#the dead 1904

[droughtofapathy]

"Welcome to the Theatre": Diary of a Broadway Baby

The Dead, 1904

November 26, 2024 | Off-Broadway | Irish Repertory Theatre | Evening | Play | Adaptation | 2H

This is one of those rare immersive theatrical experiences that does it to perfection. Four dozen audience members mix and mingle with the cast as we all attend Aunt Julia and Aunt Kate's Christmas dinner. There's singing, there's dancing, there's a little politics for good measure. The story itself is a simple one, and I'm not sure I'd be that enthralled were this a traditional play. But being able to live in this world is an experience I'll never forget. Being disabled, I had my doubts about the accessibility, but there were a number of chairs available for those who needed them, and a single-person elevator right out of the history books. Guest were ushered up to the second floor and greeted by a few of the party goers and the aunts. To be so close and personal with Mary Beth Peil and to shake her hand and thank her for inviting us...oh what a joy. And on opening night.

Then, with the party and the play underway, we were in this story. The sisters were just divine. Una Clancey made a brilliant Kate, the bolder and biting sister, to play off Mary Beth's sweet and wandering Julia. She was a replacement for Estelle Parsons and I loved her portrayal, but can you imagine the thrill of seeing Estelle Parsons in such an intimate evening? That woman is 97 and still kicking.

During the evening, Julia (a former soprano) entertains guests and it feels like a blessing. To watch Mary Beth act as she sings, and to see the moment Julia loses herself and the shade starts to descend is nothing short of heartbreaking. And I am once more proclaiming my love for Kate Baldwin. She too sings, and it makes the soul transcend. Oh, to be wealthy enough to afford the big tickets and sit with the family at the center table...

The supporting cast is colorful and entertaining. Getting to see two quadrille sets, one with Kate Baldwin in the traditionally male lead with a petite older woman was such fun. I did not buy the $400 (or $1k) dinner ticket because well, I make $51.5K a year and have to eat. But the show-only ticket was more than sufficient, no matter how good that pudding smelled. I do think I'd love to do the dinner experience if I ever come into some money. But even the show-only ticket was a bit of a stretch.

I also think the adaptive script is perhaps less impressive than the original story, given its reputation. Much of the internal conflict doesn't come until the final scene. Under normal circumstances, I have no doubt it's a powerful one. Unfortunately, midway through the last scene in the bedroom where Kate Baldwin breaks down and reveals a childhood romance that ended in tragedy, one of the older audience members collapsed. She was sitting just behind me in one of the few chairs and just slumped over. In the end, I think she was fine, but I saw her lying there against the sofa beside me, and she looked dead. The actor playing Gabriel handed it so well. He immediately broke scene and went to her, and the crew got her some water and sat her down on a sofa. She was able to talk, but seemed really out-of-it. The scene picked up again, but I'm not really sure I took it in. Until that moment, it was a wonderful night.

Verdict: You Can Pry This Show Out of My Cold Dead Hands

A Note on Ratings

[lucasoliko]

1904 wip

Sorry I don't have much time for drawing for myself lately :(

It's kinda sad because I want to do so many things but I literally can't, school drains my time and my energy completely and I always end up in bed doing nothing, anyway I felt like drawing Javier this weekend so here's a wip I don't know when I'll finish sadly

[tilbageidanmark]

A page from James Joyce’s manuscript for Ulysses

[fru1tt0ast]

hai guys.... i'm back with more cool drawings....

this is my red dead online character (atohi), his partner (wāštawešīš), and their baby (mistâpos)

[good--merits-accumulated]

can't help myself. another dps wip begun <3

[arealtrashact]

scrolling through your blog and finding out that not only do you draw the most FIRE peter pan art, but you also love elvis and have excellent takes,, ur so cool frfr <3

You...........think I'm cool

[the-van-der-linde-gang]

in honor of rock anon disappearing id like to give micah this (its a brightly glowing piece of plutonium. im giving him radiation poisoning)

“…” [Micah raises a brow and holds it up.] “The hell am I supposed to do with this??”

[vintage-russia]

Participants in the production of the opera "The Tale of the Dead Tsarevna and the Seven Bogatyrs" at the estate of Princess Mariya Tenisheva (1904)

[sheep-from-rad]

Hi! Sorry if this is weird or anything, this is my first time sending an ask lol

But I just finished reading your writing about the singer/influencer reader and omfg I love your brain. Like imagine the reader did a cover of/wrote like spit in my face by ThxSoMch or Cigarette Ahegao by Penelope Scott (love her sm btw-) cause just imagine the GUILTTT

Imagine the Batfam listening to their music and just hearing the bitterness in their voice as they sing “Screwing everything up, doing everything wrong, In my defence I wasn’t supposed to be around this long, so” HGDECANZZKNFBVD

Anyway, I love your writing and I hope you have an absolutely amazing week! Take care of yourself too- drink water, eat some food and try to get some sleep ml <3

Nah anon you're cool. I love reading asks. ALSO credits to Luludelulusramblings, they made the originally made Influencer reader. Batfam belongs to DC as usual. Singer reader post: here

You know, in the Art History year 1901-1904, Picasso started the Blue Period where he only painted in the shades of Blue. It started due to the death of his friend, later his financial struggles, and of course the current state of the society. Blue Period art was so good but so doleful and depressing that no one wants to hang it in their house. Singer! Reader started their career covering mainstream songs, band songs, maybe even vocaloid. 

Their blue period started months before they planned to leave the manor. It was a simple cover of MARINA’s ‘Are you satisfied?’ A lot of burnt out overachievers ate that cover, even Tim himself. The song is basically the reader questioning the Wayne last name. Sure it was a goldmine to others but to them it’s a ticket to misery. One song cover turned into many song covers, enough to make a long playlist to play at 3 a.m. when you’re about to have a breakdown. 

The whole playlist? Batfam avoids it because it reminds them of the times they could have been giving you love but they didn’t BUT at the same time they can’t really avoid it. It became like those guilty pleasures playlist. Damian loves and hates reader’s ‘The Family Jewels’ cover because it reminds him of the fact that he and the reader are basically on the same boat. They were just children who needed attention and love. He got that attention and love immediately because of the whole league of assassins backstory. He won’t admit it but the weight of the role weighs like tonnes of iron on his shoulders. 

Jason, Bruce and Cigarette Ahegao will roll together so much. That man has twice the amount of trauma Bruce had and his coping mechanism sucks. All the aggressiveness was just a coping mechanism, underneath he’s a man with conflicted feelings and those years of being dead and suddenly being resurrected didn’t help. Let’s face it Bruce is a tired man who lives a double life. He's a man who dresses up like as a bat making sure the city is safe but he can't cover all grounds. The neglect on reader was unintentional but neglect is neglect.

Dick with reader’s cover of ‘Stressed out’ by Twenty one pilots, no explanation needed. ‘This is me trying’ by Taylor Swift with Cassandra, Stephanie, and Tim. Cassandra and Stephanie being raised by villains and Tim being an overachiever to have his parent’s attention. His parents being always away and realizing he basically did the same thing to the reader by making them feel invisible. 

Double guilt if they left the playlist on autoplay and ‘Daddy issues’ plays. Any version but I think the original fits the bill. Reader ends their blue period with a cover of Mother Mother’s ‘Burning Pile’ basically saying ‘Yeah fuck it, it’s over. I’m burning it, I’m leaving it, I’m closing the chapter’. But to the Batfamily, it meant renewal and turning a new leaf, an invitation to make things better.

[diana-andraste]

Some of Bluebeard's Wives, Charles Yates Fell, 1904

Chamber of Bluebeard's dead wives from Georges Méliès silent film, 1901

John Carradine in Bluebeard, 1944

A children's staged play, late 1800s

Depictions of Bluebeard's wives through the years.

[uwmspeccoll]

Dia de los Muertos 2024

We commemorate Dia del los Muertos with woodcuts  by the Mexican printmaking satirist José Guadalupe Posada Aguilar (1852-1913) from the 1930 publication Monografía: Las Obras de José Guadalupe Posada, grabador mexicano, edited by American ethnographer Frances Toor (1890-1956), American Mexican artist Paul O'Higgins (1904-1983), and Posada's contemporary and colleague Blas Vanegas Arroyo (1852-1917), with an introduction by the prominent Mexican artist Diego Rivera (1886-1957), published in Mexico City by Mexican Folkways. 

 Calaveras and calacas are closely associated with Day of the Dead celebrations, and this Posada monograph contains many examples.

View other posts with works by Posada.

View other Dia de los Muertos posts.

[droughtofapathy]

"Welcome to the Theatre": Diary of a Broadway Baby

The Dead, 1904

December 29, 2024 | Off-Broadway | Irish Repertory Theatre | Evening | Play | Adaptation | 2H

As luck would have it, your favorite theatre aficionado won the $59 lottery and got a second chance to live in this world for a few hours. And this time, dinner. My last review more-or-less covered my thoughts on this fascinating production, and without the harrowing interruption of an audience member collapsing during the final scene, I can definitely say it was more impactful.

There were a few minor differences in the two performances. For one, I did notice that there seemed to be fewer cast-audience interactions, which I attribute to a greater caution about illness. So, no clasping hands with Mary Beth Peil this time around, and that's just fine with me. I was...alas...the only masked attendee, which seems rude of everyone else, but god forbid we bring up returning to mask mandates around here. I also had some minor difficulties securing a chair, but a staff member was very accommodating. It meant a slightly less desirable vantage point compared to my seat the last time, and some of the off-focus action got lost, but I was just happy to be seated. It was a high-traffic area, so I got covered in a lot of passing skirt layers, and look...I ain't complaining about *that.*

Now. Onto the review you're actually waiting for here. No, I don't think the $400 meal ticket is worth the cost. Had I paid the full price, I'd have been a little disappointed. I'm not a food kind of person, so it would have to be a true masterpiece for me to think any ticket so expensive would be worth it. If you're thinking of going, show-only is just fine. It was fun to be at the table, but just not to my taste. The beef had some kind of vinegar sauce I wasn't thrilled with, and the chicken was pretty dry actually. But the mashed potatoes were divine, and that pudding smelled heavenly. I wasn't as fond of the taste, though the baked top was a treat.

Loved the experience. Would not pay again should it return in future years. Unless they present me with a truly remarkable cast. I am not immune to the irresistible draw of a pretty woman or two.

Verdict: You Can Pry This Show Out of My Cold Dead Hands

A Note on Ratings

[genderkoolaid]

So it is with Florence Hines, a Black singer and drag king who got her start on the stage sometime around 1891, when she began to receive particular notice for her performances with Sam T. Jack’s Creole Burlesque. When the show came to Paterson, NJ, on November 23, 1891, “hundreds were turned away from the doorway” before the Creole Burlesque was even scheduled to take the stage, according to the Paterson Daily Caller. In their review, they called out Hines in particular for being an “excellent male impersonator.” The Creole Burlesque was a standard minstrel show, featuring all Black performers, led by a white manager, giving skits, songs, and scenes that featured standard variety acts (everything from clog dancing to drag) set in a pre-Civil War Southern plantation fantasy. But within a few years, Sam T. Jack would launch The Creole Show, an important milestone in Black performance in America. For the first time, an all-Black revue was presented as a modern, staged performance — not as an “authentic” recreation of Black life. According to Whiting Up, a history of white face entertainment by Black theater historian Marvin McAllister, The Creole Show was “a major outlet for Black artists interested in… developing a comedic tradition that was racially grounded but not riddled with stereotyping.” In another important departure from tradition, instead of hiring a man to play the traditional lead role of interlocutor or master of ceremonies, Sam T. Jack hired Florence Hines. As a drag king, Hines performed a routine that made mock of the “dandy” — flashy, modern, young men who drank and dated openly, and wore the latest clothes. One of her most famous numbers was “Hi Waiter! A Dozen More Bottles,” whose first verse went: Lovely woman was made to be loved, To be fondled and courted and kissed; And the fellows who’ve never made love to a girl, Well they don’t know what fun they have missed. I’m a fellow, who’s up on the times, Just the boy for a lark or a spree There’s a chap that’s dead stuck on women and wine, You can bet your old boots that it’s me. Many white drag kings of the day also performed this song, and similar dandy characters. For these performers, the dandy was a way to needle the men in the audience. But for Black performers, taking on a dandy role was also a way of resisting degraded depictions of Black people that were common on stage at the time. As Kathleen B. Casey wrote in The Prettiest Girl on the Stage is a Man, “when worn by a Black performer, the tuxedo with tails, cane, cape and a top hat countered the image of the ragged, shoeless plantation slave.” Thus, Hines made a natural choice for a show that wanted to show an entirely new kind of Black performance. By 1904, The Indianapolis Freeman would report that Hines “commanded the largest salary paid to a colored female performer.” In their book, Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889-1895, Lynn Abott and Doug Seroff wrote that “Hines’s male impersonations provided the standard against which African American comediennes were compared for decades.”

[literaryvein-reblogs]

121 Words & Phrases for Dying

A remarkable creativity surrounds the vocabulary of death. The words and expressions range from the solemn and dignified to the jocular and mischievous.

Old English

swelt/forswelt ⚜ give up the ghost ⚜ dead ⚜ i-wite

wend ⚜ forworth ⚜ go out of this world ⚜ quele ⚜ starve

c.1135 — 1600s

die (c.1135) ⚜ fare (c.1175) ⚜ end; let; shed (one’s own) blood (c.1200)

yield (up) the ghost (c.1290) ⚜ take the way of death (1297)

die up; fall; fine; leave; spill; tine (c.1300)

leese one’s life-days (c.1325) ⚜ part (c.1330)

flit (c.1340) ⚜ trance; pass (1340) ⚜ determine (c.1374)

disperish (c.1382) ⚜ be gathered to one’s fathers (1382)

miscarry (c.1387) ⚜ go; shut (1390)

expire; flee; pass away; seek out of life; sye; trespass (c.1400)

decease (1439) ⚜ ungo (c.1450) ⚜ have the death (1488)

vade (1495) ⚜ depart (1501) ⚜ pay one’s debt to nature (c.1513)

galp (1529) ⚜ go west (c.1532) ⚜ pick over the perch (1532)

die the death (1535) change one’s life; jet (1546)

play tapple up tail (1573) ⚜ inlaik (1575) ⚜ finish (1578) ⚜ relent (1587)

unbreathe (1589) ⚜ transpass (1592) ⚜ lose one’s breath (1596)

go off (1605) ⚜ make a die (of it) (1611) ⚜ fail (1613)

go home (1618) ⚜ drop (1654) ⚜ knock off (c.1657) ⚜ ghost (1666)

go over to the majority (1687) ⚜ march off (1693)

bite the ground/sand/dust; die off; pike (1697)

1700s — 1960s

pass to one’s reward (1703) ⚜ sink; vent (1718) ⚜ demise (1727)

slip one’s cable (1751) ⚜ turf (1763) ⚜ move off (1764)

kick the bucket (1785) pass on (1805) exit (1806)

launch into eternity (1812) ⚜ go to glory (1814) ⚜ sough (1816)

hand in one’s accounts (1817) ⚜ croak (1819)

slip one’s breath (1819) ⚜ stiffen (1820) ⚜ buy it (1825)

drop short (1826) ⚜ fall a sacrifice to (1839)

go off the hooks (1840) ⚜ succumb (1849) ⚜ step out (1851)

walk (forth) (1858) ⚜ snuff out (1864) ⚜ go/be up the flume (1865)

pass out (c.1867) ⚜ cash in one’s checks (1869) ⚜ peg out (1870)

go bung (1882) ⚜ get one’s call (1884) ⚜ perch (1886) ⚜ off it (1890)

knock over (1892) ⚜ pass in (1904) ⚜ the silver cord is loosed (1911)

pip (out) (1913) ⚜ cop it (1915) ⚜ stop one (1916) ⚜ conk (out) (1918)

cross over (1920) ⚜ kick off (1921) ⚜ shuffle off (1922)

pack up (1925) ⚜ step off (1926) ⚜ take the ferry (1928)

meet one’s Maker (1933) ⚜ kiss off (1945)

have had it (1952) ⚜ crease it (1959) ⚜ zonk (1968)

The list displays a remarkable inventiveness, as people struggle to find fresh forms of expression.

The language of death is inevitably euphemistic, but few of the verbs or idioms shown here are elaborate or opaque.

In fact the history of verbs for dying displays a remarkable simplicity: 86 of the 121 entries (over 70%) consist of only one syllable, and monosyllables figure largely in the multi-word entries (such as pay one’s debt to nature).

Only 16 verbs are disyllabic, and only 3 are trisyllabic (determine, disperish, miscarry), loanwords from French, and along with expire, trespass, and decease showing the arrival of a more scholarly vocabulary in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Even the euphemisms of later centuries have a markedly monosyllabic character.

Some constructions evidently have permanent appeal because of their succinct and enigmatic character, such as the popularity of ‘____ it’ (whatever the ‘it’ is): snuff it, peg it, buy it, cop it, off it, crease it, have had it.

It’s possible to see changes in fashion, such as the vogue for colloquial usages in "off" in the middle of the 18th century (move off, pop off, pack off, hop off ).

And styles change: we no longer feel that "pass out" would be appropriate on a tombstone. But some things don’t change. Pass away has been with us since the 14th century. And, in a usage that dates back to the 12th, we still do say that people, simply, died.

Source ⚜ More: Word Lists ⚜ Notes & References ⚜ Historical Thesaurus

[henk-heijmans]

Woman with a railing, dead end, Montmartre, Paris, ca. 1904 - Jules Séeberger (1872 - 1932), French

[amnhnyc]

Feeling crabby? Feast your eyes on today’s Exhibit of the Day, the Museum’s Japanese spider crab (Macrocheira kaempferi). This species is the biggest living crab and the largest arthropod in the world, measuring up to 13 ft (4 m) from the tip of one outstretched leg to another! Its diet includes dead fish, invertebrates, and algae, but it occasionally snatches live prey with its strong claws. This scavenger can be found on the seafloor off Japan’s Pacific coast, inhabiting depths of more than 984 ft (300 m). You can spot a model of one in the Museum’s Hall of Ocean Life! Photo: The American Museum Journal, Volume IV 1904