None of the classical Greek plays were original: they were all based on earlier plays or poems or myths. And none of Shakespeare's plays are original: they are all taken from earlier work. As You Like It is taken from a novel by Thomas Lodge published just 10 years before Shakespeare put on his play without attribution or acknowledgment. Chunks of Antony and Cleopatra are taken verbatim, and, to be sure, without apology, from a contemporary translation of Plutarch's Lives. Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle is taken from a play by Klabund, on which Brecht served as dramaturg in 1926; and Klabund had taken his play from an early Chinese play.
Sometimes playwrights steal stories and conversations and dreams and intimate revelations from their friends and lovers and call this original.
And sometimes some of us write about our own innermost lives, believing that, then, we have written something truly original and unique. But, of course, the culture writes us first, and then we write our stories. When we look at a painting of the virgin and child by Botticelli, we recognize at once that it is a Renaissance painting�that is it a product of its time and place. We may not know or recognize at once that it was painted by Botticelli, but we do see that it is a Renaissance painting. We see that it has been derived from, and authored by, the culture that produced it.
And yet we recognize, too, that this painting of the virgin and child is not identical to one by Raphael or Ghirlandaio or Leonardo. So, clearly, while the culture creates much of Botticelli, it is also true that Botticelli creates the culture�that he took the culture into himself and transformed it in his own unique way.
And so, whether we mean to or not, the work we do is both received and created, both an adaptation and an original, at the same time. We re-make things as we go.
The plays on this website were mostly composed in the way that Max Ernst made his Fatagaga pieces toward the end of World War I: texts have often been taken from, or inspired by, other texts. Among the sources for these pieces are the classical plays of Euripides as well as texts from the contemporary world.
I think of these appropriated texts as historical documents�as evidence of who and how we are and what we do. And I think of the characters who speak these texts as characters like the rest of us: people through whom the culture speaks, often without the speakers knowing it.
And I hope those who read the plays published here will feel free to treat the texts I've made in the same way I've treated the texts of others."
( http://www.panix.com/~meejr/html/about.html )
OK, so his point is valid that "the culture writes us first" and we then write our stories... or that a Renaissance painting is the product of it's "time and place" as he says. Were time travellers able to go back to that time and place, would it be the 'same' as if they had not been there. That is, their perceptions would be created by their time and place of origin, which would be wildly different from those in the time and place they are visiting. Lobster referred to the famous science fiction story of a time traveller killing a butterfly and altering the future... I am wondering if it is possible at all for any time traveller to the past to NOT change the future. Is it possible to ONLY be a witness? Or is becoming a participant in the story unavoidable? And is it possible for a time traveller to the future to NOT change the present upon his return from the future?
But i digress.
:)
Seems as though people have been busy bees on Projex and CurlChat - work on the wikis (both wikipedia and swiki) and Curl programming and more. Caught one of the Projex busy bees in action this afternoon:
http://www.vzavenue.net/~knowmystery/curl_rtd_joyce/Busy_Bee_3.gif
Keep up the good work, everyone.
love and peace,
joyce
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