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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Please take your seats. We will begin, now.

Harold Pinter's wife's name is Antonia Fraser. They are, legally, married. She just didn't take his name. (Of course, wiki says she has a 'married name'. But wiki's just bullshitting, we all know that) As didn't Anne Hathaway. Is there a connection?
Who knows? Is there any way to find out? Ol' Bill lives no longer at Stratford Upon Avon, it got too crowded with tourists and visitors after an "immortal bard" made the little place famous. Woody Allen was right in mentioning that one must always notify the post office if one is moving, unless one doesn't care about posterity. While on the subject (Woody, P.O., etc.) Kommie's a lucky man.
He will be receiving his very own copy of W.A.'s complete prose. Soon after I finish reading it.

I have been reading a lot of plays lately. It began with Edward Albee's 'Who is Sylvia?'. A brilliantly scripted play (which Plabs' [as Flavia Agnes puts it:] hypocritical morality couldn't stand) that deals with some of the lesser discussed issues, for want of diverse practical examples, academic thoughts and practical influence. At the bottom of it, it's just a spousal spate of bickering. The entire tension that the play runs on is because of its controversial theme - which is the fact that ultimately throttles us. That something that can be looked upon so "sanely" takes up a lot of space in our taboo lists.
Do you have taboo lists? I guess I do. And in my endeavour to run away from run-of-the-mill taboo lists, I have quite a unique one, the desire to post which may hopefully lead me to blog the next time around.
The thing with me and blogging is that I wish to maintain my habit of writing. It is so long since I've used 'I' and not in short messages or IM conversations.
It's almost taken over me. My time in the day is consumed so much part of it, by intermediary things like travelling, speaking on the phone, 'making arrangements' and replying to messages.
I digress.
I was talking about plays. There's a play 'Exit the King' happening at Rangashankara, and I'm not even being paid to advertise. But an interesting "uncle" at a relative's place who works with TFA has been helping out with the backstage part of the production. And I'm gonna watch it tomorrow. That's Thursday for the Calendar-ily challenged.
And then I picked up a book of three plays by Henrik Ibsen which I still haven't read.
I did read some more by Albee, such as 'The American Dream' - a work which lies almost wasted, as in the middle, the orientation is slowly lost (maybe on me, maybe on the author. Who knows? Tch, woody's right) and it looks like it would turn into a shouting match.
One play I would not want to watch.
And I read Lolita - as an adaptation by Albee, (which is incidentally pronounced, Ol-bee, like the a in all. You would've guesssed right?) and not the original by Nabokov. Which I want to read, since I would sincerely like to use words like Nabokovian. I haven't had ocassion to use Kafkaesque yet, although I have read a little bit of Kafka.
He didn't write plays though, to the best of my knowledge. Or I haven't read them. (Amazon reveals that he wrote two plays: 'Kafka's Dick' and 'The insurance man")

And then I read some Shaw. I had borrowed a book from Jhelum, which I've hopefully returned. Man and Superman, Candida...

I thought I'd read some more. I did read a super play by Tom Stoppard which had a lot to do with Marxism and music and it was interesting, until I lost the thread somewhere.
Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead is nowhere available. Not on the net, at least. Treat if the reader can find me a copy, anywhere.

Will be updated later.