Aladdin By William Glennon: Book Review

"Aladdin" adapted by William Glennon is a play that I was involved in back in high school. It was a fun little production that we cut up something fierce to get it on stage.

This adaptation is designed to appeal to young children and so it has little in the way of substance and more in the way of humor and jokes. The action is simple, the plot is wish fulfillment and the work is short and direct.  

Who should read this book? Theater Geeks looking to produce children's theater. 

Books' Read: 27 of 5,000

Pages 63

Total Pages Read for 'The 5,000 Project' 6,196

Everything

Tommy

Cool Idea

Great Actor

Nice Name

Gbuldegook 2

Did a Good Job

Gbuldegook

You did Great

Too Loud

The Night Thoreau Spent in Jailby Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee: Book Review

I ran into this volume at the used book store some years ago and on the advice of a professor took to "read every play you can get your hands on and watch every play you can afford to see". I can say I'm glad I read this play.

'The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail' is a fictional account of moments and contemplation in the life of Henry David Thoreau. It serves to humanize the writer and bring him closer to modern ideas such as war, racism, and violence.

Where as this needs a large company of actors to be produced it is a good read as a piece of literature. I also believe there is a restriction against professional companies producing this work.

All and all, I recommend this work for anyone who likes to think. 

Who should read this book? Thinkers 

Books Read: 26 of 5,000

Pages 98

Total Pages Read for 'The 5,000 Project' 6,133

Calm Down

So, this is an old signature from my 1996 high school yearbook. Even at 16 I had my head on tight. 

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Backett: Review

Some say 'Waiting for Godot' by Samuel Beckett is the greatest play of the 20th century. To be honest I have never read a play as relevant to the common man as this one, and I question if I will ever find it's equal. 

The premise so that of extreme simplicity, two men waiting for the absent Godot as they contemplate the brutality of their world, suicide, and their friendship.

They live in a world where slavery is legal and human life has no value. In dead, we find in this story a master going to fair to sell his lave as one may do an older horse and at least one of the two protagonists, I can't call them heroes, asking about the slave's position with his owner as if he would like to have this lowly state.

This is a play about all of us at the bottom of the world hoping for our chance to go do something better.

Vladimir and Estragon or Didi and Gogo as they call each other, are victims as much of themselves as they are from the hard world they live in and the question is why do they stay together and in this place waiting.

When I look at these names, and the author would tell me my idea is as good as the next, I see to possibilities. Didi and Gogo can be seen as Did I and Go Go or Did it(taking Godot's T) and Go Go. This would imply that the questioning of the self or a statement of gilt and then the push to move even in that question.  

In other words, I believe these to are like most of us waiting to Go Do something in their lives. Haven't we all then been waiting for Godot? Have you ever waited to ask that someone out, or until you got a better job? So many common people spend their lives waiting for Godot but if we should keep waiting is a question only we can answer for ourselves. 

Who should read this play?: All the humans who can.

Total Books Read: 11 of 5,000

Pages: 61

Total Pages Read for 'The 5,000 Project': 2,036

Moonchildren By Michael Weller: Review

Moonchildren is a coming of age story for a group of college grad students who are facing the possibility of a draft and getting shipped off to fight in Vietnam. 

It accurately depicts the gravity tension and of that time in American life. The story elements are second to character building and skit like comedy. There are running jokes and odd little notions.

The major down side of this play is that it would be hard to produce. There is a working refrigerator, a wall of milk bottles that needs to be real, and a living cat all part of this script. Thus it is more of a script for a film than one for a play.

Moonchildren was a fun read and I'm glad I read it but it still works better and literature than as production.

Who should read this book: Hippies and theater geeks.

Total Books Read: 10 of 5,000

Pages: 85

Total pages read for 'The 5,000 Project':1,975

Book Review: Under the Peach Tree By Lawrence Carr

A bit of what I can only call existentialist theater this little one-act play is a minimalist production that forces you to question yourself.

Sadly, there are few questions in so short a script and the real meaning and moral are hard to pick out. 

In truth, Under the Peach Tree, is even a misleading title for the play as the major active ingredient is fertilizer and not the shade of a peach tree.

Who should read this book:

Theater Geeks

ISBN 0-8059-7019-3

Total Books Read 6 of 5,000

Pages 18

Total Pages Read for 'The 5,000 Project' 1213

A=X+Y+Z - Albert Einstein

You Don’t Get it

I don’t recall what I was responding to with this letter, but it was the practice of the addressee to try to get me into situations that I found stressful. He tried his best to sabotage my life, and then he got vengeful when I finely walked away from him.

Human decency is so rarely human that I must consider it a goal to aspire to rather than a fact of our nature.

8^th August, 2007  

Now look, (Soldier on deployment in Iraq),

 Once again you just don’t get it. I could get another job, yes, but not a better one. I’ve now been hired by twice as many security companies then I’ve worked for and the biggest obstacle on my way to getting another job has been school. Read “The Applicant” I go over my problems.

Getting another job as a security guard is not consistent with getting out of college and getting into what I want to do with my life. You said I was wrong in what I did with (my first job), but if I hadn’t done it I would still be at (that job) making twelve thousand dollars a year. I’ve made up my losses, and now I can pay for school.

This is much like the time that I gave those two hundred dollars back to my dad. That was me making it totally clear that I was done with his bullshit, and you couldn’t understand. Now, two hundred dollars is pocket change. When you said that you were looking at used laptops I said “maybe I should send him my old pile of shit and go by a new one, I can get an Apple for eight hundred”. If I didn’t just plunk down eighteen hundred for school the thing would be in the mail for you right now. As it stands I really should hold off, but you get the point.

I’ve said time and time again that my life is going to suck, and that I need to let it suck, but remember that my experience as a security guard is conducive to my work as a writer much like your army days are for you. I get something out of my every day shit storm, and that’s important. I’m working on a set of one acts involving security and “Welcome to the Gurd Shack” is about my experience at (my current job).

I’m trying to move up, and you’re telling me to move sideways. Frankly, one of the guards who was giving me problems has already quit and two of them are realizing how idiotic they sounded. One of the guards was really upset about what happened, and he is a long standing officer.

Not that I’m upset with you over this but the point remains that I’m just telling you what is going on with my life and not complaining. I don’t have anything ells to talk about so I talk about work.

You should probably save all my letters and read them again when you’re on leave so you can get my meaning better, but then it’s all not that important.

Stay safe out there,

Richard Leland Neal

ALD and other stuff

This is a letter sent by email to the department chair of the Theatre Arts department of my college. I recall that I received no reply. My success was never a goal of that department. They felt that the thousands of dollars I was paying wasn't reason enough for me to be looked after.

They were still willing to take my money, but at no point did they say that I didn’t belong or wasn’t good enough. The opportunities to practice my art simply never came my way.

By the time I dropped the Theatre major I had a good number of reasons to do so. I was angry and felt cheated. When I tried to talk to people within the department they treated me as if I was worthless and refused to hear a word I said.

You tell me, was it right for a state funded school to ignore this letter?

12^th of May 2008

Subject: ALD and other stuff

Dear (Department Chair),

At this point, I’m not opposed to doing anything light related. I have two years left at (State College), but as I will be taking advanced sound next spring my last year will likely have more to do with that side of design.

I’m still shaky on the Vector Works stuff, but I’m improving.

I have presently planned a 15 unit semester involving three days a week without (the 2 unit lab class) so I can take two sections of it, but I only need one more to put towards my degree. I’m always angry when there are units that I’m paying for and not taking, but the situation is what it is.

I’d also like to know who I should talk to about what the department is looking for in terms of plays. Like I said, one of my full-length plays is a 25 character monster and might suit the needs of the department once I clean it a bit. I had planned to write three full-length pieces of theatre in playwriting last semester and only failed to do so because I was refused in-class readings. I did turn in more than one hundred pages of never before viewed work. I know I can write to the needs of the department. I can’t promise that the plays will be good, and I know the likelihood of the school putting them on is still very small, but if I don’t try then I have no one to blame but myself.

“Nothing left but trying cept’in lying down and dying” Charles Dickens