3rdragon: (Default)
After 40 pages of introduction in Spanish, we reach:

Words for you

Talk about theater, they tell me. Take the oportunity to tell them your impressions and experiences. Educate the reader. Okay, fine. I'm thrilled. I know that there are few of you, a minute quantity. My editors tell me: "People don't buy theater, nor do they read it." Since you are reading this, you are an exceptional being, nearly unique, marvelous. Congradulations! I love you. For the trouble is that no one reads theater, and neither do people watch it.
. . .
They say that it is the fault of television, the strike, the moral crisis, the return to conservatism, the price of the entry, the heavy political culture, the lack of talent... Everyone casts the blame on someone else. I do not know with whom the fault lies, but I assure you, dear reader, extraordinary person, that the fault is not with theater.
The theater is a place of notable, interesting, and magical tales. Theater is an ancient and sacred art, profane and amusing, young and luminous. Theater is an actor. A beautiful dramatic melody, scenery to be admired, a star that speaks... These and a thousand other things, such is theater. And if you have not discovered it, I ask you to look. Don't pay attention to the critics who don't understand anything, not to the politicians that always lie, nor to the illuminating neon lights. Put yourself in front of a mirror and paint yourself a clown's face - now you are close! . . .
I love theater, reader mine, I love it because it deserves it, love it effortlessly, because it is not theater that has made me suffer. The theater is innocent, like you and I. It lives for the enjoyment and the transformation of the people.
I confess myself naive.
And smile.

Paloma Pedrero


. . . now perhaps I should actually read the play instead of translating the interesting part of the introduction.
3rdragon: (Default)
There were many things that I intended to write about on here, and I don't want to write about all of them because it would take all afternoon, so I'm going to just mix and match and give you anecdotes as takes my fancy.

ExpandCut for rambling )
3rdragon: (Default)
I had a dream last night. This isn't too surprising; I had two dreams the night before, and at least one the night before that - I believe that this is a function of getting nine or ten hours of sleep a night and lazing when I wake up, rather than becoming awake at seven and getting up more-or-less immediately (more immediately if it's a day when I think I'm in danger of falling right back asleep again). I tend to do a lot of dreaming when I regularly sleep in a bit-but-not-lots.
So. ExpandThe Dream )

Wow, I'm tired. And I'm willing to bet that a third of those sentences are odd in terms of grammar (if not outright wrong) or completely unintelligible in terms of content, but it's getting late. I'll probably edit it in the morning. And I'll tell you about the puppet theater, too.

Edit: So. Dream. While I've had weirder dreams, I don't recall ever having invented anything quite like the Three Post-It Note System before. Unless you want to count the mountain-climbing Rescue Nuns. Which were just as weird, but not nearly as complex, so I'm not going to count them.

And the theater. Last night Mom, Isaac and I went to see A Christmas Carol at the Mum Puppet Theater. I wasn't sure how much I was going to enjoy it, but was playing the part of the thrilled, cultured daughter because Isaac was doing The Teenager Thing where he wasn't interested in anything and had to be bribed by the offer of dinner at a restaurant of his choice (he picked Mama's - home of the unhealthiest cheese steaks in the Greater Philadelphia Area. The sandwiches are huge, and greasy (by which I mean considerably more greasy than most cheese steaks), and absolutely delicious. It was lovely having a cheese steak with the meat done properly and actual cheese and the real kind of bread - even if the Mama's cheese steaks are smaller than the ones I remember when I was a child. Isaac's memories concur, but I'm still not sure if this is a function of the changing size of the cheese steaks or a function of growing up). Have I mentioned that Isaac is really, truly a teenager now? He acquired the Teenager Attitude years ago - actually, it's a family joke that I turned 13 and he became a teenager - so he would have been eight or nine, but now he looks the part, too. His sweatshirts have been getting baggier and baggier over the past several years, and I was surprised to notice that he now has the Hooded Teenager Slouch as well. Ever since he claimed the mp3 player mom got me for Christmas (I'm not going to go into the story of my mother being lied to by salespeople, but suffice it to say that I wanted an mp3 recorder, and despite blithe assurances that all mp3 players record, this one doesn't.) he's even had earbuds glued to his ears. And his voice changed over this past fall.

Anyway. The puppet theater. The show was performed with two actors, one of whom played scrooge and the other of whom acted some characters and manipulated puppets or props for the others. It was really well done. The theater was necessarily small, so it was very intimate, and when they were making it scary prior to the ghost's arrival, it was quite scary. Isaac said that it wasn't scary, and mom said that she didn't feel the arrival of the ghost made it any less scary, but I find the idea of being alone in an old house with noises that you can't identify and that aren't there when you go and look to be much scarier than a well-done papier-mache mask (particularly if the mask's hair is made with a scraggly ostrich feather). The candle blowing out was a nice touch, but I anticipated it (it occurred to me that it would be good for the candle to go out right about now, and I was just wondering how that could be arranged when it did). The Ghost of Christmas Past was excellent - it was essentially a lighted head on a stick with long flowing gauze, which was manipulated by the second actor. He could stick his free hand through the layers of gauze of the spirit needed to be more material, or waft the head around the room if it needed to be more ethereal, and the lighting was just right so that it was mostly impossible to see the actor doing it. The lighting was really good for the whole show, actually.
I quite recommend it if any of you happen to be in Philadelphia over Christmas.

December 2018

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