GBS

[ellenkushner]

"I do not want actors and actresses to understand my plays.  This is not necessary.  If they will only pronounce the correct sounds, I can guarantee the results."

-- George Bernard Shaw

I'm not sure I agree with that - hell, I'm not even sure GBS did - but I sure love the line.  Gearing up for more "illuminated" audiobooks, control freak that I am, I wonder if I should back off the actors some . . . . Nah. GBS never did.  He was a complete pain in the ass at rehearsals.

I read a lot of GBS when I was a kid - over and over and over and over . . . . I had Pygmalion, St Joan, and Androcles and the Lion. I made my best friend in HS come over after school and read the best scenes in Joan aloud with me (guess who was Joan?) - and I honestly read the Introductions over and over, too. The resemblance of the end of Swordspoint to that of Pygmalion is not an accident -- or rather, it is an accident: I only realized some time after the book was finished just what it was I'd done.  

As influences go, I can think of worse.

Comments

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I have mixed feelings about Shaw. On the one hand, the plays. On the other... I can't help a creeping suspicion that for all his cleverness he was rather proud of his tendency to be cruel.