continue to make no offerings, however, something very bad can happen. You can lose your car.
And then you've learned that it's better to put a little something in the altar every now and then, to guard against bad fortune.
Ibsen. That's who wrote A Doll's House.
Might as well make this thread an optical illusion.....
gggggggggPatiodog,
You certainly have more than a passing initerest in theatre.
Thr play with meat on the stage was at the Teatre Libre in Paris about 1910. It was set in a butcher shop. The director (name escapes me) attempted to made the audience really believe they were i n a butcher shop what with the smells and flies and all. It didn't work then and it has never worked. That was a short lived period in theatre called "naturalism".
The audience may have "a willing suspencion of disbelief" but they're not crazy. They know they're in the theatre. Threatening them in any way breaks the aesthetic distance and actually increases the sense of being in the theatre.
Tied in with this was the 60's attempt to create ritual in the theatre (Dionysis Sixty Nine) failed. The best put down of this effort was made by a Brandeis student who said, "Trying to create a ritual is like trying to create an antique."
Interestingly, Bertolt Brecht did not want the audience to suspend its disbelief. He wanted the audience emtionallly distanced from his plays and viewing them from an intellectual perspective.
Amok Billy
Billy, You do realize that I was jesting by saying that you had run amok. Loved your quote about creating a ritual is like creating an antique.
Yeah, it's a good one. A lot of folks have turned to ritualistic theater (you know, ones that have evolved over centuries) in other cultures to try and see if there were elements they could lift. As always, there's the risk that some people will take this literally and create something truly deadly.
I studied with a guy a few years ago who coopted this kind of tuff beautifully, but he had no intention of recreating any sort of "ritual space" -- he just liked using performers and devices from others schools of theater. Got to do some stuff with an older (trying to be gracious in stating this) Chinese woman who'd been an actress in Beijing for years and years, and it was fascinating to learn the little pieces of what she did. To alien eyes, her theater looked like some wild and totally other thing, but of course she broke it down bit by bit, each gesture was determined coldly and with incredible attention to detail. There was nothing wild about it at all; it was just a shock to (truly undisciplined) western theatrical expectations.
The really interesting stuff this guy was doing, though, was back in New York with puppeteers from Japan and Bali. Verra cool. But I digress...
-- Clearly Billy F has more than more than a passing interest in the subject --
-- Tangentially, I was trying to remember the word "amok" a couple of days ago and for my life I couldn't do it --
Re ritual in the arts: Interesting points made by patiodog here. Coincidentally (and digressively), I went to the Seattle Art Museum yesterday afternoon and saw a show of miniature paintings by Indian artists, 17th Century or so, all with themes based on Hindu scripture. Amazing stuff! Graphic depictions of mind-boggling events. A blue-skinned Krishna (mirroring the color of the sky), monkey gods, dwarf Brahmans.
There were also works by two contemporary artists who use some of these motifs in their work. I found these interesting, but I liked the old stuff better. It made an Eastern world come alive before these Western eyes...
Sounds very cool. I'll have to get myself down there. (Tomorrow is first Thursday, isn't it?)
Indeed it is! I recommend the show, patiodog. And if you own a magnifying glass, bring it with you. No lie. I plan to do so the next time I go. You don't need one, but it would help...
Patiodog, regarding directing "Godot." I saw one production whose preparation inlcluded having the actors watch hours and hours of Chaplin, Buster keaton, the keystone Cops and so on. It helped to create the humour called for. You would have loved it.
Beckett admired Keaton. I believe Keaton acted in one of B's plays; might have been a TV or film script, I forget. I've seen a great photo of the two of them (if memory serves) in the bio I mentioned earlier: "Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist".
You're welcome. I love a good research project!
Indeed. And it proves that Beckett wasn't bunk. How could he be--a man who appreciated the genius of Buster Keaton?
Hey, Mac. Neat!
D'art, proof beyond a shadow of a doubt, my friend. Buster Keaton's cameo in Mad Mad Mad Mad World was fabulous, and he didn't have to do a thing except stand there with that dead pan trade mark.
Sorry, Still think Beckett's breath was bad. Perhaps a mint would help.
Maybe they should have held it in Fort Knox!
As a mater of fact, Bo, he did accept the money, but not the Nobel prize. Noble of him, no?
better make that "matter"
Letty; that's your specialty, isn't it; making it "matter"!
I suspect B felt he could do more with the money, than would be afforded to him by the prize!
