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I saw that in the Kazoo program, but I wouldn't get my hopes up about
cancellation, which seems very likely to me. I wish I could be there if it
does go on, but I can't. I'd like to hear her talk and share my own
experience of the play with her. Meanwhile, if any of you haven't seen
Yiimimangaliso (two <i's> after the Y if you're googling), you can get the
DVD here: https://www.dvdempire.com/700039/mysteries-the-movie.html.

Didn't know about that novel. Thanks.

Alan B.

On Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 6:29 PM Michael Winkelman <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> My tuppence worth  (2 footnotes really):
>
> 1) At the upcoming International Congress of Medieval Studies, hosted by
> Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo,
> panel 315 includes a talk on Yimmimangaliso: the Chester Mystery Cycle in
> Post-Apartheid South Africa by Carla Neuss.
> (Here's hoping the conference isn't cancelled due to covid-19.)
>
> 2) The novel *To Calais, in Ordinary Time*, by James Meeks (2019) is set
> in southwest England in 1348, when the plague (and rumours of plague) are
> beginning to spread. There is an episode involving a performance of
> dramatized scenes from *The Romance of the Rose*. It's an interesting
> book, in my opinion: something of an alternative to the Canterbury Tales,
> and there is a profusion of Middle English throughout.
>
> ~Michael Winkelman
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* REED-L: Records of Early English Drama Discussion <
> [log in to unmask]> on behalf of Alan Baragona <
> [log in to unmask]>
> *Sent:* Friday, March 13, 2020 7:20 PM
> *To:* [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> *Subject:* Re: [External] Modern play about medieval troupe performing
> Noah
>
> Thanks, Michelle. This is very helpful. Of course, a play like this can
> still be useful in teaching medieval drama by way of contrast--what's wrong
> with it, what's modern in it, etc. Is it ever clear whether the Noah play
> the medieval characters are performing is the Wakefield version, or is it
> just a generic version of the Uxor? Contrasting the Wakefield Uxor as a
> type of Eve who wants sit on the hill and spin to this modern
> interpretation of her as a self-asserting individual would make for some
> good discussion.
>
> Your insights about the problems with the flat staging of the medieval
> scenes in contrast with the more dynamic modern ones reminds me of when
> years ago Rick McDonald and a Theater Department colleague presented a
> paper about team teaching Medieval Drama with an emphasis on performance,
> then taking the class to London and seeing a production of* Everyman*
> that was so flat, so staid, so academic, that it threatened to undo
> everything they had taught in the semester. Luckily, Rick noticed an ad for
> a production of the Chester mysteries in a warehouse turned theater, so
> they took a chance and got tickets for their kids. It turned out to be
> Yiimangaliso, and it saved the course. The following Spring, I was lucky
> enough to be in London with cadets, and I saw that the production had moved
> to the West End, so I got to see it for myself. First time I ever saw a
> unanimous standing ovation in a London theater. When it came out on video,
> I snapped it up and show it every time I teach the course. The students'
> eyes get wide, and they see the potential for their own productions.
>
> Thank you again for all your  good thoughts on this.
>
> Alan B.
>
> On Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 2:38 PM Michelle Markey Butler <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> My two cents on *The Amateurs:  *
>
>
> One-sentence Assessment
>
> Medieval drama experts are more likely to be disappointed than excited by
> this production.
>
>
>
> Synopsis of *The Amateurs*
>
> After the death of one of their company, a group of actors hopes to
> impress their patron so much with their new production that he will invite
> them to stay on, safe from the plague behind his castle walls.
>
> The actors rehearse their play, revealing interpersonal conflicts and
> everyday concerns.  One discovers she is pregnant, and not by the man who
> would probably assume he is the father.  Another mourns her brother, the
> actor who died of the plague.  The one who makes their props and effects
> knows everyone else thinks he is stupid.  A stranger joins their company
> with his own secrets to guard.  Finally, as they practice, the actor
> playing Noah’s wife wonders *why* she is refusing to get on the ark.
> What is her objection?  What does she want instead?
>
> At this point, the play pauses.  One actor steps out of his ‘medieval’
> costume and addresses the audience as the playwright, Jordan Harrison.  He
> explains why the playwright became interested in this moment, in Noah’s
> wife’s refusal, seeing in her a connection to himself, her moment of
> asserting her individuality reminding him of a similar moment in his own
> life.  A second actor (the one playing Hollis, who plays Noah’s wife),
> joins him, and they posit (by means of other actors coming onstage with
> sandwich board images of famous paintings), the role of art in
> demonstrating/provoking the emergence of the individual.  Finally, saying
> he is ‘bringing the fourth wall back down,’ the playwright-actor steps back
> into his ‘medieval’ costume and the original storyline resumes.
>
> In this part, another actor dies of the plague and the others struggle to
> continue their performance, still hoping for their patron to offer them
> refuge.  He declines, however, and they face returning to the
> increasingly-deadly wider world.
>
>
>
> Assessment
>
> I am an Olney Theatre season ticket holder and have been since 2011.  The
> current artistic director, Jason Loewith, has done outstanding work
> here—innovative, intriguing, wonderful shows—including commissioning and
> producing new, groundbreaking plays.
>
> But sometimes when you swing for the fences, you hit a pop fly.
>
> I’ve been both dreading and looking forward to *The Amateurs* since the
> 2019-2020 season was announced.  From the title, you can guess why.  On the
> one hand:  A contemporary play set in a medieval acting troop is not
> something you see every day.  Or ever.  I really wanted it to be
> marvelous.  On the other, referring to a group of people who make their
> living as *actors* as ‘amateurs’ made me worry about how the play would
> approach medieval drama.
>
> As it turned out, that concern was warranted.
>
> The play is set during the Black Death but works from the assumption that
> the surviving later texts can be unproblematically transposed backward in
> time.  The play has the actors use a wagon to transport their gear—fair
> enough—but also as a performance venue, not seeming to understand that
> pageant wagons were used in particular places—York, Chester—not by
> itinerant players.  When enacting a pageant of the Seven Deadly Sins, the
> actors used masks—good!—but wore plain black robes, which was disappointing
> since we know medieval production invested in impressive costumes.
>
> The costumes were heavily influenced by the widespread modern iconography
> of ‘the medieval':  most pieces of clothing had ragged, unhemmed edges.  We
> can talk elsewhere about what cultural work this symbolism is doing, since
> it has nothing to do with reality.  When a single shirt represents 80 hours
> of labor, care is taken to preserve garments, including hemming raw edges
> to prevent fraying.  I don’t hold this against the production specifically,
> since it’s an issue we see often, but it tells us the production employed
> the shortcut of that modern iconography rather than researching medieval
> clothing.
>
> More troubling is the play’s attitude towards its medieval subject
> matter.  Bluntly, the play seems to employ medieval content and characters
> to hammer home a point (the playwright’s theory about the emergence of the
> idea of the individual), not because there is interest in the time period
> itself.  Nor does the play appear to consider the dramatic work its
> characters engage in to be theater in the same way *it* is theater.  This
> was most telling in the handling of audience address.  When the medieval
> play-scenes addressed the audience, the result was flat (the night I was
> there, the audience laughed at the Seven Deadlies), in large part because
> the staging was flat.  The Seven Deadlies were positioned at the rear, as
> if on a proscenium arch stage, and hardly moved as they spoke.  The Noah
> scenes occurred partly on the wagon and partly on the ground, but again,
> with little movement apart from (usually unsuccessful) handling of stage
> effects (the dove falls when it should hover, the cloth scroll of painted
> animals doesn’t budge when they try to crank it).  But when the actor
> speaks as the playwright, he uses the entirety of the stage, coming close
> to the audience, leaning towards them.  The production’s thumb is on the
> scales, using the same technique but with staging choices that make the
> contemporary use seem engaging but the medieval’s simplistic.
>
> The play’s message—the emergence of the individual from a period of
> darkness—is a retread of something we have all heard about the Middle Ages,
> to our frustration.  Also frustrating is that *The Amateurs* is not quite
> certain this *is* its central theme.  The play makes a parallel between
> the Black Death and AIDS, which could be a rewarding and fascinating topic
> to explore, but leaves that connection underdeveloped.  The method by which *The
> Amateurs* delivers its homily upon the emergence of the individual is
> also worth considering.  The middle section, in which the theory is
> presented in the voice of the playwright, is long, resembling nothing so
> much as a TED talk.  This doesn’t appear to bother the *Washington Post*
> reviewer, but all three members of my viewing party were independently
> annoyed about being told what we were supposed to think rather than being
> shown persuasive scenes leading us to that conclusion.
>
> *The Amateurs* isn’t a bad play, but it isn’t a good one either.  There
> is promise here, and hopefully Harrison will put the script through another
> round of workshopping that will help that promise develop.  If so, I hope
> he decides to take the Middle Ages and medieval drama seriously for their
> own sake, not just for the argument he wants to make from them.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Michelle Butler
> ____________________________________
>
> Michelle Markey Butler
> she/her/hers
> michellemarkeybutler.com
> facebook.com/michellemarkeybutler
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 10:03 AM Alan Baragona <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> Thanks for Theresa’s discussion. I assume she’s on the listserv, because I
> don’t have her personal e-mail address and wanted to send it The message to
> her.
>
> I would love to hear your comments, especially on 1) whether its version
> of the Noah play is close at all to the Towneley play and 2) what the
> playwright’s stand-in opines about the connection between medieval plays
> and the rise of individualism.
>
> Alan
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Mar 11, 2020, at 9:39 AM, Michelle Markey Butler <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> 
> I saw it on Friday.  I can share observations, if you like.
>
> Btw Theresa Colletti participated in a panel discussion about making
> theater on the road, organized by Olney Theatre in connection to the
> production, and there's a video of the discussion on the theater's Facebook
> page:  https://www.facebook.com/142692869075359/videos/200051651238352/
>
> Cheers,
> Michelle Butler
> ____________________________________
>
> Michelle Markey Butler
> she/her/hers
> michellemarkeybutler.com
> facebook.com/michellemarkeybutler
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 8:05 AM Twycross, Meg <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> WOMAN playing Noah's wife?
>
> Meg
>
> Professor Emeritus of English Medieval Studies,
>
> Department of English and Creative Writing,
>
> Lancaster University,
>
> LANCASTER LA1 4YD
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* REED-L: Records of Early English Drama Discussion <
> [log in to unmask]> on behalf of Alan Baragona <
> [log in to unmask]>
> *Sent:* 11 March 2020 02:51
> *To:* [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> *Subject:* [External] Modern play about medieval troupe performing Noah
>
>
> *This email originated outside the University. Check before clicking links
> or attachments.*
> Today’s print version of *The Washington Post* has a review of a play by
> Jordan Harrison call *The Amateurs*, which premiered in 2018. It's about
> a traveling troupe of medieval players who are performing a Noah play in a
> time of plague, especially focusing on the woman who is playing Noah's
> wife.  Do any of you know of it? First I've heard of the play or of the
> playwright. It sounds a bit reminiscent of the players in *The Seventh
> Seal*, and I'm a little surprised the review doesn't mention it. In
> earlier years, my wife and I would have jumped on I-81 and gone up to D.C.
> to see it, but between the coronavirus and other things, there's no way we
> can get there before it closes on April 5. But I just like knowing this
> play exists, and I've preordered the volume of Harrison's plays that is
> coming out in July and will include it.
>
> I don’t know that the Noah play being performed by the troupe is the
> Wakefield Master’s *Noah* or, more likely given the opening as described
> in the review, is loosely based on it, but if either is the case, it makes
> a nice irony that the actor who plays the character who plays the wife is
> named “Townley,” just one <e> off!
>
> For those of you who subscribe to the Post but may have missed the review,
> here is the link.
>
>
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/coronavirus-looms-over-this-play-set-during-a-plague-but-the-amateurs-speaks-to-timeless-concerns/2020/03/09/b06229a2-620f-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html
> <https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fentertainment%2Ftheater_dance%2Fcoronavirus-looms-over-this-play-set-during-a-plague-but-the-amateurs-speaks-to-timeless-concerns%2F2020%2F03%2F09%2Fb06229a2-620f-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html&data=02%7C01%7Cm.twycross%40lancaster.ac.uk%7C1533b90b85774451fac808d7c567369a%7C9c9bcd11977a4e9ca9a0bc734090164a%7C1%7C1%7C637194919419841278&sdata=Wa6kyVg47IkAGswszgYvYZoz3CbI02W3dRDWKsWrE2g%3D&reserved=0>
> Alan Baragona
>
>