Category Archives: Play

The Moth

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Storytelling rests on ‘ands’.  It’s a series of connectives and all of the contentious parts kinda have to exist as subtext – you’re simply narrating something.  The audience is enlisted in the narration and the disagreements exist at a deeper level.

There is a kind of intimacy, an old fashioned campfire, front-porch intimacy, that comes from one narrator talking to many people at once.  There is simply a kind of alchemy about it … it can’t be reproduced by the solitary act of reading which has its own great joys of intimate connection between two minds. This is a connection between one voice and many minds – that’s an extraordinary thing.

 

CBCQ discussion with Catherine Burns, artistic director of ‘The Moth’, and the author of a new anthology of Moth stories, Adam Gopnik.

September 26, 2013 – CBCQ discusses The Moth (MP3)

[audio:https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2251996/cbcq_20130926_themoth.mp3]

The Juggler on the Radio

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What’s a transcendental?

It’s the juggler on the radio.

The juggler on the radio?

There’s a juggler on the radio. He sounds exactly the same as if there’s no juggler. There’s lots of people listening to the radio and some are saying, “I believe in the juggler.” and some are saying, “There is no juggler.” and there’s a few philosopher types saying, “How is a juggler you can’t see hear, see, smell, or touch different from no juggler?” but there’s nothing any of these people can tell each other about the existence or the non-existence of the juggler!

So, how do you know there’s a juggler?

I heard him on the radio.

There’s a juggler then ….

[audio:https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2251996/DarkSideOfTheMoon_BBCRadio2.mp3]

Darkside – BBCRadio2 (MP3) 

Sir Tom Stoppard was first approached with the suggestion of writing a play based on Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ by a friend in 1973.  For the 40th anniversary of the album’s release he created a fantastical story about fear, philosophy and madness, which is woven together with the original music.   This piece is available for listening and viewing for the next couple days at BBC2.