Slate has a brief but valuable piece on Werner Herzog’s forthcoming documentary, which you can read by clicking here. The film’s called “Encounters at the End of the World” — but it seems to me that that could have been the title of almost all the Herzog films. To wit:

• “Aguirre, Wrath of God” — in which would-be conquistadors run up against the savagery of the undeveloped new world (a nice riposte to the quaint green notion that nature is bucolic and enriching, when those of us who grew up in it know that when it’s not boring it’s deadly)
• “Grizzly Man” — in which an intrepid naturalist deep in the wild finds himself literally consumed by his passion
• “Lessons of Darkness,” which blends CNN footage and Herzog-shot footage of the burning oil wells of Kuwait into a science-fictional vision of the rapacities of humankind and the destructive force of a wounded environment
• “Even Dwarfs Started Small” — which features a group of deranged dwarfs evidently far cut off from civilizing forces convene chaos onto their benighted habitat
• “Fitzcarraldo” — in which a mad visionary is ultimately defeated in his quest by the unrelenting realities of the Amazonian jungle and a treacherously independent river

I could easily go on. The Herzog films that don’t star an extreme exterior location are concerned with an extremely bizarre interior condition; par example: the two films featuring Bruno S., an odd and mentally limited man whose ineffable motivations perfectly match with Herzog’s interests. Bruno is either a very bad actor, an idiot savant who is utterly convincing in his stunted abilities, or simultaneously both; he is also eminently watchable in “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser,” where he is perfectly cast as a strange man released into polite society with utterly no suitable training for the experience.

According to Slate, here’s the narrative of the new Herzog film, which I await with relish:

It’s a loosely bound collection of miscellany filmed at the McMurdo Station, a 1,000-person settlement of researchers in Antarctica, during the five-month “austral summer” of round-the-clock sunlight. Herzog was sent to Antarctica by the National Science Foundation with carte blanche to make whatever movie he wanted—all he could tell them for sure was that it wouldn’t involve penguins. What he returned with is a lyrical group portrait of McMurdo’s motley crew of scientists, technicians, and lifelong travelers—men and women whom one local labels “professional dreamers” and whom those of us who live on more populated continents might affectionately call “crackpots.”

You see the recurrent theme: extreme environment is met by crackpot theorists.

For those who care about these things and will be lucky enough to be in Los Angeles next February, Herzog will be speaking (as well as performing a concert of some sort) as part of the UCLA Live spoken word series. Here’s the link. I will be there.

“Hulk: Smash!”

You heard it here first.

On Saturday, the act begins: The act in which Hillary Clinton tries to rise to the occasion and bury all the hurts and indignities of the past 18 months and, like Lyndon Johnson (whom she famously referenced), admit her defeat to someone younger and (seemingly) less experienced who captured the zeitgeist in a way she was unable to.

That will be the external Hillary. Here will be the internal Hillary:

Here she is captured in this photo in a way we’ve seen innumerable times since January when her fate first became apparent. And no matter what you see on Saturday and beyond — a sunny buoyancy and an arm draped around her victorious foe — remember that, inside, this is the true look.

And you know what? I understand. We all should. She’s human. She’s ambitious. She believes she was right, and secretly hopes that he loses in November so that history will vindicate her. Even though I think she’s wrong, and has been wrong, and will be wrong, who among us can’t understand the terrible depths of her anger and humiliation?

Y’all.
Youse.
You-uns.
You guys.
All of you.

These are just some of the regionalisms that Americans use to substitute for the lack of a different plural form of “you” in English. My favorite is the one employed in my mother’s hometown of Johnstown, Pennsylvania:  “Yins.” Yes, Virginia, there are many thousands of people in the Pittsburgh area who say “yins” when they’re addressing a group of people. My theory is that “yins” is a further contraction of “you-uns.”

Even though in my own speaking voice I use just “you guys” and “all of you,” I love every one of these locutions. For playwrights, they’re useful baubles to adorn characters with. But until yesterday I had forgotten one, and shame on me. Spending the day in Philadelphia, and seeing the Bill Irwin show “The Happiness Lecture” – developed with an ensemble of Philadelphia theatre artists – reacquainted me with one of the best plural-you forms in the country. Here it is, and no, I’m not making this up, and please keep your mind out of the gutter:

Yizz.

Hillary Clinton looks like she knows her flight is coming in for a landing. Bill, meanwhile, is still flying too close to the sun. For further proof, click here. These are not the rantings of someone grounded in fact.

I have an Obama bobblehead on my desk. Now I’ve found a wonderful companion piece, if only I could get my hands on it:  this promo piece for the Saint Paul Saints, which depicts some of the prominent parts of Larry Craig in his most famous public works project.

Anyone know how I can get one of these? My birthday is in July.

Remember this post the other day, in which the lovely and incredibly helpful Shanda Clark, project coordinator for the Great Plains Theatre Conference, drives me to a television taping I’m unaware will star myself? In that post, I also mentioned that she picked me just after I’d gotten a promising report on my little boy, who had been briefly hospitalized with a truly upsetting autoimmune deficiency. I shared a little about that with her in the brief car ride.

The next morning when I opened the door, there was a package sitting there in the hallway on the floor. A white gift box tied with an attractive red ribbon bore a card from Shanda and the message, “Hi Lee, Just thinking of your family… and thought your boy would enjoy this when you arrive home. Shanda.” And inside were a rubber dinosaur, some playdoh, and a children’s art kit. I shared something about my son in passing, and she responded in this way for a little boy she’s never met, and for his father who, mere days before, had been a complete stranger. I was moved by this heartfelt gesture.

When I’ve been brought into retreats and conferences like this in the past and been well-treated, I’ve half-joked that “they treated me the way everyone should have to treat me.” This conference has gone one better: They’ve treated everyone the way we should all treat each other. The graciousness shown here has been nothing short of astounding. (Which, tomorrow when I’m not rushing off for final-evening cigars and drinks, will take me to the subject of playwright Doug Wright, perhaps the most gracious highly accomplished person anyone will ever meet.)

Now that the fate of the Florida and Michigan delegations have been decided, with Hillary Clinton picking up 24 delegates but nowhere near enough to ever close the gap with Barack Obama, she will continue through the final primaries this Tuesday. Then, within a week, she will fold her tent and begin repairing her image with certain segments of the Democratic party.

I make this prediction for three reasons:

1. She must go on, because she has proclaimed her desire for the party of “count every vote.” (Even though her long-ago plan was to effectively seal up the nomination within the first six weeks, therefore rendering meaningless all the ensuing votes. Have I menioned “hubris” here in connection with the Clintons? I think I have.)
2. There is simply no scenario whereby she can gain enough delegates to take the nomination, even if a chunk of Mars were to crash through the atmosphere and cave in Obama’s skull. He’d still have more delegates.
3. To go further than a week after the final primary would truly anger the party and all its activists and foreshorten her political future.

So:  By June 10th, she’ll be out. Unless, that is, she’s crazy. Given that she’s running for president, that shouldn’t be ruled out.

Marshall W. Mason is one of the esteemed guests here at the Great Plains Theatre Conference. He’s a legendary director and, indeed, directed the first show I ever bought a ticket to, in 1980:  Lanford Wilson’s “Fifth of July,” starring Christopher Reeve, Jeff Daniels, and Swoozie Kurtz.

While he’s here, Marshall has been directing a snippet from a Doug Wright play as part of a tribute that was performed last night. Tonight, we’re all going to see “I Am My Own Wife,” a remounting of a production that ran here recently, brought back especially for the conference. The director of that production, a local whose name is Kevin and who seems like a very nice man, is noticeably caught up in the anxiety of remounting a small-town small-theatre production for the benefit of the visiting Pulitzer- and Tony-Award-winning author. Marshall, who shows every sign of being the kindest director I’ve ever met, has been nothing short of warm and supportive.

One of Kevin’s concerns has been about the theatre, a beautifully appointed mid-sized house with a colonnade supporting a balcony trimmed in warm wood. The theatre is undeniably attractive, but those stone columns add an echo to the acoustics. So Kevin had requested that thick black stage drapes be used to dampen the echo and support the actors. He had requested this in a friendly but firm fashion for several days, but nothing had come of it. Then, yesterday, Marshall had his tech runthrough for his segment of the tribute to Doug Wright, and now the black curtain was up. At dinner, he was eager to share this with Kevin and allay his fears about the acoustics.

So the execrable Robert Caisley and I are having dinner at our end of the table with Marshall when he politely excuses himself. “They’ve put up the black drapes and I must go tell Kevin,” he says. “He’ll be relieved.” He runs over to a table near us and leans in to someone he mistakes in the dimness for Kevin, someone who turns out to be Doug Wright’s partner David, in other words, someone who has no idea of the desire for dark sound-muffling curtains. Marshall leans over the table excitedly.

“Good news!” he proclaims. “They’ve hung the blacks!”

Much explaining of that gleeful statement ensued.

Courtesy of VisualThesaurus.com, and no, I couldn’t believe it either when it arrived in my in box: “Playwright.”

Good Wrighting Word of the Day

Playwright

Of the half dozen English words ending in -wright in use today, playwright is the only one in which the creative act is writing, and the latest coinage (17th century) of them all. The -wright part is from very old English and denotes a maker of something, as in shipwright.

I’m betting the contemptible Robert Caisley already knew all this.