Lizkdc Dislocation

The Return of Glee

Well, Tuesday night.

Well, if you love pop music with such a sickness that it can make you happy to have Bruno Mars and "A Chorus Line" mashed together in one hour.

If you spend expensive hours with your therapist's furrowed brow, attempting to spackle over the foundation-sapping traumas of adolescence.

 If your stupid, unkillable inner girl insists still takes a detour outside the approved playlist of Belle and Sebastian and Sufjan Stevens  to take an  inner spotlit stage and  belt an unholy synthesis of "If You Believe in Life After Love," "Don't Rain on My Parade", and "Circus" while you make your rounds of office desk and Powerpoint and lonely smart-phone twaddling  . . .

If you ever had a freak-out seeing the junk culture of your oddball, shabby, inflationary, low-budget decade of childhood turn into some sort of warm and glowy, cherished cultural touchstone . . .

If you're not sure if you're ironic, camp, or just a loser.

Then, you probably enjoyed the coming of a new season of Glee.

I would like to report that instead of such futility, I spent the evening tutoring orphans soaked in British Petroleum spillage and writing free-form poetry on soy paper. But it would not be true!

L sign.

A Tangent Universe

So, the American Repertory Theater did a funny thing.  They decided to do a stage version of cult film "Donnie Darko."  It was literally a "staging" of the film--not an original play based on the film's ideas, but more of an experiment--what if we took a highly visual, surreal, mysterious and psychological film and acted it out on a tiny theater stage with actors and props?

As might be expected, it didn't surpass or even match the film, as a matter of artistic expression--but it didn't even seem to be trying to.  Instead, what it did was call to mind the film, bring back snatches of memory and emotion and insight that one had in viewing the original movie.

As an enterprise, this may be a little quixotic.  You can just go down to the local Borders, buy it, and  pop it in the DVD.

I avoided reading any reviews, so I literally have no clue as to the theater company's thinking or the origin of the project (intend to go looking, shortly)

So what's the purpose? I think it has something to do with the creeped-out mix of repulsion and affection that  "Donnie" generates in its fans. Fear and love, is what it is.  Personally, I was sort of horrified, sort of amused, when I hear the exercise was taking place.  I could have given you several smooth and cynical kiss-off remarks about it.  I also knew I had to go.  Luckily, my friends Bronia, Jason, and Michelle wanted to go too, because if they hadn't, I probably would have gone by myself and sat in the dark, embarassed, nervous, longing.