Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

John Link

Regulars
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    349

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    2

 Content Type 

Posts posted by John Link

  5. Anthem Play in New York

    in Movies, Shows, and Theatre

    Posted · Edited by John Link

    Thanks for your review of it.  Perhaps that may play into why the play is not being performed for as long as it was initially planned for.

     

    What is the "that" that you think played into Anthem closing early? I believe there's one primary reason shows close early: lousy attendance. The night I attended the theater was less than half full (maybe less than a third full. maybe less than a quarter full), and based on my check of available tickets for many performances, lousy attendance seemed to be the rule.

     

    I'm going to have to take a look at Rand's book there again.  It's my least reread Rand book.  :)

     

    Do you mean The Romantic Manifesto?

     

    I have a narrator in nearly all of my plays.  Only my first published  one I don't. 5 out 6 plays, have a narrator.  I use mine to advance the plot, time, inform, even hide from the audience what is about to take place onstage in one of my plays...  

     

    I wonder what modifications would be required to removed the narrators from your plays? How else could you achieve what your narrators accomplish?

     

    Even if I were to accept the device of a narrator I would never accept any of the characters of a play in the role of narrator, as was the case for Equality 7-2512.

    Am I the only one who attended the New York production of Anthem?

  8. Anthem Play in New York

    in Movies, Shows, and Theatre

    Posted

    I saw Anthem in New York on Wednesday the 30th and was quite disappointed. The problem is that the Anthem Ayn Rand wrote is an introspective fictional diary with little action, so it contains almost no material suited for the stage. In my opinion the playwright did not succeed in solving this problem. The main character, Equality 7-2521, narrates throughout most of the play, occasionally interacting with other characters in a scene, but I never felt that he fully abandoned the role of narrator. On page 74 of The Romantic Manifesto Rand wrote that "the introduction of a narrator into a stage play is...a breach of the theater's basic principle, which demands that a story be dramatized, i.e., presented in action;" Anthem the Play fails to dramatize a story.

    Despite my disappointment I'm glad that I attended the play, if only because my experience confirmed and demonstrated the importance of the theater's basic principle cited by Rand.

  10. Government Run by Computers?

    in Political Philosophy

    Posted · Edited by John Link

    Let's see, it runs under Windows, so it doesn't actually work. Or it runs under Unix, so nobody understands how it works. And then there's this problem.

     

    How about running under Mac OS X?

     

    The final problem to which you refer sounds quite interesting, at least as fiction. The movie that dramatizes the problem is available at Netflix. I've put it in my queue.

    http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Colossus-The-Forbin-Project/70012907?strkid=1553613075_0_0&strackid=730d08e969fe5356_0_srl&trkid=222336

  23. In the future your perspective might change

    in Metaphysics and Epistemology

    Posted

    I think that the bottom floor should almost never move. I came from Christianity and it certainly moved my bottom floor to become an atheist. If some sort of god appeared and brought people back from the dead... well I'd have my head checked out, but if I weren't crazy and this had been verified as accurate by reputable atheists, then I'd at least accept the possibility of my bottom floor moving again. 

     

    Well said!

×
×
  • Create New...