The play starts with a play-within-a-play. A precocious but decidedly misunderstood young playwright tries to put on a play to impress his egotistical actress-mother and to win the heart of his leggy true love. The play goes on to involve these characters and other countryside families/acquaintances in the most geometrically complex of love polygons, resulting in 150 hardcore minutes of screaming, feelings-declaring, angst-wracked writhing, suitcase-launching, shooting, and also, at one point, air-guitaring to Guns ‘n Roses Sweet Child of Mine. Oh, and puddles. Splashing through, kneeling in, dragging selves across, and lying fetal-style in puddles—a wonderful continuation of A.R.T.’s tradition of having fantastic set designs. (Remember that car from Julius Caesar?)

At the end of the 2.5 hours, we were were all mentally and physically spent. It was the kind of play that tests your endurance. The melodramatic theater fluff was definitely masterfully executed. Especially Karen MacDonald—as of this play I have now seen her play 2 tragically delusional middle-aged femme fatales to perfection. So at first it was easy to find the humor in the clichés and satirical portrayal of 19th century popular theater. But slowly, as the plot drew you in and you slowly realized these characters aren’t going to find any sort of redemption whatsoever, it was just kind of… crushing, actually. In the end, no one finds true love. No one realizes their artistic hopes. No one ends up living the life they hoped for (except for Nina. Maybe. But it was actually kind of hard to read her character because the actress had a kind of flat, Emma-Thompson, Angels in America way of intoning everything). Nearly everyone ends up spiritually alone, resigned to brutal reality, and/or dead. And everyone ended up soaked.

You’re probably not supposed to care that much about the plot or the characters, but instead you’re supposed to look at the entire play as a tentatively Symbolist experiment concocted at a time when theater was trying to reconfigure itself and “find new forms.” But from my standpoint that’s kind of impossible. Right as the proverbial curtains were drawn and we stood up to leave, Jess said to me, “Man, now I never want to be an artist.” According to this play, if you want to be groundbreaking, you’re only going to end up emotionally strangled/creatively stifled/unrequited/unforgiven/alone/ultimately shot. Sure, you’ll be the only one in mid-19th-century Russia with a Macbook Pro, but I mean… doesn’t seem worth it, yeah?

It was a good theatrical experience nonetheless. (Yang is slowly collecting all of the A.R.T. program booklets in his jacket pocket. So far we’ve got 3… A.R.T. has been nothing short of awesome so far, so we’re hoping for more.)

Afterwards we went to Charlie’s and shared 2 plates of waffle fries, a plate of buffalo wings, and a plate of mozzarella sticks. It was the most disgustingly gratifying dinner I ever had. Mmm, bar snaxxxx, chased down with [root] beer (hey, it can be an effective social lubricant) and loud yelling over the music. Late-night bar-going is fun in moderation. I think this was my first time, honestly, out past 11 at a bar, but it was pretty much what I thought it would be. Wouldn’t do it everyday, but I now see why people enjoy it so.

Oh, one more thing before I begin: I don’t want this to come off as a movie review. The votes are in, they have been for a while, and everyone already knows Wall•E (or, Wall-E, for those unversed in the nerdy joy that is the Option key on a Mac) was a critical darling, a smashing triumph, or any number of jubilantly laudatory clichés. So I am not seeking to be redundant here, even though I do feel nothing but praise for this movie myself. Really what I want to share in this post was 2 of my random decidedly personal observations regarding it. So, like, don’t take it as an exhortation to see it or anything. (Psst, go see it! Yes, again!)

Where do I even start? Okay maybe we can start with how I’ve been most affected by the movie. The movie most affected me by making me open to the idea of being primarily an interaction designer rather than a print designer. Strangely enough, for the majority of my life up until this moment, I had always felt a bit of trepidation at the thought of working with digital media for the rest of my life. I fiercely enjoyed the tactile aspect of print work, which was the main reason I was so enthusiastic to take everything from small metals to bookmaking to acrylic media at SMFA. The aspect of web and UI design that bothered me the most was that I couldn’t for the life of me touch it. Add to this the fact that I had always kind of entertained a slight aversion to robots. They made me queasy in a sort of uncanny-valley kind of way. In the form of a children’s toy, robots were clunky and useless wastes of money, far inferior to the living breathing life-forms they were intended to portray (or, in more extreme cases, substitute.) In the form of laboratory experiments, they were downright scary, their electronic entrails kind of strewn everywhere in a techno-gory array as they appear to struggle desperately, mid-experiment, to interact with you. In the form of everything else that didn’t try to assume biomorphic form, they were kind of just plain difficult to relate to. Efficiency and downright usefulness aside, they were still symbols for that turn-of-the-century fear of the dehumanizing side-effects of the Industrial Age.

So perhaps I’m a bit old-school, that robots come off in this way to me. I have pretty much been left behind when the bandwagon of edgy indie hipsters, with their love of monkeys (another uncanny valley thing for me) and robots, left the station. But now it’s a little different, thanks to this ridiculously good movie. And I’m not even going to go at length into why — you know how it is: Pixar brings soulless entity to life with masterful styling; viewer falls for aforementioned soulless entity; viewer develops incongruous but irresistible affinity for all other soulless entities like it. Ta-da! A potential interaction designer is born.

From time to time, I consciously allow myself to be manipulated by Disney. Anyway, next point:

The other thing about Wall•E that struck me as thought-worthy was the response of its right-wing critics. It seems that some extreme rightists take major issue with Wall•E because they view it as a dangerous leftist piece of propaganda designed to scare their children into, heaven forbid, not trashing the Earth. I want to try and be an open-minded fair person here (as I have tried to do throughout the entire spectacle that was the 2008 Presidential Election), and consider why the extreme right might feel this way. But honestly I am failing, and for this reason: Do you have no soul, extreme right? How can you even watch this movie and not have every nerve in your heart be touched by it? Does everything have to ultimately come down to a cheap battle of beliefs? Did you not follow the love story? Did you not notice the beautiful score (which I think, in this case, has got to be as apolitical as it gets), or the stunning technical brilliance, or the endearing plot? Okay, sure, oftentimes in this dangerous modern world, you have to be on guard for being mindwashed by the “enemies,” but are we so utterly jaded and distrustful that we can’t even for a moment put aside the politics we make up and just walk away with a warm feeling from just having witnessed one of the purest, most innocent romances ever concocted by the powers of mass entertainment? Glearrgh!

Huff, huff.

Well, I guess I kinda answered my question with the reference to the Election up there.. yes, sometimes there are people out there who actually believe the seemingly unbelievable. (Or it just seems unbelievable to me because I’m one of them dangerous lefties.) After all, for every piece of great art, there are its fierce detractors. In this country, freedom is law and opinion is sacred. So really, I should just be content that the vast majority of people seem to agree with me that this movie was a masterwork.

But speaking as someone who hopes someday to make art powerful enough to change people’s lives, I cannot entirely be blamed for wanting this movie, or any great piece of art, really, to succeed completely in connecting us, inspiring us, and helping us find what is human and basic and common to all. If love, portrayed in as pure and un-corporal a way as only childlike animated robots can deliver, isn’t what that is, then what is?

Perhaps what this just says is that we, as cultural producers, need to try harder. Wall•E can teach us as much through its success as through its failure. It shows that there is much work to be done, and now is not so much a time to celebrate as to get down to business.

So let’s get down to business! Yeah!

This was the first year I have been able to actually go, and Yang was also there. I had never seen a Revels performance before, though I’d been hearing about it extensively, as my company has had a very close relationship with them and designed a lot of stuff for them in the past. (I even got to do a logo comp for the Revels SummersDay festival, back in my internship days.) I was very excited to finally get to see them performing.

Revels is a tradition-inspired song, dance, and story performance company. They are nationally based, but have a pretty big presence in Boston. Their work is largely focused on celebrating the seasons through joyful family-oriented events/shows, and they take cues from a variety of different ethnic traditions. The Christmas Revels in particular seems to be focused on European traditions, which makes sense as it’s Christmas. Every year the Christmas Revels has a different theme, but there are some unifying recurring elements such as a Mummer’s Play and a Lord of the Dance audience-participation dance. Last year was a spectacular Balkan theme, which Carol says was absolutely stunning and soul-stirring but apparently not very well-received because it was too “esoteric.” (Yeah… what??) So this year they really toned it down. The theme/plot was a loose rendition of Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree, which is essentially a love story, but Revels adapted it to be more of a portrait of a traditional English village celebration of Christmas.

The performance was centered on one of the themes of the book, the dichotomy of tradition/past and innovation/future. Though I found the heavily-accented dialogue hard to understand (costume beards too thick? ^^;) I managed to gather that the light plot was about the arrival of a new harmonium (a symbol of progressive technology at the time) at this little quaint village, and there was an altogether spirited outcry by the townspeople against it replacing the charming old quire and boisterous caroling/mumming tradition. In the end, cherished tradition won over of course, and the children got their parade, and there was much caroling and dancing both joyful and somber.

It was a charming performance through and through, and though I knew close to nothing about English villages and old-school carols, I found myself belting out the lyrics to Donna Nobis Pacem next to a very expertly harmonizing Yang (and, on my other side, co-worker John, who was mumble-singing for all he was worth). Unlike any of the other holiday-season shows I’ve seen in my entire life (and I think I’ve seen a fair share), this one was truly “toned down” in many ways. The costumes were not fabulous by any means, nor where there awesome displays of stage pyrotechnics (there was some snow and dry ice, though), nor dazzling displays of virtuosic skill. There was just good, solid charm, and some beautifully rich singing voices. And, after you walk out of there, you realize you don’t need any of the showy fabulous to really feel fabulous about the season and all it entails.

Additionally, I think the show raises an interesting and forever relevant question: that we should all carefully  consider, as the relentless march of time continues, what things we should keep and preserve for posterity. We should question whether new things can rightfully replace the old just by virtue of being the “latest and greatest.” The answer that Revels proposes is a resounding “no.” That there are traditions that bind together and warm hearts, like songs requiring a crowd’s unified voice to sing, and dances that remind us of the rigors and challenges that humanity has overcome, and all that good stuff, that we should definitely keep. And I think, after seeing Christmas Revels, they are right to believe so.

Happy Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/Winter Solstice, 2008 world… here’s to hoping 2009 is just as songful, danceful, and joyful for all… if not more.

Who knew that Romania had such a turbulent and delirious history? I mean, I was dimly sort of aware that there were dictators and communism and some sort of civil turbulence because after all it’s Central-Easternish Europe, but I wasn’t aware that there was a mad scientist-wannabe (not to be confused with a mad-scientist wannabe), nor that Vlad Tepes of Impaling fame is revered by some even today as a national hero. Other things I didn’t know, but now do: how to pronounce Ceausescu, that Vlad looks actually kinda friendly in portraits, and that Queen Elizabeth II knighted a dictator (but then revoked it). Plays – they really are educational, aren’t they? Even ones about the haziness between truth and lies.

Also, an elderly gentleman had a seizure during the play and an impromptu intermission was called. A medical team arrived within 7 minutes and carted him off to safety in a very efficiently designed folding chair. I’m amazed by the swiftness of medical professionals in the US. I hope the old gentleman is feeling better today.

Plays used to be boring to me. I found them annoyingly unsubtle, what with all the flailing and shouting and exaggerated verbiage. I guess I kind of missed the point back then. Plays are actually very awesome. There is a lot of craft that goes into it. There is makeup, props, and stage design. There is lighting and sound and suspension of disbelief. There is mist and sparks and the audience almost being led to believe it’s a magic show but suddenly being reminded it is a play about “history” and “reality,” or that it is just humans playing human (or bear) parts. (Which is it?) So in the end, the shouting and flailing are what make them so interesting and sometimes touching to watch. It’s seeing humans be at their most heroic – passionate and purposeful, not prim and yeah yeah whatever about it. In plays, actors just can’t be coy about what they’re acting. This is what I’ve discovered, and now thoroughly enjoy.

Though I was somewhat of an anime fan in HS, I’ve gotten a great deal more suspicious since then. Right now I’m of the opinion that anime, as a genre, has some kind of unholy power that other forms of fiction do not, turning otherwise normal people into rabidly obssessive zombies who don’t know (or don’t want to know) the difference between reality and glossy cel-animated dreams. Yang disagrees, citing Trekkies as a cultural group whose fandom is of a magnitude to be seriously reckoned with. But I still think there is a difference. Anime is hyperreal, whereas Star Trek and Dungeons and Dragons and the like are merely fictional. The type of world that anime sucks people into is far more divorced from reality, by being a super-perfect and super-desirable version of it. That, coupled with the fact that it is foreign, and therefore seductively exotic to some, is a recipe for sanity purée.

What was I talking about. Oh, right, Cardcaptor Sakura. For Sakura I make an exception, for the simple reason that it has so much beauty and innocence and sweetness that it will make your heart explode. Strangely enough, once you brave the first 5 episodes, any and all suspicions of anime fan-service crap quickly evaporate. And when you are done watching, you will bask for days in the intense loveliness of a little fictional girl who has precious little logical acumen but copious amounts of heart.

…Which is what I am going through right now, I guess.

There are so many flaws with this show, but oh it is so good. For a little kids’ TV series it has a surprisingly high degree of character depth, plot integrity, and overall complexity. (The animation work itself is impressive too though they seem to have an inability to draw hands.) And the exquisiteness of its love story is rivalled only by the other Tina-shattering work of entertainment of late, Wall-E.

Okay, friends who read my blog, if you have any prejudice against anime like I do, I exhort you to put them aside for a bit and waste I mean devote 30-odd hours of your life to watching the Cardcaptor Sakura series. It will make you a better person. Yes, even you, Elliot, with your manly heart of frosty man-ice. =P