Chaos Attraction

Three Plays Today

2020-08-29, 9:44 p.m.

All is forgiven, I did hear from Scott this morning.

I should probably clarify that I sent him this: Men's Leggings Are Evolving Beyond the Need for Dick Towels. The word "DICK TOWELS" was what stood out for me in this one, as well as this quote: "Matador Meggings founder Valentine Aseyo started the company after he felt uncomfortable wearing leggings in a yoga instructor class full of women. "I don't think those women were ready to see my balls on display, it would be pretty pornographic," he recounted his eureka moment on a phone call."

I think Scott was probably thinking something like "why was she sending me this? I wouldn't wear them," and other than making a crack about "pants so tight you can see your religion in them," I explained that I was more about the dick towels and then this delightful quote from The Rock on them: "But “dick towel” is my new favorite term that I will break out on date nights " He liked that one! This led to some more dick jokes, mostly out of me when talking about shirtcockers and him saying that Deadpool called it "the full Winnie the Pooh." I mentioned the Deadpool musical online and he said he felt like he'd seen that and I said good, I would have passed it on but you tend to not have Internet. Maybe I shouldn't have said that last bit, but the conversation was about dead by then anyway and I had to get going.

So I've talked to him four days this week! That's very good.

A little later in the morning, Kelly, Shanna, and the rest of the company got together to do a reading of draft 3 of the first act of her 1970 play, which went well even if I did spill water on my keyboard (I think it's fine). The new version is a lot more fun. The characters are sassier, the main character Alice is more fun and now married to her love interest and there's a great line about how she knew she wanted to marry him by flipping the bird. The character I read, Sarah, is also a lot more fun--Kelly said she based her off Alexis Rose, and she's got a lot of snarky lines about trying to figure out if her deceased grandmother was a lesbian. It sounds like most people who didn't like their characters too much--the guy ones--think it's improved. We also got a new company member to read the part of Michelle and she had great critiques and said that her parents lived in the area of the play around that time. Kelly definitely wants to talk to her mom about that.

We talked about the timeline of the play because figuring out the middle timeline of it is hard, and whether or not to have Sarah and Michelle get into an insta-relationship or not. I'm not sure where it's going beyond the commonality of yes, the deceased Maggie was a lesbian back in the day, but there's always been some awkwardness on the speed of them getting together whether or not they have past history or not, and whether or not it'd be safe for an African-American woman (Michelle) to just go kiss Sarah openly in a lesbian bar on the first date. Also, Michelle works for Sarah's mother. I suggested maybe Michelle is just a volunteer rather than employee and maybe they should be a couple already. Also, maybe have Michelle from somewhere more liberal? Anyway, we all gave good notes and we'll see how draft 4 or 5 or so comes out. Kelly's going to start in on act 2 as well.

In the afternoon, I watched Buried, a new play featuring characters streaming over Twitch while going on a treasure hunt. It's very Blair Witch and starts out with a girl in some kind of distress on her streaming channel, and then after that we cut to Riley and Rory, two girls cheerfully going on treasure hunt despite what might have happened to the last girl. Rory's internet is perpetually going out, leaving Riley to cheerfully ramble alone until Rory's phone is back on. Oddly enough, these two treasure hunting girls aren't....walking around much? Well, Riley does, Rory seems to be at the same table. Riley sees some random figure in black that freaks Rory out, Riley claims to be scared but seems unconcerned. Rory freaks at finding...a pile of logs? And hears a lot of frogs?

Rory is carrying around an egg soaked in vinegar for a week to do some kind of Science Corner thing?

Anyway, Rory is clearly the more worried one, Riley is just having fun, but then later gets mean and calls Rory a stupid bitch. Riley is perennially bringing up that Rory doesn't have a dad, for some reason, and seems to imply that whatever mysterious figure is walking behind Rory is her dad. Somehow despite Rory not doing much walking around, she finds Lexi the dead girl's camera and turns it on. That is also very obscure and Blair Witch. Rory keeps freaking out and demanding Riley come over, Riley (former track star, according to her) takes her sweet fucking time strolling over and yet Rory keeps demanding that Riley pull out the treasure hunting poem to stop and read it. After a while Rory is frozen but you can hear her yelling, "I need to run!' and then...well, she's in and out.

Finally Rory starts telling Riley off (while her screen is frozen again) and I am all GO GIRL, RILEY IS A SELF-ABSORBED BRAT. Riley apologizes and cries. She also suggests changing their channel name and starting a "Riley jar" like a swear jar to put money in every time she is shitty. Then you'd owe me like ten thousand dollars, Rory says. Then Riley disappears...then Rory disappears....presumably for good as Riley starts screaming and crying when she gets to the spot where Rory was.

Lines from the show:
"I'm not going to be another forest suicide channel."
"Riley and I want to be famous purely for the financial benefits."
"Don't play with demons, dude, you're going to die."
"If you die, I'm going to come back to life and murder you." "Cool, cool."
"I'm starting a petition to make water wet."
"There's something in the trees and I think it wants to kill me." "Can I at least finish my orange?"
"Is everyone excited? We're gonna kiss, I can hear the screams from over here."
"Dude, you're being so stupid. Be afraid of bears."
"Can you shut up about my dad? I'm so sick of hearing you joke about that!"

Welp, I can't say I loved it. It's a good idea for this day and age, but Blair Witch live action run around the woods freaking out is not as fascinating to watch as some people think it is.

Afterwards they did a chat and according to the playwright, Riley found the money and treasure but lost her best friend. I ... didn't figure out that last bit. "Riley" is friends with the playwright and they were physically together later. "Every actress got a friend of theirs to dress up in culty robes..." They were filming it in Dallas and Austin. It's 105 in Texas and all the electronics were overheating.

This is one of the big things I worry about in the world.

I spent another $400 ordering from Safeway, we'll see how much of that I actually get. It's so weird on what they are short on from time to time. This time I had issues getting rice, stuffing, and my favorite kettle chips, darn it. But this time I was trying to focus on getting more frozen food since I am short on that. I'm hoping to get more pizza and fried chicken. IF IT ARRIVES.

I'm so sick of food I made these days. Eating isn't much fun. I've hardly eaten anything at all today. These days I try to have one "proper" meal (by my standards, as opposed to "I grazed on snack food for ten minutes and called it a lunch.") and today I haven't even done that. I was going to have dinner tonight but I am not even hungry for snack grazing.

Tonight I watched SF Shakes's King Lear online. I'm not exactly chomping at the bit for the plot of that show, but I wanted to see how they do it, and they did manage to somehow technologically fit more than one actor into a scene at a time. Wow, good job there. They appear to be all superimposed into the same screen. Also, Lear is a lady this time, but Goneril still calls her "sir?" They show all these kid pictures from the actresses's youth on the screen, which is an interesting choice. Also, it appears that they're dividing the entire United States into three sections in the back?

Seriously, this looks really good. Here's more on what they did.

* Cordelia, that's an.... interesting....choice to hold back on the praises there.
* They also threw in a Black Lives Matter newcast that Goneril is listening to at her estate, wow.
* I note that they are not actually drawing swords on each other (it's air swords), though one guy did dramatically slice his own arm and get blood out (I'm assuming film tricks). It cracks me up how he's going on about how he bleeds.
* I love how "I will send his picture" to the entire kingdom is just on a cell phone.
Later, they do manage to have a rudimentary knife fight, even!
* "A plague upon your epileptic visage!" Why isn't this line more popular? It's a hoot.
* I'm amused that one backdrop they use is...a pile of trash? That's random. I feel sorry for the guy forced to be in his underwear with a bunch of slashes on him. And then he's....I don't even know what he's doing with his tongue.
* And then Lear takes her pants off..... *
"Gloucester's Estate Utility Shed" is an actual set here.
* Two people seriously managed to tie Gloucester to a chair convincingly. Like WOW.
* As for the eye squick, they switch back and forth from watching him to watching the evil sisters through an oval shape. THEN I CAN'T LOOK I THINK SHE PLUCKED.... NOT LOOKING. Eventually the screen is blacked out.
* "Sirrah! Naked fellow!"
* This production does show the Fool getting a beatdown by soldiers, answering the "what happened to him?" question.
* "Methinks the ground is even!" "Horrible steep!" Oh brother.
* "The King herself" has gone full Ophelia with flower crown and....lingerie.
* SOMEONE GO CLEAN UP GLOUCESTER ALREADY GOOD GOD.
* At least Edgar put more clothes on. Slightly.
* More imaginary swords, though one guy is waving a cane(?) around. I find it interesting just HOW MUCH WORK they did on this but the one thing they could not replicate was swords.
* "American Army Camp" setting. So is Lear the king of America? I'm assuming? * Okay, Edgar's got a knife and calls it a sword. There you go. Ditto Edmund.
* They only started having technical difficulties around 10:10 and featured a clay figure Shakespeare making a shocked O face while they tried to fix things. Adorable. I know they said NO SCREENSHOTS, NOT THAT WE CAN STOP YOU BUT NO SCREENSHOTS, but could I take one of this?
* Aw, looks like technical difficulties missed the end of it entirely: it turned back on and they were doing the bows. Then they showed everyone on their green screens separately.

Seriously, this was amazingly done and you should see it. It runs for another month. There is also the King Lear Green Show.


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