Waiting For Todog ? A Play on Zimbabwe

[Prufrock451]

*laughs hysterically*

I finally just NOW got around to reading this hallowed classic. Beautiful stuff.

I do have to say that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, far from being a short play, is a four-hour monstrosity in its original unedited form.

I once, in a fit of temporary madness, signed on to play Guildenstern in the unedited version after two months of rehearsals. Over ONE HUNDRED PAGES of speech, including a few dense two or three-page monologues. Ow ow ow.

 

[Edgar Francis I]

I'm glad someone bumped this one back up. This was at least part of my inspiration for the section of the Venice collaborative AAR I'm posting right now. MrT showed me the dramatic format could be done here and done well.

That said, I think Zimbabwe got exactly what they deserved. I mean honestly, sitting there all by themselves several thousand miles from France, not bothering anyone... it was inevitable really. Anyone can see that.

EF1

 

[Norgesvenn]

To think this gem had merely around a thousand views...

We're an uncultured lot, really. It's an absolutely brilliant idea, and its execution is also top-notch, MrT!

Once again, a very inspirational piece that's both sad and extremely funny.

 

[unmerged(6777)]

I remember that at the time I was very disappointed at the miniscule number of views and seeming general disinterest in it, so I cut it much shorter than I had originally planned. Even so, I thought that I managed to work in some pretty funny bits, and did a respectable job of blending my writing into the other portions of the play which I stole from the two authors. I just figured it was my rather unusual sense of humour that had failed to produce a reaction, and that people just aren't into reading plays anymore.

Thanks for digging it up and giving it a read, guys. I'm actually inordinately proud of it and always regretted that it got very little feedback...particularly when you look when I wrote it.

One of the projects I've been mulling over in my mind is to write a play based on a game, but using a style more in keeping with Shaw or prehaps Cervantes. I have this feeling that it wouldn't garner much readership or response though...at least not while comedy and WC seem to dominate the ratings.

 

[Cat Lord]

Dear MrT,

I was willing since a while to read one of your AAR, to pay you back for the attention you provide to all of us.

Alas, I must say I was quite frightened by the fact that as soon as you begin to start one, posts accumulated to amounts that make them impossible for me to follow your thread.

How you find the time to read all our AARs (more or less) and produce that volume of work is a mistery to me.

Nevertheless, I am so glad I found this little marvel.

How you manage to complete a whole play on a failed game, with a satisfactory ending, just add to my admiration of your many skills.

I read it all, enjoy it more than most of the other AAR around, and in the end, I am able to thank you so much for all you do, at last.

Sincerly,

Cat Lord

 

[unmerged(9994)]

It is uncanny how well Waiting for Godot adapts to a game as Zimbabwe. Endless waiting, seeming pointlessness, much like a hands off country is. Your adaptation was quite entertaining.

p.s. Did the French have a conquistador, or do they cheat on land exploration? If Zimbabwe has the coast settled, they shouldn't be able to explore the 2 inner territories protecting your capital during peace time.

 

[J. Passepartout]

I happened upon an old copy of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in my school library. I signed it out and read it in a day, and it was great. I was able to pick out the parts you parodied quite easily, especially the flipping coins bit. That part is in the very first act, as are the tragedarians who did the swordfighting here. Now I need to find Waiting for Godot.

If you the other play you talk of, I'll definately read it. Shaw is the other author I've gotten out of the school library, and Cervantes is one of my favorites. Actually, I like most plays, as long as they aren't by Paul Zindel.

 

[unmerged(6777)]

It's great to see people digging this out of the vaults every once in a while. It's one of those early efforts I did here that I' really enjoyed writing and I still have a soft spot in my heart for it.

I guess Cat Lord and Eddie Teach must have posted their comments when I was sick as a dog or I would have responded at the time, so I hope you'll forgive me and I'll thank you all now.

Cat: Sometimes it's a mystery to me too. This is my second-shortest piece ("Drums in the Deep" being the tiniest) and yet it does have a certain je ne sais quoi to it. The idea came to me when I was playing since I was bored out of my skull most of the time and playing at 1 minute = 2 years until the evil French came along, and as I said earlier in the thread I just took a mixture of the sad doom and gloom and irony of R&G and combined it with the monotony and pointlessness of WfG. Made for an interesting mix.

Eddie: No. I'm guessing they knew about me because they were trading in the same CoT's I was so presumably they knew where my capital was. I think I must have competed away one too many of their merchants and then they DOWed me. They marched incredibly slowly so I assume the compute just pointed the armies towards the capital and explored that way.

It's possible that they had an explorer and I just didn't notice because I was too miserable at my lovely army getting whallopped by a force not even a quarter of the size of mine. After that, it was back to a case of waiting for the end because I had almost no income, virtually nothing in the bank, and massive inflation.

J. Pass: I think that the "other play" will likely be my next AAR (after RRR is done...or maybe simultaneously if the spirit moves me) but I'll have to be in exactly the right frame of mind to write it. I'd probably start be reading a good dose of WSS's tragedies and histories, the odd GBS, and your suggestion of Cervantes is excellent...it's been far too long since I've picked up one of his plays.

I'll confess to being ignorant about Zindel's work(s) but it sounds, from what you said, that I'm not missing anything.

Thank you, all three, for taking the time to have a look at this and comment. It really makes my day.

 

[J. Passepartout]

You're not missing much. We had to read two of his books in english last year, one a play and the other prose. The prose one was a bit better, but they were about basically the same thing with different characters and details. He seems to like writing about dysfunctional families. One-track mind, if you will. I think a large part of it, though, is that the writing isn't as good as it should be.
Come to think of it, I didn't like very many of the writers we read last year. Shakespeare is good, although I don't like R&J as much as his others, and there was another fellow I can't remeber the name of, who wrote Alas, Babylon. I also liked the Orwell stuff we read, and got annoyed at the teacher when she told me to let someone else answer the questions on the Russian revolution.

If you do a Shaw parody, do it on Pygmalion. Higgins is one of my idols.

 

[unmerged(4766)]

I'm not sure when you started writing this, but I've read it only today
I've never read any of the plays you've mentioned (although I did recognize the "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" ) but the AAR was funny without me needing to know about them. I remember asking a friend a couple of years ago what's Waiting for Godot like, and he told me it's boring....

The characters and the atmosphere was also written very well. You could feel the haste and confusion in the scene before the battle. And the last scene? Well I was thinking when will they finally start running! It's weird that they died just sitting there...