Cultural outpost
Andrea Harris arrives in Virginia (yay!), and she’ll rest later. Right now, the play’s the thing:
Anyway, guess where I’m going in a few minutes: to the local Shakespeare theater to see Hamlet. And then later tonight, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and then tomorrow Comedy of Errors — all at the same theater. Which is like, within walking distance. In all my years of living in urban cultural centers I’ve never actually seen a real play — I had to come to remotest Bucolica to get some real culture, which all of the People That Matter are always careful to assure everyone doesn’t exist in this country outside of places like New York and San Francisco. What a surprise, they’re wrong.
Surly note from the People That Matter: “Dead White Males. Don’t count.” Well, Tom Stoppard isn’t actually dead yet, but he’s past seventy and can’t last forever, and anyway, what does he know? He’s not a Wise Latina, after all.
And now that I think about it, it’s been a while since I’ve been out that way.
canadienne »
14 June 2009 · 1:18 pm
Who are these People that Matter?
CGHill »
14 June 2009 · 1:31 pm
Generally, anyone who will say with a straight face that yes, Rigoberto Menchú made up all that crap in her memoir that won a Nobel, but that doesn’t matter because she was speaking truth to power.
Lisa Paul »
14 June 2009 · 2:52 pm
Andrea Harris needs to get out more as there are tons of cultural events in the countryside — the Ashland Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Shakespeare Festival in Monmouth, Maine are two that come to mind. And who are these people who are saying culture doesn’t exist outside of two cities? Can you name them. I’ve never heard them and I read a lot of papers from San Francisco and New York. In fact, I seem to recall papers from both those cities regularly running travelogue round-ups of plays, music and arts events in lovely rural sites throughout America. Is someone trying to incite culture wars where they don’t exist?
CGHill »
14 June 2009 · 3:02 pm
It’s not so much the countryside, as it is the fact that there exist cities here in the flyover zone who don’t know their place. We caught megatons of that crap when one of our own overpaid a crapload of money for a Seattle basketball team that was losing money and moved it down here, to a place full of God-botherers and people who drive pickup trucks and other unsavory types. The Seattle papers were just full of it, in pretty much every sense of the word.
canadienne »
14 June 2009 · 3:12 pm
I agree with LIsa – that’s what I was getting at with my question (and I also agree with the availability of culture outside of the bigger centres).
Andrea Harris »
14 June 2009 · 5:49 pm
I think that some of you are confused as to what I said. I’m not the one who didn’t think there was any culture outside of Newyorklondonparisrome — when I wrote that I was being sarcastic. As to those of you who claim never to have heard of the “there’s no civilized cultural scene in the sticks” meme that streams steadily from the maws of the Mainstream Media — well, I wish I lived in your world. Actually — maybe now I do. For one thing, where I am now I have no tv. (The person I’m staying with has a television, but it is for the watching of videos and dvds.)
On a side note, I’ve found that it’s most of the big cities where culture (by which I mean theater, movies that aren’t big blockbuster things, the like) is hard to come by. It’s not that there isn’t any — Orlando, for example, had plenty non-Disney art stuff — but it’s often difficult to get to it. For one thing, city ticket prices can be expensive. And then there is the problem of getting to a theater or art gallery or so on if it happens to be across town and you have no car as I did for many years, and the buses don’t run as late as the show. Or you have a car, but you have to drive, often in traffic (if a show starts at 7pm, you need to get there at least at six to find parking, and often have to pay for parking as well, and thus you need to leave your house at rush hour). And in some cities going to events that are at night and even in the daytime is downright dangerous if the crime rate is high. These are just some of the problems that make so many people just opt to stay home and rent the Mel Gibson Hamlet from Netflix.
Where I am now is literally up the block from the theater. It’s like a couple minutes walk. Also a friend of mine got me into going. I didn’t have anyone like that in Orlando — everyone there I’d known had moved away long before I did.