gailderecho

My stage-and-screen production company, Media Theatre Company (MTC), just produced our second multimedia play, "The Screens Between," which had a very successful four-show run at the McCormick Tribune Center on Northwestern University's campus, May 3-5, 2007. The same team that produced "The Philippine Deep" last year - Steve Persch, Ian Bennett, and I (the core members of MTC, I suppose) - was behind "The Screens Between" this year. Steve and I co-wrote the script, Steve directed, Ian created the digital media and directed "Harborview" (which was awesomely produced by Cate Smerciak and Jamie Dobie), and I served as Executive Producer.

"The Screens Between" is the story of a young couple, Dan and Meg, who are separated when Dan gets deployed to Iraq. While Dan is overseas, all the contact that Meg can have with him occurs through media: the telephone, e-mails, IMs, and the images of the Iraq occupation that Meg hates to watch on TV. In Dan's absence, Meg becomes addicted to a daytime soap opera, "Harborview," whose main characters, Davis and Mallory, closely resemble Meg and Dan. Meg's best friends become her fellow participants in the "Harborview" online chatroom. Meg's whole life takes place on screens - television and computer screens - which works fine for her, but doesn't work so well for Dan, who returns home only to find virtual worlds coming between him and Meg.

You can read the official press release for "The Screens Between," and watch a clip from "Harborview," our fake soap opera, here:

The Screens Between website

And to read my thoughts on Media Theatre Company's mission and philosophy, and about the problematics of media, politics, and interpersonal relationships we aimed to work through with "Screens Between," click here:

( MTC Philosophy/Screens Between Themes )

I presented this essay, "0/1 v. Zion: Techno-Orientalism in 'The Matrix' Films," at the Visualising the City Symposium at the University of Manchester in England in June 2005. This research served as the basis for my Northwestern University Spring 2006 course, "Asian American Studies 392: Techno-Orientalism: Asia Hidden and Revealed in Hollywood Sci-Fi."

( 0/1 v. Zion )

I presented this essay, "Re-Acting Woman: Performing Gender through Hypermedia Appropriations," at the Merging Methodologies 2 Conference, which was held at Northwestern University in Feburary 2005. Also, in that same month, during graduate student recruiting weekend at NU, the Director of CLS asked me to present this paper to the recruits.

( Re-Acting Woman )

This is the official announcement that my next play, "The Screens Between," will be have its world premiere at Northwestern University's McCormick-Tribune auditorium May 3-5, 2007. "The Screens Between" is a multimedia play about romantic love, Internet addiction, daytime soap operas, and coming home from war. I am co-writing and co-producing the play with Steve Persch. I will post the link to websites as soon as they are functional.

Here is my review of Marsha Cassidy's book What Women Watched: Daytime Television in the 1950s (University of Texas Press, 2005), which was published in the March 2006 issue (26.1) of the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television.

( Review of Cassidy's What Women Watched )

Here is a link to the very simple, one-page website for the multimedia play that I authored and produced in January 2006, at Northwestern University's Struble Theater. Each of our three shows was sold out. The play was funded by a generous grant from Northwestern's Center for Interdisciplinary Arts.

The Philippine Deep, A Multimedia Play about Five Generations in Three Acts

My essay, "'Archontic Literature,' or, A Definition, a History, and Several Theories of Fan Fiction," appears as Chapter 1 of Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (McFarland & Co., 2006).

ETA: I've just been notified that due to the fact that the publisher owns the copyright, I have to remove the text of the essay from this LJ. Please check out a copy of the anthology, Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, to read my essay along with several other truly excellent ones!