[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I dunno. The play didn't seem at all like a compilation of verse. I think it's more likely that the playwright had come in contact with the title (possibly indirectly) and liked it, so he used it.

I'm not sure I'd really 'recommend' the play, per se. It was about a group of actors who were trying to tell what amounts to a basic boy-meets-girl-etc. type of story, but the playwright (yes this was a character in the play, he sat in the audience) kept changing things. The play started as a greek tragedy, changed to something quasi-Shakespearian (complete with an advertising ditty to the tune of "Greensleeves"), then morphed into a plain old present-day cocktail party type venue, then moved on to something modern-interpretive, and finally ended up with one character, alone (it increasingly lost characters as it moved from phase to phase), on the stage in a shrinking spotlight trying desperately, and unsuccessfully to somehow make the playwright happy so she wouldn't be left alone in the dark.

The stage manager and director (my part) were characters too, 'til they quit the show in frustration (the mercury line was one of the director's), but they were up on the stage. There was one scene where the actors run amok through the audience pretending to stab audience members with their rolled up scripts ... I think it was the transition between the Greek and Shakespearian variants.

Thinking back on it, it may have been a comment on the evolution of theater and a prediction of what the author saw as a possible eventual outcome of that pattern. Or it might have been a comment on the amount of power writers (should?) have over productions. Or the guy could have been writing it on a bet ... while drunk.

hmm... sounds strange, definitely interesting ! the description reminds me a little bit of "Six characters in search of an author" by Pirandello, if it's anything like that it's worth reading...

On the emotifaction issue, I tend to try to write as much nuance into my posts as I can, but I make liberal use of the smilies to reinforce that. I figure I'd rather be understood, and I don't always have an hour to devote to a single post. I also like to use them to indulge in my dry, twisted humor, while still communicating clearly that I'm joking.

Besides, I kinda like the little guys.

personally, i was refractory to smilies for a long long time, they seemed superfluous and lazy to me, for illiterate people who didn't know how to write. then one day i got into an actual *fight* with a guy i was working with, because i had made an unusually laconic reply to one of his mails (not even a joke that wasn't obvious : a serious reply) and he had interpreted it badly. while i was trying to straighten everything out, he said to me, "and you didn't even put ONE SINGLE smiley !!" and this guy was an otherwise intelligent and litterate person... (if a bit oversensitive !)

since then, i use them, especially on forums where people don't know me personally.

i have to say though (for once, not being silly at all), that it is a real pleasure to read this forum, where most of the people are unusually articulate and eloquent... the absurd posts are ironically among the best examples of this. every time i see someone use a polysyllabic word i get a little thrill, having also seen forums where no word had more than 3 letters because even if it did the people would write in telephone sms code... it makes a nice change from the rest of teh interwebz ! (for good measure !)