Love's Labors Lost: My kinda show

March 15, 2010

My kinda show

I'm gonna save up my pennies to go see Vampire Cowboys' Alice in Slasherland. Why? Because it's fucking Alice in Slasherland, that's why. It's like asking "Why Frank Sinatra?" Because it's fucking Frank Sinatra!. Do you really need any other reason?

After this serious turn with Anne&Me is over, I'm gonna see about writing a D&D game as a script using genre-savvy characters. Or my personal favorite - a horror story for smart people. Imagine:

SCENE: Woods. Late night.

CAMPER 1: What's the name of this place again?
CAMPER 2: Crystal Lake.
CAMPER 1: Why does that sound f - hey, ain't this where all those people got cut up?
CAMPER 2: Yeah, but it was a long time ago. Hey, where you going?
CAMPER 1: Home. I'll just watch Animal Planet or something.

SCENE: Big-assed house in upstate New York.

1ST HALF OF LOVELY YOUNG COUPLE: This is so cool! And it's only $2,000. This is amazing!
2ND HALF OF LOVELY YOUNG COUPLE: Yeah, and in this economy with our credit score.
1ST HALF OF LOVELY YOUNG COUPLE: I know!
2ND HALF OF LOVELY YOUNG COUPLE: Too bad we can't stay.
SCARY VOICE: (Whispering) Get. Out.
1ST HALF OF LOVELY YOUNG COUPLE: I heard the South Bronx is really nice this time of year.
2ND HALF OF LOVELY YOUNG COUPLE: If we sell one of the kids I think we could scrape by in Williamsburg.

Or maybe something like . . .

3 comments:

cgeye3/19/2010 12:18 PM
The SCREAM series tried to do this, but really they only snarked on the conventions the smart characters thought were stupid, instead of the obvious Gothic ones the witless heroine ignored (A: Check whether your mom's slutty affairs have damaged the kids; B: Those friends who hang around like lint probably want you dead; C: learn firearm safety; D: Trust No One; E: If you're in a strange place, get out; if you're in a familiar place, get out)

I don't think a horror movie's been made yet with A Girl and A House where the girl didn't scream. What would that do to the genre?
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RVCBard3/19/2010 1:23 PM
@cgeye:

INT. HOUSE. NIGHT.

GIRL creeping along hallways, eyes peeled for someone in the house.

SLASHER jumps out with knife.

GIRL grabs nearest heavy object and bludgeons the slasher until the white meat comes out.
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Jamespeak3/21/2010 2:52 AM
I think that's why I consider The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (the original, accept no remakes, reboots, sequels or substitutes) so amazing and utterly terrifying: at no point do I watch it and think, "You guys are being stupid." I think it's safe to say that, given the circumstances, I'd do the exact same things the heroes/victims do.

And I just saw Alice in Slasherland last night. Save your pennies and go. Oh. Wow. Go. I'm definitely going again.
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Words, Words, Words

. . . a lot of it [fostering rather than smothering students' playwriting] has to do with finding a way to construct a dialogue about ongoing work that empowers the writer. A lot of it has to do with making sure there's a diversity of voices around you. A lot of it has to do with thinking of the writing program as a brain trust for writers, not as some infantilization in which the dramaturg gets the power. And basically trying to find a place where everyone's aesthetic in the room grows larger rather than smaller. There are many ways to do that. It's really not a hard thing to do.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

Here is what seems to me an elementary truth that must precede any other: namely, that the theater, an independent and autonomous art, must, in order to revive or simply to live, realize what differentiates it from text, pure speech, literature, and all other fixed and written means.
--Antonin Artaud, letter, 9/15/1931

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all I need for an act of theatre to be engaged.
--Peter Brook, The Empty Space

My work is characterized by one thing above all --- invention. In theatre we imagine the world, we do not record it, we are not documentary makers. I hold all social realism and journalistic theatre in contempt. It is a sordid habit. And the social realists have the impertinence to pretend they are 'telling the truth…'
--Howard Barker, interview

Women and writers of color are still seen as threats because, in essence, when a woman or writer of color is defining a play world, there's another definition of what our society is, and that's very threatening.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

Through this experience [working on " . . . and last week it was a mountain"] I learned the importance of the life and the dynamics under the words, and began to see the power of working from the silent space within - the emotions, the images, the experience and the feelings - rather than relying on the words.
--Sande Shurin, Transformational Acting: A Step Beyond

How does it happen that . . . the Occidental theater does not see theater under any other aspect than as a theater of dialogue?
--Antonin Artaud, Theater and Its Double

All conventions are imaginable, but they depend on the absence of rigid forms.
--Peter Brook, The Open Door

I never 'say' anything in my work. I invent a world. Let others decide what is being 'said'. Nor do I claim to tell the truth or enlighten people. We are suffocated by writers who want to enlighten us with their truths. For me, the theatre is beautiful because it is a secret, and secrets seduce us, we all want to share secrets. That is also its politics, if it has any politics at all. And modern democracies hate secrets, they want everything transparent. Obviously the critics collaborate in this desire to expose everything to the light of day, they are the police force, after all.
--Howard Barker, interview

I think that form is content . . . I've always been more interested . . . in the formal devices and the structure rather than in the subject matter . . . I really am a follower of Viktor Shklovsky, who said that in some ways the subject matter doesn't even matter. It's whether or not we see the subject matter anew that matters.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

I am well aware that the language of gestures and postures, dance and music, is less capable of analyzing a character, revealing a man's thoughts, or elucidating states of consciousness clearly and precisely, than is verbal language, but who ever said the theater was created to analyze a character, to resolve conflicts of love and duty, to wrestle with all the problems of a typical and psychological nature that monopolize our contemporary stage?
--Antonin Artaud, Theater and Its Double

The mediocre artist prefers not to take risks, which is why he is conventional.
--Peter Brook, The Open Door

"Transcendence became my life theme. I wanted to be lifted beyond everyday circumstances and everyday reality."
--Sande Shurin, Transformational Acting: A Step Beyond

I actually think of writing for the stage as not writing . . . It's about structuring, about gaps between the language that are really filled in by the collaborators and the process. It's all about indirection rather than a direct statement . . . It's like a three-dimensional chess game in a way. If I say this, will the director go in this direction? If I say this, will the actor respond? And one of the delights of the process is actually not having your intention fulfilled, but finding out at times that other people's interpretation or intention is actually more interesting than you originally thought of.
--Paula Vogel, interview with Ann Linden in The Playwright's Muse

The person who has an idea of what this language is will be able to understand us. We write only for him. --Antonin Artaud, letter, 9/28/1932