Sneeze Cough Hack September 3, 2010

I’ve got a ton of projects in the works at Librivox at the moment, but all of them have been on hold because I’ve been sick. You know those colds that just seem to last forever? My two-week cold, combined with my allergies that have returned full blast since the temperature shot back into the upper 90s, has made recording just not too much fun. Most of my time since I finished my thesis has been spent sitting on the couch, watching movies, and doing cross-stitch. Usually I’m a knitter but I never feel much like knitting when it’s so hot outside.

Yesterday I managed to record Chapter 37 of Olive, which means only 12 more chapters to go until the end–yay! It’s reminding me more and more of Jane Eyre, the book that inspired it, as I go on. I was recounting the entire plot to my husband the other day, and he said, you know, a genre is just a fad a hundred years later. Does that mean that in a hundred years, people will be talking about the Vampire Genre of the early 2000s? Will students have to write 6-page papers on symbolism in Twilight for English 101? Shudder.

I think you appreciate a book more if you have to struggle a bit to enjoy it. The first time I read Pride and Prejudice, I was going into 11th grade, it was on the required summer reading list, and I hated it. Haaaated it. I had no idea what was going on, I thought it was boring, and that all these people who talked about how great Jane Austen was were sadly deluded. I spent several misguided years telling everyone how much I hated Jane Austen, and when several of my wise friends suggested that I give it another try, I refused. “No,” I said, “I’ve READ Pride and Prejudice and I didn’t like it! Why would you subject me to that torture a second time?” Well, my sophomore year of college, I had a TV in my room which could only pick up one channel, the local PBS station, and one night they showed the Laurence Olivier version. It was so great! I couldn’t believe it! I ran to my friend’s room and said, “THAT’S Pride and Prejudice? Why didn’t you TELL me?” Happily, she didn’t say, “I told you so,” but rather, “If you think that’s good, you need to see the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle version,” which of course is one of the greatest movies of all time, and now I’ve read the book many times and obviously adore it. (This same friend is now getting her Phd in English literature, by the way.)

Two of my other favorite books of all time are Jane Eyre and Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, both of which I had to start and stop multiple times before finishing and loving them. (I started reading Jane Eyre in seventh or eighth grade and never got past the first ten chapters, which cover Jane’s childhood, until I was well into high school. I think that was all I was ready for at the time. However, my first really serious literary crush was on Mr. Rochester, which I think explains a lot about me.) A lot of people tell me that they had to read Cry, the Beloved Country in tenth grade English and hated it, and I always encourage them to try it again. (Or to see the movie with James Earl Jones and Richard Harris, which is really excellent.)

The moral of both these stories seems to be that if you don’t like a book at first, watch the movie and then read it again (which worked really well for me with Lord of the Rings) but my thoughts on movie adaptations are probably a topic for another day. If there’s a book you’ve always hated, or never understood (The Scarlet Letter seems to be high on that list for a lot of people) I encourage you to try it again with an open mind. You may be surprised at what you find.

And now, as a reward for having read my rambling thoughts for this long, here is a picture of my dog, Oscar, doing what he does best, which is being extremely cute. By the way, some jerk at the dog park asked me accusingly the other day, “What is that, a pit bull?” I have nothing whatever against pit bulls, but that guy was obviously on crack, right? Does this look like a pit bull to you?

Working on My Thesis August 23, 2010

As those of you who read my Twitter know, at the moment I’m literally two and a half pages away from a master’s degree. My MFA thesis is currently going by the boring title “Deaf Theater in America: Past, Present, and Future,” though I’m certainly taking suggestions for jazzing it up a little. It is 47.5 (out of 50 required) pages in length, and at over 14,000 words, by far the longest piece of writing I’ve ever done. From childhood, I’ve always been told that I’m a good writer, but the act of actually sitting down and writing for an extended period of time is absolutely torturous for me. This is the only reason I’m graduating late (in October instead of May). All of my research and reading was done long ago, but I couldn’t force myself to sit down and actually write the stupid thing. The only way to get through it, I discovered, was to break it down into the smallest possible sections. Thinking about writing 50 pages was completely overwhelming. Thinking about it as five sections of ten pages each, or even ten sections of five pages each, was almost as bad. In the end, the only way to do it was to break it down into two page segments. I told myself that I was going to write two pages a day. Not “at least” two pages a day, but two pages exactly. I was not ALLOWED to write more than two pages and then, no matter where I was, no matter if I had more to say, I would stop. I would imagine that this method would be torture to the kind of person who likes to get on a roll and just keep going, but for someone like me, to whom every word is like pulling teeth, it worked really well.

One of my goals is to someday write and publish a romance novel. I think I could do it using this method–two pages every weekday is ten pages a week, which is 520 pages in a year! That’s totally doable, right?

In Librivox news, I recorded Chapter 30 of Olive today, in which you’ll have to excuse my horrendous Yorkshire accent (Why did 19th century authors all write characters in dialect? Why?) which came out sort of half-Scottish and half-Martian. I also recorded a few lines as Mrs. Bemis for Five O’Clock Tea, and fixed a mispronunciation in my recording of Wagner from Dr. Faustus. I’m getting over a cold and I’m still a little hoarse, and of course no one wants to listen to a recording full of sniffles.

Tonight is the opening night performance and party for Wife to James Whelan, which I’m very excited about. I hope anyone in the New York area can make it to the show!

Upcoming Librivox Projects August 21, 2010

I have quite a few projects coming up on Librivox which I’m excited about. Activity on Librivox seems to wax and wane (or maybe it just seems that way) and after a slow summer, I’m seeing people starting to post new projects and finish up old ones at a faster rate.

The projects I’m coordinating at the moment include my ongoing solo, Olive by Dinah Maria Craik, a book inspired by Jane Eyre in which the heroine finds a fulfilling life despite her disability. It’s unusual now, never mind back then, to find a sympathetically written disabled central character, which is the reason I was drawn to this book. I’ve currently completed 29 of 49 chapters and hope to have it finished up soon.

I’m also planning a solo of Susan Glaspell’s novel Fidelity. Glaspell is better known as a playwright (she was a contemporary of Eugene O’Neill at the Provincetown Playhouse) but she also wrote novels, many of which are in the public domain. I can’t give you much of a plot synopsis (I never choose books I’ve read before as solos–that would be too boring!) but I can guarantee it will be interesting.

On the dramatic works side of things, I’m coordinating a dramatic reading of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. I got the idea after seeing a rather poor stage adaptation of the novel here in NYC awhile back, and I thought, “You know, I bet Librivox could do this better.” I’m reading the small role of Mrs. Vane, and will have my hands full editing it all together when the parts are in. I’m also coordinating readings of Wilde’s Salome (I’m reading the role of Salome) and Chekhov’s Three Sisters (I’m reading the role of Masha). All three of these projects still have roles open, so please sign up!

A few months back, I had the crazy idea of coordinating all three parts of Shakespeare’s Henry VI keeping the same readers in the same parts across all three plays. I then dismissed the idea, thinking I was too busy but I’d do it someday, and then someone else got to it before I did! He was kind enough to ask me to read the role of Henry VI, which I’d never have dared to choose for myself, so it worked out well for me in the end. Coordinating dramatic works projects on Librivox can sometimes be like herding cats, much like working with actors in “real life.”

Speaking of real life, if you’re in New York, I highly recommend going to see Wife to James Whelan at the Mint Theater, a play I worked on as assistant director. I’m also going to be directing a staged reading of a Swedish radio play in translation for the Columbia University Swedish Department in late October, so keep an eye on the blog for more details.

A Face to a Voice August 21, 2010

As a Librivox listener as well as a reader, I love visiting the blogs of people I know only as a username and a voice. It’s always interesting (and sometimes surprising) to learn what they do with the rest of their lives, and most importantly, what they look like. With this blog, I plan to keep track of my ongoing Librivox projects, and maybe some of the other things going on in my life as well. And of course, here’s the obligatory picture of me and my dog Oscar!