Today I picked up Métis playwright Marie Clements' Burning Vision (2003) from the library. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jasmine_r_s recommended it for its lyrical stage directions.
In leafing through this copy, I find after only a few seconds that one of the characters is
So I'm all in on page 2. Then there's a timeline that begins with a Dene prophecy, carries through 1930s radium mining at Great Bear Lake (NWT), follows the atomic bomb to Japan, and ends with the play itself. I didn't know that Dene people were the ones who carried the ore out of the Eldorado mine.
Okay. This is going to be really, really good.
jasmine_r_s suggested I look at Clements' fusion of the structural/formal aspects of the play with the performance/literary aspects as an inspiration for how to write the games I'm making (which sit somewhere between story and instruction manual). I admit that although I had proposed that plays and games had a lot in common (and therefore it is fine to teach a game instead of a play in a literature survey course), it hadn't occurred to me to, you know, read any plays to see what they might tell me about games.
I'm a little dazed by the lyrical power Clements shows before the play even starts.
Here are the opening stage directions for Movement One, "The Frequency of Discovery":
Of course as soon as J. recommended a play to me, I began to wonder if it would work for teaching. Choosing a play is always tricky. In the winter, the Belfry always puts on a work by an Indigenous playwright, so that's easy -- you can take the students to it, often get student discounts on the tickets and even a speaker to come to class, because the theatre is really friendly to educators -- but I teach in the summer and fall, when they put on no such play. So I will read also with my Teaching Eyes for what this play might yield in the room.
What I need to do now, though, is to finish re-reading Louise Erdrich's novel LaRose so that I can participate in a video discussion for a friend's Indigenous Literatures course. Since I am still having a lot of trouble with concentration, even on this beautiful book, I am using an old studying strategy and taking it into the bath with me, where I can't get away.
Good night.
{rf}
jasmine_r_s recommended it for its lyrical stage directions.In leafing through this copy, I find after only a few seconds that one of the characters is
Little Boy -- A beautiful Native boy. Eight to ten years old. The personification of the darkest uranium found at the centre of the earth.
And another isFat Man -- An American bomb-test dummy manning his house in the late 1940's and 1950's. He gets more and more human as the bombs draw closer. Unlikeable in a likeable way.
And then another isThe Radium Painter -- A beautiful American woman who paints radium on watch dials in the 1930s. She is looking for the answers to the glow and death of her life.
So I'm all in on page 2. Then there's a timeline that begins with a Dene prophecy, carries through 1930s radium mining at Great Bear Lake (NWT), follows the atomic bomb to Japan, and ends with the play itself. I didn't know that Dene people were the ones who carried the ore out of the Eldorado mine.
Okay. This is going to be really, really good.
jasmine_r_s suggested I look at Clements' fusion of the structural/formal aspects of the play with the performance/literary aspects as an inspiration for how to write the games I'm making (which sit somewhere between story and instruction manual). I admit that although I had proposed that plays and games had a lot in common (and therefore it is fine to teach a game instead of a play in a literature survey course), it hadn't occurred to me to, you know, read any plays to see what they might tell me about games.I'm a little dazed by the lyrical power Clements shows before the play even starts.
Here are the opening stage directions for Movement One, "The Frequency of Discovery":
Intense darkness is pierced by light that reveals foreboding scenes of human suffering: pain, grief, loss, and isolation.
The sound of loud, strange noises from deep in the earth.
The sound of a radio dial gliding from frequency to frequency, creating different cultural tones and telling different stories. It is as if they are waiting on the radio waves, ready to be heard, and a sense of discovery is heightened.
The sound of loud, strange noises from deep in the earth.
The sound of a radio dial gliding from frequency to frequency, creating different cultural tones and telling different stories. It is as if they are waiting on the radio waves, ready to be heard, and a sense of discovery is heightened.
Of course as soon as J. recommended a play to me, I began to wonder if it would work for teaching. Choosing a play is always tricky. In the winter, the Belfry always puts on a work by an Indigenous playwright, so that's easy -- you can take the students to it, often get student discounts on the tickets and even a speaker to come to class, because the theatre is really friendly to educators -- but I teach in the summer and fall, when they put on no such play. So I will read also with my Teaching Eyes for what this play might yield in the room.
What I need to do now, though, is to finish re-reading Louise Erdrich's novel LaRose so that I can participate in a video discussion for a friend's Indigenous Literatures course. Since I am still having a lot of trouble with concentration, even on this beautiful book, I am using an old studying strategy and taking it into the bath with me, where I can't get away.
Good night.
{rf}
