NEWS: The Passion of Zoe Roosevelt

 

You are cordially invited...

On Saturday September 28, 2024 there will be a free reading of the first act of my play The Passion of Zoe Roosevelt.    The Broadwater Theatre at 6320 Santa Monica Blvd (near Vine) opens its door at 10am.  It is presented under the auspices of Fierce Backbone Theatre Company.

Attendance is FREE.  Feedback requested.

This is a four character play, with the first act showing a group of people (two actors, two writers) coming together on an important day in November, 1914 during what was then called "The European War."  

The cast is:

• Zoe Roosevelt -- Emily Asher Kellis 
• Ferdinand Riley -- Skylar Silverlake
• Giselle de Vere --  Brittney de Leon
• Josephine Bligh -- De Ann Odom
• Stage Directions – Matthew Kamm

My new play: "Carmilla"

Not exactly news that I'm a hug fan of Joseph Sheridan LeFanu's Carmilla. Well, now I've written a play version and we're trying to put it up on stage!

In fact we've got rather a lot lined up. Enough to run a fundraising campaign to finish the process, complete with gifts (like this mug) for certain levels of donors.

This really is a dream come true for me, seeing LeFanu's classic as I've long believed it should be--with all the ambiguity, the drama, the sensuality and haunting as the original story!

Given we're talking about a stage play and not a novella, more a story being told in 2013 instead of 1872, some changes are of course needed. Probably the biggest change I've made is to create a character to whom Laura is telling her history. LeFanu has her talking to someone. We don't know who, not really. In my version, this is a specific person with an agenda of their own--an agenda somewhat at cross purposes with Laura, which leads to awkward questions Laura probably does not like answering. But must, given the circumstances...

NoKiss BlogFest

Behold my entry for the NoKiss BlogFest! The rules are actually pretty simple. Herein is how it is officially described:

We'll be posting scenes from our WIPs, favorite books, movies, and tv shows that show the almost kiss-- the rising, crushing, excruciating, longing, tension that comes from when two characters get oh-so-close to kissing that you can just feel it....and then...they don't!

For my entry, I've chosen a bit of fanfiction I wrote some years back for the virtual spinoff series WaTchers. Quite simply, this was intended as a spinoff of Buffy the Vampire Slayer put together by fans who just didn't want the show to go away. We did our best to recreate the "feel" of a t.v. series, including a rigid refusal to let the readers "inside the heads" of characters as well as (as you can see) screencaps created for each episode.

"Strange Bedfellows" involved none other than the terminally blond vampire Harmony Kendell and her friendship with an original character -- Luna. Luna is a combination of total ditz and supervillain with more than a touch of good old-fashioned stalker. By sheer chance they ended up allied, and became best friends. Yet the terminally clueless Harmony hadn't yet realized an important fact -- namely, that Luna had fallen for her. Hard. Nor did she figure out that her best pal was trying to seduce her for most of the episode (if you want to find out whether she ultimately succeeded, you have to read the whole episode).

A certain sad note amidst the silliness. We would "cast" guest stars and the part of Luna was given to pictures of the lovely and talented Brittany Murphy, may she rest in peace.

Cut to:

Int.

Bridal Suite – Night

Most lights in the bridal suite were dimmed if not altogether ‘off.’ A wash of light from the bathroom poured in, along with the last remnants of steam and the scent of bubble bath.

Harmony moaned, a little smile on her face. "That feels…so great!"

"Glad you like it," said Luna from behind her. They were close enough Luna barely had to whisper. Her fingers worked their way along Harmony’s bare shoulders and neck. Unlike the half-naked blonde before her, Luna wore a simple blouse and skirt. A very simple blouse. One that could be slipped off in less than a second. Ditto the skirt. Her shoes were at the edge of the bed where she’d left them before crawling behind Harmony.

Smiling contentedly, Harmony held a thick towel to her chest, rocking slightly with the rhythm of her new best friend’s massage. "Wow," she murmured, "your fingers…how’d you get them so strong…and…nimble?"

"Practice. Lots and lots of practice."

"It shows!"

"Oh, I’m nowhere near through with you."

"Goody," Harmony giggled. "Oh!"

"You like that?"

"Well, duh. Yeah!"

"I’ll do it again if you really want."

"Go for it!" Harmony’s eyebrows shot up. "Woah."

By now Luna’s thumbs were working their way down Harmony’s spine, the rest of her fingers doing a little drum motion on the muscles below each shoulder blade.

"I am so glad," Harmony said, "you keep your nails short."

"Yeah," Luna agreed, her eyes fixed on the bare back before her, "well, long nails get in the way. You know what they call a girl with long fingernails, don’t you?" She had a little smile on her face as she asked.

Blinking, Harmony thought. "No, what?"

"Single."

Harmony thought some more. "I don’t get it."

"Don’t worry about it. You will." By now Luna’s fingers had reached Harmony’s hips. She had to shift her position. As a result, now both her hands began to undulate firmly into the muscles near the sciatic nerves. Luna’s face was forward, barely two inches from the blonde vampire’s naked flesh.

"That feels…oh my god…" Harmony said huskily.

"You…you smell so good…" Luna whispered.

"I used those ball salts you gave me. Oh! Do that again?"

"Okay. Like that?"

"Yeah!"

"Harmony honey…"

"What?"

"I’ve never felt skin like yours before. Smooth…and cool…like silk…"

"That’s ‘cause I’ve always tried to take care of my skin. Not that I really have to anymore. And of course I’m cool. I mean, think about it. I’m dead!"

"Not to me."

"Aw, you’re so sweet. Wow. And warm! Your hands are like…I dunno…something warm and strong and firm, that feels really really good…I mean, really good…"

Luna’s open mouth was barely half an inch from Harmony’s shoulder. "I can make you feel even better…" she purred.

"Really?"

"If you’ll let me, I can make you feel better than you ever have before!" Luna’s voice had dropped an octave.

Harmony grinned, eyes bright. "Go for it!"

Luna’s long, shuddering sigh in response was interrupted by the sudden, hard rap of the door. She did a take. The knocking came again.

"Darn it, what do they want now?" Harmony stood up off the bed. Her back was turned and so she couldn’t see Luna’s crushed expression. Letting the towel drop, Harmony reached for her robe. Another round of knocking masked the lustful whimper from Luna.

"I’m coming, I’m coming," yelled Harmony at the door.

Luna bit a pillow.

Dream Cast "Carmilla"

Awhile back, I posted my dream cast for Jane Eyre. Well, now my imagination turns to what some might call more 'up my alley.' One of my favorite period stories is Sheridan LeFanu's Carmilla, part of a collection published under the title Under a Glass Darkly. Some disagree, but most who've studied such things say LeFanu's tale is the first example of the lesbian vampire trope. After Bram Stoker's famous novel of a Transylvanian Count, this may be the most adapted vampire story in history (although the caped impaler wins handily in that category, probably by an order of magnitude).

Most such adaptations are poor, to say the least. Many are trashy, brimming with sexual innuendo but no tension, drama, or even eroticism. Others, like Hammer Studios' The Vampire Lovers at least qualify as guilty pleasures. Roger Vadim at least tried to do a more-or-less faithful rendering in Blood and Roses (its English title). But even he changed to period, location, the focus and introduced a male love interest (not at all uncommon is such adaptations).

As of today, I have every known filmed version of the story save two--one of which is believed lost (a BBC production from the 1960s) and the other was a French t.v. film from the 1980s (am working on finding that one). Hardly any even try to capture the peculiar flavor of the original.

Granted, this is anything but an easy task. Much of the "action" takes place off stage (or page, if you prefer). The discovery of the vampire and her destruction follow almost immediately. No chases across the mountains, no futile efforts to keep the undead from her prey. In essence, the entire novella is from the victim/beloved's POV, a waif named Laura who usually becomes little more than a pretty prop for the filmmakers (Showtime's Nightmare Classics version is notable for at least breaking this stereotype).

But consider...Styria (the setting) is a sparsely populated land of mountains and forests dotted with farms and the occasional schloss. Following invasions and war its towns and castles mostly lie fallow. It is an empty land, a haunted landscape. Mists hover around the near-empty woods and valleys. On the night of a full moon, a stranger comes to a lonely family--a girl named Laura living with her widowed father. What's more, this stranger (the title character) recognizes Laura as someone from her childhood dreams. Laura recalls Carmilla the same way! Thus is born a mysterious friendship which proves to be much more.

Imagine if you will a motion picture as atmospheric as Picnic at Hanging Rock or Let The Right One In or The Duellists (plus maybe a touch of Lets Scare Jessica To Death). Laura and Carmilla walk together amid the lime trees, wheedling secrets from one another, sharing a dream not only in the past but to some extent right now.

Laura in the novel is telling what happened to someone--we do not know who. How reliable a narrator might she be? What was left unsaid? For example, who can say where Carmilla dwells at other times? She must sleep in her grave, yes, but who are the people who brought her? If anything, the coach and aristocratic woman who calls herself the vampire's mother seem even stranger that she herself. In truth, the novella abounds in tiny unanswered questions. My ideal would be for a film focusing on those questions, yet not really answering many of them.

Along those lines, I would suggest an unconventional choice for Laura. Some fans suggest Emma Watson for the role, but given the nature of Laura--this lonely, rather naive girl who so fascinates an unaging nosferatu--my suggestion is another Harry Potter alumn. Evanna Lynch.

For the title character, I'd choose someone who's actually played a vampire once before, but is now better known for another fantasy film series. Anna Poppelwell (for those who don't know, she was in the recent two big budget films based on the Chronicles of Narnia). Some might think this odd casting, since Ms. Lynch comes across as so ethereal while Ms. Poppelwell is quite voluptuous. Yet to me this creates an interesting dynamic, and helps explain/reinforce the relationship of the two--each in some sense is better suited to be the other, and perhaps on some level they know it. Besides, expectations are things to be used ruthlessly by storytellers the world over. So there!

Laura's father, whose name we never learn, is supposed to be English and elderly. Yet there's also something of a mystery to him. For example, he evidently forbade Laura to be told ghost stories and the like when she was a child. Why? For that matter, whatever happened to his wife, Laura's mother? My choice would be Edward Petherbridge, an excellent British actor probably best known here in the States as Lord Peter Wimsey on Mystery.

Running the household is Madame Perradon, Laura's governess and for all practical purposes her mother-figure. Since the casting in this matter is entirely up to me, I will select another British actor, one rightly praised for her many fine performances--Kristen Scott Thomas, perhaps best known for The English Patient but equally if not more impressive in such films as Angels and Insects, Four Weddings and a Funeral, etc.

Maybe somebody someday will do a version not unlike the one described here. Maybe. Stranger things have happened.

Review: "Fingersmith"

Every now and then, you fall in love. With a coffee house, or a kitten, or maybe a moment under a specific tree on one particular day.

Sometimes you fall in love with a novel. In this case, a novel about falling in love.

Is this review sufficiently saccharine yet? Wait--it gets better! Really!

Fingersmith is a novel by Sarah Waters. It is also Victorian slang for "pick pocket." In the context of the novel, it also functions as a double ententre. You see, like the writer's two previous novels, its plot concerns a lesbian love story. But not one of those plithy tales of nice girls who fall for each other then stand up to a social order that disapproves. Such can be the stuff of good story-telling, to be sure. Look at Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit for example or But I'm A Cheerleader. But Waters challenges us rather more than that. The term "politically correct" having become too degraded to mean much of anything anymore, instead let us call this novel one that confounds all expectations--and makes perfect sense. No small feat.

The first stirrings of the plot you can read on any cover of either the novel itself or the DVD of the miniseries adapted from it. Sue Trinder, raised in a squalid but raucus part of London by Mrs. Sucksby, is hired by a charming rogue known as Gentleman to help fleece an heiress. Said heiress is Maud Lilly, a girl Sue's own age--kept under the thumb of a tyrannical uncle Christopher Lilly in his estate of Briar (love the name of that manor--feels perfectly authentic yet seethes with meaning). It is a cruel plan, a ruthless one, and it hinges upon Sue earning Maud's trust.

As perhaps one might suspect, things do not go according to plan. Sue grows close to Maud, and finds herself in a terrible conundrum. In time, they grow more than close. Herein lies the stuff of tragedy.

Waters, one should mention, has a degree in Victorian literature and it shows. She wields a startling plot (or plots) with a skill one might expect of an expert on Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and like. Or not. Because the creation of story points and satisfying revelations has never been a matter of studying Anne Radcliffe or Sheridan LeFanu. That requires ability, rather than mere knowledge. For that matter, the book is draped with telling details with layer after layer of meaning. Mr. Lilly, for example--he of the purple tongue from ceaseless wetting of his quill pen, and the brass finger on the library floor beyond which servants are forbidden. Or the extra income Mrs. Sucksby earns because one of her windows shows the nearby gallows (quite a boon execution time, with folks willing to pay for the "show").

Lest you have not yet read or seen this work, I offer no spoilers. Precise twists and turns in the plot remain unwritten for this review. What I will mention is that a co-worker, to whom I'd lent the novel, came in one day with less than ten pages left and uttered the words "I have no idea what is going to happen next!"

Maybe my co-worker is not a good judge of such things. You have no way of knowing. But assume for the sake of argument (as is indeed the case) that she is. Consider then what a testimonial she gave in that moment! Let my own testimony confirm it! One of the grave problems with reading or viewing many works of fiction--whatever the media--is that an audience member becomes jaded. One watches a film or reads a book and what happens within too often ends up predictable. This is my major complaint, for example, with the last book of the Twilight Saga--after chapter one, the bones of plot for all the other chapters were naked to my mind's eye. Not so this book!

Alas, my fear is that now readers might halfway expect UFOs to abduct one of the characters, then clone her to become the president of a distant planet of living lawn furniture.

No fear. Surprising, yes. Silly, no.

What I can say without hesitation is that Fingersmith captures the feel of another era, a time before modern forensics or women's rights, before the cataloging of all things had reached quite such a pervasive level, where "class" meant something much than it does to us today (at least, I hope so). Social services--what would those be? London--a place only imagined and barely that without television or films or even photographs. More tellingly--Identity. A more malleable thing in some ways without social security numbers or fingerprints, much less DNA profiles or digital records. Waters' words take us to another place, one not so very far from us in time--hence familiar yet alien. Quaint, and also disturbing. Yet comfortable in some odd way.

More than this, she weaves a constellation of characters in orbit around one another that compel interest and caring. Sue's practicality coupled with a growing shame at her own actions. Maud's ignorance, slowly but surely demolished in the wake of meeting Sue. The charm and cruel honesty of Gentleman. Mr. Lilly--tyrant and cripple (in soul far more than body). And the strange, difficult journey of Mrs. Sucksby as plots unravel and secrets start doing a dance. Yet at its heart--a love story. Two complex and complete human beings who--and why this should be so utterly believable and understandable is the art of the thing--find in each other some part of themselves they've been missing. Sue and Maud are the heart of this tale, with all its mystery and betrayals. They are the ones we care about most, and from whose eyes we learn all kinds of uncomfortable truths. Each becomes a treasure to the other, but under more bizarre and challenging circumstances one might fear to imagine.

In passing I should mention the BBC made a fine adaptation of the novel, starring Sally Hawkins and Elaine Cassidy in the leads. Behold the trailer: