The Classics

School has been very busy, and I haven't taken the time to update what I have been reading, so here goes:

For classes, I read Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet.

Then I read two Shakespeare-derived plays, both entitled Desdemona, the first by Toni Morrison and the second by Paula Vogel. So much more to say about these two adaptations/transformations/feminist reactions of/to Othello.

Lastly, because I went to see The Great Comet on Broadway, I read and am still in the process of reading War and Peace for pleasure. I read the up to the part the musical is based on before seeing it, and now I am continuing on from there. Truly this should count as 3 books. I am enjoying it very much, though, as a break from school-related things.

Shakespeare-Sort-of-Stuff

This week, in preparation for my upcoming fall IB Literature and Performance course, I read Freeing Shakespeare's Voice by Kristin Linklater, an acting and voice theorist I studied in my course at Yale. The book builds on her work of allowing a natural voice to emerge (as opposed to a false, forced, or constrained voice) through centering ideas about character and situation in the body, projecting the voice from there, as opposed to originating in the mind/head, thus creating voice through the throat alone. The book was a good reminder of these principles and offered a number of activities that I can use while teaching Shakespeare specifically.

I also read a farce entitled The Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged). I had heard of this play and seen clips before but decided to read it in order to see if it would be something we could perform here at CA. Still on the fence.

What is a Summer without Harry Potter?

My daughter wanted to re-watch one of the Harry Potter movies, so we chose Chamber of Secrets, not my #1 favorite but I like them all. As we were watching, we were discussing some differences from the book so I decided to reread the book (so much better than the movie). This was a good precursor to what came next -- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It was interesting to revisit the characters but not really a great read. I don't know if that is due to the play form or the impulse to revisit common plot devices. Either way, it felt a bit flip/sparse/cutesy/eh. I love the long world-building descriptions of the book which were missing here with a focus on dialogue. I did think there were some interesting things going on theatrically with lighting effects and time montages, and I am glad I read it and would see a production just to see the way it staged those interesting parts. But I doubt I will reread it on a regular basis for pleasure the way that I do with the original series.

2 books of (somewhat scholarly) non-fiction about women characters in theater

This week, I read two interesting books about women and theater. The first is Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical by Stacy Wolf. I liked it, but it was a little repetitive at points and somewhat intractable in terms of its overarching analysis (it felt a little like a dissertation-turned-book). The second is Women of Will: The Remarkable Evolution of Shakespeare's Female Characters by Tina Packer, the founding artistic director of Shakespeare and Company. I liked this one a lot, although she too has a clear agenda (arguing, for example, that Shakespeare had a life-changing love affair with Aemilia Bassano) and sometimes goes a bit astray on a tangent; however, her lifelong experience with and passion for the works of Shakespeare shines through in the text, making me want to bring her to CA for a performance and go to her workshop in MA. Both books are good resources for one of my extended essay advisees, and both books gave me some meaty things to wrap my brain around as I dive back into specific course planning this August.

I passed the halfway mark and am now at 22!

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat

Danticat is one of my favorite writers, and I especially love her collection of short stories, Krik? Krak! Breath, Eyes, Memory is her first novel, and I've read this novel before, maybe 20 years ago, but most of it I didn't completely remember. This novel is our schoolwide summer read, so the rest of my family will read it eventually too, and we can talk about it. I like how the author channels the voice of Sophie and how her voice changes throughout the four sections as she ages and matures and moves and discovers herself. The novel is filled with a lot of pain, and the ending is not truly redemptive although it can be perhaps read as hopeful. As with most of Danticat's writing, though, there is a beauty that exists alongside of the pain and violence. This coming year, I will teach Krik? Krak! in Lit and Performance, and there is so much crossover between the two books that hopefully we can revisit some of the summer read themes in discussing those stories as well. And have I mentioned that Danticat is coming to our school to speak?!

Proof byDavid Auburn

In my Directing Course last week at Yale, we sat in on some acting classes, and one class was performing a scene from Proof. I had never heard of it but the scene we watched was good, so I decided to read the whole play. It's very good, very tightly constructed, and even when I get to the end, I was still questioning who was right and who was wrong and wondering what was the truth. The scenes may be too adult to use in my acting classes, but I am tempted because there is a lot of good material there: tension, conflict, pretending. There may be a film adaptation of the play -- I will put it on my watch list and maybe get to it eventually, but maybe not this summer break.

Bandette: Presto! (recommended by my 16-year old)

This graphic novel, the first perhaps in a series, is fun and light, a perfect escapist read. The main character is a thief but also a hero who helps prosecute other thieves/lawbreakers. She comes complete with her anonymous helpers, the "urchins" who she contacts by cell phone and who innocuously play baseball or deliver food while all the time helping her catch a criminal or escape her enemies. Also populating this world of Paris (maybe?) are an evil nemesis and a thief rival/friend. 

Oddly, the comic style reminds me very much of a French animated cartoon, also recommended by my daughter: the Miraculous Ladybug:

Summer Reading

At CA, we have a schoolwide faculty read, and each department assigned a summer read as well. For the English Department, I read Why Teach?: In Defense of a Real Education by Mark Edmundson. I generally enjoy books on teaching and find them thought provoking and inspirational. However, I had a few problems with this book (the first being the question mark followed by the colon in the intro -- clunky!). It was not truly a full-length book (which is what I was expecting) but instead a collection of essays or speeches (one a transcription of a commencement speech he gave, for example). And the whole thing was rather speechy, a lot of speechifying throughout. Also, the author repeated himself a lot as if perhaps someone might just read one of the essays or the introduction alone and not feel annoyed at the repetition. I began to feel as if the author was just being lazy and recycling old ideas. There were some interesting nuggets in there that I am sure we will pull out in our department discussion and use to get us thinking productively about teaching. But as to the form, the often condescending tone, and constant references to the dangers of technology, it just wasn't my favorite.

A play about 18th century music and a musical about 20th century NYC

Amadeus

Peter Shaffer, English playwright, died in June. I have read his play Equus and have seen the film version of Amadeus, but both of those things occurred quite a while ago. This past week, I was in a class where we were discussing the dramatic setup of Equus and Shaffer's signature style, so I decided to read and re-read some of his plays, beginning with the play that dramatizes the rivalry between Mozart and Salieri. Apparently, Shaffer wrote and rewrote the climactic scene of the play at least six times over a span of 30 years, changing it for each subsequent performance and published edition; his introduction to this edition talks through all of these changes and their motivation. The play itself was good, and his flow of scenes in the stage directions anticipates the coming of digital projection -- reading his idea made me think of the various backgrounds that inhabit the world of A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. Amadeus is probably not a play I can stage at CA because the main characters are male, the music of Mozart is required live to have a full impact I think, and the show is perhaps too language- and thinking-heavy. I will re-watch the film, perhaps this week, so I can compare that version to the one I read today. 

In The Heights

My daughter has been playing this soundtrack in the car lately, and although the music recalls Hamilton in an early draft kind of way, some of the songs stick with me through the day. Unlike Hamilton, this piece is not a full-through musical but has a substantial book. I wanted to read the full book so that I could get a better sense of the plot that is absent when simply listening to the soundtrack. It's good. Christopher Jackson, who played the original Benny, said (when I heard him speak last week in NYC) that high schools should do this show because it builds the cast into a family. However, I am not sure if we could pull this off. Lots of Spanish speaking and Latin rhythms that are hard for some of my international students and some of my domestic students -- perhaps because my music director admits that the timing is hard for her. But I would consider it depending on the cast because it would be a fun show. I am also going to be on the lookout to see a college or high school production to attend because that always helps me see if it would be something I can see us doing here.

4 Plays and a Novel

This week, I am preparing for various theater-related activities:

1) I am going to see The Color Purple on Broadway on Sunday as one of the shows for the Broadway Teacher's Workshop professional development I am participating in, so I thought I should re-read the novel. It was just as raw as I remember, and I suspect the musical is not as frank in its use of language and discussion of sex and abuse. Before I go, I want to see the film version with Oprah since I've never seen it.

2) I am directing School of Rock at CA next winter and have started planning for it already. I received the libretto as an advance in the mail and read through the script. It will be a fun show for us!

3) I am taking a directing course at Yale, and we had to read three plays that we will use as texts over the 9 days of coursework: The House of Blue Leaves by John Guare, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, and As You Like It by William Shakespeare. I am very familiar with Menagerie since I have read it many times and performed it in high school, but it is an enjoyable re-read. I have read the Shakespeare before too and it is a fun, zany read. The Guare was new to me (I have read his other play Six Degrees of Separation but this one was darker and weirder). It is a black farce that has an underlying social message and a tragic ending, but throughout the play, you may forget that in the comic antics that distract you. This makes the ending/message more poignant. I recommend seeing rather than reading, though, because the tone of the play is not expressed best on the page -- it is a play to be best experienced on stage.

For the next two weeks, I may not have the opportunity to read too much because I will be seeing many plays/musicals (including Hamilton!!) and attending workshops and classes. I had a brief moment of imagining starting a new blog to chronicle and review all the shows I see but maybe that is a challenge for next year.

2 Related Works of Nonfiction

Summer Reading has officially kicked into gear. As has summer listening (podcasts) and summer watching (films and plays). It's very different from the school year because I can just read and watch all day and night and listen to podcasts as I take a walk. What a life.

I was listening to a podcast (maybe Theater People) interview with Sierra Boggess (who currently plays Ms. Mullins in School of Rock on Broadway but who also has played Christine in Phantom and will do so again this Fall in Paris), and she mentioned that the Winter Garden Theater used to be horse stables as she read in the book Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway. Because I like history and theater, I thought it would be a perfect summer read, and Amazon suggested simultaneously reading The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows are Built (Amazon knows me well). So I read both and enjoyed both.

The first was simply historically interesting and enjoyable, but the second may have classroom use as well in that it discusses the structure of a show and how various types of musical numbers come together to craft a perfect show (using musicals as varied as Oklahoma!, Gypsy, The Producers, Music Man, and Book of Mormon). My Lit and Performance students sometimes benefit from that type of instruction in stagecraft when designing their literary stage adaptations...so maybe I will copy some bits or work them into an activity.

In 2 weeks, I am taking a course and the required reading is three plays, so those are next on the list for summer reading (although I may throw in some other things as well since why not?)

Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl

I found this book in a stack left behind by girls in my dorm who left for the summer. I had heard of it from my students and heard it was being made into (or already made into) a movie. So my hunch was that it would be a quick and fun summer read.

It was quick. And I could see that it was trying to be the not The Fault in Our Stars book about teenagers and cancer. But I think I am not the target audience for this book and mostly I didn't like it. The narrative voice, the angst, the teenage boy profanity...ick. Just not my favorite. Something about the ending was slightly redeeming, some glimmer of maturity, revelation.

But mostly I am glad it's over. Bring on book number ten. Time to cleanse the palate.

May/June -- 2 more books (I am up to 8 read for this year so far, not including a few others I reread for classes)

Number One

Sarah Ruhl is a unique contemporary playwright. I have read a number of her plays including Dear Elizabeth, Dead Man's Cell Phone, The Clean House, and maybe a few more. They are all very different in style and tone which makes her an interesting writer to read -- all of the pieces don't sound or feel the same.

I received this book, 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write, as a gift, I think a Christmas gift, maybe from my husband, maybe not, and maybe he or someone else saw it on my wish list. I am not being coy -- I truly cannot remember the origin of this book in my apartment but only know it has been sitting on an endtable in my living room for months when I didn't have time to read it. Sometimes it was buried under other books, and I would forget about it, but when I would see it or remember it, I always wanted to read it because of the title. I feel like this is a title I would write. It speaks to me and about me, I thought.

Over Memorial Day weekend, I flew to North Carolina for my husband's cousin's wedding. I wanted to bring something to read on the plane, and the book happened to catch my eye as I was leaving, so I brought it. Now, I do not like flying very much, but this book was an absolute joy to read. It is a collection of very short essays about this and that, but all of the thises and thats appealed to me.

Many were about theater or children, so I could relate. I first looked at the table of contents and saw something about CATS, so I read that one first. She talked about the strange phenomenon which is CATS, and how she is very familiar with it since her daughter made her watch the video recording of it countless times (I completely related to that since my daughter, too, went through a long a grueling obsession with CATS which I am not sure is completely dormant especially now that a revival is coming to Broadway.) The essay had me laughing on the plane, as Ruhl suggested that the musical is some kind of just retribution for T.S. Eliot's pretentious ways, but how he must be baffled by the leg warmers.

This was a very fast read; I finished it well before we landed in under two hours and reread some of my favorite essays. Having nothing to read on the way back, I reread the whole thing again. It was worth it.

Number Two

Maggie received this book as a prize, and I have heard good things about this author's more recent novel, The Garden of Evening Mists, so I thought I would read it. Classes are done, and I have nothing left to grade until finals come in, and I thought I deserved a reading break.

The novel was okay. It was compelling, and I wanted to find out what happened, so I spent a day and a half starting and finishing it. And it was full of lush description and some interesting characters. BUT...it was also clunky, somewhat overdone, somewhat undone or left undone but in unsatisfying ways. The frame of telling the story of the story and within that, other people telling their backstory, felt too narrative at times. And although I got a good sense of the main character's struggle with mixed identity in his childhood, I am not sure I ever felt resolved that we truly know who he is -- even though the novel suggests that he knows this by the end -- not sure I agree. Maybe this is because it is a first novel.

I still want to read the author's second novel, and reviews of it make it sound similar to this one yet perhaps with more fleshed-out characters. Both are set in Malaysia and deal with the Japanese Occupation (and accompanying violence) of World War II, and some of the writing is based on historical research and some on the author's own life experience. Interesting stuff.

Despite my tepid review, I feel that reading this was a good way to spend a free and rainy Sunday before finals.

Untwine by Edwidge Danticat

I love Edwidge Danticat and have read almost everything she has ever written. The rumor around Cheshire Academy is that she is coming to read/speak here next year, and I am so excited for that author visit. As a tie-in, my Literature and Performance students will read and adapt some of her short stories for their IB Internal Assessment next year.

Last Friday, I was covering for a colleague whose class meets in the library. I arrived early and browsed the shelves to find something to read while the class was working on peer review. The colors in the cover art caught my eye, and I saw this novel, Untwine by Edwidge Danticat. I hadn't heard of it, but scooped it up, excited to check it out.

My first response, to the first few pages, was: "Is this YA?" Now, I read a lot of YA but that response wasn't a positive one necessarily. It felt YA in a way that was too obvious, too overbearing in the storytelling style, and I didn't like it. The book details the story of two twin girls who get into a car crash with their parents and the aftermath of dealing with that tragic day. One twin, an artist, lives and narrates the story; the other twin, a flute player, is present throughout the novel but dies in the crash.

The opening of the story felt redundant. Didn't I read this story already in If I Stay? Is there a mystery here just like in We Were Liars? I was skeptical, annoyed, disappointed, a skeptical reader. I finished it, though; I had to see if Danticat had something else in store for me, and I grew to like it more than the beginning although it never quite lost the YA feel for me.

I might recommend it to my students to read before Danticat visits, and I might recommend it to my daughter, although the death of the flute player as they rushed to a concert, not wanting to be late, seemed a little close to home. Maybe that was another reason it wasn't my favorite read.

2 Quick Reads/Films Featuring Strong Female Protagonists

1. Allegiant by Veronica Roth

My friend and her daughter invited us to go see the film Allegiant over break. I had read the Divergent series a while ago and saw the first film. I liked the books and the first film; the character Tris, while not completely groundbreaking, seemed original and interesting to me.

But I hated this latest film installment. It was just awful.

I thought, "Was the book this bad or what did the film change from the book to make it so bad??" So I decided to reread the book, and it was very different from the film -- the film takes out all of the reasoning and investigating and discovering that happens in the book, and all of that stuff explains the origins of the world and just adds some depth to the plot. The film strips all of that away and the story becomes boring. Apparently, they also want to be The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, so they're splitting the book into two movies -- an unnecessary move, in my view: there's just not enough there.

I am glad that I reread the book, though, just to cleanse my palate.

2. The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera

This novel is also a reread for me, and I also need to watch the film. We are studying this text in my IB Literature and Performance class -- my students' (and my) homework over break was to read it and watch the film. I like the choices the filmmaker makes in adapting the novel and transforming the mythological stories of the Ancients and the Whales into the magical realism depicted the film. I am looking forward to hearing what my students think about this novel and its adaptation, They will eventually write an exam paper detailing how they would adapt the novel to the stage, and they have been so creative all year that I think this text will inspire their best work all year.

A Book That Is More Than 600 Pages

This week, to further my Hamilton obsession, I read the biography of Alexander Hamilton written by Ron Chernow -- 738 pages long without the notes. Hamilton was a brilliant, mad, haughty, insecure man -- and the biography succeeded in capturing the complex and contradictory sides of him. For me, the book was additionally interesting because I could see places where Lin-Manuel Miranda lifted actually lines or phrases from history to use in lyrics, or in rap battles. It also interested me where he chose to edit or adapt history for his own purposes to create a tighter plot or to enhance the musical's central conflict between Hamilton and Burr. The reading certainly captivated me, and I supplemented it with various internet searches to fill in some questions that I had about minor characters and find interviews with Miranda about the making of the musical. Throughout the entire reading experience, however, I played the Hamilton soundtrack in my head (and listened to it while driving). The musical is also brilliant and mirrors perfectly the story of Hamilton's life in its size, scope, grandness, and irreverence. The words are etched in my brain, and I cannot wait to see it on Broadway in July.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

It's Spring Break, and I wanted to read something fun yet thought-provoking -- my go-to genre is dystopian fiction, and Station Eleven is a book that has been on my to-read list for a while. How can I summarize the novel? It is a story of a post-apocalyptic Traveling Symphony/Shakespeare Troupe. It is the life story of an actor, now dead, and all he touched in his "six degrees of separation." It is a story of what matters in life and what doesn't, although that part is blurry, both before and after the pandemic flu that wipes out most of the world. It is a journey that has a similar plot device and philosophic bent as The Road, but less of its heart-wrenching description and gore. More to simply think about without any of the accompanying nausea.

It was an easy read; I finished it in two days. But it's the kind of book that I want to immediately reread to pick out all the nuances I missed the first time around. There's a lot there and a lot to think about. Based on the content and the style (lyrical, like a symphony), I am left with an expansive feeling of beauty (despite the emptiness and destruction amply depicted in the novel), but that beauty comes with strings attached. It doesn't come with the revelation of the big things in life that matter -- it comes with a question of what truly matters. Do the relationships the actor (either one) has with other people matter? Are they important and were they real? Or are they akin to the collection of ephemera located in the Museum that houses relics like iPhones and licenses from before the collapse of civilization. Do words matter, either the text of King Lear or the dialogue bubbles from the surviving comic book or the last words recorded on a phone message or the strange corporate-speak colloquialisms left over from another era? Two characters cling to words from the comic book, some meaning they try to cobble together from the past, but one character uses those words in a search for connection and the other uses them to condone the violence he forces upon others. As the narrative perspective shifts from person to person, we see those connections being made but also connections lost: many plot elements converge in the end, but others are simply dropped (whatever happened to Elizabeth?). Clearly, this is a theme of the post-apocalyptic world, but the flashes back to life before the pandemic remind us that it is also a theme of the world before even if it was sometimes not examined in their fast-paced, high-tech lifestyle.

I recommend reading this as I did, with the soundtrack from Hamilton playing during the breaks from reading as I drove my daughter around to her obligatory rehearsals. That made for an even more lyrical and philosophical reading experience.

Railsea by China Miéville

Right before school started in January, I read Railsea. I think I will count it as a book given to me by a family member, since my husband read it and told me to read it.

The story is set in a dystopian future (always enjoyable for me to read), and the narrator is an orphaned teen who doesn't quite know where he fits in. So far, it sounds a lot like many other novels in the teen dystopian genre. But this teen lives in a land filled with waterless oceans of train tracks -- the railsea -- and he travels on a "ship" out hunting a giant white mole. The mole lives underneath the surface and is as elusive as he is large, but the ship is captained by a persistent, somewhat maniacal, woman who seeks the creature that devoured her hand (bonus Peter Pan reference).

The parallels to Moby Dick (especially considering the author's last name) make this a fascinating story of "sailing" on land hunting the captain's nemesis. But the narrator also develops his own quest -- to unravel a mystery revealed to him in a brief glimpse of pictures found in one of the wrecked ships the crew encounters. Along the way, he meets two other orphans who are smart, technologically savvy, and independent. They remind me of the children from A Series of Unfortunate Events or Pippi Longstocking. The three set off on a perilous journey to fulfill their own personal goals but end up discovering the peculiar origin of the Railsea.

If you like dystopian fiction and young adult novels, this book is sure to entertain -- it has a fun, familiar structure but is set in a unique and creative landscape. I am glad to have read it and would read it again -- but first, I need to reread Moby Dick (which I read as a teenager for school -- a long time ago!) so I can get all the subtle references that I am sure I missed this time around. Maybe that will be the next book on my list...

Here is a link to a review from NPR:

 http://www.npr.org/2012/05/10/152206508/china-mievilles-railsea-moby-dick-remixed

2016 Reading Challenge

A friend of mine posted a link to this 2016 Reading Challenge last week: (click on the link for a printable version)



One of my New Year's Resolutions is to "live my life a little" during the school year (not just work all the time and not do anything else). Last year, I read a lot of books over the summer but not very many during the school year. So I thought that maybe this nifty little scavenger-hunt-like list might be a fun way to try doing some reading. There are 40 items on the list to check off over the course of the year, so I don't think I will need to stress about it -- it will just be fun.

Up next -- the first book!