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Monday, April 4, 2011

Blind Faith

My good friend Bibliophile Girl is an awesome writer (you do follow her blogs, yes?... yes) and when she told me that she had an idea for a blog post I didn't even hesitate to say," Write it!"


Here she goes:

I have been honored with a request to guest post here on Theatrophile, and I hope that I do this blog justice. J


Let’s start off with an admission, shall we? I am not here to review “Rock of Ages” (EM here- that review is coming later- back to her post). Heck, I’m not even here to tell you about how we managed to find the only cab driver working in San Francisco who didn’t know what (or where) the Curran Theatre was. I am here to write about the concept of Blind Faith.


As I am sure that most of you have surmised by now, EM is a rabid theater attendee. But even behind Thursday’s Thesaurus, Tell Me on a Sunday, and other random features like her talking about overrated musicals and such…there is a true student of theater. And the student within EM…has fantastic taste in shows.


Case in point:


She and I had made plans to meet up in San Francisco, where we were both covering WonderCon for our respective gigs writing for Examiner.com (she as the San Diego Theater Examiner, I as the San Jose Book Examiner). Whenever we meet up, we end up doing something fun. We aren’t generally the “let’s-go-see-a-movie” types (No, we're the lets spend a bunch of $ types - EM), it usually manifests in a whole host of possibilities. This was no different.


While I was at work this week, I got an email the night she arrived in town. Here’s the title of her email: Rock of Ages – Muy Importante – Open Me Now!”. So I opened the email – it was muy importante after all – and here’s what she said:


hi,

ok, so Im not sure what day or time you are able to come up here but Rock of Ages is playing up here and I really really want to see it. It runs 2 1/2 hours and they have a few options

They have shows on friday night and Saturday night at 8pm at the Curran Theatre. If you're not interested I totally understand, but I may go by myself.

If you are interested tell me which day and I'll buy tix ASAP


Notice that there isn’t exactly an explanation of what kind of show…just that it’s a show she would like to see. Sure, it was playing at a premier theatre in San Francisco. However, I once saw Robin Williams perform at the Curran. So, it could have easily been a concert-like show.


In any case, I didn’t give it that much thought. Hell, I didn’t even bother looking it up online. All I needed to see was “show” and “I really really want to see it”. I replied to her via Google chat – basically “go ahead and do it, 8pm Sat, I’m IN”.


I tell my husband about it, to which he says something like “Now what is this show you’re seeing?”…I replied….”Oh I don’t know, I think it’s a concert". I admitted to EM before our ill-fated cab ride that I had no idea what it was that we were going to see. She did a search on Google so she could accurately describe it, and sure enough, it was a musical.


Well we went to see it Saturday night as planned. It was an awesome show. So, so much fun. Oddly enough, my original supposition that it was a concert was not all that far off. :)


But I made my decision on two factors:

1. When it comes to shows, she generally knows what she’s talking about.

2. She thought it was a good idea to see it.

That was all I needed.


And that, dear readers, is what Blind Faith is.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Comics and theatre..unlikely allies

I am currently at a comic book convention in San Francisco. This may seem like a departure from theatre related things, but it’s really not. Theatre and comics have a lot more in common than you might think.


Do you know how many Broadway actors are in comic book related shows? Hugh Jackman played Wolverine (both in "Wolverine" and in all the "X-Men" movies), Liev Schrieber played Sabertooth in "Wolverine", Peter Sarsgaard will play the villain Hector Hammond along side fellow Broadway alums Angela Bassett and Geoffery Rush in the soon to be released “Green Lantern" movie. Three of those names have won Tony Awards and the other two have been nominated for them!


Spiderman: Turn off the Dark is playing on Broadway (don’t let the 5th push back of the official opening date sway your feelings on it's comic book origins) Warner Bros. and DC Comics are currently in process of creating Batman Live a stage spectacular touring production and every year Broadway and off Broadway theaters have musicals based on comic books, one of the most recent being a collaboration of actual comic books from the 1950's as a source material called My Comic Valentine: A Comic Book for the Stage.


Add to all of that the basic form of a comic book tends to follow the structure of the ancient Greek theater and explores all of the same subjects that theater does, which is why it so easily translates to stage. Revenge, love, heroes, villains, people who come to realize that "With great power comes great responsibility" are all plots that have been used by playwrights from Shakespeare to Stephen Sondheim to Stan Lee.


OK, gotta go…. Next panel is about to start J