Colley Cibber

I've had more fun in the last week learning about a Glorious Revolution playwright I knew nothing about. Colley Cibber was an actor, manager of the Drury Lane theatre, and playwright, writing plays of his own and adapting others. His version of Shakespeare's Richard III was the definitive version of the play and the most performed Shakespeare play throughout the 1800s, so much so that people objected to the original version... preferring Cibber's "acting version" instead. Lawrence Olivier even included some of Cibber's lines in the classic movie version of Richard III. Cibber is especially known for his autobiography, An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, Comedian, which set off many of the satirists of the time because of his braggadocio. It's a fascinating book, filled with stories and gossip about all the actors of the time. Alexander Pope was driven mad by Cibber's vanity and was furious that Cibber was named Poet Laureate in 1730, making him King of the Dunces in his Dunciad. Right now we've been reading Love's Last Shift, his first play which was immensely popular, being performed over 80 times. Vanbrugh wrote a sequel to it which we're also reading, The Relapse. A couple of years ago someone combined the two plays in a performance in San Francisco... called Restoration Comedy. Colley Cibber's real strength was not so much in his acting or his writing, but in his great sensitivity to the audience. He was aware of how theatre was an exchange between actor and audience and was able to recognize moods and trends and adjust for it. Increasingly during this time the theatre included music and dance as a nod to the growing popularity of opera; the more elaborate costumes, props, and sets of the time reflected the influence of French spectacle on English theatre as well.

Vitus

I wanted to mention a terrific movie I saw the other day. Vitus is a subtitled Austrian (I think) film about a child prodigy, and is a great glimpse of childhood talent, parents who confuse the boundaries between child and self, and normal adolescence. I wouldn't mind owning a copy of this movie.
Last night we watched The Valet, another subtitled film (original in French). Very entertaining, and it was remarkable how the same types of cuckolding schemes that I'm reading about in my English Restoration Drama class are still being used as entertainment now. I'd recommend seeing this one also, although I don't anticipate adding it to our library.
We've also just received a copy of Transformers in the mail from Blockbuster; I don't anticipate either giving a review or recommending it, but our guildmates have recommended it highly... there's no accounting for taste, is there?

What's Bred in the Bone

I've just finished reading a terrific book by Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone. He's a Canadian author who has written three different trilogies, and this particular novel is the middle piece of the trilogies. It's framed by characters from the other 2 books discussing whether or not to continue publication of the autobiography of a mysterious artist/restorer of Renaissance art. The bulk of the novel, though, is the recounting of all the unknown details of this man's life by the Lesser Zadkiel, the gnostic angel of biography, and the daimon who developed his greatness. Lots of references to art, literature, religion, and history, with a focus on the creative process. To the right I've posted a painting by Bronzino that figures largely in the plot. We've been reading this work to see how theories of chaos and complexity might apply to the construction of the novel, but it's a terrific book no matter how you read it. I'm running out to get the other pieces of the trilogy this weekend.

Catching up

To follow up on last semester, my research on macaronic verse and different depictions of Nausicaa ended up evolving into a machinima project that adapts classic literature into short films using video-capture software and MMORPGs (massively-multiplayer-online-role-playing-games). I think I realized that what interested me about the first two topics was how old stuff is used in new ways, and how using old stuff in new ways is subversive to ideas of canon, and how much I really love doing something that tweaks people who can't stand having the canon messed with. So far, it's just the one short film--The Best of All Possible Worlds from Bernstein's version of Voltaire's Candide, using video from World of Warcraft. I'm just learning about copyright protection, and I think I need to write for permission from CBS recordings to be able to post the video on-line. With what I've done so far, for academic purposes and using a CD I had purchased, there's no problem; however, I need to double-check on the recording I used before I make the film even somewhat public. I also am bothered by those two little glitches in the middle and need to find out what is causing them.
In any case, I've submitted my proposal for a master's project that will allow me to create a half-dozen more of these little films. I'm thinking about using excerpts from typical required reading lists for junior and senior high schools--maybe something from Poe or Hawthorne, a poem by Blake or a sonnet by Shakespeare. Some works that are hard for a teenager to relate to. My Mr. Darcy's already aspiring to use his druid's raven form to recreate Poe's Raven; I have my doubts since an animated Simpsons' version already exists.
Here's a link to one of my favorite machinima films, mostly because of the original madrigal music, but also because there are some interesting video effects. Just imagine using some of these talents using great texts.

Back to writing...

Here's a new confession... this lovely blog has been part of a school assignment, which explains the long delay between first and second semester postings. As I understand it, the most effective blogs (read, with the widest and most enthusiastic audience) focus on a narrow range of interest and post regularly. I'm going to try to post more regularly... not, God forbid, to get a wider audience... but in order to become a little more adept at blogs and to see if I can learn to love it.

In the long hiatus between semesters, I read a terrific book about a blogging experience: The Julie/Julia Project. It describes one woman's experience working her way through all 500-odd recipes of Julia Childs' Mastering the Art of French Cooking over a one-year period, blogging her successes and failures.

Another interesting blogging tidbit you might enjoy: review of an anthology of blogs.

I'll be updating our bedside reading stacks soon, and in the next posting or two I'll let everyone know about my courses this semester.