ARMED by Dani Bryant and Andrea Loewen (July 18-21 at @PacificTheatre) [win tickets!]
As a long-time and die-hard fan of the arts, particularly the performing arts, I always love when young, up-and-coming stars create interesting works of theatre and live arts.
Xua Xua Productions rings in the summer with a simple question: what makes a man? Is it a job, a relationship, or maybe a couple of small but significant bits of anatomy? What happens when it gets taken away? Playing July 18-21 at Pacific Theatre at 8pm. Pay-what-you-can preview performance Tuesday, July 17 at 8pm. Tickets $10 in advance, $12 at the door, available through their website.
Some more information on this play:
When Joe loses everything that made him a Real Man, there’s only one thing left to do: compensate. Thus begins his epic quest to find something that will give him undeniable strength and power. Something that will never wither, grow flaccid, or die. Something that can never be taken away. The time-honoured tradition of a luxury car won’t cut it, so what will? The army? An epic tattoo? Or maybe a cannon arm. Yeah, that sounds about right. Looks like Joe’s getting a cannon arm.
This thoroughly over-the-top exploration of manhood is brought to you through the lens of two women. Just because this is a story about the loss of manhood, however, that doesn’t mean it’s anti-man. Pair this erosion of manhood with our constant need to modify our bodies, and you’ve got a guy with nothing left to do but tattoo his face and then chop off his own arm. All to make up for something he’s lost.
I have a pair of tickets to give away for opening night, July 18th, and all you need to do is to drop a quotation on this post about manhood, since that’s the theme of ARMED. My favorite quote about manhood is the following one:
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
— Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963
What’s your favorite quotation about manhood? Drop a comment on this post for a chance to enter to win this pair of tickets. I’ll draw winners on July 15th, 2012 at 2pm.
From: Richelieu. Act iii. Sc. i. by
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873)
“In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves
For a bright manhood, there is no such word
As “fail.””
Say hello to my little friend.
~Scarface
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
-Oscar Wilde
A man can be short and dumpy and getting bald, but if he has fire! Women will like him.
-Mae West
It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly, or a man womanly.
-Virginia Woolf
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
-Robert Frost
Theodore Roosevelt: “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
It is very sad for a man to make himself servant to a single thing; his manhood all taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business.
– Theodore Parker
UPDATE – The winner of my tickets to ARMED is Ashley! I will find your email and send you a note, unless you send me a note first!