Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
How To Write Good
How To Write Good
WANT TO LEARN HOW TO REALLY WRITE GOOD? WANT TO LEARN
"THE TEN MAGIC PHRASES OF JOURNALISM" AND THE "TRICKS OF THE
TRADE"? THEN THIS INSIGHTFUL SATIRICAL ESSAY FROM THE EARLY 1970'S IS FOR
YOU.
by Michael O'Donoghue
"If I could not earn a penny from my writing, I would
earn my livelihood at something else and continue to write at night."
- Irving Wallace
"Financial success is not the only reward of good
writing.
It brings to the writer rich inner satisfaction as well."
- Eliot Foster, Director of Admissions
Famous Writers School Introduction
A long time ago, when I was just starting out, I had the good
fortune to meet the great Willa Cather. With all the audacity of youth, I asked
her what advice she would give the would-be-writer and she replied:
"My advice to the would-be-writer is that he start
slowly, writing short undemanding things, things such as telegrams, flip-books,
crank letters, signature scarves, spot quizzes, capsule summaries, fortune
cookies and errata. Then, when he feels he's ready, move up to the more
challenging items such as mandates, objective correlatives, passion plays,
pointless diatribes, minor classics, manifestos, mezzotints, oxymora, exposes,
broadsides, and papal bulls.
"And above all, never forget that the pen is mightier
than the plow-share. By this I mean that writing, all in all, is a hell of a
lot more fun than farming. For one thing, writers seldom, if ever, have to get
up at five o'clock in the morning and shovel manure. As far as I'm concerned,
that gives them the edge right there."
She went on to tell me many things, both wonderful and wise,
probing the secrets of her craft, showing how to weave a net of words and
capture the fleeting stuff of life. Unfortunately, I've forgotten every bit of
it.
I do recall, however, her answer when I asked "If you
could only give me one rule to follow, what would it be?" She paused,
looked down for a moment and finally said, "Never wear brown shoes with a
blue suit."
There's very little I could add to that except to say "Go
to it and good luck!"
LESSON 1 - THE GRABBER
The "grabber" is the initial sentence of a novel or
short story designed to jolt the reader out of his complacency and arouse his
curiosity, forcing him to press onward. For example:
"It's no good, Alex," she rejoined, "Even if I
did love you, my father would never let me marry an alligator."
The reader is immediately bombarded with questions, questions
such as "Why won't her father let her marry an alligator?" "How
come she doesn't love him?" and "Can she learn to love him in
time?" The reader's interest has been "grabbed"!
Just so there'll be no misunderstanding about grabbers, I've
listed a few more below:
• "I'm afraid
you're too late," sneered Zoltan. "The fireplace has already flown
south for the winter!"
• Sylvia lay sick
among the silverware...
• Chinese vegetables
mean more to me than you do, my dear," Charles remarked to his wife,
adding injury to insult by lodging a grapefruit knife in her neck.
• "I have in my
hands," Professor Willobee exclaimed, clutching a sheaf of papers in his
trembling fingers and pacing in circles about the carpet while I stood at the
window, barely able to make out the Capitol dome through the thick, churning for
that rolled in off the Potomac, wondering to myself what matter could possibly
be so urgent as to bring the distinguished historian bursting into my State
Department office at the unseemly hour, "definitive proof that Abraham
Lincoln was a homo!"
These are just a handful of the possible grabbers. Needless to
say, there are thousands of others, but if you fail to think of them, feel free
to use any or all of these.
LESSON 2 - THE ENDING
All too often, the budding author finds that his tale has run
its course and yet he sees no way to satisfactorily end it, or, in literary
parlance, "wrap it up." Observe how easily I resolve this problem:
Suddenly, everyone was run over by a truck. -the end-
If the story happens to be set in England, use the same
ending, slightly modified:
Suddenly, everyone was run over by a lorry. -the end-
If set in France:
Soudainement, tout le monde
etait écrasé par un camion. -finis-
You'll be surprised at how many different settings and
situations this ending applies to. For instance, if you were writing a story
about ants, it would end "Suddenly, everyone was run over by a
centipede." In fact, this is the only ending you ever need use.*
*Warning - if you are writing a story about trucks, do not
have the trucks run over by a truck. Have the trucks run over by a mammoth
truck.
LESSON 3 - CHOOSING A TITLE
A friend of mine recently had a bunch of articles rejected by
the Reader's Digest and, unable to understand why, he turned to me for advice.
I spotted the problem at a glance. His titles were all wrong. By calling his
pieces such things as "Unwed Mothers - A Head Start on Life,"
"Cancer - The Incurable Disease," "A Leading Psychologist
Explains Why There Should Be More Violence on Television,"
"Dognappers I Have Known and Loved," "My Baby Was Born Dead and
I Couldn't Care Less" and "Pleasantville - Last of the Wide-Open
Towns," he had seriously misjudged his market. To steer him straight, I
drew up this list of all-purpose surefire titles:
• ________ at the
Crossroads
• The Case for
________
• The Role of
________
• Coping with
Changing ________
• A Realistic Look
at ________
• The ________
Experience
• Bridging the
________ Gap
• A ________ for All
Seasons
Simply fill in the blanks with the topic of your choice and,
if that doesn't work you can always resort to the one title that never fails:
"South America, the Sleeping Giant on our Doorstep"
LESSON 4 - EXPOSITION
Perhaps the most difficult technique for the fledgling writer
to master is proper treatment of exposition. Yet watch the sly, subtle way I
"set the scene" of my smash play, The Last to Know, with a minimum of
words and effort.
(The curtain opens on a tastefully appointed dining room, the
table ringed by men in tuxedos and women in costly gowns. There is a knock at
the door.)
LORD OVERBROOKE: Oh, come in, Lydia. Allow me to introduce my
dinner guests to you. This is Cheryl Heatherton, the madcap soybean heiress
whose zany antics actually mask a heart broken by her inability to meaningfully
communicate with her father, E. J. Heatherton, seated to her left, who is too
caught up in the heady world of high finance to sit down and have a quiet chat
with his own daughter, unwanted to begin with, disposing of his paternal
obligations by giving her everything, everything but love, that is.
Next to them sits Geoffrey Drake, a seemingly successful
merchant banker trapped in an unfortunate marriage with a woman half his age,
who wistfully looks back upon his days as the raffish Group Captain of an
R.A.F. bomber squadron that flew eighty-one missions over Berlin, his tortured
psyche refusing to admit, despite frequent nightmares in which, dripping with
sweat, he wakes screaming, "Pull it up! Pull it up, I say! I can't hold
her any longer! We're losing altitude! We're going down! Jerry at three o'clock
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggh!", that his cowardice and his cowardice alone was
responsible for the loss of his crew and "Digger," the little
Manchester terrier who was their mascot.
The empty chair to his right was vacated just five minutes ago
by Geoffrey's stunning wife, twenty-three- year-old, golden-tressed Edwina
Drake, who, claiming a severe migraine, begged to be excused that she might
return home and rest, whereas, in reality, she is, at this moment, speeding to
the arms of another man, convinced that if she can steal a little happiness
now, it doesn't matter who she hurts later on. The elderly servant preparing
the Caviar en Socle is Andrew who's been with my family for over forty years
although he hasn't received a salary for the last two, even going on so far as
to loan me his life's savings to cover my spiraling gambling debts but it's
only a matter of time before I am exposed as a penniless fraud and high society
turns its back on me.
The dark woman opposite me is Yvonne de Zenobia, the fading
Mexican film star, who speaks of her last movie as though it was shot only
yesterday, unwilling to face the fact that she hasn't been before the cameras
in nearly fifteen years; unwilling to confess that her life has been little
more than a tarnished dream.
As for her companion, Desmond Trelawney, he is an unmitigated
scoundrel about whom the less said, the better.
And, of course, you know your father, the ruthless war
profiteer, and your hopelessly alcoholic mother, who never quite escaped her
checkered past, realizing, all too late, that despite her jewels and
limousines, she was still just a taxi-dancer who belonged to any man for a
drink and a few cigarettes.
Please take a seat. We were just talking about you.
This example demonstrates everything you'll ever need to know
about exposition. Study it carefully.
LESSON 5 - FINDING THE RAW MATERIAL
As any professional writer will tell you, the richest source
of material is one's relatives, one's neighbors and, more often than not, total
strangers. A day doesn't go by without at least one person, upon learning that
I'm a professional writer, offering me some terrific idea for a story. And I'm
sure it will come as no shock when I say that most of the ideas are pretty damn
good!
Only last week, a pipe-fitter of my acquaintance came up with
a surprise ending guaranteed to unnerve the most jaded reader. What you do is
tell this really weird story that keeps on getting weirder and weirder until,
just when the reader is muttering, "How in the heck is he going to get
himself out of this one? He's really painted himself into a corner!" you
spring the "mindblower": "But then he woke up. It had all been a
dream!" (which I, professional writer that I am, honed down to: "But
then the alarm clock rang. It had all been a dream!"). And this came from
a common, run-of-the-mill pipe-fitter! For free!
Cabdrivers, another great wealth of material, will often
remark, "Boy, lemme tell ya! Some of the characters I get in this cab
would fill a book! Real kooks, ya know what I mean?" And then, without my
having to coax even the slightest, they tell me about them, and they would fill
a book. Perhaps two or three books. In addition, if you're at all interested in
social science, cabdrivers are able to provide countless examples of the
failures of the welfare state.
To illustrate just how valid these unsolicited suggestions can
be, I shall print a few lines from a newly completed play inspired by my aunt,
who had the idea as far back as when she was attending grade school. It's
called "If an Old House Could Talk, What Tales It Would Tell".
The Floor: Do you remember the time the middle-aged lady who
always wore the stilletto heels tripped over an extension cord while running to
answer the phone and spilled the Ovaltine all over me and they spent the next
20 minutes mopping it up?
The Wall: No.
Of course, I can't print too much here because I don't want to
spoil the ending (although I will give you a "hint": it involves a
truck...). I just wanted to show you how much the world would have missed had I
rejected my aunt's suggestion out of hand simply because she is not a
professional writer like myself.
LESSON 6 - QUOTING OTHER AUTHORS
If placed in a situation where you must quote another author,
always write "[sic]" after any word that may be misspelled or looks
the least bit questionable in any way. If there are no misspellings or curious
words, toss in a few "[sic]"s just to break up the flow. By doing
this, you will appear to be knowledgeable and "on your toes," while
the one quoted will seem suspect and vaguely discredited. Two examples will
suffice:
"O Sleepless as the river under thee, Vaulting the sea,
the prairies' dreaming sod, Unto us lowiest sometime sweep, descend And of the
curveship [sic], lend a myth to God" - Hart Crane
"Beauty is but a flowre [sic], Which wrinckles [sic] will
devoure [sic] Brightnesse [sic] falls from the ayre [sic] Queenes [sic] have
died yong [sic] and faire [sic] Dust hath closde [sic] Helens [sic] eye [sic] I
am sick [sic], I must dye [sic]: Lord, have mercy on us." - Thomas Nashe
Note how only one small "[sic]" makes Crane's entire
stanza trivial and worthless, which, in his case, takes less doing that Nashe,
on the other hand, has been rendered virtually unreadable. Anyone having to
choose between you and Nashe would pick you every time! And, when it's all said
and done, isn't that the name of the game?
LESSON 7 - MAKING THE READER FEEL INADEQUATE
Without question, the surest way to make a reader feel
inadequate is through casual erudition, and there is no better way to achieve
casual erudition than by putting the punchline of an anecdote in a little
foreign language. Here's a sample:
One crisp October morning, while taking my usual stroll down
the Kurfurstenstrasse, I spied my old friend Casimir Malevitch, the renowned
Suprematist painter, sitting on a bench. Noting that he had a banana in his
ear, I said to him, "Excuse me, Casimir, but I believe you have a banana
in your ear." "What?" he asked. Moving closer and speaking quite
distinctly, I repeated my previous observation, saying, "I said 'You have
a banana in your ear!' " "What's that you say?" came the reply.
By now I was a trifle piqued at this awkward situation and, seeking to make
myself plain, once and for all, I fairly screamed, "I SAID THAT YOU HAVE A
BANANA IN YOUR EAR, YOU DOLT!!!" Imagine my chagrin when Casimir looked at
me blankly and quipped, "Meh soon kahi sakta - meree kaan meh kayla
heh!"
Oh, what a laugh we had over that one.
With one stroke, the reader has been made to feel not only
that his education was second-rate, but that you are getting far more out of
life than he. This is precisely why this device is best used in memoirs, whose
sole purpose is to make the reader feel that you have lived life to the
fullest, while his existence, in comparison, has been meaningless and
shabby....
LESSON 8 - COVERING THE NEWS
Have you ever wondered how reporters are able to turn out a
dozen or so news articles day after day, year after year, and still keep their
copy so fresh, so vital, so alive? It's because they know The Ten Magic Phrases
of Journalism, key constructions with which one can express every known human
emotion! As one might suppose, The Phrases, discovered only after centuries of
trial and error, are a closely guarded secret, available to no one but
accredited members of the press. However, at the risk of being cashiered from
the Newspaper Guild, I am now going to reveal them to you:
The Ten Magic Phrases of Journalism
1. "violence
flared"
2. "limped into
port"
3. "according to
informed sources"
4. "wholesale
destruction"
5. "no immediate
comment"
6. "student
unrest"
7. "riot-torn"
8. "flatly
denied"
9. "gutted by
fire"
10. "roving bands
of Negro youths"
Let's try putting The Phrases to work in a sample news story:
NEWARK, NJ, Aug. 22 (UPI) - Violence flared yesterday when
roving bands of Negro youths broke windows and looted shops in riot-torn
Newark. Mayor Kenneth Gibson had no immediate comment but, according to
informed sources, he flatly denied saying that student unrest was behind the
wholesale destruction that resulted in scores of buildings being gutted by
fire, and added, "If this city were a Liberian freighter,* we just may
have limped into port."
*Whenever needed, "Norwegian Tanker" can always be
substituted for "Liberian freighter." Consider them interchangeable.
Proof positive that The Ten Magic Phrases of Journalism can
express every known human emotion and then some!
LESSON 9 - TRICKS OF THE TRADE
Just as homemakers have their hints (e.g. a ball of cotton,
dipped in vanilla extract and placed in the refrigerator, will absorb food
odors), writers have their own bag of tricks, a bag of tricks, I might hasten
to point out, you won't learn at any Bread Loaf Conference. Most writers, ivory
tower idealists that they are, prefer to play up the mystique of their
"art" (visitations from the Muse, l'ecriture automatique, talking in
tongues, et cetera, et cetera), and sweep the hard-nosed practicalities under the
rug. Keeping in mind, however, that a good workman doesn't curse his tools, I
am now going to make public these long suppressed tricks of the trade.
Suppose you've written a dreadful chapter (we'll dub it
Chapter Six for our purposes here), utterly without merit, tedious and boring
beyond belief, and you just can't find the energy to re-write it. Since it's
obvious that the reader, once he realizes how dull and shoddy Chapter Six
really is, will refuse to read any further, you must provide some strong
ulterior motive for completing the chapter. I've always found lust effective:
Artfully concealed within the next chapter is the astounding
secret of an ancient Bhutanese love cult that will increase your sexual
satisfaction by at least 60% and possibly more--
(Print Chapter Six.)
Pretty wild, huh? Bet you can hardly wait to try it! And don't
show your appreciation by reading Chapter Seven!*
*This ensures that the reader reads Chapter Six not once but
several times. Possibly, he may even read Chapter Seven.
Fear also works:
Dear Reader, This message is printed on Chinese poison paper
which is made from deadly herbs that are instantly absorbed by the fingertips
so it won't do any good to wash your hands because you will die a horrible and
lingering death in about an hour unless you take the special antidote which is
revealed in Chapter Six and you'll be saved. Sincerely, (Your name)
Or even:
Dear Reader, You are obviously one of those rare people who
are immune to Chinese paper so this message is printed on Bavarian poison paper
which is about a thousand times more powerful and even if you're wearing gloves
you're dead for sure unless you read Chapter Six very carefully and find the
special antidote. Sincerely, (Your name)
Appealing to vanity, greed, sloth and whatever, you can keep
this up, chapter by chapter, until they finish the book. In fact, the number of
appeals is limited only by human frailty itself...
LESSON 10 - MORE WRITING HINTS
There are many more writing hints I could share with you, but
suddenly I am run over by a truck.
-the end-
Thursday by William Carlos Williams
Thursday
William Carlos Williams
I have had my dream—like others—
and it has come to nothing, so that
I remain now carelessly
with feet planted on the ground
and look up at the sky—
feeling my clothes about me,
the weight of my body in my shoes,
the rim of my hat, air passing in and out
at my nose—and decide to dream no more.
The best I can say
I wish
I missed you
After all those years
and all of that
That my only thought.
How sad is that?
Summer grass, a poem
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
lackadaisical
When folks living from the late 17th to the late 19th century had one of those days when nothing goes right, they could cry "Lackaday!" to express their sorrow and disappointment as a shortened form of the expression "alack the day." (Alack is an interjection used to express sorrow or regret.) By the mid-1700s, the adjective lackadaisical had been formed to describe such weary and exasperated folks, as well as their half-hearted doings and sayings.
A Tragedy
“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is usually
remembered only as the famous creator of Sherlock Holmes, but Doyle himself
believed that his historical romances were his most important work. He felt
that detective stories were part of ‘a lower stratum of literary achievement,’
and he aspired to be a ‘serious’ writer; in writing historical romances, he
believed he was following in the footsteps of Sir Walter Scott.” Kenneth Wilson,
A Tragedy
Who’s that walking on the moorland?
Who’s that moving on the hill?
They are passing ’mid the bracken,
But the shadows grow and blacken
And I cannot see them clearly on the hill.
Who’s that calling on the moorland?
Who’s that crying on the hill?
Was it bird or was it human,
Was it child, or man, or woman,
Who was calling so sadly on the hill?
Who’s that running on the moorland?
Who’s that flying on the hill?
He is there—and there again,
But you cannot see him plain,
For the shadow lies so darkly on the hill.
What’s that lying in the heather?
What’s that lurking on the hill?
My horse will go no nearer,
And I cannot see it clearer,
But there’s something that is lying on the hill.
No Second Troy
William Butler Yeats was born on June 13, 1865, in Sandymount, Ireland. He received the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature for his poetry. This poem, “No Second Troy” was written in about 1912 and studies the complexities of love and societal conflict through a series of questions. Composed in twelve lines of iambic pentameter, the poem reflects Yeats’s personal feelings towards Maud Gonne, a woman he loved deeply but who ultimately rejected him. He grapples with the impact of her actions on his life, suggesting that her inability to find a suitable role in society leads to both personal and social turmoil. By comparing Gonne to Helen of Troy, Yeats draws on classical mythology to explore themes of beauty, violence, and the constraints of their contemporary Irish culture.”
No Second Troy
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
Playwrights
The Bite Sized Theatrical Spooktacular 2026
We are looking for original short plays (or other theatrical pieces) that are 10 minutes or less.
This production is on Halloween, and we encourage any submissions that may resonate thematically, whether they directly relate to Halloween or not.
While we will consider anything and everything, we especially want to see submissions that are comedic or spooky, as this fits best with the tone of the evening!
***
Wicked Cat Productions is seeking short plays for a new evening of work exploring kink, fetish, and/or desire
We are looking for plays that are bold, curious, theatrical, and respectful of the communities they engage with. The hope is to build an evening that surprises the audience, subverts expectations, and treats desire as something complex, funny, strange, tender, powerful, awkward, joyful, dangerous, sacred, unserious, deeply serious, or all of the above.
***
The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers supports projects that draw on the research collections of The New York Public Library's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (formerly the Humanities and Social Sciences Library). The Center seeks top-quality writing from academics as well as from creative writers and independent scholars. Visual artists whose projects require extensive use of Library collections are also encouraged to apply. Visit www.nypl.org/research-collections for detailed information about the collections of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** TALKING ABOUT MIME ***
The San Francisco Mime Troupe eventually gave birth to the Diggers, a community action group that Mr. Coyote helped found, which offered free food, clothes and medical care to the hippies of the Haight-Ashbury scene.
Bill Graham, who became a powerhouse rock promoter, began his career as the troupe’s business manager, organizing benefits that featured acid-rock royalty like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
Mr. Davis had studied in Paris under Étienne Decroux, who was one of Marcel Marceau’s key teachers and was known as the father of modern French mime — or “meem,” as Mr. Davis called it, observing the French pronunciation. But under Mr. Davis, the San Francisco troupe veered from tradition early on; it freely used dialogue and blended the avant-garde theatricality of Bertolt Brecht with the provocateur sensibility of Lenny Bruce.
The result was a sharply political form of commedia dell’arte, the centuries-old Italian theatrical form known for its masks, broad comedic stylings and earthy humor.
More...
https://archive.ph/hOsUh
***
Deburau is credited as the father of mime but down the years the genre has been sustained by a long line of chalk-faced Frenchman. On Deburau’s death, actor Paul Legrand succeeded him as the new Pierrot at Théâtre des Funambules, giving the character the more tearful, sentimental dimension we still see in many mime acts today. Ever faithful to the winning white face paint, Legrand did away with his predecessor’s bulky outfit and often chose to perform in his ordinary clothes (beret and breton stripe anyone?). Then, in the 20th century, French theatrical practitioners like Jacques Lecoq and Étienne Decroux were central in developing mime as a formal artistic genre. Both writers published detailed theoretical explorations of the subject.
Last but not least, perhaps the most well-known French mime artist in recent years was Marcel Marceau, whose performances of his persona, "Bip the Clown" achieved international acclaim. Marceau even put his mime act to heroically good use, while working for the French Resistance during the Second World War. Performing silently as Bip, the mime kept groups of Jewish children quiet for hours as they escaped across the border from occupied France into Switzerland.
More...
https://www.theatreinparis.com/blog/a-history-of-mime-the-most-oh-so-french-of-art-forms
***
Mimes are sometimes hated in fiction. No real reason is ever given, but the Uncanny Valley may have something to do with it - after all, their pure white faces and refusal to speak give them a definite alien aura. This trope isn't limited to people who hate mimes, but also works of fiction that seem to have it out for them. In other words a character doesn't have to say "I hate mimes" for it to be this trope. All the character needs to do is fall on, punch, kick, or otherwise cause intentional or accidental harm to a mime. A variation of this is Everyone Hates Morris Dancers, without a reason for it ever being given.
More...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EveryoneHatesMimes
***
JUDY WOODRUFF: Now to another in our Brief But Spectacular series, where we ask people to describe their passions.
Tonight, we hear from artist and performer Bill Bowers, who teaches mime, a theatrical technique that uses gestures, instead of words. He's at New York University.
BILL BOWERS, Mime: I am from a big, quiet family in Montana. I was an incredibly shy younger person.
I am also a gay man, which the word gay didn't even exist back then, but I knew about silence early on for all of those reasons. I got older and learned that there was an art form about not talking. I thought, oh, my God, that's perfect. I'm in.
I loved mime once I learned more about it. When I had a chance to put my focus on being a mime performer, I really went in that direction.
A story came on the news that Marcel Marceau was embarking on his 80th birthday world tour. And I thought, I have got to study with Marcel Marceau. I sought him out. I was intimidated by him. He was a very famous, very old French mime. And all of that came into the room with him.
He talked about himself in the third person a lot. He said: "People say Marceau is genius. I say, no, Marceau is not the genius. Genius is where Marceau and the people meet."
More...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/brief/214131/bill-bowers
***
“Seriously, I don’t think you see the potential for hilarity here, and, you know, miming is one of the first things actors have to learn —”
“Do you not hear what I’m saying? We’re not doing mimes,” David snapped in a tone reminiscent of my mother when she’d finally had it “up to here” with her four daughters pestering her to add more impulse items to the shopping cart. “I. Hate. Mimes. There will not be mimes on our show. Ever. So don’t bring it up again.”
Terri and I simultaneously pulled back our heads and widened our eyes at each other, which is the universal body language for What is that guy’s deal?
We’d been brainstorming subjects for our friend and creative cohort to feature in her “Terri Tries It” segment that appears on the art-centric TV show that I produce and David directs. So far, Terri had tried everything from ballet to glass-blowing. David was often skeptical at first — he required convincing and thought-out planning before he’d even begin to consider a subject. But he had never before displayed this much contempt for any one idea.
“I don’t like mimes, you know,” I said. “I don’t find them funny at all, but I don’t hate them. What is it about them that you hate so much?”
“Hate’s a strong word. It would probably be more accurate to say that —”
“Fine, forget about hate, that’s not the point.” I fought off an argh, took a deep breath, and continued, “Why do you strongly dislike mimes? Is it because they’re like clowns? I mean, I hate clowns. Like, I really hate them. They freak me out.” I imagined David must have had some terrifying childhood mime encounter.
My coulrophobia (fear of clowns, it’s a thing) began when, at a young age, I saw the movie Poltergeist, in which a clown doll tries to kill a boy. As if the nightmares featuring that creepy killing toy clown weren’t traumatizing enough, I also watched Stephen King’s miniseries It, in which Tim Curry plays an evil monster clown with sharpened teeth. Killer Clowns from Outer Space sealed the deal.
More...
https://divabarbarella.com/read-weep/diary-of-a-diva/i-hate-mimes/
***
Étienne Decroux, the father of corporeal mime, developed a grammar of movement meant to internalize all of human drama within the body’s edges. For the head alone, he stipulated two hundred and fifty positions. He parsed a further one hundred and eight of the head’s inclinations to demonstrate yet a wider range of emotions, though he later realized even this was insufficient. And perhaps because I am not a mime student, mastering this sounds to me like a banausic prospect. There’s also little that’s natural in codified movements, though I suppose that’s the art of it. Otherwise, we would all be mimes by virtue of moving while keeping quiet.
Though if there is a grammar at work, then miming is a language, meaning mimes are far from silent. The mime is an artist, and artists cannot keep from clamoring for notice. Mimes chatter on while trying to make their faces disappear into a whiteness, trying to speak for all of us. Overlaying their skin with clown makeup to express universal emotion, whiting out their features so that we might more easily identify with the theatrical drama, so that we might perceive the mimes as our simulacra. As if we are just as loquacious, our own emotions just as stripped of color. As if because we fail to understand the grammar of movement and never studied mime in Paris, our bodies cannot form their own sentences.
More...
https://acrossthemargin.com/grammar-of-mime/
***
Marcel Marceau discusses the art of mime ; part 1
Marcel Marceau, world renown mine, discusses the art and history of pantomime. Marceau talks about mime throughout history from Ancient Rome to the 20th century. He discusses some well-known mimes such as Pierrot and Charlie Chaplin. From aging, to humor and tragedy, and different cultures, Marceau explores about how the art of mime affects and reflects society. They also discuss how Marceau created and plays Bip and how the audience interacts with his character.
https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/marcel-marceau-discusses-art-mime-part-1
--Marcel Marceau discusses the art of mime ; part 1
Marcel Marceau, world renown mine, discusses the art and history of pantomime. Marceau talks about mime throughout history from Ancient Rome to the 20th century. He discusses some well-known mimes such as Pierrot and Charlie Chaplin. From aging, to humor and tragedy, and different cultures, Marceau explores about how the art of mime affects and reflects society. They also discuss how Marceau created and plays Bip and how the audience interacts with his character.
https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/marcel-marceau-discusses-art-mime-part-1
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Sonnet by Archibald MacLeish
O too dull brain, O unperceiving
nerves
That cannot sense what so torments
my soul,
But like torn trees, when deep
Novembers roll
Tragic with mighty winds and
vaulting curves
Of sorrowful vast sound, and light
that swerves
In blown and tossing eddies, branch
and bole
Shudder and gesture with a
grotesque dole,
A grief that misconceives the grief
it serves,
O too dull brain,—with some more
subtle sense
I know you here within the
lightless room
Reaching your hand to me, and my
faint eyes
See only darkness and the night’s
expanse,
And horribly, within the listening
gloom,
My voice comes back, still eager
with surprise.
Archibald MacLeish’s poem “Sonnet”
was collected in The Happy Marriage and Other Poems (Houghton Mifflin Company,
1924). About MacLeish’s poetic work, Grover Smith, a noted scholar of T. S.
Eliot and professor emeritus at Duke University, wrote in his biography
Archibald MacLeish, “Between 1917 and 1924 MacLeish’s style acquired the
features of its maturity—conscious symbolism; witty, almost metaphysical
strategies of argument; composed and intense implications—all of these owing
much, though quite certainly not everything, to Eliot’s example. [...]
MacLeish’s poetry, for the most part, is not introspective, and this is why
indeed no persona is wanted. According to its own purposes, its diminution of
the persona is a strength: by this means it turns the reader away from the
endless labyrinths of subjective illusion and irony, the ‘echoing vault’ of the
poetic self, and invites him to contemplate the phenomenal world. It does not
vocalize that self: it can and often does fabricate a kind of disembodied speech,
or speech whose origin need not be known.”
Archibald MacLeish, born in
Glencoe, Illinois, on May 7, 1892, was a writer, Modernist poet, and lawyer. He
authored several books, including his epic poem Conquistador (Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1932) which won a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He served as a Chancellor
of the Academy of American Poets from 1946 to 1949. MacLeish died on April 20,
1982, in Boston.
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