UGA’s Best of the Worst Dance Crew

Winners D-Coy celebrate. Photo by Blane Marable.

By Ashley Bene

Hosted by the Committee for Black Cultural Programming, the UGA’s Best Dance Crew competition had its inaugural event on March 22, 2011. Tickets were free for students, and in hindsight, even the free entry couldn’t make up for the wasted hour of my life.

Five UGA dance groups - Georgia Dance Team, D-Coy, Red Hotz, Mahogany, and Sweet Dreams - competed. Each team performed twice: one regular number and one number in which they had to complete a challenge such as dancing in slow-mo. Of course, none of this was explained to the audience before the competition began, and I found myself asking people around me why some groups had to do a “challenge” while others had regular numbers. It was not until the first repeat group of the evening that the course of the competition was clear.

The only group that stood out was the second group, called D-Coy. They are comprised of males and females and specialize in hip-hop dancing. Their performances were clean and energetic (one of the judges said, “too energetic”).

They stayed in sync with each other, while also incorporating their own personalities into the dance moves with facial expressions and body language. When they did transitional moves to change formations during their numbers, they kept the transitions short, careful not to waste precious dance time. They came into the competition as a crowd favorite, and their second routine got the only standing ovation of the evening.

The other four groups were all-female and despite each group claiming to have experience with a number of different types of dance (jazz, tap, lyrical, hip-hop, contemporary, ballet, etc), they relied on sexiness to appeal to the crowd.

The groups are interchangeable in my memory as I remember the competition. The one who stands out most was Georgia Dance Team, which is in its first year at UGA, because they were the least polished performers. Two of their dancers almost collided, and many had rubbery knees and legs as they attempted spins. They looked at their feet a lot, and one girl looked so bored I was expecting her to yawn in the middle of the number.

The other three groups had better energy and covered any mistakes they made more smoothly, but their routines were about shaking their hips around and hair-tossing rather than any challenging dance moves.

Now, I don’t expect college students to get on stage and perform straight ballet or tap pieces to hip-hop/pop songs, but they can incorporate more of the principles of these dance forms into it to stay true to the art form. There’s nothing impressive about dancing like you’re in a night club. Most of the girls I know do that every weekend with no prior dance experience. Perhaps the worst moves these groups made was over using poses.

One group did sexy poses for the last thirty seconds of a song, while the other groups used poses as transitional parts of routines while some of the performers moved around the stage, posing as they walked. There is nothing impressive or creative about posing. If you want to pose, model; aside from the start and end of a dance, there is very little room to waste music on poses.

As if a dance competition full of bad dancers wasn’t enough, the judges were pretty clueless as well. The four judges included the Myers Hall Area Coordinator, Adam Scarbaro; two basketball players, Chris Barnes and Trey Tompkins; and, the only judge with dance background, a female UGA student, Shirleyse Costen.

After each number, the judges got to critique the dancers, which ruined any chance of the competition or the judges’ abilities being taken seriously. Scarbaro told nearly every group, “good job,” which garnered laughter from the audience after the first three performances. Costen made helpful observations a few times, but made a snotty comment when she told D-Coy she “has stepped before and wasn’t impressed” with their challenge to include step moves, even though it was a clean, energetic dance. Barnes and Tompkins were oblivious to the dancing and spent the evening ogling every scantily-clad female on the stage. After a particularly sexy number by Sweet Dreams, Barnes said, “I’m gonna have sweet dreams tonight!”

Lucky for the judges picking a winner wasn’t rocket science, as D-Coy was easily the best group there and had the most audience support. Mahogany earned second place over Sweet Dreams, who came in third. Really though, winning UGA’s Best Dance Crew is meaningless, as nobody in the competition was that impressive.

Classic satire shows its True Colors

By Marlyncia Pierce

Miss Pat, a perky flight attendant, warns to “fasten your shackles” as Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre brings the 1986 classic satire “The Colored Museum.” While Miss Pat (Amber Iman) lays down the rules for the flight — no drums, no rebellion — we expect our ride to be turbulent with laughter all the while stricken with heavy truths. The play is set up like a museum with 11 exhibits, all taking jabs at stereotypes surrounding African Americans. Even 25 years later, George C. Wolfe’s timeless play falls in place as True Colors handles the colorful, sophisticated context with special care.

As the director for her third True Color’s performance, Jasmine Guy extends the talent of six actors to unravel the absurd yet hysterical exhibition. She first got her feet wet in the director’s pool with “For Colored Girls,” and later with “I Dream: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” Guy spruces up Wolfe’s script with insertions of present-day motifs, including pokes at the current dance craves like “The Dougie” and “The Stanky Leg.” Oddly, the 90-minute exhibition plays through without an intermission, leaving little room to digest the messages in their entirety. In real life, no one breezes through a museum without a small second (or in this case, a 15 minute intermission) to reflect and ponder on the message. Another fault were the kinks in the sound system, which were a bit distracting. But the cast’s resilience over the technicalities can’t go unrecognized.

The vignette “Soldier with a Secret,” performed by Ali Aman Carter speaks volumes on the troubled soldiers coming home after war. The monologue is followed by a lighthearted, but toilsome “The Last-Mama-on-the-Couch Play,” which pokes fun at theater classics, “Raisin in the Sun” and “For Colored Girls,” a choreopoem that Guy also directed for True Colors’ last year. Here, Enoch King stands out as “the angry black man,” whose brows are low from oppression from “the man.” His eloquent touch in other exhibits: the tormented, flamboyant homosexual and the conformed, token black guy are breathtakingly delightful.

Self-identity and objectification shows through in “The Hairpiece” as kinky coiled Janine (Yakini Horn) and straight pressed LaWonda (Danielle Deadwyler) hash it out. “It don’t matter the grade, as long as the point gets made,” LaWonda shouts as The Woman (Amber Iman) decides which wig to flaunt on a date to break up with her boyfriend. Horn and Deadwyler are exquisite in their comedic tag-team work over the touchy subject of the black woman’s hair.

Until April 17, “The Colored Museum” will raise questions and eyebrows while the subjects juggle the line between offensive and gratification. The crowd responded with side-crunching laughs and heavy moans for the nerve-striking lines. The Porter Sandford III Performing Arts Center is located on the outskirts of Atlanta in Decatur. As Guy addressed her in greeting to the audience, "If it's good, [the people] will come." For what it's worth (without an intermission and sound problems) — it is good.

Book Review: Heresy

By: Carrie Donovan

The front of the novel Heresy, by author J.S. Parris, states that the book is a ‘historical thriller.’

Perhaps "historically-based, occasionally kind of intriguing work of fiction" was too long to fit on the cover.

The novel is based on the story of Giordano Bruno, a 16th century Italian monk, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher whose insistence that the Earth orbited the sun and that the universe extended infinitely into space proved a bit too radical for his Catholic contemporaries.

It would be hard to imagine a more interesting or tumultuous setting than post-Reformation England, nor a more fascinating character than the rebellious Bruno. Perhaps then, it is Parris’ rigid structure alone that manages to transform her lovably free-spirited protagonist into the pawn of a formulaic plot that reminds the reader of a Dan Brown concept gone stale.

We are first introduced to the main character, affectionately known as Bruno, when he is caught in the monastery's latrine reading Erasmus' banned "Commentaries,” a crime punishable by death. After his escape to nowhere in particular, save wherever the Inquisition will not be, Bruno finds himself in London, where he receives a mission from Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham, to root out Oxford University Catholics who may be plotting to overthrow the Protestant queen.

But apparently Bruno is also on a mission independent of the crown. He is aiming to uncover the whereabouts of a missing manuscript that purportedly contains the lost wisdom of the Egyptians, and a “secret that could destroy the authority of the Christian church.” Alas, both his official and unofficial missions are driven off course by a series of dramatic killings on the Oxford campus, which further complicates the Protestant-Catholic divide that threatens to destroy both the college and the kingdom as a whole.

Parris wastes no time in suggesting that things are not always as they seem. Not suggesting, so much as having various cryptic characters lay it out in painfully obvious terms. “No man in Oxford is as he seems, Doctor Bruno,” says the spiky and gnomic man in the corner.

Perhaps the art of foreshadowing could simply be left to the every-other-paragraph description of the weather, which always seems to be as gray and bleak as Bruno’s hopes of solving the murders before that cryptic-but-eerily-familiar symbol or Latin phrase that the unknown stranger slid under his door in the nighttime translates into that next we-should-have-seen-it-coming murder.

Then again, perhaps it is this predictability and comfortably familiar storytelling style that has propelled the novel from obscurity in the first place. It may not be wholly satisfying, but beneath the layers of exaggerated code-breaking ah-ha moments lies an underlying message that represents what Bruno was all about in the first place; a truth above the politics of religious difference.

Indeed, the bulk of the novel’s underlying message is probably easiest summed up by Bruno’s near death declaration that he only wants “to be left in peace to understand the mysteries of the universe in his own way." To which his adversary mockingly replies, "Ah. Tolerance." Whether it is worth tolerating the previous 430 pages to arrive at the moral fiber of this remarkably lackluster caper is another question entirely.

Wayne Hoffman at UGA

By: Carrie Donovan

Sometimes it’s necessary to judge the proverbial book by its cover – especially if you’re in the mind-reading business.

While mentalist and illusionist Wayne Hoffman failed to satisfy those audience members expecting to see a top-hatted, tail-coated, bunny-wielding magician with an affinity for sawing people in half during his Tate Theater performance on Monday night, he definitely made up for his lack of flair with a trick that no one could have predicted: blatant honesty.

Though some of the hour-long show was dedicated to exploring the more cliché staples of the illusion industry, such as linking three separate rings into a single chain and transforming simple phrases into really bad puns, Hoffman wholly captivated the crowd during a 30-minute segment of seemingly inexplicable and prop-free mental trickery.

He catapulted a paper airplane into the crowd to let fate select his first volunteer, and for the sake of time and possible participant injury randomly called on other eager hand-raisers for the rest of the show. He guessed childhood pet names, home desktop backgrounds and one girl’s phone number with a speed that would imply that he is either a distant relative of J.K. Rowling’s Voldemort or exceptionally upfront about his stalking habits.

During the game of guess and reveal, at which point some members of the audience became overwhelmed with conflicting urges to either stay and marvel at the impossibility of Hoffman’s feats or to bolt out the theater doors before he decided to start unveiling Social Security numbers and ATM codes, the illusionist explained the art behind his magic.

“I just break it down,” Hoffman said. “I’m going to look at the way someone acts, the way they sit, the way they dress.” He outlined the process using an audience member’s memory of his first car, saying that the amount of gel in his hair was a large factor in assuming that he owned a Honda and not a pick-up truck.

According to Hoffman, the simplest way to get inside a stranger’s mind is by taking an initial impression and creating a pool of probability, using supplementary body language and other immediate clues to narrow down his options further.

As mystery propelled the first half of the show, the eventual glimpse into the phenomenal talent required to deduce so much information from seemingly insignificant cues was almost more impressive than the secrecy that thrills the audience in the first place.

And while it may be heartbreaking to discover that you give off a “my first hamster was named after a Spice Girl” vibe, getting a first-hand glimpse into the many intricacies behind the illusion is well worth a bit of embarrassment.

Collection of short stories highlights black youth

By Kelundra Smith

In her debut, short-fiction collection "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self," Danielle Evans gives voice to black, middle-class, young adults in stories of identity, sex, parent-child relationships and love. She covers a lot of material in these eight stories relating to the formation of racial identity, yet slides the effects of racial identity in so smoothly that they are relatable across color lines.

Sex and its complications are themes in almost all of the stories, especially in “Virgins,” which was previously published in Paris Monthly and "Best American Short Stories 2008." This story is about teenage girls experimenting with sex without the maturity to handle its consequences. Evans addresses these issues again in “Harvest,” this time using white, college girls selling their eggs to pay for tuition or buy designer clothing as its context.

Evans poignantly writes how the build of this resentment starts for “barely middle-class black families where the girls were always called Courtney or Kelli or Lindsay or Brooke, and the family forgoes vacation and savings and stock for a nice house in a nice neighborhood in the hopes that the neighbors will forget they are black.” In both stories sex, and the desire for it, is a dividing point between friends, and men are seen as predators to be loved and feared for their ability to take and protect.

Biracial identity, family and mental health are all subjects explored in perhaps the best story in the collection — “Snakes.”

This story is about a biracial girl named Tara reflecting on the summer she spent with her white cousin Allison and grandmother Lydia in their Florida country club neighborhood. The girls busy themselves by playing in the lake behind their grandmother’s home, until, in a moment of frustration, Grandma Lydia tells Tara that there are snakes in the lake. This seemingly small lie engulfs the entire family, changing their relationships and shaping their futures in unforeseen, pitiful ways. This is also the only story in the collection that does not use college as a pivotal point that characters are striving to, or from which they are recovering.

Evans even infuses the male perspective into these stories in “Someone Ought to Tell Her There’s Nowhere to Go,” about a soldier trying to re-integrate into civilian life after serving in Iraq, and in “The King of a Vast Empire,” about the damage divorce and trauma have caused a dysfunctional brother and sister. These are both good stories, but Evans’ female voice infiltrates the narration of “The King of a Vast Empire” in a way that makes one question the narrator’s sex until it is revealed in the story, and not in a good way.

“Robert E. Lee Is Dead” is a wonderful ending to an overall well-crafted collection of short stories. It is a new take on a classic tale of being from the “wrong side of the tracks,” with its narrator Crystal like a black, more educated Maniac Magee. In this story, white flight and the need to be accepted are set against the football game between Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee high schools. In this environment, black students are trying to thrive in a glorified old South legacy that reaches its pinnacle at the height of black oppression.

This story is especially well-written, because the narrator’s language changes as her identity changes “…I’d slipped through our school’s de facto segregation...” she says about being criticized for being smart and as a result losing social acceptance.

And as screwed up as some of these characters are, it is refreshing to read literature about black people that are educated, middle-class and passionate in spite of themselves. Evans has mastered the art of a good build while also examining the psychology of middle-class, black youth. "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self" is a book of untold stories, crafted in a way that makes them each worth reading a few times.


Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self.
By Danielle Evans.
Riverhead Books. 232 pages. $25.95

Brutally honest bio recounts post-divorce obstacles

By Kari Quill

If you’re one that seeks thrill from reading someone else’s diary, I highly suggest hijacking Rhoda Janzen’s memoir of going home. ”Mennonite in a Little Black Dress" falls nothing short of a brutally honest account of the most challenging obstacles Janzen has overcome as a recent divorceé. Sure, self-help books, family, friends and faith have helped along the way, but her introspection trumps all. Intrigued by Janzen’s constant e-mails about bunking up with her old-fashioned Mennonite parents at 44 years old, her friends finally urged her to share her hilarious tidbits with the world. You are going to wish you had your very own “Pee Bag” like her when laughing out loud is taken to the next level.

Not only can I taste the braised cabbage in one of her five “shame-based” foods from her childhood lunchbox, but also I cringe at her mother’s “Moses of all farts” in the grocery store that soils the page. Her tone similar to Cathy Lamb’s wit, Janzen’s consistent ability to make the words jump off the page turns this confessional into a conversation with your best friend. Without whining, she explains the grieving process of losing her husband of 15 years to Bob, a man he met on Gay.com.

While she admits her continued bouts with her abusive husband were a result of her idiocy, she doesn’t drown in self-pity or even blame him entirely. Where there is a moment to dwell on the unfortunate hand she was dwelt, she surprises readers with newfound wisdom.

While living at home, she comes to accept her parents’ devoutness to the Mennonite doxy, simultaneously creating her own belief system. Though she recognizes the Bible’s “toxic charm,” she believes: “When you’re young, faith is often a matter of rules. But as you get older, you realize that faith is really a matter of relationship — with God, with the people around you, with the members of your community.” Despite the social rejections of the conservative Mennonites, she highlights the relationships she cherishes within her religious community.

However, one can’t help but first wonder the significance of her interaction with a slightly deaf elderly neighbor, Mrs. Friesen, obsessed with cat books with titles such as "The Cat That Dropped a Bombshell." But, as no good deed goes unpunished, Janzen’s visit leads her to Mrs. Friesen's Mennonite grandson who appreciates her "real nice shape" and generosity just as his grandmother does.

Now heavily immersed in academia at Hope College in Michigan, Janzen presents new logic that prompts a reader of any age to reflect upon one’s character. She presents arguments that make even flaws seem understandable. As she tackles the human condition, she raises the simplest of questions rarely considered by all of society: “And since even the most virtuous among us displays this adiaphorous morality, what if we agreed just to let people be who they are, since we can’t change them anyway?”

While she explains that only patterns of behavior can explain virtue, I realize it is all in your foundation, not necessarily your “genetic gift basket,” but how you add value to it everyday. For some, it’s adding ingredients of your mom’s cooking to your past knowledge and coming up with something all your own.

Instead of meandering through the self-help aisle at the bookstore, I urge you to immerse yourself in conversation with Janzen. An articulate, poignant and refreshing woman, Janzen can sympathize with just about anyone.

Keep working, keep laughing message in new biography

By Nate Thurman

America should be worried about Tina Fey. She’s not in any kind of trouble, but she really does seem to be working too hard. In addition to writing, acting and producing the television show "30 Rock," she has now written a biography. She makes it clear in her book that she is aware of this, but doesn’t care too much about it. She loves her work too much to care.

"Bossypants" is an autobiography of sorts. It’s made up of stories from Tina’s life that span her growth from a girl who is a bit scared of her dad to a woman who was once scared of her boss. The chapters vary from a tribute and meditation on her father and her lack of understanding of him as a child, her disastrous honeymoon, all the way to her thoughts about having a second child.

"Bossypants" is in some ways a feminist look at the life of a woman trying to make it as an actor and writer, the challenges built by society and the things she did (or didn’t) do to deal with them. The feminist aspect isn’t anything preachy. It’s not the focus of the book, but Fey’s sharp mind allows for her to comment on gender issues and sexism in a very intelligent, sarcastic and sometimes hilarious way. Her voice is funny but maintains a level of serious frustration about inequality regardless of the humor, which adds a truly thought provoking side to this very funny book.

Did I mention these chapters have great jokes in them? Some of them are horribly rough (that is to say harsh), many are off-color and most of them are just side splitting. I found myself laughing aloud in the book store I was reading in. A sample “You could put a blonde wig on an old radiator, and somewhere a guy will [have sex with] it.” This comes in the middle of Fey’s idea that we should start calling blonde hair yellow, because that’s really what it is.

Her humor is natural and her subject matter too, it’s usually about routines, stress in day to day life. As a male fan of Fey I can fairly say that this book is not 100 percent written for me (biggest no Duh ever, why should it be?). Ninety percent of this book is for everyone. Its generally funny anecdotes about life that human beings should be able to relate to in one way or another, but there are parts of this book that some male readers aren’t going to make it though.

She has a chapter of simple beauty tips, which is worth reading for the skin pointers but mostly is over my head as I know very little about the process of beauty and make up and what not. I feel bad even mentioning this, because how many times has a women HAD to read a book about a troubled male youth/youths. I’m looking at you "Catcher in the Rye," and "Lord of the Flies," and "Hamlet" and just about every book ever. So really I should be quiet about this. Sorry, Tina.

If Fey comes off as the East Coast Liberal Elite she often jokes about being, I would be surprised. Because of the honesty and candidness of her recollections, we are reminded in so many ways that we are all the same, or at least very similar. She came from a similar same high school we went to in a community that’s equally American. We have funny, crappy jobs sometimes. We stress out about work and family. Our vacations don’t always go as planned. What Fey’s message seems to be is to keep your head down and working, and remember to laugh.

Dark play made some uncomfortable

By Kari Quill

“How far do your memories go back?” Lemon (Paige Pulaski) asked the audience of Wallace Shawn’s 1985 dark play, "Aunt Dan and Lemon."

Instantly, this frumpy, sickly woman had me uncomfortable with her constant intentional eye twitching and head nodding. The rhetorical questions she asked from her lemon-colored armchair quickly merited a response from me. Although I refrained, I wanted nothing more than to tell her that her explicit approval of the German Nazis was unsettling. Following this conviction was her admission that she would be “fine with dying,” after a life spent almost entirely void of human interaction.

Eventually, I realized Shawn, a playwright notorious for provoking controversial arguments, had mastered the opening scene with Lemon’s contestable monologue. Anxious to hear how the protagonist would support her beliefs cemented by her unproductive life, my ears were fully attuned to the University of Georgia student production.

After Lemon’s lecture, I was grateful for the introduction of a new character named Freddie (Matthew Bowdren), the father of Lemon. His wit and strident voice awakened the audience as he shouted about the Darwin characteristics of the working class in the 1960s. Once he finished his rant, the execution of the play became obvious: flashbacks that don’t pertain to a plot. Luckily, not every character is as abrasive as Lemon’s father, whom Lemon says resembles “a caged animal” after overhearing a quarrel between him and her passive mother (Chelsey Horn).

While the play continues with limited props and lengthy monologues, some redeeming qualities emerge. I am stunned by the consistency of the casts’ English accents combined with their memorization skills. Most engrossing are Aunt Dan’s stories she recites to her 11-year-old worshipper, Lemon.

As one of the two American-born characters in the play, Dan is equally as captivating with her American accent as she recounts her trysts in London and obsessions with Henry Kissinger and public policy. While her parents are oblivious to the intimate relationship between Lemon and Aunt Dan, her father’s best friend, Lemon tells us: “[My parents] had me, but I only had Aunt Dan.”

It seemed that each time members of the audience yawned during a speech, at least one of the characters started to undress, regaining their attention. Mindy (Spencer Tootle), the money-hungry call girl, demands attentiveness from every male member in the audience as she struts around in lingerie. However, it was the unexpected bloodshed that regained my interest an hour and a half into the performance.

The beastliness Lemon claims to be innate in every human proves to be a major theme of the play. Some characters reveal this trait through action while others only vocalize it. As Lemon gleefully preaches with pursed lips, her brutish opinions resonate with the audience. The similarities she draws between civilized people and the Nazis are enough to elicit a response from an individual only vaguely aware of the unjust treatment of Jews during World War II.

As she sat drinking her daily supplement of lime and celery juice, I couldn’t help but equate the liquid to her slimy personality. Her admiration for the “truthful” Nazis, whom also lacked compassion, elicited my firm rebuttal. This in mind, I commend the show and its talented cast, but wouldn’t consider a second viewing.

Even now I wonder how Lemon sat confident and comfortable in her armchair as I squirmed in mine, noticing that she never missed a blink.

Studio Series at UGA puts on another performance

By Kelundra Smith

UGA’s University Theatre recently produced Aunt Dan and Lemon written by Wallace Shawn as a part of their studio series. Studio series productions use minimal sets and technical elements to focus on acting and directing.

In this witty, controversial play, Wallace Shawn invites the audience into Lemon’s reality. Most of the play takes place in 1960s England at the height of political unrest due to the Vietnam War and the sexual revolution. We find Lemon, a troubled young woman, reflecting on her adolescence, particularly her summers with Aunt Dan.

The play, directed by UGA professor Farley Richmond, had a set consisting of an arm chair, lamp, side table and two rugs downstage right, and a long table and five chairs at center stage. The play starred UGA sophomore Paige Pulaski as Lemon and UGA MFA student Jennifer Schottstadt as Aunt Dan.

Aunt Dan, short for Danielle, is an American who Lemon’s parents befriended while studying at Oxford. The entire family grows fond of Aunt Dan, but this fondness quickly changes. As Lemon’s father’s health starts to fail, and Aunt Dan and Lemon’s mother have political disagreements, the dynamics change. This causes Aunt Dan to draw more toward Lemon, and they develop an intimate relationship.

I must admit I went into the play with my own opinions about the production, because I read the play a few years ago. I was particularly curious about how they were going to keep such a wordy play engaging for an audience. The play consists mostly of monologues where Lemon and Aunt Dan are speaking to each other or the audience. And the show has a run time of two hours without an intermission.

The actors worked hard to make sure that monologues were manageable for the audience by infusing humor and using inflection. Lemon speaks candidly to the audience, which could have been boring, but it was engaging. And despite a recent obsession with the Nazis and their usage of genocide, she is rather charming. The actors were also working with British and Spanish accents. And though these accents were not very good, they did help to give the long speeches some life.

Shawn never reveals Lemon’s exact diagnosis, but it is implied that she is a schizophrenic. The audience watches snippets of selected stories from Lemon’s past play out. Lemon inserts herself into the scenes as she narrates them. Ironically, Lemon seems in control of her opinions, which are very controversial, but seems out of control of her life and relationships.

This is perhaps why she admires Aunt Dan, who seems to have an affair with everyone she encounters. Aunt Dan does not seem to have a past, because she is so much in the present, but she is a large part of Lemon’s. I must say Aunt Dan seemed more reasonable in script, no matter how controversial, but on stage she seems an over-educated, self-righteous, abrasive, idealist especially concerning Henry Kissinger.

This is obvious in a well-directed scene where Aunt Dan and Lemon’s mother argue about Kissinger’s policies during Vietnam. In a seemingly endless (but quite funny) rant, Aunt Dan cannot seem to understand why the media is criticizing Kissinger’s pro-American tactics.

However, the most engaging scenes of the show took place when Aunt Dan spoke about her swinger friends from Oxford. One specific scene involved a mysterious Spaniard, swindled by a beautiful, money-hungry woman named Mindy. The blocking in these scenes made me feel like I was peeking in on something scandalous, but I could not look away.

This production was OK overall, but the delivery of such socially and politically heavy material by such young actors was admirable. Lemon’s balance of innocence and controversy made her one of the strangest characters I have ever seen on stage, which fit the script perfectly.

Disturbing flashbacks give foundation for play

By Lauren Ellison

The University of Georgia’s theater department revived Wallace Shawn’s 1985 play, "Aunt Dan and Lemon," in the Cellar Theatre this week.

"Aunt Dan and Lemon" chronicles a series of disturbing flashbacks told through the eyes of Lemon (Paige Pulaski), a chronically ill woman whose joviality and pleasantly frank disposition often distract from the story’s core darkness. "Aunt Dan and Lemon" raises questions we ponder in our darkest moments, questions many of us never dare to ask aloud. Exploring and challenging the notions of compassion and morality, Shawn’s play, directed here by Farley Richmond, raises questions that that stuck with me for hours, even days, after leaving the theatre.

The play opens with Lemon seated contentedly in an armchair, surrounded by half-empty glasses of colorful fruit and vegetable juice concoctions. Makeup-free and hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, Lemon’s drab disposition paints an accurate picture of a reclusive woman living alone with the ghosts of her past.

Addressing the crowd with gentle ease, Lemon explains that due to her illness, which we never learn any particulars about, she was robbed of an adventurous life, never given any opportunity to see the world for herself. Instead she immerses herself in literature (books about the Nazis are her choice of late) while also living vicariously through the characters of her past. The most valuable lessons she’s learned about life stem from stories passed down to her by Danielle (Jennifer Schottstadt), also known as Aunt Dan, a close friend of Lemon’s parents. Aunt Dan captures the heart of young Lemon with her infectious passion and unapologetic outspokenness, and the two grow to need each other, and love each other, in a more twisted and complicated way than tradition would have it.

Lemon raises daring questions when speaking to the audience, at one point offering a shocking alternative point of view on the Nazi death camps. Are we really so different from the Nazis, she wonders? Killing is unpleasant, certainly, but what is so wrong with admitting that there is something inside of us that wants to kill? The answer: compassion. This emotion is beaten into our consciences from birth.

We are told that it is right to be compassionate, but Lemon wants to know why. I couldn’t help but shift uncomfortably in my seat when Lemon asked how the Nazis killing the Jews was any different from us poisoning cockroaches in our homes once they become an unavoidable problem. None of us would do it if it weren’t necessary, she rationalizes, but unfortunately, they felt that it was.

The play is an ongoing intellectual debate, stacked with extraordinarily drawn out monologues debating life’s most challenging moral dilemmas. Pulaski’s gleeful tone adds an unexpected lightness to the profound nature of her ideas, creating a chummy sort of camaraderie between the audience and herself. She embodies the essence of Lemon’s complex character to a tee, allowing a childlike innocence to bleed through her adult façade. Pulaski delivers extensive monologues flawlessly, nailing the English accent the entire show.

The standout performance of the evening came from Schottstadt as Aunt Dan, who is a dead ringer for Anne Hathaway in both physical appearance and natural talent. It is impossible to not be captivated by Schottstadt’s uninhibited confidence and raw emotion throughout the play. Schottstadt steals the show with her impassioned rants against anyone who speaks against Henry Kissinger, with whom she is almost humorously and psychotically obsessed throughout the play. Defending his honor and justifying his wartime decisions, (from this we can gather the story is set during the Vietnam War,) Aunt Dan becomes enraged at Kissinger’s critics. “What did YOU decide today?” Aunt Dan demands of them. Who are we judge his choices, as we sit in our comfortable homes, with our mundane lives that affect no one but ourselves?

Aunt Dan and Lemon dares to ask if we are actually as different from the Nazis as we prefer to think. Is compassion real, or is it a notion we think we feel because we know we’re supposed to? The painful honesty of the production made me both uneasy and unsure. Am I offended or intrigued? It’s something I’m still deciding.

Though the dialogue was compelling, all I could think the entire play was how much I’d prefer it to be a musical. Maybe I just thought the Nazi comments would have been a little less uncomfortable had Lemon belted them in an inappropriately upbeat ballad.

The script was indeed thought provoking, but long-winded and exhausting at times. The acting, however, was impeccable. The moral debates discussed in "Aunt Dan and Lemon" continue to haunt me days later, so despite the play’s occasional rambling moments, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make a surprisingly significant impression on me, and I’m a little irritated that I might be thinking about this play for weeks to come.

The Joys of Last Love

By Sarah Grace Smith

Old love is so often forgotten. But Helen Simonson chooses to remember in “Major Pettigrew's Last Stand” that even those nearing 70 still have hearts. Her debut novel is a welcome alternative to the tales of first love that flood the market.

A charming Sussex village, Edgecombe St. Mary, is the backdrop for this tale of unlikely love. Maj. Ernest Pettigrew is the epitome of an English gentleman: stolid, patriotic, polite. A widower, he still finds joy in his garden, his golf club and his tea. Mrs. Jasmina Ali, a Pakistani, is the village shopkeeper. A widow, she defies convention by having taken over the shop after the death of her husband.

The two come together after the death of Maj. Pettigrew's brother. Mrs. Ali provides unlooked for support and understanding, and the two quickly grow to like each other's company. They build their relationship on conversation and Kipling. These parts may be dull for those used to fast-paced love stories, but Simonson writes with language that is both beautiful and witty. The sweet is balanced by the snarky.

But with such an unusual couple, complications arise. These come in the form of family and friends. The Major's son, Roger, provides quite a few etiquette headaches, and Mrs. Ali's nephew disproves of the budding romance. The society that Maj. Pettigrew moves in is complex at best, and throwing in a biracial relationship does not make it any easier. Simonson's modern take on the novel of manners has been compared to those of Jane Austen. Like many of Austen's characters, Pettigrew is often stretched to the limit to maintain his sense of decorum while also maintaining his sense of what is right.

This contrast is what distinguishes Simonson's book from the other light romances on the shelves. Though its classification could lead it to be passed over as an insubstantial read, it deals with issues that give the reader something to chew on besides the author's descriptions of teacakes. The plot deals with the problems of racism, preservation and conservation, and even the age gap that causes so much misunderstanding today. The discomfort of new love seems negligible compared to the discomfort of rejection because of one's nationality.

What holds the reader's interest and keeps the novel grounded is the character of Maj. Pettigrew himself. Though staunchly traditional, he is not static. The book is interspersed with his wry thoughts and opinions. At one point, his ideas about young men are offered: “The Major wished young men wouldn't think so much. It always seemed to result in absurd revolutionary movements or, as in the case of several of his former pupils, the production of very bad poetry.” Simonson creates a character that is convinced of his own correctness, and only slowly shows the reader how incorrect he can be. These faults seem only to endear him further with the reader, though. They lend believability to a character who would otherwise be too upright.

As the novel progresses, the love story encounters the aforementioned bumps in the road. But towards the end, Simonson seems to have included one bump too many. Her carefully crafted love letter to the Sussex where she grew up careens out of control. Eventually, it reaches the expected happy ending, but not before throwing the reader into situations that feel much more like “Days of Our Lives” than Jane Austen. With a little more work, it seems Simonson could have concluded her book with events that didn’t break so drastically from the style of the rest of her novel.

Despite this slight hiccup, Simonson's book is still an enjoyable read. Its light and pretty prose makes it quick, but the subject matter and characters make it interesting. “Major Pettigrew's Last Stand” shouldn't be Simonson's last foray into authorship.

Bossypants

By Lauren Ellison

Tina Fey’s book "Bossypants" is a treasure trove of sarcastic wit, shameless honesty and even the occasional (and surprising) vulnerable revelation. Fey carefully tailors each phrase in the most hilarious style, ensuring countless laugh-out-loud reactions to even the most banal accounts. Fey’s strengths lie in her uncanny ability to recount her teenage loserdom and current insecurities in a hysterically self-deprecating, yet not self-pitying, way. She begins the book with a wild rant about the ridiculous acclaim “yellow” hair receives. Incensed and disturbed that her young daughter already prefers her yellow-haired Sleeping Beauty doll to the brown-haired Snow White doll, Fey finally concedes to the yellow-hairs. “Let’s admit it,” she writes, “Yellow hair does have magic powers. You could put a blond wig on a hot-water heater and some dude would try to fuck it.” Fey’s book is a wonderful mash-up of valuable lessons learned and inconsequential personal reflections that would even garner a chuckle from Sarah Palin, Fey’s most loyal hater.

The book’s most entertaining chapter, appropriately titled “Dear Internet,” features crude blog posts that Fey has chosen to personally address. The fact that Fey is capable of wittily, but not bitchily, replying to a blogger who calls her “an ugly, pear-shaped, bitchy, overrated troll,” puts her in a comedic league of her own: “To say I’m an overrated troll when you have never even seen me guard a bridge, is patently unfair.” While she laughs off her haters and imperfections, Fey is also unafraid to admit her weaknesses. She unabashedly admits to the difficulties of being a bossypants, a wife and a mother, confessing that she enjoys a “triannual torrential sobbing.” She’s only human, after all.

The book starts from the beginning, chronicling her summers among the gays at theater camp. She relives the heartbreaking realization that though she loved her gays for entertainment value, she was a little disgusted when she really thought about what went on behind closed doors. Fey gives us a laugh here, but at the same time reveals a character flaw she’s truly ashamed of. It’s raw, honest and something she doesn’t need to share with us, but she does anyway. The book is rifled with obscure over shares and embarrassing questions that usually go unspoken, which make the book stand out for me. I take moderate comfort in the fact that Fey ponders the same off-kilter, often politically incorrect, thoughts that I entertain from time to time. Maybe I’m not so screwed up after all. Or maybe we’re just two freaks.

There’s a delightful chapter where Fey discusses the pros and cons of Photoshop. With all of the emaciated celebrities declaring war on Photoshop (clearly because they are all a Size Negative Five and don’t need it anyway,) Fey is the first to say, “What’s the big deal?” When Fey makes a point, her diction is fearless. “I feel about Photoshop the way some people feel about abortion,” she writes. “It is appalling and a tragic reflection on the moral decay of our society … unless I need it, in which case, everybody be cool.”

Her stories make trite moments such as a painfully awkward run-in with a high school ex seem equally life altering as the first time she hit the "Saturday Night Live" stage as Palin. Fey entertainingly recounts her journey from an undesirable partially-permed college female to the best days of her life at the improv company, The Second City. Fey proves that a woman can be funny without playing the pretty girl and reveals that you don’t have to be a mannish ballbuster to be a successful boss and entrepreneur. "Bossypants" truly has something for everyone, with chapters touching on everything from breastfeeding to job searching to a laundry list of her bodily flaws. She considers no story too ordinary to share with us, and though some accounts are more laughable than others, the book in its entirety is absolutely worth reading. Her life encounters are reminiscent of an uncomfortably amusing "30 Rock" episode, each page packed with smart, perfectly constructed gems.

"Bossypants" puts Fey as a frontrunner for one of the greatest comedians of our time. “Do your thing and don’t care if they like it,” Fey writes. I think I’ve found my new motto.

Fairy tales reveal truth of loved one's past

By Courtney M. Holbrook

Do you remember sitting on your grandfather’s knee, listening to stories of the past?

Half reality, half folk tale, those stories developed our lives, teaching us lessons while entertaining our childhoods. They were fairy tales.

Yet, entwined amongst elves and Aesop-like animals were morsels of truth, waiting for us to grow up and recognize their worth.

Téa Obreht’s “The Tiger’s Wife” is the story of Natalia, a young doctor vaccinating orphans in the Baltics, and the fairy tales her now-dead grandfather told her. The grandfather, Dr. Stefanovic, has passed away after leaving his home for a strange town. His copy of “The Jungle Book” — which never left his side — has gone missing.

It is in Stefanovic’s fairy tales that Natalia will discover the truth of his past — and the horrors of the Baltic Wars.

To understand both Stefanovic and the destruction of the Baltics, one must understand “the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like rivers through all the other stories of his life.”

This is a devastating novel, one where truth lies thinly veiled beneath the twists and turns of myth.

At 25 years old, Obreht’s ability to play with language and fantasy is remarkable. Though Obreht left Yugoslavia at 12, she has a keen sense of the damage wrought upon an entire people trapped in the aftermaths of war.

Obreht’s talent lies in her vivid writing style and sense of youthful optimism, which keeps such dark material from drowning in turgid prose. Her ideas of war and blood surprise you. They are not mindless evils, but things that trap you through “hate, and the long, slow progression of people who feed on it and are fed it, meticulously, by the ones who come before them.”

“The Tiger’s Wife” is not told in a linear fashion, but through stories. This may turn some readers away — at times it is difficult to hold onto the plot when Obreht gets going.

However, these literary flights are not signs of an overeager young writer, but a classic tool of Baltic writing. Obreht has clearly absorbed the stories of her own Yugoslavian culture, where animals do speak and men live forever.

The magical elements of the tale are placed in stark contrast to Natalia’s own experiences. Orphans die and men dig up dead bodies to appease superstitions.

After reading “The Tiger’s Wife,” one realizes that it’s not just a story of war or a girl coming of age, but of how a way of life can vanish.

That is why Natalia’s grandfather tells his stories.

That is why our grandfather told us his own tales.

Our elders narrate their stories so that we can glimpse the lives they once lived, the loves they once had — and for a moment, understand a past that will never return.

Everyday life, work displayed at Ga Museum

By Sarah Grace Smith

A quick glance at any newspaper will show that America is a study in contrasts. Everything from politics to socio-economic status to pop culture create divisions that make American culture seem like a pot set to boil rather than a melting pot.

"The American Scene on Paper: Prints and Drawings from the Schoen Collection," on display through May 2 at the Georgia Museum of Art, shows that this phenomenon is not a new one. Featuring artwork from the 1930s, 40s and 50s, this exhibit depicts scenes from everyday life in the mid-twentieth century.

The variety of mediums used and experiences shown create a spectrum of sights and feelings that seem like they could have been taken from life today. Many of the works were created by artists working under New Deal programs during the Great Depression, and as the country works its way out from under the Great Recession, these pieces seem especially pertinent, even 80 years later.

The showcase is divided into sections presenting different themes common in the works, such as regionalism, industry and abstract works. The first room provided a general overview of the artists, introducing their different styles and subject matters through works usually including some sort of self-portrait. The collections features of variety of artists of varying notoriety.

The owner of this collection, Jason Schoen, is an art consultant who has created a valuable resource in his collection, not only for those interested in American art history, but also those interested in the everyday lives of mid-twentieth century Americans.

One such representative piece is Edward Laning's "The Park," created in 1933 with ink, chalk and silverpoint. In sepia tones, the picture shows a playground full of children, some playing marbles, others sliding, some being comforted by concerned mothers. Though the drawing could be a modern day scene, the clothing and lack of modern safety measures place it firmly in the last century. And though the scene is so commonly American, Laning's style brings to mind sketches by Renaissance artists. This juxtaposition of so many factors is common in the exhibit. Though many of the drawings seem simple at first glance, a careful look reveals layers of meaning and craft.

Though most of the works are black and white etchings, lithographs or sketches, this lack of color does not detract from the interest of the pieces. One of the most beautiful and typical works is "Glow of the City," part of the section featuring scenes from the Northeast. The foreground is dark, pierced with spots of light that are lit windows. The background is light but foggy, and the Empire State Building looms in this glow.

The deep contrast between the foreground and background of the picture is a common motif in the collection and offers insight into the feeling of the time. Darkness was close at hand, but the thought of better days to come kept people hoping. The timeliness of this message is almost eerie, and the deep blacks and stark whites make it seem as if ghosts from the past have come to deliver it.

Not all of the works were created with such profound messages. Moments of humor and irony show up often even in works that can seem serious in tone. Many of the artists find humor in the mannerisms of the people they depict or the contrast between expectation and reality.

The gallery's lay-out emphasizes the progress and interplay of ideas. Comic relief comes along at the right moments. Rural gives way to urban, just as American life was at the time. And the more traditional depictions of American life give way to the abstract and surreal.

"The American Scene on Paper" is the museum's second collaboration with Schoen and the Mobile Museum of Art of Mobile, Alabama. In 2003, the museums created "Coming Home: American Paintings, 1930-1950, from the Schoen Collection." America has entered a different era in its history since that time, an era that is more akin to the one shown in this collection. "The American Scene" raises questions about work and art, and shows the beauty that exists in the everyday.

Aunt Dan and Lemon

By Courtney M. Holbrook

The Nazis may have had it right.

That’s the lesson Lemon, our protagonist, would like us to learn. Compassion and love — foreign feelings to a sickly girl feverishly remembering the dead and gone — circle like so much wasted space in playwright Wallace Shawn’s “Aunt Dan and Lemon.”

As performed by UGA’s University Theatre, the play is dominated by two sinister performances.

As Aunt Dan, an American studying at Oxford University, Jennifer Schottstädt gives us a seductive yet ultimately frightening performance.

As Lemon, a sickly woman with an even sicker worldview, Paige Pulaski gives us a woman who is seemingly frail, yet far more disturbing than we can imagine.

Set during 1970s Vietnam in London, the play follows a father and mother, their daughter, Lemon, and their American friend, Dan. “Aunt” Dan tells stories about her glamorous friends at Oxford. Lemon listens, enraptured by Aunt Dan’s tales of mob bosses and married professors.

But soon the audience comes to learn about Dan’s obsession with Henry Kissinger.

This obsession turns and turns, until suddenly Dan and Lemon are rationalizing murder, evil and oppression in the pursuit of the greater good. Dan takes Kissinger’s RealPolitick and applies it to her personal life, where the individual must dominate all others.

As we watch Dan’s friends act in increasingly horrifying ways, we also are forced to empathize with Lemon’s fascist, take-no-prisoners mentality on life. For this ill woman, strong and unfeeling people are to be praised, not shunned.

Set on a sparse set, the production pushes the audience to focus on the actors. Most of the time, that works. Aside from Lemon and Aunt Dan, Chelsey Horn gives a moving performance as Lemon’s mother. Hers is the one voice of real compassion in the show — and Dan’s Ciceronian verbosity shuts her down.

Though most of the cast works well with what is a linguistically challenging script, there are some problems. Spencer Tootle, as Mindy, is not believable as a cold-hearted, irresistible seductress. She is too childlike and blank-faced. She sometimes looks uncomfortable with the overt sexual evil of the character. At other times, she just looks confused.

The lighting focuses on the wrong parts of the stage. It’s a minor issue, but one that is a distraction from specific monologues.

In the end, this is a play whose dialogue dominates all else. It is Aunt Dan’s use of language that makes her the frightening force in Lemon’s life.

But it is Lemon who is the real terror. Her cheerful London accent chirps throughout the narrative. But it is when you really listen to her words that you realize the horror of who she is. For in Lemon’s world, compassion is futile, and political leaders such as Kissinger and Hitler are to be admired. This would be impossible without Pulaski’s deceptively terrifying performance.

“Aunt Dan and Lemon” reveals the terror of social acceptance toward evil, and the all too easy way in which good people can become heartless.

Fictional travel book doesn't really go anywhere

By Colin Frawley

Road novels can be great fun – pick up Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” or Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49” for a look at the merits of tetherless adventuring.

These types of stories provide boundless opportunities for zany encounters of every variety. It’s a great setup for a tale, allowing a character to drink in a bounty of culture while in pursuit of a singular goal.

Unless there’s no culture.

Unless there’s no goal.

So, what happens when a travel book fixes its gaze on its own feet? You get Joshua Ferris’ “The Unnamed.”

Ferris’ follow up to his debut novel, 2007’s National Book Award-nominated “Then We Came to the End,” starts off as a domestic drama with a pathological twist. New York City lawyer Tim Farnsworth is doing exceptionally well compared to most men in their late forties: He has settled comfortably into partnership at his longtime law firm, looks great for his age, and has a relatively solid relationship with his wife Jane. At the novel’s outset, however, he walks into the couple’s house wearing a grave expression and simply announces, “It’s back.”

What’s “back” is Tim’s long-dormant but inexplicable disease, which causes him to walk uncontrollably over excessive distances. He might be sitting in his corner office, meeting with a client or preparing a report, when he will simply shoot up and out of the building and begin a long jaunt to nowhere. It’s an original concept that leaves the door open to a multitude of possibilities for Tim. Unfortunately, the whole thing becomes repetitive almost instantly – all of Tim’s early journeys just end with Jane picking him up late at night.

Ferris characterizes Jane mainly by showing us how she deals with Tim’s affliction. In this light, she is a fantastically sympathetic character: Despite the annoyance of having to continually fetch her husband from odd places at odd hours, Jane is unflaggingly supportive and faithful. Through all of her patient suffering, Ferris manages to avoid drawing her as a submissive, do-all China doll: Jane works in real estate. Jane keeps the couple’s pissy teenage daughter on track in school. She goes to incredible lengths to make sure her husband is comfortable. Strong and prudent and always believable, her character is one of “The Unnamed”’s greatest triumphs.

This little victory demonstrates that Ferris is more than capable of getting down to ground level and really living inside his stories. As such, it’s a little tragic that he doesn’t perform this task more frequently throughout the novel. While the first half of “The Unnamed” provides the reader with a nuanced, detailed picture of a strained family situation, the book hits cruise control halfway through and never puts its foot back on the accelerator.

Three days after finishing this novel, I’m still wondering why Ferris bothers to give us a cast of such authentic characters. All he does in the second half of “The Unnamed” is remove us from them. It’s not giving away all that much to reveal that Tim eventually takes off for good, backpacking aimlessly around the U.S. with nothing but his next camp site in mind (supposedly for the good of the family, which I don’t buy for a minute). Meanwhile, the reader is stuck in his consciousness, which never grapples with anything more than garden variety existential angst – mind vs. body, religion vs. secularism, etc. The novel’s promising setup gives way to an excruciatingly cyclical journey through cardboard landscapes featuring throwaway characters. It’s as though Ferris needed a novel-length story, but didn’t know what to do with his protagonists, his premise or his talent. I have a hard time believing this is the most careful work of a National Book Award-nominated novelist.

I would love to see a rewrite of “The Unnamed” that preserves the first half and takes the rest in a new direction. There is too much emotional investment here to be wasted on such a lazy and unsatisfying ending. “The Unnamed” shows that Ferris still has the chops to hold a reader’s interest – but it also shows that those chops aren’t hot enough to let him sleepwalk through a project without people noticing.

People still read, Joshua. Next time, please – give us a little something for the effort.

'Anarchy' has substance, but too much style

By Rebekah Baldwin

Justin Taylor falls prey to many of the pitfalls encountered by first time novelists in his “The Gospel of Anarchy," published by Harper Perennial this year. The book is replete with indulgences, omissions and, at times, incoherency. It did, however, keep me interested with vivid detail, mysterious plot lines and unique storytelling approaches.

“The Gospel of Anarchy” tells the story of a group of anarchist kids living in a run-down house in Gainesville, Fla. called Fishgut. From the beginning, the main characters have differing ideas about what life as an anarchist looks like, but they all live in harmony, allowing each to his own. But peace in the house is disturbed after several of the young anarchists start a cultish religion that’s a kind of twisted off-shoot to Christianity. They call it Anarchristian, and it is based on the journal of an old housemate, Parker, who has gone missing.

The story begins with David right before he meets the Fishgut crew in the summer of 1999 and drops out of college to join them. It seems that he will be the book’s main character, but four other characters are the center of perspective for different chapters, and some chapters are told through a third-person omniscient narrator. Some of the story lines overlap, and it is helpful to see situations from multiple angles. This writing technique leads to a more complete picture of Fishgut than seeing it from one person only would. Also, it gave readers more of an opportunity to connect. Maybe I identify with Anchor, the young girl who becomes part of the scene for a summer but returns to school once classes start again, but someone else might relate to Katy, the powerful, alluring nymphomaniac. This story-telling approach was a welcome surprise.

Another unexpected element to “The Gospel of Anarchy” that I enjoyed was how mysterious it is in parts. After an intense description of a dream, that Katy and Anchor have simultaneously, was left as a cliff-hanger, I just had to read the next chapter to find out what they saw. The mystery surrounding Parker held me in suspense, also. Who was Parker? Would he return to Fishgut?

Just as soon as I would get into the story, I would be stopped in my tracks by confusing, nearly incoherent sentences. I would re-read them to try to make some sense, but usually came up with nothing. For example, “If we could create a world in which everything that is possible is also desirable, then there would be no possibility of hypocrisy or conflict between desires” — I've read that several times now and I'm still not understanding it.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind having to read something multiple times to decipher its meaning. In fact, I enjoy it every now and again. But Taylor’s philosophizing came across as total bullshit. Can anyone tell me what, “Desire is a strange attractor. Your longing warps the arc of the world's emergent truth,” means? Perhaps it went over my head. There were some clear ideas, but they were greatly outweighed by the nonsense.

Another thing that annoyed me about “The Gospel of Anarchy” is what seemed to me to be indulgences by Taylor — namely the lengthy descriptions of internet porn and the many vivid accounts of orgies. I wasn’t bothered by their inclusion in the plot — I understand that both served to further the story — but the length of time spent describing them seemed gratuitous and unnecessary. I don’t know if Taylor thought he needed the graphic sexuality to keep his reader’s attention, or if he just really enjoyed writing it, but I, for one, was turned off by it.

On top of that, “The Gospel of Anarchy” was highly unrealistic in places. Call me crazy, but I find it hard to believe that a bunch of kids in their late teens and early twenties are participating in orgies and polyamory. Even if they are, how are they not teeming with STDs? Why hasn’t anyone gotten pregnant? I would say it’s safe to assume that they aren’t using birth control or condoms, since they only live off of what they can scrounge out of dumpsters.

The detail with which Taylor describes Gainesville and its locales do help bring the story back to earth, at least. “I walked past the library, out to where East University becomes Hawthorne Road, and the sidewalk grew cracked and weed-split, and the homes needed paint jobs they wouldn't get,” he writes. I can picture the setting, and thanks to Taylor’s vivid depictions, I feel like if I were to drive to Gainesville I could find them.

This dedication to detailed description and other elements of Taylor’s writing style lead me to believe that he has potential. Overall, “The Gospel of Anarchy” is well-written and interesting, however, the fact that it is unintelligible, unrealistic and unnecessarily lewd make reading it a fairly unpleasant experience.

Comedy and drama coexist in 'Dearly Departed'

By Colin Frawley

It’s asking a lot of a play to expect both humor and pathos in equal measure. In “Dearly Departed,” the Black Theatre Ensemble’s latest production, director Kelundra Smith often strikes a balance between the two notions, stumbling only when tears and titters seem to be vying for supremacy within the same scene. “Dearly Departed” is entertaining and compelling from end to end, but it would benefit from a couple tweaks aimed at establishing a firmer tonal center.

The play begins at the breakfast table with the death of Bud, who, based on the exposition we receive later, is your classic grumpy, gruff patriarch who insists on doing things his own way. After Bud meets his maker face-first in a plate of eggs, his surviving family members are forced to — God forbid — spend some time together and plan a proper burial for their dearly departed.

The catalysts of the operation are Bud’s responsible son, Ray (Dane Alejandro, who also plays Bud in the opening scene), and Bud’s resolute widow, Raynelle (Lauren Rice). Everyone else — Bud’s penniless, philandering other son, Junior; his fundamentalist Christian sister, Marguerite; as well as a cast of cantankerous in-laws — seems to be too wrapped up in other pursuits to lend much help. Despite being an ensemble-driven number, "Dearly Departed" ultimately privileges Ray’s side of the struggle, sympathizing with his frustration over anyone else’s.

It’s too bad, then, that Alejandro was one of the weaker elements of the cast. His character was well-written, displaying a believable mixture of sparring emotions, but more so than anyone else on stage, Alejandro came across like he was reciting lines instead of interacting with fellow human beings. He’s only a sophomore at the University Georgia, so I hope persistence pays off and we see him churning out better and better performances as time goes on.

The rest of the cast was at least adequate, and in some cases, remarkable. Most notably, Elliot Dixon floored me in the roles of the Rev. Hooker, Clyde the mechanic and, most charmingly of all, Norval the contented invalid. Dixon took the lead in all his scenes without ever appearing starved for attention. In the hands of a less considerate actor, the role of the Rev. Hooker could easily have fallen into the trap of the fire-and-brimstone caricature; instead, Dixon imbued the Reverend with a prudent, articulate demeanor that made him one of the most sympathetic characters on stage.

I began by discussing the play’s tone, and I think both the writers (David Bottrell and Jessie Jones) and director deserve credit for maintaining a fairly consistent balance throughout the two hour-plus narrative. After a couple scenes, it started to become clear that each somber passage would soon be followed by a moment of comic relief — and many of them killed it. One woman in my row stomped the floor in laughter so many times I was tempted to ask her when she was supposed to get to China.

In any event, the one-two, sad-funny formula worked for the most part, helping reinforce the multi-faceted nature of certain characters while keeping things breezy for the audience. But as I mentioned earlier, there were a couple sticky moments where strong emotion was undermined by an inappropriate joke that simply fell flat (see, for instance, a funeral scene toward the end in which one character sits munching on an ice cream bar in the foreground while everyone else grieves and says their goodbyes to Bud).

“Dearly Departed” worked for me, thanks to generally solid acting and a plot that tied up neatly at the end. Still, there were some odd inconsistencies that threw the vibes in the Morton Theatre into a strange flux. While I applaud the attempt at variety, some slight directorial adjustments would go a long way toward getting the play’s incompatible feelings out of each other’s hair. Comedy and drama are not mutually exclusive, but things can get awfully messy when they start stealing each other’s lines.

'The Imperfectionists' is perfectly imperfect

By Ashley Bene

When you’re bored at work, have you ever tried to imagine what your coworkers’ lives may be like outside of the office? Tom Rachman’s comic novel, "The Imperfectionists," appears to be his inter-office day dreams in print; it’s like a book version of TV’s "The Office," but about journalists instead of paper salesmen.

Broken into sections, each named for the person it is about, the novel explores the lives of the workers who are all connected to an English-language newspaper in Rome. We see a cranky corrections editor, a has-been foreign correspondent, a copy editor who fights sexism in the office every day and a young stringer who makes one mistake after another trying to land a job with the paper.

At the end of each of these sections, there is another story in italics. These are chronological as the novel progresses and tell key events of how the paper started and inevitably died. The last of these sections ties the novel together, as it sums up what happened to each person we read about after the paper shut down. It leaves readers with the beautifully described, yet haunting image of an empty newsroom, the perfect way to wrap up the story.

The layout of "The Imperfectionists" allows you to enjoy it in episodes, only needing to remember who characters are when they are mentioned in other sections. Each section could stand alone as a short story, but since the characters lives are all intertwined and linked through their work at the paper, the stories work together to make a greater whole. The majority of the action takes place outside the newsroom, and it becomes apparent to the reader how little these coworkers know about each other and how wrong their assumptions about each other are. Perhaps this is Rachman’s way of commenting on the increasing lack of communication among colleagues.

On the surface, "The Imperfectionists" is about the death of a newspaper and what happens to its employees in the years and days leading to its demise. Much deeper than that, this is a carefully constructed study of the human psyche that so thoroughly understands each and every one of the variety of characters in the novel it is astounding.

Rachman explores everything about the imperfections of these human beings, down to little quirks like feeling the need to put a hand up in the background of someone’s photo, locking yourself into their memories forever or needlessly popping hard candies in your mouth to get through the day.

One of my favorite sections of the novel is on the Cairo stringer, Winston Cheung. Cheung is trying out for the position as a stringer with the paper, and one mistake after another later, he ends up letting his competition for the position, a much older Rich Snyder, stay with him in Cairo, taking advantage of his young naivety. Snyder gives the kid hints and tells Cheung, “You are getting this job. I have total faith in you,” all while running off with Cheung’s laptop for several days at a time and convincing Cheung to stop working on his application piece to help Snyder research his. Pitying Cheung but laughing all through the section, anyone who has fumbled through the beginnings of a career can relate.

Rachman’s perfectly imperfect characters live and breathe on the page like the coworkers you see in the office every day, making "The Imperfectionists" a must-read for anyone who has ever made an assumption about one of their colleagues.