The Further Adventures of...
I know my problem set is late; you can deduct 5% from my grade.
Word World Design Assignment 7 is, and I quote:
Design an all-singing, all-dancing show -- live, animatronic, or whatever -- that involves your audience in the further adventures of a favorite character in your genre.
Whoa, now, that's a toughy. Ruminating on the "involves your audience" part led me to realize that the various audience segments targeted for LitLand would be most fractured in their taste when it came to stage shows. Therefore, the entertainment requires a three-pronged approach.
Developing a further-adventures show for the starry-eyed reader is a piece of cake, as there's already a whole subgenre's worth of pre-made plots available, in the form of third-rate unauthorized sequels. My highly unscientific survey of the source material indicates that 97.624% of it consists of Jane Austen continuations. The pragmatic and commercially-minded Word World planners needed only to contact the purveyors of such drivel and auction off the rights. Unfortunately, the team pushing Mr. Darcy Presents His Bride were overtaken at the last minute by a dark horse delegation bidding on behalf of Scarlett. (Horribly true: the Publisher's Weekly review exerpted by Amazon includes the word, "ultra-mega-hyped.") Lucky audience participants draw straws to determine who gets to dress up in curtains, and who gets to portray a house-slave.
I shuffled through a few ideas to sell to the carefree intelligentsia. True story: while showering the other night, I was suddenly consumed by the urgent, violent, visceral drive to re-read Voltaire. I'd like to think this is the sort of thing that happens to the carefree intelligentsia, but, more certainly, it's the sort of thing the posseur would make a point of talking about, so I'll let the reader decide where my credibility currently stands. Anyhow, no matter how hard I tried to twist the moment into a stage show, it just wouldn't go - the end of Candide makes it painfully clear that the further adventures of those characters will be limited to gardening forevermore, and, while that might introduce all sorts of opportunities for audience involvement, it would also be horribly dull. So we look elsewhere.
Ultimately, I have to cheap out and rip off Jasper Fforde's Richard III encounter (if you haven't read The Eyre Affair, imagine a social phenomenon in which the masses take a Rocky Horror-style devotion (costumes and all) and apply it to a Shakespearean script - par for the course in Fforde's alternative-history Britain, which takes literature very seriously). I really can't improve on Fforde's concept - Richard III really is the perfect piece - but for the sake of originality, we can arrange an occasional seasonal switch-out for, say, The Pickwick Papers.
And for the posseur? One lucky audience member comes onstage for a fireside chat with an actor portraying, say, Andre Gide. Or Camus. Or Gertude Stein. (Every day is a surprise!) Naturally, the actor spends the entire time subtly mocking the participant, utterly unbeknownst to him. The song-and-dance part is provided by the line of cabaret dancers that cross the stage at unexpected intervals and for no apparent reason.
The fourth class of LitLand customers, the high school English teachers, should be able to find all three options equally delightful. Because that's what high school English teachers are like.
.
Developing a further-adventures show for the starry-eyed reader is a piece of cake, as there's already a whole subgenre's worth of pre-made plots available, in the form of third-rate unauthorized sequels. My highly unscientific survey of the source material indicates that 97.624% of it consists of Jane Austen continuations. The pragmatic and commercially-minded Word World planners needed only to contact the purveyors of such drivel and auction off the rights. Unfortunately, the team pushing Mr. Darcy Presents His Bride were overtaken at the last minute by a dark horse delegation bidding on behalf of Scarlett. (Horribly true: the Publisher's Weekly review exerpted by Amazon includes the word, "ultra-mega-hyped.") Lucky audience participants draw straws to determine who gets to dress up in curtains, and who gets to portray a house-slave.
I shuffled through a few ideas to sell to the carefree intelligentsia. True story: while showering the other night, I was suddenly consumed by the urgent, violent, visceral drive to re-read Voltaire. I'd like to think this is the sort of thing that happens to the carefree intelligentsia, but, more certainly, it's the sort of thing the posseur would make a point of talking about, so I'll let the reader decide where my credibility currently stands. Anyhow, no matter how hard I tried to twist the moment into a stage show, it just wouldn't go - the end of Candide makes it painfully clear that the further adventures of those characters will be limited to gardening forevermore, and, while that might introduce all sorts of opportunities for audience involvement, it would also be horribly dull. So we look elsewhere.
Ultimately, I have to cheap out and rip off Jasper Fforde's Richard III encounter (if you haven't read The Eyre Affair, imagine a social phenomenon in which the masses take a Rocky Horror-style devotion (costumes and all) and apply it to a Shakespearean script - par for the course in Fforde's alternative-history Britain, which takes literature very seriously). I really can't improve on Fforde's concept - Richard III really is the perfect piece - but for the sake of originality, we can arrange an occasional seasonal switch-out for, say, The Pickwick Papers.
And for the posseur? One lucky audience member comes onstage for a fireside chat with an actor portraying, say, Andre Gide. Or Camus. Or Gertude Stein. (Every day is a surprise!) Naturally, the actor spends the entire time subtly mocking the participant, utterly unbeknownst to him. The song-and-dance part is provided by the line of cabaret dancers that cross the stage at unexpected intervals and for no apparent reason.
The fourth class of LitLand customers, the high school English teachers, should be able to find all three options equally delightful. Because that's what high school English teachers are like.
.
You're good. You could have a winter-time skating party to go along with Pickwick Papers, if you so desired...
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