Teenagers

It is easy to classify today's teenagers, if you are older, as disappointing, irresponsible, and even crazy. This is true enough in some ways but give those teenagers a good script, maybe a good set of music and see them shine. I saw a student production of Les Miserables last night and if  it was far from perfect it was extremely stirring. One thing that really struck me is that the streetwalkers and the revolutionary students about to be gunned down were played by people of the same age as the characters they were portraying. And that's what really struck me of course. In some sense I was looking at reality.

Update: I've talked about this before.

Does anyone know about the "Ehs" and the "You-Alls?"

In Afghanada, CBC Radio's excellent drama about Canadian soldiers fighting in Kandahar province, the Canadians call the Americans "You-Alls" and the Americans call the Canadians "Ehs."  Does anyone know if these slang phrases exist, or whether it is just inspired invention?

Image:  Some "Ehs" in Kandahar, some years back.

Afghanada

CBC Radio has been broadcasting a series called Afghanada for about four years now.  It concerns the experiences of a Canadian forces section  fighting in the vicinity of Kandahar.  In all that time  I have caught very few episodes.  But today I was driving to work in exactly the right time.  When I got to the university I parked my truck and listened to the last 10 minutes of the show riveted and open-mouthed.  I highly recommend that you listen in.  And if you get hooked, you can buy the complete seasons from iTunes for about $12.00 Canadian each.

Image:  Real Canadians in  real Kandahar.

Medieval Fantasy as Performance: the Society for Creative Anachronism and the Current Middle Ages, by Michael A. Cramer

Michael Cramer is a theater scholar, an active dramatist, and a longtime member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. I know him reasonably well and am not shy about promoting my friends when they publish, but I can honestly say that this is a very interesting book that will appeal to a number of different audiences: thoughtful members of the SCA, people interested in postmodernism and medievalism on the theoretical level, and those who find dramatic theory useful in analyzing what people do in daily life.

One of the best features of this book is that Kramer is willing to be honest about his own feelings about the organization he has belonged to for so many years. If some aspect strikes him as worthwhile, he doesn't hold back from saying so either implicitly or explicitly. If some incident or feature strikes him as problematic, that comes through, too. He is neither bashful nor chauvinistic. I can guess that he feels that if some readers are going to dismiss the SCA or his study as too weird for words, well, then, they should read another book. This straightforward approach to the material makes it a lot more lively than a lot of cultural/anthropological studies.

As an informed reader with a great deal of SCA experience myself, I got some good laughs from his accurate observation. It didn't hurt that I know or have heard of most of the people he interviewed, quoted, or told good stories about. For somebody like me, this book could almost be entitled Famous Eccentrics of the SCA. For readers coming to this book for scholarly treatment, Cramer's deft use of anecdotes is actually a strength, because they are well-chosen and well discussed. They're not just there for freak-show value. Cramer is far from condescending to his subjects; if a famous eccentric in the book it's for a good reason.

I am not sure how this book will be received by theorists of performance or postmodernism, but I've always thought that the SCA was an interesting cultural phenomenon, and I think this may be the best, or at least most sophisticated, treatment of that phenomenon.

Image: the cool cover. There are lots of cool pictures on the inside, too.

Hawley and Shakell hit the stage

I have a bad feeling that someone told me about this (Will McLean?) and I can't remember who. But it's not in my blog, or his, as far as I can tell so here goes.

A few of you may remember that back at the end of the year I said that there was a story waiting to be told about Hawley and Shakell, who captured a Spanish count in the 14th century wars and spent decades trying to cash in on their "good fortune." Hawley ended up being murdered in Westminster Abbey (I recall being told it was during high mass) by thugs working for a royal duke, who wanted control of the captive to promote his diplomatic schemes. I said it would make a good medieval murder mystery or maybe a movie...

...little dreaming that there is a stage play from the 1840s online here. I haven't had a chance to read it yet so I can't tell you whether it is any good. But I bet John of Gaunt is the bad guy.

Next: the lost Broadway musical about Hawley-Smoot.

Update: The play Count de Denia, or the Spaniard's Ransom, is pretty dreadful pseudo-Shakespeare. John of Gaunt is the bad guy; otherwise great liberties are taken with history.