Pitchfork Disney

I went to see The Pitchfork Disney at the Arcola in London last weekend. Philip Ridley is one of my favourite playwrights and it was great to finally see a professional production of this classic. I think this production really brought home to me Cosmo and Pitchfork's position as part of Presley's dreamscape. It's hard to feel pity though for someone so fucked up and I'm not sure you're supposed to pity him. I think that's the point of those wonderfully-written nightmare speeches, so that you feel like you are in the nightmare, so you live the nightmare with him. All great! I have tickets for Shivered at Easter and might possibly go and see Mercury Fur too - there seems to be a bit of a Ridley resurgence in London at present and I'm loving it!

There was a call for papers for this conference on the University website. I would love to write about the legacy of Angela Carter, looking at modern writers like Cat Rambo, Erzebet Yellowboy, Catherynne M. Valente and many, many others reclaiming and creating their own myths, rewriting fairytales to better understand gender and politics and the human experience, but I don't have time and haven't written anything academic for almost 10 years (yikes). Maybe after I retire and get to do a doctorate I'll revisit this idea, though by then it'll be classified as "Ancient Literature"!