New news - New litzine Beat the Dust is now LIVE and broadcasting to the nation. The first edition has some interesting writing from across the world, including a poem by Dan Fante and other poetry and short stories about drugs, young love, mental illness and the apocalypse to amuse and abuse readers. To read Beat the Dust online and add comments on the writing, go to www.melissamann.com/beat-the-dust.asp. There is a printable Chap-book version to download, as well as the Beat the Dust Podcast to play or download. Beat the Dust is continually on the look-out for inventive, hard-hitting, intelligent and thought-provoking writing. Send work at any time; there are no set deadlines. Now that Beat the Dust is live, if the writing is good, it will go straight on the site. Short stories, poetry and flash fiction that involves some kind of contradiction or breaks a rule in some way, is particularly welcome. Go here to open the Beat the Dust submission guidelines www.melissamann.com/downloads/beatthedustsubmissionguide.pdf for full details on how and where to submit work or alternatively, follow the links on the site.
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Opinion
How It's Done
So, I’ve seen three and a half shows in two years. A learning experience, as theatre always is. Last year, my little girl was three, she cried during ‘Mary Poppins’ so we left at intermission. Well, the first act wasn’t particularly appealing anyway so maybe she got it right.
This year we start off with ‘The Woman in Black’ a horror show. "It’s too scary for little kids" they always tell you when you get there. Little girl was mad at me after the show - "it’s too scary Papa, I don’t ever want to go there again." Like we were going to - with show tickets being so outrageously expensive now days. Thirty pounds at the Half-price Ticket booth in Leicester Square, or at any of the ‘discount’ ticket agencies.
I paid twelve pounds fifty - go to the theatre at midday, buy your tickets directly from them. Of course the seats are way up high, but we’re able to see and hear everything anyway. Except for the huge fellow sitting in front of us who has to shift from side to side throughout the show - me shifting from side to side whenever he does.
Then we see ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ at the Savoy. Wow, that’s a trip. Like old world luxury, that is. The emotion of it hits me. I’m taking my little girl to see this remarkable musical at this fancy ritzy place in the very heart of the civilized world. Chokes me up. My ticket’s twenty-five pounds, but the lady at the ticket office was nice enough to give little girl a half-price ticket. And all of it such an emotional experience for me, I’ve got tears in my eyes throughout much of the play.
Again we’re way up high, but they tell us to move down to the expensive seats as the theatre isn’t sold out. Little girl is enthralled, she loves it, rocks back and forth with the music, moving her arms like she’s conducting the orchestra. I’m amazed, a purely uninhibited natural response on the part of a four-year old.
Finally we see ‘The Last Confession’ at the grand old Haymarket Theatre. Again the high up cheap seats. Again they move us down to the expensive seats before the show starts. Such an intriguing plot - inside the Vatican. All the characters are cardinals, bishops, popes. And the finest, most decent holy man of all, Pope John-Paul I, murdered by those stodgy old arch-enemies of change, who he was going to ‘send home.’ They sent him ‘home’ first.
A truly marvelous concept - the world sucks because people in power won’t allow for reforms that would eradicate their corruption, wealth, greed; their positions of authority, their power over everyone else. But little girl is bored, she falls asleep in that beautiful old theatre during that very well-acted play.
So what did I learn? How to write, how to tell a story. ‘Last Confession’ is grand, a grand theme for the whole world to take notice of. But...it doesn’t hold your interest. Would’ve been an intriguing but not exciting TV show. ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ is all raw emotion, very entertaining, powerful, dramatic. But like ‘Last Confession’ there were times when I knew the actors were acting, when I knew I was in a theatre watching a show.
‘Woman in Black’ on the other hand, is so captivating, so spell-binding, you’re there. You’re in the fog, the murky waters of the marshes, riding that perilous horse cart, ascending the steps to the forbidden room in the old haunted house. You can’t escape it.
It catches you and holds you in its clutches. I’ve seen this show four times in the last eight years. And this last performance was as good as the first.
Why would I keep going back to see a ‘horror’ show? This is theatre. This is how you grab an audience by the balls and shake them ‘til they’re putty in your hands. Bravo, encore, salute. This is how it’s done.
News
The inaugural edition of Literary Fever is now available, with poems by Adele Stripe and Ben Myers.
Word Riot's latest edition is up, including a review of Steven McDermott’s Winter of Different Directions.
Here’s a flash fiction piece by Word Riot editor, Jackie Crowley at a new zine called Pequin that looks quite appealing.
From Henry Baum, Bukowski in Time.
Identity Theory is looking for a social justice editor for their blog page.
Short story by Don Eminizer at Thieves Jargon.
Lee Rourke interview at Dogmatica. Plus a story by Anthony Neal Smith.
The Book of Sex by Matthew Coleman.
Call for submissions at The Whirligig zine.