I can’t even begin to imagine how those families feel – getting the good news last night and today getting the correction.
I find a report of Bush’s condolences about the miners in a Chinese paper – not surprising, really, as coal miners die in China pretty much every month and their deaths go unreported or under-reported.
My condolences to the families, and a wish for freedom from guilt for that one guy who survived.
(If you haven’t worked it out, my grandparents & much of their generation were anthracite miners around the turn of the century.)
Five Questions With… Bradford Louryk
Bradford Louryk created and performs in Christine Jorgensen Reveals – as Christine Jorgensen herself. In the play, he lipsynchs a recorded interview with Jorgensen that was conducted by Nipsey Russell and recorded in 1958. The show, as directed by John Hecht, has garnered rave reviews, including at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Louryk did his BA at Vassar, and has acted at varied theatrical venues, from Studio 42 (of which he was a founding member) to Playwrights Horizons to hERE. Christine Jorgensen Reveals plays in New York until January 28th.
1. How has this piece affected your understanding of gender? Is this the first time you’ve played a woman?
This is not the first time that I’ve played a woman, but it’s the first time I’ve played an historical human being who happens to have been a woman. My previous experiences were with Greek tragic heroines – Klytaemnestra, Elektra, Medea, Phedre – and with biblical figures – Judith from the story of Judith and Holofernes, and I’m currently developing a piece about The Virgin Mary called “Version Mary.†I like to stretch myself as much as I can as an actor every time I’m onstage. Whether that’s through language or physicality or playing the opposite sex, I always want to grow as a performer through whatever role I’m creating.
That said, since I first became aware of cross-gendered casting as a politicized choice (when I was exposed to Charles Ludlam’s writing) when I was about 15 years old, I have understood gender as a fluid construct. Thus, my approach isn’t about being male or being female, but about realizing the character in an honest manner. Men are not exclusively masculine and women are not exclusively feminine, thus, when you paint your character with details from the spectrum of what we understand gender to be, you arrive at – I hope – a fully rounded person, with whom the audience can interact.
Continue reading “Five Questions With… Bradford Louryk”
Back to Normal
All of the parts of this website are functioning normally again, so you don’t need your special bookmarks to access the boards or my blog anymore. FYI.
Buy Gas at Citgo
Citgo is the only oil/gas company in the US that’s offering discounted home heating oil costs to lower income neighborhoods this winter. All the others are making their usual fast buck.
Back From DO
We’re back from our 4th DO, and once again – we had a blast. (More when I’m not exhausted.)
1/2/06 = #1
NCTE’s 52 Things You Can Do for Transgender Equality:
#1 Take a Trans Person to Lunch.
Two Books
I was just reading some of Curve magazine book reviews, and came upon a couple of books I thought people here might be interesting to people here.
Here’s one about this nation’s “founding feminists,” called Sisters: The Lives of America’s Suffragists.
(Note that she uses the correct term, suffragists, and not the derogatory ‘suffragettes’, in her title.)
For you musicheads, there’s one about the rise of queer rock via Homocore called Homocore: The Loud and Raucous Rise of Queer Rock.
Happy 2006!
May you all have a happy, healthy, peaceful 2006.
While We're at DO…
… we thought Aurora should keep you company. She’s sitting here with two favorite toys: 1) the self-made ball o’foil on a string, and 2) my bullwhip. No-one should be surprised that the bullwhip is her favorite toy, since we found her at DO, after all.
(The bullwhip, btw, was not given to me for any reasons you’d imagine. In fact it was given to me by a friend who went to Turkey, and who thought of me when she saw it – because I am a huge Raiders of the Lost Ark fan. Perverts.)
What To Do
Okay, here’s another of those beautiful parts of the Narnia books, another of the parts that makes me love these books more and more over the years:
Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later and then you still have to decide what to do. – C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair
You can put “being angry” in the place of “crying” and – same thing. My grandmother used to say similar things. A long time ago, when one of my brothers was having a hard time with his life, dealing with addiction and divorce and some other heavy problems, and he said something to her about how rough things were. I can’t say she was sympathetic, except she was; the woman went through one world of hell in her lifetime. But what she said was “At some point, you have to put your pants on and go outside.”
To me, they’re similar sentiments: you still have to decide what to do.