Viva Christmas!

I'm gearing up to see El Vez's Viva Christmas tour on December 18. What a perfect antidote to the Holiday Blahs - a new show backed by Los Straightjackets and sure to be filled with humor, political critique, and rock and roll. I am excited to see how this new show gets me thinking in new ways.

I just sent off an article on El Vez's use of spectacle, irony, and entertainment. In it, I condense a lot of the arguments I made in my dissertation, suggesting that El Vez is able to pierce through stupefying Debordian spectacle by picking up the ultimate spectacular joke - Elvis. Elvis becomes the common access point to a show that radically revises the political, social, and consumerist tropes that surround us. By embracing spectacle, humor, and entertainment, El Vez effectively flips our encounters with pop culture, allowing us to critically assess prejudice and injustice through a thoroughly pleasurable performance event. More news if it gets published.

Dramaturgy Workshop, RUR Have Come and Gone

It has been a very busy past few months.

I had a lovely time working with the students of ASU in our two-part dramaturgy workshop. An excellent and excited group of students participated - they were so engaged and had so many questions for me. It's exciting to know that dramaturgy strikes a chord of interest among students. There's at least a few budding dramaturgs in Tempe doing interesting work and learning more and more about the field.

R.U.R. at Caltech was extremely successful. It was a joy to stage this play - there's so much in it that comes to life when staged and not solely read. Kudos to our actors and artistic team. We completely transformed Dabney Lounge into a working theatre space and created a funny, yet poignant telling of the story.

It was really wonderful to immerse myself in Karel Capek's world - both the fictional world of the play and the historical one of the Czechoslovak Republic. His commitment to democracy comes through in his essays, and his insouciant wit make the reading delightful and touching.

Next up: Pasadena Babalon by George Morgan.