(no subject)
Aug. 30th, 2019 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI picked up The Wilder Plot after reading rachelmanija's review of it - it's a middle-grade book by Stephen Krensky about a high-school production of Midsummer Night's Dream, which protagonist Charlie Wilder has been volunteered for very much against his will. A heated battle for the seat of school president also ends up intersecting with the machinations around the play, thus providing plenty of opportunity for Stephen Krensky to run some mild middle-grade political satire.
It's definitely a funny book, and the Midsummer Night's Dream riffs are extremely cute, although I had a hard time getting over the premise, central to many of the characters' activities, that acting in a school play generates valuable political capital among one's peers. Some theater kids were popular, sure -- I have fond memories of the resident Theater Dreamboat, a sweet lad who received love notes on a regular basis, came out in junior year, and concluded his high school career by forming one-half of our high school's first gay power couple -- but I don't think anyone I knew ever tried out for a play on the assumption that it would yield social dividends.
(OK, I lie: we did have one kid in my high school who thought that having made an appearance on an episode of Law and Order was a good argument for his qualifications as a prospective school president. He attempted to make this argument in his campaign speech. We were unconvinced.)
But, I mean, other thing about the The Wilder Plot is that it's the kind of screwball comedy in which all the characters are colliding in entertaining ways due to their own wacky priorities, but nobody is actually friends with each other or acting in the play for fun, and that makes for an entertaining plot but also does not accord at all with my memories of high school theater.
rachelmanija's review of it - it's a middle-grade book by Stephen Krensky about a high-school production of Midsummer Night's Dream, which protagonist Charlie Wilder has been volunteered for very much against his will. A heated battle for the seat of school president also ends up intersecting with the machinations around the play, thus providing plenty of opportunity for Stephen Krensky to run some mild middle-grade political satire. It's definitely a funny book, and the Midsummer Night's Dream riffs are extremely cute, although I had a hard time getting over the premise, central to many of the characters' activities, that acting in a school play generates valuable political capital among one's peers. Some theater kids were popular, sure -- I have fond memories of the resident Theater Dreamboat, a sweet lad who received love notes on a regular basis, came out in junior year, and concluded his high school career by forming one-half of our high school's first gay power couple -- but I don't think anyone I knew ever tried out for a play on the assumption that it would yield social dividends.
(OK, I lie: we did have one kid in my high school who thought that having made an appearance on an episode of Law and Order was a good argument for his qualifications as a prospective school president. He attempted to make this argument in his campaign speech. We were unconvinced.)
But, I mean, other thing about the The Wilder Plot is that it's the kind of screwball comedy in which all the characters are colliding in entertaining ways due to their own wacky priorities, but nobody is actually friends with each other or acting in the play for fun, and that makes for an entertaining plot but also does not accord at all with my memories of high school theater.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-03 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-03 08:56 pm (UTC)