In honor of Groundhog Day last week, we swap favorite time travel stories with fellow nerd AJ Mass that run the gamut from Ray Bradbury, Jack Finney, and Stephen Fry to Eliza Dushku and Ashton Kucher. Featuring nods to precision, romance, 12 monkeys, gateway drugs, literary detectives, time-traveling Irish playwrights, open and closed universes, and the surprising double presence of Christopher Plummer. Heavy, doc. (Length 37:40)
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Braden Abraham, the new artistic director of Chicago’s Writers Theatre, just announced the theater's 31st season, the first one he's programmed since joining the company. Braden talks about what goes into planning a season (and how that thinking never really ends); how a theatre season is like a great album; the importance of being in a learning and discovery phase; remaining in conversation with various overlapping communities; how programming a show in one city leads to a different show in another; the challenge of making each show an event; finding the right balance of scale and intimacy; and the value of bring some west coast energy to the north shore. (Length 19:18)
The About Face Theatre world premiere production of Gender Play, or what you Will is a tour-de-force for its co-creator and star Will Wilhelm, who transforms their own story as a nonbinary actor into a funny and powerful evening that's part seance and part dance party. Will shares their journey of discovery and how this play began as a thrown gauntlet; how Shakespeare’s plays are fundamentally queer, and how Will found themself in them; the difficulty of parsing gender identity, gender performance, and cross-dressing; the importance of creating easy on-ramps to appreciating Shakespeare; and how Gender Play will continue to be a gift to future queer performers who can make it their own. (Length 25:20)
David A. Goodman, the former president of the Writers Guild of America currently leading the negotiations and strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), takes a break from the picket lines to explain why this existential fight is so important. David reveals what's at stake, avoids heroic hyperbole; declines to craft narratives; confides who has the real power in Hollywood; explains the gutting of the American middle-class; possesses an admirable reluctance to participate in childish banter; and expresses gratitude for the extraordinary support the WGA is getting from its sister Hollywood unions. (Length 20:18)
17 Comments
Julie K. · March 24, 2012 at 9:49 pm
Other time travel favorites inculde the following:
1. Wrinkle in Time (Madeline L’Engle)
2. Chronicles of Narnia
3. Fringe (You say “altenate universe”, I say “timeline.”)
4. Adventures in Odyssey (the Imagination Station)
5. Hitchhiker’s Guides
6. Brigadoon
7. Daybreak (Similar to Groundhog’s Day, but Detective Brent Hopper wakes up to the same day on which he’s been accused of murdering a district attorney. Every morning is identical, except for any new information that he has discovered from the previous day–and anything that has happened to his body.
8. Lost in Austen (Elizabeth Bennett comes to the present and current day Amanda Price goes back to Pride and Prejudice times.)
austin · February 20, 2012 at 7:35 am
I agree on both points, and you’ve convinced me to go back and re-watch “Blink”. Thanks, Hilary!
Hilary Giffen · February 20, 2012 at 7:27 am
The Doctor may be a time traveller, but most of his stories aren’t actually time travel stories. They’re more settings for stories. There are a few individual episodes that do qualify. “Blink” from series 3 is outstanding on so many levels and is a true time travel story. I would put that episode in my top 10 list of “best hours of television” and the top of my list of best time travel stories.
austin · February 13, 2012 at 8:16 am
Seriously? How can we trust somebody with a *Stanford* email address… Holy crap, you ain’t kidding! This is a shocking blind spot. I look forward to checking out her books. Thanks for the recommendation…and Go Bears!
Joe Pallas · February 13, 2012 at 7:32 am
Hello, Connie Willis? Firewatch, Doomsday Book, and To Say Nothing of the Dog? Not only does she present the time machine as a fait accompli without any silly pseudo-technical explanation, she puts it in the hands of academic historians, because really, who else should be operating a time machine?
austin · February 9, 2012 at 7:33 am
Names of fans are culled from these comments, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, iTunes reviewers, and actually (gasp!) meeting fans in person. They’re then thrown into a digital hat and I pluck one out each week, double-checking that I haven’t given them a shout-out before. I usually try to get both first and last names but sometimes will use noms de web if it looks like I’ll totally screw up the pronunciation.
Colin · February 8, 2012 at 8:02 pm
How do you decide random fans? I know they’re random but how do you have a list?
austin · February 8, 2012 at 10:45 am
Love it. There’s a similar bit in the DS9 episode “Trials & Tribble-ations”, in which an agent from the “Department of Temporal Investigations” refers to Capt. James T. Kirk as “The worst. A menace.”
Frank Forkl · February 8, 2012 at 10:34 am
My favorite Star Trek time travel story is from Voyager. A renegade time cop from the future travels back in time to kill Janeway because she’s messed with time too much. For me its so meta. Star Trek always seems to do a time travel ep when they run out of other ideas. So, for there to be an in-universe character who just flips his lid and goes “STOP. MESSING WITH. THE TIMELINE!” is hysterical to me.
austin · February 8, 2012 at 10:29 am
Ooh…excellent point, sir.
Frank Forkl · February 8, 2012 at 10:22 am
I also love Back to the Future, including the chalk board bit, BUT: Back to the Future Pt. II isn’t internally consistent! After Biff brought the almanac back, he would have traveled to the newly created 2015, not the one Marty and Doc were walking around in. They should have been stranded in that 2015 forever. But then, of course, there’s no story.
austin · February 8, 2012 at 10:03 am
That may well be it!
Katy Hargreaves · February 8, 2012 at 10:02 am
Trust me, I noticed and was outraged by the lack of Dr Who. I put it down to you being Americans… 😛
austin · February 8, 2012 at 7:56 am
Thanks, Dustin! You’re the third person to post that information (the other two were on Facebook and Twitter). Thanks for the confirmation!
Dustin · February 7, 2012 at 10:10 pm
FYI – Austin, the story you are looking for is “Behold the Man” by Michael Moorcock.
Kyle · February 6, 2012 at 10:35 pm
By the way…Where the hell is Hot Tub Time Machine in this? Major failure, guys. This will be on your permanent record
Kyle · February 6, 2012 at 10:26 pm
Yes! Love it! PRIMER! That’s how I know you’re picking the right interviewees. I literally had my comments all ready: “PRIMER IS THE BEST”. He. Said. It. For. Me! <3 <3 <3