#There could be a behind the scenes feature during the intermission to show all the special effects

[livingmeatloaf]

There is only one way to make a truly wonderful Avatar adaptation, not matter how bad it turns out to be:

A professionally shot, full length stage production of the Ember Island Players' Fire Nation propaganda version of the events

[wavesmp3]

[ksw] clouds

sunwoo x reader

wc. 5k warnings: medical inaccuracies, death, illness, hospitals, overall just a pretty heavy piece genre can only be described as an absolute mess inspired mainly by san junipero but also slightly by charlie kaufman and wong kar wai

a/n: this is supposed to be told nonlinearly but like the creation of it was very messy so i have no clue if it actually worked, so good luck trying to make this piece make sense of this :) 

act iii. scene iii.

Sunwoo sits and watches the sun shift from pink and blue to an impossible shade of green. And it’s then he knows that without a doubt Clara has ruined the color green for him. Because instead of marveling at the color of the sky, Sunwoo is reminded of the doors in her apartment building.

“Thought I might find you here.” The voice of a stranger who Sunwoo loved once upon a time says behind him. He tries like hell not to turn around. Not to lean back towards the voice and wait for your hand on his shoulder or your shin knocking familiarly against his back. He focuses on the waves crashing below instead. The roar of the water beneath him is deafening, but only if you let it be. He does, and he almost forgets that you’re behind him.

“Where’d you go?” You ask, now sitting next to him, tugging at the long grass. 

“I’m right here.”

“And what about in there?” You bring a finger up and poke at the side of his forehead. 

He turns to you, facing you in full. He takes in your features like it’s the first time all over again. And, oh, he wishes he knew before how many firsts you already had together. This is just another. This is just the first time he’s seen you in the past six months and remembered the thousands of times he’s seen your face before. 

He studied your cheeks. The one he now recalls running the back of his palm over after you left for the Cloud. 

He memorizes, for the millionth time, your eyes. He used to swear they were darker than they are, but then he saw them in the sun. He was dying back then; then he saw your eyes and you saved him. Just like that. 

Mr. Choi was right of course. As he always must be. You and him are like an old married couple. Not like. You are. Almost were. 

“I had lunch with Mr. Choi today.” He tells you. 

You squint at him. “I know. It’s Thursday.” You pull out a piece of the grass. “What’d he make?”

“Ramen.”

“Was it good?”

“It was okay.”

“Too spicy?”

Suwnoo answers with a sigh, looking away from you and back towards the water. The deafening waves crash against the cliffside. “I know you looked at your file.” He finally says. You stop pulling at the grass. You still. “Mr. Choi told me.”

After he says it, there’s a silence that isn’t actually silent at all. The waves rage below his feet. The seagulls are there too, beneath, above, somewhere, everywhere. And then, of course, there’s you and Sunwoo, trying to be silent over the static in your heads and the machines you’re hooked up to in a universe far far away. 

“Did he tell you about my file?”

He looks at you again. “No.”

“Oh.” You look away, brows furrowed, lick your lips, and then turn back to him. “So why are you upset?”

“After he told me, I went and I…”

“You didn’t.”

“I looked at mine.”

There’s another silence, except that this time it really is quiet. Sunwoo read once whilst in a rabbit hole of medical research that true silence only happens in a vacuum, where there is no medium for sound waves to travel through. This must be that. This place, the files, Mr. Choi and Mr. Chan, Clara and her apartment building full of green doors--it’s a vacuum. And they stick people in it then call it the Cloud. They call it extra time. But it isn’t. It’s nothing and he’s stuck in the middle of it. So Sunwo stares at you, straight through the vacuum of time and space you’re both lost in, waits for you to say something, and then waits for himself to hear it. 

“You looked?” You finally say, voice folding in on itself. 

“Yes.” Sunwoo’s own voice is barely there. You must be reading his lips which you’ve always been good at anyways. 

“So you know now?” 

“I always knew, and now, I remember.”

act i. scene iv.

There’s been an accident. 

That’s what they say when the sun falls out of the sky and the world starts spinning in the wrong direction. It’s how they show up at Sunwoo’s door painted in shades of blue and red, with authority in their arms and hands on their hips. How they prepare him for the looming moment where they rip past his skin, blood, bone to shoot a gun straight at his heart. I’m so sorry for your loss, they say leaving him with a bullet lodged somewhere between his left and right atrium. 

And those are the four words that play over and over and over in Sunwoo’s head as he gets to the hospital. Those are the words that crawl inside his open chest and turn him blue and black with infection. There’s been an accident, he remembers, staring at the extraordinary measures taken to keep your heart beating and lungs beating. This is it. Except that the accident isn’t that you’re dying, but that you’re dying. It’s always supposed to have been him. He’s supposed to be the one stuffed with tubes and hooked up to monitors, the one whose life is hanging on by a thread, and you’re supposed to be the one that saves him. It all feels like a play that’s gone horribly wrong because everyone switched parts after intermission without telling him. At what point did you steal the role of dying protagonist from him? 

We did everything we could, a stranger in a white coat says. Except that it’s not some stranger, it’s your colleague and co-worker because this is the hospital you work at and the hospital Sunwoo met you in. There was too much damage to the brain, they explain as the image of their tear-stricken face goes from your friend during intern year to the doctor who operated on you as your brain went dead. 

“We have two options, right?” Sunwoo is far too familiar with surgery and all this. He knows from his hospital days what’s supposed to happen next. But apparently, things have changed since then. 

“Actually, there’s a third option.”

Sunwoo doesn’t waste a second. He jumps out of the chair stained red from his bleeding heart and asks: “What is it?”

“We can upload them.”

act iii. scene ii.

In fifty days of living in the cloud, Sunwoo has learned all about the people that he shares a building with. There’s Mr. Chan who lives behind a vomit green on the same floor as him and who hasn’t left his room since last January. There’s also Mr. Choi, who lives behind the emerald door and invites Suwoo over for lunch every Thursday. Clara lives upstairs, where the walls are painted in various shades of green--olive, seaweed, moss, hunter, shamrock, sage, and others that Sunwoo tries not to think too deeply about. He’s only met Clara once in the past fifty days and has no particular wish to see her again. He hadn’t expected her to be a kid. Cancer, you told him after their introduction in the lobby, poor girl was only seven. As said before, Sunwoo tries not to think about it. 

And then of course there’s you behind the forest green door who has been slowly showing him all the good places. There’s the beach where you spent the day making seashell necklaces. The  cafe which serves its tea too sweet for him, but sweet enough to be considered your favorite. Sunwoo just gets the chocolate bread. You took him downtown. To a club. The tallest building. And to midtown where the amusement park is. 

But his favorite place you’ve taken him so far is the cliffside above the beach, where the waves crash against the rocks in a way that can only be described as violent. That day you and him laid in the grass and stared at the clouds with your heads dangling just over the edge and water spraying the backs of your necks. That day you turned to him and told him you’re sorry. For what, he asked. I’m so sorry you’re sick, you said, but it’s nice to have you around here. I think in a sense, we’ve both been waiting for this. Then, you smiled and stole all of the blood from his body. So yeah, that day, that place--it’s his favorite. 

Today, you take him on a hike up a mountain. 

“Do you believe in an afterlife?” You ask him after having spent thirty minutes silently staring at the view from the best peak. 

“One after this?”

“Yeah. I guess. Although, I’m not so convinced this counts.”

“I don’t know.” Sunwoo shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Do you think we’d be able to be with our loved ones in it?”

His chest lurches. “If there is one, yes.”

“Do you think it’ll be different than this?”

Sunwoo turns to you finally. “Why are you asking about this?”

You shake your head. “Nevermind. It’s a stupid question.”

He turns back towards the view. From here, he can make out Clara’s building. He thinks about her, about Mr. Choi and Mr. Chan, who he recently found out were once married but who haven’t spoken since Mr. Chan read his file in January, and he thinks about you and about him. 

“I think,” Sunwoo says, loud enough so that you can hear after wandering a little bit away from him, “that whatever the afterlife is, if it does exist, it’ll be worth it.”

You turn to him, but don’t make any move to come near him again. “And if it doesn’t exist?”

“Then life will have been worth it.”

The corner of your lip lifts. “I like that.”

Sunwoo only nods at the sentiment, and after a long while, he builds enough courage to ask, “you’ve been here a really long time, haven’t you?”

“Time doesn't work as linearly in the cloud as it does in the real world. Sometimes it feels like I got here and then you arrived the very next day.” You turn back towards the view and exhale heavily. 

“But yes. I’ve been here for an eternity.”

act ii. scene i.

Before he actually sees you, Sunwoo feels you. Not you, in particular, but something in the distance, a presence in the corner of the room and a pair of eyes watching him from somewhere far away. 

The scariest part is how much the feeling doesn’t actually scare him. 

--

Two days after that, he starts to see you in the flesh. He tells himself that his mind is playing tricks on him, that the person he saw in the produce aisle wasn’t actually you at all and was just a stranger with the same hair. 

He doesn’t go straight home from the store that day. Instead, he stops by the hospital and checks in on you, but even that doesn’t do anything about the fact that he sees a shadow of you behind the bed.

--

The day after that, you speak to him. Standing in the middle of his kitchen in broad daylight, you speak, you say hello, and the first thing Sunwoo thinks is that he’s dead. 

You aren’t, you reply. You’re a zombie, he reasons, here for my brain. I’m not. A ghost. No. Are you, here Sunwoo falters, fear flooding out of his body to make room for the briefest blotch of hope that’s crushed almost immediately by you saying: I’m not alive, Sunwoo. You saw me in the hospital yesterday. 

“So then,” he swallows, “what are you?”

I’m here. You look at him, stare at his face and without a sliver of doubt say, I’m here for you. 

Sunwoo knows it’s impossible. You can’t be here. You can’t. And yet, you are. 

Three years ago Sunwoo was told he had three months left to live, and he still remembers how impossibly you saved him from the brink of death. He remembers how impossible things happen all the time, and how impossibly possible it is that this is one of them. He steps towards you, touches your face, and feels the real, impossible thing against his hand. 

“You’re here.”

--

On the fifth day of your haunting, Sunwoo finally has the sense to ask why. 

Why what?

“Why are you here?”

I’m here for you.

“Stop saying that.”

But I am, you tell him. You asked, and that’s the answer. I’m a doctor, Sunwoo. I’m here for you. 

Then, finally, he hears what you’ve been saying for the past five days. You’re here for him. 

And the thing about doctors is that they’re there for you when you need them. 

“I’m sick.” 

Yes, you answer quietly, although it wasn’t a question. 

“Again.” 

I’m so sorry. 

“You’re a hallucination, aren’t you?” Sunwoo’s shocked by how sad that makes him, how disappointing it is. “I’ve been hallucinating.”

Find me in the Cloud, Sunwoo. There’s something I want to say. 

You’re gone by the time he gets to the hospital. 

act iii. scene i.

Sunwoo stares at the hall of green doors, eyes darting from door to door in an attempt to stare down the shades until they confess which one of them is tea green.

“Clara, the landlord, likes colors.” A voice says from behind him. “Every couple of months she repaints all of the doors in different shades of the same one. Before the green, it was yellow.” 

Sunwoo turns around to face you. When your eyes find him, they go blank for the smallest of moments. You give him a look that goes right through him, turning him inside out like you’ve seen the underside of his skin. It irks him. 

“I’m Sunwoo. I’m new.”

You gulp. “You’re here.” He doesn’t know what to make of the statement. Do all people in the cloud act like this? “Why?”

Sunwoo nods, maybe you’re not so weird as much as you just have a weird way of posing questions. “I was told I’m sick.”

“I’m sorry.” You say, frowning like you actually might feel back for him. 

“Have you been here a while then?” You nod. “Can I ask how long?” You shake your head. Sunwoo doesn’t think too much about it. Instead, he returns your earlier question “Why are you here?”

“Brain dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

You ignore it and point to a door down the hall. “I’m forest green. You?”

“Tea green. But I can’t find-” 

You tap the door in front of him. “This one, genius.”

“Oh.” He laughs awkwardly. “Thanks.”

Your mouth parts as if to say something, and your face goes blank again. He feels his skin turning itself inside out because of it. “Have you read your file yet?”

He shakes his head. “I just got here.”

You inhale, softening, and mutter an ‘okay’. You continue down the hall towards your door. Sunwoo is stuck in place. “I can show you around here, if you like. Take you to all the cool places.”

Sunwoo takes you up on it.

A forest green door slams shut down the hallway. 

act i. scene ii.

“Thank you for taking me out of the hospital.” Sunwoo says, exhaling. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to a park like this.” 

And it’s true, he really can’t. He’s been sick for so long now, and has been through a multitude of treatment plans and too many surgeries. When you’re sick and have 9 surgeons turn you down after asking them to save your life, you forget the joy of being outside and feeling the sun on your skin. You were the first doctor to agree to the surgery. You’re the only doctor to have ever treated Sunwoo like he wasn’t dying, like he was actually going to live.

“You don’t have to thank me. This is good for me too.” You say, head resting against the park bench and eyes closed. 

Sunwoo inhales, taking in the park with all his senses. A visceral sort of thing you learn to do as often as possible when you’ve been as close to death as frequently as he has. He feels the wood beneath his body and the grass beneath his feet. He feels the light on his skin and the wind pushing against his arms and nose. He listens to the kids screaming at the playground at the bottom of the hill and to the dogs barking within the dog park beside it. He takes all this in, relishes in it for the last time as a dying person. 

You sigh. “One more surgery.” 

“And then I’ll be done with this sickness.” 

You smile. He pretends not to see. “And then you’ll be done.” 

“Thank you for saving my life.”

“Don’t do that.”

“No. Seriously.” 

You smile again, this time at him. Sunwoo doesn’t have to pretend not to see. “I haven’t finished saving it yet.”

He leans back against the bench and closes his eyes. “But you will.” 

You tap on your coffee cup. “Honestly though, you did more work than me.” Sunwoo frowns while you take a sip. “The other nine doctors you called are good doctors, and they made the same judgement call I would have made for any other patient. No sane doctor would have agreed to treat you. But you were the reason I said yes. You had such faith that you were going to live and so much faith that I could do it that I believed you. I might be the one doing the technical saving, but you, Sunwoo, you’re the one who convinced me to do it. You saved yourself.”

He stares at you. The light hits your eyes like it’s finding a way to break through them. In truth, before Sunwoo got sick, he didn’t think he was scared of death, but he is. He’s terrified of it. Sunwoo realized it two weeks after his diagnosis and the day after he was wrongly told he only had three more months left to live. But now, for the first time since he was diagnosed, he doesn't feel so afraid of it. Despite how far he’s come and how close he is to beating this fucking illness, while staring at the light woven through your eyes, Sunwoo thinks he could live with himself if he dropped dead tonight. 

That thought alone, is almost as terrifying as death used to be. 

act iii. scene v.

“I saw your ghost, you know.” It’s the first thing Sunwoo has said to you in over two weeks. “It wasn’t actually you though, was it?” You don’t even bother looking up from your cup of tea. Through the silence, Sunwoo orders a coffee. 

“I didn’t know that.” The coffee turns lukewarm. “It wasn’t me.” You push an uneaten half of chocolate bread towards him. “It’s in your brain this time. Symptoms can include hallucinations.”

“Think you can still save me?” You can’t. If you know that much, you know he’s out of medical miracles, and that this time, he really won’t survive it. But it’s a joke. And you laugh at it.

“Definitely not. I never really liked neurosurgery.”

And all at once, he’s painfully aware of your friend somewhere in the real world that does like it but watched anyways as your brain died before her, split wide open. 

“Anyways, how do you know all of this?” But what Sunwoo really wants to say is brains are killer. Literally. Figuratively. 

“I’ve known since we...“ you hesitate, mouth stuck halfway through a word he can’t place. “After last time, I read your chart and looked at your scans.” Sunwoo nods. He expected as much. He doesn’t ask how you got them. “I’m sorry you're sick again.” You say to him quietly. “I’m sorry you’re dying.”

“I’m sorry you’re dead.” As soon as the words have left his mouth, he regrets them. Because you aren’t. And he knows you too well to think you’d look past the technicality. 

You scoff, shake your head slightly, and with a spiteful smile say, “Can I say it?”

Sunwoo only sighs. “Let’s start over instead.” 

You nod. He pushes the chocolate bread back. 

act iii. scene iv.

Mr. Choi was the one to recommend that Sunwoo give you and himself space. It’s been a month since you and him last spoke, since that moment hovering above the waves after he read his file and after he found out you read yours. He misses you, and has been for so long now. Mr. Choi was wrong. Sunwoo’s standing outside your forest green door to prove it. 

You open the door before he can knock. There’s no shock in your voice when you say his name, like you’ve been waiting for this day, expecting it. 

He looks behind you, at your apartment in Clara’s building that looks just like your apartment in the real world. The same one he cleaned out after you died, still filled with things he gave to your family or donated or took back to his place. He wants to crumble just looking at it again. “Can I come in?”

“It’s only been a month.”

And he knows what you mean by it. Three months is the recommended time off after reading one’s file. To reacclimate, they say, to process. But the insinuation that Sunwoo was supposed to go three months without seeing you makes him feel sick. The insinuation that after a year of being without you in the real world he was supposed to be without you here too, enrages him. Then he remembers how long you’ve been here, and how long you’ve been doing this and feels slightly murderous.

All he says is: “It’s been a lot longer than that for you.”

Your lip twitches. You lock and unlock the open forest green door five times before saying, “Are you sure?”

He nods. You let him in. 

Sunwoo used to imagine what it would be like to meet you again in the Cloud one day. He imagined tears and hugs and kisses. He imagined i love you’s and i hate you’s and i miss you. He imagined the scenario more times than can possibly be considered healthy. But he imagined something. He was waiting for the day. Waiting for this day. But this moment, sitting at your round wood table while you boil water for tea, is nothing like the million different ways he imagined seeing you again. 

And as you set down two mismatched mugs and take the seat across from him, he doesn’t even try to create one of them. “How long has it been since you read your file?”

You watch the steam rise from your tea for a long moment, then stand, grab the sugar and pour a spoonful of it into your tea. You take another spoonful and look at him expectantly. “Want some?” He nods, and you pour the sugar into his. You stir the tea then taste, then cringe, then add more sugar and then ask if he wants it. He refuses. You stir again. Sunwoo watches the whirlpool and waits the eternity it takes you to say: “I read it on my first day.”  

You put the sugar away, satisfied with the tea’s sweetness while Sunwoo marvels at how long you’ve known and how silently you’ve been carrying the knowledge of you and him since he came. And that knowledge is what makes him finally remember one of the reasons he came. “Is there something you want to tell me?” You look up at him when he asks it, exhaling like you’ve been wanting to bring it up for so long now, which Sunwoo guesses isn’t as much of a simile as he thinks it is. 

“Yes, actually. I…” you hesitate, flicking the mug as if the right words will come hopping out of the tea. Sunwoo watches for it. “I’ve just been here for a long time now, Sunwoo.”

“Two years isn’t that long.”

“Time doesn’t work the same here as it does down there.” You tell him tiredly. “It’s been decades.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“In the beginning, I didn’t mind the waiting. I knew you were on your way, but I just,” you hesitate, “I didn’t think it’d take so long for you to come back to me.” 

Sunwoo covers your hand with his. “I’m sorry.” You twist your palm into it, squeeze, then pull your hand away. Sunwoo swallows. “I came as fast as I could.”

“I know. I waited.”

“Do you regret it?” Sunwoo’s terrified of what the answer might be.

You don’t give it. “That’s not what I meant.” 

“Then?”

“I’ve been here for so long, and,” your head drops, voice breaking under the weight it carries, “it’s been so lonely.”

“But I’m here now.” Sunwoo says, leaning forward against the table. “You aren’t alone anymore.”

“I know you’re here. I know, and I thought that would fix it, but it didn’t. Seeing you in the hall that day was so bittersweet, because you were here but that also meant you were somewhere else dying. Because you were here and I still felt lonely.” You stop, chugg the remaining bits of your tea, and then wipe your cheeks. “Do you get what I’m saying?”

“No.” But it’s a lie. He does get it. He knows all about loneliness and the way it creeps inside, so slyly. The way it starts small and then grows, feeding on negligence, until it's too big for your body. He knows how it sits inside you, for all its enormity, and spills into everything. He knows how it lingers. How it has nothing to do with people or lack of them and everything to do with grief. Sunwoo knows all about loneliness. The day he read his file he felt a dam of it burst open within him. 

“I’m saying that in the real world I saved you, and now it’s your turn to save me.” You gulp. “I’m saying that I want you to unplug me.”

It takes a moment for Sunwoo to even register what you’ve said, but when he does remember the life support that’s keeping your body alive somewhere in a universe far away, he doesn’t say anything. He just stands and walks out of your apartment. 

act i. scene iii.

“Doctor, please present.” The attending announces, stepping into Sunwoo’s room for rounds. 

“Mr. Kim,” a resident starts, flipping open his chart, “was diagnosed 14 months ago and has gone through several different treatment plans. When he came to us, the illness had spread and was deemed inoperable and untreatable by several other physicians. Our treatment plan was aggressive and grueling but ultimately, effective. Sunwoo is 20 days post op from his third and final surgery. The surgery went extremely well with no complications and his vitals were excellent. He has been a model patient all throughout recovery, and according to our latest scans, he is also now illness free…”

Sunwoo doesn’t even bother listening to the rest. 

--

“So, now that I’m no longer a patient, if I ask you out on a date, will you actually say yes?” 

“Well,” you say, signing his discharge papers, “only one way to know.”

“What is it?”

You look up at him, smiling. “Ask me again.”

He does. 

You say yes. 

act iii. scene v. take ii. 

“I saw your ghost.” The first thing Sunwoo says after the last failed attempt.

You look up from your tea. “It wasn’t me.” 

“I know.” Sunwoo orders another coffee. “But the hallucination was how I knew I was sick again. It made me feel like you were trying to warn me, like you were up here somewhere caring from a distance. Right after I pieced it all together you told me to find you here and that there was something you wanted to say.” The coffee turns lukewarm again. Sunwoo can’t bring himself to say it. You sigh and push the same piece of chocolate bread back towards him. This time, he takes a bite from it. And with a mouthful of chocolate bread, he cries, “I just got you back, and now you want to leave all over again.”

You frown. “I didn’t want to leave the first time, and it’s different now.”

“How?”

“I want to go. Isn’t that worth something?”

“And what about what I want?”

“Oh, Sunwoo,” you say, “I’m sorry you’re sick. The hallucination was you and your head, but for what it’s worth, I have been up here caring from a distance. I still…” you don’t need to say the words. He knows. He never had to doubt it. “I never stopped.”

“I’ve been thinking about what you asked of me.” Sunwoo tells you. He made the decision last week but today, right now, with your confession still falling through the air, is the first time he’s had the stomach to swallow it. “And I’ll do it. I will. I just need some time. You’ve had so long and in comparison I’ve had nothing.”

“Okay.” You say simply.

“How long can you give me?”

You smile. “You know I’d give you an eternity if you asked for it.”

“I’m scared.” Sunwoo confesses then. “I know it’s what you want, but selfishly, I don’t want to let you again. I don’t know if I’m a big enough person to do it.”

“I do.” You say to him, leaning forward against the table and looking straight through him. “I know because I was your doctor. I have cut inside your body, seen all your organs, and during surgery two, I held your heart in my hands. I felt it beating. So I know exactly how big it is, and I know it’s big enough for this”

Sunwoo feels the heart you worked so hard to repair bursting inside of him. 

“God. Why’d you have to read your file so soon?”

You laugh. “I missed you. I couldn’t help it.”

And just like that, you’ve stolen the entire concept of fear from him. 

“I’m ready.”

“What?”

He looks at you and feels the loneliness slither away.

“Ask me again.”

[iwroteyoualoveletter]

Review - The Second Yu Yu Hakusho Stage Play

Due to a family member of the cast having COVID-19, the opening day of the second Yu Yu Hakusho stage play was postponed to accommodate the 14 day quarantine period, opening this past weekend.

COVID-19 regulations in the theater included mandatory face masks, temperature checks, hand and shoe disinfection, seat blocking, and a ban on talking within the theater. Stage actors wore clear chin face shields and the first row of the audience was required to use full face shields. The stage was sprayed with disinfectant during intermission. Goods usually sold at the venue were moved to online sales. (More on safety protocols in this TikTok if you are interested!) 

Now... on with the show!

::SPOILERS AHEAD::

ACT 1 The show opened with Botan running onto the stage and reminding everyone of the three main rules for safety: wear your mask, do not speak within the theater (even though she knows you want to talk to your friend-- please wait!), and disinfect your hands when you come back from intermission. Her little talk brought us into Hohoemi no Bakudan, during which the main cast showed off their fighting skills, and Koenma slid onto the stage to end it with his remote and a "disinfectant" spray bottle (which he was constantly spraying on stage and accidentally in his own face). 

He was about to launch into the Maze Castle footage when Genkai appeared and began to bully him for skipping her tournament. He conceded slightly and offered a 2 minute recap, during which Kuwabara and Yusuke hyper went through the events, with Yusuke's training with Genkai being acted simultaneously by the main actor and 3 "stage Yusukes" behind him, each doing a different task. When he wanted to balance on his finger, a "stage Yusuke" flipped him upside down and held him up, haha

Then, we moved onto Maze Castle. Because Seiryu and Suzaku were the only 2 mentioned by name in the program, I wasn't sure if the other fights would be featured-- thankfully, they were! 

Genbu 

My personal Kurama bias aside, this fight was done INCREDIBLY WELL. Genbu was a 7 piece puppet, with all his parts assigned to different ensemble members. They used the set pieces to hide and "fly" off stairs/ledges and it made for a great effect. The movement was fantastic and the pieces of the puppet looked like real stone under the stage lights.  

Bakkyo

I'm... so sorry, Kuwabara fans. This scene was certainly an interesting choice. A tiny adorable Bakkyo puppet shouted its threats from the second story of the stage (for the "I can't believe he's that big this far away" line) and Kuwabara threw his hat into the arena by saying he could beat him "without a word being said." So... he pantomied the ENTIRE FIGHT. THE WHOLE THING. ALL BY HIMSELF. It was an awkwardly long, albeit entertaining, game of charades. If you didn't know the battle already, you'd be completely at a loss to understand what he was doing. In the end, he destroyed Bakkyo, who at that point was a projected image on a backdrop. 

Seiryu

Another fantastically done fight, although made comedic by Koenma's commentary. In the first take, the fight is over in a blink, with Hiei not moving and Seiryu falling to the ground. Koenma jumps on stage to say, "Wait, that was too fast, let's rewind a watch in slow-mo." You then get to see the characters fight gracefully in slow motion, with Koenma counting the cuts made by Hiei. In the middle of the slow-mo battle, Hiei makes it a point to punch Kuwabara in the stomach when he passes by him, haha. The last viewing, Koenma plays the fight at "easy viewing" speed, which places Seiryu and Hiei at "normal" speed and the spectators in slow-mo. Overall, very nicely done!

Suzaku

This fight was pretty straight forward and did not have any comedy added into it. It jumps between Yusuke fighting Suzaku and Keiko being attacked in the human world, with the lower stage for the battle and second story for Keiko and Botan's flee/fight. The choreography was good and their acting spot-on. Suzaku's clones were video projections. In my opinion, though, they made a tragic mistake by NOT INCLUDING THE SHOES ON THE HANDS. Maybe they decided it wasn't safe or workable. Either way, it was missed. 

The first part of the play ends with Keiko confronting Yusuke and demanding that she is the first one to know next time he has one of these missions. 

ACT 2

Act 2 opens with Yusuke, Kuwabara, and Botan viewing the video from Koenma about Yukina. The "video" Yukina is the actress up on the second floor of the stage while they sit on the bottom, so when the scene ends for them, the lights focus on her and her scene with the birds. (She captures Yukina’s aura perfectly.)

The Toguro brothers look GREAT on stage, which I didn't expect. Elder Toguro's actor in particular has such a creepy/slinky way of moving, he really embodies what gives you the heebie jeebies about him. 

The choice was made to cut Botan from accompanying them to Tarukane's estate, although I don't know why. The initial demons they encounter in the woods were also cut, for obvious comedic purposes, because they were replaced by a sunglasses and suit wearing demon who says, "No one can defeat me except Hiei. He's so cool. [Insert 1000 compliments about Hiei / jokes about Hiei]" because... it's Hiei's actor, who has nothing to do until the end of Act 2.

(They included Kurama's actor as the young man who tried to save Yukina from Tarukane in a later flashback during the Toguro fight.)

The bottom stage remains the fighting place as the upper stage is turned into Tarukane's betting room. It goes between reactions to the intruders and them knocking out demons, including Miyuki and that ninja guy.

The fight with the Toguro brothers is also well done and, as I said above, they have serious stage presence. After everyone collapses, Hiei shows up to punch Tarukane and they go on their way. We observe the conversation between Younger Toguro and Sakkyo after the main cast has moved off stage. 

We have another brief scene with Yusuke being invited to the Dark Tournament, and then the scene where they are about to get on the boat to Hanging Neck Island and Hiei greets Yusuke by attacking him. As they look off into the distance, Koenma pops up to say that's all we have time for today, and implies we'll have a next time to look forward to.

  GENERAL COMMENTS

The pacing for this show was heaps better than the first one. It was great they chose 2 stories to follow instead of cramming in as many as possible. George was also included in the random in-betweens when Koenma offered commentary and gave actors time to change. All in all, it was a very enjoyable performance for fans of the show, and I think they did everything they could to make it safe for the people involved on stage and for the audience. 

If you can, definitely check out the livestream (there are 9 dates available) or buy the DVD when it comes out in April.

[reallyhardy]

regent’s open air theatre LSOH (2018) breakdown

act two. continuing on from [this post about act one!]

after the intermission they went back into mushnik’s for ‘call back in the morning’ which featured the ensemble in the number with a bunch of telephones kind of tangling/tying up audrey and seymour with them, but by the end they’d all been disentangled - it looked so chaotic i was so impressed with how well organised it was to free them by the end of the song :’) found a backstage clip showing some ensemble members from this scene:

then it was time for more heartbreak!!! the scene where seymour shows audrey his leather jacket. i kinda loved the jacket itself tbh, it had all this fringe on the back and sleeves (which was another visual call to audrey ii in drag queen form, who wears a jacket with chain “fringe” on the sleeves) and there was a rhinestone plant and ‘seymour’ written in rhinestones. but of course audrey is horrified and backed herself up against the wall and started crying and after seymour threw the jacket away they go into suddenly seymour which was done quite sweetly - seymour handed her his ‘kleenex’ (but it was a wet wipe because she actually did take off her lipstick with it)

ALSO notably there to cast a sinister light on the emotional moment - the mushnik’s shop rotates to reveal the audrey ii plant, which was grinning behind audrey and seymour as they hug at the end of the song. LOVED THIS extremely ominous the fact that the plant was smiling evilly behind them was just chef’s kiss things are about to go horribly wrong.

but anyway. now that seymour and audrey are ‘official’ they kiss!!! kind of. it was more like… seymour leaned in and kissed her nose and then sort of…slid his face down kind of towards her mouth??? it was so awkward but...v cute :’)

and of course now that we’re in act ii things are going a little worse and it’s definitely showing on seymour, who has not been beaming nearly so much and looks pretty stressed out and upset a lot of the time. by suppertime he’s freaking out and looks genuinely so mad and angry with himself when mushnik gets eaten by the plant: which was done by having the plant mouth open, mushnik step inside, and then drag queen audrey ii step up behind and attack while vines close in, and then the mouth closes up:

i think... there was more of audrey ii trying to be flirtatious with seymour either before or after this, but he is much more disgusted by it and doesn’t have to try to snap himself out of it:

(note by this point audrey ii’s wig no longer resembles OG audrey’s, and by now seymour hates her guts.) this continues into ‘the meek shall inherit’ and i loved the staging of this one because the ensemble are still in black-and-white but now wearing these pink-green gloves with pointy ends (so they look like audrey ii’s vines) and they had vines extending out from the scenery/props too, all closing in on seymour who’s freaking out even more.

in this one matt willis made multiple quick changes to play all the different characters trying to buy seymour/the plant, and he was brill each time (this wasn’t all of the looks but it was all i could find from the show trailer:)

oh, and when it came to the “then there’s audrey” part of the song, seymour takes the kleenex from suddenly seymour out of his pocket.

so seymour plots to try and kill audrey ii by grabbing a bunch of weapons (and tying a green rambo-style headband around his head) but before he can get to it audrey comes in with her seymour-costume!!! (she was even shorter next to seymour then because she was wearing converse instead of heels) and argghhh it was just so cute!!! and the sweater she put on was the one she had to come back for during ‘feed me’ which was a cute touch.

(i could only find a design sketch for the main actress in that costume, but did also find her understudy rosalind james in the same outfit.) then... sadness again though because then they go into the ‘would you still like me/i’d still love you’ scene. ‘somewhere that’s green’ plays instrumental while seymour promises he’ll find them a better life. they do their adorable little awkward kiss again and then audrey leaves.

heading toward the end then into suppertime reprise/sominex, and then the confrontation… the whole time me knowing what’s coming i was just like audrey don’t but then of course…audrey does. (also she had another costume change, this time into a half-blue-half-pink nightdress with a transparent pink raincoat on top.)

she steps into the plant ‘mouth’ and audrey ii bites her neck vampire style (so there’s no doubt that she has been wounded, no “she just fell asleep because of the sominex” theory here,) before seymour can get her out.

somewhere that’s green reprise of course i was crying again – the actress kind of played the ‘when i die, which should be very shortly’ line for funnies rather than sincerely BUT. then she went into the reprise and ohhh my god i was so sad watching seymour hold her. i noticed they never really properly kissed on the mouth (because seymour’s bad at kissing) but he was really desperately hugging her and shaking and kissing her all over on her shoulders and her hands and it was DEVASTATING.

after audrey dies seymour kept crying her name which was…i thought a bit much but sure, why not. he was sad. then he carried her to the plant and she stood up and walked backwards so they were looking at each other as she went into the plant’s “mouth” and he held onto her hands as long as he could. (this time there were no vines and the drag queen version of audrey ii wasn’t there either so it was more of an emotional parting than watching a violent/comical death.)

after that seymour tries to kill the plant (drag queen audrey ii was standing above, on top of the mushnik store prop) so he shot at her first with his halloween prop gun and then tossed the boxes of rat poison into the plant mouth, and then of course charged into the mouth and the vines are back and grab and crush him and then he’s dead. RIP that silly fool who i loved.

then it’s don’t feed the plants! the urchins come out and are wearing new outfits and open the number…

then there was the ‘characters come back onstage as plant buds’ version of the ending, but oh my god. this was so much fun i loved it so much. mushnik, orin, audrey and seymour dash out of the plant opening wearing audrey ii-ified costumes and!!! it was amazing. mushnik was in a sparkly green sequin jacket and kilt, orin was wearing his black combat boots  and a sequin minidress, audrey was wearing a big poofy 1950s-ish (you know, because of her somewhere thats green dreams) pink-and-blue dress with flowers and little white gloves (and still her glasses) (and i remember as she ran out on stage she mouthed WHAT THE FUCK lmao) and seymour’s was this big puffy clown suit (probably because…he’s kind of a fool) over his blue shirt (now with sparkly red blood on it, implying that his arms/legs have been eaten) and all the ensemble also had similar crazy plant looks, very flytrap with a lot of teeth and big floppy tongues.

seymour and audrey had the little ‘we’ll have tomorrow’ line too which made my LSOH-obsessed ass get tearful again too - they grabbed each others hands for it and !!! my emotions.

there were a few bows after that but then audrey ii interrupted and was like wait we ain’t finished!!! and they did mean green mother from outer space as this huge dance number which was extremely fun. this finale was very similar to how the spongebob musical ends - after the song they tossed huge green beach balls into the audience and had a huge confetti cannon explosion. of course i went nuts for it lmao. and the best part is that THERE IS A VIDEO ON YOUTUBE:

and then it was over. iirc it took a total 10 hours for my sister travelling there and back in on day, but it was 1000% worth it!!! next post: gonna look at costumes in detail!!!

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Once you touch the trappings of monarchy, like opening an Egyptian tomb, the inside is liable to crumble.

- Anthny Sampson

The concept behind the documentary was to soften and modernize the royal image. But members of the royal family, including the Queen, were reportedly dubious about the idea from the start. After its premiere, Buckingham Palace greatly limited the film’s circulation, at least in its entire form.

It was Lord Brabourne, the son-in-law of the royal cousin Lord Mountbatten, who suggested using the medium of television to provide the Queen’s subjects a sense of her personality. By the 1960s, the times were rapidly changing, and the shy, dutiful Queen and her young family were seen as increasingly irrelevant. A TV special, Brabourne suggested, could also introduce British subjects to 21-year-old Prince Charles, ahead of his investiture as Prince of Wales.

At the urging of Palace press officer William Heseltine, who was convinced that offering a humanized view of the royal family would strengthen the monarchy, Prince Philip agreed. The Queen cautiously gave her consent, while other family members were decidedly not on board.

“I never liked the idea of 'Royal Family,' I thought it was a rotten idea,” Princess Anne later recalled, according to an account in the 2015 book, Queen Elizabeth II and the Royal Family. “The attention which had been brought upon one ever since one was a child, you just didn’t need any more.”

But the Mountbatten camp won the day and filming began in 1968. Richard Cawston, the chief of the BBC Documentary unit, was put in charge of shooting the royals at work and play. For months, he shot 43 hours of unscripted material at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, on the royal yacht, the royal train, and even at the Queen’s beloved Balmoral Castle in Scotland.

Understandably, the royal family had a difficult time adjusting to the presence of the crew in their personal space. Peter Conradi writes in his 2012 book, Great Survivors: How Monarchy Made it into the Twenty-First Century, that during a film day at Balmoral, Philip snapped at the crew, “Get away from the Queen with your bloody cameras!” 

The finished documentary claimed to show a year in the life of the royal family. Queen Elizabeth was featured tirelessly working and making small talk with world leaders like U.S. President Richard Nixon. During his state visit, she asked him, “World problems are so complex, aren't they, now?” To which Nixon replied, “I was thinking how really much more complex they are than when we last met in 1957.”

There were also sweet scenes, like one where the Queen takes her youngest son, Edward, to a candy store, paying for his treats herself even though the monarch is technically never supposed to carry money.

The royal family’s genuine sportiness was also highlighted - Prince Charles was shown waterskiing and fishing, Prince Philip flew an airplane and the Queen drove her own car surprisingly fast.

But there were also strained moments, according to detractors. At one point Prince Philip describes an instance when King George VI the Queen Mother’s late husband, took out his rage with a pruning knife on a rhododendron bush, screaming curse words while hacking it to bits. “He had very odd habits,” Philip deadpanned. “'Sometimes I thought he was mad.”

Then there was when Queen Elizabeth jokes: “How do you keep a regally straight face when a footman tells you: "'Your Majesty, your next audience is with a gorilla?... It was an official visitor, but he looked just like a gorilla.”

Cawston let Philip see a rough cut of the documentary before showing it to the Queen. “We were all a little bit nervous of showing it to the Queen because we had no idea what she would make of it,” the film’s editor Michael Bradsell told the Smithsonian channel in a 2017 special. “She was a little critical of the film in the sense she thought it was too long, but Dick Cawston, the director, persuaded her that two hours was not a minute too long.”

The public was, in fact, intrigued—more than 30 million viewers in Britain alone viewed the premiere. It was said that during an intermission, toilets flushed all over London, causing a water shortage.

Less than a month later, on July 1, Prince Charles was invested at Caernarvon Castle in a carefully filmed spectacle organized by the photographer Lord Snowdon, Princess Margaret’s soon to be ex-husband.

This double-whammy of royal TV was seen by some as a rousing success. “It redefined the nation's view of the Queen,” Paul Moorhouse, former curator of the National Portrait Gallery, told Daily Telegraph in 2011. “The audience were amazed to be able to hear the Queen speaking spontaneously, and to see her in a domestic setting."

But to many, the royal family had opened Pandora’s box, lifting the veil and making them easy targets for criticism and intrusive paparazzi activity.

"They were criticized for being stuffy, and not letting anybody know what they were doing, and my brother-in-law helped do up a film, and now people say, 'Ah, of course, the rot set in when the film was made,’"royal cousin Lady Pamela Hicks and daughter of Lord Mountbatten told an interviewer. "You can't do right; it's catch-22."

"Royal Family" was shown only once more in full, in 1977. And in 2011, Buckingham Palace gave the National Portrait Gallery a 90-second clip of the breakfast scene during the Diamond Jubilee celebration. The palace allowed a few more brief clips to be included in the 2011 documentary "The Duke at 90."

[walpurga-nacht-academy]

The Witch Dances

It is said that during the annual gatherings of the eight witches on the Bald Mountain where they would swear obedience to their Master, they would engage in dancing and loud partying for his amusement. They would usually follow the format of a circle dance, the witches coming together around a bonfire, and overcome by frenzy became enticed to spin and sway to unheard melodies among demons and spirits. These dances could and usually did go on throughout the entire night until the break of day. Their laughter and yelps could be heard from the base of the mountain and villagers of Brocken would often be tempted to join them in their revelry. However, this was considered unwise as the dancing was sacred to the witches themselves, and any man caught spying would be immediately struck mad.    

Nowadays, the dances are performed as an homage to the memory of the eight illustrious figures whose teaching inspired the formation of the dorms. Taking place a week before the Sorting ceremony, students who passed the admission exam are invited to attend a ceremony known as the Witch Dances. Its purpose is to help the young girls about to enter Walpurga Nacht decide which particular dorm they might find most helpful for their studies based on its presentation by the Prefects. 

Danse Macabre

Opening the Witch Dances at dusk is an event known as the “Danse Macabre”. In the venue which takes the form of a theatron (ancient Greek theater), a group of twelve students are gathered in the middle around a bonfire that is burning brightly. Dressed in red, loose dresses the girls also wear masks that resemble various animals, among the most common being pigs, wolves and goats. Around them, at a fair distance, is another group of nine girls clad in black and seated down with hangs in their laps or tambourines in their hands. The girls around the bonfire hold hands and as the others students begin to play their instruments start to dance in a circle around the bonfire. The dance is wild and unstructured, accompanied by chanting and punctuated by yelps and shouts as the students twirl and move to the rhythm of the music. The red clothing makes it seem like they are blending in with the fire itself, and the animal masks create a grotesque image of madness and devilry. 

The purpose of this dance is two-fold: to recreate what the atmosphere on the night where the eight witches met on the Bald Mountain must have felt like and to acknowledge the sacred nature of this event. Though information about the witches is scarce, it is said that the eight of them came from very different walks of life based on the textual evidence left behind by their grimoires. The fact that they would assemble each year and treat each other as equals was proof of their respect for each other. The twelve girls dancing around the first are said to represent the months of the year, and the number nine is considered a cursed one but also has connotations of power. 

As a result the twelve dancing girls are girls chosen for the month of their birth, at random, from among the second, third and fourth years. It reinforces the idea that no matter the girl they are all witches at their core. The nine instrumentalists are all chosen from among the music club. The girls usually prepare for this event before the end of the previous school year, after the Prefects for the next year are announced.

The Prefects’ Dances

Once the Danse Macabre is over, all that remains on the stage is a ring of scorch marks and footsteps. What follows is a short speech given by the Headmistress of the school regarding the legends of the eight witches and their teachings, before introducing the Prefects at the start of their performances to the audience.

What follows afterwards are the presentations for the eight dorms according to what the respective Prefect thinks are its most important features. Traditionally, Rosenhex has always had a focus on their mastery of enchantments and charms, either bringing constructions to life or asking for volunteers from the audience in order to cast a charm on them. Grimmaire takes a more methodical approach and almost simulates a classroom lecture, as the Prefect rattles off the many spell compositions and steps to be undertaken when casting. Kriegskald’s performances have usually been focused on showing off their newest creations and mechanisms, or bolder Prefects have gone ahead and attempted to recreate them on stage. Galdtrea’s performances are often cited as lacklustre as there are only so many ways one can talk about and present a collection of herbs and plants. Monarchia presentations are turned usually into a monster show, where tamed beasts are brought to show the audience their various tricks and abilities. Oraluna has focused mainly on showcasing its divination talents and fortune telling by asking for volunteers from the audience. Eliksia has always done a live demonstration of how their alchemical concoctions might be used or what their effect might be, with the Prefect explaining the process. While Noctasis has remained rather controversial with its exhibitions of mummified corpses and pickled organs to this day.

The Danse Macabre portion is allocated thirty minutes, and is followed by a short intermission of fifteen minutes. The Headmistress’ speech is usually an hour and a half, followed also by an intermission. Each Prefect is given 50 minutes to perform their ‘dance’ and it is up to them how they use it. While the dancing witches must wear red and animal masks, and the singing witches must wear black, the Prefects are allowed to dress in any manner they consider fitting. Some may order customized costumes, while others may choose to don the school’s Ceremony Dress. The only request is that whatever clothing they wear, it must remain in the limits of public decency.   

The Witch Dances are not traditionally televised, this being seen as a breach of privacy, however this year, at the request of Prefect Rosalia Morgainne, the school has allowed her manager to livestream the eight performances. It was considered inappropriate for the Danse Macabre to be caught on camera, and the manager considered the Headmistress’ speech irrelevant to the PR campaign he was undertaking. 

Notes: The idea for the Witch Dances comes from several sources. First there is the Disney animated short “Night on the Bald Mountain” where spirits and demons dance for Chernabog’s amusement in infernal fire. The image of the three masks (pig, wolf, goat) correspond to the three animals that appear during a scene in the short. The red dresses are an allusion to the Fire Women that also appear there. Second, there is the image of Walpurgisnacht as shown in Goethe’s Faust, where witches and warlocks dance together on top of the Harz Mountains. Another reference is made to the Iele, which are beings in Romanian folklore who are said to dance so beautifully it drives men mad. The name ‘Danse Macabre’ refers to the artistic allegory on the universality of death: regardless of one’s station in life, death comes for all.

[mst3kproject]

Dracula vs Frankenstein (1971)

 I’ve been meaning to get to this one for a while.  It was directed by Al Adamson and stars Lon Chaney Jr. from Indestructible Man in his last and worst film.  Also featuring appearances by Greydon Clark (director of Angel’s Revenge), Forest J. Ackerman (the comic book guy from Future War), and Jim Davis (the grandpa from The Day Time Ended, not the guy who invented Garfield), and generally being one of the shoddiest and most confusing movies I’ve ever sat through, it is a mystery to me why Joel chose Carnival Magic and just left Dracula vs Frankenstein sitting there.  Maybe it was the widescreen thing.

It’s hard to say what the hell is going on in this movie but I’ll give it a try.  Under the cover of a carnival freak show, mad Dr. D’Ray is decapitating nubile young women and then sewing their heads back on, because… uh… because.  One night, his work is interrupted by none other than Count Dracula!  The Count reveals that he knows D’Ray’s secret – D’Ray is really the last surviving member of the Frankenstein family, and Dracula has recovered the body of the original Frankenstein’s Monster and wants D’Ray to help him bring it to life, because… uh… because.  Meanwhile, a woman named Judith Fontaine is looking for her sister, Joannie, who was last seen on the beach near Dr. D’Ray’s Creature Emporium.  Judith and her boyfriend Mike eventually find their way into D’Ray’s lair, and the doctor and his various deformed assistants (obviously he has deformed assistants) are all killed as the couple attempt to escape again.  What Judith and Mike don’t know is that they’re not safe yet.  They still have Dracula to deal with!

That outline actually only represents a fraction of the madness in Dracula vs Frankenstein.  There’s a rapey biker gang and a bunch of noticeably over-age hippies who seem to think they’re in a very different movie.  There’s D’Ray’s hunchback Groton and his pet puppy, and Grazbo the Angry Midget. There’s the stunningly unhelpful detective who’s supposed to be looking for Joannie.  D’Ray brings the Frankenstein Monster back to life with the help of a magical comet.  The idea that creatures like Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster actually exist is treated as obvious and commonplace, and the climactic fight between the two is over who gets to feel up Judith.  It’s a mess.

The reason Dracula vs Frankenstein is such a mishmash of incongruous ideas, at least according to El Santo of 1000 Misspent Hours, is that Adamson filmed for a while, then ran out of money and had to set the project aside while he raised more.  During this intermission, he got a bunch of new ideas, and had to shoehorn them in with what he’d already shot to turn his original sex-drugs-and-rock-n-roll film into a monster-versus-monster piece.  It should therefore surprise nobody if the results are about as graceful as a giraffe on roller skates.

The two title monsters are astonishingly shitty. Frankenstein’s Monster looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy gone horribly wrong.  He looks like his head got stepped on and they couldn’t afford to fix it. The first time you see him, when Dracula digs him out of a cemetery, you can barely tell you’re supposed to be looking at something’s face – it looks like a mass of home-made play-dough that’s been left out in the sun.  He has claws for some reason.  That sequence of similes still doesn’t do justice to just how absolutely terrible he looks, and yet, shockingly, he’s less stupid than Dracula.

Oh, god, this movie’s Dracula.  His face is slathered in Observer makeup (though his hands aren’t, probably because it would have gotten all over everything) and he wears bright red lipstick and fake fangs that don’t allow him to fully close his mouth.  His vinyl cape almost definitely came from Party City. His voice echoes like he’s talking into an empty garbage can, even when he’s sitting in the back seat of a car. He has an incredibly funky goatee and a ring that shoots fire.  Everything he says and does is deeply, self-consciously dramatic and it all comes to an absurd crescendo in the series of priceless faces he makes as he turns to dust in the sun.

On a scale of absurd theatricality, Dr. D’Ray is only shortly behind him.  The mad doctor dresses like Colonel Sanders, has some classic evil facial hair, and spends much of his screen time monologuing… but nothing he says ever makes a lick of sense. The stuff that comes out of his mouth is literally indescribable so I’m going to have to give you some examples:

Rambling in his lab, D’Ray describes his work as follows: “human blood is the essence from which future illusion may be created, but the secret is not to have the blood at rest.  No, the circulatory system must experience a traumatic shock, one that is inconceivable to the human mind.  The idea of trauma is not a new one, but I am sure I am the first such experimenter to incorporate the horror of an actual decapitation into later rejuvenation of a human body!”  This is evidently supposed to be a justification for the sewing-heads-back-on thing – it ‘activates’ the blood and allows D’Ray to make his ‘serum’.  He then injects that ‘serum’ into Groton, who transforms into an axe-wielding maniac.  Later, Dracula claims that the same ‘serum’ would have made him invincible.  I, uh… what?

Sorry, I was talking about D’Ray’s monologuing.  When describing his Creature Emporium, D’Ray informs some guests, “the greatest mysteries in the world are not mysteries at all, unless we take time to become familiar with them.”  Isn’t that the opposite of how mysteries work?  It’s easy to believe in, say, the Loch Ness Monster, until you familiarize yourself with the history of the ‘evidence’ and realize that it’s almost all complete bullshit.

When Dracula shows up, D’Ray declares, “I am too old and too sick to be interested or surprised by anything, but when a man comes into my house and casts no reflection on my mirror, and on his hand wears the unholy crest of Dracula, there is no scientific answer to anything.  Now, what is on your mind, Count Dracula?” Honestly, this nonsense is spoken with such conviction that you almost don’t notice that the end of the sentence has nothing to do with the beginning.

The movie has two things that might qualify as a ‘special effect’.  One is Dracula’s zappy fire ring.  It’s crummy, but you can tell what they’re going for.  The other is the ‘comet’ that is instrumental in giving life to the Frankenstein Monster.  This is represented by a slow pan past a flickering light bulb against a black background.  Even having just heard Dracula talking about the importance of the comet, it took me a minute to figure out what I was supposedly seeing – it’s that bad.  This might be halfway forgivable if the comet were somehow important to the plot… if the Monster, for example, had to complete some mission before it sets or something.  But it’s totally gratuitous.  They could have taken that out, avoided a distractingly awful effect, and made the movie a little bit shorter!

As for meaning anything… Dracula vs Frankenstein does not, and indeed seems to go out of its way to avoid it.  The events that unfold are remarkably meaningless.  Judith finds her sister Joannie, who is not dead but neither is she alive, and then the story just forgets about Joannie and gives her no resolution.  Hippie girl Samantha is saved from being raped by her angry ex and his biker gang, but then she, too, is entirely forgotten.  D’Ray and his henchmen die in a series of contrived accidents that serve no purpose but getting them out of the way so that Dracula and the Monster can fight uninterrupted.  This is particularly anticlimactic because so far, D’Ray has been presented as our main baddie.  Dracula disintegrates Mike with his magic ring and then the movie rushes to its climax without giving either Judith or the audience time to deal with it.  Dracula, the movie’s actual main baddie, just turns to dust in the sun.

There are a couple of moments that are probably supposed to be social commentary, but they have nothing to do with the meandering main plot. One is the scene where a hippie guy says to his girlfriend, “let’s get ready for the big protest tonight.”  She asks, “what are we protesting this time?” and he shrugs and replies, “I dunno, but I bet it’s fun.”  Later we see this protest, which does seem to have a major ‘party’ component and features some very unspecific placards being waved.  In another sequence there’s a druggie bar with the walls covered in graffiti that say things like POT and SOCIETY SUCKS.

Boy, I bet Adamson was really proud of sticking it to those angry young people.

Dracula vs Frankenstein is mesmerizingly bad.  Usually the best bad movies are the kind where you can follow the story a bit, so you aren’t wasting time wondering what the hell is going on instead of appreciating the nonsense dialogue and unconvincing effects.  Dracula vs Frankenstein is a singular exception.  You never have any idea what anybody’s doing and yet somehow it doesn’t matter… the movie gives up on making sense very early, and just forges merrily ahead, dragging you along behind it.  What’s actually happening never matters enough to distract.  I honestly don’t know if this is a point in the movie’s favour or not… but it would have made a hell of an MST3K episode.

[in-dire-need]

OK, I’M SICK- Badflower

OK, I’M SICK was released in 2019 as upcoming band Badflower’s first full-length album. Every single track on the album has gotten its due share of the spotlight as the album climbed the billboard charts. A band that was once the underdog of the rock scene became a renowned name almost overnight. Frontman Josh Katz ties personal experiences into emotional stories to create the perfect blend of heart wrenching and riveting.

Opening track “x ANA x” serves as the perfect introduction to the chaotic world of Badflower. Its extremely powerful, vulgar, and aggravated sound welcomes all the chaos that is to come. Frontman Josh Katz had spoken out about his growing issues on tour before the creation of this album: he would have panic attacks every night on stage and could hardly stand to look at himself when off stage. His anxiety grew to such a high level that he was prescribed Xanax to calm down. “x ANA x” is written as a love letter to the prescription drug, which Katz had now developed a dependency for. He tells ‘Ana’ that even though she saves him from his demons, he can’t breathe with her around. He craves the feeling of being himself again, but he craves her more. He explains the awful life he lives without her, then the instrumentals slow down as an auditory example of the effect Xanax has on a person. He begs her not to let him lose control over himself, so he keeps her around as he destroys himself.

"The Jester” waited almost an entire year after its initial release to bask in its well-earned fame, when a well-deserved music video and an acoustic adaptation were released. Josh expresses that he feels like a source of comedic entertainment for others, as if he is only there as a jester. Everyone is just fucking him over, letting him run in circles for their own amusement. 

The next track is an extremely emotional one and if you deal with sensitivity toward subjects involving depression and/or suicide, I suggest you skip past this paragraph. “Ghost” was first released as a single before being added to the set of the album. Badflower’s raw performance on The Late Night Show With James Corden is what attracted so many initial listeners to them. The lyrics depict the narrative of someone who has attempted suicide by self-harm multiple times, but has never succeeded. He thinks about how he is a constant let-down to his friends and a disappointment to his family. He wants to give in and try again, but he is worried that he will fail once more and that his pain will continue. At the same time, he wants someone to save him from this endless loop of self-destruction that he has caught himself in. He finally makes up his mind and attempts to kill himself once more. As the blood leaves his body and his vision goes dark he regrets not telling his family that he loves them and not leaving a letter. He admits that the thought of regretting what he did is so fucked up and, at the very end of the song, his last attempt succeeds in taking his life out of his hands. In another interview, Josh disclosed that the true inspiration behind the gut-wrenching, graphic track was fortunately not from a personal experience. He explained that during tour his mental health had severely deteriorated, as mentioned in “x ANA x,” and he was considering harming himself. Instead, he wrote “Ghost” to keep him from making that mistake for himself. Not only did this intent work for him, but possibly millions of people in the same situation. “Ghost” appears as a gruesome depiction of humanity’s lowest point, but actually serves as a beacon of hope for the many that are unfortunate enough to be living that reality.

Now that that emotional hashing is through, let’s progress through the rest of the album. The next wave of songs depicts individual stories of different people in extremely different situations. “We’re In Love” presents the conflict of a man struggling with his sexual identity as he begins having a sexual relationship with another man. He has never been with a man before and struggles with accepting who he is. “Promise Me” is a sweet-sounding track that expresses putting your all into a relationship just for it to be torn away from you as you and your partner grow older. This song was inspired by Katz’s fear of growing old and losing his loved ones.  At the end of the trifecta, “Daddy” tells the story of a girl who was sexually abused by her alcoholic father from a very young age. The trauma permanently scars her, so when her father is hospitalized at an old age she smothers him to death as payment for all the years he stole from her.

“24″ returns the focus back to Katz’s own personal experiences in a sedated and calmed intermission. He reminisces about when he was younger and had a life ahead of him. He had hopes, dreams, and passion. In the present, he struggles with depression, anxiety, and drug addiction. This calls back to the continuing theme of Katz feeling worthless, as he states that his friends should let him die because he is too afraid to be alive. The next track was featured as a single, on the band’s EP Temper, and on OK, I’M SICK. Whereas “x ANA x” compared a drug to a person, “Heroin” does just the opposite. The song was originally released in 2014, five years before its release on the album. It is tied with “Ghost” for what is the band’s most emotionally raw performance. Josh knows that the girl he is with is wrong for him and is toxic, but he finds himself addicted to her. She treats him horribly, but he constantly finds himself going back to her. He knows that in the long-term he will escape his addiction to her, but cannot find it in himself at the time. It has become somewhat of an anthem for people that have been trapped in toxic or abusive relationships and has inspired many to stand up when found in that situation.

The calm atmosphere created by the last two tracks is destroyed as the hardcore, violent, and extremely offensive song written about people that are so afraid of change that they bring an entire nation down. Though many think that “Die” is directly aimed at Donald J. Trump, Katz has stated that it is not. Many of the lyrics point toward that conclusion, since many of the people that the song is truly aimed at are grouped in with Trump supporters. Keeping with the violent political scene, “Murder Games” solidifies Katz’s vehement stance on veganism and the consumption of meat. “Girlfriend” serves as yet another action-packed, graphic, and vulgar piece of insight into the real world. To put it simply, a man goes onto an online dating service to find love and becomes obsessed with an attractive woman’s profiles to the point where he imagines cutting her open and tasting her blood.

“Wide Eyes” continues the stories of people in horrible situations, telling the story of an altar boy who was sexually abused by the priests in his Church. He hid what happened to him from his loved ones in fear of being named a liar and being alienated from the Church. During the breakdown, he finally gives in and comes out about how the priests treated him. He accepts that he has become the shame of the Church and has been twisted into the bad guy. The album ends in the exact opposite place to where it started. “Cry” is a soft ballad about emotional pain that utilizes the use of metaphors and imagery to describe the action without actually using the word ‘cry’. 

OK, I’M SICK has not only brought the band to an amazing place, but has brought Josh Katz to a better mental state. Thousands of fans worldwide have been affected by the words contained in this masterpiece, and have even been given the will to keep going. That being said, it is very clear that there are two continuing themes throughout the album: Josh’s personal struggles and the struggles of other people in these horrible situations. This album covers an extremely broad scale, ranging from suicide to internet stalking to sexual abuse. This not only raises awareness to these issues that plague the world, but serve as a message to all people personally dealing with them. By telling the stories of these people, Badflower has given real-world survivors a safe space to open up about their struggles and the memories that follow them. This atmosphere is what brings listeners to cherish this band because Badflower is more than just a band and OK, I’M SICK is more than just an album. Badflower is a home. A haven. Somewhere that, despite all the world’s troubles and grievances and sickness, you can feel safe. When most bands tell a story, that’s all it is. A story. By connecting to this vulnerable and powerless side of humanity, OK, I’M SICK crosses the line from story to message. It is a message telling you to keep going and to cherish the good that you have. It is a message telling you that the situation you are in now is under your control and that things will get better. Nothing is permanent, and that is both a good thing and a bad thing. So relax. Go enjoy yourself.

“Okay, I’m sick! Not the kind of sick that lands you in the doctor, Not the kind that makes you weak and then heals you stronger, It's the kind of sick that turns your legs into spaghetti. It’s the kind of sick that makes your blood burn and your bones heavy. The kind of sick that makes an atheist pray for Jesus. The kind of sickness that turns your power into weakness. And I'm sick of being sick for this whole fucking place to witness. And I'm living a sick life that most people call privileged. And they're kinda right, but I’m still sicker than I can cope with.”

[love-sweet-tooth]

Breakfast Club

Here’s another double dip prompt coming at you. Yet again, this is for @get-beached. Hope you enjoy~

Fandom: Voltron / Pairing: Klance / Prompts: School festival and drive-in movie / Words:  930

Warning: This is a weight gain/kink story. Don’t like, don’t read.

Since they had started dating a year earlier, Keith had steadily put on weight. Everyone jokingly pointed out that he’d put on the freshman fifteen during their junior year, not knowing that Keith was well beyond fifteen pounds by now. Despite being very much into this thicker version of his boyfriend, Lance hadn’t asked him to do it, but he reminded him every day how much he loved his new curves.

It wasn’t as if Lance didn’t love his friends - he did - but he also loved his boyfriend. Very much. And there were times he wanted Keith all to himself.

The college festival being one of those days.

It was always on alumni weekend and subtly used as a fundraiser. They packed the quad with rides and vendors alike. Lance treated Keith more than once to whatever food drew his attention.

Which was a lot.

Since they had started dating a year earlier, Keith had steadily put on weight. Everyone jokingly pointed out that he’d put on the freshman fifteen during their junior year, not knowing that Keith was well beyond fifteen pounds by now. Despite being very much into this thicker version of his boyfriend, Lance hadn’t asked him to do it, but he reminded him every day how much he loved his new curves.

After a whole day of wandering around the festival, Lance finally managed to whisk Keith away.

For once they took Lance’s car since Keith’s motorcycle wouldn’t really do for a drive-in movie. On top of that, the date was Lance’s idea. “Let me woo you,” he said. Keith reluctantly agreed and took a seat in Lance’s old Prius.

They had to drive for over an hour to get to the drive-in and Lance made sure to stop by a grocery store on the way. They stocked up on more than enough snacks and sweets. Keith also insisted they order some takeout.

“What? I’m hungry,” he said with a shrug, as if forgetting about all he’d eating at the festival earlier. His hand squeezing Lance’s on top of the gear stick. “I want to have actual food and not just snacks.”

Actual food ended up being a large pizza from a small shop beside the drive-in theater.

The drive-in was having a double feature. The Breakfast Club followed by Sixteen Candles. Keith laughed at that from behind a slice of pizza once he found out.

“Wooing me with The Breakfast Club?” he quipped.

Lance rolled his eyes and teasingly shoved Keith. “Horror night is on Fridays and you know how I feel about the goat scene in Jurassic Park.”

“Jurassic Park isn’t a horror movie.” Keith’s lips twitched, threatening to let out a laugh.

Lance tisked, “The Velociraptors are pure nightmare fuel.”

They kept up with their banter even as The Breakfast Club started. Lance ate until he was sure he was going to be sick while Keith continued to stuff his face.

They were sitting in the back of the car. Lance had pulled down the back seats and opened the trunk, giving them a perfect view of the screen. It was a little cramped but it was more than perfect for cuddling. Lance had brought enough blankets and pillows that they were comfortable and warm, even with the late October chill in the air.

It wasn’t until The Breakfast Club was nearly over that Lance realized Keith was still eating.

He glanced at his boyfriend only to catch him mindlessly raising chip after chip to his mouth. Unlike Lance, who was laying down, Keith was sitting up with the bag of chips in his lap. But it wasn’t just one bag of chips - it was several and a bag of buttery popcorn and a tray of oreos.

Keith was leaning against the side of the car, though he was also teetering back, allowing room to accommodate his stomach.

Freshman fifteen? More like forty.

There was no denying he had a double chin or how his pecks had grown soft. It was his stomach, however, that had grown the most. It stuck out, resting on his thighs. And the more he leaned back, the more skin he showed. Even in the dark Lance could trace the thin, red stretch marks that trailed up his love handles and underbelly.

Lance swallowed the fist sized knot in his throat, his eyes honing in on the newest habit Keith had picked up.

When he was mindlessly eating like this, he liked to rub his belly. His fingers pressed into his gut, drawing tiny circles into his fat. He wasn’t even sure if Keith knew he was doing it. It was so adorable to him that all he wanted to do was smother his boyfriend with affection.

He managed to hold back until the brief intermission between movies. By then Keith had polished off all the popcorn and left a graveyard of chip bags in his wake. Lance sat up and motioned for Keith to sit up against him.

Keith was plush when he pressed up against him. He was also breathing a little heavy. When Lance ran a hand over his bloated middle, he could see why. At the very top of his stomach, below his chest, there wasn’t much give. The skin was pulled tight from every calorie he had devoured today.

Keith leaned into his touch as the next movie started, silently giving Lance permission to touch every gurgling inch of him. He moved on to what was left of the oreos and struggled with every bite. Lance did his best to soothe him, his attention focused on Keith’s straining gut and not the movie they’d come to see.

Keith was panting by the time he finished the last cookie. He fell back against Lance, his body heavy and his stomach angrily growling beneath Lance’s eager fingertips.

“Damn,” was all Lance could say as he drank Keith in.

Keith hid a belch behind his hand. “How was that… for wooing?”

[untitledtallgeesepodcast]

There were a total of five OSTs released for Gundam Wing (the fifth was dedicated to the music of Endless Waltz, which will not be covered in this post or this playlist). Caitlin asked if I (Cathy) would create a playlist of my favorites. I didn't think she expected I would also write a novel. But here we go.

Let’s listen to some of the music of Gundam Wing!

(All song titles will be described with their English name and also the strangely romanized Spotify name.)

There are three main categories of Gundam Wing OST songs: (1) shoot 'em up fighting tracks which usually feature loud riffs, drums, and blats and blares coming at you at the same speed and frequency of mobile suits firing pointlessly at the Gundams, (2) instrumental, orchestral songs meant for the intermission period of a ballet that was never written or performed, or (3) synthy stuff with saxophones that wouldn't be out of place in a dingy rainy bar scene of a tame movie from the 80s. Most of the really recognizable tracks are in the first OST. OST 2 tends towards less interesting instrumental waltz-like stuff, Sanq Kingdom ballroom music as I've termed it in my head. They're fine, tolerable pieces of music, but you don't hear them and instantly think "Gundam Wing." By the time you get to OST 3, you're digging into the really deep cuts of Gundam Wing OST tracks, some of which I don't remember being in the show at all. (OST 4 is almost entirely character songs.)

We open with two of the best OPs—nay, songs—to have ever been made, "Just Communication" and "Rhythm Emotion," both by TWO-MIX. "Rhythm Emotion" was not, as you may have imagined, a mid-season swap-out. It was only used for about 10 episodes, and you may have even forgotten what it sounded like until just this moment, but "Rhythm Emotion" is no slacker. With alien, wintery synths that make you feel like you're soaring through the sky and between enemy mobile suits, this is one of those songs you would hear heavily remixed for knock-off DDR machines in arcades for years to come. The breakdown is cheesy, overemotional, and yet gives me the same goosebumps I would feel, years later, when listening to Love Live's "Snow Halation." Its more accomplished older sister, "Just Communication," dates itself from its opening note, but it owns its place in time and history unapologetically. Timeless, instantly recognizable, and eminently singable, you could, as Caitlin says in Episode 1, play this in a karaoke room full of randos and you're guaranteed to have someone scream along. There are some songs that make everyone feel like the star of their own shounen anime when they hear it, and "Just Communication" is one of them. Turning it up full volume in your car is like blasting "Take My Breath Away" while speeding on a motorcycle with a leather jacket. You are invincible through all 4:20 minutes of this song.

After that, perhaps one of the most famous instrumental tracks from the series: "The Wings of a Boy that Killed Adolescence / Shisyunki wo Koroshita Syonen no Tsubasa." (That boy is Heero Yuy. I know you know that, but this OST makes it explicit with its last instrumental track, "Code Name Heero Yuy," which is just another version of this melody.) There are a lot of songs like this, fighting tracks that hurry along at a clip, heroic but a little bit anxious ("When the Dragon Swims / Ryu ga Oyogutoki...," "Break Out," "Scattering Left Light / Kakusansuru Zanko" which barely sounds like music and is clearly hoping to be the soundtrack to your next laser tag game). I want to call out among them "Mission Accomplished / Ninmu Suiko," which has a last half that is so tied in my head to the world of Gundam Wing that when I hear it, I am instantly transported. It's almost a letdown that it's just an OST track, because it builds up such amazing tension that it releases just as quickly. "Mission Accomplished" is a bridge between these energetic tracks and more headbang-y, hard metal type fight songs like "Use the Cloak of Darkness / Kurayami Karano Tsukai," one of my all-time favorite guitar riffs from the GW OSTs. A lot of OST 1 is full of this "Enter Sandman" type stuff, though you still get reprises in the later OSTs, like "Well-Planned Tactics / Butsuryo Sakusen." The back half of "Cloak of Darkness," though, is a completely different track, this time pure fascist military fantasy. A lot of OSTs were like this, two short BGMs together masquerading as a one- to two-minute track. I'm not sure if it was just more expensive to list out a bunch of 45 second tracks, or if Otani Kou just ran out of emo names for all of them.

One thing I didn’t realize until this project is that there are no less than five variations on Relena’s theme in OST 1 alone:

Soft Hair and See-through Eyes / Yawarakana Kami...

Inside the Girl's Heart... / Syojyo no Mune no Oku Niwa...

To Beauty, to Elegance, and to Noble-mindedness / Karen ni Yuga ni...

I Feel Like I Can Cross Even That Rainbow Bridge / Ano Niji...

As Relena Peacecraft / Relena Peacecraft Toshite

When you've heard one, you've heard them all, so I’m putting on "Soft Hair...,” the wonderfully 80s and slightly boozy "adult contemporary" version of it, completely with a Kenny G sax. The others feel much more pure and dignified, especially "To Beauty...," which I think of as "waltz music" as it shows up in many of the early series' ballroom scenes. ”Rainbow Bridge..." is a worthy remix/variant, and for another similar boozy 80s feel, also try "Coolheaded Bloodthirstiness / Reitetsu na sakki" from OST 1. While I’ve left most of this playlist in chronological album order, I’ve moved up "I Believed We'd Meet / Kanarazu Aeruto Shinji” from OST 3. This track is not particularly noteworthy to me, but I leave it here as an example of how even later in the series, Otani Kou makes references to this refrain, even if it's not played note for note.

Because like any good soundtrack, Gundam Wing reuses themes and motifs. "Searching for Peace Buried Amid the Corpses / Shikabane ni Umoreta..." and "That Clown Doesn't Need Make Up for Tears / Sono Doukeshi..." share the same melody, only one is a fighting song and another is a mourning song. I actually like the rendition in "Hourglass of a Sad Color / Kanashimi-iro no Sunadokei" (also from OST1) better, but while "Hourglass" is a straightforward BGM track, "That Clown..." shows off one of the more interesting aspects of the Gundam Wing OSTs: its frequent blending of synths, cheesy sax, and more classic orchestral strings. You can hear it in second half of "That Clown...", but also in tracks like "Unknown Pressure / Michi no Pressure," or OST 3's " Behind The Scenes of The Blackout / Anten no Butaiura de," which is a typical "woe is me" orchestral track that is for some reason constantly interrupted by digital "beep boop" mumblings. Without that blend, you're left with a lot of grave-sounding tracks with bombastic Phantom of the Opera-worthy brass sections, like "Soldiers Who Don't Have a Gravepost / Bhyounaki Senshitachi" or "Legend of Zero / Zero no Densetsu." Not that those songs are bad, which is why I include the last of the instrumental tracks from OST 3: "Who Will Give Their Life / Darega Tameni Inochi," which takes itself very seriously and very earnestly, just like the show itself.

One of the other frequent moods of these OST is anxiety, perhaps no better demonstrated than "You Can Hear a Voice Calling the Soul /Tamashii wo Yobu Koe ga Suru", which has a guitar emitting screeches of existential despair. “Signs of Consciousness / Ishiki no Taido" is from this same school, but its second half is more "I am walking into a rave already a few minutes into what I know is going to be a bad trip," which is not really a mood I remember from the series itself. By the time you get to OST 3, you start venturing into tracks that wouldn't be out of place in a horror film. You can hear an example of it in "The Eyes of a Mobile Doll / Mobile Doll no Me," which is on this list because it sounds like a fever dream, but you could also check out "The Abandoned Horse of the Age / Jidai no Sutegoma," which is not on this playlist and has the same effect. Some of them, like "I Don't Like Fairytales / Otogi-banashi wa Sukijyanai," are inspiringly atmospheric, almost hypnotic. Is Gundam Wing horror? [Treize Voice] Yes, the Horror of War.

Some quick call-outs in the odds and ends group: “Tokimeite Harmony” is the 3x4 theme, a literal duet between a violin and a flute, and it’s there for that reason and that reason alone. I could not tell you for the life of me where in the series “Yasuragi no Hitotoki...”, “Kizuna,” “Sonzai Syomei,” or “Kioku no Gyakuryu” come from, but they sound like beautiful tracks from a video game I’ve never played. Similarly, “That Day Was The Last Day I Saw Your Smile / Anohi Saigo ni Mita Egao” is uncharacteristically fluttery and beautiful for a Gundam Wing OST piece, an almost Ghibli-esque track which nevertheless ends on an anxiety-inducing note of unrest.

And finally, the character songs. I leave you with one for each of the six main characters, and then a bonus.

Heero Yuy: "With Only My Words / Oredake no Kotoba de." Did you expect Heero's singing voice to sound like this? Neither did I. I have no idea why they thought this was a good image song for Heero. It's not. I leave it here because you must listen to it. The better "sounding" song is "Flying Away," which shows up in this CD later, but it doesn't give me the same dissonance as this one.

Duo Maxwell: “Wild Wing.” "Good Luck & Good Bye" is the superior song. (there's a little bit of Wang Chung “Everybody Have Fun Tonight" to it), but the sheer hilarity of this chorus (WILD WING BOYS!) means that i have to include it.

Trowa Barton: “Clown / Doukeshi.” What to say about this? This is a typical ballad, something you may play during a romantic moment of a kdrama or during the slow motion death scene in a Hong Kong film that would be released around the same time as GW was. I feel bad for Nakahara Shigeru who clearly is straining himself singing this. but it is nothing if not period accurate.

Quatre Raberba Winner: “Star’s Gaze / Hoshi no Manazashi.” Poor Orikasa Ai. Quatre’s voice is passably bishounen in the series itself, but it's hard to hide that his seiyuu was a woman when it came to the image songs. That said, her voice has a much fuller quality than her fellow pilots, and this is actually a decent-enough filler song. You could imagine debuting an idol maybe in the late 80s with this track.

Chang Wufei: “Knock at Tomorrow's Door / Asu eno Door wo Tatake.” If Wing were a kpop group, Wufei would be the rapper. You don't get to argue with me here. It's hard enough to imagine Wufei actually singing, but Ishino Ryuzou's singing voice also doesn't bear that much resemblance to the voice he adopted for the character. 

Relena Peacecraft: “Love is Not Crying Yet / Ai wa Mada Nakanai.” One of the most unexpected of the image songs is this bossa nova inspired track for Relena. Like Orikasa's ballad, this song almost works as a real song, and the purity of Yajima Akiko's voice is incredibly charming, which makes it all that more surprising that she's actually best known for being the seiyuu to the eponymous Shin-chan of Crayon Shin-Chan.

I do not include the image songs for Zechs and Treize, simply because they're boring. Both of them are extremely well-known and popular seiyuus, who have since done a number of musical projects. You can tell that they will fare better at that endeavor than Trowa’s seiyuu, but there's really nothing interesting to say about their songs. As always, the men of Gundam Wing are shown up by their female counterpart: Lady Une's "Brightness & Darkness" is positively anthemic and fun to listen to. Sayuri doesn't hit all the notes perfectly, and you can sense there is Fleetwood Mac / Stevie Nicks impersonator out there who could really knock this one out of the park, but if I were to keep one image song out of the whole bunch, it'd be this one.

[the-penny-dreadfuls]

They once called her “The Most Beautiful Girl in New York City”. With just one look at Olive Thomas, anyone could see that fate designed her for stardom. Her face was carved with fine, delicate features, framed by a halo of soft and warm curls. Long, thick lashes feathered her striking violet-blue eyes, and a demure smile often painted her lips. She was as intelligent as she was beautiful, with a charming personality to boot. During the 1910′s, the world and all its possibilities laid out in front of her. All she only had to grab it. Now, nearly a hundred years after her sudden and grim death, Olive Thomas is one of the most famous ghosts of Broadway.

Miss Olive R. Thomas, affectionately known as Ollie, made her stage debut on June 21st, 1915 when she joined the cast of Ziegfeld Follies in the New Amsterdam Theatre, one of the most magnificent theatres of its time. She performed alongside a cast full of beautiful women, garbed in elaborate and exquisite costumes, for the entertainment of thousands. She became such a popular performer that she earned a coveted spot in Ziegfeld’s later, more risqué show, the Midnight Frolic.

In 1917, Olive transitioned her career from the stage to the silver screen when she starred in her first full-length movie “A Girl Like That”. Up to twenty movies followed with her most distinguished character being Ginger King in “The Flapper”. This role made Olive the first person to portray the iconic 1920′s phenomenon in film. Outside of acting, the rising star aspired broaden her career with more roles both in front of and behind the camera. She dreamed of becoming a director and used her time on sets to study the craft. A director for one film Olive starred in believed that, with her brains and ambition, she could easily turn those dreams into reality.

Life in the movie business was somewhat of a family affair. After meeting in 1916, Olive fell head over heels for Jack Pickford, the younger brother of the famed actress Mary Pickford. The couple eloped during October of that year, much to the apprehension of the Pickford family. Although they were madly in love, their marriage was a turbulent one, packed with highs and lows and lavish gifts in between. They hoped to expand their family once their careers allowed enough time. Olive adored children. She doted over her kid sister, Harriett, her niece, Mary Pickford Rupp, the daughter of Lottie Pickford, and her brother’s son. Olive became the main caregiver of her nephew in 1920 after the boy’s mother passed away. For birthdays and holidays, Olive enthusiastically spent her hard-earned money on spoiling the youngsters. These were special days, after all: no expense should be spared. That was how she preferred to live. Olive embraced life with the joy and optimism of a child and kept her eyes fixed on the future.

Jack and Olive’s once fiery romance cooled to mere embers by 1920. To rekindle their relationship, they set sail for Paris, France in August for a much-needed vacation. Reporters gathered on the ship’s deck to document the send-off. A fury of clicks buzzed through the air as Jack and Olive smiled and posed for the cameras. At one point, much to the delight of their audience, they shared a quick kiss. Afterwards, Olive dissolved into a fit of giggles and leaned in closer to her beloved husband. Little did she know, she would not make the trip home.

Paris was the perfect city for this young Hollywood couple. They loved to cut loose and have a good time, and with their strenuous workload, this was exactly what they needed. Jack and Olive toured the city, taking in its grand sites and nightlife. On September 5th, they hit up multiple hot spots in the Montparnasse area, dancing and drinking the night away. The party continued until 3 A.M. when they decided it was time to return to their hotel room. Olive went to the bathroom to take something to ease her into sleep. The full details of what took place are unknown, but for whatever reason she ended up grabbing a bottle of mercury bichloride and consumed it. According to Jack, he heard his wife scream “Oh, my God!” and he then sprinted to her aid. Emergency personnel rushed Olive to the hospital where she laid bed-ridden for a grueling five days until finally succumbing to the poison after it shut down her kidneys. By then, the mercury bichloride corroded her esophagus and left her completely blind.

Olive Thomas’ untimely passing was one of the first major scandals to rock Hollywood. Throngs of mourning fans attended the funeral to bid the star a last farewell. As Olive’s family and friends tried to make it to the church doors, the crowds erupted in hysterical grief and had to be blocked by police. Chaos swelled to a new level when the coffin was brought outside. Pallbearers were jostled about as heartbroken fans pushed at each other, attempting to snatch funeral floral arrangements for a souvenir. Fortunately, police were able to restore peace once again and Olive was laid to rest in the Woodlawn Cemetery without further interruption. Rumors instantly began to whirl around the strange circumstances of her death. Some blamed Jack Pickford for the incident, alleging it must have been murder. Others theorized the actress became so miserable with her marriage that she committed suicide after a bitter argument, perhaps over Jack’s infidelities. A third telling of events is far simpler. Olive, combined with the night of partying and the darkness inside the bathroom, mistook the bottle of mercury bichloride pills for sleeping pills, stirred the concoction into a liquid, and poisoned herself. The official report sided with this version and ruled her death as accidental.

That was the end of Olive Thomas, or so people thought. It’s believed that her spirit returned to the stage of the New Amsterdam Theatre, where she could once again live out her glory days as a Follies Girl. Disney restored the theatre to its original grandeur in 1997, just in time for the premiere of their animated film “Hercules”. Popular musicals such as the Lion King, Mary Poppins, and Aladdin later took to the stage and captivated adoring audiences. After the shows, when the curtain fell and everyone returned to their daily lives, an eerie atmosphere envelops the theatre. During a night shift in their restoration period, a lone security guard began going through the rows of seats in search for any stragglers. Something caught his eye. He directed his flashlight in its path and caught sight of an individual walking across the stage. It was an elegant young woman, dressed in a glittering green beaded dress, paired with a matching headdress. This mysterious character noticed the guard, and she turned to blow him a kiss before vanishing into a wall. This was the initial sighting of what some believe to be the ghost of Olive Thomas.

Those who have encountered Olive’s lingering spirit describe her as being flirtatious and a bit mischievous. She is known to move objects around and mess with stage props and equipment, such as crewmen’s walkie-talkies. One audience member believed she met Olive during a performance of “Mary Poppins”. The patron needed a booster seat for her child. A woman gowned in attire similar to that of the musical’s time period helped her find the seat, and the family settled back in to enjoy the production. Later, the woman commented to an usher how fun it was that they allowed characters to help. The confused usher replied that they didn’t. It was against their policy to help in the middle of a scene, although they’d be more than happy to during intermission.

To make Olive’s spirit feel appreciated, employees of the New Amsterdam Theatre have hung a photograph of her up at every entrance and exit. Each worker greets her with a cheerful “Hello, Olive!”, and as they leave, they blow her a kiss and wish her a goodbye.

During a 1917 interview with Photoplay’s writer, Jack Lloyd, Olive offered a piece of her philosophy towards life. “Life’s too short and fate too funny to get upstage,” she remarked. “Today they may be showering us with roses on Broadway and tomorrow some fool director who used to be a waiter may be rejecting us as atmosphere in a five-reel five cent feature.” This tragic actress was certainly not one to be upstaged. In both life and the afterlife, Olive Thomas was destined to be a star.

[john-cardoza]

Let’s talk about the prom!

As most of you know today the prom will close after 23 previews and 310 regular performances. They will have run for under a year after 4+ years of preparation. 

I personally found out about the prom in late 2017 when they were in between their run at the Alliance theater in Atlanta and opening on broadway. I fell in love, found what little content existed, followed their instagram account, and forgot about the show until things started being announced for broadway. 

A little background. I am a lesbian, I am also in high school, I’m lucky enough to live in a bigish city where gay people are common and relatively accepted in everyday life. When I first found out about the prom I did not know my sexuality, and it was causing me stress mostly due to the belief in our society that you should know exactly who you are when you are still young. Getting to see a musical that was centered around two teenage lesbian characters was so important, and helped me down the road of finding out who I was. Not only that getting to see a musical that normalized having multiple gay/lesbian characters and featuring multiple women in important roles with good character arcs? Even better.

When a broadway show opens they tend to do multiple performances on many different media sources to raise publicity. The first performance that prom did was at the Macy’s thanksgiving parade where they made history by having the first same-sex kiss in the parade’s history, not only that the performance was televised nationally, it is a program that is mostly watched by families and children. Who knows how many children who live in conservative homes got to see their first kiss between two women in a pure, prom like scenario when through their lives they have only been told that homosexual people are ‘wrong’. I can only hope that girls who are attracted to girls got to see an example of their sexuality being valid and that it will help them come to terms with it when they get older. The prom had many other performances on different television shows and such, and in all of them they went to lengths to show good lesbian representation while still advertising their show.

When it comes to the tony awards the prom had the honor of being nominated for seven different awards, one of which was best musical. Because of the number of awards they got they were also given the option to perform at the tony awards. It is not an overstatement to say that I cried when I saw their tony awards performance. It was yet another example of lesbian representation in theater which is something that is relatively uncommon. I do have opinions on the fact that they didn’t take home any of the tony awards that they were nominated for, but I will avoid sharing that here as I don’t want to talk about things the prom didn’t do. (I will mention that they won the drama desk award for best musical)

The two leads of the show who play Emma and her girlfriend Alyssa are Caitlin Kinnunen and Izzy McCalla. Caitlin Kinnunen who has been playing Emma since the first workshop for the show four years ago is my hero. There is probably another way I could phrase that, but I think that hero is accurate. It is rare to see an actress in a broadway production who is as open about their non-hetero sexuality as Kinnunen has been. A couple of months into the broadway run Kinnunen went to an interview where she talked about how she had recently started to realize her own sexuality thanks to in part, her role in The Prom. She also felt comfortable enough to share that she had just recently started dating a woman for the first time. Since then she has come out as bisexual, which I would consider a huge step forward as there are still many queer roles that are being played by heterosexual, cisgender people. Not only on broadway, but also in movies and television. Kinnunen is also very open about her own mental health issues. She has never shied away from talking about her anxiety and how it affects her day to day life as a broadway actor, like the fact that she usually cannot stagedoor and that she occasionally has to call out of shows to deal with her mental health. As a teenager with anxiety who has an interest in going into theater as a career (though I am more interested in the technical side), it’s inspirational to see someone as successful as Kinnunen be that open about her sexuality. The other lead who was mentioned above; Izzy McCalla, is also someone I look up to. A few weeks ago she went on a popular podcast titled “Thank you for coming out” there she talked about her struggles with her sexuality, due to the fact that she had never been in a real relationship with a woman. As of recently she has also come out as bisexual.

I was lucky enough to see the prom last month. I scheduled the trip when they announced closing, knowing that I would regret it if I never got to see the show live on broadway. Needless to say the show was amazing, but more specifically I was amazed by how good the show was quality wise. Right away it pulls you in, something that I feel many broadway shows struggle with, by the end of the first scene I felt completely invested in the plot and the characters. Not only that, but you stay invested, I find it hard to believe anyone could leave at intermission after the heartbreaking scene that closes out act one. Finally, near the end of act two there is a song called unruly heart that made me cry. It starts with Emma sitting alone on her bed with her computer and guitar, creating a song about her experiences with the prom. Near the end of the song ensemble members dressed in pajamas enter the stage behind her, representing the comments on the video. Something about that scene just hit me, it was amazing to hear people on stage voicing things that I have though in regards to my sexuality. I know that wasn’t the most eloquent explanation, but that is the only way I can think to put it.

Of the primary leads in the prom, three of the four of them are women. Of the secondary leads two of the four of them are women. Not only that but all of the women are fully fleshed out characters with emotions, and character arcs. It would be so easy to make Mrs. Greene nothing but a villain and a terrible person, but at the end of the show it is implied that she may be able to fix things with her daughter and become more accepting. Dee Dee Allen, the egotistical broadway star who starts the show as nothing but a narcissistic, selfish, asshole is also given the chance to learn from her mistakes, by the end of the show she is willing to make a huge sacrifice in order to help Emma. Having multiple female characters who all have flaws and make mistakes like a normal person is huge, especially on a broadway stage where many shows are reduced to “multiple men and a love interest”.

Lastly there are many amazing examples of representation that don’t necessarily apply to me so I won’t go super in depth about them. For one Izzy McCalla is Haitian and multiple actresses who understudy Emma and Alyssa are also not-white. Caitlin Kinnunen has diabetes and has been open about that, even wearing her medical bracelet during the tony performance.Overall the show has a lot of diversity among the ensemble actors which is uncommon in many shows. I will absolutely not say that it is perfect, but it is still amazing when compared to the more white shows.

Honestly I don’t know exactly what my intention is with making this post, but I can’t stand to let this beautiful show disappear without talking about it. I guess these are all my reasons as for why the prom shouldn’t be closing this early. Either way I will always love this show, and I hope that other people will too. Also make sure to go see the tour if you are able!

[perfectirishgifts]

How This Visionary Producer Is Transforming The Theater Podcast Landscape

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/how-this-visionary-producer-is-transforming-the-theater-podcast-landscape/

How This Visionary Producer Is Transforming The Theater Podcast Landscape

“You can’t use up creativity,” said Maya Angelou. “The more you use, the more you have.” Early in her life, someone must have told that to Dori Berinstein. This unstoppable theater, film and TV maker appears to embody creativity. She is an endless font.

Dori Berinstein

Berinstein is a four-time Tony-winning Broadway producer whose credits include The Prom, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Legally Blonde: The Musical, The Crucible, One Flue Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Fool Moon, Flower Drum Song, Enchanted April and Golden Child.

Oh, and Berinstein is also an Emmy-award-winning director, producer and film and television writer. Most recently, she and Bill Damaschke, who produced The Prom on Broadway, collaborated with Ryan Murphy to adapt the show into a Netflix feature film starring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, James Cordon, Keegan-Michael Key, Andrew Rannells and Kerry Washington. She also co-produced the Sony Masterworks cast album of the musical Half Time. The show was inspired by her documentary, Gotta Dance, about a group of seniors who make up a hip-hop dance troupe who perform for The New Jersey Nets. 

“I love the art of storytelling and believe it’s all about a good story. Whether you’re telling it on stage or screen or in an audio drama or soap opera, I like moving between different worlds and sometimes moving a project throughout different worlds,” says Berinstein who has degrees from Smith, the Kennedy School at Harvard and the Yale School of Drama where she was a visiting scholar focusing on the business of Broadway. After working in strategic planning at Paramount Pictures she joined a tiny emerging independent film company, Vestron Pictures. Within a year, she became head of physical production and ultimately supervised production on the film Dirty Dancing. “What keeps me very excited is being able to collaborate with wonderful people,” she adds.

But if all this isn’t enough, Berinstein is also the co-founder and CEO of the The Broadway Podcast Network which produces over 100 theater podcasts, dramas, musicals and miniseries, like As The Curtain Rises, the delicious new digital soap opera that Berinstein co-wrote with Mark Peikert. 

As The Curtain Rises is a dishy comedy that offers listeners a glimpse of the behind the scenes mayhem trying to birth a Broadway show. In this case there’s the challenge of getting Avvatar: The Musical to The Great White Way. Producing shows for 25 years, the drama is inspired by things Berinstein has witnessed along the way. “Our As The Curtain Rises characters are certainly “inspired” by our theater colleagues. In some cases, characteristics are exaggerated. In other instances….not so much!,” says Berinstein. “The behind-the-curtain Broadway world is definitely the perfect setting for a soap opera.”

The multi-part series features a riveting cast including Alex Brightman, Ariana Debose, Andrew Barth Feldman, James Monroe Iglehart, Ramin Karimloo, Ilana Levine, Lesli Margherita, Mauricio Martinez, Bonnie Milligan, Ashley Park, George Salazar, Sarah Stiles and Lillias White. The priceless cameos from Lynn Nottage, Alex Lacamoire, David Korins, Natasha Katz, Matt Britten and Jordan Roth are worth the listen.

Creating and producing As The Curtain Rises during the pandemic was particularly meaningful to Berinstein. “We haven’t been able to produce live theater. Even though it’s tremendously goofy and fun, this took on a whole other level of urgency,” says Berinstein. “It’s important to keep theater alive during this time. And it’s thrilling to work with and pay actors, make people laugh and try to provide some joy.” 

Jeryl Brunner: What inspired you to create The Broadway Podcast Network?

Dori Berinstein: I live in Northern Westchester. Pre-Covid-19, I spent a lot of time commuting to and from New York City. I would find myself driving home after seeing theater and would be sitting in my driveway at 1:30am, listening to podcasts because the episode wasn’t over. I was so caught up in it and loved the medium, but having trouble finding theater podcasts. There was no real destination for theater podcasts. Then when I brought the company of The Prom to Google, I met Alan Seales who runs Google Talks. He then invited me to be a guest on his theater podcast. We talked afterward and shared the frustration that we couldn’t find a lot of theater podcasts. We agreed that we had to do something about it and said, “Let’s do it.” We spent ten months building and partnering with a lot of wonderful podcasters who were out there before anyone else like The Ensemblist, The Fabulous Invalid and Broadwaysted.

Brunner: How has the platform gown?

Berinstein: We launched in October, 2019 with 15 podcasts. And here we are, a little over a year later, with almost 100 podcasts. Since the beginning it was very much the plan to have podcasts and record plays, musicals, audio dramas, and soap operas. It was never to replace theater and we certainly never anticipated the pandemic. When you see a show, you want to know more. What is happening behind the curtain? There is so much additive information that we are excited to bring to life. We are in a community filled with amazing storytellers and wanted to help support and give them a voice.

Brunner: What do you hope to offer listeners?

Berinstein: It was very important from the get-go that we create a network that is representative and has many different people from all different aspects of our community. That includes onstage, behind the curtain, looking back in history and education. Having all these different artists and voices is essential, because our community is made up of so many different voices.

There is also a lot of hunger from people interested in getting into the business. So we have podcasts about breaking in and auditioning. We also have podcasts from established producers like Hal Luftig and Eva Price. Kerry Butler has one on breaking into Broadway. Justin Guarini has a podcast about auditioning. They are educational and informative. Then there are pure, goofy, fun, joyous podcasts. It’s exciting to have a lot of star power on the network with podcasts from Tonya Pinkins, Sir Tim Rice and Donna McKechnie. I love hearing those behind-the-curtain stories. It was also important for us to partner with many different regional and international theater companies and the Dramatists Guild, Variety and Playbill. We really want to be a home for everyone.

Brunner: Did you always know this was your path?

Berinstein: From a very early age, I was completely captivated by theater. I saw Carol Channing in Hello Dolly! at the Dorothy Chandler pavilion when I was five years old. And that was it. I was so just transported by that show and the whole experience of live theater. [Berinstein ultimately directed, produced and co-wrote the documentary Carol Channing: Larger Than Life.] My parents would take me to theater all the time. It was just the most thrilling thing. I had no talent. I could not sing. Even though I tried, I never got cast in anything. But I wanted so badly to be part of the world. At my school they didn’t have a student director or even backstage crew. But I still was very captivated by how things came together. In college I triple majored in economics, history and theater and created a special studies program on the business of Broadway. I became voracious about reading absolutely everything I could. So much that I learned about life and important issues came from theater and its power to enlighten and make me think.

Brunner: How did you become a theater producer? 

Berinstein: I really wanted to be part of that world, but had no idea how. I didn’t know anybody. Coming from Los Angeles, I was established in film before finding my way into theater. Finally I was introduced to James Freydberg who was producing Broadway shows. We went to the Serious Fun Festival to see a short piece that Bill Irwin and David Shiner put together. I flipped over it. The show was the early stage evolution of Fool Moon. If I knew anything about producing at that point, I probably would have been nervous about producing a show with two guys who don’t speak and a ragtag band, [The Red Clay Ramblers]. It just doesn’t scream hit. But I loved everything about it. 

I got thrown into the thick of it right away as a general partner producer. I didn’t even know what that meant. It was an amazing experience in every way. In previews the audience was maybe at 50% capacity. At opening night we had our associate producer stationed at The New York Times a few blocks away. This was before the paper was digital. We were in the Richard Rodgers theater where Hamilton is. At intermission he came running into the house, waiving the newspaper with the most magnificent review by Frank Rich. He wrote, “To that short list of unbeatable combinations that includes bacon and eggs, bourbon and soda, and Laurel and Hardy, you can now add Shiner and Irwin.” From that point on, the show was sold out every night and standing room only. How can you not throw your entire career in that direction after that? I loved standing in the back, listening to the audience laugh so hard and lose themselves in the show. 

Brunner: Is there something you look for in a story? 

Berinstein: I believe deeply in theater activism and have had the opportunity to lean into and be part of shows that say something important. I have been so fortunate to tell stories that mean something to me and I believe help make the world a better place. It takes years of your life and it’s hard to do. So you better believe in what you’re doing. With Legally Blonde, my daughter was seven. I loved the idea of telling a story that it is very cool to be smart. That message was really important to me to put out there and help inspire young women. 

The Prom and Half Time all have messages that are also really important to me. When people experience these shows or listen to the cast album or watch the film adaptation, I hope they can evolve and embrace the message. In the case of The Prom it’s all about acceptance and tolerance. With Half Time, which is a Jerry Mitchell musical that was adapted from a film I made, it is taking on ageism. They also say go for your dreams, no matter what.

Dori Berinstein directed, produced and co-wrote the documentary Carol Channing: Larger Than Life. … [] After Berinstein, as a little girl, saw Channing perform live, Berinstein knew that had to work in theater.

Dori Berinstein interviews Terre Blair Hamslich for the Emmy-award-winning documentary celebrating … [] the life of Marvin Hamlisch.

More from Arts in Perfectirishgifts

[common-placee]

YSU Spring Awakening

I just saw ysus production of spring awakening and I thought I take down my thoughts!! Before I start I loved this so much so any criticism is meant to be constructive!!

Wendla was AMAZING!! She gave me some DWSA vibes, despite the fact that they were very different performances!

Mama Who Bore Me was not a highlight, but it was very good!

Reprise was same tbh

At first, I didn't think I was gonna like Melchior. All that's known started a bit shaky, but he pulled it together quick!

LET ME JUST SAY: THE COSTUMES WERE GREAT!! As far as I know, ysu students made them and they were impressive!! Some of them had colored hair and when I first saw that I thought it would ruin the immersion, but it didn't!

I LOVED MORITZS ACTING!!! HIS ACTING WAS ON POINT!! HE WAS AWKWARD AND GOOFY AND SEEMED LIKE A HOT MESS!! (I got a picture with him but I'm not gonna post it) his singing was not the best and if he would have been angrier and let his voice not be perfect (let in crack a bit as it fits the role) it would have been 10x better. Still love him!!

Bitch of Living was good, not what I was expecting, but good.

AND IN MY JUNK IS ENTER THE LESBIANS!! They literally put this lesbian couple in every single scene they could and honestly 100/10 just for that!

During the part were Hanschen is jacking it, the audience was DYING!! There were also ALOT of old people in the audience and alot of them were laughing too!

Touch Me once again features the lesbians in full effect!! I'll admit the I stereotyped Georg when I saw him but he HIT THOSE NOTES SO WELL!! loved the choreography as well.

This is the point where I thought that Melchior was great!! His monologues were great!! He gives the Melchior vibe!

MARTHA WAS PERFECT!!!!!! SHE HAD A BEAUTIFUL VOICE ABD THE SCENE WAS SO FULL OF EMOTION!! SHE HIT THIS RIF THING AT THE END AND I QAS SO SURPRISED IT WAS SO GOOD!! ALSO ALL THE OTHER GJRLS WERE SITTING BESIDES MARTHA ILSE AND WENDLA AND MARTHA WAS STAGE RIGHT, ILSE STAGE LEFT AND WENDLA DEAD CENTER AND I THINK IT PERFECTLY SYMBOLISED/ FORESHADOWED THS BEATING THAT COMES LATER!!

I did really like the way this was staged! Moritzs father left and Fanny Gabor came on stage and tried to comfort Moritz before giving him the letter and starting the song. It was really cool

Both wendla and Melchior did wonderful in the beating scene, but it pissed me off that people were laughing during it. Idk I didn't like that they were laughing...

Mirror Blue Night was great

OK DURING THE BEGINING OF I BELIEVE MY MOM GOT A PIECE OF GUM FROM HER BAG AND THE CONTAINER MADE A LOUD POP NOISE TWICE (2) AND I EANTED TO DIE VECAUSE IT WAS IN THE REALLY QUUET DRAMATIC PART!!!

I BELIEVE WAS GREAT!! (the lesbians were there)

Intermission: I made a friend, yo if you see this lol

Guilty ones sounded so beautiful!! (++Lesbians)

I was not big on don't do sadness/blue wind in this production, but ilse was very good, acting and singing. AFTER THE SONG WAS OVER THOUGH WHEN MORITZ DOES THE THING (avoiding major spoilers) HE DID SO GOOD!! HE SOUNDED LIKE HE WAS AT THE END OF HIS ROPE WITH EVERYTHING! IT PHYSICALLY HURT ME TO SEE HIM LIKE THAT CAUSE IT FElt REALL

Left behind was absolutely beautiful (probably a bad time, but lesbians)

AND NOW THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE SHOW, TOTALLY FUCKED!! IT WAS SO FUCKING GOOD!! THE ENERGY WAS AMAZING AND YOU COULD TELL THEY WERE HAVING FUN WITH THAT SONG!!

Nobody expected the gay shit. Hanschen and Ernrst kissed peeps gasped it was hilarious.

THE DOCTOR SCENE WHEN WENDLA FIND OUT ABOUT THE THING (spoilers) SHES CONFUSED AND THEN SHE GETS ANGRY AND IT FITVSO PERFECTLY BECAUSE IT SEEMED LIKR THE CHILDISH SORT OF ANGRY LIKE WHE. YOURE YOUNG AND YOUR PAREBTS LIKE TO YOU IT WAS AMAZING DID I MENTION I LOVE THIS WENDLA

Reformatory scene was hilarious just saying. (I think they were playing soggy biscuit (if you don't know what that is, you don't want to))

Those You've known was not a favorite, EXCEPT WENDLA I LOVE HER

Purple summer was BEAUTIFUL!! I don't want to spoil anything for people that haven't seen it so I can't say what made this so beautiful. (The lesbians are back too)

If you want know specifics about the show, send in a message or an ask and I'd be happy to tell you!!

I know the lesbians thing was annoying but idk why I was fixated on it. (Lesbian counter: 6 times)

The guy that played Moritz was so nice and the sweetest guy btw, I won't post anybody's name BCS idk if theyd want that.

I may post some more about this show so prepare

[rndyounghowze]

An Interview with John D. Smitherman Part 2/2

By Ricky Young-Howze

Welcome back to part two of our interview with Broadway Theatre of Pitman Artistic Director John D. Smitherman. In this installment he talks about a key difference between the audiences of today and the dinner theater crowds of yesteryear and why his relationship with his team is the most important.

“Everything has become quick. Movies used to be three hours long now a movie is just under two hours long if that. And I really don't think people want to be in one place for that length of time. Because if you think about it in dinner theater it's not just an hour you're there for an hour and a half with dinner the way it's all set up and then you have a show that could be two and a half hours long when you add the intermission and so you've been in someplace for four hours. It's almost too much. I've found that people would actually prefer, like say using this theatre as an example, they would rather go to a restaurant across the street or down the street or whatever and then coming over because they have at least gotten up and changed location.”

He’s very quick to offer up examples.

“I’ll give you two things with one show. We did Camelot, our audiences were looking forward to Camelot. But our audiences also did not remember that Camelot when done as is is over three hours long. You add the intermission then suddenly it's four hours long. So that was my first quest, to cut down this classic, and I was able to so that when we were done with intermission we were done in two and a half hours.

John uses a very simple philosophy when it comes to creating a season.

“You also have to do what the people want. I'm sorry that's my thought. you can have shows, and I know that there are plenty of shows out there, that they pound a message to you and those audiences will go to those. But if you know your audience is not that type of an audience and that they just like theatre and they want to go home humming tunes and be happy or whatever then that's what you give them. This is my seventh year and when I got here we had about 4,000 subscribers and now we have 8,000 and so it's doubled in that amount of time. I think it's because of the shows. We’re giving them what they want and they tell a friend. Also the quality of the production.”

But sometimes giving an audience what they wanted is a double edged sword. Sometimes they like a song or a soundtrack more than the musical themselves. When we said that we loved John Stephan's production of Evita Smitherman was ready with yet another story.

“Now it's interesting that it happened to be Evita because Evita was one of those mixed shows for us. It didn't do as well as we thought it would. Our audiences said they wanted to see Evita but then once we presented it to them I think our audiences knew the one song (“Don't Cry For Me Argentina”) and then they see the concept of how the show actually is they were confused by some of it and and it just wasn't really their cup of tea. So we really didn't do well. It wasn't horrendous but didn't do well with Evita and that's one of the few examples I can give.”

But how does he get the info from the audience? We were imagining a call center or a survey manned by a huge team but Mr. Smitherman is just really in tune with his audience.

We don’t do surveys but I have an open door policy. I’m always very accessible so people come up to me and they’ll give me their suggestions on what should be done and what they’ve liked and that’s the main thing. I see what works.

He emphasizes heavily the role the owner, his general manager, staff, and tech team have in keeping the theater running. He doesn’t want it to seem like it was a one person job and he descended on the scene like some kind of demagogue to turn things around. The theatre was very strong when he got there and he leaned heavily on his team when he first got in.

“When I got here the general manager was my only source of input. He would say what has worked and what has not worked and I’ve worked from that.. When I can because it’s not always one hundred percent my [call] I do have the owner of the place, the general manager, and board people that we have to go through before we can actually have a finalized season and such.”

It takes a village to make a season and a lot of his stories start with the group supporting him and trusting him to take the theatre in new directions. Over the years they got in a rhythm together. During the interview his director is texting him to ask if he wants coffee while he’s out. He stops the interview when his interview walks in to make sure everything is alright with the upcoming matinee. You can tell that he has an army of staff behind him and he trusts them greatly.

“We wouldn’t do it if we were one hundred percent sure it was not going to work but there were some that we were nervous about. It’s funny one of the first years I was here I suggested Jekyll and Hyde so that we could start bringing in some of the younger audience but it would still be appealing to our older audience. I literally had to fight to get that show. I was confident that when they saw this production, because I really love Jekyll and Hyde because it was my favorite role, I knew that they would like it. But then of course as time got close to performing it, the production, I was like ‘Oh man they're not going to like it.’ So that one I was like nervous about but it ended up being one of the most successful shows in the history of this theater.”

“So it’s these things you have to take the chances on but then there’s been things I’ve been surprised. 39 Steps is basically a comedy version of all of [Alfred Hitchcock's] movies with a clear storyline played by four characters who all played multiple roles. I thought that they would all get it and find the humor. But they hated it. The audience hated it. So that was a rough one. If the people hung through to the end it was fine but there were so many of them that they were leaving in droves.”

Those are the breaks right? He takes it all in stride. Since he's done a lot of theatre he knows how to pick a show based on what he's seen work before.

“Not all shows translate to different theaters. When I was first given the information of what the age group our audiences are and this is what they’ve liked in the past and so forth there were certain things. I've done South Pacific a hundred thousand times, that to me is a no brainer, we’re going to do South Pacific. They hadn't done it yet so let's do it. And it did really well. I also know there are shows I’ve done before that will never work here. Prom Queens Unchained? It’s not going to work here.”

We couldn't believe that we had been sitting there for fifty minutes without really asking about his upcoming show. He had us entranced for the whole time. We finally got to ask him the all important question: What does the title mean?

“It's My Broadway in general because if we just did what I did in Manhattan it would just be a ten minute concert so it's spanning all of the stuff that I’ve done here and there. It's encompassing all of the leading roles that I've done both internationally, and Broadway, and here, the United States and so forth.

This isn't the first kind of show that he's done before.

“I've done “Music of the Night” that one was more of a variety of things because I love so many different types of music. Like I like Tom Jones, some of the Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Mario Lanza, those type of things, but then feature the Phantom stuff because everyone loves Phantom of the Opera.

Alas the director and hopeful auditionees for The Pajama Game were waiting to use the space so we had to call it a day. But it wasn't over yet. John invited us to enjoy Aida, their show that just closed. We decided this was a good chance to explore John's city that he loves so much and eat at Stage Right, the wine bar attached to the theater. John magically appeared onstage before the show even after a busy day to greet the audience. We have no idea how he does it all. You can see him do a lot of it on June 8 when his one man show My Broadway hits the stage for one night only. This is a man most beloved by the staff and subscribers of this theatre. You had better get your tickets now on their website.

[shiningforvixx]

170617 - Mata Hari Musical (Leo)

If you have followed my blog for a long time (over a year), you will know that I fell in love with the 2016 Mata Hari. Sure, I went at first to see Leo, but I fell in love with the music, story, characters, and actors. Because of that, when I heard that the 2017 Mata Hari would be very different, I was honestly a little worried if I would/could like it as much. I went into it knowing that even if I loved it, it would be a different love. However, I also wanted to like it, so perhaps that tricked me into liking it anyway. I did like it though, for whatever reason, and this post will probably feature a lot of comparison between the two versions. I’ll go over Leo’s arrival and departure before talking about the play in case you don’t care about the play/don’t want spoilers.

I don’t have all that much to say about his arrival, but he was so gorgeous. He always is. Possibly my favorite thing with seeing him come and go from musicals is the contrast of when he arrives and when he leaves. He gets there all made up and fabulous, like he’s ready to walk down the catwalk and have his picture taken, but when he leaves, his hair is all down and he is so soft and sweet. He always seems so happy after performances (whether it be a concert or musical) and he takes his time when he leaves. It makes me happy to see him so happy, so I’m glad he has the opportunity to be in a musical again despite it being undoubtedly tiring for him and money-draining for me. Ah. Yeah. He ignored me during arrivals this time. Hahaha. That kid. Like three feet before he got to where I was standing he turned the other way to look at the people on the other side and kept looking that way until he was past me. Jung Taekwoon.

Beware of Spoilers:

I’m not really sure where to begin to talk about this version of the play. I’d like to go through it sort of scene by scene, but I’ve already forgotten a lot. Also, the order/contents is a bit different than last year, so I don’t know it well enough yet.

I think the major difference is that they basically pulled the story out of the Moulin Rouge onto the streets of Paris. The 2016 play was showy and fun and dance-y, but this one highlighted the destitution of real people in Paris. It brought the focus to the war and the sadness that comes with it.

Rather than opening on Mata Hari’s “performance” before the firing squad and then moving into a fun opening number in the Moulin Rouge, the opening number is the ensemble as citizens of Paris being frightened during an air raid.

Then we move to Mata’s dressing room where Ladoux comes in for the first time. There are two things I’d like to note here. One, Anna (Mata’s seamstress) seems much more subservient this time around. But the funny thing is it seemed like they were trying to show they had a closer relationship than last time, but I think the fun banter they had in 2016 made them feel closer than this version. Two, Ladoux merely implies that he knows Mata’s true identity and only subtly asks her to be a spy, so her panic song is more questioning how much he knows and worrying about the life she has built for herself. I don’t know why I liked this so much, but I was sitting there with my mouth literally hanging open during this scene, haha.

(Just a warning here that I probably won’t go over every scene this time!)

The Armand meets Mata scene this time was such an entirely different introduction to his character. Where we had Mata save him from the river in 2016, this time she was being harassed by drunk airmen while Armand is smoking near another building watching the scene unfold. Eventually he saves her from the men when they get too demanding/handsy. But our Armand is still not a “perfect” knight in shining armor because he basically just gets beat up by the 3 guys. However, Armand gets an invite back to Mata’s apartment (as an invalid) where they hang out and chat through the night. Then Mata invites him to the roof to see the sunrise (as a man!). I just loved this scene because in 2016 we didn’t get to see the times when their relationship grew like that? I feel like we saw the results of the time they spent together more than the actual time together.

Skipping along to when Mata goes to Germany, I found it interesting that Mata’s interactions with the general(?) were at a public party rather than her “seducing” him at his hotel. And when she left to go meet up with Armand in another town...it was so cute. It really showed that their growing bond goes beyond the physical. Actually, I think they only kissed once in the whole play. It seemed like they were trying to downplay physical love to show that their relationship was different than what Mata had with other men.

My friend who went with me didn’t enjoy Act 1 as much as I did because she felt it was a lot more telling than showing (and she doesn’t know Korean). For me, however, I really loved it because there was so much conversation? I did love the showy, performance feel in the 2016 version, but this time around everything felt more subtle, and I love subtleties. I suppose they make me feel special when I get them, haha.

So, the writer decided to make me cry in Act 1 by changing things up a bit again. When Ladoux finds out about Armand and Mata spending the night in a hotel together, he dismisses Armand from his spying on Mata duty and orders him to go take pictures of the German air base (a suicide mission). Armand then writes a super sad letter to Mata that basically is saying goodbye, but if by some slim chance we ever meet again, I’ll never say goodbye again. Cue the waterworks. Actually, none of the tears spilled over at that point, they just made it hard to see.

Then we had a sadder rendition of “If You Fall”, Armand’s pep talk to the other airmen basically. It felt less glorious this time and more like, hey we got to do this so just fake it ‘til you make it. Haha, maybe that’s a bad description. Then he leaves and Mata gets to the hanger too late to see him one last time and sings her sad little song before intermission.

When I went into the lobby for intermission, I passed by the composer and told him I liked the music. He was very nice about it, but I get the feeling he isn’t the chatty type? Or that was me projecting as usual, haha.

Act 2 opened with Mata going to the hanger to get news about Armand, and she and the female ensemble sang a depressing song about waiting for their loved ones. I cried again during this song, haha. Eventually Pierre (who was scared to go fly until Armand gave him a pep talk) comes back but says Armand’s plane was shot down. Then we see Armand singing about wanting to get back to Mata before he is captured and sent to a German hospital.

Mata goes to Ladoux’s home and asks for news on Armand. Ladoux basically tries to seduce her and says she can’t go see Armand in Berlin. She of course ends up going anyway. (Oops this is getting summary-ish;;)

The hospital scene this time is more tragic because you see the nuns treating other wounded soldiers as well. Then Armand accidentally reveals that he knows who Ladoux is and tells Mata that everything from the beginning was planned, so they fight. Mata leaves and she, Ladoux, and Armand sing the “What Am I to Do?” song. Cue the tears again. They moved Armand’s reminiscing about the past up from the courtroom to him when he is in the hospital being all sad, and he runs away from the hospital when the nun leaves him alone outside.

Anna’s song about how she lived her life through Mata seriously got me as usual (it’s what made me cry the first time back in 2016). Then when Mata is arrested and goes to court...wow. It’s such a different play without the Emcee character narrating and without the “show” feel. It’s more real and relatable, I guess. Anyway, there is a moment when Mata goes into her mind and dances. I felt like it was a scene that showed how she hides behind/depends on the strength of her Mata mask. It did feel sort of weird and out of place to suddenly have that break though. Then all of a sudden, our Armand shows up and tries to save the day, but gets in a tussle with Ladoux and accidentally gets shot (he had the gun, but was struggling with Ladoux when the trigger gets pulled). Having Armand actually die on stage in Mata’s arms made everything 8 million times more sad. Seriously getting dehydrated from crying at this point.

Mata’s firing squad preparation was heart-wrenching again. Her and Anna’s interaction really gets to me. Plus she was wearing red throughout the whole play but was wearing black to mourn Armand’s death. It was the same dress that she wore last year but was black instead of redㅠㅠ (Personally I like the red one, but I get the symbolism.) Of course her final song had me shaking with tears again. Man I cried so much this play.

Anywho, I do have some more thoughts probably, but I’ll leave it at this for now, haha.

Cast: 마타하리 - 차지연, 라두 대령 - 문종원, 안나 - 최나래