Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Jesus Christ Superstar Live & In Concert On NBC or whatever it was called

90% of what I know of the Christian Bible comes from two semesters of Western art history, meaning my familiarity is largely centered around the figures/moments that people have generally thought it’d be hot to draw. Which is likely why if you had asked me before yesterday, when I was reminded of the name, who ordered Jesus put to death, I think the best I would’ve come up with on short notice would be “…there are a lot of plosives. Pot…iades? no that’s Pylades, uh—”

It’s Pontius Pilate

I have a LOT of questions about Pontius Pilate after this evening

Such as: is this figure in the Bible at all similar to how he is in the 1970s rock musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber? Is this figure in this 1970s rock musical usually at all similar to what Ben Daniels is doing here, which I think I can best describe as “mohawk Jafar falls in love with the holy man he’s supposed to execute at the wrongest possible moment”? Sincerely whomst?? is allowing this??? to me?????

Going in I just thought oh this’ll be fun, Ben Daniels is gonna play this villain that sends John Legend to the cross while dressed like Zaphod Beeblebrox, this will be entertainingly adjacent to, while not exacerbating, my Exorcist situation. But nooOOOooo, no Ben Daniels is gonna have to be all like [close, desperate]—you have to let me help you, they want you dead!, and then just break his voice open on the jagged enormity of his feelings when he finally does, indeed, send John Legend to the cross while dressed like Zaphod Beeblebrox.

HEY THIS DID NOT HELP ME CALM DOWN AT AAAALLLLLL

Anyway Deep V’s: The Musical was pretty great, I enjoyed this, and @memory-for-trifles and @fursasaida are on suspension until further notice

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[wellntruly]

fursasaida replied to your post “actualmichelle replied to your post “ewanspotter replied to your post…”

i dunno if Jesus Christ Superstar (or indeed musicals) is your thing, but Ben Daniels was Pontius Pilate in the live production they did with John Legend recently and he FUCK. KING. KILLED. IT. even the part where his singing voice kind of failed him worked! he integrated it into his performance! we stan a professional who has found a niche called “gay and overwhelmed by divinity”!!!

quite early memory-for-trifles sent me this image

[wellntruly]

L o l  I queued this as a placeholder draft in the middle of the night last night after getting back late from a real good three women production of Macbeth, then fell asleep and forgot to…expand on it. WHOOPS. AT LEAST IT TURNED OUT TO BE FUNNY.

Anyway YES, I am pro musicals! I used to joke I had to leave professional theatre due to how few of them I know, thanks to my insane devotion to never listening to a cast album before seeing a staged production, but I like ‘em, I like ‘em a lot. But in fact, I do actually know one singular song from Jesus Christ Superstar, as a friend put it on a mix CD she gave me in high school and maaaannnn I loved it and I wish I could remember anything besides the melody right now so I could tell you what it is. God I’ve gotten myself so sleep deprived this week I was literally just humming aloud like that was going to help you.

The point is: a filmed live production neatly circumvents my rule, something I’ve just realized and am so elated about?? Because look at Ben Daniels in this OUTFIT? Is that like a wine-colored blazer over LAMÉ? Lordt.

You have also provided us with another in the devastatingly good collection People Describe Ben Daniels Characters:

“existential snackness”
“gay and overwhelmed by divinity!!!”

[wellntruly]

It all came back to me at once it was ‘Everything’s Alright’ sung by Sarah Brightman and I listened to it for the first time in ages and Did at one point just release a dry sob of feeling for no reason I can clearly explain!

This is gonna go well!

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[wellntruly]

fursasaida replied to your post “actualmichelle replied to your post “ewanspotter replied to your post…”

i dunno if Jesus Christ Superstar (or indeed musicals) is your thing, but Ben Daniels was Pontius Pilate in the live production they did with John Legend recently and he FUCK. KING. KILLED. IT. even the part where his singing voice kind of failed him worked! he integrated it into his performance! we stan a professional who has found a niche called “gay and overwhelmed by divinity”!!!

quite early memory-for-trifles sent me this image

[wellntruly]

L o l  I queued this as a placeholder draft in the middle of the night last night after getting back late from a real good three women production of Macbeth, then fell asleep and forgot to…expand on it. WHOOPS. AT LEAST IT TURNED OUT TO BE FUNNY.

Anyway YES, I am pro musicals! I used to joke I had to leave professional theatre due to how few of them I know, thanks to my insane devotion to never listening to a cast album before seeing a staged production, but I like ‘em, I like ‘em a lot. But in fact, I do actually know one singular song from Jesus Christ Superstar, as a friend put it on a mix CD she gave me in high school and maaaannnn I loved it and I wish I could remember anything besides the melody right now so I could tell you what it is. God I’ve gotten myself so sleep deprived this week I was literally just humming aloud like that was going to help you.

The point is: a filmed live production neatly circumvents my rule, something I’ve just realized and am so elated about?? Because look at Ben Daniels in this OUTFIT? Is that like a wine-colored blazer over LAMÉ? Lordt.

You have also provided us with another in the devastatingly good collection People Describe Ben Daniels Characters:

“existential snackness”
“gay and overwhelmed by divinity!!!”

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[macklesufficient]

i have a bunch of shit to do today and im gonna need a distraction later so rn i’ll say “while many couples in the literary canon had previously demonstrated classic tenderness there is a Modern Tenderness™️ that was 100% invented by beatrice and benedick” and hope somebody asks me to explain

[macklesufficient]

oh, well thank u for asking!!!

ok so y’all know that i am queen of Stop Complaining About Love At First Sight In Shakespeare Plays It Was A Common Plot Device And I’m Sorry But You Really Just Gotta Fuckin Roll With It, Treat It Like Ghosts/Fairies/Witches IE A Fantastical Element That Enables The Plot To Occur but what’s so special about beatrice and benedick is that they’re one of the exceptionally few shakespearean couples (hamlet and ophelia are a notable exception, though they’re at least romantically involved from the jump) who already have a long history with each other when we meet them. and, as we learn later, there is a whole ass background to them that we hear exactly one (1) explicit reference to, beatrice’s quiet admission at the party about her double heart for his single one, false dice, etc. (and plenty of old plays are about gossip, but god does this old play about gossip feel modern in the little slices of ancient history we get, the small-town drama of ill-kept secrets). but with everything that they are to each other and have been, through all the merry wars of wit etc etc, what i love love love about beatrice and benedick is that they’re friends

they’re old friends. they’ve known each other forever (i get frustrated by ppl casting them as twenty-somethings; not only does it textually make more sense for them to be older, but why wouldn’t you take the opportunity for them to have known each other since they were young-n-stupid and now, twenty years later, find themselves in their forties and no less stupid for the effort??). they have inside jokes, for god’s sake. lbr, “you always end with a jade’s trick” is referring to SOMETHING— sexual? embarrassing? both? only beatrice and benedick know

i have such a vivid picture in my mind of exactly how id stage their scene right after the wedding:

time has passed. out in the backyard the wedding decorations have sagged, chairs are kicked over, crepe paper sits in sad little heaps as beatrice sits in a deck chair chain-smoking in her bridesmaid’s dress. she’s in that post-crying phase of “my makeup dried all down my face in weird tragic rivulets and i look absolutely batshit but why bother wiping it off im just gonna start crying again” when benedick shows up, and god how fckin tender is “have you wept all this while?” “ay and i will weep awhile longer” “i will not desire that”. you can just see him standing there on the back porch, all limp and useless because the woman he loves is in pain and he can’t do anything about it. so he plops down next to her and they sit there in sad but companionable silence, a moment of stillness after all the chaos, until finally it settles over him that god who even cares? everything’s fucked and all these secrets are so stupid and they both know it anyway so it’s very casually that he reaches over, swipes her cigarette from her fingers, takes a drag and says “i do love nothing in the world so well as you. is not that strange?”

two old friends side by side during a crisis. twenty years and the timing’s never been right, but it never is, is it? and one friend says to the other “it’s been you the whole time. fuckin wild, huh?”

modern tenderness/mortifying ordeal of being known/self recognition through the other etc

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[omgthatdress]

Barbette was a unique performer in that she was primarily a high-wire and trapeze artist. Having taught herself to walk on a high wire using her mother’s clothes line, she took the second role in a traveling circus act called the Alfaretta Sisters (one of the sisters had unexpectedly died and had to be replaced). She performed fabulous aerial stunts, maintaining the illusion of femininity until the end, in which she revealed that she was, in fact, a man. Soon, she was premiering at the Harlem Opera House, and then in Paris. 

There, she met, worked with, and fell in love with artist Jean Cocteau. Described by Cocteau, “[Barbette] transforms effortlessly back and forth between man and woman. His female glamour and elegance Cocteau likens to a cloud of dust thrown into the eyes of the audience, blinding it to the masculinity of the movements he needs to perform his acrobatics. That blindness is so complete that at the end of his act, Barbette does not simply remove his wig but instead plays the part of a man. He rolls his shoulders, stretches his hands, swells his muscles…And after the fifteenth or so curtain call, he gives a mischievous wink, shifts from foot to foot, mimes a bit of an apology, and does a shuffling little street urchin dance – all of it to erase the fabulous, dying-swan impression left by the act.”

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[forophelia]

“GUILDENSTERN: It’s autumnal. ROSENCRANTZ (examining the ground): No leaves. GUILDENSTERN: Autumnal - nothing to do with leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at the edges of the day… Brown is creeping up on us, take my word for it… Russets and tangerine shades of old gold flushing the very outside edge of the senses… deep shining ochres, burnt umber and parchments of baked earth — reflecting on itself and through itself, filtering the light. At such times, perhaps, coincidentally, the leaves might fall, somewhere, by repute. Yesterday was blue, like smoke.”

— Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (via thebluesthour)

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[doggos-with-jobs]

Service dogs training to sit through a movie at a theater.

[driftwooddragons]

It’s actually better than that - the picture comes from dogs being trained to sit through a PLAY… which means there are actors on the stage performing a musical for a theatre full of dogs.

[tienriu]

Incredible vital update, it was a performance of Billy Elliot.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Red may have been purple in antiquity, as the Greeks had a very different conception of colour to ours. For instance, they had no word for true blue. Was Clytemnestra’s carpet purple, or was it crimson? Was the imperial purple, in fact, red? Let us believe that Clytemnestra wove a crimson carpet for Agamemnon – blood red with a touch of blue in the blood. When he stepped on this first carpet he committed the sin of hubris, and was murdered. Red carpets lead to assassination. Revolutions die in their own red. Have you ever stepped on a red carpet? Felt the pomp and circumstance? Before it was pulled from under your feet? Red betrays.

from the chapter “On Seeing Red”, from Chroma, Derek Jarman (via a-witches-brew)

as far as i can tell from reconstructions of the murex dye color, the imperial purple was, in fact, magenta.

(via undercrowns)

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[plainwaterpdf]