Setting up readings/book signings for a new novel is always a very pleasant task, and for Under the Poppy there’s the added component of performance, a new boon. Shall we ask a floozy or two to sit in (or lie in, I guess, depending on the venue’s layout? (lieout?))? Should we get some Champagne? Every launch needs Champagne! Why not a puppet MC? Will I get my top hat back from the cleaner’s in time? And the musical component: there will be musical accompaniment (live, at the NYC reading); watch this space for eventual MP3s …. Being able to present a novel to its readers in this very personal way, this one-night-only moment, is to tie a lovely, gaudy, ephemeral bow around the whole, to offer a different kind of peek behind the curtain. Reading is performance. Writing is performance, is seduction, is a continuous flowing gesture of sleight-of-hand from “Once upon a time” to “happily ever after,” and if it’s done well it continues, a performance forever in the reader’s mind, whenever the book is recalled.
And if you should find yourself sitting next to a puppet, well, so much the better.
Via Clive Hicks-Jenkins, the gorgeous dervish-y devils of Berga, blind, burning, otherworldly. This is theatre, folks! Follow the link to peek beneath the costumes, under the fire.
… and Eileen Blumenthal, since I was happily wading, again, in the gorgeous swirl of her Puppetry: A World History, to B) console myself for not being able to get to the toy theatre blowout in Brooklyn, and A), be ravished anew by the grave and astonishing, rebellious and terrible performance of the eternal corps of extra-human actors she spotlights … Like Ilka Schonbein, say. Put some money in the little girl’s bowl, sir?
Very happy to see the gentleman of the road Chasing Ray this morning. And loved her reference to “Moulin Rouge” (very recently rewatched, in fact, by Diane and me) – it’s a movie that either ravishes or overwhelms you, a dichotomy familiar to the staff Under the Poppy ….
… without the question mark, because the name, not the title per se but the perceived genre of a book, so often determines its placement in that Worldwide Virtual Bookstore of Everyplace. Not to mention the more – most – valuable arena of all, readers’ word-of-mouth (as in, “I just read a great book called War and Peace!” “What’s it about?” OK, bad example, but you know what I mean).
So I have been bemused to see Under the Poppy categorized as historical fiction/gay romance/gay erotica/theater fiction(!), all of which are certainly true in the aggregate, none of which is everything the book is about. Herewith, what a very well-read and learned librarian of my acquaintance (hi, Kevin!) has to say:
“There isn’t anything that comes to mind as an already pre-existing genre slot that I think would fit the scope of the book without truncating part of it, which is the trouble with those kinds of labels generally. (As you well know!) But the most interesting books – or so it seems to me – always erupt out of their genre classifications. They’re rebellious!’
I love that. So the next time someone asks, I’m going to say that Under the Poppy is rebellious fiction, like puppets are rebellious entertainment, like love is rebellious energy, like life rebels every turning moment from the sludge of entropy! Or, as Bowie might put it, “Hot tramp! I love you so!”
Delighted to note that the film project based on my first novel, The Cipher, is now officially in development: it’s called “The Muse,” and more details will appear when I can share them. Until then, an extravagant tip of the top hat to the gentlemen concerned, oh yeah!
Federico Garcia Lorca, one of the great treasures of poetry and the stage – of civilization – wrote puppet plays as well. To wit:
“El retablillo de Don Cristóbal/The Farce of Don Cristóbal and the Maiden Rosita … Lorca’s puppet play that celebrates the defiance against dictatorial authority with knock-down-pratfall puppetry actually was performed on the battlefield to build troop morale against Franco’s forces. And what greater relief could there be than puppets in scenes of ribald joking and wild sex.” …Well, none.And PS, Blair Thomas‘ “Cabaret of Desire” stirs the same pot with a different spoon; I saw a production in Chicago a few years ago that I remember very fondly indeed. [Photo: Daniel Troconis.]
Of course we go to Motor City Pride every year, where you do run into the nicest characters … The puppet show, FYI, was for the wee folks and did not involve sex, deception, or the inordinate pulling of strings. [All photos: DC.]
This is one of the costume sketches Monika has created for the show: Here’s our lovely Lucy, a good-time floozy with a yen for far horizons. Seeing the costume is another way of seeing the character, isn’t it, another turn of the kaleidoscope.
It was really a wonderful challenge, recreating the characters from the novel for the stage presentation. Lucy, for example, is still wholly Lucy – curious, funny, sexy, commonsensical – but onstage she’s essence of Lucy, cooked down, made purest flavor, like a roux; she’s words, yes, and gesture too, she’s movement, she’s costume, she’s the scent of her own skin …. I’m not a poet, but I imagine this process of theatrical design and script and actor is, must be, something like the compressed energy of a poem: everything is there, under a kind of beautiful pressure, waiting for the lights to go down and the character to come alive. Like Galatea. Like water to wine.
