Delia Sherman's Blog, page 12

The Merchant of Venice

This is a difficult play.  It's supposed to be a comedy, and it is, in the formal sense that it begins with order, moves through chaos, and ends in the restoration of order, plus three weddings.  But the actual comic parts are full of mean-spirited ethnic humor, the long-suffering Christian protagonist Antonio is an anti-Semitic zealot, the romantic hero Bassiano swears oaths he then more-or-less thoughtlessly breaks, Portia begs Shylock to show mercy, but shows damn little to him.  There's a fairy tale comedy about a princess (or at least an heiress) who must give herself in marriage to the man who picks the right symbolic box, a family tragedy about a girl who robs her father and runs off with a feckless wastrel, and a political drama about a deeply broken economic system that creates a fertile environment for racial hatred, financial ruin, and moral bankruptcy.

Huh.  It sounds a lot like Real Life in the USA in the new millenium, doesn't it?

In his Director's notes, Darko Tresnjak says he was thinking of the racial and economic tensions of his native Yugoslavia when he mounted this production in 2007, but that this latest version owes more to Wall Street:  "The surface-rich, cash-poor society of The Merchant of Venice, with its irrational cultural myths, exclusionary tendencies, mounting tensions and scare tactics, seems increasingly like our own," he writes, and certainly that's the way he's framed the play.  Antonio, Bassiano, Gratiano, and the rest wear nicely-cut conservative suits, consult Macs, use cell phones and Bluetooth.  Work--or more properly, commerce--tinges all their interactions.  Their power is in their money, their access, their community of insiders.  Portia's power is signaled by her sleek blondness, her stiletto heels, discreet jewelry, form-fitting dresses, and the fact that she has a villa and a personal assistant and a major domo to help her run it.  Shylock is an outlier to the social system that gives the white, Christian characters their privilege.  Antonio and the rest talk about his power, but demonstrate over and over again that he has none.

And I'm talking about the play again instead of the production.

It's that kind of production.  It takes a text I had thought about and made me rethink it in mind-bending ways.  For instance, both Launcelot Gobbo and Nerissa are played by black actors.  Which makes all the classist remarks directed towards them racist as well, and Portia's line to Nerissa about the Prince of Morocco ("Let all of his complexion choose me so") not only racist, but casually cruel, and makes Gratiano's "I have a wife whom I protest I love;/ I would she were in heaven, so she could/Entreat some power to change this currish Jew" even more insulting.   The dynamic between Shylock and Jessica is crystallized in the scene in which Shylock, on a balcony above, is praying wrapped in his tallis, and Jessica, wearing a shapeless dress, is resentfully polishing the Shabbas candlesticks below.  When she shows up at Belmont with Lorenzo, she's in a floofy pink dress above her knees, showing her shoulders and teetering in high-heeled pumps she takes off at the first opportunity.  I really noticed the resonance of the three rings, and how the men unthinkingly privileged their relationships with each other over their relationships with the women they professed to love, and how, in the end, everything in this play comes down to money and the power money confers.  Just as it does in The Jew of Malta, with which this production was originally performed in repertory in 2007, with F. Murray Abraham as both jews.

Oh, F. Murray Abraham.  Words fail me.  He is the most individual Shylock I've ever seen.  He is bitter, he is angry, he is blind, he is deeply, deeply damaged by living and working in a society that disenfranchises, belittles, and isolates him.  He weeps for the loss of his ducats because his anger will not let him weep for the loss of his daughter, which in turn fuels the mad quest for vengeance against Antonio that finally breaks him.  His Shylock is proud, prickly, an observant man, but not necessarily a religious one.  This reading of the play needs a strong Antonio to balance Shylock and set him off, and Tom Nelis (who I suspect I've seen before, but his bio is too sparing of specific details for me to tell in what) is just the ticket.  To his friends, he's the Parfait Gentle Christian:  kind, generous, charitable.  To anyone outside his circle, he is a cold, distant, self-righteous prig.  To Shylock, he is simply hateful.  Certainly nobody deserves having a pound of flesh cut from their breast, but Nelis makes us see why Shylock--or any reasonably proud human being--would very much want to.

Portia, sadly, didn't fare quite as well.  I liked Kate MacCluggage very much in the Belmont scenes, where she played Grace Kelly with considerable wit.  But the court scene was just laughable.  Portia has to be smarter than everybody else around her and in complete control of the scene from the beginning.  She gives Shylock the chance to act like a mensch, and when he doesn't take it, comes down on him with the full rigor of the Venetian law.  This Portia wasn't in much control of anything.  Part of this was the director's fault--he had her servant Balthazar searching for precedents on his computer while she was concluding that Shylock was justified in law, and producing the saving twist out of panic and desperation.  And her suit didn't begin to fit her, although it fit better than poor Nerissa's.

OK, I have to stop now.  I'm going to see another play this afternoon.  It is a truism that it's harder to write about something you love than something you have reservations about.  I feel that I'm floundering here, and perhaps that's why.  Or maybe it's the weather.  In any case, if you want a more coherent review, here's what The New York Times has to say about it.

It's a Rat's World

I love my job.

My new WIP is about a young boy apprenticed to an Evil Wizard.  At one point, the wizard turns Our Hero into a rat, and so I went on the Internets to find some Fun Facts about rats I could use to make his experience a little more, well, realistic.  And I found this.  It's a video of a walk through a garden from a rat's pov.  It's very cool, as is the rest of the site, which is pretty much everything you need to know about being a rat:  how they see, what they smell, what their world is like.

This chapter is going to be So Much Fun to write!

The Future of Publishing

OK, this is clearly a Big Video Day over at Chateau Riverside.  My beloved mother-in-law sent me this today.  And I love it.  So I'm sharing.

On Being Earnest

"True wit," wrote Alexander Pope in his Essay on Criticism, "is nature to advantage dress'd: / What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd."  This typographical poem/video certainly fills the bill.  I got it from Terri Windling.  And I believe Every Single Word.  Passionately.

I like to think I am a moderate person.  I don't enjoy flaps, foofaraws, or kerfluffles.  Loud voices make me wince, extreme opinions send me searching for exceptions.  I prefer shades of gray to black and white thinking.  But I am not, and never have been, a fan of being too cool to commit.  I don't mind irony in the service of passion (see Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," or Pope's "The Rape of the Lock").   But irony for the sake of irony?  That's passive aggression dressed up in superficial cleverness.  I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it.

Me, I like passion.  OK, I live for it.  (I'm talking about intellectual and emotional passion here.  The more physical variety is not something I talk about in public)  Squeeing?  I'm there, though innate self-consciousness keeps my decibel level down.  Waving of the hands and expansive gestures?  Yep.  Going up to people I admire and telling them I think they're the bee's knees?  Absolutely, even when I can feel myself blushing (and I do blush).  Fixing students with a feverish eye and telling them a really cool idea doesn't make a story if cool is all it's got going for it?  Yeah, guilty as charged.  Do I sometimes embarrass myself?  Frequently--I am one of God's Frozen People, after all.  I was not brought up to express strong personal opinions, or to think mine were particularly important.  Have I died of it yet?  Well, I'm here to write this post, aren't I?

And I think--no, I know--that learning to say things without hedging, mindful of my audience, but not paralyzed by my fear of displeasing it, is one of the great ongoing projects of my life.

In "The Second Coming," Yeats wrote: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."  What I'd like to do is keep the passionate intensity, tempered (in my daily life) with the ability to listen to and respect opposing views.  And in my writing and my teaching, to be as intense and passionate as possible, because otherwise, what's the point?

Whaddya think?

Busy, Busy, Busy

You know all that stuff I wrote a month ago, about the things I needed to get done?

Well, I did them.  Mostly.  I've got some material I still need to give to Gavin, but the worst of it is in.  Except for the "Why I Wrote This Book" essay, which will top my March "Do or Die" list.

The intro?  Done and dusted.  I even had fun doing it, and liked it when it was done, which is not a usual thing for me.

Meeting Minutes?  Compiled, organized, in, and accepted by the board.

The course description?  In.  I'll be posting it for your delectation later this month.  I've also got some ideas on exercises and prompts.

The short story?  Handed it in two days before it was due, even though I'd asked for an extension, because the end would not cooperate and the climax was 1) incomprehensible; 2) anti-climactic.  Bless birdhousefrog ,  and the other beta readers (especially the long-suffering ellen_kushner  ) for their help and encouragement.  The great bonus is, I've heard back from the editor, and he's bought it!  This is the kind of positive reinforcement that keeps me writing short stories.

Plus, I've made good progress on the middle-grade book I came on this retreat to work on.  When I got here, I had maybe 15,000 words of text, a plot full of holes, too few characters, and too many questions.  Since I haven't compiled the ms out of Scrivener yet, I don't know how many words I have now, but whole book is plotted, the existing material retooled, many new scenes written or begun, and I generally as if I've got a good, solid handle on the thing.

Not bad for the shortest but most annoying month of the year.

Squeeee!

Breaking radio silence from Sekrit Writing Bunker in Undisclosed Location to chortle, cheer, and generally kvell over the news that shweta_narayan  and Christopher Barzak have both been nominated for Nebulas, for novellas that appeared in The Beastly Bride.

Would it be immodest for me to say that I read "Pisaach" when Shweta was my student at Clarion, and made her submit it, because I thought it was full of awesomeness?  Oh, who cares?  I'm saying it anyway.

I love Chris's "The Map of Seventeen," too.  It's a very strong (and diverse) list of nominees.  Here, check it out for yourselves.  I'm particularly pleased about nojojojo  's One Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and maryrobinette  's Milk and Honey and aliettedb  's "The Jaguar House, In Shadow," and blackholly  's White Cat on the Norton list.

Oh, what a wonderful (and humbling) thing it is to have such talented friends.

The Witch of Edmonton

Ah, Red Bull Theatre!  How I love thee!  How I dote upon thy twisted tales of depravity, greed, murder, revenge, and sententious endings, in which those few characters left standing reflect upon the sad fate of those who lie, weltering in their blood, at their feet!  How I joy in thy slightly ratty costumes, thy triumphantly sparse scenery, thy state-of-the-art stage daggers and rivers of stage blood!  And how I clap to my heart thy faithful audience, drawn, like me, to the thorny language, the proliferating plot twists and coincidences, the sleeve-worn hearts, the double-dyed villainy, the sheer theatricality of Jacobean Drama!

In other words, I just got my yearly fix of black-and-scarlet Jacobean bombast, and it was a doozie.

Beneath its fantastic window-dressing of witch, devil-dog, and phantasms, The Witch of Edmonton is one of the far ancestors of modern domestic realism.  Its characters are serving-men, chamber-maids, farmers rich and poor, peasants, petty nobles.  They are worried about money, bad harvests, getting the butter and cheese made, keeping their masters and/or their fathers happy.  Their ideas of fun run to getting drunk, eating a lot, singing, making fun of beggars, old women, and simpletons.  They're sometimes nice, sometimes awful.  They're judgmental and forgiving, law-abiding and vengeful.    If Shakespeare gives us the poetic distillation of the human condition, Ford, Rowley, and Dekker show us how individual common men spoke and thought and acted.

This is a great production, too.  The stage is set up with four wooden walkways around a central pit filled with "earth" and "rocks."  There's a withy door below ground level which stands in for the Witch's hut, and a cave the Devil Dog climbs out of.  A good third of the audience sits on-stage, beyond a wooden railing.  The direction was very interesting.  Witch, Devil, clown, peasants, kept pretty much to the center; farmers, lovers, suitors, judge, nobles kept to the walkways except when drink, lust, anger, lies, or double-dealing pulled them off of the paved way and into the muck.  It was subtly and thoughtfully done, underscoring and clarifying the text as good direction is supposed to do.

All the actors were wonderful--intelligent, nice voices, focused, affecting.  I was particularly struck by Miriam Silverman as the Wronged Maid/Wife Winifred, Christopher Innvar as the creepy nobleman Sir Arthur Clarington who has seduced and abandoned her, Adam Green as Cuddy Banks, the innocent fool who delivers a most moving speech, in which he tries to persuade the Devil Dog to give up deviltry and take up a proper doggy trade (like bear-baiting), and Sam Tsoutsouvas as the decent and downright yeoman Carter, who goes mad in Act IV, but gets over it in Act V.

Best of all, though, were Charlayne Woodard as the Witch, Mother Sawyer, and the incredibly supple and menacing Derek Smith playing Tom the Devil Dog in a leather headdress that was something between a tricorne hat and a dog mask, his face painted red and black, his calves padded out to look like a dog's back legs.  Woodard's Witch was both pathetic and nasty, honestly wronged and embittered beyond redemption--a woman with all the goodness long since kicked and starved out of her, whose only remaining emotion is the desire to make those who wronged her suffer as much as she has.  And Tom--well, he is sexy and creepy and ugly and glorious all at the same time, which is just what a devil should be. 

New Yorkers note:  it's only going to be around until February 20, so get your butts down to the Theatre at St. Clement's.  The cheap tix are on-stage, which means the first row has actors leaning into their faces or sitting inches from them, and every fraying stitch and unraveled braid on the ratty costumes is very much in evidence.  I say this as one who found these points very much features and not bugs, and certainly not in least distracting from this glorious, passionate Jacobean domestic tragedy.

Lost In The Stars

I've written about Encores! before--those semi-staged, 4 day mountings of old Broadway musicals too dated, too long, too strange, too commerically iffy in one way or another for a producer to consider raising the big bucks necessary for a full  production. 

Based on Alan Paton's novel of life in pre-apartheid South Africa, Maxxwell Anderson's book is a very nearly classical tragedy, and Kurt Weill's music sounds more like a modern opera than a musical, full of dissonances and fuges and wonderfully strange rhythm changes.  It sounds very modern, reminding me more of, say, The Scottsboro Boys than Gentlemen Prefer Blondes or South Pacific, which both opened, like Lost in the Stars, in 1949.

The cast was wonderful.  Both Jeremy Gumbs and Sharon Washington had been in The Scottsboro Boys (Washington as the silent presence of Rosa Parks, Gumbs as the youngest Boy), and acquitted themselves splendidly--especially Gumbs, who has a remarkable set of pipes and a presence that just lights up the stage.  Chuck Cooper as the black Anglican pastor Stephen Kumalo, whose journey into spiritual despair the musical traces, was a bit of a disappointment to me.  His voice isn't strong, his acting not entirely convincing.  There should be a lot going on in that character, pain and faith and fury and hope.  Which he gave us all right, but sequentially, so the character seemed more of a whirligig of attitudes than a complex human being.  Could have been the script, I suppose, but his extremely awkward handling of one particularly difficult scene inclines me to think he didn't quite get Stephen.  Ted Sutherland as the Horrible White Bigot, however, did a remarkable job with a basically thankless part, until the surprise switcheroo at the end, which even he couldn't rescue from unconvincing sentimentality.

The play itself was a more than usually mixed bag for me:  some things worked for me; some things, I really disliked.  I'll put the negatives first so I can end on a positive note: 

Things I had trouble with: 

The character of Irina, Absolom's lover and the mother of his unborn child, who has not one, but two "he's a troubled, troubled soul and he makes me cry a lot, but I love him anyway and will be faithful to him until the day I die" songs.  Anderson should just have renamed her "Griselda" and have done with it.

The fact that when the horrid old bigot James Jarvis has his personality transplant comes to be with Stephen at the moment of Absolom's execution for the murder of Jarvis's son, his gesture of reconciliation is  all about him:  his pain, his need to find a reason to live, his hunger for friendship with someone who knows what it is to lose a beloved but poorly understood son.  It works as a metaphor--Jarvis and Stephen Kumalo are brothers in suffering, and have, in some sense, inflicted that suffering on each other--but I found the staged moment artificial.  I don't know whether it was the writing or the acting (or possibly both), but I wasn't convinced that those men, as I'd come to know them over the last 1 1/2 hours, would have behaved as they did at that moment.

The women:  Madonna, Magdalene, or whore.


Things I liked a lot:

The music.  Oh, the music.  I liked the choruses better than the individual character songs--although some of those were just dandy--especially "Who'll Buy?" a song of sultry double-entendres sung by a random floozy in Johannesburg's shantytown, and "Big Mole", sung by Stephen's young nephew Alex (played by Jeremy Gumbs).  And "Thousands of Miles," a song about the impossibility of knowing another human being and the necessity of loving them anyway, made me cry.

The staging:  Mounting a semi-concert production of a musical, where everybody's carrying scripts, the orchestra is on-stage, and there's little to no scenery, is challenging--especially when there are 27 characters with speaking parts (10 of whom play no other roles), a chorus of 19, and 2 dancers.  The costuming was simple (everyone in white and tan, with touches of red, pink, coral for the main characters.  Except for Stephen Kumali, who was all in clerical black with a white dogcollar, and (for some reason I cannot fathom) Irina in satiny yellow with a most unconvincing padded Baby Bump sewn into the front.

The (mostly) unsentimental and unflinching eye two white men (three, counting Alan Paton) brought to their examination of South African racial politics.  There are no apologies here, no appeals to manifest destiny or real-politik or religion or expediency.  Just a quietly damning demonstration of how the white men gutted the indigenous culture of the Zulus, leaving them with few choices and fewer opportunities.  It made me want to read the book, which I somehow missed when I was in school, even though many of my friends read it. 

There have been musicals picked up from Encores! and given the full Broadway treatment:  Gypsy a few years back, and 2009's  Finnian's Rainbow come to mind.  If Lost In the Stars  joins them, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Interfictions Zero: Towards a Critical Theory of Interstitiality

Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, Scholars and Academics all!

Helen Pilinovsky and I are editing a new on-line rolling anthology of critical essays whose purpose is to create a theoretical framework and vocabulary that will make it possible to talk about interstitial texts without pigeonholing them.  It's an open-ended anthology, with an essay appearing on the Interstitial Arts Foundation website the first of every month, beginning in April.

A full description and Submission Guidelines can be found at:

www.interstitialarts.org/projects/interfictions0.php

Please help spread the word to writers and academics who may have critical interpretations concerning works that challenge genre tropes and expectations. If you've got an idea for an article that provides a cogent analysis of a text, but is too idiosyncratic for a standard academic publication, send it around!

Time Travel Query

Anybody got a working time machine?  Because I could use to re-run the last two weeks, or at the very least, go back to 1996 and document some of my research more precisely.

But that's not what I really wanted to ask you.

As you may know, Bob, my time-travel/slavery/coming of age novel The Freedom Maze is coming out this November, just (we hope) in time for World Fantasy.  In Big Mouth House's admirable Author Questionnaire is a request for a list of comparable books.  Between my terrible memory and my penchant for books published 40 or more years ago, I have come up dry as a saltpan.  Can anybody out there help me?

Here's my potted/patented description:

Set against the burgeoning Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and then just before the outbreak of the Civil War, FREEDOM MAZE explores both political and personal liberation, and how the two intertwine.  Sophie, a lonely white girl in 1960’s Louisiana, loves to read.  When she meets a magical creature in her great-aunt’s maze, she hopes for a fantasy book adventure with herself as the heroine.  Instead, she gets a real adventure in the race-haunted world of her family’s Louisiana sugar plantation in 1860, where she is mistaken for a slave.

Anything out there that might help the marketing folks sell Many Copies to B&N?