The Creative Act

Who’d-a-thunk it? A committee can write a play. This puppet play will (ideally) be in the 2010 Fringe Festival. We’ll see how that goes.
What follows here is the records of what we’ve done in the past 6 months. The Fringe is in early/mid July of 2010, so we’ve got under 12 months left, with just 6 until we have to submit for the Fringe.

So we decided to do a play. How does one do that? Having put on 2 before, Asa wanted to do less work this time. So he decided “I’ll write it with Dan and Erik, and then they’ll do some of the production stuff! And as we write it, we’ll do puppets!”
Poor, naive Ace.
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This piece is inspired by, adapted from Strindberg’s Dance of Death.

scene 1

Onassis:Play for me,won’t you

Callas:(eager to please)What shall I play ?

Onassis:What you like.

Callas:You don’t like classical music.

Ari: Play anything as long as you don’t sing!

Callas:(coughs nervously)…

Ari:You should not smoke,it’s not good for the voice.

Callas:I never smoke,would you like your drink ?
Ari:Make it double.

Maria mixed his scotch, a labour of love

Callas:Darling,you should not drink that much.

Onassis:Why not,I have never been sick in my life,I will live another fifty years.

Callas:That’s not what the doctor says.

Ari:The doctor! Who cares what he says.I am not sick and I never have been,and I’m never going to be,either.When my time comes,I am going to drop dead like a vaillant soldier.

Callas:Speaking of soldiers, I would love to do the Guns of Navarone.The more I think about it,the more I feel it’s a good part.

Onassis:Think? Feel?You!

Callas: It’s a small,but crucial part,it carries the action,and it’s the only female role.

Onassis:You can’t act, and you are not beautiful for the camera, nowhere near Garbo.

Tumbling, shale over flint,
With layered granite for a bed,
Set over an orbiting furnace
Stone ledges leapt into the skies,
Soaring o’er the ages,
As nothing else can fly through time,
With crags so slow and sure,
That nought deflects their course,
Excepting just the wind and rain,
Whose constant tribulations will make vain,
The highest climbing mountain peaks of earth,
They casually erode these errant bluffs,
Deferring stone to dust and girth for dearth,
Tumbling now and then into a plain,
That which has risen,
And may yet rise again.

The diamond forms from pressure,
and gleans its gleam from such,
the earth can not contort itself,
nor focus quite as much,
as such steadfast material,
it must be formed and reformed evermore,
reactionary to its core
never content to stay in place
although it roams through outerspace
a boil of activity stirs constantly earth’s scenery
the surface of our atmosphere
will dance with weather’s weary cheer
below the weather still more motion,
man pushing earth and earth the ocean,
when the ocean pushes back man rues his work,
but abandons not his quest to shape
the very world despite – perhaps despite – more apt, ‘because’
of nature’s inconsistency,
a trait at odds with human insecurities,
and getting on not all that well with the maturity,
of our peculiar species, we
that turn the land into the sea, defy imprisoning gravity, and deftly wreak our havoc with an arbitrary majesty.

We were in August 1968, I was still the Mistress on the CHRISTINA…not for long, the wedding of the century was only two months away.

_” I love you but I need Jackie, I hope to marry her one day ,soon”…

The beast told me that, he knew that I was at his beck and call…why do we love men that destroy …That woman Jackie will open the doors for him, will do for him what she did for John when she was First Lady,bring prestige and class to him.Bobby Kennedy will be the next President and he will be the brother-in-law,imagine !…The bastard had it all planned…Seduite et abandonnee,that is what I was, like the movie.

THE MAGIC OF BERNSTEIN,VISCONTI AND CALLAS.!!!..FEBRUARY 1955 AT LA SCALLA

La Sonnambula was important because I loved Bellini and wanted to prove that I could do two parts that are so completely different..Norma and Amina,Bellini ’s most haunting bel canto opera…I did not want to do it the way Luchino wanted it.Amina,a Swiss peasant girl was a sleepwalker,Luchino wanted me to wear an all white costume a la Sylphide,and all my jewellery.

—Luchino ,it’s ridiculous, I am a village girl
—You are not a village girl,you are Maria Callas playing the part of a village girl,don’t ever forget it !

So we all wore white,and he taught me to move like a ballerina,like Giselle .I learned the fifth position and le port-de bras.The production became a classic and like Visconti ’s other productions, changed opera for ever.The fat Callas has become slim ,beautiful,and on stage I was small,fragile and moved with grace.For the sleepwalking scene,the stage was in total darkness except for the moon ,I walked across a broken bridge and almost fell to my death.How did I do it?… I stood still in the middle of the bridge,high up in the mountains,breathed in slowly and exhaled quickly,in the darkness I gave the illusion of falling.

For once the critics were impressed by my vocal brilliance, and the fact that I could sing both Bellini’s Norma and Amina. It was heaven to work with two geniuses…Entre les deux mon coeur balance…Jeanne Moreau ’s song…I had a crush for both men,but they were in love with each other.They met at La Scala ,had an affair,the meeting of two Titans,both geniuses in their own way.I knew it was love without hope for Luchino never hid the fact that he loved men,Lenny was more secretive but I knew.We were both Americans and working with him I was impressed by his enthusiasm,vitality and for the first time though seriously of going back to America.Next to him I felt energized ,proud to be American and dreamed two dreams,a career on both sides of the Atlantic.

When I lost my voice I wanted to die.I would never be Violetta again,I suffered so much for her,I lost weight for her,I fought with opera managers,directors,conductors to be her, to wear those gorgeous fin de siecle gowns,to be a courtisane, la belle du bal… I shall never be, act,play,sing Violetta the way I wanted,the way Verdi wanted .Every soprano dreams of Traviata.Violetta was my first love ,Norma my great one.I lost weight for Violetta and for Medea,to do justice to a courtisane and a Princess.With Norma I could get away with some body fat…Now it’s all over.