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THE SEAGULL:

I was somewhat obsessed with The Seagull in Jr. High, though this was my first time seeing it performed. It is a play about art in general and literature and the theatre in particular, about being a writer and about what people who are not writers think that means. It is also a play about how no one is ever happy, regardless of whether they succeed or fail. Having not read the play for about fifteen years, I had given into the conventional wisdom that teenagers are idiots and suspected that I hadn't understood it; that the characters I found so tragic were actually ridiculous. But seeing it live I find that it is the same play that I remember: the satirical edge is evident but not so sharp as to rob the characters of sympathy; everyone is faintly ridiculous but it is their ridiculousness that makes them tragic.

As someone who rarely goes to the theatre I'm not sure how to judge this particular production, though I do think Masha was too sexy and Konstantin was not sexy enough. (Masha should be a somewhat gawkish goth girl, not a hot goth girl. It might just be me who thinks Konstantin is/should be really sexy. This how you got my attention in Jr. high. By being Russian and shooting yourself). I've always felt that Chekhov should be performed in very subtle, almost detached manner, but that probably says more about me and my preference for filmic styles of acting than it does about Chekhov. Konstantin's play within a play was hilarious, something that is not so obvious reading the play on it's own. The performance was staged at Pittsburgh Playwrights, which is somewhat odd as Chekov was obviously not from Pittsburgh. Also odd, Pittsburgh Playwrights is house in a few small rooms contained in a parking structure.

THE CONQUEROR WORM:

This was a dramatisation by some CMU kids of several poems and stories by Edgar Allen Poe, another writer I was obsessed with in Jr. High. Poe is also tragic and ridiculous, but in the opposite direction. The director started the performance with a warning that the piece contained sudden and prolonged instances of darkness. While I started out snickering at the over-literal interpretation of the line "the orchestra fitfully breathes" by the end I was genuinely moved. I am generally skeptical of expressing anything through dance or 'movement,' but I realised that dance is actually ideal for expressing the unnatural and uncanny, the otherworldly and the grotesque. My favourite segment was 'Ulalume' which was spoke-sung to an accompaniment of banjoes. The play was greatly enhanced by it's location; it was staged at the Allegheny Playhouse Childcare Center, a crumbling and atmospheric 100 year old Czech church, having gone through several incomplete and competing renovations.

Here is our first and last album, The Tower Inverted to listen to and download for free. If you want a hard copy let me know, and I will give you a CDR.

I used to think I hated holidays, but then I realized that what I actually hate is other people. Since I started spending holidays on my own, cooking myself ridiculous meals and drinking wine and listening to Motown, I've decided holidays are great.

Please come, with or without your gothic lolita and festive robot child. I will have sweatervests and cuddly octopi.

It is I, Barthor Martok, Hero of Leisure. Recently I was sent to a Futurological Congress as an ambasador, representing the glorious culture and peoples of the Republic of Nyesk.

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Saturday before last Soldiers and Sailors played die_graumensch's graduation party in the suburbs.

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I meant to write about the show after it happened, but then I got sick. Nothing serious, just a cold, but enough to relieve me from this and other various duties. The show went well. People genuinely seems to like us, even people we didn't know who had no obligation to be nice to us. They made us play Ice Hotel twice. I'd had to superglue my thumb together since I'd given myself a massive blister the night before (I don't use a pick, I don't like the way they sound) and was in quite a lot of pain, and absolutely terrified, but overall I really enjoyed myself. When I'm scared the instinct is to make myself terrifying.

Actor Slash Model sang a bunch of country songs about S&M and were just generally fabulous. And then other people messed around with their guitars nd ukeleles and hammer dulcimers and were also fabulous. I had a bit to drink, played one of our works in progress, and was happy for a several hours in a row, which almost never happens.

The next day I helped robots_suck with the art project he's working on for Robot250. My job consisted mostly of standing on chairs, waving umbrellas, and pacing back and forth, trying to get hit by a lazer.

Technology is boring. I'm sorry but it is. I'm not suggesting we try to live without it; that's one masochistic fantasy I'm immune to. But I'm not impressed by your singularity. Or your iphone. It's people that are going to have to change. Get to it, people.