![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
THE PLAY'S THE THING ...
Nov. 3rd, 2006 10:25 pmCool, this: Turns out the local high school drama department is presenting Flowers for Algernon next weekend, based on the Daniel Keyes short story (and subsequent expanded novel).
Flowers, if I remember correctly, may have been one of the first two or three science-fiction stories I ever read (H.G. Wells' The Time Machine was another, as was Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles). It's a fascinating, moving -- and, at times, chilling -- story of a mentally challenged man whose intelligence quotient is enhanced and expanded through surgical means; and it traces not only his intellectual development, but his attempts to come to grips with his changing life socially, vocationally, emotionally and sexually. (And, along the way, he observes just how much petty rivalries and cutthroat jealousies can exist in the academic/research setting, particularly with grants and Nobels and such are on the line.) I didn't even know I was reading SF at the time; in retrospect, I find it to be science fiction at its most highly realized.
I might go, if I get a chance (that's Astronomicon weekend, and a work weekend). High school drama productions sometimes carry an undeserved reputation for amateurism, but in my experience -- feature-writing for community newspapers, I've attended more dress rehearsals than I can count -- many of them, when the director is skillful and dedicated enough to elicit and inspire the best work from the student performers (and when they in turn are skillful and dedicated enough to put it forward), compare favorably to adult, or professional theatrical productions. For that matter, when I finally saw the film version of Roberts and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, it was a bit of a letdown -- I found the Arkport High School's 1992 presentation to be better cast and acted. (I also remember it as bringing out the play's dark side -- in the song "Pore Jud," comedic as it is, our genial protagonist Curly tries to manipulate a romantic rival into killing himself.) I remember particularly powerful productions of Oliver (Wayland-Cohocton, N.Y., in 1995-6ish), Stand and Deliver (Honeoye, N.Y., 2002ish, based on the Edward James Olmos film), Bev Kaufman's Up the Down Staircase (Honeoye again) and The Secret Garden (Victor, N.Y.).
Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to take part in a high school play myself -- for reasons unknown, my school had pretty much no drama program during my high school tenure after I was in seventh grade. (I remember doing some stage-crew work for a production of The Sound of Music when I was 12, but I don't think Honeoye did any more plays until seven or so years later, when I was in college. And during college I was too busy with my course load and the campus paper to devote any time to getting involved with the theater department, though I would have enjoyed it and Houghton had a good one, with an able and highly admired director in Bruce Brenneman. (The music department also did some tremendous work with musical productions as well -- I could be thinking of someone else, but I seem to remember Adam English playing the Mikado at one point.)
No, sadly, my last stage role came when I was 11 years old, playing the part of Dracula in the musical comedy Monster Madness (plot: the various famous monsters of filmland get together to gripe that nobody's scared of them anymore). I did a somewhat over-the-top rendition of the vicious Romanian count -- for the accent, think Bela Lugosi and then cube it. Before that, I was Waldo the troll in a third-grade production of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, which these days I recognize as being based on the Cupid/Psyche myth -- when I read C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, I found myself saying, "Hey!"
And that's all I have to say about my brief yet powerful thespian career.
Sounds & Images: Zen Cappuccino (Andrea Dale)
State O'Mind: Content
Flowers, if I remember correctly, may have been one of the first two or three science-fiction stories I ever read (H.G. Wells' The Time Machine was another, as was Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles). It's a fascinating, moving -- and, at times, chilling -- story of a mentally challenged man whose intelligence quotient is enhanced and expanded through surgical means; and it traces not only his intellectual development, but his attempts to come to grips with his changing life socially, vocationally, emotionally and sexually. (And, along the way, he observes just how much petty rivalries and cutthroat jealousies can exist in the academic/research setting, particularly with grants and Nobels and such are on the line.) I didn't even know I was reading SF at the time; in retrospect, I find it to be science fiction at its most highly realized.
I might go, if I get a chance (that's Astronomicon weekend, and a work weekend). High school drama productions sometimes carry an undeserved reputation for amateurism, but in my experience -- feature-writing for community newspapers, I've attended more dress rehearsals than I can count -- many of them, when the director is skillful and dedicated enough to elicit and inspire the best work from the student performers (and when they in turn are skillful and dedicated enough to put it forward), compare favorably to adult, or professional theatrical productions. For that matter, when I finally saw the film version of Roberts and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, it was a bit of a letdown -- I found the Arkport High School's 1992 presentation to be better cast and acted. (I also remember it as bringing out the play's dark side -- in the song "Pore Jud," comedic as it is, our genial protagonist Curly tries to manipulate a romantic rival into killing himself.) I remember particularly powerful productions of Oliver (Wayland-Cohocton, N.Y., in 1995-6ish), Stand and Deliver (Honeoye, N.Y., 2002ish, based on the Edward James Olmos film), Bev Kaufman's Up the Down Staircase (Honeoye again) and The Secret Garden (Victor, N.Y.).
Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to take part in a high school play myself -- for reasons unknown, my school had pretty much no drama program during my high school tenure after I was in seventh grade. (I remember doing some stage-crew work for a production of The Sound of Music when I was 12, but I don't think Honeoye did any more plays until seven or so years later, when I was in college. And during college I was too busy with my course load and the campus paper to devote any time to getting involved with the theater department, though I would have enjoyed it and Houghton had a good one, with an able and highly admired director in Bruce Brenneman. (The music department also did some tremendous work with musical productions as well -- I could be thinking of someone else, but I seem to remember Adam English playing the Mikado at one point.)
No, sadly, my last stage role came when I was 11 years old, playing the part of Dracula in the musical comedy Monster Madness (plot: the various famous monsters of filmland get together to gripe that nobody's scared of them anymore). I did a somewhat over-the-top rendition of the vicious Romanian count -- for the accent, think Bela Lugosi and then cube it. Before that, I was Waldo the troll in a third-grade production of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, which these days I recognize as being based on the Cupid/Psyche myth -- when I read C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, I found myself saying, "Hey!"
And that's all I have to say about my brief yet powerful thespian career.
Sounds & Images: Zen Cappuccino (Andrea Dale)
State O'Mind: Content
