A MAD WORLD 

MY MASTERS*                                                                

Here’s some splutter I came across on t’Interweb the other day.

                                                                          

"Hollywood and the entertainment industry are paying more and more attention to issues of diversity and gender equality in films and television shows and now Walt Disney Studios has a new tool to help. Announced at the New Zealand Power of Inclusion Summit earlier this week, Disney is partnering with Geena Davis and her Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media to deploy a new tool that functions as a "spellcheck" for gender bias in film and television scripts.

According to a report from The Hollywood Reporter, the new "GD-IQ: Spellcheck for Bias" tool is an AI technology-using digital tool that is able to analyze a script's text and evaluate the number of male and female characters and if the breakdown is representative of the actual population. The tool, which was developed at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, can also be used to evaluate how many characters are LGBTQ+, are people of colour, have disabilities as well as other groups frequently underrepresented in media. Additionally, the tool can check the number of lines spoken by group as well as additional characteristics. According to Davis, Disney is the pilot partner for the tool."

I checked that it wasn’t All Fools’ Day... but it wasn’t. Then I pinched myself to make sure it wasn’t a bad dream… nope! Well they do say truth is stranger than fiction.

But then I twigged it. This must be down (get it) to the impact that this megastar met with after driving off that cliff in the film ‘Thelma and Louise’. The mega G force landing couldn’t have done much good for the old grey matter. And I thought they used stunt drivers… but there you go… and stop… suddenly!

So, if the judgemental Gina has her way, I reckon that the entire Shakespeare canon won’t make the grade, along with plays by the likes of George Bernard Shaw, Anton Chekhov, Neil Simon and Molière, to mention only a few. Varied as the characters are in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ I suppose the Association for the Advancement of Aardvarks would have an issue with an accurate dramatisation, since there is nary an “African ant bear” in Lewis Carroll’s classic. The closest thing is the Duchess’s baby that turns into a pig!

Joking aside, this is seriously sinister…. shades of ‘1984’… and they are all greyish. Of course the Thinkpol would be cock-a-hoop… or should that now be, “cock and hen-a-hoop”! Gosh, we really are going to have mind our Ps and Qs… which unfortunately excludes twenty-four other letters of the alphabet! Wow… this is a minefield… or should it be “a yourfield, or “an ourfield”? Stop the world I want to get out!

 

In the month of March this year, in London, there was a production of Shakespeare’s ‘Richard II’ featuring an all-female cast of... “women of colour”. We are talking historical figures here… living beings. Yes, the Bard was occasionally a little cavalier with history, but not to that extent.

“During the Stalin era, Russian history was rewritten to conform to the political demands of an increasingly controlling regime.” ‘Rewriting Russian History: Stalin Era Representations’ -

Ludmilla A. Trigos

“‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’” 1984 - George Orwell

*’A Mad World, My Masters’ is a Jacobean stage play written by Thomas Middleton, a comedy first performed around 1605 and first published in 1608. It would surely be a victim of the blue stocking’s blue pencil!

               

            

ALL RIGHT
ON THE 
KNIGHT!

So shout, hip-hip-hooray,
He's a jolly good fellow…
21 today!*

Yes… my twenty-first script has just had a bottle of bubble bath broken over its bows, before sliding down the slipway… sideways.

The title is "Flimflamalot – a prank in King Arthur’s court"

All right...  it’s from the same stable as the Python’s ‘Spamalot’, which was a spin-off of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", but then the story goes all the way back to 1135 (that’s the year, not twenty-five minutes to midnight) when Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote “Historia regum Britanniae”, (“History of the Kings of Britain”) a fictional work, which includes an account of King Arthur’s conquests.

Fast forward to 1889, when the American humourist and writer, Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) wrote “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court “, which was filmed in 1931 as “A Connecticut Yankee”, starring Will Rogers. In 1949, Bing Crosby played the time-traveller in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”, which was a musical film adaptation of the novel.

“The Sword in the Stone” was a 1963 Disney animated film about Arthur's childhood, loosely adapted from T.H. White's take on the legend.

The "Carry On" team’s 1975 TV series, “Carry On Laughing” included two courtly contributions… “"Under the Round Table", and "Short Knight, Long Daze".

The French series "Kaamelott" (2005–2009) featured a humorous look at the legend.

And so it goes on...

Nothing new there then, well. apart from my script, which incidentally, could be

conveniently performed at any time of the year, as part of a regular season.

Hey… that’s cool!

Well… it was the age of shivery!

* The song, “I’m Twenty-One Today” was made popular by the English music hall comedian and singer, Jack Pleasants (1875–1924) Born in Bradford, he was a regular in pantomimes. His repertoire also included, “Come in and Cut Yourself a Piece of Cake”, “I Want to be Pally with Everyone”, “It's My Bath Night Tonight”, “Where Do Flies Go in the Winter Time?” and the self-effacing, “I’m Shy, Mary Ellen, I’m Shy”.

THINGS TO DON’T 

                                             

I came across the following whilst searching through the Internet Archive (Internet Archive: Digital Library  (archive.org)

                    

It’s from: HUMOROUS HOMESPUN DIALOGUES by Willis N. Bugbee (great name!) Published by T. S. DENNISON & COMPANY, CHICAGO (hence the American spelling), in 1913, and still relevant, I reckon! 

A DOZEN DON’TS 
REGARDING THE PRESENTATION OF DIALOGUES

Don’t select a dialogue or play without first considering whether your would-be performers have the ability to present it in a creditable manner.

Don’t assign important parts to those who cannot or will not attend all rehearsals, or to those who are extremely timid on the stage.

Don’t give an old man part to one who can do straight work better. In other words assign the parts to fit the players.

Don’t attempt to direct or coach a dialogue until you have studied it carefully and understand yourself, just how it should be presented – what expressions and gestures are needed to make it most effective.

Don’t stop rehearsing until every line is thoroughly memorized and every detail has been mastered. The first meeting should be for a reading of the play, the last one should be a full dress rehearsal.

Don’t think that the memorizing and reciting of the words alone will make your dialogue a success. There are many expressions, gestures, movements, etc. that are not given in the text, but are almost as essential as the words themselves.

Don’t allow unnecessary interruptions during rehearsals. Insist that all laughing, talking, joking, etc. be postponed until the rehearsal is over.

Don’t allow mumbling. Require that each and every one speak loud enough to be heard distinctly in all parts of the building.

Don’t be discouraged if the first few rehearsals do not seem to bring the results you expect. It takes considerable time and a great deal of patience before you may hope to attain the degree of perfection you desire.

Don’t fail to have all accessories (costumes, properties etc.) on hand at just the proper time and proper place. A failure to do so may spoil the whole performance.

Don’t depend too much on the prompter. Although he/she is quite necessary to a well conducted entertainment, yet the least he has to do apparently, the more successful the performance.

Don’t trust to luck unless hard work goes with it. If you have assigned the parts wisely, drilled thoroughly, and attended to all the little details of the play, your success is reasonably assured.

HEIGH HO!

I watched Disney’s ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ on a DVD a couple of nights ago. It was the latest addition to my collection, which has been acquired from car boot sales and charity shops… did I mention I was a Yorkshireman? We like a bargain… and if there's owt for nowt, we'll be there with a barra!

This landmark in cinema history premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles on December 21, 1937. Golly gee billycans! It’s even older than I am!

It was the first full-length cel-animated feature film, and the process of bringing the classic story to the screen involved some 750 artists. Disney's multiplane camera, used up to seven layers of artwork (painted in oils on glass) shot under a vertical and moveable camera, to give a three-dimensional feeling in many sequences and it was also used to give a rotating effect in the scene where the Queen transforms into a witch.

The undertaking was dubbed “Disney’s folly” by the Hollywood harbingers, many of whom were convinced that the film would bankrupt the studio.

However, the well-over-budget $1.5 million production costs were more than covered by the $8 million gross box office receipts from its initial worldwide release. The rest… as they say… is history!

Currently, the film’s lifetime gross is around $418 million. When this figure is adjusted for inflation that places it in the top-10 American film money-makers of all time.

From a pantomime point of view I came across this 1935 quote from Walter Elias Disney…

“The first duty of the cartoon is not to picture or duplicate real action or things as they actually happen - but to give a caricature of life and action - to picture on the screen things that have run thru the imagination of the audience to bring to life dream-fantasies and imaginative fancies that we have all thought of during our lives or have had pictured to us in various forms during our lives… I definitely feel that we cannot do the fantastic things, based on the real, unless we first know the real. This point should be brought out very clearly to all new men, and even the older men.”

I reckon this applies to a stage production as well as one destined for the silver screen.

NAPPY NEW YEAR
to all our reader!
2019

May the Good Fairy sprinkle stardust on your bippy!