Why I Love Doing Live Theater, Part 17
January 12th, 2006
So last night I opened a short run of my comic monologue Ben Franklin: Unplugged -- a show that looks at Franklin's famous kite experiment from several possible angles -- at the Philadelphia Theatre Company (through Jan. 21 -- come see it if you're in Philly!). And I was closing in on the end of the first act, when an enormous crack of lightning literally shook the building. The audience and I took a moment to take stock of ourselves, and I briefly struck a kite-flying pose before returning to the scene I'd been in (depicting an intense dining-room conversation). Afterwards, my director and collaborator, David Dower, pointed out that if the performance had begun at the usual theater showtime of 8 p.m. -- rather than at 7:30, when they're starting here -- the lightning would have struck at the exact moment when I was actually dramatizing the kite experiment.
I leave it to theatrical theologians to determine whether this confirms that God prefers holding to the 8 p.m. showtime. ...
Entry Filed under: let's digress
4 Comments
1. MPH | January 13th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
I love that story. I wish we had more lightning in the Bay Area.
Say, Josh, have you ever thought about taking your blog to myspace? I enjoy your blog when I remember to check it out, but I’m not on this site very often. And I’m curious to know what your thoughts on the whole myspace scene would be. Just a thought…
Break some legs in Philly.
(That’s theater talk, right?)
2. Josh Kornbluth | January 13th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Thanks, MPH! I haven’t checked out “myspace,” but I suspect that it may not be possible for this blog to wander away from KQED’s website. Sounds cool, though. What’s “myspace” about?
3. Julie Bernstein | January 15th, 2006 at 2:28 am
If Myspace allows embedding RSS feeds, you could just subscribe to Josh’s page at http://blogs.kqed.org/joshkornbluth/?feed=rss2. (That’s how I have it embedded in my Protopage portal.)
4. MPH | January 16th, 2006 at 4:29 pm
Hi again,
Myspace is network of sorts, where friends can create simple web pages and share pictures, interests and blogs and then comment on each other’s sites. Basically, it’s a way keep track of friends and make new ones (I sound like an ad, huh?)
But I noticed more and more bands are creating ’spaces’, like http://www.myspace.com/deathcabforcutie. You can add bands to your list of friends and then they are just a-click-away from your own page. I went searching for people like you and Ira Glass and others, but no luck.
To Julie: I’m not sure about RSS feeds on myspace (I’m not much of a techie), but I’ll check it out. Thanks!