Several people have sent me the excellent NYT article about all the current ANTIGONE productions happening in the city. It’s well worth reading, exploring the various versions/adaptations – with a passing nod to our own Anouilh’s script.
Let’s all pause to have me admit that I never EVER spell his name correctly on the first try. He’s the sitiuation of French playwrights.
The article has two perhaps unforeseen effects.
Making me feel very hip and savvy to have tapped into the cultural winds that have brought so many adaptations of ANTIGONE to the Big Apple, all the way from my chair in Athens, GA on the absolute bottom rung of THEATRICAL ART.
Drawing my attention to the Greek word ‘deinos’. *ominous rumble of thunder sound clip / specifically the Sesame Street – Count von Count one*
Antigone can be an extreme character. The word used to describe her, and many Sophoclean protagonists, is deinos. It means “strange” or “uncanny,” describing a world-breaking stubbornness that is simultaneously unyielding, magnificent and frightening. Even when her sister, Ismene, is trying to comfort her, Antigone throws herself in harm’s way. Her unreasonable righteousness is indistinguishable from self-destruction. Antigone never tries to save herself, or operate in secret. Instead, she speaks out, placing her beyond Creon’s ability to forgive — and also giving her qualities beyond the human. “I follow death, alive,” she says.
Antigone, deinos to the max, created the model for a particular kind of (anti)heroine: the “bad girl.” She is disruptive, a total pain, unpliable and correct. Sometimes this figure is interpreted as a kind of punky riot grrl, or a protofeminist, or a mentally troubled woman. Thanks to Sophocles, who was writing in a time when women didn’t rate as citizens, “girl” is now another word for “courage.” Imagine one, arms akimbo, ponytail flying, and you automatically picture her facing down the world. – Helen Shaw / NYT / Who is Antigone? The 2500- Year Old Greek Heroine Who’s Story Never Gets Old
Reading this passage – I felt a nice little LEGO block snapping together type feeling. Finally, a perfect Greek word for this woman coursing with electricity, something for my brain to hang all sorts of thoughts on. I’ve been trying to describe her to friends and actors interested in our production and the best I’d managed so far was “Antigone has a knife. She always has a knife. Everyone in the scene knows she has a knife but no-one knows if she’s going to stab them, herself, or nobody at all. She will never put down the knife. Sometimes, she hides the knife…poorly.”
Photo: Matt Hardy Photography / Model : Lily Medlock
It also doesn’t hurt that ‘deinos’ is the root from which DINOSAUR was created.
I find it deeply interesting how much Anouilh’s script focuses on this strange otherness in her — and how much the character grapples with it herself. She seems desperately to want to be any other person, to have any other destiny. The lines about how she dressed herself in Ismene’s style in an attempt to please Haemon, or perhaps to just squeeze out from under her appointed role for a few hours are pathetic. But unfortunately she is ‘fucked by fate’ as that modernized version of Beowulf said of Grendel. The few breaths of relief when she almost leaves the stage under Creon’s advice, almost to be merely human. But, as the Chorus reminds us, there is no escape in tragedy – that is the majesty of it.
Photo shoot this weekend! I love directing a photo shoot, boy howdy. Mainly because I wish I could take actually good photos – so instead I point my friend Matt’s actual talent at what I’m vaguely gesticulating towards. An image can be a perfect expression of an idea – or maybe several – evoking an entire world of feeling, frozen in a moment. Or if nothing else, just looking rad as hell. People often forget that the majority of the purpose of art is just to rule.
We’ll be shooting in my beloved’s theater at UGA Dance Department, so of course I’m simply salivating about being to have some real goddamn negative space to play with. BIG EMPTY pleases this little peapod brain of mine – and it is especially satisfying as an environment to consider the character of Antigone. So much of the script focuses on her isolation – on being separate and cut-off – by bloodline, by destiny – almost to the point of treating her as non-human. I enjoy the ambivalence. The script has a bent towards deifying her – but also so many images of the unnatural, bordering on paranormal.
You come from a people for whom the human vestment is a kind of straitjacket: it cracks at the seams. You spend your lives wriggling to get out of it. Nothing less than a cosy tea party with death and destiny will quench your thirst. / CREON
The overtly theatrical tone of the play also lends itself to this – the image of her being pushed on stage to play a part. A role that she chooses, but also is desperate to deny. Deny what it means to be Oedipus’ daughter, to be Jocasta’s daughter, to be Antigone. A whole section of the photo shoot is putting an Oedipus mask, complete with bloody tears, on our model – in wide, in closeup.
I have a pack of extra masks, maybe throw some on whatever bodies I have to put in the background, out of focus – looming, judging, demanding. Weird photos are the best, boy howdy.
Sometimes I think I should just do weird photo shoots and skip the attached play, podcast, other media, etc.
Now I lay me down to show prep, may my course be blessed by Hermes Threewizards. The future is unclear and storms unpredictable, but still I can put extra caulk between the boards of my hull and lay in as many oranges and packs of Buldak as this craft will allow. Preparing to direct a play is basically just an emotional exercise as nothing you plan will survive the first encounter with the enemy — the enemy is basically every component of the thing. Cast, crew, set, costumes, illness, cowardice, caprice, and Capri Sun.
To catch you up: I am directing a production of Antigone (Jean Anouillh/ translated by Lewis Galantiere) this summer. Auditions are in June, show opens in August. This is my 14th time in the director’s chair with this company, stretched over a couple of decades. I’m a goddamn warhorse at this point. The days of directing out of social pressure, vague artistic yearning, or purely atavistic conviction are behind me. Basically I only direct these days when I’m legitimately excited about a project and have every intention to get real weird with it. Or, more to the point, I work on projects when the ceaseless alarm clock in my mind sounds that I haven’t done something sufficiently cool to justify this entire plasma-type personality matrix I’ve been rocking.
I was chatting with some other theater people recently and I dropped some questionably sage wisdoms over pancakes. Maturity is just accepting what truly motivates you – boiling away all of the vague trappings of success, art, and progress. For me, everything I do ties back to wanting cute girls to think I’m funny. That’s the real engine all this creative activity has been running on – moments of beauty and truth are completely unplanned and are more by-product than goal. Wild to think the lengths I have gone to make things of ever-increasing difficulty and complexity using nothing more than a 12 year old’s survival strategy – the forge of all that I have made is nothing more than a hastily assembled Easy Bake Oven with racing flames painted on the side.
And this show appeared early in that juvenile charlatan’s development. My high school performed this script, way way back in the late 90’s. (WAY BACK) What artistic style or proclivities I have in theater can almost be traced 1:1 back to this production specifically – and generally everything my high school drama teacher laid down as first principles in my peapod brain. He was getting his MFA in Theatrical Direction, so our high school productions were purposefully academic – I was exposed to Bertolt Brecht far too early to every truly recover. By it’s very nature high school theater – and community theater(!) – are art forms of limitation — usually financial. Leaning into the more imaginative and primal language of the stage has an immediate advantage when you can’t afford much more than a couple of flats and some chairs. But, don’t worry, I learned absolutely the wrong lesson as usual. A chair on an empty stage is IT, girl. A voice, two voices, three voices. The darkness. The light. The space that can be anything, can be everything, can be nothing. My artistic colleagues roll their eyes at my sets made of boxes and benches and empty air, much as I sneer at the door that needs a doorknob on BOTH SIDES.
I’ve also had the rare opportunity to have a trial run at directing this before. A few years ago I stumbled upon a copy of the script in a used bookstore and felt compelled (enticed by fate?) to put together a staged reading. I’ve been thinking about this show for years before, and the more I think about it (and the reading confirmed) – is that it doesn’t need any help. It doesn’t need to be set in Aghanistan or even Paris during the occupation. It’s always now. Every time I come back, it’s more topical – more to the point. Maybe just the years of watching fascism rise here, inarguable – impossible to not recognize – have made the script hit harder and harder. It doesn’t ask the audience to imagine a world without fascism — that is a pure impossibility. It’s asking how will you choose to live with it. Or perhaps die under it.
This is a play about sound, about voices. The little human moments before the machinery of it pull the god in Antigone to the fore. And then the goddamn bars when Creon and she argue. What a strange thing to recognize as familiar, the curse in the blood, the glorious idiocy of revolt.
I know more now, I have more tricks up my sleeve. This time I’ll catch it, this time it won’t get away from me. Maybe.
A chorus is a weapon built to assault heaven. Human energy brought together, bound by time, focused and sharp. Let’s point a gun at god and demand that they dance.
Full disclosure: The author of this book is one of my closest friends. I’ve written plays with him. We’ve have swung imaginary swords together in many strange lands. I have eaten his mother’s chewy ginger-snaps. Whether that makes me meaner or nicer is best left to your judgement. From a writing standpoint, our worlds are kissing cousins at the very least – linked by Pratchett’s ‘consensus fantasy universe’ and a shared wavelength of universes touched by the Fall of Gilead and the breath of the Red Wizard. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Well, Brent does.
Non-spoiler Review:
Absolutely top-notch world building and character work. Strong dialogue, clean action scenes. Brent has a patience that I lack, really drilling down into the core of his world — each location breathes, the thought and care put into each is delightful. It’s a fantasy where most travelers will feel at home, and that’s no easy feat. Also, really badass, involved descriptions of some magical rituals and arcane machinery – that may be a ‘writer’ sort of thing to say, but those things are a beast to write and way too easy to make boring. Brent keeps them engaging throughout, and any writer that can make logistics interesting is one to wear in your heart’s core.
Our Heroes are a ragtag band, but not of misfits. Misfits suggest a lack of competence, or a fringe status in this world – nay, they are perfectly shaped. Though I quickly found myself favoring Kestra over the other characters – your reaction may differ. I like stoic gladiators, perhaps you will prefer the wily thief-mage, Demetrius or the scholar, Talbert.
The narrative structure flips between the present, where our group has embarked on a quest of more than usual danger and foolhardiness — and the past, where we learn more about the three main characters in a series of ‘Origin’ chapters. Taken as their own, the flashbacks provide the novel’s strongest writing – but the chapter order was one of my main complaints, especially early in the book. You go from the present, to the recent past, to a flashback, to another character’s flashback, then return to the present. It was like Brent kept handing me different action figures – and let me assure you I wanted to play with each one! – but just as I would start having fun with them, he would knock them out of my hands and push another toy at me. I found myself wanting to sink deeper into each story only to be jerked out too soon. This could just be a ‘me’ thing and may not bother other readers, but by the end of the book I was only nominally interested in the present-day plot [and there’s a fucking dragon in it!] – I was much more looking forward to the resolution of each of the Origin plotlines.
This is rock-solid fantasy writing – and I have no problem saying it holds together much better than my first attempt. You all need to buy this and love or hate it – but support the writer. I want to read the next one, the next one’s what it’s all about. There’s some dark, beautiful things in that head and we’ve only gotten a glimpse.
Spoiled Review:
This is mostly ‘inside-baseball’.
Your heart is in the past, Brent. Those Origin chapters are so fucking good they shamed the rest of the book. You are at your best when your characters are growing, changing – in pain, in woe, in transformative joy. You write the hi-jinx stuff fine too, but it doesn’t have the resonance, it doesn’t have the ‘THIS MATTERS’ bell that goes off when you read something real. I want to read further adventures of the DT, but I’d love to see you sink your teeth into a single protagonist YA. That’s what the Origin chapters and half your novel really were.
I liked most of the one-off characters, but Carradam just didn’t work well enough for me as a villain – maybe he’ll be better if he comes back as more of a Zenigata-type for the team. But he didn’t hold a candle to the witch, or Pho, or Tate’s avaricious mentor.
Loved the ‘interior’ dragon chapters, I wanted to experience the battle a little more from her perspective.
This is one of my innumerable ‘Hey Blog, What’s Up Old Friend?’ posts.
As is obvious from yesterday’s post, I’m dealing with a lot of grief. My mom passed last week and that post is all I really want to say about it for a while.
Segue from Maudlin to Shameless Self-Promotion — ACTIVAAAAATE.
Stanley Spudowski always elevates the mood.
Fellow fantasy writer C.B. McCullough wrote a lovely review of the book, and it makes me feel like punching the air while riding on the hoverboard from Back to the Future II. I’m going to return the favor and review his work The Path Less Traveled.
Progress on The Riddle Box continues — I met my goal of 30 pages last week, and dagnabbit I’m going to buckle down today and at least write five more.
Four men sat at a table, rectangular with knife-blade edges. Steam filled the air, blasts of heat and cold.
Sean Andrew Murray – Artist
They each wore floor-length white robes with deep cowls. Runes shone on the edge of each cowl with a fiendish light. Their names were known to each other, their proper names, the names that the world spoke in tones of fire and glory. But when they met here for their Conclave of Secrets and Power they took great care to use their Names of Secrets and Power.
“Where is he?” the One Called Wizzle said.
“Late. As usual,” the One Called [(4x) + 17.3y] sighed.
“I’m sure he will be among us at the proper time. When the moon and the wind and the turning of this fragile earth sing together in perfect harmony,” said the One Called Jambalaya, in between noisy bites of a pine cone.
Wizzle and [(4x) + 17.3y] rolled their eyes. Jambalaya was something of a wood nymph, only occasionally interfacing properly with reality. The fourth man said nothing, but continued to scribble frantic notes on a stack of napkins in front of him.
“How’s that coming, Fardancer?” Wizzle asked.
The One Called Fardancer hissed and wrapped his free arm around the napkins.
“Okay, then.” Wizzle stroked his beard in consternation.
A moment of quiet floated across the table, sickly and ominous like a vomiting ghost. The only sounds were the crunch of Jambalaya finishing his pine cone, Fardancer scribbling and muttering, and the other two men adjusting their cowls to better disguise their features.
“Okay. I can’t wait any longer, we’re just going to get started.” Wizzle oriented his beard at the other three in turn. “Does anyone have a problem with that?”
“But the winds, the winds are not yet proper! Our art will be forever marred and turn the gyre—”
“Can it, Jambalaya.” [(4x) + 17.3y] crossed his arms.
“I think we all know why we’re here,” the beard continued. “A new power has arisen in the South, a troublesome upstart. His followers are legion and the blasphemy that he spews grows and grows with each passing hour. It is a dark fungus, a creeping creep of untold crep. If we are not careful than it will spread beyond our ability to stamp out, much like the the weeds that grow in my garden. Oh, did I show you the picture of me and my son in the garden? Oh man, he did this ridiculous thing with some dandelions, you guys are going to love it.”
Wizzle pawed at his robes, searching for his phone. [(4x) + 17.3y] leaned across the table and shook the bearded man’s shoulders kindly but firmly.
“Please stay focused, my friend.” [(4x) + 17.3y] straightened his glasses. “We do not have time for one of your famous digressions.”
“You’re one to talk.” Wizzle retorted. “How about you explain to me how water flows downhill for thirty more pages?”
“That’s not germane. And a misrepresentation. The water flows uphill in my world due to the reversed polarities of gravity on fluid. It’s why it was so important that my Aquaemancelers could make the water flow downhill, as was prophesied in the 12,785th year of the Jtang Dynasty. Maybe if —”
“Oh god, you’re about to get out a chart, aren’t you?”
[(4x) + 17.3y] folded his hands neatly on the table. “I…might have a few charts in my robes, yes.”
Wizzle pressed the heels of his hands into his forehead and groaned.
“Maybe…” [(4x) + 17.3y] continued. “Maybe when you’ve written more than two books, you’ll learn to appreciate the efficacy of a well-made chart.”
“Excuse me?!?” Wizzle’s head popped up.
“Don’t you see, my friends?” Jambalaya cried, brushing pine cone debris off his black robes. “It’s this new book. This Spell/Sword! It’s tearing us apart!”
Wizzle and [(4x) + 17.3y] stared hard at Jambalaya.
“Weren’t you wearing white robes…before?” the glasses-wearing man tried to appear polite.
“Oh. Yes. That happens.” Jambalaya managed to look slightly embarrassed.
“Jambalaya is right.” Somber Wizzle rapped his knuckles on the rectangular table. “I don’t know why, but somehow this silly little book, this freaking Spell/Sword is tearing at the very fabric of–”
“You boys need a refill?” The waitress leaned over the cramped table with a coffee pot.
The white-robed men blinked at her for a moment. Her brown and white apron was freshly pressed, her gray hair tightly wound in a neat oval. The Waffle House was empty except for the four of them, their thick girth and arcane robes crammed into a corner booth.
“No, thank you, Glenda.” Wizzle managed.
The other three men shook their heads as well, and Glenda smiled and floated away.
“Why do we meet here, anyway?” [(4x) + 17.3y] complained. “None of us even live in this state.”
“Don’t you see. That is the thing. The very thing.” Jambalaya smiled, one tear rolling down his cheek. “Only outside of ourselves can we see ourselves.”
“Time for me to talk.” Fardancer interrupted, displaying his stack of ink-daubed napkins with pride. “I’ve prepared a solid list of reasons why Spell/Sword sucks. As soon as I post this online, the world will know that it sucks, and we can go back to our lives without a further thought.”
“Uh…arr. I’m not sure it’s quite that straightforward, Far–” Wizzle began.
“RESPECT THE LIST.” Fardancer slammed the napkins down on the table, neatly overturning the sugar dispenser. “Okay. Verbal List Power Activatus!
1. No one’s ever heard of it, so it can’t be very important. Only things that people have heard of are worth discussing. I’ve talked to all the very important people I know on Twitter, and none of them have heard of it, so it’s nonsensical to keep discussing it.
2. Even if it was important, it’s different and weird and silly. All of us have worked very hard to earn a little respect and credibility for genre fiction. To have this weird kid come along and try to make what we write about silly again undoes years of work. I like getting paid for my work, and I can’t keep getting serious-work money if all of a sudden people think we’re silly again.
3. Wil Wheaton said he thought it sucked.
4. Spell/Sword can eat my poop.
5. And by my poop, I mean the poop that comes out of my butt.
6. And by my butt, I mean —
“That’s enough, Fardancer!” [(4x) + 17.3y] waved both hands. “I think we get the gist.”
“Yeah, thanks.” Wizzle patted the napkins respectfully. “All good here.”
“Well, I’ll go ahead and put this up on my blog, that ought to take care of things.” Fardancer pulled a smartphone, two tablets, a Chromebook, a Macbook Air, a TRS-80, and an abacus out from under his robe in quick succession.
“I like to write on oak leaves.” Jambalaya said, lost in dreams. “Oak leaves, just as they turn scarlet. I write with a grasshopper’s leg dipped in some Faerie Inkque that my beloved brought me from—”
The newly black-cloaked man’s words were cut off by hellfire engine roar. A massive black motorcycle tore into the Waffle House parking lot, chrome and leather and a Valkyrie’s virginity.
“He’s here.” Wizzle said.
The motorcycle pulled into a spot and then hopped up on the sidewalk. The front tire crashed into red-flecked newsbox. Bent metal and flying newsprint filled the air. The rider got off the bike, and stalked in through the glass door entrance. He wore a sailor’s cap, and his white robe thrown around his shoulders like a cocksure cape. In his hands he carried a massive two-handed hammer, something that would be more appropriate at Medieval Times than Home Depot.
“Darklorrr.” [(4x) + 17.3y] said nervously.
“Coffee!” the One Called Darklorr bellowed as he stumped over to corner booth. “And four waffles on top of five other waffles. No syrup, just bring me some melted butter and three mugs filled with chili.”
Darklorr tossed his hammer onto the table and surveyed the other four men with a paternal eye. “I know I’m late. Deal with it.”
“We were just talking about Spell/Sword, Darklorr.” Wizzle gingerly pushed the hammer off the hem of his white sleeve. “And how we needed to handle it.”
“Handle it? Spell/Sword? HAR.” Darklorr laughed, pushing his sailor’s cap back. “Listen close, boys. I already know how to handle this. I’ll do what I always do with things that people love.”
The four others leaned in close with expectant horror.
“Kill it.” Darklorr smirked.
He picked his hammer back up and leaned it on his shoulder with a cavalier air. Then he started to laugh. The other four men looked at each other uncertainly, then echoed his laughter with their own.
[(4x) + 17.3y] quickly scribbled something on a spare napkin, and slid it across the table to Wizzle.
OR GO ON A TWO MONTH PIZZA TOUR, it read.
Wizzle shrugged in response, but continued to echo Darklorr’s amusement.
The Conclave of Secrets and Power had convened. They had made their decision.
Spell/Sword didn’t stand a chance.
[Just me throwing some eggs at some author’s that I respect, admire, and envy. I’ll send a free Spell/Sword button to the first five people who can name all five.]
spell-sword.com 