sundries

[rm]

A lovely review for Dogboy & Justine:

The most moving of the plays is Racheline Maltese’s “Dogboy and Justine,” directed by Cash Tilton. The setting is a brothel that specializes in kink, and the company duly thanks David Menkes Leather for the scary props and costume pieces. All the working girls are getting clients but Mistress Justine, who has to content herself with a frequent and pathetic caller who wants to be treated like a dog. “Everybody likes dogs,” he explains.

Though funny, Maltese’s work has a depth and poignancy that the other plays don’t access. The caller, played by Christian Barber, gets across an excruciating loneliness, even as we never see him. Stacy Ann Strong is the voice of his distressed mother, who sheds a sad light on why her son is the way he is. Melissa Ferraro plays Justine with a nearly maternal compassion; she’s not hard like the other girls Jeannie (Amanda Boekelheide), Erika (Laneshia Pryor) or Dynamite (Christy Richardson). This is a play that lingers in the mind.

I can't tell you how good this review feels. Remember Dogboy & Justine continues to run as part of Act V: One Act at The Secret Theatre, Jan 20 - 23.

Gallifrey One programming schedule is very fluxy. Times are changing. Panelists are being added. IT IS ALL VERY EXCITING. Real schedule from me here when things are more solid, as I think I'm about to be added to some stuff. I just, btw, stopped myself from volunteering for one in particular, because JUST BECAUSE I HAVE AN OPINION ABOUT SOMETHING DOESN'T MEAN I HAVE TO PROVE ANYTHING BY SITTING UP THERE AND TALKING ABOUT IT. God, sometimes I just have to be in the audience, or the bar, or sleeping late, or whatever. I think it was the right choice, but if they ask me to do it, I'll do it (in a heartbeat), but I don't think they know me well enough for that to happen. It's fine. See, see? This is me, learning to love with a more open hand. Or something. I am both not even kidding and totally making fun of myself, yes.

Yes, I was one of the gatekeepers for therealljidol this week. And I suppose I should make a brief comment. At this point I sort of view myself as the Simon Cowell of the thing. Some of you love me. Some of you hate me and many of you love to hate me. A lot of you also know I'm right.

Gary asked me to vote for 75 entries to stay. I struggled and struggled to get to that number. Being more generous than I wanted to be, I only made it to 40 on the first past. Eventually I got close to 75, but didn't hit it, and that was even after grading you people on a curve.

How many of you did I really think deserved to stay after reading all those entries? About 25. Maybe. You're lucky I was feeling nice.

Here are my general thoughts:

- Six sentences is not enough. In most cases, three paragraphs is not enough either.

- For the love of god, put spaces between your paragraphs if you want me to be able to focus on what you're writing about.

- There's a reason short fiction doesn't work for LJ Idol, and that's because short fiction is very, very hard to write. I don't know you, your characters or their issues. Short fiction is often harder to read than a novel, even if it is technically a bite-sized piece. I voted for very few of the fiction pieces, as mostly I found they had no point and no believable voice.

- I hate that Reader's Digest voice so many of you take on.

- I looked for pieces that felt like people would have written them as part of their journal even if they weren't competing in LJ Idol. I wanted a sense of organic relevance and honesty, which believe it or not, does come across even if I've never read anything else in your journal ever. Very few of you achieved this.

- Adjectives do not replace narrative!

- And for the record your excessive adverb use is strangling me. And not in the nice kinky way. But in the "I want to throw your sentences up against a wall over and over again until the extra words fall off" way.

- Similes and metaphors are your friend, but leading with cliched "this is my college application essay and I am like a great big tree soaking up knowledge" types of metaphors and similes is not how you make friends and influence people.

- "I hope this is okay" introductions about the inadequacy of what I am about to read: you are wasting my time. It's not humility, it's annoying.

- Endings that go nowhere fill me with rage. WHAT WAS THE POINT?

- Endings that assume the reader is stupid and spell out the point like five times. Assume your reader is at least as smart as you. Offer them a gift, don't shove it down their throat.

- Look, most of us aren't special snowflakes. Most of us have experienced loss, heartbreak and mean kids at lunch. Do not try to make your ordinary experiences sound special -- it makes them more mundane -- the value-add you provide is your observation and perspective on those experience. Way too many of you did not bring a value add.

- Knock it off with the sex. It's not that it's TMI. It's that it's boring. Again, what's sexy or interesting is context and observation. Talking about sex to be "edgy" reads, to me, as incredibly jejune and boring.

reannon alerts us to the absence of Poe's mourner this year. Like her, I'm surprised by how solidly I find myself hit by this.

The Rabenmutters of Germany: life where women really can't have it all. At least not until schools stay open past lunch.

First world problems: therapists report rise in green disputes.

And yet another new YA book in which a PoC main character is depicted as white on the cover.

US weapons inscribed with Bible references. And we're trying to convince people this isn't about religion?

About 40% of the way through the Jack/Alonso fic now. This time it's working.

Because this is good.

This is almost like the last 207 days haven't happened, and almost like Jack didn't pay a masseuse for a hand job three fucking days after Ianto died just so he could have all the loss over and done and gone at once.

It is almost like, instead of burning his only photo of Steven, he had left it with Gwen instead.

See, this is why I have to do it this way. Because I can.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

Some of your comma errors made me frustrated as they robbed us of some of the cadence I think your piece was intended to have.

I liked that you knew you had a story you wanted to tell; a lot of people didn't.

You got a little adverb happy and you should never under underestimate the effectiveness of a simple "said" when attributing quotes (or sometimes not attributing at all, when we can follow the speaker) for better rhythm and energy.

I think you overused the rhetorical questions.

It's a good story, worth telling, but that would be more effective if you were more subtle about leading us through it and showing us the conclusion.

Also, pause for the laughs. You rushed us past some of the good bits.

[shadowwolf13]

Thank you for the feedback.

Nearly all of these are things I felt that I should probably work on so it's good to know I'm mostly on the right track.