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Why can't the English teach their children how to speak? --Henry Higgins, in My Fair Lady |
Monday, May 15, 2000 Subject: Shaw Okay, I've more or less decided that I'm doing the research paper on Shaw. And probably on Pygmalion. I'd forgotten that my all-time favorite play fell within the parameters of this course. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning of the day, shall we?
So I got up, had a cup of Earl Grey and a slice of pizza, and sallied forth to college, where I met my scene partners. We proceeded to read through our lines three times, which (a) was helpful for me, and (b) succeeded in making me pretty frustrated, as I appear to be the only one of us three who's really taking the scene seriously... and one of the others just plain doesn't care at all. I mean, I can understand not remembering every exact word of one's lines during the actual performance; it happens, especially as we're all new to this, and we're doing this in a short period of time. But to ignore the page and wing it when we're simply reading from the scripts, because you don't feel like memorizing anything at all... I'm sorry; that's just wrong. But there's no point in trying to strangle my partners (and I'm outnumbered two to one anyway), so I'm just gritting my teeth and hoping for the best... outside of insisting that a couple of critical lines be delivered properly. My partners are probably right in that we'll probably be graded leniently in the first place. But I am a perfectionist; if I'm gonna be doing this, I want to do it right. Plus this is the only chance I'm gonna have to do any real acting in this whole course... and this is sort of what I signed up for in the first place, y'know. Suddenly I remember just how frustrated I used to get directing the Purim plays I used to do... but that's another really long story, and I don't have time to tell it just now.
Anyway. After dropping off a bunch of books at the campus library, I returned home, after which Mary Anne reminded me of Shaw (I love modern technology. And having friends, even if they're scattered all over the globe), and I went back to the campus library, where I returned what I was pretty sure was the rest of the books I'd had out, and went to the Shaw shelves. After selecting eleven volumes, I went to the main desk and was informed that the computers were down and they had to write down all the relevant information with pen and paper for later processing once they went back up, so there was a five-volume limit. So I selected five, and put the other six aside on the "hold" shelf to take out later. This turned out to be a Good Thing, 'cause I went back later (during the break in the Geology class) and the computers were back up, but it turned out that I'd left one overdue book back in my apartment, and thus couldn't take anything else out until I return it. Which I'm going to do tomorrow. But in the meantime, I have the first five, 'cause their computers were down and we didn't know any better. See, even computer glitches can be your friends!
In the meantime, I've taken out My Fair Lady again, in the name of research. (I'd wanted the film version of Pygmalion, but neither Blockbuster near me has it, apparently.) I've got it on in the background as I type this, and chortling with delight every few minutes. I'd forgotten how much I love this musical! Which is all well and good, but it doesn't change the fact that I need an actual focused topic for this paper. I'm sort of hazily thinking in the general area of Shaw's use of the play for social criticism, especially as it pertains to women's roles, and the reaction to same, or possibly Shaw and Wilde's wildly divergent views on art and its purposes. But, hey, I have reading to do. If I'm lucky, I'll even have time for it.
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