Illegal Tender / a lot of plays
Nov. 20th, 2004 10:04 pmDavid Tripp, Illegal Tender
In 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, the US government stopped issuing gold coins. All gold was recalled and melted down, to be stored in Fort Knox. This included the 1933 "double eagle" $20 gold coins, which were minted but never officially issued. A handful of the coins managed to escape the furnace, however, and (due to never having been legally removed from the Mint) the coin wound up on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Most of the fugitive coins were retrieved within a decade or so. One, though had been sold (given?) to King Farouk of Egypt, and was out of the reach of the federal government. It turned up at the close of the twentieth century in the US, was confiscated, and then officially issued by the Mint and auctioned for a staggering sum. The end.
Really, this story was far better when I read it as a magazine article a couple of yearas ago. There's just not enough material to fill a book. Tripp tries, and we get bits about the history of the double-eagle, and the gold recall of 1933. Ultimately it just feels like padding, and not even [to me] very interesting padding at that.
Eric Lane and Nena Shengold (eds.), Take Ten: New Ten-minute Plays (selections)
Exactly what it sounds like: a collection of plays that can be performed in about ten minutes. More are funny than serious; in ten minutes it's harder to work up a good drama than to toss out a couple jokes. Still, some do manage to touch nerves. I really like the form. But then, I'm usually a fan of stripping things down to the essentials, and it doesn't get much more essential than ten minutes.
Erik Ehn, The Saint Plays (selections)
Short plays inspired by various Roman Catholic saints: Joan, Christopher, George, etc. Ehn uses some powerful imagery in these plays, and a great deal of poetic language. They're not really traditional 'plays' at all; they're more akin to poetry on stage. I used one as my scene for directing class; that was probably a mistake. Walk before you fly, handle realism before imagery. Oh well. It was still a good scene.
Daniel Halpern (ed), Plays in One Act (selections)
Everything I said about Take Ten also applies here. The Stopppard piece in thei volume [about three lexicographers] gave rise to my idea of Art as that which makes you see things in a different, often surprising, way. ["Where's Brenda?" "Bracelet to Brilliance." "No, no-- your wife."]
Karen Hartman, Gum
This seems like it ought to have the same kind of dialogue problems that Abingdon Square did: it's got choppy sentences that switch topic from moment to moment. I found Gum a lot more believable than Abingdon, though. That may have to do with general character issues, or maybe with a more sympathetic plot [women trapped in a fictitious Muslim country]. Regardless, I found Gum to be a genuinely moving experience, and Abingdon Square a merely puzzling one.
[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]
In 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, the US government stopped issuing gold coins. All gold was recalled and melted down, to be stored in Fort Knox. This included the 1933 "double eagle" $20 gold coins, which were minted but never officially issued. A handful of the coins managed to escape the furnace, however, and (due to never having been legally removed from the Mint) the coin wound up on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Most of the fugitive coins were retrieved within a decade or so. One, though had been sold (given?) to King Farouk of Egypt, and was out of the reach of the federal government. It turned up at the close of the twentieth century in the US, was confiscated, and then officially issued by the Mint and auctioned for a staggering sum. The end.
Really, this story was far better when I read it as a magazine article a couple of yearas ago. There's just not enough material to fill a book. Tripp tries, and we get bits about the history of the double-eagle, and the gold recall of 1933. Ultimately it just feels like padding, and not even [to me] very interesting padding at that.
Eric Lane and Nena Shengold (eds.), Take Ten: New Ten-minute Plays (selections)
Exactly what it sounds like: a collection of plays that can be performed in about ten minutes. More are funny than serious; in ten minutes it's harder to work up a good drama than to toss out a couple jokes. Still, some do manage to touch nerves. I really like the form. But then, I'm usually a fan of stripping things down to the essentials, and it doesn't get much more essential than ten minutes.
Erik Ehn, The Saint Plays (selections)
Short plays inspired by various Roman Catholic saints: Joan, Christopher, George, etc. Ehn uses some powerful imagery in these plays, and a great deal of poetic language. They're not really traditional 'plays' at all; they're more akin to poetry on stage. I used one as my scene for directing class; that was probably a mistake. Walk before you fly, handle realism before imagery. Oh well. It was still a good scene.
Daniel Halpern (ed), Plays in One Act (selections)
Everything I said about Take Ten also applies here. The Stopppard piece in thei volume [about three lexicographers] gave rise to my idea of Art as that which makes you see things in a different, often surprising, way. ["Where's Brenda?" "Bracelet to Brilliance." "No, no-- your wife."]
Karen Hartman, Gum
This seems like it ought to have the same kind of dialogue problems that Abingdon Square did: it's got choppy sentences that switch topic from moment to moment. I found Gum a lot more believable than Abingdon, though. That may have to do with general character issues, or maybe with a more sympathetic plot [women trapped in a fictitious Muslim country]. Regardless, I found Gum to be a genuinely moving experience, and Abingdon Square a merely puzzling one.
[Posted with hblogger 2.0 http://www.normsoft.com/hblogger/]
