Tuesday
Interesting list of films I was supposed to see. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy didn't become a movie for more than a decade, so I think I was supposed to track down and watch the old BBC TV show.
I did end up reading Einstein's Dreams during the summer, while I worked the ballfield concession stand in the park district. It blew my mind. I've ended up buying it at least two more times since, because I never got back the copies I lent to people.
Here you see another example of my poetry from back then. Most were about relationships in some fashion. "Atlas' Monologue" was one I was particularly proud of, but looking back on it, it wasn't very good -- the rhythm is poor, as you can tell from the beat counts I made, and it pulls in too many disparate metaphors (Greek mythology, toilets, masks?). I do still like "I will curse and swear off love" though.
Wednesday
BHS's theatre department allowed a couple seniors each semester to direct their own plays, which were called "experimentals," short for experimental theatre. Kyle B. and I took the opportunity the last semester of high school to do that.
Kyle's play was Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. Mine was titled Dialogues but was simply a collection of dialogs I liked -- passages from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, On the Open Road and others. I also did a bit of creative work turning the closing monologues from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest into a dialogue of sorts -- the actors took turns reading their lines, blending the monologues together in what I thought was an insightful way. It was a challenge for the actors, but it came off really well in performance. The cast list you see here lists which days they were available to rehearse after school.
Val Mazzenga is no longer with the Tribune, but appears to be a professor at University of Illinois.
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