Okay, so for the musical I'm starting to work on now, I'd really like your help. It's about two people who are always pretending to be totally different depending on who they're with or what image they've decided to present, and what happens when they call each other on it. One character is half-Japanese and totally plays up her Asianness, even though she didn't really grow up in the culture and doesn't identify with it, and the other is white, but is pratically fluent in Japanese and is far more culturally Japanese than the actually half-Japanese character. I'd love to hear from people who have been through similar experiences, like being immersed in a culture you didn't grow up in, or trying on different images/stereotypes because you felt other people expected it, and anything else you think might be relevent. Even though the show deals primarily with Japanese culture, stories about any culture or ethnicity would be really helpful.

Just leave a comment here with the cultures/ethnicities involved and your age and location at the time (if you're talking about a specific time period or event in your life), or email me (my email's in my userinfo). If your experiences fit really well what what the piece is about, it'd be great if you'd let me know if I could interview you. Definitely let me know if you have any questions or want to know more specifics about the show, too. And pass this along to anyone you think might be interested in sharing their story!

Thanks!

I plan on using this journal a lot more now that the program's over. I didn't really feel like I could write anything specific to our assignments in here (because...we're not allowed to...), and since I wasn't really working on anything else, that kind of left this journal out to dry. BUT! Now I'm graduating next week and I have my life back, so I can talk about my projects again. (I say "again" like I had projects before the program...I kinda did...but I didn't know what I was doing, so they don't really count.)

I'm going to do more work on my thesis project (a musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "May Day") in about a month or two--I need a really long break before getting back into that one--so in the meantime, I'm starting work on a piece inspired by an anime (which is an adaptation of a manga I haven't read yet). I'm really, really excited about this one; we've got one song written already and a general plot, but we have a lot to hash out before writing more material. Hopefully it'll use a lot of anime/manga/video game elements. I'm excited.

Animated Short. Actually I find animation kind of fascinating. Hey, I could write a little animated musical maybe? That um...is not for children...because it would inevitably make them depressed.

Ghost in the Shell magna, films, and anime series: cyberpunk police thriller, yes! This is so relevant like ridiculous.

Looking up at the moon and thinking, "There are people up there."

An empty streetcorner that's silent except for the sound of its traffic light changing...possibly in time with Laurie Anderson's "From the Air."

(P.S. Why am I NOT visual artist???)

"wine-dark sea"

And those epic name things in general (okay, totally forgot the actual term, bad Classics major!).

"Scrap has an obsession with Matt Damon that is at once a joke and not a joke. He falls asleep every night to either The Departed or The Good Shepherd on his laptop. I once was standing on the street with him and he turned to me, after two minutes of silence, and said, 'I just pretended I was Matt Damon.'"

"your armor is made in taiwan!"
"no, it's made in the future!"

I kind of want this piece to feel PROFOUNDLY SAD--not wistful or depressing, but just quietly, achingly sad, like a combination of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and "Sharkey's Day".

Speaking of "Sharkey's Day," THIS VIDEO IS AMAZING.


Okay, now I know what I'm doing today, I'm watching Laurie Anderson videos.

Article on the Wikipedia editing community and how Wikipedia's being used as a news source. This is so fascinating! Try to do something with this!

( Read more... )

Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

Desert Exile: the Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family by Yoshiko Uchida

I really want to focus on Japanese internment. Americana touches on that, but I want to really engage with the issue and write something centered on it. I think it needs to be talked about much more than it is, and there needs to be more art looking at what was going on in America during WWII other than like...patriotic home front stuff.

I find being insulting to people who aren't familiar with musical theatre (or aren't as familiar as people who live and breathe it) actually really alarming. I mean, I don't think I'm stupid for only having a vague awareness of popular culture, so why does not having heard of Gypsy make a non-theatre person stupid?

I guess because I remember extremely clearly what it's like to be totally outside of the theatre world (ie, NOT KNOW IT EXISTS), I'm more sensitive to that than I would be if I had grown up singing along with cast albums like most theatre kids. I really want to make sure I remember what that was like, and that ignorance doesn't mean stupidity. What's common knowledge for me is incredibly arcane to the majority of the world and vice versa, and that's TOTALLY OKAY. That's actually really good! I just can't forget that I'm writing for those people, too, and that their opinions are just as valuable as those belonging to people who can rattle off Sondheim lyrics in their sleep.

So don't forget this! Be nice to and respect non-theatre people! AND DON'T PATRONIZE THEM.

Okay kids, I need to stop this "getting mildly depressed when not writing" thing. It makes me mopy and more melodramatic than normal, and it kills my concentration. Ugh. I think I'll get better once I raid the library for futurism/cyberpunk stuff because then I'll be working on a project again, but until then, ugh. I can't even figure out how to rewrite Tradittore, which is frustrating, but also expected. I don't think I'm ready to come back to that yet. I think instead I am going to immerse myself in ROBOTS.

SMASHING TELEVISION SETS. MANY OF THEM.

The Madeline series! That would be really cute. Really, Nell would be a much better person to musicalize those books, but if I ever felt the urge to write something non-emotionally devastating, I could give it a try.

Maybe I could incorporate issues of historical revision, nostalgia, and escapism into the retrofuturism piece...huh. I think I could potentially merge this project with the '50s escapism idea that I had. That would be kind of fascinating. I think that might be a better idea than writing something that takes place in the '50s, since '80s culture is much closer to people now, and, like the '50s, that's a decade that people find easy to laugh at and be nostalgic about when in reality a lot of it was really crappy. I mean, hello, AIDS, the economy, New York being a pit of crime, Reagan? The '50s and the '80s actually have a great deal in common. Only instead of movie musicals, it's more like, videos...like MTV and television in general and MOVING IMAGES, but in both decades there's that kind of scary blurring of what's real and what's fake.

Oh my God, I am getting so excited about this piece!

Alaska! It's interesting how their industry is based on like, oil, yet their environmental situation is fairly precarious. That's a great location for a feeling of intense claustrophobia, too. It's funny because even though it's so undeveloped and open, thinking of Alaska makes me feel enclosed, whereas Los Angeles with its huge sprawl makes me feel the total opposite. Look at Julia's Alaska pictures and ask her about it.

Short Circut 2, I almost forgot! SO SAD. Musicals about robots, yes!