Yeah, I know, I suck. But cybercafes in Harare charge $200,000 per half hour. Of course that's roughly $1 in U.S. terms, but it's more dramatic in Zimbabwe dollars.
The real hassle, and the real reason I've been out-of-pocket, is that said cybercafes (even the supposedly high-speed ones) are painfully slow. And none of them, not one, allows you to hook up your own laptop. And I've long since given up trying to post to this damn thing through the half-ass Web interface, so ...
So, yeah, sorry for not giving y'all any advance warning, but I was in Zimbabwe for the last two weeks or so. Big arts festival, to which two American plays (Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter's In the Continuum and Ntare Mwine's Biro) were invited. I'm writing primarily about the former, which is coming to Woolly Mammoth in August, but it's worth mentioning that Biro is pretty fantastic.
And while I have no idea whatsoever what's been going on here in D.C., I can tell you that theater anecdotes have a way of happening no matter what continent you're on. To wit:
It's the half-hour. Audience is lining up outside. Someone realizes: Oh, shit. The prop bones that Gurira's witch-doctor character throws to interpret the ancestors' wishes in Continuum have somehow gone missing.
General panic.
Then: An idea. An emissary is dispatched to the local Nando's (yes, they're all over Harare the way they're all over London). A takeaway order of peri-peri chicken is returned to the Standard Theatre.
And Gurira eats it, hurriedly, with some help from a stagehand.
"Me and Blessing backstage, biting Nando's chicken off the bones during Nikkole's scene. So I came on, and I don't know, my face might've been greasy. It felt like it. And you know people right near the front could see" that them bones was from some fresh chicken...
So fair warning, Woolly: Scope out the nearest Popeyes now.
that's awesome. AND greasy.
welcome back! we were like pip lost at sea without you.
(does anyone even get that reference? besides jack marshall, i mean?)
Posted by: luckyspinster | Thursday, 04 May 2006 at 11:42
"...from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee..." it's from Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan, right?
Posted by: JM | Thursday, 04 May 2006 at 17:57
"There is an old Klingon proverb: 'Revenge is a dish best served cold' and space is very cold." Star Trek II Wrath of Khan, I love the classics.
Posted by: dcepticon | Friday, 05 May 2006 at 09:50
JM--please tell me you at least had to google for the exact quote.
Godzilla--thanks for reminding me that you will always be a bigger dork than i.
Posted by: luckyspinster | Friday, 05 May 2006 at 19:01
Of course I am a bigger dork. I am like 6'1" you are maybe 4'11" tops.
Posted by: dcepticon | Monday, 08 May 2006 at 09:38
Luckyspinster: Of course some of the rest of us get it. If not from actually having read the book, or having seen the several movie adaptations of the novel at least by osmosis as Jack has done the show three times now. One of these days they will kill that whale, or if Orson had his way they would have already. lol
Posted by: Novathespian | Monday, 08 May 2006 at 11:00
'zilly--you deliberately misread, my big spiny friend. besides, 4'11" my sweet assterisk--i'm 5'5" (and my resume says i'm "135" elbees heh heh). hey, wait a minute, shouldn't you be like 300 feet long? either that or 3 inches high for the tiny soundset?
NT--i know. of course i didn't really mean no one else would get it, but just that JM would be all over that reference like white on rice, baby, like a jackrabbit dancin' 'round that hole.
:)
Posted by: luckyspinster | Monday, 08 May 2006 at 18:53
VERY impressed that Novathespian knows that in Orson's original version of MDR, Ahab actually kills the White Whale; VERY worried that the Welles estate will finally hunt me down for cutting that part; and pretty depressed that there are so many people who think Khan's quote originated with Riccardo Montalban.
Posted by: Jack Marshall | Wednesday, 10 May 2006 at 16:05
Let us say for argument's sake that there are some of us unaware at the time of our first viewing of the Wrath of Khan in 1982 that there was a book called Moby Dick. Let us say that for a 9 year old that part of the greatest Star Trek movie of them all went right over our heads. Let us think that perhaps there was a part of us so moved by those lines that we remembered them until we were sujected to reading the book about Ahab and the Whale. And then we go back and we think Wrath of Khan is even cooler and notice the copy of Moby Dick and Paradise Lost sitting on Khan's night stand. Eventually we all figure these things out.
Now: "Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!" -General Chang - Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Posted by: dcepticon | Wednesday, 10 May 2006 at 16:22
LS : Just remember that mentioning Welles and Moby Dick in the same breath can cause Jack to get overly excited. Hell just mentioning Welles causes a Pavlovian response in Jack. But instead of drooling he will talk for hours about Welles. lol. But that isn't a problem if you as big of a fan of Welles as I am. But if you mention Welles AND Moby Dick in the same breath he can get almost giddy.
Jack:
I wouldn't worry about the estate coming after you. They are still hiding from embarrassment after he did all those wine commercials
Posted by: Novathespian | Wednesday, 17 May 2006 at 16:49