Two fun opportunities for a bit of Christmas magic!
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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.
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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 ESTChristmas Day performance time is 8 pm EST
I asked Miss Bianca about a fundraising link, too. Donations welcome but not required.
OPEN THREAD.
Alison Rose
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.
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose: Someone referred to us as:
Someone else will have to tell you who that was, I forget!
Uncle Cosmo
@WaterGirl: Meanwhile we’re all part of the unwilling audience for The Grift Of The MAGA in real time… :^(
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Having Googled, apparently at some point “vicious” was deleted from the description.
“Vitriolic vicious jackals”
WaterGirl
@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?
Baud
@WaterGirl: I haven’t found the source, just the old phrase. Do you remember the reason for the change.
germy
Maybe Greenwald came up with “jackals”
Cartoon:
WaterGirl
@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.
Miss Bianca
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! : )
Baud
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.
Baud
@WaterGirl: Ok.
Spanky
Gift of the Magi? Spoiler alert: They ruin each other’s Christmas!
Scuffletuffle
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.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I miss so many of the old peeps.
laura
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.
Miss Bianca
@Spanky:
LOL!
Alison Rose
@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.
jeffreyw
@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?
catclub
… and yet they don’t.
sab
@jeffreyw:Baby eating, that was dingoes not jackals.
WaterGirl
@Alison Rose: That was in 2010!
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw: shush! I told you that was our secret.
Royston Vasey
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
WaterGirl
@Royston Vasey: Merry Christmas, New Zealand!
Have you checked out the New Zealand pics in the morning On The Road threads the week?
Yutsano
@Royston Vasey: Thank you! I nudged my Kiwi and Aussie peeps.
MERRY CHRISTMAS YA WONDERFUL SOUTH OF THE EQUATOR JACKALS!
Feathers
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.
Royston Vasey
@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
WaterGirl
@Royston Vasey: Oh, good! Send something in. :-)
WaterGirl
@Scuffletuffle: 4 hours of sitting in the car waiting to be tested? That’s ridiculous, and must be so frustrating!
jeffreyw
@sab: Yet
WaterGirl
@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???
WaterGirl
Am I the only one who thinks both of these sound interesting?
Kattails
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.
Scuffletuffle
@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.
WaterGirl
@Scuffletuffle: It’s all so fucked up, for lack of a more technical word.
WaterGirl
@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?
WaterGirl
@Kattails: You can send your Christmas quilt photos to any of us. Take your pick! :-)
MazeDancer
@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!
WaterGirl
@MazeDancer: Thanks, MazeDancer!
Miss Bianca
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.
Kattails
@MazeDancer: Got them, thanks!! sorry to be running so late.