March Books

[gnomi]

Here's what I read in the month of March:

#9 - Junk English 2 by Ken Smith: This sequel to Smith's Junk English continues his discussion of words that he has decided English does not need. While I agree with some of his rants against jargon and unnecessary constructions, many of the words he deems "Junk" are, to my mind, more specific than the "classic" English terms he'd prefer we use. An interesting read, but frustrating on some levels.

#10 - Type: The Secret History of Letters by Simon Loxley: An excellent book on the history of typography, fonts, and the people who designed the fonts. Loxley examines the influence and impact typography has had from the 15th century through modern day. Highly recommended.

#11 - Out of Sight by Cherry Adair: Adair, like Susanne Brockmann, is a romance author who has shifted into romantic intrigue. In this book, she continues telling tales of the Wright siblings as we follow Kane Wright as he and rookie sharpshooter A.J. Cooper travel through Egypt on the trail of a terrorist. A fun, quick read, with the right balance of romance and adventure.

#12 - Noises Off by Michael Frayn: I've seen "Noises Off" performed on stage twice and have seen the film as well, but reading the play itself made me realize just how wonderfully frantic this show is. The sheer chaos caused by the combination of on-stage and off-stage goings-on is so well choreographed in the stage directions. Highly recommended.

Comments

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Noises Off was 'performed' (we didn't ctually stage it) in a roleplaying game that mnemex, drcpunk and I were playing a few years ago. Drcpunk's character was a college student with a gift for the theatrical... a slightly magical gift for the theatrical. When he directed a show, if it clicked into working at all, it tended to do something... odd. _Wait Until Dark_ turned everybody in the audience blind at the critical moment, for instance. He could never tell *what* it was going to do until performance, though.

We decided that Noises Off ran as though it were four totally different plays, one for each of the first four nights of performance. The basic plot and characters were the same but all the lines were different, all the jokes were different, so each time it was a completely different version of, conceptually, the same play. The fifth and last performance, it ran perfectly, exactly as written.

The character bound the transcripts of the four variants into a book and published it under the title "Noises On."

[42itous.livejournal.com]

I worked on a production of Noises Off where we reseated the audience on bleachers backstage, rather than turn the set around. It was nice because it allowed for a more complicated and realistic set. It was not-fun because the audience would get confused and lost on a nightly basis, and because somebody always thought it was okay to just walk across the stage during intermission (this made the stage manager very nervous).

I was working on this production during September 2001. On Sept 11, the house was 70% sold, and 30% filled. It took until the middle of Act II before anybody laughed, but once one person did, everyone loosened up and started laughing. All that week, audiences came in all solemn-faced, and left smiling ruefully. I like to think that Noises Off was just what they needed to remind them that the real world still existed and had good things in it.