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Scorched briefly returns...

I am looking forward to seeing this show for myself in a couple of months, but in the meantime -- Evan gives a measured and thoughtful take on The Burnt City.

#the burnt city #Punchdrunk #tbc #TBC #punchdrunkuk #I'm not past Tumblr #just FYI #this trash site is still my favorite #I just spend more time off main...

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2:55...

"Midtown! Where there's no food at night!"

Truth.

#SNL #Saturday Night Live #sleep no more #sleepnomore #mckittrick #sleepnomorenyc #Youtube

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My Heart is Full

Many people asked me last night after the show how I was feeling, and all I could say was, "My heart is full."

Walking back into the building was all I could have imagined. The space, the sounds, the people, the characters -- they were all there. I'm so incredibly grateful that the McKittrick Hotel has survived so far and that we have the chance to return to Manderley. It turns out...we can go back.

I don't want to say too much about specifics and spoil the surprise for those who will be returning soon, but there are some things that are different. Much of this is probably the result of a focus on safety in regards to Covid, but some changes have probably come from longer term planning. We will have to see which changes will be made permanent and which won't.

There currently are no 1:1s other than the 6th floor, and many of interactions that involve touch or food/drink are not happening. I do hope that this is a temporary change. Although I really loved some of the material that has been put in place of the 1:1s (it's really fantastic!) I will be sad if that part of the show doesn't return. There is something so special and so much a part of Punchdrunk in the hand that reaches out to you. Perhaps there will be a blend of the new material and audience interactions/1:1s in the future. One can hope! But in the meantime, the new moments and scenes and spaces are really lovely. I only saw a few of them, and I love that are mysteries to be found in the space!

Last night, in addition to wandering the space and just soaking everything in, I spent my evening following a new-to-me performer (Michael Bryan Wang as Boy Witch) and a long-time favorite (Ernesto Breton as the Speakeasy Barman.) Both of these loops were so satisfying. Michael is new to the role of Boy Witch (as far as I know he barely started the role before the shutdown,) but I love some of the choices he made last night. I think he is going to be a favorite after he settles into the role and becomes comfortable enough with the choreography to play with the character's motivations. Boy Witch is an incredibility difficult character for several reasons, and I enjoy watching new performers grow over the first few weeks they perform it. And then there's Ernesto. What to say? He's just delightful. And his Speakeasy is a ton of fun! Over the years, Ernesto has been a consistently good choice to spend an hour or so with in the Hotel. I'm hoping I can catch his Macduff soon, and perhaps we may even get a glimpse of his Fulton. (I haven't seen him play Fulton in ages, and I always loved how very scared his Fulton was.)

However, I think my favorite moment of the night might have been a quiet one. "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me." I wandered up to the 5th floor and stood in front of the gate. The forest seemed to be completely empty, and I couldn't hear anyone behind me in the hallway. It was just me, and the gate, and the woods, and the blue light filtering through the trees. And the soundscape. It was beautiful.

#sleep no more #sleepnomore #sleepnomorenyc #mckittrick #art in the time of covid #punchdrunk #recap #mckittrick recap

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I am excited. And nervous. And excited.

That is all...

#sleepnomore #sleep no more #mckittrick #sleepnomorenyc #it's tonight! #after almost two years I'm back in my favorite place

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Yes. From my perspective as an English teacher, this is exactly why stories written by the people who actually understand history are so vital to our understanding of said history. We need to read and listen to the voices of those who know and were present or were directly impacted.

#history #banned books #read banned books #maus

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Do you know if/where I could find a list of the songs and music used in The Drowned Man and the scenes they correspond to?

Thank you for this question! I just went down a rabbit hole of listening to music from TDM. It's amazing how a song can just drop you into a memory, isn't it?

Here is a Spotify playlist, although some of the songs aren't playable. They are still listed, so you might find them somewhere else?

As for a breakdown of what song is playing during which scene...I don't know if that is floating around the internet. Back in the day there were a bunch of spoiler documents, but I have no idea if they survived online anywhere.

I'm not the best person to ask about The Drowned Man since I was only able to see it four times (once at the very beginning of the run and then the final three shows.) I don't have the show memorized, and it lives in this very hazy and beautiful space in my memories.

Can anyone who knows TDM better than I do answer this one?

Edited to add: @exitmurderer reminded me that there's a terrific blog post with more information here: https://thedustwitch.wordpress.com/2015/01/10/blood-on-iron/

#the drowned man #TDM #punchdrunk #punchdrunkuk #punchdrunk international #I miss this show...

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When the show comes, do you think there will any major changes due to Covid? I wouldn't be surprised if the 1:1s are cut out but also wonder if some scenes will be moved from smaller spaces (like the MacDuff apartment or Agnes's apartment) into larger ones. Still cannot wait to see the show, regardless of any changes.

This is a great question that I am also curious about! I know that when the Shanghai show opened up again, there were initially no 1:1s. But those have been back in that show for awhile.

So...we may see no 1:1s or modified 1:1s (I wouldn't be surprised if anything involving eating or drinking is changed, at least for awhile.)

But you know what my hope is? That they have added to the show. There have been rehearsals and planning going on for while and this opportunity is unique. There will never have been a better time to add depth to certain characters. (*cough* Can Duncan DO something instead of take a nap????? *cough* The little chapel space is right there. *cough*) Can you imagine if Macduff has a 1:1? Or Bald Witch? And what if the relationship/rivalry/whatever between Speakeasy and Taxi was fleshed out a bit?? There are SO many possibilities that would be relatively easy to change with a bit of rehearsal time.

But...to be honest, my hope is pretty small. I'll be very pleasantly surprised if the narrative is strengthened, but I'm not actually expecting it.

#sleepnomore #sleep no more #mckittrick #sleepnomorenyc #seriously what is the deal with Duncan? #he takes a five minute nap in the middle of the show! #have a little dream sequence with an audience member

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Oh. Yikes. This is a very specific reference to me.

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A little glimpse of the Porter...

I'm not gonna lie...seeing Austin's Porter in the Lobby makes me glad I bought a ticket to this party.

(Not that I'm expecting anything in particular, and I doubt Austin will perform, but still....it's so nice to see and brings up good memories!)

#sleepnomore #sleep no more #mckittrick #sleepnomorenyc #austin goodwin

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Many smiles and a few tears...

Tonight, in the Manderley Bar, Mallory Gracenin hosted a McKittrick Follies as her delightful alter ego, Evelyn Grey.

It was an incredible experience to be back in the Manderley. Of course the evening was amazing and entertaining, full of music and laughter. But tonight was so much more than just entertaining. Walking up the stairs into the Manderley, stepping through those red curtains into the bar...it was yesterday and it was a thousand years ago.

And the people. Oh...all of you who came tonight...you fed my soul. To see you and hug you and talk with you... I've missed you. Even those of you I met in person for the first time time tonight, I've missed you as well! It felt like a coming home, and although I won't feel completely home until I'm running up the stairs after Boy Witch, this was such a good beginning.

Thank you to Mallory, Austin Goodwin, Paul Corning, and Lilin for a night I won't forget. There were several times I got a little choked up, but when Paul began to sing, "It's a Sin to Tell a Lie," tears were streaming down my face. And when Mallory brought several hotel residents up to the stage to sing "Let's Misbehave" for the final number, I couldn't help but smile and laugh.

#mckittrick #sleepnomore #sleep no more #sleepnomorenyc #manderley bar #mckittrick follies

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Pssssst! (Halloween Party tickets are on sale!)

Go check out the McKittrick calendar and you'll find a nice surprise. Proof of vaccine required, of course.

Here's a glimpse of from 2019 to set the mood!!

I'm not convinced this party will actually happen, as everything depends on the situation with COVID. But...it's a hopeful sign, and I bought tickets just to manifest that hope!

Am I nervous about it? Yes, a little. However, I interact with zero people who are under 12 years old, so I'm not as nervous about having a breakthrough infection that impacts others. (My students and I will also be masked 100% of the time, and they are the only people I see whose vaccine status I don't know.) That said...a ticket doesn't mean I have to go. I'll make that final decision when the time comes based on the current situation in New York.

But it's so nice that the possibility is here!!!!

#mckittrick #sleepnomore #sleep no more #sleepnomorenyc #masquerade party #literally most likely #halloween #mckittrick halloween #have we moved on from Inferno? #no theme as yet

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Yes! This. Classic novels are delightful!

Except Moby Dick, which you shouldn't have to suffer through. (And if you are forced to suffer through it...you can skip every other chapter.)

#chapter of narrative #chapter on whaling #chapter of story #chapter on how to kill large animals #etc etc etc #also Pendennis #don't read that one #and the other one by Thackeray that was terrible #The Newcomes? Yes. The Newcomes also don't read that one

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Are we expecting 1:1s to still exist when/if SNM reopens in October? Any word on requiring proof of vaccination? Does the lease still end in 2022?

Hello!!!! (It's so fun to open tumblr and have an SNM ask waiting for me!) I wish I had more information for you...

Regarding 1:1s -- when Shanghai reopened there were no 1:1s for awhile, although I think they have resumed. (Perhaps someone more plugged into the Shanghai show can confirm?) I am expecting there to be no 1:1s for awhile, but I am also basing that on absolutely no inside information whatsoever. So who knows!

Vaccinations -- the Broadway theaters have just announced that they are requiring all audience members to show proof of vaccination and to wear masks inside. I expect (and hope) that Sleep No More will follow in their footsteps. I will feel much safer as an audience member if I know that most, if not all, of the people in the building are also vaccinated.

The lease -- no clue! I know it was renegotiated a few years ago, but details of that contract have not been made public, nor would I expect them to be. I've guessed that the lease currently ends in 2025, but that's based on a series of unsubstantiated assumptions. (The original lease lasting ten years (2010-2020) and then having a 5 year extension.) I would imagine that the producers will keep SNM going as long as it makes financial sense for them. So...hopefully ticket sales will be strong going forward. Of course, the owners of the building could decide that they want to turn the entire thing into high end condos, which seems to be a popular decision in that neighborhood. Fingers crossed that we will have the Hotel with us for a long time!

#sleep no more #sleepnomore #sleepnomorenyc #mckittrick

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So let's talk about the Lost Generation.

This is the generation that came of age during WWI and the 1918 flu pandemic. They witnessed their world collapse in the first war that spread around the globe, and they -- in retrospect, optimistically -- called it the "war to end all wars". And that war was a quagmire. The trenches on the Western Front were notoriously awful, unsanitary and cold and wet and teeming with sickness, and bloody battles were fought to gain or lose a few feet of territory, and all because a series of alliances caused one assassination in one unstable area to spiral into a brutal large-scale war fought on the ground by people who mostly had no personal stake in the outcomes and gained nothing from winning.

On some of the worst-hit battlefields, the land is still too toxic for plant growth.

And on the heels of this horrific war, a pandemic struck. It's often referred to as "the Spanish flu" because Spain was neutral in the war, and so was the first country to admit that their people were dropping like flies. By the time the warring countries were willing to face the disease, it was far too late to contain it.

Anywhere from 50 to 100 million people worldwide would die from it. 675,000 were in the US.

But once it was finally contained -- anywhere from a year to a year and a half later -- the 20s had begun, and they began roaring.

Hedonism abounded. Alcohol flowed like water in spite of Prohibition. Music and dance and art fluorished. It was the age of Dadaism, an artistic movement of surrealism, absurdism, and abstraction. Women's skirts rose and haircuts shortened in a flamboyant rejection of the social norms of the previous decades. It was a time of glitter and glamour and jazz and flash, and (save for the art that was made) it was mostly skin deep.

Everyone stumbled out of the war and pandemic desperate to forget the horrific things they'd seen and done and all that they'd lost, and lost for nothing.

Reality seemed so pointless. It's not a coincidence that the two codifiers of the fantasy genre -- J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis -- both fought in WWI. In fact, they were school friends before the war, and were the only two of their group to return home. Tolkein wanted to rewrite the history of Europe, while Lewis wanted to rebuild faith in the escape from the world.

(There's a reason Frodo goes into the West: physically, he returned to the Shire, but mentally, he never came back from Mordor, and he couldn't live his whole life there. There's a reason three of the Pevensies can never let go of Narnia: in Narnia, unlike reality, the things they did and fought for and believed in actually mattered, were actually worth the price they paid.)

It's also no coincidence that many of the famous artists of the time either killed themselves outright or let their vices do them in. The 20s roared both in spite of and because of the despair of the Lost Generation.

It was also the era of the Harlem Renaissance, which came to the feelings of alienation and disillusionment from a different direction: there was a large migration of Black people from the South, many of whom moved to the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Obviously, the sense of alienation wasn't new to Black people in America, but the cultural shift allowed for them to publicly express it in the arts and literature in ways that hadn't been open to them before.

There was also horrific -- and state-sanctioned -- violence perpetrated against Black communities in this time, furthering the anger and despair and sense that society had not only failed them but had never even given them a chance. The term at the time was shell-shock, but now we know it as PTSD, and the vast majority of the people who came of age between 1910 and 1920 suffered from it, from one source or another.

It was an entire generation of trauma, and then the stock market crashed in 1929. Helpless, angry, impotent in the face of all that had seemingly destroyed the world for them, on the verge of utter despair, it was also a generation vulnerable to despotism. In the wake of all this chaos -- god, please, someone just take control of all this mess and set it right.

Sometimes the person who took over was decent and played by the rules and at least attempted to do the right thing. Other times, they were self-serving and hateful and committed to subjugating anyone who didn't fit their mold.

There are a lot of parallels to now, but we have something they didn't, and that's the fact that they did it first.

We know what their mistakes and sins were. We have the gift of history to see the whole picture and what worked and what failed. We as a species have walked this road before, and we weren't any happier or stronger or smarter about it the first time.

I think I want to reiterate that point: the Lost Generation were no stronger or weaker than Millennials and Gen Z are today. Plenty of both have risen up and fought back, and plenty have stumbled and been crushed under the weight. Plenty have been horribly abused by the people who were supposed to lead them, and plenty have done the abusing. Plenty of great art has been made by both, and plenty of it is escapist fantasy or scathing criticism or inspiring optimism or despairing pessimism.

We find humor in much the same things, because when reality is a mess, both the absurd and the self-deprecating become hilarious in comparison. There's a reason modern audiences don't find Seinfeld as funny as Gen X does, and many older audiences find modern comedy impenetrable and baffling -- they're different kinds of humor from different realities.

I think my point accumulates into this: in spite of how awful and hopeless and pointless everything feels, we do have a guide. We've been through this before, as a culture, and even though all of them are gone now, we have their words and art and memory to help us. We know now what they didn't then: there is a future.

The path forward is a hard one, and the only thing that makes it easier is human connection. Art -- in the most base sense, anything that is an expression of emotion and thought into a medium that allows it to be shared -- is the best and most enduring vehicle for that connection, to reach not just loved ones but people a thousand miles or a hundred years away.

So don't bottle it up. Don't pretend to be okay when you're not. Paint it, sculpt it, write it, play it, sing it, scream it, hell, you can even meme it out into the void. Whatever it takes to reach someone else -- not just for yourself but for others, both present and future.

Because, to quote the inimitable Terry Pratchett, "in a hundred years we'll all be dead, but here and now, we are alive."

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A new mode of production arises out of the newly networked masses.

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As someone who has been teaching English for decades, the original poster's attitude drives me nuts. And it is racist. English has hundreds, if not thousands, of variations all over the world, and the one that some people refer to as "Standard American English" is just one of them. I prefer to call it Standard Edited American English (SEAE) or Standard Written American English (SWAE) because this emphasizes the fact that literally no one speaks "standard" American English. We all speak variations based on our families, where we grew up, and a myriad of other factors.

So-called Standard American English has no linguistic value over any other variation and is not better for communication than any other. It just happens to be the one valued by people who have historically had power and money. And they got to set the rules.

On a side note, my favorite grammar rule/construction in AAVE is the "habitual be." For example, in the sentence, "She be singing," it is understood that she has been singing for a long time and will continue to sing in the future. (It's a habit, hence..."habitual be.") This is distinct from, "She is singing," which tells us that she is currently singing, but we have no idea if this is something that she does on a regular basis. SEAE has no way of communicating this idea without using several additional words.

why do black people use you in the wrong context? such is "you ugly" instead of "you're ugly" I know u guys can differentiate, it's a nuisance

you a bitch

#linguistics is fun #don't be racist #AAVE is English #just like all the other Englishes