He wrote the libretto, now he'll write the book

Ever since the whole Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark fiasco happened last year, I've been saying, "I really hope Glen Berger publishes a tell-all book about it."

Guess what? He is!  Per the New York Times, Berger's Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History will be published in 2013.

Berger is the musical's co-librettist and one of the few people to be involved with the show throughout its long journey to opening night. When the producers fired Julie Taymor, they retained Berger, though they brought in a new librettist (Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa) to collaborate with him.

Because of this -- and because, y'know, he's a writer -- I've always felt that Berger is the ideal person to write the tell-all book about the Spider-Man musical. And, face it, this is a saga that's crying out for a tell-all book.

I should also note that I took a playwriting master class with Berger several years before this all happened and found him to be a likable, unassuming, smart, somewhat nebbishy man -- totally not the kind of guy that you'd picture writing the most expensive Broadway musical ever produced. He came to prominence writing whimsical Off-Broadway plays with a kind of shabby-nostalgic aesthetic (Underneath the Lintel; O Lovely Glowworm) and then found himself working with Bono on a multimillion-dollar superhero musical with flying and special effects.

I can't wait to hear what he has to say about all of it.

Meeting Emma Straub

Between the time I bought my ticket to the Magnetic Fields concert a few months ago and the time I attended the show on Saturday night, I had developed a secondary motivation for being there -- beyond my desire to see one of my favorite bands perform.

See, when I read The Millions' "Most Anticipated Books of 2012" article at the beginning of this year, the title that intrigued me the most was Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures by Emma Straub, "about a Midwestern girl who moves to Los Angeles and, at great cost, becomes a movie star in 1940s Hollywood." I'm writing a play about a '40s movie star, so of course I thought "I have to read this novel when it comes out!"

And it just so happens that Emma Straub is on tour with the Magnetic Fields as their "merch girl" and maintainer of their tour blog! When I realized this, I decided I'd try to introduce myself to her at the concert and let her know that I am truly excited about her book.

So, during the opening act, I went out to the lobby and recognized Emma Straub from her author photo -- she was standing near the merch booth. Though I'm always a little nervous in situations like these, the friend I was with cheered me on, and I went up and introduced myself.

Because the Fox Theater insisted on using their own employees as merchandise vendors, Emma didn't have anything pressing to do and I was able to chat with her for a few minutes. We talked about '40s cinema (we're both Hitchcock fans) and how fun it is to watch old movies and call it "research." She also asked me a little about my play and the Olympians Festival.

According to Emma, Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures actually spans several decades in the life of its heroine, from the '20s to the '70s -- so the blurb on The Millions was a little misleading. Nonetheless, I'm still super excited to read it, and Emma couldn't have been nicer or more approachable.

Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures will be Emma Straub's debut novel, but she is currently represented in bookstores with a short story collection called Other People We Married -- which I want to read now, too!  Here is a video where she reads some of her fiction and Stephin Merritt plays some of his songs, in a joint appearance at the NYC Barnes & Noble earlier this month. She is also chronicling the Magnetic Fields tour for the band's official blog and for the Paris Review blog.

Midwinter Music Mania

Coming to an iPod near me in the very near future:

• The King is Dead, by the Decemberists (downloading it as I type this). As I wrote at the time the last Decemberists album came out, "I am a pretentious theater-nerd from Portland, so I am contractually obliged to love the Decemberists." And I am on record as preferring the Decemberists in literate pop-song mode to the Decemberists in heavy rock-opera mode. The King is Dead -- ten folk-inspired songs in forty minutes -- is exactly the kind of music I was hoping the band would make after the excesses of The Hazards of Love, and I look forward to listening to it tomorrow.
  

• Cleopatra: Arias from Giulio Cesare, by Natalie Dessay (to be released February 8). Man, I was looking forward to this as far back as two and a half years ago, when the word first surfaced that Dessay would add the role of Cleopatra to her repertoire. She's my favorite opera singer, and Cleopatra's "V'adoro, pupille" is perhaps my favorite Handel aria. And now she's recorded it!

Dessay is also currently performing in a production of Giulio Cesare in Paris, at the Palais Garnier. Must resist the urge to look up cheap flights to France...

I'm so excited about both of these albums! I feel as though I'm back in college! -- the era when I discovered both of these artists. Blissful afternoons of sitting on my dorm-room quilt and listening to the Decemberists and Dessay -- I really don't do that often enough, these days.

Things That Are Making Me Ridiculously Happy

NOW, AND IN THE NEAR FUTURE

• Today is my 2-year anniversary of moving to San Francisco. I love this city and feel so grateful for my life here--my apartment, my neighborhood, my roommates, my new friends, my old friends reconnected-with, my finding my way into the theater community here, the supportiveness of that community and the great art they make...
• Speaking of which, the premiere of my play at Theater Pub on Monday night was a huge success. I couldn't have asked for a better cast, director, or venue in which to make my local playwriting debut. I'm still kind of on a high from Monday evening, which is why I haven't blogged about the experience yet... in the meantime, I'm looking forward to the 2 other performances! August 23 and 30th, 8 PM (but get there early!)
• A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book is finally out in paperback, so I finally am reading it! I started it Monday morning and am about 200 pages in (out of nearly 900). There are a ton of characters and I'm excited to find out what happens to all of them. It's the longest book I've read in quite a while; it's the most excited I've been about a new novel in quite a while; I'm enjoying it so far.

IN A COUPLE OF MONTHS

• I just bought my tickets for a long weekend in NYC at the end of October--my first trip back there since graduation! I look forward to the East Coast autumn, to traveling, to catching up with old friends... Now I've just got to decide what show to get tickets for.
• The day after I return from NYC, Stephen Sondheim's book about lyric-writing will be published! 480 pages of (as the subtitle has it) "Collected Lyrics, with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes." Not sure I'll be able to wait for the paperback with this one...

IN THE MORE DISTANT FUTURE

• Whit Stillman, of Metropolitan fame, is preparing to shoot another movie! Working title is Damsels in Distress, a comedy about a "charming, eccentric clique of stylish but possibly quite mad" college girls, whose values "appear to derive from the late lamented Zelda Fitzgerald." Sounds like vintage Stillman (and one of my friends recently described me as "Zelda Fitzgerald without the insanity," so it is any wonder that the description of this new film has me ridiculously excited?)
  

Things I Want to Arrive Now, Dammit

Because tomorrow may be devoted to gratitude but today one is still allowed to be greedy and impatient...

• Movies: Broken Embraces, Me and Orson Welles. A.O. Scott has developed a bad habit of giving rave reviews to movies that aren't open in my city yet.
  
• Newspapers/magazines/saviors of the printed word: McSweeney's San Francisco Panorama. So looking forward to this!
  
• Abstract qualities: Inspiration, imagination, willpower, gumption, etc.
  
• And most importantly: The end of the month, so that I no longer have to write a blog post every day! (Can you tell I'm frustrated?)
  

There Are Faeries In My Neighborhood

No, this is not the set-up for a tired joke revolving around the "there sure are a lot of gay people in San Francisco" thing. It's a reference to a short story by Chris Adrian, called "A Tiny Feast," which is, to crib a line from Shakespeare, "something rich and strange." (And which was published in The New Yorker in April, but I only now got around to reading.)

The quote from The Tempest is especially appropriate because "A Tiny Feast" is a twist on another Shakespearean fantasy, A Midsummer Night's Dream. The premise of the story is that Oberon and Titania and their band of faeries are living beneath Buena Vista Park in San Francisco (about a mile from my house), and have stolen a human child and left a changeling in his place. When the human boy gets leukemia and cannot be cured by faerie magic, they must disguise themselves as a mortal family and get him treated at UCSF Children's Hospital. This information comes out much more gradually in the story than I have written it here, of course. And what follows is brilliantly odd and imaginative and well-written and meaningful, too. As immortal faeries, Oberon and Titania have great difficulty processing their child's illness and the doctors' diagnoses. But how different is this from the disorientation that any parent feels when his or her child gets cancer?

Chris Adrian, aka Mr. Overachiever, is a critically acclaimed fiction writer, the possessor of a divinity degree from Harvard, and a pediatric oncologist at UCSF--so he knows whereof he speaks. And according to this interview, "A Tiny Feast" is not just a standalone story: Adrian is working on a novel that retells the story of A Midsummer Night's Dream in modern San Francisco. Anticipation! Because, just reading "A Tiny Feast" has got me to see my city as a new place--a magical place. When the N-Judah train tunnels through Buena Vista Park I now think to myself "There are faeries here, living right on the other side of these tunnel walls." I can only imagine what effect a whole novel of this will have on me.

Incidentally, what is it with UCSF physicians having amazing second careers as artists? Aside from Chris Adrian, there is a great band called Rupa and the April Fishes whose frontwoman, Rupa, also works as a doctor at UCSF. My god, they put the rest of us San Franciscans to shame.

Image: "A Fairy Flew Off with the Changeling" by Arthur Rackham.

Barbary Lane to the Great White Way

By the way, I read recently that Tales of the City is being adapted into a Broadway musical, and while I'm skeptical of many of the musical adaptations I hear about, I actually think that this one has a lot of potential.

For one thing, Tales of the City is a heavily dialogue-based book, and is mostly told as a series of short, two-character scenes. So it's not like Maupin spends pages and pages describing his characters' psychology in ways that would be hard to dramatize. And the book features a wide variety of characters who combine in surprising ways.

For another, the librettist, Jeff Whitty, is best known for his libretto to Avenue Q--another musical about a disparate bunch of characters who live in an apartment building with an eccentric proprietor.

Indeed, the story seems to fit right into the musical-comedy tradition. It could begin with Mary Ann arriving in town and singing a wide-eyed-girl-in-the-city, Thoroughly Modern Millie-style opening number... or maybe the opening song ought to be more of an ensemble piece, introducing all of the characters as they go about their day at 28 Barbary Lane. (That would be a good song title, too--"Lane" rhymes with a lot of things.)

And one of the pivotal scenes has Michael participating in a jockey shorts dance contest--can we say Big Production Number?

The music and lyrics are being written by Jake Shears of the band Scissor Sisters, which I am not familiar with, but is evidently known for a "glam-rock disco sound"--a good fit for the 1970s setting, though disco music tends to be rather slick and shallow and I prefer my theater songs to delve deeper into the characters' feelings...

V'adoro!

Two things about me:

1. Currently the most-played song on my iPod is Natalie Dessay singing "Tornami a vagheggiar," from Handel's Alcina. Her effortlessly tossed-off coloratura pyrotechnics, which perfectly express the aria's theme of being head-over-heels in love, just make me happy whenever I hear them.

2. Other than that, my favorite Handel aria is "V'adoro pupille," written for the role of Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare. I don't have a favorite recorded version of this one--I love it for the delicate, sensual beauty of the music itself. And now I have a personal association with it as well, having incorporated it into my play The Rose of Youth.

I already posted this interview with Ms. Dessay about a week ago--but reading it again, she says that she is planning to star in Giulio Cesare at the end of 2009. In Paris, no less!

My favorite opera singer and my favorite Handel aria. Oh lord, somebody had better stop me before I get so excited that I start singing jubilant coloratura myself.

Upcoming: vocal fireworks!

Fireworks over the Sydney Opera House. Photo from whitehouse.gov, of all places.

Exciting news that I have been dying to share: there won't be any new posts for several days, because I will be in San Francisco celebrating my 21st birthday at a performance of Lucia di Lammermoor--starring the one and only Natalie Dessay!

This plan has been a long time in the making. Longtime readers will recall that I got into an opera phase last fall, kick-started by some YouTube videos of Dessay. Prior to that, I'd mostly thought of opera as beautiful music that conveyed a generalized wash of emotion. I had never seen anyone like Dessay, who makes specific, pointed acting choices on every line she sings. I revised all my ideas about what to look for in opera--and because singer/actors like Dessay make opera into truly compelling theater, I found myself liking it more and more.

Then I saw that Dessay would be performing in San Francisco this summer, and started developing one of my Crazy Marissa Schemes. (I get these fairly often, having an overactive imagination and all.) See, I was born in San Francisco, and Dessay's final performance there coincides with my 21st birthday--and if I was there, that would be just too perfect and memorable, wouldn't it? I doubted that my parents would go along with the idea, or maybe I just didn't want to get my hopes up--but they love the Bay Area, and the arts, and they consented!

And after watching the PBS broadcast of La Fille du Régiment starring Natalie Dessay, my parents might be even more excited than I am. I mean, they liked her voice when I played some of her CDs for them, but seeing her in action takes things to a new level. I think my father, especially, had never seen such a physical and funny and un-pretentious opera singer. "I can't believe they let her peel potatoes onstage--with a knife!" he kept saying.

Of course, in Lucia she'll be using a knife in a much different context, and avoiding comedy antics. But her performance of "Il faut partir" on the broadcast was very sincere and touching, so if she can do that in the middle of a silly comedy, imagine what she can do in a real tragedy!

I got an idea for an opera spoof, though, while watching La Fille du Régiment and anticipating Lucia. Both are Donizetti operas where the coloratura heroine despairs of being forced to marry a man she does not love. So, what if Tonio didn't arrive in time to save Marie at the end of La Fille? Well, I imagine her marrying the Duchesse de Krakenthorp's nephew, stabbing him in his bed (with military precision, naturally), and singing a mad scene. Then Tonio, unlike the wimpy Edgardo in Lucia, avenges Marie by killing the Marquise de Berkenfeld, who forced her into this marriage. After all, he's learned courage and marksmanship since joining the Army.

Links to amuse, in my absence: check out the blog of Sarah Noble, a fellow Dessay fan who just saw the San Francisco Lucia; learn the connection between Hitchcock and Lucia di Lammermoor; and, if you haven't already, search for Natalie Dessay on YouTube. May I recommend "Tornami a vagheggiar" to put a smile on your face, and for something more moving, "Adieu notre petite table".

And of course, happy 4th of July!

Whoa-oh-oh-oh, Da Doo Ron Ron

On Saturday I'll be in NYC again to see Doris to Darlene at Playwrights Horizons (and maybe do some Christmas shopping). I'm excited: not only is playwright Jordan Harrison a great guy and a talented writer, but the subject of this play sounds right up my alley. It interweaves 3 stories: Richard Wagner writing Tristan and Isolde, a 1960s girl-group singer's career, and a contemporary gay man's coming of age. Y'all know that I'm in an opera phase right now (though I'm no Wagnerian) but it might surprise you that I absolutely love girl-group pop!

Probably this has something to do with playing a doo-wop girl in Little Shop of Horrors in high school and getting to sing Ashman & Menken's pastiche songs. Really, it's a great score; the choice to use girl-group music is just so perfect for the show's humor and its 1950s/1960s setting. And it parodies its sources just enough, never too much. In the opening number, we sang "Shing-a-ling, what a creepy thing to be happening. Look out! Look out! Look out! Look out!" Only a few years later did I realize that that parodied the Shangri-Las' shouts in "Leader of the Pack."

This kind of music has also been heard on Broadway in Hairspray and Dreamgirls. Hairspray's "Mama I'm a Big Girl Now," with its three girls singing harmony and I-vi-iv-V chord structure, perfectly evokes the girl-group sound. It's one of my favorite songs in the score. However, I did not think that any of The Dreams' hit songs in Dreamgirls were as catchy or brilliant as the real deal from the Supremes. (More Dreamgirls carping here.)

Girl-group songs are a lot of fun, obviously, but their sweetness and innocence and adolescent heartbreak can also be quite affecting. When I went through my first quasi-relationship/quasi-breakup (eh, it was complicated) one thing that helped was listening to "Where Did Our Love Go?" and "You Can't Hurry Love" on repeat. Sounds clichéd, I know...but better than listening to emo.

It's funny that these songs should be this powerful, because they're the very definition of commercial music--written not from the depths of an artist's soul, but by teams of songwriters hoping to score a big hit. Much of the time, white adults wrote songs for young urban black girls to sing, which is a little creepy/exploitative (especially when said white man was Phil Spector!). At Motown the songwriters as well as the singers were black, but if anything, the "hitmaking machine" mentality was even more in effect.

Some people may scorn girl-group music because it's so commercial, but there's a lot of distinguished girl-group aficionados, too. They include:

Amy Winehouse: Her Grammy-nominated album (congrats Amy!) is heavily based around the classic girl-group sound: "Back to Black" might be the greatest Phil Spector song that Phil Spector never produced. But her voice gives it a modern twist: paradoxically, she's both more tough and more vulnerable than the typical poppy girl-group singer (the Shangri-Las excepted).



The Pipettes: A trio from the UK who is also contributing to the girl-group revival. Pretty, peppy, and polka-dotted, "Pull Shapes" ought to cheer you up if you just watched that funerary "Back to Black" video...



Martin Scorsese: Ever since seeing Goodfellas last summer I can't listen to "And Then He Kissed Me" without thinking of how it underscores the astounding tracking shot where Henry and Karen make their way into the Copacabana Club through the kitchen. Just ecstatically good filmmaking and music.



Tom Stoppard: His quasi-autobiographical character Henry, in The Real Thing, knows he "should" love difficult classical music, but really only likes the '60s pop hits from his youth. In one scene, he is trying to choose eight songs that are personally significant to him for the BBC radio show Desert Island Discs--but, ashamed of his musical tastes, is hunting for some more obscure tracks than the ones he usually listens to:

HENRY: I'm supposed to be one of your intellectual playwrights. I'm going to look like a total prick, aren't I, announcing that while I was telling Jean-Paul Sartre and the post-war French existentialists where they had got it wrong, I was spending the whole time listening to the Crystals singing "Da Doo Ron Ron."

That's one way of looking at it, Henry...or you could've been like Jordan Harrison, and put both your intellect and your love of girl-group music into one of your plays!

Book-to-Movie Anticipation, Part 2: Atonement

In the first part of this post on how two of my all-time favorite books are being turned into movies this fall, I looked at Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, which became my favorite book when I was 9 years old. And it retained that position for quite a long time--I loved its sequels too, and there were other books I enjoyed, but I don't think it ever had a serious challenger. By the time I was in high school, though, I began thinking it silly that my favorite book was a children's novel. And when I was 15, I finally read a book that knocked The Golden Compass off its pedestal: Atonement, by Ian McEwan.

I read Atonement on a high-school trip to Cuba (a long story which I may get around to telling someday). It was 2003 and the Iraq War had just begun, so you could draw a parallel between that and the depiction of World War II in the novel, though I doubt I was conscious of it at the time. The book had gotten good reviews and was half-price at Costco, so I picked it up rather on a whim--thinking "This had better be good, or I'll be stuck in Cuba with a lousy book."

And at first I read it leisurely--the first section is slowly paced in that classic "British country house novel" way--though I was impressed with McEwen's attention to detail and shifting perspectives. And then, as the book's inexorable chain of events got set into motion, it hooked me in the same way The Golden Compass had. I'd vowed that on our bus trips through Cuba I would observe the countryside instead of reading; soon, that vow was broken. When I finished the book, I stared blankly out the bus window, feeling swelled-up with emotion and ready to cry; just then, we went down a particularly twisty road and the kid in front of me got carsick--the bus had to pull over so he could vomit out the window. That was all anyone could talk about for the rest of the day--"David threw up!" Me, I barely noticed. As it has done to many other readers, that last section of Atonement knocked me flat. Devastated me.

Due to Atonement's critical acclaim and general brilliance, as well as the public's appetite for romantic dramas, I was sure it would be made into a movie someday. Still, I worry that something fundamental may get lost in the translation to the screen. *VAGUE SPOILERS* The end of the book is so powerful because you discover that it's a novel about the act of writing. In order for the twist to function the same way in a movie version, you'd have to make the older Briony a film director instead of a novelist, but I highly doubt that change took place.

*SPOILERS END*

All the same, I'm excited about the movie. I was surprised how much I liked director Joe Wright's film version of Pride and Prejudice, which looked beautiful and brought the characters' emotions to life. (You can read my IMDB review here, though it seems that some Austenites took offense at my statement "I admire Jane Austen's novels, but admire good filmmaking even more.") Screenwriter Christopher Hampton proved with Dangerous Liaisons that he can turn a difficult-to-adapt novel into a lively drama. Wright obviously enjoys working with Keira Knightley and she did a good job in Pride and Prejudice--though I wonder if she's too beautiful and glamorous to play Cecilia.

I had a bit of the opposite reaction when I heard James McAvoy would be playing Robbie. Now, as you can see from the photo above, he's not a bad-looking chap, he seems likable, decent, and sympathetic--all qualities that Robbie requires. But I'll admit I pictured Robbie as much more traditionally handsome, and rough around the edges (he's the cleaning lady's son after all) where McAvoy is wet behind the ears. Still, I have heard good things about McAvoy's acting talent and hope to be pleasantly surprised. This movie was made to fulfill Wright's and McEwan's visions, not to fulfill my own romantic dreams, you know!

I will always love Atonement, but I'm less willing to call it my Favorite Book of All Time, as I did when I was sixteen or seventeen. I now think it's a little foolish to single one book out as my all-time favorite, as well as awfully hubristic that both of my former All-Time Favorites, The Golden Compass and Atonement, were written during my own short lifetime. It's exciting, though, that two such high-profile movies based on two such great books are coming out this fall. Often I love the kind of books that would never be made into movies!

Book-to-Movie Anticipation, Part 1: The Golden Compass

Now that it's almost November, the prestige movie season is heating up. This year is special for me in that two movies are going to come out based on books that I, at one point or another, have called my Favorite Book of All Time. They'll even be released on the same day, December 7 (a date that will live in infamy?). The books/movies? The Golden Compass and Atonement.

From about the ages of eight to twelve, I was a fantasy-book junkie. But I now realize that much of my fantasy-book addiction was a quest to recapture the rush I felt when I first read The Golden Compass. I read a lot of kiddie-fantasy trash in those days, most of which I have forgotten. But I could never forget The Golden Compass--it, and its sequels, are just extraordinary works of literature.

My aunt gave me The Golden Compass for my ninth birthday, but when my mom saw on the book jacket that the plot involved "horrible experiments performed on children," she decided my dad had better read it first to make sure it wouldn't scare me to death. (The previous Christmas, this same aunt had given me A Wrinkle in Time, which my parents also took away immediately on the pretext it would scare me, until I wised up and checked the book out of the school library instead.) After four or five months, Dad handed it over--I don't know what took him so long, because once I started the book, I could not stop reading. I had always loved to read, but had also always been too dutiful a daughter to turn my lamp back on after lights-out and keep reading when I should have been asleep. The Golden Compass changed all that. I simply had to find out what was going to happen to Lyra and Pantalaimon. I had to immerse myself in that universe that, despite its lack of fairytale/Tolkien trappings like gnomes and swords and medievalesque society, was still so magical and fantastical. I was hooked!

Scared that my parents would catch on to my late-night reading sessions, the next day I would reread the section I had read the previous night, so as not to look like I was finishing the book too fast. (I don't know why I was so worried--that same year, I read all 1100 pages of Gone with the Wind in three days flat. Why have my speed-reading skills deserted me in college?!) Still, I didn't mind. I knew, even then, that The Golden Compass can withstand many rereadings. And now, if I want to feel old, I remind myself that I have loved this book for over half my life, and the Tenth Anniversary Edition came out last year!

Now, finally, a movie is coming out, written and directed by Chris Weitz. The initial screenwriter was Tom Stoppard--you can surely imagine how excited I was about that!--but Weitz ultimately rejected his draft. I have very high hopes for Nicole Kidman's portrayal of Mrs. Coulter--a character I'm rather attached to, villainous as she is, because she's the only Marisa or Marissa I've ever encountered in a great novel. Kidman is good at playing icy glamor-queens, and though the book describes Mrs. Coulter as having a Louise Brooks-type bob, I always found it easier to picture her as a blonde. Daniel Craig also looks like he will be a good Lord Asriel. And I'm not sure we need another child actress named "Dakota," but Miss Richards rather looks the part of Lyra. (At nine years old I dreamed of playing Lyra because I too have dark blonde hair, but I was never a scrawny little savage like her.)

I know that to appease American audiences, a lot of the anti-organized-religion messages in the books will be toned down for the movies. I can definitely see this becoming a problem when they film The Subtle Knife, but those themes are not as explicit in The Golden Compass, so the story should still make sense. I'm more worried at the recent news that the last three chapters of The Golden Compass are going to be part of the next movie, instead.

*SPOILERS* This means that the film will end with Iorek Byrnison's victory, and that just feels wrong. Too triumphant, too happy. One of the things I love most about His Dark Materials is that each book has a progressively more poignant ending: Book 1 is wrenching enough, Book 2 breaks your heart, and Book 3, well... And now the filmmakers will disrupt that wonderful pattern. *END SPOILERS*

Another concern: In all of the 19 production stills available on the IMDB, why does not a single one show a human being with their daemon? After all, the plot requires establishing the fact that in Lyra's world, humans can never travel very far from their daemons!

Part 2 of this post, on Atonement, will be up shortly. In the meantime, have you been more often happy or disappointed when your all-time favorite books are turned into movies? Share in the comments!

Wending my way to the Windy City

That's it from me for a few days...it's October break here at Vassar (where did the semester go?) and I am off to Chicago. I've never been there before and I have tickets to Sarah Ruhl's epic Passion Play at the Goodman Theater, so I am quite excited! (And I'll be sure to tell you all about it.)

Theatre on the Horizon

On Sunday I'm going to go down to NYC and see 100 Saints You Should Know at Playwrights Horizons. I don't want to sound like a shill for this company, but I got really excited when I saw their season announcement. Their fantastic student-subscriber deal ($10 per show...seriously, the train ride costs 2.5 times more than the show does!) is just the icing on the cake. See, Playwrights Horizons is devoting its season to young "emerging" writers and getting a lot of great press for it (see this Village Voice article). The plays are:

• 100 Saints You Should Know by Kate Fodor
  
• A Feminine Ending by Sarah Treem
  
• Doris to Darlene by Jordan Harrison
• Dead Man's Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl
• The Drunken City by Adam Bock
• Saved by Michael Friedman (music), John Dempsey and Rinne Groff (book and lyrics)
  

Not household names yet, but definitely rising stars--and they deserve it! I have actually been fortunate enough to meet four of the authors: Sarah Treem, Jordan Harrison, and Adam Bock when they had plays workshopped at Portland Center Stage, and Sarah Ruhl after I won a playwriting contest. Jordan is a terrific guy and the subject of Doris to Darlene sounds so intriguing--Wagner and girl groups! I've enjoyed Sarah R.'s writing ever since my freshman roommate was in a student production of Melancholy Play three years ago, and look how her star has skyrocketed since then! Mary-Louise Parker just got announced as the lead, and I've never seen her onstage, so am excited about that as well. Sarah T.'s Feminine Ending was already a crowd pleaser as a JAW staged reading so I am looking forward to seeing a full production. And I love Adam's intricately patterned dialogue and the description of his new play as "wildly theatrical."

I'm not sure what I think about yet another musical adapted from a movie (even if Saved was a quirky indie comedy), but I LOVE Rinne Groff's play The Ruby Sunrise, so that gives me a better feeling. I actually know the least about Kate Fodor (100 Saints is only her second play, it seems) but have heard good things about the play in previews. Looking forward to it, and to my first NYC day in 9 months--it's been too long!

addendum: One last thing I really admire about this season: the equal number of male and female writers! How often does that happen?

How to Get Marissa's Attention

If any of the following elements are present in a book or article, you can be sure that it'll get my attention:

• Playwrights, especially female playwrights
• France or the French
• Behind-the-scenes political intrigue
• Larger-than-life personalities

So you can imagine my excitement when there's something in the news combining all four of these topics!

Playwright Yasmina Reza got behind-the-scenes access to Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential campaign and just published a book about it, L'Aube le soir ou la nuit (Dawn, Evening or Night). New York Times article here, some clunkily translated excerpts here.

I think I'm going to want to read this one in French, especially if the English translation is as bad as what the Times just published. After all, it has "dialogue of which the theater could be jealous"! Wow!

August: Clackamas County

I've got two more weeks before I go back to school, the crickets are chirping outside my window as though counting down to the end of summer, and this post is titled in tribute to a new play, August: Osage County, which seems to be creating quite a furor in Chicago.

I mean, Charles Isherwood even raved about it--a rare occurrence! And I am completely intrigued. First of all, by the sheer size--13 actors, 3 acts, 3 hours 20 minutes--a canvas that hardly any American playwright uses anymore. How many plays have had 13 cast members recently? The Kentucky Cycle? Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play? I'm looking forward to the complexity of human relationships afforded by having more than 5 or 7 cast members.

Second, I'm curious whether and how playwright Tracy Letts has done something original with his subject matter. Can a play that incorporates "drug abuse, alcoholism, adultery, pedophilia, emotional and physical abuse, and special bonus horror: incest!" rise above the shock value of those elements, escape the trappings of cheap melodrama and soap opera, and actually say something? Isherwood calls it "more a potboiler than a heart-scouring tragedy," and compares it to Martin McDonagh's style of ultra-violent ultra-black comedy...but I'm a fan of that. I'm actually glad that Isherwood says it is "ferociously enjoyable," rather than an entirely serious and melodramatic consideration of Important Issues.

As Isherwood's review proves, the classic American plays have always been about families--larger-than-life families. And there haven't been many larger-than-life characters on the American stage recently, I feel. Rabbit Hole is about a family, but they're everyday, relatable people going through a crisis--not dramatic personalities in their own right. The makeshift family of Angels in America are some of the last American stage characters that have become iconic figures. And I never get urges to write plays about families--perhaps because I'm an only child. Does this mean I'll have a harder time creating iconic characters or dramatic situations? (Aristotle would have you believe that the only possible plays are about families!) So I'm excited to see or read this dysfunctional-family drama, and meet what may be the newest additions to the list of iconic American characters.