I guess I was unsure of your tone - your style is playfully puzzling to me.
Thank you
mj
Judy Prince wrote:
>yeeks, martin, my grateful thanks was grateful thanks.
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>no irony,
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>just thanks,
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>judy
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>>From: MJ Walker <[log in to unmask]>
>>Date: 2005/12/11 Sun PM 03:52:45 EST
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>Subject: Re: Poem/Play (was Re: Pinter on Blair et al.)
>>
>>Was I being that ridiculous? Oh well...
>>Martin
>>
>>Judy Prince wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>my grateful thanks, MJ (sorry, don't know your first name). i'll die, surely, of profound ignorance and semi-tolerance, but somewhere within's a glimmer that Truth'll be made known to me, and that i'll recognize it. you've awakened that glimmer and awareness, thanks be to God.
>>>
>>>judy
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>From: MJ Walker <[log in to unmask]>
>>>>Date: 2005/12/11 Sun AM 08:50:09 EST
>>>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>>>Subject: Re: Poem/Play (was Re: Pinter on Blair et al.)
>>>>
>>>>There is a longstanding debate about Seneca's practice & intentions with
>>>>his plays. I believe more advanced theories support full-scale
>>>>theatrical production during Nero's reign. Certainly the "progeny" of
>>>>his drama, meaning Elizabethan tragedy, was generally meant for
>>>>performance. The renewal of Senecan tragedy in English in the last
>>>>century began with the very successful Peter Brook/Ted Hughes production
>>>>with Gielgud & Worth - a great loss that it was never filmed. If Peer
>>>>Gynt was only meant for reading, why did Ibsen then bother to get Grieg
>>>>to compose the music for theatrical production? He understood that
>>>>poetry and music go together well in the theatre - and reading can never
>>>>supply that frisson. Flecker's The Golden Road to Samarkand, to cite a
>>>>similar example, perhaps Britain's reply to the Theatre of Cruelty avant
>>>>la lettre, had a very successful production in 1923 with the
>>>>unforgettable music of Delius. As for Faust, it was, has been and is
>>>>performed quite regularly in German-speaking countries (as is Madach's
>>>>Tragedy of Man in Hungary & elsewhere). Try to see Peter Stein's amazing
>>>>production (there must be a video, I taped it off the TV) with Bruno
>>>>Ganz et al (two Fausts, two Mephistos).
>>>>mj
>>>>
>>>>Knut Mork Skagen wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>There is a dimension of the theatrical performance of a text, though,
>>>>>>that creates a third consciousness (that is, one besides the
>>>>>>audience-as-audience and the performer-as-performer), even in fairly
>>>>>>traditional dramatic texts like my own, which are constructed with
>>>>>>plot and character and all that stuff we've come to expect from a
>>>>>>night out at the local playhouse. If I can be permitted an example
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>from my recent play "In Public": a character in the second scene is
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>sitting at a bar, flirting casually with a colleague, when she comes
>>>>>>up with this monologue:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>I immediately think of two things when I read your examples and your
>>>>>explanation of this extra dimension. The one of them you describe with
>>>>>"spoken by the same actress within a 15 or 20 minute period" --
>>>>>stating the obvious, drama, unlike poetry, is a time-based artform.
>>>>>Lyric poetry is perhaps the least time-based form of literature, which
>>>>>strengthens its role as object-on-the-page. It exists, in a sense,
>>>>>without a proper beginning, end, or sense of time having passed.
>>>>>
>>>>>I also think of how a dramatic text is meant to be inhabited and
>>>>>embodied by a performer -- mentioned earlier in this thread -- and it
>>>>>seems to me critical to that the performer is not performing his or
>>>>>her own words but those of a "character." (Character, of course, in
>>>>>the broadest possible sense, given that less traditional drama won't
>>>>>have such precise divisions). But still, the performative context of
>>>>>a text is automatically a fictitious context. Even in performance art
>>>>>where the performer is the writer is the character, the act of staging
>>>>>produces an artificiality which enhances the impact of portions of the
>>>>>text while reducing others.
>>>>>
>>>>>Contemporary lyric poetry isn't anywhere close to being staged, on the
>>>>>contrary, it's often passed off as the opposite, some kind of "direct
>>>>>communication." This may well be illusory, but is often an underlying
>>>>>assumption on the part of the reader.
>>>>>
>>>>>There is a crossing somewhere. As drama approaches the purely literary
>>>>>is enters the unperformable realm. Norway's own "national play" Peer
>>>>>Gynt is meant to be read rather than staged; Goethe's Faustus;
>>>>>Seneca's plays. And on the poetry end of things there is the point
>>>>>where lyric crosses over into epic.
>>>>>
>>>>>--Knut
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>--
>>>>M.J.Walker - no blog - no webpage - no idea
>>>>
>>>>Nous ne faisons que nous entregloser. - Montaigne
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>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>--
>>M.J.Walker - no blog - no webpage - no idea
>>
>>Nous ne faisons que nous entregloser. - Montaigne
>>
>>
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--
M.J.Walker - no blog - no webpage - no idea
Nous ne faisons que nous entregloser. - Montaigne
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