Dramaturgy in Bucharest

Rhine Maiden as Roaring Girl

It was bad enough when I first moved to Bucharest to work as a dramaturg at the State Opera. Wolves had begun to make forays into the outer suburbs. Every truck I saw on the street seemed to me at least to have just run over the playwright, Mihail Sebastian. Balzac novels seemed to be overflowing in the bookstores. Then the wild bears came into the inner ciy. The recent presidental election was said in the newspapers to have been altered or affected by a paranormal psychiatrist. I was put to work on a libretto based on “the truth about Vlad, the Impaler.” People began to bruit it about that vampyres had returned to the city. Highly anti-semetic vampyres. I wasn’t sure about that but bears began to appear downtown soon after the wolves had moved in from the suburbs. People began wondering if Romania was a Balkan nation. A lot more women in Bucharest wore stockings and garters than do so in America. Vlad the Impaler, was a tough script to work on and more and more of my female colleagues had stopped doing thier eyebrows so it seemed as if the world in the east had grown much colder and hairy. I noticed the werewolves straight away. They began to appear in green rooms and at cast parties. They wore tuxedos and made it clear dramatists were not seriously important in the theatrical world, and dramaturgs even less so. It was difficult to tell the male from the female werewolves and I began to consider whether I should go back to Kansas, or at least the Iowa Writing Workshop. Then she, or it, put her hand on my thigh, my inner thigh, and I fell into a trance. Time passed. Then the Romanian Air Force introduced a new jet-biplane to its arsenal. Submarines were said to be active in the Black Sea with names like the Jason and the Medea. Dismemberment opened at the National Theatre. I seemed to be the only person in the city to not have a widow’s peak. I began to read Herodotus aloud in a late night cabaret. This was deemed highly controversial. It was suggested I stay at home after dark, eat, sleep, and read.

Stanley Richardson,
Der Zuschauer

I Love Scrod, On Cape Cod

Idylls of the Northeast Corrider

Can there be such a thing? Ice fishing perhaps? Birds can still be seen on warmer days. No squirrels. Momentous Bug Movies from Hollywood are wicked this way coming. 2010 feels, seems like we are living in an age of science fiction. Can Youtube be used in a court of law? Are smart phones the very center of most people’s lives? Are Americans more crass, vulgar, and trashy than ever before? Why do people sneer at humanism? Is tenure tenured? In the People’s Republic the book stores are mobbed, the new ones, the scholarly ones less so. Please go and look into McIntrye&Moore Booksellers in Porter Square in Cambridge when you visit. I now live 2 miles or less from where I lived when I first moved from Georgia to Cambridge, over on Broadway in 1975, already a veteran Soixante-Huitard. Dr. Johnson is suddenly the rage, because of the recent biographies. I have a Collected Works in 16 Volumes. It was a birthday present from my beloved colleague, Frau Busenvollig. I now celebrate World Historical View Day on the 25th of December, just as they do on Guam Island. I have been reading and translating poems of Nelly Sachs from the German. My most ambitious reading project currently is Die letzten Tage der Menschheit of Karl Kraus. We are all 21st Centurians now. I don’t twitter, I don’t eat to-fu. I believe strongly in cleavage, public libraries, short plaid-pleated skirts, foreign languages. I use Arts&Letters Daily as my home-page. Der Zuschauer is always a click away. I have been reading in Henry James’ French Poets and Novelists of 1875. There is a cat in the house whose proper name is Kumba but I call her Pussy instead, it’s easier to remember. I have two splendid daughters, Bo and Ivy, two dissenting wives, and am a bachelor now although in love with my Frau Busenvollig, who never wears trousers. My library is now in multiple locations but I am working on that. My brother died in his early 40s. So did my college roommate Alan Johnson, in his early 40s. I have a contemporary engraving of Dr. Johnson reading a periodical on my desktop. There is a cork in the bottle of wine and several other corks lying on the table. Great Sam was terribly afraid of Death. Perhaps you are. I, myself, have my concerns. My best to you in the new decade.

Stanley Richardson for Der Zuschauer.

Komm, heilige Melancholie

“I have noticed, as a 21st Century writer, looking for geld, earnings, moolah moolah, that Higher Education, such as it is, is a lying slut and self-regarding whore for mediocrity, security, and balls, little else: time-serving bolsheviks, feminist running dogs of chagrin, lamp-lighters of blind alleys, DeuteroIsaiah’s Not, MLA weibchen peer review, male eager beaver referring, stool-squating skunks, can’t-wait-to-beg-a-question from the Hunden at the podium. “We are smug when we are secure. We are tenured and we are old. Rue! Go ahead and rue, rue the day! We too were jackals, now you are jackals.” There are sharks in the Danube. There are werewolves along the Charles. Exit, pursed by a Kodiak Bear.”

Geheimreport, January 2010
Offices of Strategic Services

Weiss Gott: Niemals hat ein Geheimdienst sein Geld sinnvoller unter die Leute gebracht.

We Young Hegelians

“Dr. Marx–that is my idol’s name–is still very young (about twenty-four at most) and will give medieval religion and politics their coup de grace. He combines the deepest philosophical seriousness with the most biting wit. Imagine Rousseau, Voltaire, Holbach, Lessing, Heine, and Hegel fused into one person–I say fused, not thrown together in a heap–and you have Dr. Marx.”

Moses Hess, quoted by I. Berlin in Karl Marx, 54.

“The time will come when the sun will shine only upon a world of free men who recognise no master except their reason, when tyrants and slaves, priests, and their stupid or hypocritical tools, will no longer exist except in history or on the stage.”

Condorcet

“He sealed it by becoming a member of the Doktorklub, an association of free-thinking university intellectuals, who met in beer cellars, wrote mildly seditious verse, professed violent hatred of the King, the Church, the bourgeoise, and above all argued on points of Hegelian theology.”

“…free spirits as they called themselves…For we are dealing with a remarkable phenomenon–the decomposition of the Absolute Spirt.”

I. Berlin, KM, 52-3.

Katerina Degot. Junoesque: woman imposingly tall and shapely.

Weltanschauung Week on Guam

Every year we thespians on Guam Island celebrate World Historical View Week from the 25th through to New Year’s Day. Celebrations include hoola hoola hooping, giant tortise racing, realism barbecues, modernist cook-outs, tire-sales for the avant-garde. The spirit of Betty Page is definitely in the air and in our hearts. Fringe activities abound. Vegans play soccor with hot-dog enthusiasts. The week’s main even was to be a reenactment of Lord Acton’sLectures on the French Revolution. Leftists immediately announced enactments from Leon Trotsky’sThe Russian Revolution. Attendant events from the center right included dramatized scenes from Dostoyevsky’s The Devils, and readings from Burke’s Reflections. Lest this seem heady, remember the beer and wine wagons, the bikinis, nude volley-ball, lesbian fish fries, and cigar-smoking in the Churchill Pavillion, not to mention the Winter Soltice Rhumba-Dance-Lines. Maximillian Klinger is set to perform the role of John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, First Baron Acton. Ekaterina Degot is being restrained for this event, being tied to a chair and forced to wear a motorcycle helmet. Wish you had been here. Annette Funicello and Her Mouseketeers were wonderful.

Christian D. Grabbe

Reportage from the Northeast Corrider

A Retired Medical Officer from the Dutch East Indies ends up in Cambridge, 02140.

“I, who see a tragedy in every cow…”
D.H. Lawrence, Christs in the Tirol

“Maybe it all started when I found myself living without a broad in an apartment outside of Porter Square with a 65 year old MD and drinking Batavian Arrack for breakfast. Chocolate and orange peel were always in my bushwacked nostrils. Wives despised me, older daughters avoided me, and who knew what my younger wee daughter thought? I had had a heart-attack, surgery on a broken ankle; pious, self-regarding, smug, puritanical social-workers, who didn’t really know what the Salavation Army was exactly like, and who didn’t know who George Bernard Shaw was anyway, began to talk to me about walkers, crutches, shelters, and finally, canes, which are at least good defensive weapons. Other decent, thoughtful people, supporters of Cest moi to the last, came dangerously close to suggesting I get a real job. Charles Bukowski came back from beyond the grave with ants crawling upon his drunkard’s arms and said he could see me for counselling for a six-pack of Busch tall-boys an hour. I was offered a sales route as a shill for Seroquel which was a lot more money than teaching creative writing at Lesely University. I considered going for broke and specializing in 10-minute play competitions, but then realized there were a number of seasoned stallions ahead of me. I considered sperm donation, and tried waxing 30 something beaver dams, but none of these things really worked out. There were scrooge plays, translations from the German, or the Dutch, and then one day I realized I had shrunken down to a bed-post sized chipmunk , and being chased by a rabid house-cat, disapeared into the crotch of a tree.”

Dramaturgy: Definitions

It is with remorse that we have received your recent concerned correspondence regarding definitions of the above as well as speculation and debate. I have addressed the issue with our entire dramaturgical staff world wide. We admit to a Coleridgian waywardness and promise to get back on the ground. I have pushed for articles, letters, definitions etc. We invite your contributions. This ongoing work will appear on our Dramaturgy: Definitions page.

Sincerely,
Christian Dietrich Grabbe
Der Zuschauer

“…Coleridge wanted to write as an opinion-former, to create a philosophical intelligensia in a new way. His work was to be deliberately elitist: exclusive and intellectually demanding. He made no apology for this. He was not producing a set of Labourers’ pocket knifes for cutting bread and cheese, but a Case of Lancets for dissecting the anatomy of a national condition. His target was what he came to call the Heresy of expediency, of short-term aims, superficial thinking; it was also the intellectual partianship of…journalism itself.”

From Richard Holmes’ Coleridge, Darker Reflections: 1804-1834

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Aryan It Girls

“Oh, qui, me dis-je, bientot tout sera termine…auf!…assez nous avons vu…soixante-cinq ans et meche que peut bien vous foutre la plus pire archibombe H?…Z?…Y?…souffles!…vetilles! seulement horible ce sentiment d’avoir tant perdu tout son temps et quelles myriatonnes d”efforts pour cette hideuse satanee horde d’ alcooleux efiates laquais…misere, Madame!…”Vendez vos rancoeurs, taisez-vous”!…bigre, j’accepte!…je veux, mais a qui?…les acheteurs me boudent, il parait… ils n’aiment et n’achetnet que les auteurs presque comme eux, avec juste en plus, lesere a la couleur…chef-loufiat, chef torche-chose, leche-machin, fuitets, beni-tiers, poteaux, bidets, couperets, enveloppes…que le lecteur se retrouve, se sente un semblable, un frere, bien comprehensif, pret a tout…”

From Celine’s Nord, we apologize for the lack of accents, etc. eds. Klinger, Grabbe, Degot.

Frauenrollen, Weiberrollen

“Es ist kein Ort in der Welt, wo die vergangene Zeit so un mittelbar und mit so mancherlei Stimmen zu dem Beobachter sprach, als Rom. So hat sich auch dort unter mehreren Sitten zufalligerweise ein erhalten, die sich an allen andern Orten nach un nach fast gangzlich vorloren hat.

Die Alten liessen, wenigstens in den besten Aeiten der Kunst und die Sitten, kein Frau des Theater betreten. Ihre Stucke waren entweder so eingerichtet, das Frauen mehr und weniger enbehrlich warren; oder kie Weiberrollen wurden durch eine Akteur vorgestellt, welcher such besonders darauf geubt hatte. Derselbe Fall is noch in dem neureren Rom und dem ubrigen Kirchenstaat, ausser Bologna, welches unter andern Privilegien auch der Freiheit geniesst, Frauenzimmer auf seinen Theatern bewundern zu durfen.”

From Goethe’s Schriften zur Literatur.

The Slutcracker: A Burlesque

As correspondent for the Northeast Corrider, I am writing to alert playgoers of The Slutcracker: A Sexy, Freaky, Holiday Zeitgeist Spectacular, to be presented at the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square. December 10-13, 8PM, December 17-20, 8PM, and Sunday matinees on December 13th and 20th, 2PM. Come one come all.

Respectfully,
Stanley Richardson for
Der Zuschauer