PUGGY'S HILL

Hmm. I kind of need an icon for Performer Ellen, don't I? Here are two upcoming shows I'm doing in Michigan & Ohio (plus a signing). If you're in the area, please come, and don't be shy to introduce yourself!

Sunday, Nov. 9th KALAMAZOO, MI( Read more... )

Tuesday, Nov. 11th MARIETTA, OH( Read more... )

Good news from Bantam/Spectra: The Privilege of the Sword has just gone back to press for another printing (again)!

Does anyone live in or near Marietta, Ohio? I might be doing my Esther: the Feast of Masks show at Marietta College in November, and am trying to figure out if it's worth coming in early to do a bookstore signing. Any good bookstores in town? And would you come?

Fingers crossed for Passing Strange to win lots of Tony Awards on June 15th! If the Interstitial Arts Foundation had an award for Interstitial Theater, I'd vote for it.

NYTimes review uses classic "if only the word 'interstitial' were in common use for arts reviewers" language: “Call it a rock concert with a story to tell, trimmed with a lot of great jokes. Or call it a sprawling work of performance art, complete with angry rants and scary drag queens. Call it whatever you want, really. I’ll just call it wonderful….The story of a young man achingly out of place in the world, trying on poses and assuming new guises in his quest for an identity that, as he will ultimately learn, many artists can only find in their art.”

Kinda like Bordertown, actually. Maybe that's why I love it so much!

Discount tix are available at TDF, BroadwayBox.com and day-of-show for Under 25's. The website has cool stuff, including some of the music. And there's an album coming eventually....

Wonderful day yesterday! Our friend Hillel Bromberg came down from Boston the night before, to accompany us to the Horace Mann School in Riverdale for their Book Day - this year's book was Alice in Wonderland; we were presenting, but the keynote speaker was to be Marina Warner! So we all got up at the crack of dawn and rolled into the car the school sent and up the Henry Hudson Parkway to Riverdale in time for Opening Assembly and a terrific speech by Warner, thoughtfully illustrated with slides. The thing that struck me the most was her suggesting that Alice Liddell looks like a rather sad and withdrawn child in the photos, and that maybe Lewis Carroll, who loved making children laugh (and remembered his own childhood miseries), had made it his particular mission to cheer her up. ( Read more... )

More of the poem, and many of Dodgson's photographs - including some of Alice - are here. [And here I cannot help pointing out that there are images of Dodgson's actual glass-plate negatives up at the National Portrait Gallery site. One of the lectures we wandered into pointed out that Dodgson's own negatives were a backwards/inside out "through the looking glass" version of our world.]

My dream was to shake Warner's hand, tell her how much I admired her work (From the Beast to the Blonde and Joan of Arc: the Image of Female Heroism being 2 notable examples), and maybe to listen to what pearls might drop from her lips at lunch - instead, we ended up bonding over being the day's outside guest speakers, as one sometimes does, and running from classroom to classroom together trying to figure out what was what! We had a great talk at lunch about contemporary novels - which she also writes! Delia got to tell her how much she'd admired The Leto Bundle - and she seems to feel the same way we do about current novels that are nothing but a collection of place names, brand names, and loathsome characters - she actually called them "costume dramas" (I think! lousy no good memory!) which I love.

Now that I'm looking at all her achievements on her website, I can't believe I even had the nerve to speak to her - but she truly is a remarkably warm and pleasant person. I loved spending time with her.

Delia & I gave a talk about Alice's influence in our lives and writing, and about how Carroll's book both is and is not like the kind of fantasy novel we write, with copious examples and free advice given to the young writers & readers of Horace Mann, who are a truly engaging bunch. (Warner came to our talk and sat on the windowsill of the crowded classroom. Intimidated much? Good thing we're both old troopers.)

Then we all went to our friend (& former English Dept. head) "fabulist" Tom LaFarge's workshop on surrealist poetry, and wrote some very silly stuff together. (Tom will be at Wiscon - maybe we can convince him to lead us in something similar....)

Then a car drove us home ("I could get used to this!" said Hillel. We explained that in our looking-glass life, some days it's like this, and others you're hauling groceries home on the bus....), and we took a nap, and then went out to Broadway to see Curtains, a musical with cheap tix available and that was about all I knew. Wow!!! Total fun, hilarious, huge stellar ensemble cast - I'm a sucker for Backstage Comedies, and the lyrics were smart and funny and even, dare I say it, literate - one of my faves( Read more... )

I know I'm always recommended pointy-headed stuff - or stuff that's about to close - so this one's for you!

We came home. We went to sleep.

And now we are going out to buy a new mattress.

We saw Barishnikov at the opera again tonight. I guess we've got the same schedule; he was walking around at intermission about 5 feet away from us; so close I could have reached out my hand to introduce myself. As Delia put it, "That's two for two": we saw him last time we went to Lincoln Center for ballet - I think it was last June for her birthday, and there he was picking up his tickets in the line ahead of us. (Well, they ushered him through the line, actually, but there he was.) This time we walked out into the big lobby at intermission, and practically walked right into him. We locked eyes, for a moment, before politely looking past each other as good New Yorkers do. We were right behind him heading out afterwards, as well. He's tiny! Little & lithe and somewhat serious. Wearing a leather jacket, with 2 friends who didn't look at that exciting or excited. I hope he liked the show: it was Mark Morris' adaptation of King Arthur by Henry Purcell (& John Dryden, except Morris cut all the dialogue, so it was just all the great songs & instrumentals, well-played and -sung (Early Music style with no vibrato, larbalestier, don't worry!). I do love Mark Morris! He is my Other Brother (after Neil, of course - not that I've met Morris, but all his interviews and all his aesthetic choices so speak to me. He loves Lou Harrison's music, and Michelle Shocked, and baroque, and gender confusion.....
(The NYTimes review online also includes video performance, interviews and slide show, if you're curious.)