Fringe Festival — 4 out of 6 Plays Were Great!

So this year I and my love attended six plays, all of which were part of the New York Fringe Festival. Had a blast; we absolutely heart Fringe. There is no place and time in New York when you can see so much daring, inventive and raw theater than you can during the two weeks in August when the Fringe Festival runs.

“Raw” is an important word here, though: at Fringe, you should expect to see some shows that aren’t quite at the polished-to-a-blindingly-brilliant-sheen level just yet. In fact, most shows could probably use an extra minute or two in one of those bowling-ball buffers (remember those things?). One of the reasons to perform your play at Fringe, in fact, is to figure out what needs to be revised about your show. And it works: as the Fringe web site will testify, Fringe shows have gone on to become award-winning productions and/or commercial successes.

And in the mean time, theater lovers can see writers and performances that lie well outside the chewed cud of mainstream theater. My favorite thing about Fringe is its daring, no-holds-barred attitude toward the art of the play. There are plays you will see that will NEVER become mainstream hits, that have no desire to be that. They want to be smart and cater to a dramaturgically-savvy audience, for instance. Or they want to tackle subject matter that a quorum of American theater-goers would never financially support. Or they want to experiment with language and form that they themselves aren’t quite sure about yet. Etc.: the point is, when you go to Fringe, you’re going to see theater at its generative tipping-point, when its still as skinless as the Visible Man, instructively displaying its inner organs — and beautiful in its own right as well.

We saw six plays total. Two of them were awful. And, forgive me, I’m not going to say which ones: my love and I have decided only to emphasize the positive when it comes to Fringe, in order to honor the risk-taking and creative spirit the festival embodies. But I will tell you about the four plays I felt were successes. Here they are, in the order in which I saw them:

Hillary Agonistes (the title is a hat-tip to John Milton and his Samson Agonistes) is a political fable in which President Hillary has to deal with the greatest mystery of modern times: why millions of people from all over the world have suddenly vanished. We hear from the military, the religious right, science, and the Catholic Church, all of whom offer the first woman president advice on how to deal with this catastrophe: and reveal in the mean time their own not-so-hidden agendas. Best moment of the play: when Chelsea Clinton comes onstage wearing a hijab.

This play was good grad. school fare — 516 is the story of a professional paper-writer and her Moonlighting-esque affair with a Mass. Comm. graduate student who thinks that writing papers for required courses is beneath him: especially given the importance and magnitude of his thesis. One minor gripe: I have to think the playwright hasn’t been involved with academia in a while, as the character of the professor had a few off-key notes that didn’t ring quote true. Still, great writing, great performances from the leads, and a peppy pace made this play time well spent.

Two middle-aged women pretend to be two old women and sell a special peanut butter that Vermonters are going nuts for. Its secret ingredient? Penises. Ahem.

Well written and funny, PB&J is darkly funny and, given its topic, surprisingly light-hearted. Like 516, I had a few minor gripes — slutty French maids, even when they’re French Canadian maids, are still cliché — but in all, this was a good time.

Tragedy! The Musical I think just edges out Hillary Agonistes as my favorite of the Fringe plays I saw this year. And part of it probably has to do with the fact that I had this exact idea for a musical back in 1996. Really, I swear! The story is a retelling of Shakespeare’s (arguably) worst play, Titus Andronicus. It’s really bad. But bad turns to great in this musical, full of sick humor, social commentary, and a terrific cast of mostly William and Mary graduates who did the right thing after they earned their degrees and put on a show together. Bravo, folks!

And bravo to all of the Fringe Festival. Next year, my love and I hope to hit a lot more shows.

Virtual Cheating — the Second Life How-To Guide

So the Wall Street Journal featured an article recently on the painful human consequences that may come from living part of one’s life in a virtual world. The graphic on the left, courtesy of the Journal, pretty well maps out the bizarre love triangle featured in the story, but let me give you the quick and dirty: Ric Hoogestraat has an avatar on Second Life named Dutch Hoorenbeek, and that avatar is married in-game to Tenaj Jackalope, controlled by Janet Spielman. Ric’s rl [real life] wife, Sue Hoogestraat, isn’t happy.

Why? He plays, like any of us who’ve been addicted to an MMO game will recognize, like Second Life is his first life. He works there — he’s made a bunch of mula online (a million in a half in-game money, which is about 6,000 USD) running a virtual strip club — and he plays there: he takes motorcycle rides, smokes and drinks, and, well, enjoys his virtual wife.

Yes, I said that to imply salacious virtual sex, and I think the story implied it as well, even if it didn’t come out and say it. But I mean “enjoy” in a more platonic and important sense. According to the story, Ric and Janet never intend to meet in real life or extend their communication beyond Second Life. But why would they need to? Mr. Hoogestraat is on as much as he can be, and when he does log on in the story, several other avatars messaged him, wondering what took him so long to get on. His virtual wife was the first to message.

In short, he’s using Second Life for all of his important human activity: work, play, and social interaction. He spends more time communicating with his virtual wife than his corporeal one. And as for other activities, the story seems to imply that, due to some health problems, maybe Mr. Hoogestraat isn’t the physical specimen he once was. Some activities might be beyond him for the moment. But not in Second Life. Dutch Hoorenbeek has flowing, grayless hair, six-pack abs, and a virtual cock. He’s good to go.

The article asks the question “Is This Man Cheating?” If we’re talking about a heteronormative, monogamous relationship, I don’t think there’s a question. He is. His mind and soul are in Second Life. He’s built the life there that he can’t quite have in our world.

Now, he’s tried to interest his wife in SL, and she could not be less interested. So there is an aspect of this that reads like Mr. Hoogestraat has found a hobby that Mrs. Hoogestraat simply isn’t interested in. If he liked hockey or building cars or model trains or playing Magic: The Gathering or a hundred other hobbies, and spent inordinate amount of time pursuing them, we wouldn’t call that cheating per se. We might say he needs to get his priorities straight, but we probably wouldn’t say his hobby amounted to infidelity. The trick is this: you don’t have sex with hockey games. You don’t share your hopes and dreams and fears with your Magic cards. You don’t “pretend” to marry your model railroad set.

In all those other instances, you may or may not engage in social interactions with people: but there is always a content to the hobby itself. In Second Life, there is content too: building things in-game, for instance. But he’s not just building. For Mr. Hoogestraat, the most important content of the game is the human interaction. Second Life is serving as a surrogate for his first life: which, truth be told, and with apologies to the Hoogestraats, doesn’t sound so great. And so, if Second Life is replacing the needs he normally has for human companionship, and if he has made a commitment in his first life to be a loving companion to someone else — say, through marriage vows — then the former is in obvious conflict with the former. He is reneging on his marriage commitment.

People divorce. People grow apart for different reasons. If he can no longer keep the promises he made, and has found a way to be happier through a different kind of relationship, then Mr. Hoogestraat should consider doing the right thing and divorcing Mrs. Hoogestraat. But he shouldn’t, as he does in the WSJ story, say “It’s just a game.” It’s most definitely not. It is the place where he has found comfort and solace and human warmth during a difficult time in his life (read the story if you haven’t to read just how difficult). Even if he abandons it all later and comes back to Mrs. Hoogestraat, begging her forgiveness for neglecting her these many months, there’s no doubt that he was getting his needs as a person met in Second Life and not from her. His play is an act of infidelity.

Armor For the Fight Against Terror

Ready to lay the smackdown on those e-vile terrorists, but not sure what you should wear? Cory Doctorow has the answer: this spiffy tee! Note: be sure to click on the image so you can read the small print around the image of the eagle. ZOMG!

When I went to the web page, they were already sold out, but, true to his share-the-love and fuck-copyrights ethos, the image on the shirt is licensed under a creative-commons-share-and-remix-as-you-will license. So have fun with this one, kids!

Even Zombies Need a Balanced Diet

I found this on 7 Deadly Sinners, which in turn got it from Threadless. I had no idea lungs were so important to the zombie diet.

The Best Use Yet for Second Life

This little piece of machinima by artist Robbie Dingo is literally one of the most moving things I’ve seen published on the InterWebs. And, on a different note, it also displays Second Life at its best. I was frustrated by Second Life because I tried to use it in my Comp. II class in the Spring, but it was too fussy and temperamental for me to make it work. (I know, other professors have had smashing success with Second Life in the classroom, but look, I’ll bet you a can of Diet Sprite that every last one of them has his/her own favorite “I couldn’t get Second Life to work” stories. But I digress.) Watching this video, however, makes me believe again in Second Life’s possibilities.

One of the commentators on the YouTube site called this “achingly beautiful.” Couldn’t agree more. Especially in the end, when he frames himself and his art … but enough: go see for yourself! And once you’ve done that, you can go to this page and get a behind-the-scenes look at how it was made.

Let Us All Go Run With the Bulls

Thank you, Reuters. Never again going to think to myself “Wouldn’t it be fun to run with the bulls?”

How Conservatives on Both Sides of the Pond Escalate Ill-Will and Precipitate Culture Wars (and Sometimes Real Wars)

The good folks who brought the world the “World Without Zionism” conference in 2005 have now released a video game called (according to the AP’s crack translators) “Rescue the Nuke Scientist.” In the game, the evil Americans capture a pair of married nuclear scientists (?!), and it’s the job of the good guys (i.e. the Iranian military) to rescue them. Rescuing them, of course, means killing a lot of American and Israelis along the way. You can read the full AP article here.

But lest you think that these are simply the actions of Muslim extremists propagating hatred through whatever means they can, allow me to point your attention to a couple of key paragraphs in the article:

“This is our defense against the enemy’s cultural onslaught,” Mohammad Taqi Fakhrian, a leader of the student group, told reporters Monday….

This game follows the free “Assault on Iran” online series from New York-based Kuma Reality Games. That game simulates U.S. Special Forces destroying the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran.

Why exactly is Kuma Reality Games simulating attacks on Iranian sovereignty by creating a game like this? Because they want another war? I would link to Kuma Games and let you see for yourself the kind of conservative agenda they have going on there, but I just don’t want to encourage them any more by giving their web site more hits. Their banner, which prominently features both a real and an in-game image of Saddam Hussein, pretty much says it all. Yeah, Saddam Hussein. Remember him? All those storehouses of biological and chemical weapons he was stockpiling to use against American kittens and puppies? Good thing we got him.

This story illustrates perfectly to me something that’s been bothering me for a long time: it’s the radical conservatives on both sides of the war who are dictating the conversation in the post-9/11 world. The most dangerous clash anyone can engineer is the one created when the most conservative elements of two different ideologies collide. Think about it. What would radical liberals from each country do: free love each other to death? What would the moderates do? Oh, that’s right, act moderately: with restraint, respect and decorum. But it’s not the liberals nor the moderates who are doing the talking right now. It’s the people with the most xenophobic agendas advocating for the most extreme solution there is: war.

The end result is that we have on the American side Kuma creating video games which have players commiting acts of war against Iran. That, in turn, incites the most radically conservative student group in Iran to create a game where players win by killing Americans and Israelis. Want to know what’s wrong with the world? Take a look at the games we play — at the things we do “for fun” — and you’ll get more of an answer than you bargained for.

LOL, Benedict. Just LOL.

I am sure the Blogosphere is about to catch fire, thanks to this article from the AP which reports that the Pope Benedict II is re-releasing a 2000 document where he declares among other things that Protestants lack the “means of salvation” (i.e. they’re going downtown) because they lack “apostolic succession.” Of course, this isn’t supposed to in any way compromise the great ecumenical strides the Holy See has made over the past few years.

So here’s my modest contribution to the conversation. Basically: LOL.

“We Are Spreading Toilet Culture”

I’m not going to link to Boing Boing every time they post a good story because, well, they get three million hits a day and I get minus four. But I’m making an exception here, because this one is just so damn funny. In the immortal words of Boing Boing regular David Pescovitz:

A four-story, 30,000-foot public bathroom recently opened in Chonggqing, China. The outside has a bizarre cartoony Egyptian facade while the inside holds more than 1,000 toilets of various designs. Apparently the city officials hope the giant bathroom is worthy of a Guinness World Record. From the Associated Press:

“We are spreading toilet culture. People can listen to gentle music and watch TV,” said Lu Xiaoqing, an official with the Yangrenjie, or “Foreigners Street,” tourist area where the bathroom is. “After they use the bathroom they will be very, very happy.”

Here is some text from CNN, and here is some video. There’s no sound, but don’t worry: even without it, you’ll be plenty weirded out. For one thing, there a point in the video where, in an “open-air” labyrinth of urinals, some kids are sitting on a ledge above the johns and watching some rather uninhibited men make wee. Eww.

On pelting rams

I read an editorial not too long ago that said that the profession of the book reviewer — that is, people who actually get paid to read and review books for newspapers and magazines — is dying out. Books just aren’t as relevant to the culture as T.V. and movies and video games and Web 2.0; the demand for those kinds of reviews is fading.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I like T.V. and movies, and I love video games and Web 2.0 stuff, and I think they should be reviewed professionally (this isn’t a Luddite’s rant against the changing times). But the other thing the editorial said was that book reviews were more and more going to become the purview of non-professionals. To my mind, that’s not exactly a bad thing. Books aren’t going to die out, but they are going to appeal to a smaller audience, much in the way books used to appeal to a much smaller audience (i.e. the few people prior to the printing press who could afford them). Occasionally a book may break out, but more and more I suspect that books will be read and discussed more by the small group of people who remain interested in the uniquely thorough way a book can deliver information or inspire one’s imagination to create an aesthetic experience. So maybe magazines and newspapers–or whatever new forms those media take–won’t reserve space for book reviews.

That means it’s more important than ever for non-professionals to take up the torch and keep the discussion alive. There may be less people reading now, but the readers that remain will be, by definition, more engaged with and passionate about their reading. Like I said, that might not be the worst thing in the world. I teach English, and every semester I run into students who are reading their very first novel in my class. I’m not naive; for many of them, it will also be their last. So be it; they prefer other forms of media. But I am hopeful that the commercialization that has so greatly influenced the publishing industry might wane as books become increasingly less commercial. Corporations are already choosing to focus less money and time on printed media. But if a group of devoted readers remains, that means that smaller independent presses will cater to them in a way that corporations can’t be bothered too, which will lead to more challenging, adventurous, and sophisticated books.

In the not-too-distant future, I think we will live in a world with very few millionaire writers. But I think, while sad in some respects, that that’s okay. Most of us who write write for loftier reasons than a paycheck, and many of us already make a living aside from what we publish. Most of us write for the same reason we read: to be enlightened. So this blog, among the other fun stuff it will cover, will help to keep the discussion of good books alive. Books might not be the #1 fashion anymore, but they still matter, and will continue to, as long as people keep turning to them for their one-of-a-kind way of inducing insight.