March 2010
61 posts
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Check out the following sites for a glance at some of the past, fully staged productions of after the quake:
-Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre mounted the first production (sensible enough as, hey, it was adapted by Steppenwolf ensemble member Frank Galati). Site includes a number of articles, including thoughts from Galati.
-Company One in Boston offers a nifty video (check it out), along...
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“Now a narrative is a story, not logic, nor ethics, nor philosophy. It is a dream...”
– Haruki Murakami, in Underground (as quoted in Jay Rubin’s Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words)
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Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Disaster Materials... →
On January 17th, 1995, the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake shook Kobe and the surrounding area; it was partially in response to this that Murakami (who had spent hs younger years around the area) wrote after the quake.
This collection, from the Kobe University Library, includes such digital sources as photographs (many, many photographs), sounds, and leaflets.
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“To understand something and to put that something into a form you can see with...”
– Haruki Murakami, “honey pie” (featured in after the quake)
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Auschwitz Death Camp Doctors' Documents Found →
Hidden find unearthed. Apropos of East of Berlin…. How so? Weeeeell, come here the reading April 22-25 at CENTERSTAGE. The playwright will even be with us.
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“Why should a person like me be the one to save Tokyo?”
– after the quake by Haruki Murakami
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“He asked me how my school day was.
I asked him how he liked it at Auschwitz.”
– -East of Berlin by Hannah Moscovitch
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Nietz Old Textbook Collection →
RESOURCE TIP OF THE DAY: Check out the Nietz Old Textbook Collection for all (or perhaps a fair percentage?) of your 19th-century American textbook needs. Polish your spelling and grammar, improve your reading comprehension, all to the the tune of 140 schoolbooks from the 1800s.
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Faedra on 1920s soda bottles.
Question:
Were there was any sodas/soda bottles (other than Coke) in existence in 1927 Chicago? Can you suggest what these liquid props might be? We need other liquid to be delivered with the sandwiches, & to be available to be drunk onstage.
Response:
So, by the 1920s, Soda was big business—and prohibition actually propelled the demand even further. By 1927, there were a few big names...
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More from the dramaturg known as Faedra.
Stage management poses the question, Faedra responds, and we all receive some most interesting insights.
LINDY HOP #2 DRAMATURGY RESONSE – 3.18.10
Question:
Understood from a previous email, (from Dr. Chris Martin) that the term “Lindy Hop” gets its name in September 1927, BUT is it directly related to Lindbergh’s flight?
Response:
So, I found this great site about the Lindy Hop—it has...
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Asked and Answered, the dramaturgy edition
So, another from the annals of rehearsal. Query posed to production dramaturg Faedra, and the reply follows. No, not all of our “du jour” questions are this interesting, rich, or rewarding—nor are our answers, always.
STEW/LEFTOVER DRAMATURGY RESPONSE – 3.18.2010
Question:
p. 42 Toledo’s “But the stew they eat, and the stew your grandpappy made, and all the stew that you and me...
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“People are looking for their tales inside themselves. Without tales people...”
– Haruki Murakami (from a May 2001 Guardian article by Matt Thompson)
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“We Wear the Mask
WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our...”
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The poem appeared in Dunbar’s first professionally published volume, Lyrics of Lowly Life, in 1896 by Dodd, Mead, and Company. It also appeared in the volume Majors and Minors from the previous year. It can be found, for example, in:
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. The Collected Poetry of Paul...
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Listen to "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," sung by the... →
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The telling of an earthquake.
Looking ahead to after the quake, consider the following excerpts from Regina Bendix’s article ”Reflections on Earthquake Narrative” (from West Folklore, volume 49, October 1990).
The article itself centers primarily on the 1989 Loma Prita Quake in California’s Bay Area, but her implications extend beyond the particular incidents to consider the effects of earthquakes in...
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Listen to Bessie Smith's "Mean Old Bed Bug Blues" →
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“A primer on Persian, a.k.a. Iranian, food”
– Pomegranates, Dried Limes, Rose Water : A primer on Persian, a.k.a. Iranian, food - CHOW
With Nowruz upon us—not to mention our April reading of Benedictus and its thrills-a-minute, imminent-apocalypse, deadline-diplomacy dance with things Iranian—here is a delicious dip into a far...
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture |... →
Can’t get enough of this irreplaceable site: a vast wealth of information engaging and illuminating, really well organized and easy to navigate. If you can’t make it “live” to the Center, this is easily the next best thing. If not, arguably, better.
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'It is a hard, hard thing to write a good play'
Smart and interesting year-end summation of new work on the Canadian stage, including a nifty shout-out for Hannah Moscovitch’s East of Berlin—due up in the Readings series April 22-25. Certainly the observations about the challenges of creating full, dynamic new plays (and the perils of the workshop process) ring as true south of the border (the other one) as they do for our northern...
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Ma Rainey du jour ad infinitum
Another dramaturgy question has come down the transom, this time on the details of the train journey from Thomasville, Georgia up north (the band members have a lengthy dispute over archaic train lines, to the thrill of the subway-map-loving geek in us all).
Here’s Faedra’s clarifying note:
DRAMATURGY RESPONSE 3.13.09
1. As per earlier email: p. 75 Levee’s Train Route...
Top 100 Songs of the 1920s →
Want to have your mind blown and afternoon chewed up by an intense crash-course in the American pop music landscape of Ma Rainey? They’re all here in this damn-near scholastic piece (complete with streaming audio!) from pop critic Johnathan Bogart.
Here’s what he has to say about Ma Rainey (but you really have to read the whole thing in context, trust me):
59. Ma Rainey’s Georgia...
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“Everything changing all the time. Even the air you breathing change. You got,...”
– Toledo, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
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At the end of Act I (prompting Slow Drag’s aforementioned song), Levee reveals a story of violence from his youth, telling of how a gang of white men raped his mother. When the eight-year-old Levee, witnessing the event, rushed in to defend his mother, the men stabbed him, then retreated when the boy seemed on the verge of death. The family left town, and once he had secured a home for his...
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Near the end of Act I, Ma Rainey “takes off her shoes, rubs her feet” and begins to sing about, yes, her feet and her barking corns. The lines are indeed from one of Ma’s songs: “These Dogs of Mine.”
Faedra noted, “[The song is] also known as ‘Famous Cornfield Blues’ and it was recorded for Paramount in Chicago in 1924. Here’s the only sound clip I...
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About a town called "Fat Back."
“How you call yourself a musician, and ain’t never been to New Orleans.”
“You ever been to Fat Back, Arkansas? All right, then. Ain’t never been nothing in New Orleans I couldn’t get in Fat Back.”
-Levee and Slow Drag, Act I
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Right, so what about this Fat Back, Arkansas? Does or did it exist? Faedra is investigating the...
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"I would tear this old building down."
Slow Drag closes Act I of Ma Rainey by intoning: “If I had my way / If I had my way / If I had my way / I would tear this old building down.”
What is this song? Where did it come from?
Faedra notes, “Blind Willie Johnson (a.k.a. Joseph W. Johnson) recorded “If I had My Way, I’d Tear This Building Down” on December 3, 1927 in Dallas, Texas (it was Johnson’s first recording...
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Since Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom went into rehearsal last week, we’ve seen a flood of questions coming for the most fabulous production dramaturg, Dr. Faedra Carpenter. Start thinking about the world of a 1927 recording studio, the world of Ma Rainey and the Blues, the world of African American men and women in the ’20s… You just might start to see how this might happen....
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“Let me see you do the rag-time dance,
Turn left and do the cakewalk prance,...”
– Scott Joplin, “The Ragtime Dance,” written in 1899
For those wondering where the name Slow Drag comes from. It also has other, um, adult connotations.
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The Band
Cutler: Guitar, Trombone
Cutler is the leader of the group, possibly because he is the most sensible. His playing is solid and almost totally unembellished. His understanding of his music is limited to the chord he is playing at the time he is playing it. He has all the qualities of a loner except the introspection.
Slow Drag: Upright Bass
Slow Drag is perhaps the one most bored by life. He...
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“Wilson constructs the play as if it too were music, set forth to understand...”
– Frank Rich on Ma Rainey
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WatchMa Rainey’s Imagined Communities
The locations mentioned in the play. Look like anything similar?
Click me.
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Inset Songs
“Hear Me Talking to You” (full band, Slow Drag singing)
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (full band, Levee’s arrangement)
“These Dogs of Mine” (Ma Rainey singing to herself)
“Jelly Roll” (Levee’s song for Sturdyvant)
“If I Had My Way I’d Tear This Building Down (Slow Drag singing to end Act 1)
“Ma Rainey’s...
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The Inset Stories
The Story of the Lord’s Prayer
Eliza Cotter Sold his Soul to the Devil
How Slow Drag got his Name
Leftovers from History
Levee’s Scar
Toledo’s Marriage
The Train Stops in Sigsbee, AL for Reverend Gates
Slow Drag’s Card Trick
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, by August Wilson, is a play filled with storytelling and stories. A group of musicians in Ma Rainey’s...
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At the wire, photo finish...
Remember this post, a few days ago? Sure you do…the big question on everyone’s lips was, to break or not to break. Should our 90(ish) minute evening of short play excerpts, Working It Out, have an intermission midway through or not. It was carefully designed to be one continuous, fluid evening straight through—though that was when we’d hoped it would run closer to 80...
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