Odds and Ends

Busy Days

I’m in the last weeks of rehearsal for The Rogue Theatre production of Jean Genet’s “The Balcony,” which will open with a preview performance here in Tucson on October 6.

When I first read the script I wondered if many in a Tucson audience would “get it,” but over the weeks of rehearsal I’ve come to see this play not only as accessible, but as timely in dimensions that are really astonishing. They may not like what they “get,” but they surely will “get it.”

Visit the Rogue’s marvelous web site and read what the theatre’s all about. Link


The Environment Of Surfaces

Many months ago, before the Raven flew out of the blogosphere, I exchanged notes with him about the “environment of surfaces.” This, I take it, is the environment increasing numbers of us live in today. It’s an environment of appearances, like images on a movie screen, and like those images there is nothing behind them, or before or after them but more images.

These surfaces refer only to themselves and hence are always exactly what they seem. Can only be what they seem. Our political world has become exactly that, and the Bush administration has mastered its manipulation.

For the prisoner of the environment of surfaces there is not both appearance and reality, there is only appearance. And truth is what you are told it is.

In the Balcony the Envoy and the Queen come upon three photographers faking publicity scenes. The queen blurts out, “But those are false images.” The Envoy replies, “They are true images…born of a false spectacle.” The people will see the iages, the surfaces, and that will be their reality.

He is her majesty’s Rove.

Annoying Pop Up

The University of Phoenix, which is supposed to be an educational institution, markets itself with the aggressive determination of a used car lot. It’s main tool is an annoying pop-up that seems slyly capable of weaseling past my pop-up blockers.

If I could find the e-mail address of a President, or Chancellor, or someone on a Board of Directors I would suggest we bury him or her in e-mails of complaint.