PoPachel's Place: My opinion of my friend "kellbo0"

PoPachel's Place: My opinion of my friend "kellbo0": Wow, this is exactly what I've been feeling about this "Kellbo0" situation. Thank you for posting this, Rachel!

On a personal note, I considered her a close Twitter friend. She was never "abusive" to me, but in hindsight, I do now remember certain times she was "controlling." But, all in all, she was nice to me. Which makes this situation very hurtful to me: I have no idea if she ever really MEANT all those nice things. Was I just a pawn in her game? Was I ever her "friend?"

But truth IS the best disinfectant; it's sunlight that illuminates our lives. I feel much freer now. I'm still very hurt, but I'm glad that the truth is out...

Review of "Cloud 9"

Well, it's been a busy, bizarre 18 hours, with the mysterious disappearance of beloved Twitter user @Kellbo0 and subsequent exposure as nothing more than a fraud. And even though it's hurt me a great deal, I'm okay. Lot more going on in the world to keep me occupied.

Anyway, here's a theater review I wrote for my theater class earlier this semester. We had to see two school productions, and write one review for the class. So I saw Cloud 9 in early October, loved the first act, hated the second, and wrote my brutally honest review.

If you're not familiar with the play, here's a synopsis.

Enjoy my review! :)

I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t have to read about a play beforehand in order to be able to follow it. As with any good movie or play, one should be able to jump in and not be confused. I do it all the time. It’s how I went into Inception, blissfully unaware of what was going to happen; only that it had something to do with the mind. It’s how I went into each season of 24. Completely spoiler-free. Well, not always, unfortunately. But enough so that I had no idea what was in store for the year. So I thought I could just waltz into this play, only knowing that it had lots of risqué things in it, and something to do with 1960’s England, and follow it and enjoy it. But no…while I loved the first act, I was completely dumbfounded by the seemingly unconnected second act. It seemed as if I was getting two half-plays, not one full, and I was feeling jibbed. I mean, I knew once the play started in the Victorian era that there would have to be some sort of time jump, since I knew we were going to end up in the 1960’s somehow. But boom, the second act begins and we’re in the 1960’s, with seemingly no explanation and no connection to the action that had come before. Was in it that song? And even if I missed it, with all due respect, it shouldn’t be buried like that. Churchill really miscalculated there. If you’re going to mess with the laws of time and space like that, you can’t leave it up to the uninformed audience member to figure it out. I mean, a simple voiceover of “25 years later, 100 years in the future” would have sufficed and would have actually been pretty funny, rather than the jolting opening scene of all the actors in modern clothing singing and dancing. Because without that critical knowledge, I just assumed the actors were playing different characters and didn’t look to see that all the names were mostly the same. So I didn’t know what the heck was going on. It also didn’t help that Churchill had different actors play different characters, which, an as aside, was great and I really appreciated the excellent work by the players. It’s one thing to transform yourself into one character during the course of a play, but two? I loved it. But still, I was greatly disappointed with how the whole thing worked out. I mean, I knew early on that the actors were going to end up playing different characters in the 1960’s, but I expected the connection to be clearer and explained to me. And even though it was Churchill’s decision to go the absurdist route, not have it take place in the “real world,” and I suppose it worked now knowing that, but I do feel disappointed, as the first act makes it seem as if the play took place in a “real world,” obviously with characters making absurd, unrealistic, but really hilarious decisions. It was kind of like Seinfeld, with characters doing absurd things, but ostensibly taking place in a “real world,” with real rules. It even had its own tight continuity. So that’s why I could not naturally follow Cloud 9. It’s why I assumed I was watching an entirely different story, but with the cool element of the actors returning to play different characters. I thought it was some “retelling” of the first act, with the metaphysical notion of the other characters from the “other” dimension coming back and speaking to them. I didn’t know what was going on, and I hated, hated, that it wasn’t explained to me. There’s a big difference between trusting the audience to follow along, and what unfolded in Cloud 9. So, I’m not really feeling particularly warm toward Caryl Churchill now, especially after reading the handbill’s gushing description of his “glorious” experimentation. Well sorry, but this experiment was a failed experiment.

Of course, I give kudos to the players who did such a great job with such challenging, and ultimately sadly faulty, material. I was impressed with how the actors were able to handle all that load, especially, as stated before, having to prepare for two roles in a single play. Fortunately, Churchill does find ways to reduce the burden for his actors; for example, by having the man that plays Clive in the first act (and the one that essentially has to carry the whole act) end up playing Cathy in the second act, a much lessened role that allows the actor to just focus on being funny. And elevating the actress playing supporting character Edward to what I considered the most compelling character of the second act, Victoria, is an excellent example of the inverse. On that matter, I will say I did notice a character making note of the fact that Victoria grew out of “a doll,” a clear reference to the first act’s baby that was “portrayed” by a dummy (and was absurdly, hilariously mishandled as such), but of course, without the grounding of knowing exactly what that meant, I just assumed it was a meta-joke, seeing as it was a definite wink to the audience, which would contribute to my mistaken belief that these were actually different characters. Which is why I’m so disappointed in how much Churchill steeply blundered here. After looking up the play, I now see why Churchill chose the surreal time-bending format—all very important points on patriarchy, imperialism, sexual liberation, and defying social constructs—and I really can’t fault him for pursuing that path. I personally love it when plays and television shows “break the rules.” But I just hated how it was not explained to me at all. What Churchill was doing was fairly complex and novel and to expect every theater-goer to “know” of the abrupt shift in time and the nature of the play’s “reality” from Act I to Act II was a severe error in judgment and a colossal misstep. It ruined the play for me, and I’m sure I’m not the first one. But I was still impressed with the actors’ range and how they genuinely seemed to be British. They were very professional. Everything about this production was well-executed, except for, of course, the play.

 Even though I know “get it,” and understand Churchill’s “point,” I will forever feel jibbed that a theater patron like me, one that prefers to be as spoiler-free as possible, was never included in his thought process of how to present this work. What Churchill did here was so obnoxiously pretentious. Churchill must have thought that all 100% of the people that would see his play would all know who he is and the contents of his “glorious” plays. Never once apparently the thought crossed his mind that there would actually be people that had never heard of him or even wanted to know any details of the play beforehand, even if that’s their preferred way to consume entertainment. So, out of an exercise of self-importance, Churchill has left many viewers of Cloud 9 feeling confused, disoriented, and coming up with their own wrong conclusions during that unfortunate second act. I would only recommend this play to those people that don’t mind spoilers and enjoy surreal metafictional theater.

My First Blog!!!

Hey everyone, this is BrettR4763 from Twitter. For years I've always wanted to get into the blogging world, but have just never found the time. Just too busy, with schoolwork, Facebook, and of course, "micro-blogging," i.e. Twitter. Ever since I started tweeting during the 2009 MLB All-Star Game and began to connect with very cool people, I've just fallen in love and I can't imagine ever not tweeting.

So this blog is meant to simply augment my "micro-blog" at twitter.com/brettr4763. I probably won't post that much, as I feel it will be more fruitful to post in "real-time" on Twitter. But I do have some things that I want to share with the world that are simply too long to put on Twitter.

Foremost is a 24 fanfiction, a complete "alternate season" for the horrifically bad Season 6. I'm sure any 24 fan reading this knows exactly what I'm talking about, and I really hope that, once it's finished, it'll serve as a satisfying "replacement" for 24's misfire of a season.

Unfortunately, it's only about a third finished, and I haven't touched it in nearly three months. Just been too busy with/worried about schoolwork this semester to really want to focus on it. But I'll post some of it here and see if any of you have any thoughts.

There are other things of course, but I won't get into them at this time. But anyway, can't wait to get started on this! This is going to be fun! :)