Michael the Girl

In Which Our Heroine Despairs

I'd planned today's post to be a quick analysis of Glen Berger's The Wooden Breeks. I saw it last night at the Lucille Lortel with my roommate. At one point it reminded me of (thematically and, in a weird way, geographically) of Haruki Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

But there's all sorts of things on the web and in the news today that would make excellent jumping off points for posts I want to write. Reviews for Daniel C. Dennett's new book about religion are out. As is the State Department's report on human rights abuses. The NYTime's finally ran a review of HBO's Big Love and The Village Voice got a nice Octavia Butler obit printed. Plus the state of Nebraska is a right wing looney bin and Abu Ghraib is being handed over to people who disguise death squads as the highway patrol. And the Democrats have decided to be racist bastards in an attempt to gain a political victory rather than just let the UAE company run the ports. Plus Apple has announced a monthly subscription to the Daily Show which, combined with the cable companies' idiotic idea of al la carte channels is the first death knell of programming, channels and television as we know it (oh come on, you knew it was coming.) And finally, Harper's has an article on flash mobs that takes on the "scenesterism" of the hipster/indie movement (although, I think it fails to convey the truly hollow and pathetic nature of the ones I've dated. Yuck documentary filmmakers).

And, rather than actually sit down and try to sort out a thoughtful analysis of any of this, I spent my morning trying to hunt down an ex-boyfriend, who I am now quite convinced never existed. Or he lives in Santa Monica, which is the same thing.

Murakami/Berger? Geo-politics? The day the TV died? I hate Williamsburg?

I think it is safe to assume that the world will be a madhouse next week and I can be my anti-torture, pro-choice, anti-/pro- religious waffling self.

The Wooden Breeks it is!

Glen Berger is awesome. I want to meet him. I would tell him how much I adored Underneath the Lintel, his truly astonishing monologue of a play. It was genius. He writes about BIG THEMES: memory, storytelling, love, journey, history, family. These are the themes of the best modern theater. Plays like Arcadia, Mnemonic, Wings, TexArkana Waltz and In On It (personal favorites, all) are about these themes. And writing a good play that is also a BIG THEMATIC play is tough. It took Tony Kushner some eight hours of stage time and a whole bunch of Angels and Nietzsche to pull it off. And Berger doesn't quite.

I'll finish this later. But for now: posting for the quota.

posted by Mike @ 1:15 PM