...with the number of posts I made last year, in its entirety! This entry makes 26 posts for 2010, fulfilling a goal of mine towards blogging more often - and more organically. I want to blog as easily (if not as frequently) as I breathe - not because I think that everything I say is precious. (Quite the contrary: I still fear that I'm writing into the void - until great friends tell me they're reading, or leave comments. [Thank you, Kerri! Thank you, Jorge! Thank you, Megan and Louise!]) But rather because I want to WRITE more easily and more often. Have this be more a part of my daily life and a natural means of expression.
The last play I posted, AFTERLIVES OF THE SAINTS, kicked my butt. Honestly, it was a blast to write but it took for-freakin'-ever to type in. (I write longhand on yellow legal paper, then type the plays later, making very few changes.) AFTERLIVES necessitated some research about the saints themselves, and I went down the rabbit hole a bit as I was looking into them. I mean, good gravy! There are patron saints for beekeepers, snakebites, and clowns. (All the characters in the play are real saints, and really the patrons of shepherdesses, dietitians, the Venezuelan National Guard... and so on. If you want to learn more about them, check out THIS SITE HERE.)
As a Catholic schoolkid, I was completely fascinated by the saints. Their stories were so full of drama and pathos, magic, miracles, and murder. (Waaay more lurid children's stories than the original Grimm's Tales!) As a grownup, I grew to admire Gertrude Stein's libretto "Four Saints in Three Acts" and the fantastic music by Virgil Thomson, and I suppose I started the play hoping to use a similar poetic language.
My play took another turn linguistically, though, and became more literal. Stein imagined the saints as something like celebrities of heaven, who sit around and don't do much but... well, sit around, chatter, and be fabulous. My saints are post-fabulousness. I became interested in those saints no one's heard of. It's fine to be Saint Francis or Saint Theresa... but what of Saint Eligius? Or Saint Radegund? What happens when no on remembers them, or prays to them?
Hope you enjoy these saints! Please feel free to leave comments, and come back for more. Fresh plays daily, baked here. (I hope not half-baked.)
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2 comments:
I have a bit of saintophilia myself!
Two sainted facts.
1. Are you aware of St Lucy? She's a bit of a rock star. She is very interestingly accessorised.
2. My Italian grandmother used to invoke St Anthony (in Italian) ("Sant'Antonio") easily 30 times a day. My mother would joke that she had him running around "up there" with a clipboard. I imagine him with one of those Britney-and-Madonna-type wireless headsets as well.
My family used to say:
"Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony,
look around, look around -
for something that's lost
and cannot be found!"
My mother jokes-slash-believes that St. A. actually HIDES things in an act of heavenly extortion - so that mom will promise him $$$ and then, when he answers her prayer and "helps her find it," she'll have to cough up some dough to his fund.
Oh, those sneaky sneaky saints!
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