Friday 23 January 2009

thought for these days

Thought for Today
while discussing Blake's illustrations. the critic Morton Paley quoted some lines from Young's Night Thoughts

We have been drinking with a rioteous thirst
Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth,
A selfish, lewd effeminate race
(55-7)

Tuesday 20 January 2009

Poetry drama and art

It seems every collapsed company needs criminal investigation with mandatory jail for tax evaders or mis-sellers

BACK to poetry drama and art... I thought

Here is an structure for a very short play/dance of about 30 minutes. Genet/Artaud style. no plot no authorial presence discontinuous narrative discordant music chants ....the use of surprise/shock....The Theatre and Its Double...The theatre as plague...as put by Artaud...

OPENING

huge aqueduct in rear of the stage over which lights and pictures are shone

first line of five national anthems. badly played and sung

ENTER

Running in knees up style all holding part of rope

THE EXECUTIVE.......

ENTER PARODIES
COSTUME TO SYMBOLISE

CEO (crooked for profit and wage slavery) and Chairman (crooked for power and easy money) Accountant (crooked to serve for avoidance and money) Lawyer (crooked for legalistic causistry and money) and Personnel (hitman and money)......
.
A motto for the set is put up by them above the aqueduct reads:
THE HIGHER THE RANK THE EASIER THE JOB

Dress and costume can't resemble any specific individual ....USE OF CRUTCHES, MONEY PINNED ON AND SO ON LIKE BATMAN COSTUMING....else they lose their immediacy...They start to lie the second time they speak.... these are spontaneous and should be original too and comic... with one line each.... heavily mimed (all good lies have an element of truth woven into perversion) the 'second' time they open their mouths..... spontaneous lies interact into verbal meaninglessness, laughter, anger...more cast comes on stage creative dancing...examples of stageing should be multicoloured, luminous...and masks. darkness and light strobe effect and zebra/lepoard/tiger stripes. break up human form, human/animal masks too snake bull pig rabbit SUDDEN TRUMPET...motionless silence
.....Backdrop film of a school on huge aqueduct in rear of the stage SUDDEN TRUMPET
cast become like children in school assembly
...MIME CEREMONY OF GIVING

written signs passed like giant playing cards over heads. heavy metal music soft and slowly getting louder

the ceo is given 'baron' like power... draped
rope about his neck drags him to his knees

huge £ sign and as many zeros as possible...reverse of card ... land playing fields buildings

each of the other four are awarded cards and rope drags to knees on the sides of the cards is written

30 peasants/ called teachers...
students/ £700o per head.
power/ is the goal.
its a/ lottery.

EACH line is on a huge card in ceremonial mime handed over like degree giving

BETWEEN each award

analogous to Genet's The Balcony masks of e.g. Judge General Police Fireman etc .....some genitals flash luminous colours...the cast is added ....climb about the aquaduct... all at times put on animal masks take them off ...engaged in chimp like screeching chasing ...putting on and taking off suits/masks and miming changes.... simulated random sex male and female...some one is painting.... someone else conducting the air.... another dancing slow motion...another covering bandages on another like a 'mummy'.... the works are torn up ritually and so on.... the actions are spontaneous too.... women here... NO children BUT some actions need to be human and loving....movement and stillness in action after action

each set about one minute of mime and two minutes of verbal action

while ceremony takes place onstage audience divided into five groups without regard for stage action....each group to be led by cheer leaders each with different sheet of paper with chants written and are cheer-led to chant a line at each other ... goal of cheer leaders is to allow a single chant per group clap cheer and the like as in a sports crowd. .....sample lines are.....

alpha males alpha female ....
Yahoos.... dignity
human rights
Dog eats dog ...
We wrecked the weather....
Wind before wave ....
greed is good.
sex is better
love is best..
more money
Tax-Haven Heaven.
why bonus

A Chimp masked character is in the corner of the set close to the audience with a unique agenda...building a heap of beans till expedential growth collapses..................................................threatening snarls lunges shouts.... throws paper at them actor independent timing

Another chimp in other corner beating drums softly and sublimely....angel mask and wings on a pair of lovers who sit in front of the drums bongos ...mime of love ....


CHORUS in full surround sound.................choir of children... startwith one lovely voice then two...three and so on till full throated and beautiful.... Rolling Stones number 'we can't always get what we want' but if you try somehow you get what you need and...

rhythmic chorus CLAW IT BACK is the new end game.

Scene shifts suddenly to silent huge backdrop film of leisure/wealth cast dancing

Suddenly the voices singing and films subordinated by thunder lightening flashes wind effects crashings and sounds sounds of pain and grief despair howling................. dance on stage to sound surrounds inside the theatre.

SUDDEN SILENCE

Prospero's speech from the Tempest

difference between stage and audience is dissolved stage characters sit in scattered seats in audience applaud and applaud

Think of the aqueduct ..... The major feature of the stage water drains down effect shimmering

all slowly exit leaving one choir person on aquaduct singing ....DRUMS SOFTLY PLAYING.....love will see us through...

light fade

THE END.
TIME TAKEN FOR PLAY 15/20 minutes

National anthem cast in audience stand up and salute each other boy scout salute each cast member pulls out toy pistol fires caps into air retreats onto stage and exit.

Tuesday 6 January 2009

the post-modern pulse?...everything is discourse.

Look again at the images of war in Blake's Jerusalem, the intellectual encounters of Eden and Beulah, and in contrast... down into the twofold time and space called Ulro and Generation ... in Eden ... or the enlightened life of reason...there is no classical glorification of death in war...come back with your shield or on it is the famous saying of the spartan mother....Vala could be her name. In Ulro the feminine real such as mothers... have children to be killed or sacrificed. Phallocentricism is twofold in Blake.

in fourfold life the feminine, Jerusalem, is a divinised form of living energy of love and of unity with all material realities.

it is a fair criticism, made by feminists critics, to see all god-the-father religions as phallocentric. in mystical theology all sexuality is transcended. the triune god is transexual else god limited to generation and that is impossible.....pure Blake there too .. who follows .. just dogmatic fact