ooh cutting it close to count for monday...

SO this weekend a student-directed theatre production, STOPKISS, went up. And yours truly was overzealous enough to agree to help stage manage rehearsals – and seeing the final product really got me thinking about authorship and theatre. I haven’t delved too deeply in this yet, but I wonder if a part of it’s unique appeal is how authorship is constantly shifting in the message/meaning of a play. A playwright does his or her thing, and writes the text and all that. Then a director reads, feels inspired, and pitches his or her vision to a producer to get the thing up. Then actors interpret and create, and finally an audience receives the combined efforts, and I wonder how that equation flow chart actually manages to not come off as completely schizophrenic and impossible to comprehend. It seems almost miraculous, but then again it would also lead to me new conclusions about why live theatre, hell live performances, are only attended by less than 2% of the American Population. 26% apparently still go see movies – at least 3 a year or month, I can’t remember exactly, whereas 98% watch television regularly…
And a little note on my disappointment at myself for already dropping the ball and not blogging on Saturday. So now I’m cheating and insisting on only writing during the business week, because while it is a cool experiment to write down/journal/take stock of your life/blog every single day for a month, I was unable to write out any form of a coherent thought on Saturday (thanks, rugby) and I really don’t want to have to just throw up my unorganized notes like I did before… this accountability for my blog authorship hasn’t fully sunk in.
And creepily enough, I totally felt the same vibe as “msblogger1220” (jenni) at the taping of “the Price is Right” today. Seeing all of the behind-the-scenes efforts to get a television game show together was a cool new experience to check off the list – and it made me sad to think that in all of our current readings, I am not able to visually wrap my head around the behind-the-scenes processes of computer games, hypertexts, etc. And at the taping I guess I should mention how again, I was floored at the reality of seeing an icon live in person who I’ve only previously experienced through a heavy media filter. Bob Barker is not as awesome as I thought, more of a hardcore perfectionist who has got the whole smile-for-the-camera good guy act down pat. But hey, if I could still be working that hard at 83, I guess I’d be a bit grouchy and particular about my mic, too….

And does anyone else thing Lev Manovich is kinda full of shit? Some of his arguments made NO sense to me, and I have many question marks in this week’s reading… but I’ll try and chew on that for the future.

PS I think I’ve got more of a direction for my thesis now, really, and would love any recommendations or sources that you could share with me - relating to feminism and media, more specifically on how the media has constructed notions of feminists ( or “feminazis”), feminism and sexuality, and really recent critical approaches to contemporary feminist representations. Anything you could point me towards would be very super appreciated. Word.