podcast friday

[sabotabby]

 Hi I am very tired.

Give a listen to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff's entire last few weeks, which has been about the alter-globalization movement, but especially to this week's episodes, "Bread and Puppet: The Dawn of Giant Protest Puppets." (Part I | Part II). This is one of my special interests, stemming from how I used to teach at a puppetry camp, and I've actually been lucky enough to visit Bread and Puppet in Vermont on a road trip, albeit not quite lucky enough to see one of their shows. I am always in favour of more theatricality in activism and these episodes trace the evolution of one particular brand of theatricality that I'm especially a fan of.

I bet you will be surprised to learn that the personal stories of the two founders of the theatre are also especially interesting. Also, since Jamie Loftus is the guest, there is a tragic hot dog connection.

Comments

[greylock]

It was great. Arguably the best puppets live I have seen. My ex the soundtrack and the poster, so I can probably uncover the deets my random search did not.

I went to see Lathe and, cannot find it in my library, BUT if it is the story I think, how do they deal with the rain?

[selki]

I don't remember rain in the play or book, but I haven't re-read the story since 2020-ish, so I could be forgetting. Their portrayal of events was imaginative and playful, with a mix of cheap props (e.g., an old-school overhead projector and a spaceship dangled on a string) and college student theater "ninjas" moving things around. Unless someone has a bootleg vid, I don't think it was filmed. I went and saw another play by the same producer/adapter (the woman in the review I linked), about Vietnamese immigrants in the USA, and it was good, but not as stratospherically good as Lathe. So much heart and wonder.

There is a movie and a mini-series production of Lathe of Heaven, but I remember the movie being poor, and I haven't seen the mini-series (BBC maybe).

[sonia]

Wow, this sounds like it was an amazing production. Wish I had seen it.

Ursula K Le Guin lived in Portland OR, where it famously rains a lot, but the sun does shine sometimes. In one of the scenes in the book, reality has shifted so it is eternally drizzling. It's only mentioned in passing, but as someone who has lived in Portland, that stuck with me because it would be dreadful to have everything be damp and never see the sun.

[selki]

Oh yes, thanks. I think the screens (they had multiple individually-controlled monitors as windows/outdoors/scenery) would change to show the outdoors, newsbreaks, etc. and they probably showed the rain rain rain.

And there's always Ray Bradbury's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Summer_in_a_Day .

[greylock]

<3 for Bradbury.
That story feels so triggering, though/ It is the very vibe of childhood bullies in my day.

[selki]

Oh yes, it's a horror story.

[greylock]

Bradbury was very, very good at that.

'And There Will Come Soft Rains' lives rent free in my head. This one reminds me of bring 8yo.

[greylock]

I think some things are better in the memory than our era of revisiting things on whim.
Maybe.