Let’s talk, you and I. Let’s talk about theatre. The house isn't empty as I write this; a cold February rain isn't falling outside. It’s not night. Sometimes... we lose the power. But for now it’s on, and so let’s talk very honestly about theatre. Let’s talk very rationally about moving to the fourth wall…and perhaps over the edge.
Showing posts with label theatric thursday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theatric thursday. Show all posts
Sunday, October 8, 2017
Saturday, September 2, 2017
The Feature Presentation
I'm not the biggest fan of strong pronouncements like "And now, something completely different..." And yet, moving into this scene, I want to say just that. This is a shift in the play and I will discuss it in some detail in the autopsy post. We will soon return to our regularly scheduled programming, if anyone really needs to know what the future holds with Pompo or Carl. And now, something completely different...
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
"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!
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.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
"Got Ya"
Psych’s basic set-up is just brilliant to me. The idea of Shawn Spencer, brilliant detective, doubling as a fake psychic allows for near unlimited dramatic irony. It also allows for some four wall slippage, since Shawn and Gus know more than everyone else. Their own continued in-jokes can almost be seen as directly referencing an audience. Couple this with what I’ve mentioned before—USA Network’s solid ad campaigns that take the actors out of the show in semi-character and play little jokes and gags with them.
A few of these ads even go as far as to make light of the show’s subtle way of addressing the fourth wall, with Shawn picking the duo’s theme music in one commercial, and asking Gus if he thinks they might just be the stars of a television show in another.
To me, this is the way fourth wall treatments have to stay. Sure, they’ve been done brilliantly in a pure direct fashion (e.g. Grant Morrison’s Animal Man), but canon is ultimately more important, in my mind, in any sort of non-farcical series. I have issues with the use of the term “the real world,” or “your world” (spoken to an implied audience/reader), in fiction, and when you’ve addressed the viewer, you’ve, to some extent, done just that.
Much of my writing makes light of this fact, since I have writers in the universe that I’ve begun to create who both play characters in it and write it, themselves. But the world they came from is not the real world, just one a lot more like ours than the one that they now inhabit. Psych seems to understand my beef with this and avoids direct references to the audience, but still reaps the benefits of an aside every now and then.
The main problem I have with a show like Psych is how often it deals with murder as a comedy. Along with Monk, I would say that Psych’s main problem has to do with the fact that so many of its laughs have to come around death, albeit fictional death. In less talented hands, this type of show tends to fall on its face quite quickly, as could be noted in CSI’s repeated attempts at episodes based in humor.
Psych is generally able to skirt such issues by avoiding direct macabre humor, the sort of thing that actually makes up a good CSI episode. Where the latter falls flat, is where the former is at its best. CSI is written as a dramedy at best, more often than not it is a straight drama show with some chuckles here and there, while Psych is never unsure of itself as a comedy. CSI seems to be a part of new shows that do not bother themselves with preset rules, and like, let’s say, Scrubs, this program will often times look for experimental new styles. Turning an entire episode into a collection of the macabre humor that is barely visible in one show makes for an uninviting program that laughs at death. Psych can draw its humor from its characters and for the most part avoid that sort of black humor because of this. It is a true benefit of the show’s formatting.
Even when the show deals with dead bodies, which I believe I noted already as being nearly an every episode occurrence, we can watch Shawn and his little joking psychic routines, the knowledge of who his character really is allows the viewer to remember their disbelief perhaps and works well in dealing with the problems caused in laughing at a show that deals with death. A similar course of action can be seen in Case Closed, where the detective’s very appearance adds to the humor of the programming.
What is quite interesting about Psych is how much it depends on its own gimmick, but is not enslaved to it. Characters still interact and relationships still change, the way any active show should be, but without Spencer’s fake psychic gig, the show would become your traditional crime drama, oddly then positioned in a near duplicate status to what might be seen as its child program in The Mentalist, a show that Psych even includes in one of its own in jokes.
This all adds up quite well, but Psych perhaps fizzles once again with the Corbin Bernsen character who is Shawn’s father. Whereas one has an easier time with liking Bernsen’s “semi name actor in a small role” cousin (in his position as actor on show and not in blood), Bruce Campbell who portrays Sam Axe on Burn Notice, my view of the father Henry Spencer is a bit mixed. While the acting from Bernsen is not lacking, the main issue is just an uncertainty over whether or not his character can be liked.
Psych operates commonly through flashbacks to when our hero Shawn was a kid and time and time again we see Henry portrayed as the comical over-bearing father (perhaps that’s the wrong term), and these bits generally leave me with a sick taste in my mouth. Uncertainty creeps into my mind, because Bernsen’s character is almost always portrayed in a dark, dark light.
All in all, though, the show does a good job of working its gimmick premise to the extent that it can, both relying too much on it and being quite independent from it at times. Both James Roday and Dulé Hill (Spencer and Gus, respectively) must be credited with making the show what it is, in the end, since it is their camaraderie that truly pulls everything together.
I guess it must be noted that so far I’ve only written of USA television shows, and I’ll try to steady that out a bit. If you’ve been a true reader of this blog, then you will know that I have written about Fox’s Fringe in the past, and I would just like to add that I plan to move on to other channels’ broadcastings as well at some point. Apologies to anyone upset with my apparent network bias thus far, and as always, for boring you all the way through this post.
A few of these ads even go as far as to make light of the show’s subtle way of addressing the fourth wall, with Shawn picking the duo’s theme music in one commercial, and asking Gus if he thinks they might just be the stars of a television show in another.
To me, this is the way fourth wall treatments have to stay. Sure, they’ve been done brilliantly in a pure direct fashion (e.g. Grant Morrison’s Animal Man), but canon is ultimately more important, in my mind, in any sort of non-farcical series. I have issues with the use of the term “the real world,” or “your world” (spoken to an implied audience/reader), in fiction, and when you’ve addressed the viewer, you’ve, to some extent, done just that.
Much of my writing makes light of this fact, since I have writers in the universe that I’ve begun to create who both play characters in it and write it, themselves. But the world they came from is not the real world, just one a lot more like ours than the one that they now inhabit. Psych seems to understand my beef with this and avoids direct references to the audience, but still reaps the benefits of an aside every now and then.
The main problem I have with a show like Psych is how often it deals with murder as a comedy. Along with Monk, I would say that Psych’s main problem has to do with the fact that so many of its laughs have to come around death, albeit fictional death. In less talented hands, this type of show tends to fall on its face quite quickly, as could be noted in CSI’s repeated attempts at episodes based in humor.
Psych is generally able to skirt such issues by avoiding direct macabre humor, the sort of thing that actually makes up a good CSI episode. Where the latter falls flat, is where the former is at its best. CSI is written as a dramedy at best, more often than not it is a straight drama show with some chuckles here and there, while Psych is never unsure of itself as a comedy. CSI seems to be a part of new shows that do not bother themselves with preset rules, and like, let’s say, Scrubs, this program will often times look for experimental new styles. Turning an entire episode into a collection of the macabre humor that is barely visible in one show makes for an uninviting program that laughs at death. Psych can draw its humor from its characters and for the most part avoid that sort of black humor because of this. It is a true benefit of the show’s formatting.
Even when the show deals with dead bodies, which I believe I noted already as being nearly an every episode occurrence, we can watch Shawn and his little joking psychic routines, the knowledge of who his character really is allows the viewer to remember their disbelief perhaps and works well in dealing with the problems caused in laughing at a show that deals with death. A similar course of action can be seen in Case Closed, where the detective’s very appearance adds to the humor of the programming.
What is quite interesting about Psych is how much it depends on its own gimmick, but is not enslaved to it. Characters still interact and relationships still change, the way any active show should be, but without Spencer’s fake psychic gig, the show would become your traditional crime drama, oddly then positioned in a near duplicate status to what might be seen as its child program in The Mentalist, a show that Psych even includes in one of its own in jokes.
This all adds up quite well, but Psych perhaps fizzles once again with the Corbin Bernsen character who is Shawn’s father. Whereas one has an easier time with liking Bernsen’s “semi name actor in a small role” cousin (in his position as actor on show and not in blood), Bruce Campbell who portrays Sam Axe on Burn Notice, my view of the father Henry Spencer is a bit mixed. While the acting from Bernsen is not lacking, the main issue is just an uncertainty over whether or not his character can be liked.
Psych operates commonly through flashbacks to when our hero Shawn was a kid and time and time again we see Henry portrayed as the comical over-bearing father (perhaps that’s the wrong term), and these bits generally leave me with a sick taste in my mouth. Uncertainty creeps into my mind, because Bernsen’s character is almost always portrayed in a dark, dark light.
All in all, though, the show does a good job of working its gimmick premise to the extent that it can, both relying too much on it and being quite independent from it at times. Both James Roday and Dulé Hill (Spencer and Gus, respectively) must be credited with making the show what it is, in the end, since it is their camaraderie that truly pulls everything together.
I guess it must be noted that so far I’ve only written of USA television shows, and I’ll try to steady that out a bit. If you’ve been a true reader of this blog, then you will know that I have written about Fox’s Fringe in the past, and I would just like to add that I plan to move on to other channels’ broadcastings as well at some point. Apologies to anyone upset with my apparent network bias thus far, and as always, for boring you all the way through this post.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
"One Two Punch"
The main issue I have with American TV is the same one I have with mainstream comics. Basically these creative endeavors generally end in writers establishing the general plotted episode (or issue, as it may be) and avoiding changing character dynamics. This is what generally places cartoon characters into never ending cycles of the same age/grade. I understand this is the general fault of any sort of serial, the basic falling into a pattern and then later almost a template.
To step away from this habit in TV storytelling, I’d say you move to a less commercial network than say Fox. And of course I’m biased in pointing the way to USA, but then again, this blog post is about two of their shows, and I need to segue in on them at some point, somehow, got it?
Two shows that generally avoid what I’d see as a strict formula set-up that leaves virtually no character changes are Burn Notice and Royal Pains, a one-two line-up on Thursday nights that I think blends quite well, over all. Burn Notice adds a touch of the fantastic to a semi-realistic show involving a former spy and Royal Pains is House at a later time, minus Hugh Laurie, and injected with quite a bit more comedy than House’s dramedy.
My opinion on Royal Pains is perhaps a little premature, since the first season of a program tends to be the least formulaic, but the show seems to be overly fresh in its writing—the sort of thing that a complex almost never ending romantic comedy is made of, which, I guess, in a way, is what the show really is. I’m a sucker for the whole idea that entertainment is supposed to just entertain us (something I may have already attached to Chabon), so I think the happy go lucky ending is the best in romantic comedy, and Royal Pains has yet to really disappoint on that front.
The idea of the two shows as a “one-two” punch generally has to do with the way that Burn Notice is mainly an action program that has a bit of romance on the edges—a guy show that the girlfriend isn’t going to continuously complain about. While, as I’ve already mentioned, Royal Pains is a sort of romantic dramedy. Both shows have a similar feel to them—enough so that my father remarked that all USA shows seemed to be the same when he saw the promo for Royal Pains, but of course this was without really watching either program.
This, along with USA’s brand of co-advertising (something I noted on the first of the month) that throws characters from multiple shows into a semi-canon universe all their own, gives the two weekly programs the feel of a split movie that blends genres quite well. In a comic book, one could imagine one show ending and the next being introduced on the next page with the caption, “MEANWHILE…”
Both shows seem to know that character dynamics do not need to tossed completely out of whack or shredded all the time, but that subtle references and in-canon continuing storylines are even more than welcomed, more like strongly suggested.
Michael Weston (the ex-spy star of Burn Notice who is trying to get his old job back)’s narration during the show picks up the kind of mood as the anonymous narrator of Fight Club, telling all these little violent factoids, the kinds of things that got Palahniuk to represent the repressed male in today’s culture, and this is done quite well.
Weston helps accomplish the hard task of giving a movie or show a sort of first person feel to it, rather than your usual third person edge given to camera work (an idea referred to in my last post, that a camera records stories in third person while eyes are needed for first person work).
A tight-knit cast in each series helps keep character interaction important enough so that it is easy to spot at least one major progression in nearly every episode, which, like I’ve said, I find to be a good way to write any sort of serial. Expanding out from here, what is also necessary, in my opinion, is a strong background cast, enough recurring characters so that one to three can be featured in a episode here or there and not wipe out the stock of them.
What I want to be able to do one day is to write various pastiches of TV shows without naming characters and collect them as a book called CAN YOU SPOT THIS ONE?—an Eric Clapton quote from his album, Unplugged, before he plays “Layla.” The idea would be that I would at this time be good enough to characterize the different characters without naming them and without going straight to the physical aspects.
Interestingly enough, I guess, if I were to do this with shows that I particularly liked, I might enjoy formulaic scripting from the writers of the shows, but that would make it too easy, now wouldn’t it? I think the good benefit of a book like this would be the ability to blend so many genres so deliberately in one place, like sitting down and watching a night’s worth of television.
Of course I’m not that good of a writer at this time, at least I don’t think of myself as a good enough one. I fear that if I were to write them now, my own narratives would come off forced, my own writing formulaic, and unlike some talented bloggers, I can’t exactly give a solution to every problem I bring up. I can tell you when something is working for me, when I like what a particular is doing, but very rarely can I pinpoint the problems in a show that I don’t quite think is up to par.
I guess this is the secondary reason, other than the boredom no doubt caused by my writings, that I should shut my mouth and type no more—mother always said if you have nothing good to say, say nothing at all. Don’t bring up problems when you don’t know how to fix them, yourself. But I’m not going to listen to that advice that my mother probably never gave me.
Sorry for that, and as always, for consistently boring you.
To step away from this habit in TV storytelling, I’d say you move to a less commercial network than say Fox. And of course I’m biased in pointing the way to USA, but then again, this blog post is about two of their shows, and I need to segue in on them at some point, somehow, got it?
Two shows that generally avoid what I’d see as a strict formula set-up that leaves virtually no character changes are Burn Notice and Royal Pains, a one-two line-up on Thursday nights that I think blends quite well, over all. Burn Notice adds a touch of the fantastic to a semi-realistic show involving a former spy and Royal Pains is House at a later time, minus Hugh Laurie, and injected with quite a bit more comedy than House’s dramedy.
My opinion on Royal Pains is perhaps a little premature, since the first season of a program tends to be the least formulaic, but the show seems to be overly fresh in its writing—the sort of thing that a complex almost never ending romantic comedy is made of, which, I guess, in a way, is what the show really is. I’m a sucker for the whole idea that entertainment is supposed to just entertain us (something I may have already attached to Chabon), so I think the happy go lucky ending is the best in romantic comedy, and Royal Pains has yet to really disappoint on that front.
The idea of the two shows as a “one-two” punch generally has to do with the way that Burn Notice is mainly an action program that has a bit of romance on the edges—a guy show that the girlfriend isn’t going to continuously complain about. While, as I’ve already mentioned, Royal Pains is a sort of romantic dramedy. Both shows have a similar feel to them—enough so that my father remarked that all USA shows seemed to be the same when he saw the promo for Royal Pains, but of course this was without really watching either program.
This, along with USA’s brand of co-advertising (something I noted on the first of the month) that throws characters from multiple shows into a semi-canon universe all their own, gives the two weekly programs the feel of a split movie that blends genres quite well. In a comic book, one could imagine one show ending and the next being introduced on the next page with the caption, “MEANWHILE…”
Both shows seem to know that character dynamics do not need to tossed completely out of whack or shredded all the time, but that subtle references and in-canon continuing storylines are even more than welcomed, more like strongly suggested.
Michael Weston (the ex-spy star of Burn Notice who is trying to get his old job back)’s narration during the show picks up the kind of mood as the anonymous narrator of Fight Club, telling all these little violent factoids, the kinds of things that got Palahniuk to represent the repressed male in today’s culture, and this is done quite well.
Weston helps accomplish the hard task of giving a movie or show a sort of first person feel to it, rather than your usual third person edge given to camera work (an idea referred to in my last post, that a camera records stories in third person while eyes are needed for first person work).
A tight-knit cast in each series helps keep character interaction important enough so that it is easy to spot at least one major progression in nearly every episode, which, like I’ve said, I find to be a good way to write any sort of serial. Expanding out from here, what is also necessary, in my opinion, is a strong background cast, enough recurring characters so that one to three can be featured in a episode here or there and not wipe out the stock of them.
What I want to be able to do one day is to write various pastiches of TV shows without naming characters and collect them as a book called CAN YOU SPOT THIS ONE?—an Eric Clapton quote from his album, Unplugged, before he plays “Layla.” The idea would be that I would at this time be good enough to characterize the different characters without naming them and without going straight to the physical aspects.
Interestingly enough, I guess, if I were to do this with shows that I particularly liked, I might enjoy formulaic scripting from the writers of the shows, but that would make it too easy, now wouldn’t it? I think the good benefit of a book like this would be the ability to blend so many genres so deliberately in one place, like sitting down and watching a night’s worth of television.
Of course I’m not that good of a writer at this time, at least I don’t think of myself as a good enough one. I fear that if I were to write them now, my own narratives would come off forced, my own writing formulaic, and unlike some talented bloggers, I can’t exactly give a solution to every problem I bring up. I can tell you when something is working for me, when I like what a particular is doing, but very rarely can I pinpoint the problems in a show that I don’t quite think is up to par.
I guess this is the secondary reason, other than the boredom no doubt caused by my writings, that I should shut my mouth and type no more—mother always said if you have nothing good to say, say nothing at all. Don’t bring up problems when you don’t know how to fix them, yourself. But I’m not going to listen to that advice that my mother probably never gave me.
Sorry for that, and as always, for consistently boring you.
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