David X Novak
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What is a legacy?

8/5/2019

 

The archives to this blog seem to be somewhat in disorder. Beyond the lack of Google indexing (for some pages), Weebly (which powers the site) appears to have disappeared numerous previous entries.

I say appears because it may be I simply can’t find something; I never have spent sufficient time here to “test” the health of the site. And I don’t value my scribblings so much as to devote time to sorting things out.

To say “I refuse henceforth to post on this site” goes against my grain; but with a five-year anniversary of posting here forthcoming on August 31st, I would like to do so. I’ll leave the option open, sans prohibition.

With the Anthropocene firmly holding, and humankind en masse failing to take the steps necessary to avert the worst of it, the time for worrying on self-preservation (that is to say, preservation of my things) has gone.

Ignition New Plays Festival at Victory Gardens Theater (Part 2)

8/4/2019

 

For Part 1 see here.

Briefly: another mass shooting by a disaffected white male (this in Dayton, Ohio—home of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar), and for me, in Chicago, the last day of Victory Gardens Theater’s new plays reading festival Ignition.


The two plays I saw were the best of the lot (mind you I missed two): [hieroglyph] by Erika Dickerson-Despenza and The Gradient by Steph Del Rosso. The first was my favorite. The story felt primal like Aeschylus, compactly telling about a child’s rape in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. The acting was unambiguously strong. The second was a flawless tour de force more along the lines of something Tom Stoppard would do.

The plays were all billed as “works in progress,” but it was hard to see where many of them could be improved upon. Of the four I saw, Exal Iraheta’s was the weakest; but he also presented as the youngest, least experienced playwright. Geraldine Inoa’s was the most ambitious; Act II or the second half flailed, but the story held. Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s was the most perfectly realized, without slack, and a serious sincerity of purpose. Del Rosso’s was perfectly executed, with a strong cast, providing laughs by the minute, but probably not a lot of substance there to bear repeated viewing or prolonged reflection.

In between shows, a panel of playwrights sat for an hour, comprised of Exal Iraheta, Erika Dickerson-Despenza, and two whose plays I did not see: Meghan Brown and Keelay Gipson. The conversation ran the gambit; questions or comments ran away from moderator Chay Yew’s initially-set parameters toward the end, making for an unsatisfying conclusion, and one heavily self-enamored voice seemed to hog the bulk of the conversation (mainly in response to moderator questions).

Somebody I overheard before showtime stated that Keelay Gipson’s play was the worst of the festival; but Gipson himself seemed like he had the most interesting things to say, so I question the assessment. Would that he had had more opportunity to speak. One surprising thing he said—an important lesson that he had only begun to learn after some experience—is that he would not let other people write his plays for him.

It’s an odd postulate—to let others write “your” play—and you almost wonder how he initially had come by such an odd formulation. Almost, I say, because the workshop industry is no new phenomenon.

Ignition New Plays Festival at Victory Gardens Theater

8/3/2019

 
​
Victory Gardens Theater is having its new plays festival Ignition this weekend. Today I attended two readings, missing Friday evening’s opening with #Newslaves by Keelay Gipson. I would have liked to stay for a third (this evening’s The Tasters by Meghan Brown), but two plays consecutive is about my limit.

This morning’s performance of They Could Give No Name by Exal Iraheta was topical and well-acted. As with Inching Towards Yeolha by Sam-Shik Pai, it contained a supernatural element which held the story together. Plays about immigration—in this case deaths at the southern border—seem hackneyed by now; but with the United States government having established detention camps (mirroring some of the worst of colonialism’s endemic disease-and-abuse-ridden concentration camps) and a mass shooting this morning at an El Paso Walmart with the white gunman apparently denouncing Hispanic “invaders” of formerly Mexican territory, the subject and its themes could not be more pressing. (The play failed to address either reasons for migration or the terrorist response by white males who claim to feel threatened by it.)

Reckoning: Furies from a New Queer Nation by Geraldine Inoa, although seeming to be in a less-finished state than the previous play, was nevertheless more powerful. The two main protagonists were an interracial (black/white) homosexual couple, and the trials (and ultimate dissolution) of their relationship due to structural racism and unexamined privilege on the part of the white partner the central storyline. Some of the acting was phenomenal, and one would hope to see the play mounted with nearly the exact cast. With two strong, sympathetic leads, deficiencies in the script fell by the wayside. The first half felt well-wrought and just about perfect; the second half fell into disorder almost immediately, consisting largely of harangues against the audience either direct or indirect. The feeling was of getting lectured—lectures that no doubt need to be heard—in lieu of tight drama; however the strong connecting thread of the main relationship held the disparate themes loosely together.

Inevitably I questioned my own activities in theater. With impending climate catastrophe, if topical themes be addressed, I want them to include today’s existential peril. My playwriting career effectively ended with the last presidential election and what it portended. If given the chance, I doubt that I could adequately manage the themes of this younger generation of playwrights. I doubt the value of drama—writing plays or playgoing. Even posting here, one is torn between the striving for normalcy despite crisis conditions (oftentimes a laudable endeavor) and a single-focused devotion to the politics of climate destruction.

Review of Strange Heart Beating

8/1/2019

 
Here at Rescripted is a new, and nice, review of Strange Heart Beating which I saw on the 28th July. I was noting it, not aiming for a review. If I were capable of such, I would want my review to be like Elon Sloan’s. It conveys precisely what I felt about the show but was unable to express.

Too bad that the show is getting such a review days after it has already closed; still, I suppose, a review is useful so as to “register” in the public eye, something extraordinary that has happened. “Extraordinary” here in the sense that it is not usual; heaping effusive and unmodulated praise is not the point.
    Picture

    News?

    A new poem is always news to the poet.
    ​Or whatever.

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