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I have reluctantly decided not to brave the Minn-Stf pool party. My social gears need more notice than this, but if that were all I'd just go and lurk in a corner and enjoy the music; really the problem is this threatening cold, and the fact that we are celebrating my mother's birthday tomorrow and I don't want to be sick for that.
In miscellaneous news, David has a short-term contract; my agent is going to poke my publisher about the book proposal; I somehow managed to lose all the electronic copies of the end of Chapter 3, but luckily had just printed out the whole thing for Eric; my cat wants me to open the windows; I'm reading Linda Nagata's LIMITS OF VISION and have put THE PRIZE IN THE GAME in my pack to read next; and I don't know where February is going so fast.
Last Tuesday, my friend CL whom I met online and had never before seen face-to-face offered me two tickets to the Guthrie's production of MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION. After some cogitation and consideration of schedules, I asked Eric if he wanted to go. We hadn't had a night out in a long time. We met at Lotus To Go and fortified ourselves, he with some kind of chicken dish and real eggrolls, and I with vegetarian eggrolls and Imperial Mock Duck. We each took half our dinner away with us, and very useful it was after the play, too.
We walked over to the Guthrie through Loring Park. People had been very conscientious about clearing their sidewalks of loose snow, but the thick layer of ice had defeated almost everybody. The footing was very uncertain. It was bitter and windy. I did admire the lovely dark blue of the sky, and Eric pointed out the garden we had visited several times during the summer, the AIDS memorial, remarking on how completely different it looked. Only a bench or two and the lovely trunks of the young birch trees rose above the snow. We had seen a water bird in one of those trees on a hot day not really so long ago.
We got the tickets with no difficulty, and wandered about for a little until they opened the doors, upon which we admired the set, a looming wall of gray brick that made me think vividly of my 1974 stay in London; then we read our programs. Eric was amused and intrigued by the excerpts of an article by Brecht, that in the most flattering way called Shaw a terrorist. I always forget how extremely radical Shaw was, in so many directions.
The performance was excellent. I haven't read the play often enough to know if they cut anything, but they may not have needed to. The actors were well up to the task. We were occasionally defeated by their accents when their backs were turned, but on the whole the hearing was good. During the intermission Eric pointed out how clever the structure of the play was; this observation led me to realize later that night, or maybe the next morning, that it has a structure opposite to that of a comedy. It isn't about people coming together, but about their breaking apart. It has more laughs than something like HEARTBREAK HOUSE, but is certainly not among the jollier of Shaw's works. Eric said afterwards that he could certainly see why Shaw called it an Unpleasant play.
I was much struck that the most specific condemnation spoken in the play was, "You're a conventional woman." Ouch.
CL had told me that if we wanted to wait around outside the gift shop afterwards, she could probably come out and say hello. She did, too, and invited us to come look at the set. We got to stand on the Guthrie's stage and look around and upwards, and to admire the two rolling sets, one a garden and one a parlor; CL explained how they took to pieces and how various things were done, and what her various jobs were. It was fascinating. We were a bit awkward, having never met before; also I think she was tired after a long day of work and Eric and I were both sleepy.
But it was a good first meeting.
I asked her if the sets conformed to Shaw's description. Eric had noticed that in the garden set, the flowers were actually growing through some of the piles of books, and all through the spokes of the wheels of the bicycle. CL wasn't sure, but she thought that the backdrop of gray brick (which was plastic; she let us rap our knuckles on it) was the Guthrie's idea but the two rolling sets were from Shaw's description. I don't have a copy of the play, though we did it in playreading group; must remedy this.
We walked home through Loring Park, noting that the Northern Lights building had its headpiece in red, white, and blue rather than moving all over the spectrum. Eric said he assumed it was their version of having the flag at half-mast, for the Columbia astronauts, of course. Communication is odd sometimes. We didn't mention the astronauts, we just knew what we meant.
The wind had died, so we walked all the way back to Eric's place rather than trying to get a Nicollet bus. We got back before eleven, so there was time for reading and studying and the eating of leftovers. Toliman tore up and down the apartment repeatedly and purred in the intervals. We went to bed early but talked late, about the play and other plays and about ourselves.
We talked more about the play next morning. Eric was particularly intrigued by the character of the architect, and after he'd said why I realized that that character reminded me of characters like Antonio in TWELFTH NIGHT or Prince Claudio in MUCH ADO, the leftover characters I'd written my thesis about. Only because the Shaw play isn't a comedy, what Prade is left out of is completely different.
Pamela
In miscellaneous news, David has a short-term contract; my agent is going to poke my publisher about the book proposal; I somehow managed to lose all the electronic copies of the end of Chapter 3, but luckily had just printed out the whole thing for Eric; my cat wants me to open the windows; I'm reading Linda Nagata's LIMITS OF VISION and have put THE PRIZE IN THE GAME in my pack to read next; and I don't know where February is going so fast.
Last Tuesday, my friend CL whom I met online and had never before seen face-to-face offered me two tickets to the Guthrie's production of MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION. After some cogitation and consideration of schedules, I asked Eric if he wanted to go. We hadn't had a night out in a long time. We met at Lotus To Go and fortified ourselves, he with some kind of chicken dish and real eggrolls, and I with vegetarian eggrolls and Imperial Mock Duck. We each took half our dinner away with us, and very useful it was after the play, too.
We walked over to the Guthrie through Loring Park. People had been very conscientious about clearing their sidewalks of loose snow, but the thick layer of ice had defeated almost everybody. The footing was very uncertain. It was bitter and windy. I did admire the lovely dark blue of the sky, and Eric pointed out the garden we had visited several times during the summer, the AIDS memorial, remarking on how completely different it looked. Only a bench or two and the lovely trunks of the young birch trees rose above the snow. We had seen a water bird in one of those trees on a hot day not really so long ago.
We got the tickets with no difficulty, and wandered about for a little until they opened the doors, upon which we admired the set, a looming wall of gray brick that made me think vividly of my 1974 stay in London; then we read our programs. Eric was amused and intrigued by the excerpts of an article by Brecht, that in the most flattering way called Shaw a terrorist. I always forget how extremely radical Shaw was, in so many directions.
The performance was excellent. I haven't read the play often enough to know if they cut anything, but they may not have needed to. The actors were well up to the task. We were occasionally defeated by their accents when their backs were turned, but on the whole the hearing was good. During the intermission Eric pointed out how clever the structure of the play was; this observation led me to realize later that night, or maybe the next morning, that it has a structure opposite to that of a comedy. It isn't about people coming together, but about their breaking apart. It has more laughs than something like HEARTBREAK HOUSE, but is certainly not among the jollier of Shaw's works. Eric said afterwards that he could certainly see why Shaw called it an Unpleasant play.
I was much struck that the most specific condemnation spoken in the play was, "You're a conventional woman." Ouch.
CL had told me that if we wanted to wait around outside the gift shop afterwards, she could probably come out and say hello. She did, too, and invited us to come look at the set. We got to stand on the Guthrie's stage and look around and upwards, and to admire the two rolling sets, one a garden and one a parlor; CL explained how they took to pieces and how various things were done, and what her various jobs were. It was fascinating. We were a bit awkward, having never met before; also I think she was tired after a long day of work and Eric and I were both sleepy.
But it was a good first meeting.
I asked her if the sets conformed to Shaw's description. Eric had noticed that in the garden set, the flowers were actually growing through some of the piles of books, and all through the spokes of the wheels of the bicycle. CL wasn't sure, but she thought that the backdrop of gray brick (which was plastic; she let us rap our knuckles on it) was the Guthrie's idea but the two rolling sets were from Shaw's description. I don't have a copy of the play, though we did it in playreading group; must remedy this.
We walked home through Loring Park, noting that the Northern Lights building had its headpiece in red, white, and blue rather than moving all over the spectrum. Eric said he assumed it was their version of having the flag at half-mast, for the Columbia astronauts, of course. Communication is odd sometimes. We didn't mention the astronauts, we just knew what we meant.
The wind had died, so we walked all the way back to Eric's place rather than trying to get a Nicollet bus. We got back before eleven, so there was time for reading and studying and the eating of leftovers. Toliman tore up and down the apartment repeatedly and purred in the intervals. We went to bed early but talked late, about the play and other plays and about ourselves.
We talked more about the play next morning. Eric was particularly intrigued by the character of the architect, and after he'd said why I realized that that character reminded me of characters like Antonio in TWELFTH NIGHT or Prince Claudio in MUCH ADO, the leftover characters I'd written my thesis about. Only because the Shaw play isn't a comedy, what Prade is left out of is completely different.
Pamela
