(Teatro de los Insurgentes, 13 May 2023)
This is not a West End production, where you are only as good as you are in your current part. Here, the actors and actresses are familiar faces from telenovelas. Except for the lead: Sofia Carrera. This is her breakout role. It is suggestive of certain meritocracy in the world of theatre that an eighteen-year-old newcomer, rather than an established forty-year-old actress, would be chosen to play the part of a twenty-year old protagonist.
(12 May 2023, Milo's)
The successful are obsessed. They bring joy. Indeed, in society that functions well, an important dimension of success is the ability to bring joy; one cannot be successful in abstract, without giving others what they want. (In society that functions poorly, one can find success by destroying competitors and by destroying value, without ever giving anything in return.)
Brenda Marie and the Tiger are perfectly matched. The Tiger is a consummate pianist with an acute sense of timing. Brenda Marie lives every song.
People become artists and entrepreneurs in order to retain creative control over their lives, in spite of the risk of penury. Brenda and Tiger are in full control. At least for the duration of the performance, they are free, and the audience gets a taste of freedom, too.
(12 May 2023, Un Teatro)
Dancers’ trim bodies maximise the expressiveness of the messages they transmit. There is little fat to disrupt the message. Every muscle speaks. Emotion and thought are transmitted reliably and fast.
Humans are large language models. Garbage in, garbage out. One ought to live a life that does not regurgitate others’ regurgitations. One should live. If one does not and trains instead on the same stories that others train on, then—unless one is better at training than everyone else—one is dispensable; it is as if one had not lived. When everyone trains on the same stories that others train on, the society is hierarchical, with everyone ranked according to his ability to train. A highly hierarchical society like this is akin to the world in which everyone is required to make a living by being a professional opera singer while no one wants to hear opera from anyone but the one singer who is the very best; this is an impoverished world.
Monopoly restricts output. The government outputs violence. Competing governments output even more violence. Cartel competition (with each other or with other forms of government) produces excessive violence.
(15 April 2023, The Navy Pier)
Like so very much does in this urban agglomeration, this exhibition, too, had the air of a money-laundering operation. One usually comes to an art fair to see, be seen, and to transcend the quotidian through communion with beauty. EXPO Chicago had the ambience of a car show, but without the cars. Some pretty pictures showed. But who was listening?
(26 March 2023, The Green Mill)
The night, headlined by Jonas Friddle's band, was over before the sun set. The band was earnest, and the comedy line-up was middlebrow, which is the fault of the genre as much the perpetrators, and perhaps is not a fault at all, for many in the audience seemed pleased. The genre was topical monologues intended to elicit laughter. To tool employed exceedingly often was the act of breaking certain perceived norms and taboos. The practice relies on the shared (with the audience) understanding of norms and taboos and the questionable premise that breaking a perceived norm or a taboo is inherently funny in a way that breaking a vase is not, and does not interfere with the story (if any).
The show is a great concept (Christopher Piatt's), and the city gets the comedians it deserves.
The series finale is premised on a certain notion of "realism" whose possibility and normative appeal are quite unclear. Successful criminals do not get caught and do not present themselves to the writer's room to brag about this. Then, how do the writers know what is realistic? And even if the writers (and their consultants) have been steeped in the criminal underworld long enough, most viewers probably have not been and, so, will not necessarily regard the writers' realism as realistic.
The normative appeal of realism is questionable. If society is stuck at a bad equilibrium, it is hardly noble to seek to reinforce this equilibrium by remaining true to it, by remaining "real." Realism in this normative sense is conservatism, which has limitations.
While realism carries little normative significance beyond reinforcing the status quo, internal consistency of the narrative is aesthetically and intellectually pleasing and, therefore, does belong in a work of art.
It would seem that internal consistency itself would call for realism by insisting on the realism of certain behavioural rules of logic, such as "If Alice is the kind of person who habitually does X, then she will never do Y." This may be so, but these rules of logic are less arbitrary than the rules that call upon the fate to punish the purported transgressor or to summon the prevailing notions of morality in order to energise the mob to meter out justice as it is currently understood. Furthermore, internal consistency does not require the rules of logic to be realistic. Surrealism, abstract maths, and quantum physics are among the examples.
Even though the last season is botched to please a committee, the work executed within these constraints is superb throughout the series. (The last season is botched in that internal consistency is violated: Marty acts out of character and fails to reveal the depth that the rest of the series was busy cultivating. In the final episode, Ruth is killed off in the name of "realism.")
Julia Garner consistently shines in every single frame she appears. Jason Bateman bets on rejecting histrionics for his role and wins. Someone should shoot an alternative ending or at least fork the ending on a fan fiction website.
And there is also potential for a musical, although the show's creators may not see it today.
