Making an entrance
Elizabeth Kramer reviewed the Actors Theatre production “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity” on the C-J site today. The play is narrated by a pro-wrestling underling named Macedonio Guerra, who believes in wrestling as an all-American art form with the power to tell true stories. Guerra’s grace and skill in the ring, however, are wholly devoted to making sure the headlining wrestler, Chad Deity, looks good. As the plot develops, Guerra sees an opening to create a new storyline for himself and his fast-talking friend from New York, V.P. They’re frustrated, however, by the grotesque stereotypes that their ignorant boss forces them to pantomime–Guerra is given the role of a sneering Mexican revolutionary, complete with bullet belts, and the Indo-American-Brooklynite V.P. is remade as the Fundamentalist, a cartoon of an Islamic terrorist. In her review Elizabeth writes, in part:
The script, which was a finalist for a 2010 Pulitzer Prize, has zingers that present opportunities for the performers to strut their stuff, both figuratively and literally. The results are often hilarious, and the audience at the Thursday performance was lapping it up and laughing at some of the over-the-top antics.
I also saw the play last night, and can affirm that the audience was very, very responsive. I find audiences in Louisville, on the whole, a highly enthusiastic bunch–they seem to be enjoying themselves more than typical audiences in other cities I’ve lived in, and performers appreciate it. In this case, though, the actors seemed to be rushing in to deliver their lines over the crowd’s cheers and laughter, losing important bits of dialogue. This was odd, since the play explicitly calls for audience participation–and Actors has planted volunteers in the rows to incite cheering and boos.
And the actors in this production certainly earned the audience’s enthusiasm. The play demands both good comic delivery and some pretty impressive gymnastic feats–this is, after all, a play about pro wrestling, and, yes, there are on-stage fights. Elizabeth disliked the use of video screens and some of the staging, but to me the video succeeded in jogging my memory of what pro wrestling actually looks like on TV–wobbly handheld work, lots of sweaty closeups, dumb graphics. My only quibble with the technical aspect of the show relates to the sound mix–some dialogue, music and effects are delivered on-mic, as if to an arena audience, while the rest is off-mic, and the resulting dynamic yo-yoing hurt the audibility of some lines.
It’s a bit of a risk, staging a play about a sport that (it’s probably safe to say) few ATL patrons pay much attention to. Although the play satirizes pro wrestling, it does ask us to believe, with Guerra, that it has some genuine beauty–even if that artfulness is buried under layers of crass commercialism and hokey spectacle. The plot twists in the second half felt nearly as melodramatic as the outre narratives played out in the ring, however, and Guerra’s redemption is related second-hand, by V.P.–this seems odd, since Guerra has been such a reliable and verbose narrator of his own story up to that point. But ultimately, the play seeks to affirm Guerra’s belief that pro wrestling, for all its artifice, can tell us a real American story about hard work, ambition, passion and the power of money.
John Jeremiah Sullivan
One of the interviews last year that I was most excited about (and most dreaded) was with John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of “Pulphead,” a tremendous book of essays that ended up on many critics’ top ten lists for 2011. The book collects Sullivan’s long-form journalism from places like GQ and the Paris Review, but also some straight cultural criticism like a devastating essay about Michael Jackson. He can write spectacularly–fireworks and flash, whiplash-quick changes in register and tone writing about ex-Real World stars, for example–but can also go completely subdued when the subject demands. It’s the kind of book that you have to force yourself to read slowly, to take in sentence by sentence, rather than devouring it as its delectableness compels.
Sullivan’s father worked as a sportswriter for the Courier-Journal. Sullivan’s 2004 memoir “Blood Horses” recounts his memories of visiting the paper’s offices as a kid. One of the things that didn’t make it into the piece was his memory of the constant inebriation of the reporters, including his father. This is not, needless to say, a legacy that continues at the paper (as far as I can tell).
Writer’s Block festival reads all over
Photo: Kylene Lloyd/C-J
The Writer’s Block Festival, being organized by Louisville Literary Arts, kicks off tomorrow (Friday) night at the Bard’s Town, 1801 Bardstown Road. The lineup includes Kevin Wilson, author of the NYT bestselling novel “The Family Fang.” Festivities continue on Saturday on East Market Street with some panel discussions (on screenwriting and what editors really want, among other topics), readings from local authors, and a print fair. The print fair might actually be the most fun part – going around to all the small presses and seeing what they have on offer. I wrote a piece advancing the fest earlier this week in the C-J.
Ingrid Betancourt
My interview with Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian presidential candidate who was kidnapped by the FARC and held captive for 6 years, ran in yesterday’s Courier-Journal. She gave an exceptional interview: lucid, expressive, generous with her recollections of an unimaginably difficult ordeal. My favorite part of the interview, though, came when she talked about what happened after her rescue–she had to find a new life. She was no longer a politician, a wife, a mother of teenage kids. All the most important aspects of her identity had been taken from her by this 6 year interruption:
“Finding a new purpose in life, finding a new meaning in life, a new activity, all those thing that when you are 18 they come so easy — when you are 45 it’s not that easy.”
Art house / haunted house
Todd Haynes stood on the mezzanine level of the Palace Theatre in Louisville and gave notes to an actor on how to discover that his body is melting. “You’re looking across the crowd and then it’s like: Oh shit, what’s happening to me?” Haynes said. An assistant stood by with a smoke machine whose tube fed up through the actor’s Victorian rags.
Haynes had come to Louisville from his home in Portland for a concert. The director of Far From Heaven, I’m Not There, and Mildred Pierce was about to shoot a performance of the band My Morning Jacket to be streamed live on YouTube. In an interview before he came to town, Haynes told me he planned to frame the concert with some pre-cut narrative scenes that involved this undead character variously referred to on set as “the creature” or “the monster.” In trailers for the show, the monster had appeared in the form of a hologram; he seemed to represent an antique vision of a Jules Verne future. It fit with the hallucinatory rococo style of the Palace.
Haynes wore dark jeans, New Balances, and a Mr. Peanut t-shirt that read “Everyone Loves A Nut.” He had brought along Ed Lachman, who has served as director of photography on several Haynes productions, as well as Marina Draghici, costume designer for “Fela!,” and Affonso Gonçalves, his editor on Mildred Pierce. The team thus arrayed suggested that the entire Haynes firepower would be directed at a few minutes of incidental footage to accompany a live-streamed show. It seemed, in short, like pretty spectacular overkill.
tUnE-yArDs review
I don’t really have occasion to write music reviews for the paper, but I sneaked one in recently under the “obsession” item – I think this record qualifies since I’ve had it on repeat since I picked it up.
Read all over
Twice this weekend I met people who said they had read my writing in a point/counterpoint feature the paper runs on Fridays called “The Argument.” The first person to mention this was a movie producer and sort of local cultural impresario. The second was a Somali immigrant who is studying at one of the colleges in town.
It’s nice to meet people who read the paper. But these encounters both knocked me slightly off-balance, because the Argument represents the writing I put the least amount of effort and preparation into. It’s strictly a feed-the-beast exercise–it can be fun to write, but it’s never particularly polished. It requires us to stake out absolute positions on questions about which we typically do not have particularly strong opinions (“Columbus Day: Does It Matter?”).
It’s another reminder that a lot of people really do read the paper, and that everything we do is under the microscope–whether it merits the attention or not.
Another Twitter trend story
I wrote another Twitter trend story, the pb+j of culture journalism. This one was pretty fun to write, though–it’s about parody Twitter feeds, like the Kaplans and Rahms. Romenesko linked to it, too, which is a great reason to read it.
The late shift
I covered the overnight shift at the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition construction site in Fairdale, Kentucky the night before a big storm hit. The ABC show was building a house for the Lampes, a family of six whose house was by all reports cramped and moldy. They live out on a secluded rural road, so coming upon the site all lit up like Cape Canaveral was surreal. The show’s construction work is like a parody of the recent home building boom. The builders really do work around the clock, coordinating hundreds of volunteers all working on different aspects of the site. It was a remarkable show of logistical control. The piece focuses on Rocky Pusateri, who ran the overnight shift for the main contractor on the job and whose unflappability during a midnight crisis was impressive to see.
David Sedaris
To advance his reading at the Kentucky Center on Monday, the newspaper ran a Q&A I did with David Sedaris. We talked about his new book, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, which for fans of Sedaris’s personal essays in the New Yorker and on This American Life is kind of a strange book–it’s a collection of animal fables. They’re as sharply observed as all of his work, but they’re also kind of grim.
Why animal fiction? “Well, I was wondering how I might alienate as many people as possible,” he said.
Sedaris is an extremely cordial interviewee. He takes time to answer at length. He laughs politely at your jokes. And a few days later, I received a postcard with jokes collected from his book tour. Astounding!
Update: I’m aware that I’m not unusual in receiving a post-interview postcard from Sedaris. Another reporter told me before my interview to expect one, but I didn’t quite believe it until it appeared.
