shilling for josh
Ya’ll might notice a brand new addition to the sidebar. Yup, I’m actually suggesting you go out and buy something.
I get absolutely nothing out of this deal, so don’t worry that I have sold my soul… or even minority shares in a soul-like substance (“Get xOUL®! Now with 50% less existential inertia!”)
Rather, over a hearty meal of eggs, hashbrowns, and enough sausages to build a credible log-cabin model, I tried to explain what the whole purpose of Space Monkey Pants was to my buddy Josh (final diagnosis = time-waster extraordinaire). He quietly mentioned that I could, if I was so inclined and didn’t feel that it was too much of an imposition, possibly mention his two published plays in the hopes that maybe one or two people, out of the three or four of you that come here for anything other than pictures of animals or amusing tales of my own personal mortification, might actually consider purchasing them… before the vodka gin/wine/scotch haze settles over your eyes once again (yes, I’m looking at you, Jenny).
So, gamely trying to be a good friend — and in attempt to counteract the unfortunate karmic backlash of somehow ALWAYS being out playing Ultimate every single time he calls — I promised Josh I would go forth and wield my massive zeitgeist-influencing powers and shill his books.
So.
Josh is my oldest friend. We have known each other since Grade 7. He lets me read his comic books. All valid reasons to support him.
But another valid reason is that his plays are GOOD.
The first play of his that was published is called Halo:
When an image of Jesus appears on the side of a Tim Hortons restaurant in Nately, Nova Scotia, life is forever changed. The town’s inhabitants are challenged to ask difficult questions about faith, life and love with sometimes moving, sometimes hilarious results. Complicating the matter, of course, are the more mundane questions of whether this appearance is a miracle, an accident, or a quite possibly even a hoax.
At the centre of this wickedly entertaining play resides the more existential and personal question of what has happened to our notion of meaning and ethics in the strip-mall culture of concrete and crass competition which has replaced a more pastoral and rural life of care for the earth, the cycle of the seasons and its festivals, and the blessings of renewal in the family. Has religion lost the ability to mediate these two conditions, or did it ever really have that power?
Halo is a brilliant examination of the need to believe and the power of forgiveness.
His second play is Whereverville:
Dragging Newfoundland “kicking and screaming into the 20th century” (a quote attributed to Joey Smallwood), resettlement was a carrot-and-stick approach to depopulating the province’s fishing outports. Communities were encouraged to abandon themselves in exchange for financial aid and the promise of better services in centralized “growth” towns. Between 1954 and 1975, the Federal and Provincial governments brought about the move of over 300 communities and 30,000 people. First and foremost, Whereverville is a work of fiction and its setting, the imaginary community of Loam Bay, does not appear on any map–tellingly, however, neither do many of the 300 communities by which this play was inspired.
Set in a one-room school house during the decisive evening of the community’s vote on whether to stay or leave, Josh MacDonald’s play is an intriguing reversal of and homage to Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle. While in Brecht’s play, the conclusion of the conflict over a community is that “those best able to take care of the land should possess it,” in Whereverville the conclusion is that “those no longer able to take care of the land should leave it.”
In both plays, it is the heart and mind of a young woman bereft of her future on which the action turns. It is Loam Bay’s schoolteacher, Abby Shea, herself “from away,” who holds the deciding vote as she struggles with her own phantom attachment to the community, its citizens and its ghosts of times past, and it is she who must learn that sometimes, in order to keep what we hold most dear, we must give it away–that “nothing lasts.”
So, I implore those of you interested, go forth and purchase some fine examples of Nova Scotian drama.
Final Josh Fun-Fact: Josh was in Titanic. For 38/100th of a second.
May 2nd, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Wow - what a talented friend you have! Those are always good to have. Both plays sound great, although I’m quite intrigued by Halo. And since he let(s) you read his comic books, I just can’t say no!
BTW… my drunken haze is almost never vodka-induced. Gin, maybe. Wine, probably. Scotch, definitely. But vodka, rarely.
May 3rd, 2006 at 7:46 am
Hailing from the land of NS (for a bit anyway) I am familiar with Mr MacDonald’s work. Indeed, I remember when HALO came out and read great reviews (perhaps I can be of assistance in recommending said works) but of course Timmy’s isn’t known to all. I must admit HALO certainly captures an element of rural Nova Scotian mentality markedly well.
That and I will never forget that Neptune has been compared to a Tim Horton’s.
funny.
And there you have it…
May 3rd, 2006 at 9:04 am
Whereverville sounds quite interesting. Do you know if it has ever been performed in Newfoundland? Sounds like something you’d see at the LSPU Hall.
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:32 am
Jenny: I do apologise. The sentence in question has been fixed.
SassyK: What kills me, and that people reading this might not know, is that the whole “face of Jesus on the side of Tim Horton’s”, is based on actual events. Sheesh.
SkylarKD: I “think” it’s been performed in NF, but I’ll have to check with the man himself. It’s likely though, as the company that first produced it (Two Planks and a Passion) often tours their shows in NF.
May 3rd, 2006 at 7:06 pm
Uhhhh… I don’t know what I’m doing.
I have a 56k dialup and own a computer so ancient that you have to shovel coal into the back of it to make it run. These newfangled “bloogs” are a mystery to me (seriously, I had to rewrite this entire thing for a second time after my first, cataclysmic attempt at posting).
But Sweens (so nicknamed because when we met there were, oh, a good baker’s-dozen worth of Jasons in our class and they all received these military-style last-name assignations) thought that I might respond to a word or two re: my plays.
First off: thanks SWEENS for the gratuitous shout-out. I owe you a tasty Fresca.
Secondly: neither HALO or (“nor”? “Knorr”?) WHEREVERVILLE have been produced in NF. The Newfoundland gov’t, in recent years, has closed its doors to outside theatre companies in an effort to bolster indigenous works with their money instead. It’s too bad they’re so hermetically sealed, though—Two Planks and a Passion tried (and failed) touring both plays to the province. HALO has played in every other province EXCEPT Newfoundland, and WHEREVERVILLE is set in a Newfoundland outport, so that’s ironic.
I do hope that an on-island theatre company might produce the shows some day… I know that the AD for Theatre Newfoundland-Labrador, Jeff Pitcher, has both of the scripts on his desk (because I mailed them there). So we’ll see.
I love Newfoundland! I met my wife, Francine, working in summer stock in Stephenville, NF, and have had many scraps and adventures in the rugged province ever since! I’d love to go back someday to see either HALO or (yeah– this time definitely “or”) WHEREVERVILLE in a new production.
Well, folks, thanks for your interest & comments… and godspeed with all of your “blorging”!
Now back to some monkeys and their pants out in space.
JOSH
May 4th, 2006 at 8:12 am
God bless you, Josh. No one else I know would leave a comment expansive enough to qualify as a blog post in its own right.
Now if you would just leave the 19th Century and actually get a real internet connection.
Back to blarging….
May 5th, 2006 at 9:14 am
Well Josh, I hope a NL theatre company decides to perform it! I haven’t lived there in a while, so I don’t know the theatre folks anymore, but it definitely sounds like something that would draw in a good crowd. I have to think that ‘Whereverville’, as a portrait of the resettlement era in Newfoundland, would be performed with a lot of heart by people whose parents and grandparents had some of the same experiences.
May 5th, 2006 at 11:41 am
For sure, SkylarKD! Though it was never performed in NF, the original cast was made up of 3/5ths Newfoundlanders and they made the play so much their own! They were SO great, and they definitely kept me honest during the rehearsal process. And they had so many amazing true-life stories from their parents and their parents’ parents that I kinda wondered why I bothered writing fiction about this in the first place… and then I completely ripped them off and stuffed all those stories into the show.
May 9th, 2006 at 9:21 am
lol - glad you had some good muses