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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Programming Note: Two Jackals Have Christmas Performances Online Today & Tomorrow

Programming Note: Two Jackals Have Christmas Performances Online Today & Tomorrow

by WaterGirl|  December 24, 202011:36 am| 41 Comments

This post is in: Balloon Juice, Celebrating Jackals, Open Threads

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Two fun opportunities for a bit of Christmas magic!

? ? ?

Ruemara’s Zoom Reading of Gift of the Magi (and more) at 6pm ET Today

Today I’ll be performing an African folktale, & O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi, at about 6 pm ET.

If anyone is interested, feel free to shoot me an email for the zoom reading link. Just doing something fun for people who don’t get to witness a table read.

Next year, I’ll be starting a table read workshop (The Rising Workshop) focused on giving under-represented minority writers a chance to have their works read/performed. We’ll see how it goes, I’m not exactly a very important person. We’ve nearly made it to the end of 2020. That’s not a bad thing.

Christmas Eve reading at about 6 pm ET.
Email ruemara or me for a link.
(Her address is just like mine, only ruemara instead of watergirl.)

I had to ask Rue if she has a fundraising link, in case anyone is so inclined.  She does!  Any donations will go to fund the table read workshop she mentions above.  Donations welcome but not required.

? ? ?

Miss Bianca’s Christmas Play with a Modern Twist tonight at 10 pm ET and tomorrow 8 ET

Letting you know, in case you find yourselves with an odd hour to kill, that my theater, The Westcliffe Center for the Performing Arts, just did a radio production of “The Business of Good Government: A Christmas Play”, by John Arden – a Nativity/Epiphany Play, but with a modern twist – will be airing tomorrow night, Christmas Eve, at 10 pm ET, and Christmas Day, 8 pm ET, on our local community radio station, KLZR-FM – you can stream it here: https://klzr.org/

It’s rough-cut, not polished – we basically knocked it out in a couple days, in the theater, all masked up and with socially-distanced microphones scattered around the stage. Some stuff got cut that I wanted to keep, and some stuff I wanted to cut, got left in. You can hear pages rustling and footsteps and hum from the room. The sound quality differs depending what day we were on.

In short, it sounds like…a community theater doing a Nativity play. On the radio. : ) But it’s got heart. Like Arden would have wanted, I think. We threw it together for KLZR, but also for ourselves – we hadn’t seen each other or tried to do anything for almost a year. I’m sure you can understand.

Christmas Eve performance time is 10 pm EST
Christmas Day performance time is 8 pm EST

I asked Miss Bianca about a fundraising link, too.  Donations welcome but not required.

OPEN THREAD.

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Reader Interactions

41Comments

  1. 1.

    Alison Rose

    December 24, 2020 at 11:40 am

    Huzzah for technology!

    OT: What’s the origin story of “jackals” as referring to BJ commentariat? I checked the lexicon and it’s not there, and I don’t recall when I first started seeing it used here.

  2. 2.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 11:44 am

    @Alison Rose: Someone referred to us as:

    A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals…

    Someone else will have to tell you who that was, I forget!

  3. 3.

    Uncle Cosmo

    December 24, 2020 at 11:49 am

    @WaterGirl: Meanwhile we’re all part of the unwilling audience for The Grift Of The MAGA in real time… :^(

  4. 4.

    Baud

    December 24, 2020 at 11:51 am

    @WaterGirl:

    Having Googled, apparently at some point “vicious” was deleted from the description.

    “Vitriolic vicious jackals”

  5. 5.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 11:56 am

    @Baud: Yes, that change happened last year at the request of a jackal, who had a good reason, and Cole approved, and so we had the official dropping of “vicious” from the phrase.

    Since you googled, who called us that?

  6. 6.

    Baud

    December 24, 2020 at 11:59 am

    @WaterGirl: I haven’t found the source, just the old phrase.  Do you remember the reason for the change.

  7. 7.

    germy

    December 24, 2020 at 12:01 pm

    Maybe Greenwald came up with “jackals”

    Cartoon:

    pic.twitter.com/mck27QvFqS— Peter Steiner (@plsteiner) December 24, 2020

  8. 8.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 12:02 pm

    @Baud: I do, and it was personal, so I don’t want to distress the person by going into it.  I think it was a fine change.

  9. 9.

    Miss Bianca

    December 24, 2020 at 12:04 pm

    Hi, folks! Merry Christmas! Thanks for the notice, WG! I will try to zoom into Ruemara’s reading, if I have the time – I joined a Zoom reading of A Christmas Carol with a lot of my old theater buddies last night, some of whom I hadn’t laid eyes on since leaving Chicago 20-*mumble* years ago. It was an oddly moving experience. Couldn’t believe how many of them said they had never read it before! : )

  10. 10.

    Baud

    December 24, 2020 at 12:06 pm

    Looks like the source was Church Lady (presumably not our own current Different Church Lady), and that it was nominated for the tag line by AhabTRuler.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    December 24, 2020 at 12:08 pm

    @WaterGirl: Ok.

  12. 12.

    Spanky

    December 24, 2020 at 12:16 pm

    Gift of the Magi? Spoiler alert: They ruin each other’s Christmas!

  13. 13.

    Scuffletuffle

    December 24, 2020 at 12:16 pm

    Into hour number 4 of waiting in a parking lot for a covid test…3 positive coworkers diagnosed this week.

     

    Best healthcare in the world….if you are a Trump or his minion…fuck the rest of us.

  14. 14.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 12:17 pm

    @Baud: I miss so many of the old peeps.

  15. 15.

    laura

    December 24, 2020 at 12:18 pm

    I’m not exactly a very important person.

    Au Contraire Ruemara- you are exactly a very important person just as you are. I’m so glad you were willing to take a chance on the rest of us and join in as a citizen (you too Schrodinger’s Cat). Your posts are a treat – cooking, cats, commentary, career – an interesting life examined. I think you are important.

  16. 16.

    Miss Bianca

    December 24, 2020 at 12:24 pm

    @Spanky: 

    LOL!

  17. 17.

    Alison Rose

    December 24, 2020 at 12:25 pm

    @WaterGirl: Thanks! Kind of funny, since the phrase implies a level of both anger and energy which are not exactly present in most of us.

  18. 18.

    jeffreyw

    December 24, 2020 at 12:31 pm

    @WaterGirl:

    It was requested by a commenter who raises jackals as pets and is disturbed that they are just misunderstood and are getting an undeserved bad rap and anyway they haven’t eaten any babies so far?

  19. 19.

    catclub

    December 24, 2020 at 12:39 pm

    @Spanky: Spoiler alert: They ruin each other’s Christmas!

     

    … and yet they don’t.

  20. 20.

    sab

    December 24, 2020 at 12:46 pm

    @jeffreyw:Baby eating,  that was dingoes not jackals.

  21. 21.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 12:52 pm

    @Alison Rose: That was in 2010!

  22. 22.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 12:53 pm

    @jeffreyw: shush!  I told you that was our secret.

  23. 23.

    Royston Vasey

    December 24, 2020 at 1:04 pm

    Good Morning and a Merry Christmas to all the Jackals,

    It’s Christmas Day morning, just gone 7am, here in New Zealand. Hope you all have a great Christmas!

    All the best,

    RV in NZ

  24. 24.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 1:08 pm

    @Royston Vasey: Merry Christmas, New Zealand!

    Have you checked out the New Zealand pics in the morning On The Road threads the week?

  25. 25.

    Yutsano

    December 24, 2020 at 1:13 pm

    @Royston Vasey: Thank you! I nudged my Kiwi and Aussie peeps.

    MERRY CHRISTMAS YA WONDERFUL SOUTH OF THE EQUATOR JACKALS!

  26. 26.

    Feathers

    December 24, 2020 at 1:26 pm

    Got a text from my sister yesterday as to if I had a preference for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day for the family Zoom get together.  Told her had no preference, whatever worked for everyone else. Just checked my email and it was at 10:30 this morning. Fuck my life.

  27. 27.

    Royston Vasey

    December 24, 2020 at 1:29 pm

    @WaterGirl: Yes I have. Most cool to see NZ on here. *beams*

    I have been thinking of writing and submitting an On The Road myself, probably in the new year.

    RV in NZ

  28. 28.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 1:36 pm

    @Royston Vasey: Oh, good!  Send something in.  :-)

  29. 29.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 1:54 pm

    @Scuffletuffle: 4 hours of sitting in the car waiting to be tested?  That’s ridiculous, and must be so frustrating!

  30. 30.

    jeffreyw

    December 24, 2020 at 1:54 pm

    @sab: Yet

  31. 31.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 1:55 pm

    @Feathers: Well, that sucks.  I think of Christmas Eve as evening, not 10:30 in the fucking morning.

    Note to self: don’t be so agreeable next time.  :-)

    edit: they couldn’t TEXT you the time???

  32. 32.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 1:56 pm

    Am I the only one who thinks both of these sound interesting?

  33. 33.

    Kattails

    December 24, 2020 at 2:01 pm

    Looking for Mazedancer–I know it’s Christmas eve, but i did manage to get a few postcards printed in town on Wednesday and sent in a request for names, I saw that the mailing deadline is Saturday. I’m rarely in town at this  point and a friend actually gave me some $$ toward the printing. Have not seen anything come through.  I figure I’m stuck at home and could bang out 25 or 30 & get them in Saturday morning’s mail.  Last Minute Lizzie here but the tpresent I decided to do for my sister is a lot more complicated than I’d figured.  It’ll be worth it but schedule is blown to hell.

    Also can’t remember which front pager wanted to see pics of the Christmas quilt I mentioned in a thread several days ago.  TaMara? AL?  WaterGirl? Took a few pics before I mailed it.

  34. 34.

    Scuffletuffle

    December 24, 2020 at 2:16 pm

    @WaterGirl: when I think about how quick and easy it is for my “betters” yes, it is very frustrating. Finally got in sometime in the sixth hour.

  35. 35.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 2:37 pm

    @Scuffletuffle: It’s all so fucked up, for lack of a more technical word.

  36. 36.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 2:37 pm

    @Kattails: I’ll email MazeDancer and see if she can pop into the thread for you.

    edit: I put up the bat signal for MazeDancer, so if she doesn’t show up right away, maybe check back to this thread later?

  37. 37.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 2:41 pm

    @Kattails: You can send your Christmas quilt photos to any of us.  Take your pick!  :-)

  38. 38.

    MazeDancer

    December 24, 2020 at 3:06 pm

    @Kattails:

    You should have your addresses.

    Checked before I went out at noon, but your email hadn’t yet arrived.

    Got WaterGirl’s message, so you’re should be good to go now. Thanks for writing for GA!

  39. 39.

    WaterGirl

    December 24, 2020 at 3:40 pm

    @MazeDancer: Thanks, MazeDancer!

  40. 40.

    Miss Bianca

    December 24, 2020 at 4:45 pm

    Oh! And one thing I forgot to mention to WaterGirl is that if, like me, you just can’t get enough of A Christmas Carol at this time of year, that KLZR https://klzr.org/ will be broadcasting an Orson Welles reading of it before the airing of the radio play. 7 pm MST, 9 pm EST.

  41. 41.

    Kattails

    December 24, 2020 at 4:51 pm

    @MazeDancer: Got them, thanks!! sorry to be running so late.

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