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Lilith

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Yesterday I went to see Claron McFadden perform her musical theater piece Lilith. It was shown in the Grand Theatre, which was fun as I had never been there. I had to work before hand, but had some time in between work and the show since it didn’t start until 20:30. So, I met up with Gert and we had dinner at Pappa Joe’s after which we walked in the direction of the theater before going our separate ways.

The Grand Theatre is smaller than I imagined it would be, and also in a shabbier state. It does have a nice atmosphere, though.

Claron McFadden LilithThe show itself is a two player piece done by McFadden (in the flesh) and Jeroen Willems (on projected video) about the biblical Lilith. In Jewish folklore, she became the first wife of Adam, created at the same time as him, who later left him (as she would not be submissive to him) for the archangel Samael.

In the piece, we meet Lilith in a mostly modern-day setting. She and Adam have separated long ago and she tells us, in speech and in song, of her life both back then, with Adam, and her life after. This is interspersed with Adam, shown on a screen, in a talking-head interview style, who also speaks of Lilith and their life back then, and his current life with Eve and the kids.

Adam seems to have never quite gotten over Lilith, but also cannot live with her free spirit. Lilith struggles. She loved Adam, but she is a free spirit, her own woman, equal to him. As they both speak, and sing, we get occasional flashbacks where the projection changes to a top down view of a bed with Adam in it. McFadden then stands in front of the screen to play her part as if in bed with him while they talk, and argue.

As time went on, and Adam started being weirded out by her passion for life in all its facets and her willingness to embrace it. He becomes more restrictive, and wants her to obey and submit to him, culminating in an incredibly powerful rape scene performed by McFadden in front of the screen.

After this, Lilith left Adam, and ended up with Samael. But over the years, this has not made her happier. The same goes for Adam, he married Eve, had children, but he misses the life that Lilith brought. In the end, both can’t live with, or without each other.

I really enjoyed the show, it was something I hadn’t seen before. I chose the piece because I was intrigued by its description, not only of the story, but also of the fact that Willems’ part was on screen only. I also read he died shortly after the show premiered a few years ago, so I thought that might be the reason, but it was really done because it fits the piece much better. It leaves the focus solely on Lilith, which she deserves.

I am impressed McFadden is able to play with a video projection so well, even though she’s had years of practice with it by now. It must be tough, playing with someone you know isn’t there anymore.

The music wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I had read up on McFadden and knew she was a trained soprano, so I was expecting more classic like music. Instead it is much jazzier and much more down to earth. It takes some getting used to in the beginning, but then you realise it fits the story perfectly.

War Horse

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war_4-1280x800Yesterday, Mom and I went to see the theater production of War Horse. It was beyond amazing.

It tells the story of the English boy Albert who acquires a horse, Joey, and then loses it to the military when World War I comes around. He enlists in the army to try and find Joey again and promises to bring him home. We then follow both of them through the war. Joey is used in the cavalry, pulls medical carts and cannons. Albert goes from trench to trench. In the end, just as Albert, wounded, is about to give up, he and Joey get reunited.

The animals in the show are puppets, made by the same company that made the Lion King puppets. There are a number of horses, but only two of them are main characters. So these two are the most elaborate and require three people to play them.

It was an amazing show, the story line itself is a bit simplistic, but seeing as how the book it is based on is a children’s book, that is to be expected. The decor was very understated. Freestanding doors and a window frame on a string to indicate the houses, iron poles held by people to signify fences, a plow, a cannon. High above the stage was a big projector screen shaped like a torn piece of paper. On there, throughout the show, hand drawn animations were shown to display scenery (extrapolated from what was shown on stage) and drive home the horrors of WWI (which really packs a punch) with also occasionally dates and places to give an idea of when and where everything takes place.

The horses look fantastic and the choreography and movement is so well done that, within minutes, they transcend their form and become real. We were seated first row on the balcony giving us an unencumbered view of the whole stage and allowing me to lean on the balustrade and just be totally immersed.

Mary Stuart

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ms 9092_791x545Yesterday I went to see the play Mary Stuart, written by Friedrich Schiller.  It was performed by Toneelgroep Amsterdam together with Toneelhuis, from Ghent, and directed by Ivo van Hove. It features Chris Nietveld as Queen Elizabeth and Halina Reijn as Mary Stuart. The play covers the final months of Mary Stuarts captivity. She has been convicted of treason, for which the sentence is death, but the sentencing, by the Queen, has not yet been done. The Queen is in doubt. One the one hand, she cannot let Mary live, she will always be a threat to her reign, and it will make her seem weak. On the other hand, she also can’t order the execution, as she is then directly responsible for killing another queen, which will incite the part of the populace that is sympathetic to Mary.

The play is fairly cerebral. It is sparse in decor and costume. A bare back wall with some benches in front for the actors to sit on while they wait their turns, a door in the middle for dramatic exits and entrances. The actors are all dressed in black. The men in costume, the women in basic dresses. All the attention is on the lines, the delivery, the interplay between the characters as they speak, fight, beg, command and despair.

ms 9114_791x545The moment where Elizabeth and Mary meet, even though they never did in real life, is the the best part, performance wise. They speak of their lives as ruling women in a men’s world. About power, about responsibility, loneliness, strength and the perception of weakness, and about personal and public lives. About knowing that they are more than just Elizabeth and Mary, they know these are the moments of History. What they do then and there, is what History will reduce them to.

At the end, when the execution has been ordered, in a round-about way, we see the only moment of extravagance. Mary Stuart appears, dressed as we all know her from paintings and descriptions. No longer herself, she is (and knows it) now just the historical figure, about to be executed, about to be placed on the wrong side of History. When the deed is done, Elizabeth appears, likewise dressed as we all know her. She knows that, whatever her personal feelings on the matter, she, too, has been placed in the annals of History to be judged by the generations after her.

ms 100_791x545The only thing I couldn’t really get into was a bit in the middle where Elizabeth goes a walking, and dances in the park with one of her underlings. And since they chose, for the music, an electronic rendition of music of that period, the dance is also a weird, modern thing that I didn’t really like.

That notwithstanding, the play is excellent and deserves to be seen by as many people as possible!

Strange Things Did Happen Here

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Saw Mockingjay (part 1) tonight with Kim. I was very curious to see how they would continue and especially how they would split it. The first two parts were really good, so I was hoping they would continue that trend. And they did.

It’s a really good film. A comfortable pacing keeping the action happening while making time for emotional gut-punch moments so you actually get to experience the feels and not rush through them. I think they made a good choice where to make the cut and end this part. This way parts 1 and 2 aren’t just one film that just happens to be in two parts, but each have a different all-over theme.

They also made a really good rendition of the Hanging Tree song, which is very nicely sung by Jennifer Lawrence. It becomes a tune that sticks in your head.

We stopped at Starbucks on the way back since I’d seen the sign announcing the return of the Christmas flavours the other day and I love honey almond hot chocolate. It’s like drinking a liquid marzipan bar, one of those with a thin layer of chocolate around them.

Welcome to Your Life

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I’m liking Luke Evans more and more. I saw him, consciously, for the first time in The Hobbit (where I was, at first, mightily confused about the two Orlando Blooms…) and I really like what he does with Bard. Today I saw him in Dracula Untold.

I’ve been seeing the trailer for weeks now and it pushes all my buttons. Supernatural creatures, historical referencing, fantastic costumes and sets, and a good lead actor. So, Gert and I went to see it. As I expected I loved the movie. It’s a fictionalized account (obviously) of Vlad the Impaler. As a kid, he was traded to the Ottoman Empire to be raised there as a political hostage together with a 1000 boys for the Ottomans to use as cannon fodder in their army. As such, he fought in the Ottoman army as well and there gained his nickname of The Impaler for the heinous ways he would dispose of his enemies.

As an adult, no longer suited to fight, he is released and returns home, the Ottomans decline somewhat. He gets married, takes over the throne and has a son, all the while trying desperately to forget the past. This works decently until about ten years later. Over the years, the Ottomans have started to rise in power again. There are incursions of scouts and an all around feeling of unease.

One night, during a banquet of sorts, the Ottoman prince comes a-calling. He is of the same age as Vlad, they were raised together.  But tonight he comes to claim another 1000 boys, including the young prince. Vlad refuses him and a fight breaks out. He loses the fight and is forced to concede. A few days later, they meet the Prince’s caravan on the road to do the hand-over of the boy. There, Vlad rebels and kills the men of the Prince and rides off.

Having basically put his country at war with the Ottomans, Vlad searches for help. He enters a cavern in the mountains of which there are many rumours of horrible things. In there, he meets the vampire and strikes a deal. He gains the powers of a vampire for three days and three nights. If he does not succumb to the powers in that time (i.e. drinks human blood) he will regain his humanity afterwards. If he does succumb, he will become the vampire.

With his new found powers, Vlad takes on the Ottomans in battle and fights both them, and his new urges, while trying to hide the monstrous side of his abilities from his family and his people.

Drents Museum

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The Drents Museum has an exhibition about mummies. Or had, I should say, yesterday was the last day. Nico, Jeroen and I had been planning to go for a while, but hadn’t managed to set a date yet. Until I realised, in early August, that we only had the month left. After some scheduling mishaps, we settled on yesterday, the 31st. Unfortunately, Nico had to bow out at the last minute 🙁

Drentish RainI met up with Jeroen near the station in Assen and we walked to the Museum. Along the way it started raining, and it got so bad we stopped for about ten minutes to hide out under an overhang in front of a realtor’s office.

The rain kept going but lessened some, so we risked it for the final bit. It wasn’t that far anymore, and with the waiting we arrived just minutes after it had opened for the day. After getting our tickets (free due to a promotion on their website) we went straight for the mummy part.

The exhibition aimed to show what mummies are, how they came to be and what makes them so well preserved. Mummies generally elicit surprise and fascination so they got together about 60 human and animal mummies to show the diversity. Mummies aren’t just Egyptian pharaohs like Tutankhamen, mummies are also Nazca people from Peru buried in their arid climate, or Hungarian people laid to rest in an airtight sealed crypt below their church, or the bog bodies the Drents Museum already had and is famous for (like the Yde Girl).

Early Medieval Coin HoardThere were many educational wall panels detailing mummification and its rituals through the ages, which was very interesting to read and see. The floor layout was  bit weird as it all circled around which led to some confusion at some points which way to go and what we had already seen.

After finishing the mummies, we had lunch in the Museum Café and then wandered through some parts of the permanent exhibition. Most of that hadn’t changed since last time, though, so we were done pretty fast. We did see the new early medieval gold coin hoard they acquired early this year after it was found by two dudes with a metal detector.

The hoard consists of 47 gold coins dating to the 5th and 6th centuries. They are primarily Byzantine with a few Merovingian, Ostrogothian and Late-Roman ones thrown in.

Of course we also had to check out the Museum shop. I bought the book/catalog of the Exhibition, as well as a book on Prehistoric Netherlands and some postcards.

Around the Internet VI

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Interesting read

“Each edition of the paper contained dozens of these announcements, every one more mundane and unimportant than the last. It seemed to me that these were nothing more than Facebook updates. The only purpose they served was to keep a community of people — in this case whoever had access to the newspaper — updated about what was going on in someone else’s life. We often talk about social media as some sort of new invention of the technological age, but here was the evidence that it has existed for much longer.”

http://airshipdaily.com/blog/08072014-ancient-social-media

 

Portion of Andromeda Galaxy (M31)

“The largest NASA Hubble Space Telescope image ever assembled, this sweeping bird’s-eye view of a portion of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) is the sharpest large composite image ever taken of our galactic next-door neighbor. Though the galaxy is over 2 million light-years away, The Hubble Space Telescope is powerful enough to resolve individual stars in a 61,000-light-year-long stretch of the galaxy’s pancake-shaped disk. It’s like photographing a beach and resolving individual grains of sand. And there are lots of stars in this sweeping view — over 100 million, with some of them in thousands of star clusters seen embedded in the disk.”

“Because the galaxy is only 2.5 million light-years from Earth, it is a much bigger target in the sky than the myriad galaxies Hubble routinely photographs that are billions of light-years away. This means that the Hubble survey is assembled together into a mosaic image using 7,398 exposures taken over 411 individual pointings.”

“The panorama is the product of the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT) program. Images were obtained from viewing the galaxy in near-ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared wavelengths, using the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera 3 aboard Hubble. This cropped view shows a 48,000-light-year-long stretch of the galaxy in its natural visible-light color, as photographed with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys in red and blue filters.”

So, the image above isn’t even all of it 😀 See the full article here, and see the video below for a fly-through of the panorama.

 

Hokusai_Tea_house_at_Koishikawa._The_morning_after_a_snowfall-catzilla-w

Katsushika Hokusai, Tea house at Koishikawa. The morning after a snowfall. Catzilla attacks. From 36 views of Mount Fuji, no 11

 

 

And, finally, over at FatCatArt, Zarathustra the Cat gets inserted into well known art pieces.

“Indeed, it is not very trustworthy that humans are gazing just at birds, they are not cats to be entertained by flying creatures! But humans love to watch cats doing most weird things endlessly.

So Our version is true one.

Thus speaks Zarathustra the Cat”

 

 

Everything is Awesome!

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1896772_10151991815823155_1701450211_n1897667_10151991838918155_1913042448_nWe have a new kitchen cabinet! It is awesome and glorious! Nienke’s parents had it in their hallway, where it stood in the way for years. So they offered it to us since we were looking for a better cabinet. We went to pick it up Tuesday. So thanks to Nienke’s Parents for parting with it, and Dad for driving us there to pick it up. We ended up putting it against the side wall (left of where it is in the picture) because that fit better, and also allowed us to rearrange some other cabinetry. Bottom is for large(r) tools and random crap, top for plates. And on top of it…

Wednesday Gert and I went to the movies, double feature time 😀 We started with an early afternoon Vampire Academy, which is a very uneven movie. Disjointed story, jumpy cuts, and it doesn’t know whether it wants to be a high school dramedy or a supernatural vampire movie. I did like the girl playing Rose and the dude playing Dimitri, though. In between we walked around the city and ate at La Place before going back to see The Lego Movie. I had low expectations of it, but it was definitely awesome!

Thursday I got the day off, which gives me a glorious four day weekend! Played lots of Warcraft these last few days. Also stopped at Bruna yesterday and picked up some comics. Today I got fresh bread stuff from the bakery for breakfast, made a giant pan of soup, stopped at the Blokker and got a lantern for the window sill and read my comics 😀

Also ordered tickets to two shows that are coming up at the Stadschouwburg. On April 8 there’s a play/music theater version of Gone With the Wind which seemed interesting so I got two tickets for that, we’ll see who wants to go with 😀 On June 2, Daniel Lohues is performing so I got two tickets for that as well to go there with Mom.