Marisabidilla: n., Span. A know-it-all girl with an answer for everything.
Marissabidilla: n., Amer-Span. The blog of a girl with an answer for some things
and a question for most things.
Considering my years-long involvement with a Greek-mythology theater festival and my years-long obsession with Donna Tartt's The Secret History, it's shameful to admit that I didn't read Bacchae till last July. And additionally a bit strange to write a review of these plays six months after reading them. Ah well...
Euripides V: Bacchae, Iphigenia in Aulis, The Cyclops, Rhesus by Euripides Bacchae and Cyclops translated by William Arrowsmith Iphigenia in Aulis translated by Charles R. Walker Rhesus translated by Richmond Lattimore edited by David Grene, Richmond Lattimore, Mark Griffith & Glen W. Most
An interesting mix of plays, displaying variety even while working within the limits and conventions of Greek drama. Bacchae and Iphigenia in Aulis are two of the last plays Euripides wrote—Bacchae has strong horror elements to it, while Iphigenia in Aulis is more of a traditional tragedy in which noble figures face agonizing choices. Cyclops is the only extant Greek satyr play, a burlesque of the episode in The Odyssey where Odysseus must save his men from a man-eating cyclops. And Rhesus is a wartime tragedy set in Troy, which may or may not have actually been written by Euripides.
I found Iphigenia in Aulis the most well-plotted, psychologically penetrating, and downright tragic of these plays, as the characters go back and forth on whether to sacrifice Iphigenia. Bacchae is also great, especially its choral hymns in praise of Dionysus' mountainside cult and wild rites. Euripides makes clear why so many people are drawn to Dionysus, as well as the terrible costs of denying his energies.
Rhesus did not hold my attention nearly so well, perhaps because its stakes are lower. It's the story of a noble prince of Thrace, who comes to aid the Trojans, but is ambushed and killed by Greek spies before he can do anything. Sure, that's not a happy story, but it's not nearly so tragic as tearing your son limb from limb while under the influence of religious mania (Bacchae) or being forced to kill your daughter in order to ensure a favorable wind to sail to Troy (Iphigenia in Aulis).
As this was my first time reading all of these plays, I cannot comment much on the translations, though I did find the Rhesus translation a bit awkward—it refers several times to a soldiers' "bivouac," and that word took me right out of the play.
I sang in the Theater Pub holiday musical this year, too! This is Stuart Bousel and me as the Specialist and his Assistant in "Go To The Mirror," from Tommy. Photo by Paul Anderson.
In early December, my fellow Theater Pub blogger Ashley Cowan and I teamed up for a special two-part piece looking at the ups and downs of being a tall actress. (I'm 5'8", Ashley is 5'9".) We interviewed other tall ladies and shared some of our own stories about typecasting and insecurities, triumphs and inspirations. Ashley's Part One; my Part Two.
Theater Pub's year-end tradition is to ask each blogger to contribute a Top 5 list. This time around, I chose to write about five delightfully surprising performances that I saw onstage in 2015, from Bay Area actors Madeline H.D. Brown, Adam Magill, Heather Orth, Thomas Gorrebeeck, and Siobhan Marie Doherty.
I began 2016 by writing about one of the best books I read in 2015: the memoir How To Be a Heroine, by my friend, the playwright Samantha Ellis. In particular, I was drawn to the sections of Samantha's book where she describes the tensions between being a people-pleasing good girl and being a self-actualized artist. I recommend it to any female artist who's working through those types of issues.
This week, because Theater Pub is currently producing short plays inspired by the indie-rock musician Morrissey (two performances left! See it Monday or Tuesday evening), I decided to look at the flip side of that. That is, I highlighted four indie-rock songs inspired by theater, by the Decemberists, the Magnetic Fields, St. Vincent, and the Weakerthans.
I admit I
have a kind of reflexive habit to root for France when they are nominated for
the Best Foreign Film Oscar. I’m a Francophile, France tends to make good
movies, they haven’t won Best Foreign Film in over twenty years, so why not
root for them?
This year,
though, I’ll be rooting for France out of something more than habit. Yesterday
I went to see their nominated film, Mustang,
and found it a lovely and accomplished piece of cinema. Moreover, it feels
like an important film: an unabashedly feminine and feminist work, and one of
the only female-directed films to score any Oscar nominations this year. (The
only other nominations for female-helmed films are are three Documentary
Shorts, one Documentary Feature, and a Best Song nod for Fifty Shades of Grey.) I am impressed with France for choosing a
Turkish-language, Turkish-set film by a first-time director for their Oscar
submission, and impressed that the Academy nominated it.
Mustang is the story of five sisters,
ranging in age from maybe 11 to 17. Their parents are dead and they live with
their grandmother and uncle in a small town on the Black Sea. (An incidental
pleasure of Mustang was learning how
beautiful this part of the world is, with rugged wooded mountains above smooth
blue waters.) After the girls are caught horsing around with boys at the beach,
their relatives lock them in the house, remove anything that might “corrupt”
them, and set about trying to marry them off. But the girls fight back and
sneak out and engage in many acts of overt and covert defiance. Their willpower
and love and loyalty and lust for life cannot be contained.
So yes,
there’s more than a hint of “what if The
Virgin Suicides, but Turkish,” about this set-up. But then again, despite
its female director, The Virgin Suicides
is really a study of the male gaze, the fascination that the neighborhood boys
have for the beautiful but inaccessible Lisbon sisters. Whereas Mustang is a wonderful example of the
female gaze in cinema. It’s narrated by Lale, the youngest sister. Moreover, as
a woman, Deniz Gamze Ergüven is able to film these teenage girls in a way that
honors their beauty and their power but never feels the least bit prurient or
exploitative. And, while the situation of the Mustang sisters is much worse than that of the Virgin Suicides girls (no one ever threatened to marry the Lisbon
sisters off against their will) they fight back more fiercely, they do not
succumb to despair.
It’s a
simple, fable-like story, but very well told. The climax is super tense and
there were gasps in the movie theater at several moments when the girls were in
danger. There’s also some interesting commentary on how older women often keenly
enforce patriarchal values but on occasion will support the girls’ rebellion.
And, okay, since
I self-produced a play in the summer of 2014 about beautiful long-haired young
sisters struggling against patriarchal expectations (in fact my play’s poster
has some similarities to the Mustang
poster), this movie hits a particular soft spot of mine, but I can’t remember
the last time I saw such a powerful depiction of sisterhood in cinema.
A torrential wind- and rainstorm woke me up this morning--the best kind of weather to wake up to, frankly--and inspired me to compose a brief song parody while brushing my teeth. A hymn that expresses the prayer in the heart of every citizen of this drought-ridden state.
O come, O come, El Ni-i-i-i-ño
And drop your load of ra-a-ain and snow
We parch in thirst and wo-o-rry here
Until your clouds and sto-o-orms appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! El Ni-i-i-i-ño Shall come to make the ri-i-i-vers flow.
**Wikipedia has beguiled me and educated me and (because I often write plays about obscure mythological or historical figures) it has saved my ass so many times. They're having their annual fundraiser right now; I just donated and you should too.
The Toast illustrated my piece with a still from the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern film, but this is my blog so I'm illustrating it with a picture of Rufus Sewell as the original Septimus Hodge. You're welcome.
You have devoted your life to translating Ovid, but your guilty pleasure is ‘60s bubblegum pop.
You are a young woman who’s not shy about displaying her intellectual gifts or her perky breasts.
Thinking of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, you burst into tears.
And continues with many more items of Stoppard-related literary criticism in the guise of silly jokes.
This piece is, I believe, the first thing I've ever written for the Internet that I'm getting paid for, and I couldn't be more thrilled to have that happen with a bunch of Tom Stoppard jokes. I also think I talk more about sex here than I customarily do, and again, I'm amused that this is what it takes to get me to write about sex.
The piece also seems to have found its audience -- closing in on 3,000 social media hits as I write this -- which is so flattering and gratifying. I love that so many of the people who've shared this piece said something like "I always knew I was a Stoppard character" -- I've always intended that as the subtext of the piece: if you love Stoppard's work, if you think these jokes are funny, you're probably a lot like a Stoppard character yourself.
All of the Toast's commenters have been lovely and smart and supportive too -- if only the whole world could be like the Toast's comments section! I'm especially pleased that the "bad Czechs" joke is getting so much love, because it's the last item I added to the piece, after a late night of drinking hot toddies and thumbing through my Collected Works of Stoppard. (After I submitted the first draft, the editor asked me to make it longer, and I feared I didn't have any more good jokes left in me.) And to the person who commented "Somehow this is both a devastating skewering of Stoppard's tropes and a heartening reminder of his genius" -- yep. That's what I was aiming for, and I'm so glad I may have hit the target.
Further reading:
All of the How To Tell If You're In a Novel entries are pretty fab, but the one that has made me giggle like no other is How To Tell If You are In a Logic Puzzle, by Diana Walter
Certainly, a large part of what is meant by “maturity” is learning how to suck it up and deal with it. A mature person knows how to pick her battles. But that’s not the same thing as saying that mature people never battle or protest. Sometimes the only way to deal with something is to mount a spirited objection to it. The amount of outrage and overreaction in the culture these days can be both fatiguing and depressing — but I don’t think the solution is to suggest that people should stop reacting entirely. Mature people know how to manage their sensitivity, but they do not disown their sensitivity.
(I think I may repeat that last sentence to myself in times when I am feeling low and then feeling guilty for feeling low -- though perhaps quoting my own writing makes me a 'narcissistic Millennial'!)
But! I've got something else up my sleeve this month. Later today, something fun and silly and theater-related that I wrote will be published on a popular website. I can't wait to share it with you!
For this year's San Francisco Olympians Festival, whose sub-theme was mythology and deities related to The Wine-Dark Sea, I thought about how many artists have found inspiration in the sea, and decided to put together a playlist of ocean-themed music. Each night of the festival, I posted a video on Facebook and Twitter and tagged it #Oceansongs. Now that the festival is over, I thought I'd post the whole playlist here so that it's preserved and accessible in a slightly less ephemeral medium.
The first year of the Olympians Festival (2010), when I served as box-office manager, I themed my outfit to each night's play. I am trying to figure out what it says about me and my growth (?) over the last five-plus years that I've switched from curating outfits to curating playlists.
One. "Fuor del mar" by Mozart from Idomeneo. Starting off with an old-school classic! ""Saved from the sea, I have an even more fearsome sea raging in my breast, and Neptune does not cease to threaten me." Also, Idomeneo is all about fathers and sons, and so was the Olympians show that night, Triton.
Two. "Surfer Girl," by the Beach Boys. The Olympians Festival show that night was "Bevy of Beauties," a series of short plays about minor sea goddesses and nymphs, so a love song to a beach bunny felt appropriate.
Three. "Under the Sea," from The Little Mermaid. I'm no Disney fangirl, but being a child of the '90s, I couldn't forgive myself if I made an ocean-themed playlist and neglected to include Howard Ashman's clever maritime rhymes.
Four. "The Shipwreck Coast," by the Lucksmiths. This song has no particular connection to that evening's Olympians Festival show, but I love this band and will take any opportunity to promote them, and as Australian indie pop, they bring some musical and geographical diversity to the playlist.
Six. "Seafarer," by Tennis. The show that night, Allison Page's Jasons, was a comic, pop-culture-crazed interpretation of the story of Jason and the Argonauts -- who definitely broke a lot of female hearts as they sailed the seas. Thus, this love song to a sailor.
Seven. "The Tide is High," by Blondie. Because Medea (subject of that evening's show) is not the kinda girl who gives up ju-ust like tha-at. Oh no-o-o-o! Also, this video is amazing. Debbie Harry can't dance, and yet she seems like the essence of timeless cool. The backup dancers move gracefully, and yet they seem tacky and cheesy. One could ponder this paradox for hours.
Eight. "Sloop John B," by the Beach Boys. The show that night was about the ship, the Argo, itself, so here's my favorite song about a boat. This was also the day after the Paris attacks, when everyone I knew was feeling gloomy and hopeless, and it is in such moments that we need the piercing, transcendent beauty of the Beach Boys' a capella harmonies.
Ten. "Never Let Me Go," by Florence + the Machine. One of the Olympians Festival shows that night was based on the sorceress Circe, so Florence's witchy, mystical persona seemed to fit.
Twelve. "Octopus's Garden," by the Beatles. Another obvious choice for the playlist. I posted it the day of the staged reading of Meg O'Connor's play Pontos, or High Tide, because I have fond memories of singing Beatles songs with Meg and her husband.
Thirteen. "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay," by Otis Redding. A special bonus song posted the day after the Festival ended, to make this a baker's dozen, to include Redding's bittersweet and thoughtful tribute to the San Francisco Bay, to thank everyone who participated in and attended this year's San Francisco Olympians Festival.
Euripides V: Bacchae, Iphigenia in Aulis, The Cyclops, Rhesus by Euripides
