"Waiting for Gadot" (complete)

I know clicking through a blog can be annoying, so I've stitched together all the posts that made up "Waiting for Gadot" here. I do think the best way to read the play is to read each scene/interlude and then, before moving on, reading the follow-up behind the scenes "autopsy" post where I reflect on what I've written so I've linked to these in between each scene or interlude.

100 Things to Consume Instead of "Waiting for Gadot"

Here's a list of things to read, watch, listen, or otherwise consume, rather than my play, "Waiting for Gadot." This play is the first major piece of writing I have done in years, so I didn't want to boost my ego by simply pushing my play alone--in the interim I have still been a consumer of all different forms of media, and as a fan I would like to point people in the direction of a number of these different works of art as well.

"Waiting for Gadot," final scene

Make sure you read in order!

"Waiting for Gadot," scene 3

A personal, explicatory scene. I won't say much here, because I want to save it for the autopsy.

Interlude

Political and plot happening. Not so sure it's meaningful plot, but events do occur.

Under "scene two"

You all know the drill. We're doing a post of play--either a scene or an interlude--followed by a post of reflection on that scene.

"Waiting for Gadot," scene two

Hello there.

Long time no see! Well, I guess a few months doesn't hold up to even more years like my previous gap in blogging. So what's happened in the interim? Wonder Woman was very successful. I went to Italy for a week over the summer. Brand New recently released their last album. Some other stuff I don't want to get into here because other people have discussed it better than I can. In some ways, ironically, it was because I knew how this scene opened that I think I was able to put it off for so long. I can't explain it! But now it's written and I know the next interlude and then a weird bit in the middle that I don't have a name for yet... Some of the interlude is written, so I might have that up this weekend too. I'm actually going to complete a play! Can you believe it? (Pompo can. In some ways, he's from my earliest completed play--a comedic short story I wrote in middle school that I later re-imagined as a play, which was largely just a collection of inside jokes between me and a friend of mine.) Also, if you've been here before, you'll have noticed the blog design has changed (and might again)--this is because pasting into Blogger has been very irritating with the original formatting and rather than become a coder and breakdown all the issues in the HTML that makes things look different than I want, I just changed the blog color to shove all those problems under the rug.

under interlude

Well, I just saw Wonder Woman. It was a solid movie, but falls under the usual strains of superhero fiction (and film in particular). I had a conversation with my friend after about how one problem with the film could be tied to a glorification of violence, but unfortunately that's par for the course with the genre and action films a bit more generally (and yet we both liked John Wick). It's a war movie with a woman who can stop bullets--it makes it a bit harder to make the film distinctly anti-war. There's some irony there since (spoiler) Wonder Woman literally kills the god of war in the film. Still, a good superhero movie with some particularly intriguing moments. I'm interested to see where this Wonder Woman/Batman romance or whatever it is goes in Justice League, but to be honest, I'm not all that invested in superhero movies. (I'm going to read some Dan Clowes tonight to distance myself from it. :P)

under scene one

As Carl mentions in scene one, I am currently reading The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore. "I have been thinking about Tomas for many years," Milan Kundera says of one of his main characters near the beginning of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and I wanted to begin the play with Carl thinking about Wonder Woman in that way.

"Waiting for Gadot," scene 1

The previous post is an introduction to this play. Feel free to give it a look-see if you haven't yet.

A note on the characters: Loyal readers will be familiar with Carl from "Found" earlier in this blog. Carl is the main character of "Smitten," a novella I wrote in college which was continued in "Found," of which I've written a small part and posted on this blog. The Anthropologist is a character from a poetry sequence at the end of my self-published book you are a little bit cooler than i am (a play on Tao Lin's you are a little bit happier than i am) which I might post on the blog in the near future (or edit this part out of my post if I decide I won't). If you read through all that nonsense, I'm sure the play will be at least a bit more interesting!

Covfefe

Hello! Long time, no see (he says to no one but the blog). Life has happened over the last few years, but I have wanted to do a bit of writing for some time now, and a few circumstances, like planets, aligned to form the perfect motivation.

Chronological Hyperawareness

My apologies, but I'm still reading comics. Skreemer, a somewhat science fiction Peter Milligan comic really stunned me. Absolutely amazing in places. Here in "design and style" we'll take you through some of the interesting loops of the Milligan comic. In a way, Peter is able to show how comics can do certain things to perhaps their best success, places where other mediums cannot quite reach.

Peter's Mulligan or On Milligan

This will be a bit of an odd one for "debriefing" (have I always put them in quotes? I don't remember...I might have to go and check someday when I care). We are at the end of comix week. Applause from the nonexistent masses who think this whole week has been a waste and nothing from the nonexistent masses who didn't care; it's kind of a you take two halves of infinity and they're both infinity sort of thing only with zeros. This is a reflection on the Peter Milligan issues that my dad had and that I've read. I'm through most of them now but I've got a few set out for the weekend. But if you want to hear more you'll have to follow me after the jump...

The Anti-Comic

Welcome to the second Design and Style of comix week. We're almost done for everyone I'm boring especially badly with this run of drivel. I'm currently in a post-Morrison burnout, nearly crying about the fact that I've just finished reading through Grant's entire Doom Patrol run and rereading his Animal Man. Morrison himself forecasts this emotion, when he talks about what I see as a sort of theme of both series, "Yeah. Well, that's the trouble with my stories--they always seem to build up to something that never actually happens. That's the trouble with my life, too." I won't tell you where that's from for fear of revealing too much, but I do think you can feel Morrison's early work here, like say Radiohead's "Creep," plunging into emotions that you want to exorcise from yourself, depressions you want to leave behind. The same sort of emotion that I read in a Tao Lin interview I can't be bothered to dig up at the moment where he talks about writing with the viewpoint that he was not happy at the present, but could foresee a future pleasantness. Blah, pity parade and all that, need to get to the technical stuff now before I turn the angst knob up past 11. Neo looking across the rooftops, eventually he has to make the jump...

Leadership

This is comix week and also "anthropology of sports" so I'm giving you a piece about the various ways that sport or art by committee can be done. We'll see if it works out. Catch you after the jump.

Funny Book

"Etymology" is a new occasional segment on this blog where I will investigate word and phrase origins. Somewhat art over science, or rather opinion over fact but hopefully if you want to be you will be educated. Occasional as in this might be the only one but I have a few ideas for more... Have to get this one written before my mind moves on, though.

Autopsy Presents: CHASING VICTOR

Autopsy Presents is a new feature which brings new stories to light, rather than investigating the inner workings of old stories. The following is in honor of comics week.

Where did she go? Out. What did she do? Everything...

(title is a slogan on the back of The Ballad of Halo Jones)

What my family vacation going on a month back now turned out to be besides its eponymous description was a good deal of both book gathering and reading. I finished The Ballad of Halo Jones, Pale Fire, The Storyteller, and Maps & Legends, all books I had started reading at one point and eventually put down. I don't think I read books the same way very many people do. Anyways, this is debriefing, and this is comics week, so here's a bit on Alan Moore and Ian Gibson's Halo Jones.

Self Vigilant Kitsch

In honor of what is my biggest distraction as of late, I'm going to write a week's worth of posts about comic books. Apologies to everyone who is put off by that (read "everyone"). This is design and style, a beat for sorryforboringyou dot blogspot dot com. Here we go...

To infinity and beyond--

Buzz Lightyear, Toy Story, metafiction, Borges, a single reference each to DeLillo and Gaiman, another to Stephen King, and some other words there as well. If you feel like it.