So, one of the more popular places on this blog has been, since its inception, a running bibliographic master-list of everything I've found regarding The Laramie Project and the Shepard murder and trials. In order to keep up with the newest stuff coming out and to make it much more reasonable to navigate, I will shortly introduce two new lists instead-- one for literary study and one for everything else. These will include a lot of updated bibliography and links to video sources as well.
Eventually, this will include a list of things I think are useful for the teaching of The Laramie Project at the high school and college level. But that's going to take a little more time. I'll let you know as soon as both of the new pages are operational!
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Links: The Laramie Project at Duke University
Okay, so I found out about this upcoming production of The Laramie Project in an odd way: linkbacks. While I was cruising through my Flickr account the other day, this website I hadn't known about showed up in the stats, and when I followed the link back, I found this really, really great classroom and theater production blog. The space includes a lot of great posts on producing, directing and acting this play, and those are things I can never talk about with authority. Well, until I quit my job as an Anglo-Saxonist and take up stagecraft or something, that is.
You can find the blog here, where you'll get a variety of different meditations about the entire production process. It's very, very useful for teaching The Laramie Project. One of my favorite posts so far, on acting the roles of characters, is linked here if you'd like a good place to start digging through the posts. If you're in NC or the surrounding area and would like to see the production, opening night is April 7th at the Sheafer Theater. With this much thought and careful preparation, it's bound to be a great production.
You can find the blog here, where you'll get a variety of different meditations about the entire production process. It's very, very useful for teaching The Laramie Project. One of my favorite posts so far, on acting the roles of characters, is linked here if you'd like a good place to start digging through the posts. If you're in NC or the surrounding area and would like to see the production, opening night is April 7th at the Sheafer Theater. With this much thought and careful preparation, it's bound to be a great production.
Monday, March 7, 2011
The Airing of Grievances, Charge 3
Okay, so it's been a while since I've kept up with my Airing of Grievances, and the Festivus season has long since ended. That's what I get for being way too busy with school since January. In any case, let us proceed through the last two installments!
Just for fun, and because I was avoiding reading things for my second field exam, I picked up a copy of Thornton Wilder's Our Town while I was staying with Coyote in Laramie. Although I personally love drama (my only complaint as an Anglo-Saxonist is that there are no plays) I hadn't really read any of Wilder's work before. My previous survey courses preferred the work of O' Neill and Arthur Miller, and so Wilder was squeezed out.
I found that I enjoyed Our Town more than I thought I would. Wilder takes a blank stage and fills it with all the imaginary geology, history and even shop fronts of a tiny New Hampshire town; then he populates that specific space with a strange allegory of individual lives. The Webbs and the Gibbs could be any two families in America, even though we know exactly where (on stage at least) the Stage Manager positions them. The Stage Manager even gives geographic coordinates for Grover's Corners; but its people are individuals only in how they relate to one another-- cousin, child, neighbor, parent, spouse-- and it is those relationships in the course of their lives that Wilder is interested in.
But the reason that Our Town worked as an embodiment of the universal human experience was because it had an aura of utopia-- it seemed to be a "good place" [eu-topia in Greek] that reflected all the best parts of the American dream (and some of its problems) at the turn of the previous century. But, more importantly, for all its specificity and regional connection to New Hampshire, it was a "no-place" [ou-topia] that had no specific cultural coloring other than the ones which Thornton Wilder wanted it to have. Grover's Corners was a symbol; it was a specific but fictional community existing at coordinates well off the map of America which could hold all of the nation's ideals and faults in the same space and reflect them back on the culture as a whole. That was Wilder's genius: the landscape is American and it's real, but the specific location is not.
But Laramie, Wyoming is neither of these things, really; it has too many of its own idiosyncrasies and small town problems to really be a utopia in the sense of a good place (although it is very good.) And it is a real location. I know that was part of the appeal for using Laramie as a backdrop for the national dialogue on homosexuality for Kaufman, but I'm interested in the complicated mess it makes of things as I think about TLP. In what way does the factual location of Laramie, Wyoming complicate the kind of theater that Kaufman's striving for? In what ways does the town resist any translation into a symbolic space, and is it a good idea at all?
I would hereby like to submit charge number three in the Airing of Grievances:
We need to understand that this is, in some ways, an unfair question. Of course Laramie isn't Grover's Corners; it was never supposed to be. But it's still a natural enough association I want to look at the consequences. I don't know if this is going to be a real "grievance" by the time I'm done here, but I'm interested in what comes of it nonetheless. And so, on to the analysis!
To some degree, Laramie is indeed presented as a latter-day Grover's Corners, a cozy place where everyone appears to know everyone else's business and actually finds comfort in this. But if ''The Laramie Project'' nods conspicuously to Wilder, this play is ''Our Town'' with a question mark, as in ''Could this be our town?'' There are repeated variations by the citizens of Laramie on the statement ''It can't happen here,'' followed immediately by ''And yet it has.''--Ben Brantley, New York Times
Just for fun, and because I was avoiding reading things for my second field exam, I picked up a copy of Thornton Wilder's Our Town while I was staying with Coyote in Laramie. Although I personally love drama (my only complaint as an Anglo-Saxonist is that there are no plays) I hadn't really read any of Wilder's work before. My previous survey courses preferred the work of O' Neill and Arthur Miller, and so Wilder was squeezed out.
I found that I enjoyed Our Town more than I thought I would. Wilder takes a blank stage and fills it with all the imaginary geology, history and even shop fronts of a tiny New Hampshire town; then he populates that specific space with a strange allegory of individual lives. The Webbs and the Gibbs could be any two families in America, even though we know exactly where (on stage at least) the Stage Manager positions them. The Stage Manager even gives geographic coordinates for Grover's Corners; but its people are individuals only in how they relate to one another-- cousin, child, neighbor, parent, spouse-- and it is those relationships in the course of their lives that Wilder is interested in.
But the reason that Our Town worked as an embodiment of the universal human experience was because it had an aura of utopia-- it seemed to be a "good place" [eu-topia in Greek] that reflected all the best parts of the American dream (and some of its problems) at the turn of the previous century. But, more importantly, for all its specificity and regional connection to New Hampshire, it was a "no-place" [ou-topia] that had no specific cultural coloring other than the ones which Thornton Wilder wanted it to have. Grover's Corners was a symbol; it was a specific but fictional community existing at coordinates well off the map of America which could hold all of the nation's ideals and faults in the same space and reflect them back on the culture as a whole. That was Wilder's genius: the landscape is American and it's real, but the specific location is not. But Laramie, Wyoming is neither of these things, really; it has too many of its own idiosyncrasies and small town problems to really be a utopia in the sense of a good place (although it is very good.) And it is a real location. I know that was part of the appeal for using Laramie as a backdrop for the national dialogue on homosexuality for Kaufman, but I'm interested in the complicated mess it makes of things as I think about TLP. In what way does the factual location of Laramie, Wyoming complicate the kind of theater that Kaufman's striving for? In what ways does the town resist any translation into a symbolic space, and is it a good idea at all?
I would hereby like to submit charge number three in the Airing of Grievances:
3. Laramie is not Our Town.
We need to understand that this is, in some ways, an unfair question. Of course Laramie isn't Grover's Corners; it was never supposed to be. But it's still a natural enough association I want to look at the consequences. I don't know if this is going to be a real "grievance" by the time I'm done here, but I'm interested in what comes of it nonetheless. And so, on to the analysis!
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Advocate article by Greg Pierotti on TLP and "10 Years Later"
In the middle of all this personal angst about how the members of Tectonic related to the larger Laramie community, I nevertheless feel a certain amount of personal connection to two of its members: Stephen Belber and Greg Pierotti. Perhaps it is because these two writers and actors of Tectonic Theater have both been willing to lay bare their own experiences with Laramie, their struggles and mistakes, and how the play still haunts them. Maybe that's also the reason I've found it so hard to find a similar personal connection with Kaufman. In contrast to Belber and Pierotti, Kaufman usually positions himself as the artistic theorist or architect, and perhaps that distant, forensic persona makes it harder for me to relate to him.
In any case, if you want to see why I tend to sympathize with Pierotti, he has a great article in the Advocate you should really check out. In a real sense, the first article is telling his own story, and how Matthew Shepard and researching TLP changed his life. The series ballooned into, so far, a seven-part exploration of the two plays as the company prepared to put both on tour last fall, and the whole thing is a fantastic read. You can get Pierotti's perspective on everything from how the Tyler Clementi story relates to TLP to safety on college campuses to the problem of making snap judgments-- about gays and lesbians, but also about Christians, and he's very up front with where his own snap judgments lead to. Please forgive me if I label the whole series a "must read." For those who want to see how Tectonic-- in this case, Pierotti's view, at least-- sees the world, it's quite valuable. And it will challenge your assumptions about Tectonic Theater and the way they operate. The links to all seven parts are below!
On the Road with Laramie, Part 1-- August 10, 2010
On the Road with Laramie, Part 2-- August 25, 2010
On the Road with Laramie, Part 3-- September 14, 2010
On the Road with Laramie, Part 4-- October 6, 2010
On the Road with Laramie, Part 5-- October 18, 2010
On the Road with Laramie, Part 6-- Jan 11, 2011
On the Road with Laramie, Part 7-- February 8, 2011
In any case, if you want to see why I tend to sympathize with Pierotti, he has a great article in the Advocate you should really check out. In a real sense, the first article is telling his own story, and how Matthew Shepard and researching TLP changed his life. The series ballooned into, so far, a seven-part exploration of the two plays as the company prepared to put both on tour last fall, and the whole thing is a fantastic read. You can get Pierotti's perspective on everything from how the Tyler Clementi story relates to TLP to safety on college campuses to the problem of making snap judgments-- about gays and lesbians, but also about Christians, and he's very up front with where his own snap judgments lead to. Please forgive me if I label the whole series a "must read." For those who want to see how Tectonic-- in this case, Pierotti's view, at least-- sees the world, it's quite valuable. And it will challenge your assumptions about Tectonic Theater and the way they operate. The links to all seven parts are below!
On the Road with Laramie, Part 1-- August 10, 2010
On the Road with Laramie, Part 2-- August 25, 2010
On the Road with Laramie, Part 3-- September 14, 2010
On the Road with Laramie, Part 4-- October 6, 2010
On the Road with Laramie, Part 5-- October 18, 2010
On the Road with Laramie, Part 6-- Jan 11, 2011
On the Road with Laramie, Part 7-- February 8, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Even 4chan Can't Stand the WBC...
Wanna see something just hilarious? Click on the image below to read the whole thing.
The image screen capture is courtesy of the blogger Joe My God. I've decided to put our differences aside for one day and give him a high-five for snagging this. Thanks, Joe!
Apparently, Cindy Phelps Roper got just a little mouthy about the purported Internet attack on Westboro Baptist Church and Anonymous has finally had enough. Shortly after proclaiming on a live, on-air radio program that God made the Internet just so WBC could spread their rant to the whole world and (more or less) invoked the protection of God over their servers, a spokesperson from Anonymous (on the same radio program) took their website down in about 45 seconds with a "swift and emotionless b%&#%slap" courtesy of 4chan.
As of 3:00 EST today, I tried to get on the WBC servers, and all their sites are STILL down. Yowza. If you like brimstone served with a side of poetic justice, you can see most of the radio interview on YouTube courtesy of the David Packman Show. If you want to skip Cindy Phelps-Roper grinning like a zombie and being her generally unlovable self, however, the money shot starts somewhere around the 8:00 mark.
I know I shouldn't take joy in the suffering of our enemies. But I did a little dance for joy when I saw this nonetheless. Oh well.
The image screen capture is courtesy of the blogger Joe My God. I've decided to put our differences aside for one day and give him a high-five for snagging this. Thanks, Joe!
Apparently, Cindy Phelps Roper got just a little mouthy about the purported Internet attack on Westboro Baptist Church and Anonymous has finally had enough. Shortly after proclaiming on a live, on-air radio program that God made the Internet just so WBC could spread their rant to the whole world and (more or less) invoked the protection of God over their servers, a spokesperson from Anonymous (on the same radio program) took their website down in about 45 seconds with a "swift and emotionless b%&#%slap" courtesy of 4chan.
As of 3:00 EST today, I tried to get on the WBC servers, and all their sites are STILL down. Yowza. If you like brimstone served with a side of poetic justice, you can see most of the radio interview on YouTube courtesy of the David Packman Show. If you want to skip Cindy Phelps-Roper grinning like a zombie and being her generally unlovable self, however, the money shot starts somewhere around the 8:00 mark.
I know I shouldn't take joy in the suffering of our enemies. But I did a little dance for joy when I saw this nonetheless. Oh well.
Friday, February 25, 2011
This Just In: I'm Not Flunking Out!
Well, I heard back officially yesterday: after writing what I thought was the most unintelligent, incomprehensible piece of oh-just-forget-spelling-I-want-to-SLEEP examination I thought possible, I have actually passed my field exam in the Renaissance! STOP THE PRESSES! I have been declared competent! I'd like to thank God, my husband, my exam coordinator, Prozac, the guy who discovered caffeine, and my therapist.
But do you know what this really means??? I am officially cleared to teach your children British Literature I.
Muahahaha!
Muahahaha!
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
A Winter Sunset in Laramie
So, it's been a week since I turned in my second field exam, and I'm finally feeling like I'm "recovered" from the experience. Due to some medical quirks, stress just tends to wipe me out physically, and when I turned in my exam I went back home and slept for eleven hours. So that was my convenient excuse to sit on my butt most of the following week and do nothing.
Well, I didn't exactly do nothing. In the last week I went to two SEC basketball games with my husband, a choir concert, and a friend's birthday party. I finally got to go to my liturgical prayer group, get back involved with the LGBTA, and even do a little curling. After months of doing nothing but school nonstop, I feel like such a hedonist. And I discovered that it feels pretty nice.
The only thing I'm missing in this sudden glut of Appalachian spring are the sunsets. Normally, we have simply amazing sunsets here in the evenings, full of blazing deep oranges and fuschia, but they haven't been living up to expectations recently. The afternoon clouds roll in like the tide and stifle the twilight sky. So, that naturally means I'm longing for some wide, open vistas with color. So, I thought I'd share the ones I keep sticking on my computer while I'm supposed to be working.
I'll start from north-central Wyoming, not terribly far from where some of my relatives live:
That's still not as deep as it looked from the top of this pasture. My dad and I were just speechless at how vibrant the pink clouds looked.
This is from Bosler as I approached Laramie from the North back in January. The sky had a nice, deep set of salmon and yellow to it:
Sometimes, even Bosler can be pretty. Both summer storm-clouds and twilight skies suit it admirably. A little farther down the road I stopped and snapped this one:
This one is from Laramie, about eight miles or so north of town. Yes, the color vibrance has been adjusted in this photo, but not as near as much as you'd think. That tiny purple streak along the very edge of the horizon wasn't showing up as well as I could see it with my eyes. I hope you enjoy!
Well, I didn't exactly do nothing. In the last week I went to two SEC basketball games with my husband, a choir concert, and a friend's birthday party. I finally got to go to my liturgical prayer group, get back involved with the LGBTA, and even do a little curling. After months of doing nothing but school nonstop, I feel like such a hedonist. And I discovered that it feels pretty nice.
The only thing I'm missing in this sudden glut of Appalachian spring are the sunsets. Normally, we have simply amazing sunsets here in the evenings, full of blazing deep oranges and fuschia, but they haven't been living up to expectations recently. The afternoon clouds roll in like the tide and stifle the twilight sky. So, that naturally means I'm longing for some wide, open vistas with color. So, I thought I'd share the ones I keep sticking on my computer while I'm supposed to be working.
I'll start from north-central Wyoming, not terribly far from where some of my relatives live:
That's still not as deep as it looked from the top of this pasture. My dad and I were just speechless at how vibrant the pink clouds looked.
This is from Bosler as I approached Laramie from the North back in January. The sky had a nice, deep set of salmon and yellow to it:
Sometimes, even Bosler can be pretty. Both summer storm-clouds and twilight skies suit it admirably. A little farther down the road I stopped and snapped this one:
This one is from Laramie, about eight miles or so north of town. Yes, the color vibrance has been adjusted in this photo, but not as near as much as you'd think. That tiny purple streak along the very edge of the horizon wasn't showing up as well as I could see it with my eyes. I hope you enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)