October 2009
41 posts
2 tags
6 tags
Halloween costume suggestions…
A) Oscar Wilde: Okay, so it’s a terribly obvious one, but just THINK of the options. Would you like to don the floppy hat and swish about in a cape? Curl your hair and casually smoke among scandalized ladies? I personally vote for going with the bowl cut, but I suppose that just might not happen…
B) Lady Bracknell, Wagner-style: You know…...
5 tags
Cyrano, meet Munchausen
Since Drew has taken us down the proverbial Rabbit Hole of Méliès films, that provides an interesting intersection for another set of crossover associations with Cyrano de Bergerac: the fabulous, fabular, fabulating Baron Munchausen (or Munchhausen). Both of them longtime favorites of mine, and I’ve always thought the two had much in common as quasi-mythic literary inspirations from real-life...
2 tags
Glossary adventures, hurray!
As a part of this researching-for-Cyrano business, I’ve been pulling together the beginning traces of a glossary. Or something like that. What this means, then, is a lot of basic background, information of the foundation sort, and then the chasing of references major and minute, as picked out of the text. Some of the research-chasing is book-based (books treating the history of France...
7 tags
10 tags
Dramaturgy has a new friend and acquisition…
That’s right, Michael McMillan’s The Front Room arrived today. Can we get a resounding “whoo”? WHOO!
A little bit of context? That might be helpful, sure. In February, CENTERSTAGE will be presenting Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Let There Be Love, which takes place in the 1980 London home of a West Indian migrant....
4 tags
A History of Etiquette Guides →
Save us all… ‘tis what it declares, an article on the history of etiquette guides. Yeah-YEAH.
Hey, it was all over Earnest. It isn’t exactly absent from 80 Days (particularly so far as etiquette is used to keep society in line with the expectations of the Phileas Fogg-types). And it plays somewhere into the background of Cyrano. One of those historically inescapable facets of...
3 tags
Getting Earnest about Ernest
Industrious box office assistant and periodic theater blogger Emily Hope Dobkin offered us these reflections on seeing the current CENTERSTAGE production of Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest. We’re thrilled to share her thoughts.
-The Thaumaturgs
It is quite clear that Oscar Wilde’s words have gone beyond the parameter of the stage, as several notable quotations have been splashed...
8 tags
5 tags
5 tags
7 tags
Proto-cosmonaut CYRANO DE BERGERAC →
This is just to fantabulous to resist. Here, straight from the official NASA website, is Cyrano as early practitioner of science-fiction and imaginative theorist of space travel. An aspect of his persona that Rostand made use of, delightfully, in his play—and which of course links our hero to the works of Jules Verne (and his many literary progeny), whose Around the World in 80 Days is much...
2 tags
Wilde Reflects on Wilde
The other evening we were delighted to have join us the author of our current production, the always youthful Mr. Oscar Wilde. He had the following to say about the production, in retrospect.
Upon finding myself this past Friday traveling on the occasion of my 155th birthday (I know, to count looks so calculating, but the world does insist on correctness at present), imagine my utter delight when...
9 tags
Iran, Israel attend secret nuclear meet in Cairo -... →
This April, CENTERSTAGE will be presenting a reading of Israeli playwright Motti Lerner’s recent political thriller, Benedictus. It tells of secret negotiations among Israel, Iran, and the US—hosted by the Vatican, no less—aimed at averting nuclear disaster. It is striking how frequently and consistently this topic, and Motti’s take on it, proves eerily topical.
This is...
1 tag
“It is said that this nose brought death upon more than ten persons; that one...”
– Curtis Hidden Page (in “Cyrano Bergerac,” found in the 1899 Doubleday and McClure edition of Cyrano de Bergerac’s A Voyage to the Moon)
2 tags
For the record… Whether speaking of the factual individual or the fictional character popularized by Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac is often (I’d say “almost always,” but really, what do I know? “almost always,” according to what I’ve read thus far) described with some variant of the word “swashbuckler.” Or his tale is a swashbuckling tale....
4 tags
Jules Verne may have been one of the first authors to popularize tales of extraordinary travel, but he wasn’t the first to explore the idea. Indeed, it seems likely that so long as humans have been able to dream, they have perused distant horizons and chased wild possibilities. Consider, for instance, The Odyssey, in which the title character gets by with a little help from the gods, with...
2 tags
3 tags
3 tags
3 tags
2 tags
Earnest images. →
Check out the website (in all its snazzy, revamped glory) for production photos from The Importance of Being Earnest.
3 tags
3 tags
2 tags
“Truth is entirely and absolutely a matter of style.”
– Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying
3 tags
5 tags
Oscar Wilde Meets Flying Circus →
In honor of the approaching opening night of The Importance of Being Earnest, a little pop culture moment from back in the day, Monty Python’s daffy sketch about Oscar Wilde (along with J.M. Whistler and G.B. Shaw—surely the wittiest cocktail party imaginable). I particularly like that the sketch unblinkingly alludes to the story that, in response to a finely couched witticism by Mr....
2 tags
5 tags
In which a nonsensical warning is issued.
VOTE ‘NO’ ON PARIS
Phileas Fogg traveled around the world. Phileas Fogg went to Paris. But no one knows what happened there. It is a great mystery. So great and terrible a mystery, in fact, that scholars who have dared to touch it with a ten-foot spoon has vanished without a trace.
Don’t go to Paris.
Don’t ask about Paris.
When you toddle off to sleep at night,...
5 tags
Jules Verne fangirls Edgar Allen Poe. A balloon is... →
It’s Baltimore’s own E. A. Poe meets Jules Verne (yes, Mr. 80 Days), from Kate Beaton’s “Hark! A Vagrant.” Check it out. (She’s got a couple of Oscar Wilde strips, as well.)
How about imagining your own encounter between Verne and your favorite historical/literary figure? Draw it, or write some dialogue, or whatever strikes your fancy, and send/share it with...
2 tags
Jules Verne: Around the World board game1915 -... →
Lookee here: 80 Days was so popular that it generated some early board games! And actually kept right on inspiring….
7 tags
Orson Welles goes "Around the World" (in 30... →
On top of prepping Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest right now, we’re also gearing up to bring in the Lookingglass production of Around the World in 80 Days. Drew, who’s dramaturging that one, found this wonderful bit of theater history—quite the synthesis of talents (Verne, Welles, Porter). Takes you on quite the whirl around the globe and through the story.
(You can...
3 tags
4 tags
2 tags
