Bard on the Beach at 22
June 2-Sept. 24, Vancouver, BC: In this final month of its 22nd season, Vancouver's Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival performs two comedies and two histories: As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, Henry VI, and Richard III. For a quick preview of The Merchant, see the article to the right. For more details on all four productions, click here.
A.R.T. Updates Porgy and Bess
Aug. 25-Oct. 2, Cambridge, MA: The Harvard-affiliated American Repertory Theater presents the Gershwin and DuBose Heyward folk opera Porgy and Bess, re-imagined for the 21st century. Set in 1930s Charleston, the story features Porgy, a disabled black beggar, and his attempts to protect Bess from her violent lover. For more info, click here.
Wrestling with Humor in L.A.
Aug. 30-Oct. 9, Los Angeles, CA: The Geffen Playhouse presents the west coast premiere of The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, Kristoffer Diaz's shrewd comedy about TV wrestling. The play, says Variety, takes on racism and globalization with "wickedly intelligent humor." For details, click here.
Berkeley Profiles Rita Moreno
Sept. 2-Oct. 30, Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Rep presents the legendary Rita Moreno as herself in Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup by Tony Taccone. Click here for details.
French Farce On Tap in D.C.
Sept. 6-Oct. 23, Washington DC: The Shakespeare Theatre Company stages the world premiere of The Heir Apparent, Jean-François Regnard's 1708 farce, newly adapted by David Ives. The farce features Eraste, who is desperate to marry Isabelle but must first secure an inheritance from a miserable old uncle. Though the uncle has other plans for his money, Eraste’s quick-witted servant steps in to save the day. Click here for details.
NYU Remembers 9/11
Sept. 8-9, New York, NY: Renowned actors of stage and screen gather for a benefit reading of Sarah Tuft’s 110 Stories. For details, click here.
Ground Zero's The Guys
Sept. 6-11, various venues: Multiple U.S. theaters honor the 10th anniversary of 9/11 by performing Anne Nelson’s already classic play. Flea Theater, the original (2001) off-Broadway venue to stage The Guys, revives its show, with Sigourney Weaver returning to star as the journalist. Tom Wopat plays the distraught fire chief struggling to write eulogies for his men who perished. Click here for more details.
Wellesley Tribute to 9/11
September 10-11, Ruth Nagel Jones Theatre, Wellesley, MA: Wellesley Summer Theatre performs two staged readings of Professor (Columbia University) Anne Nelson’s The Guys at 7 p.m. John Davin stars as Nick, the fire chief; Nora Hussey plays Joan, the journalist. To reserve seats, call 781-283-2000.
Chekov's Orchard at U Texas
Sept. 16-25, Austin, TX: University of Texas at Austin hosts Anton Chekov's The Cherry Orchard. In 1904 Russia, a family of aristocrats does nothing to stop its estate from being auctioned off to the son of a former serf in order to pay the mortgage. For details, click here.
Greek Theatre in Salt Lake
Sept. 16-28, Salt Lake City, UT: Westminster College stages Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris, a rarely produced play about the further adventures of Agamemnon’s eldest daughter. Exotic lands, blood, and near-sacrifice all surface in a newly translated version by Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton. For more details, click here.
Chekhov's Sisters at Yale
Sept. 16-Oct. 8, New Haven, CT: Yale Rep stages a new version of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters by two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Sarah Ruhl. Three sisters stuck in a provincial town yearn to return to cosmopolitan Moscow. Click here for additional info.
Miller's Immortal Salesman
Sept. 22-Oct. 2, Dayton, OH: Wright State University presents Arthur Miller's Death of Salesman, about Willy Loman and family, who live on the edge of poverty. Winner of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize, the play calls into question the American dream, an issue that resonates today. Click here for more info.
Stop Kiss at Ogelthorpe U
Sept. 23-25, Atlanta, GA: Oglethorpre U presents Diana Son’s Stop Kiss, about Callie and Sara, friends who fall in love unexpectedly and are assaulted when they first kiss. For more details, click here.
WRITING CONTESTS Poetry at Ohio State U Press
Sept. 30 deadline; Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press is accepting entries for its literary magazine's (The Journal) annual poetry prize. Submit a full-length manuscript, including at least 48-typed pages of original poetry, to win $3000 and publication of the manuscript by Ohio State University Press. Click here for more info.
Not-So-Strange Bedfellows: Novelists and NASA Scientists
Truth is stranger than fiction, people say, making a distinction that scientists at NASA might find invalid. After all, science fiction has inspired practical innovation. Consider the following three examples:
Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon (1865) led to Yuri Gagarin’s becoming the first man to venture into outer space.
E.E. Smith’s Gray Lensman (1951) gave rise to the naval Operation Room (a.k.a. the Combat Information Center) in warships.
Arthur C. Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise (1979) fueled today’s push for a space elevator, topic of a conference last month held by SESI, the Space Engineering and Science Institute.
So what exactly is a "space elevator?" In essence, it replaces a rocket as the main method of getting cargo (and passengers) into space. The idea, in its latest iteration, is for the "elevator" to operate as follows: A carbon nanotube ribbon stretches from earth to a counterweight in space; ascending the ribbon, a "climber" raises its cargo to earth’s orbit and is able also to launch spacecraft to planets beyond. Such "lifts" would reduce costs by millions.
In view of the above examples, the just-announced partnership between NASA and fictional literature makes eminent sense. In late August NASA and Tor/Forge Books announced future collaboration on a series of science-based novels that deal with concepts pertinent to the current and future work of NASA. Authors and NASA Subject Matter Experts will team up in a two-day workshop that promises to lend authenticity to the fantasy, which, as shown by the examples, promises, in turn, to fuel future inventions.
R: Partial image--artist Pat Rawling’s concept of a space elevator, looking down from a transfer station toward Earth. Courtesy NASA, circa 2000.
Down the Rabbit Hole, a Latino Journey
In today’s vernacular, "down the rabbit hole" (from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) means entering a period of chaos and confusion. It's also been used for taking a hallucinogenic. How apropos for the public’s 2011 Guardian First Book Award nominee! The oldest and best established of the awards given by a UK newspaper, the prize goes to the finest new literary talent in fiction or nonfiction. Each year the Guardian awards £10,000 (about $16,318) to an outstanding debut book, narrowing down the choice to a longlist of finalists. In a bid to encourage new writers, it now reserves one spot on the longlist for a work chosen by the public. This year’s public nominee is Down the Rabbit Hole (Fiesta en la Madriguera; trans. Rosalind Harvey; And Other Stories Publishing). Written by Mexican-born Juan Pablo Villalobos, the novel centers on child-narrator Tochtli, son of a successful drug lord, who lives in a luxurious hideaway. Tochtli craves a rare and endangered animal for their private zoo, a "pygmy hippopotamus from Liberia," a phrase that, as the novel progresses, becomes a kind of mantra (due partly to its lyrical quality in Spanish). A darkly humorous story, the novel has been associated with the popular Latin American genre narcoliteratura, literature that dramatizes the culture of drug trafficking. Villalobos, however, insists that the work is "more of an initiation novel" (Latineos, 7 Aug. 2011). Tochtli, in the author's view, is just a precocious dictionary-loving child, surrounded by hitmen, prostitutes, dealers, servants, and his beloved hats.
British novelist Adam Thirlwell calls the tale "a miniature high-speed experiment with perspective...a deliberated wild attack on the conventions of literature." In the excerpt below, Mazatzin is young Tochtli's tutor:
Mazatzin has been reading me bits from an old futuristic book … imagining the time we live in now. And so it's really funny because the author guessed lots of things that happen today, like hair transplants and cloning. But Mazatzin thinks the things the author didn't guess are funnier…. Mazatzin thinks it's really funny how the writer was able to imagine difficult things and couldn't imagine that people would stop wearing hats.... Poor Mazatzin. Educated people really do know nothing about life. This wasn't the writer's mistake. It was humanity's mistake.
Mexican-born Juan Pablo Villalobos and novel.
Upstaging Shylock: Vancouver’s Merchant
Vancouver, Canada, and Venice, Italy—they’re roughly 5,373 miles (8,646 kilometers) apart. So what do the two cities have in common? Well, seacoast location aside, they’re both related to Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice—in Vancouver’s case, through its current staging of the play. The venue is the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival, performed on the waterfront, this year in newly designed tents. Directed by Rachel Ditor, the production had distinguished itself as daring. In keeping with the text, the show features Venetian merchant Antonio (Duncan Fraser), his young friend Bassanio (Charlie Gallant), the Jewish moneylender Shylock (Richard Newman), the eligible heiress Portia (Lindsay Angell), and some comic minor characters (e.g., the Prince of Aragon, played by the "howlingly funny" John Murphy). Bassanio asks Antonio for money in order to woo Portia. His own funds tied up but his credit good, Antonio borrows from Shylock, agreeing to forfeit a pound of flesh (i.e., to die) in case of default, a highly unlikely prospect in view of Antonio’s wealth. When circumstances conspire to make this a very real possibility, Portia, a clever maiden, rushes to the rescue. In disguise as a male lawyer, she intervenes on Antonio’s behalf without divulging her ruse to any of the men. All ends happily for almost everyone (certainly not for Shylock). The plot remains standard, as does the dialogue. So how is this production daring? The emphasis changes. The show foregrounds not Shylock (and the issue of anti-Semitism) but Antonio. A mature man, unfulfilled, he yearns for young Bassanio in a movingly staged, unrequited, display of homosexual love. Of course, anti-Semitism is prominent too, a reflection of the faithfulness to Shakespeare’s text. But, in another daring move, the director updates the setting. Instead of a pre-1600s staging, the action takes place in the 1870s, just after Italy became unified, a choice that results in sumptuous gowns for the women and dashing suits for the men. Click to catch a glimpse of the costumes, the performances, and the humor for yourself. Courtesy Bard on the Beach.
