Pop-Up Magazine
A few years ago, I began hearing about a live storytelling show called Pop-Up Magazine. Created by the team behind California Sunday Magazine, these events bring together writers, journalists, producers, actors, musicians and more to the stage to share stories. Each show features a different line-up, announced on a city-by-city basis, which means each performance is unique. During the show, there is no photography allowed and no one is recording in the back of the theater. Once the night ends, the stories are left to be told as stories once again, not re-watchable online. When I first heard this was the plan for each Pop-Up performance, I was confused and thought they were missing out on a huge marketing opportunity. But after attending my first show in DC, I realized I was incredibly wrong. I left that night completely blown away by what I had seen. I cried twice at two separate stories and was thrilled to see a truly diverse line-up of speakers throughout the program. In many ways Pop-Up Magazine feels similar to a live taping of a podcast or The Moth-style events. But because it's rooted in research, journalism and ultimately passion for different topics, it takes on a whole new life. Oftentimes video or fun graphics are featured on the screen behind speakers. It's fun and exciting because you never really know what's going to happen next. I returned to see the show several more times when it stopped in DC, bringing family members and friends along for the ride. At one performance, there was a plastic bag that contained marshmallow-like substance in our programs, which we were allowed to taste later in the night during a story about where food comes from. In another, the evening closed with a surprise performance by an opera singer referenced in someone else's piece. One evening I learned about aggressive bald eagles in an Alaskan town and during another I found out that there's a basketball court in the Supreme Court building. I'm never not surprised by the things I discover at Pop-Up Magazine. Each story is woven together by a live band on stage, performing music to accompany certain storytellers and seamlessly smoothing over transitions. The topics range from humorous personal anecdotes, to political themed ones, to culture or food pieces to science or feature stories -- all the components that make up a physical magazine. If you haven't made it to a show yet, I encourage you to check out the schedule and see if they're coming to a town near you during their upcoming spring tour. It's an unforgettable evening that will leave you talking about it for months to come.
Bonus Pick: To read more about the origins of Pop-Up Magazine, check out this interview with co-founder and editor-in-chief Douglas McGray.
As Seen on TV
A few weeks ago I wrote about the new NBC series Rise. At the time I had only seen the pilot episode and while I enjoyed the show's premise, I had some problems with Mr. Mazzu, the director of the school's musical production. Despite my critiques, I was overly optimistic that the show would grow past its early problems and turn into a fun and powerful, theater loving series. Unfortunately, a few more episodes in and the problems from the pilot have only gotten worse. In this week's Vulture recap of the show, the reviewer writes that she will no longer be writing reviews of the series, due to it's many missteps. Like other musical shows before it, Rise has fallen into a pattern that both Glee and Smash struggled with but which oddly enough has nothing to do with singing and dancing. In Glee the whiny Will Schuester was treated as the glee club god. At the beginning of the series, you find yourself rooting for him but as the show goes on, you begin to realize Will is self-righteous, always asking for people to sympathize for him, fairly dumb and believes he can fix those around him who don't meet his standards. But at the end of most episodes, we're supposed to applaud him and his choices, because he's always right. In Smash, the writers told us that Karen Cartwright was the most amazing talent that people had ever seen. She was new to the Broadway world, but anytime she opened her mouth to sing, people's jaws dropped. One time someone literally blurted out "I love you" after she finished singing a pop song. Because the show hit us over the head with how much they wanted us to love the earnest Karen and hate the spiteful Ivy Lynn (played by the scene-stealing Megan Hilty), the audience was less and less convinced. Rise has combined both of these problems in the character of Mr. Mazzu. He can do no wrong but he often is wrong. And the writers never let him loose a battle and despite his missteps, everyone is always thanking him in the end. It's incredibly frustrating, especially given that the show is filled with plenty of other interesting characters that could gladly take center-stage or provide more of a foil to Mr. Mazzu. I hope Rise turns itself around for the rest of the season (or a season two, if it gets one), because it truly breaks my heart to give a thumbs down to yet another theater-based TV series.
Haven't You Heard?
This weekend, I made a trip to one of my favorite spots in DC -- Politics and Prose -- to hear my friend's, friend's mother give a book talk in the shop. I grabbed a seat in the last row, because it was crowded, and listened as Pulitzer Prize winning Eileen McNamara gave an incredibly engaging, insightful and funny presentation (filled with impressions that left the audience in stitches) about her new book, Eunice: The Kennedy Who Changed the World. As I did not grow in Massachusetts, I don't know as much about the Kennedy's as some of my friends do. But it's safe to say that most people who have a basic or even an in-depth knowledge of the political power family don't know much about Eunice. During her talk, Eileen said that in the new CNN documentary about the Kennedys only one line in the six-part film series is about Eunice. In The New York Times obituary of Ted Kennedy, published in 2009, the paper had to issue a long correction after mis-identifying or omitting Eunice, Rosemary and Kathleen's names. The female Kennedys are rarely given the spotlight. When you learn more about the influence Eunice had and the work she did, you'll be even more alarmed that most people only know her as the founder of Special Olympics, if they know her for anything at all. Eunice Kennedy Shriver was a force to be reckoned with. She fought for the issues she was most passionate about, intellectual disabilities and children's health were top of mind, and left senators and presidents terrified when they heard she was at their offices to meet with them. Eileen's hour-long talk shed so much insight into Eunice's meaningful work and her spirit and I'm eager to learn more by reading her book. During the question and answer portion of the program, an audience member asked Eileen if she thought Eunice would have liked to have been groomed to run for office like her brothers were. Eileen said most definitely, yes. But she was also quick to point out that if Eunice had run for office, she would have never accomplished the game-changing work that she did. Women throughout history are often hidden or misremembered. Eunice's story is another reminder that we can't let their stories fade to the background any longer.
Bonus Pick: The book talk also left me eager to learn more about Eileen McNamara's background. A masterful storyteller, she was a Boston Globe reporter for 30 years, where she wrote some of the first stories about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church (she was portrayed by Maureen Keiller in the Spotlight movie). She won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1997 and has written two other books: Breakdown: Sex, Suicide and the Harvard Psychiatrist and The Parting Glass: A Toast to the Traditional Pubs of Ireland.
Required Reading
Last Tuesday, the acclaimed author Beverly Cleary turned 102. I fondly remember reading and listening to audio tapes (on road trips) of Ellen Tebbits, Henry and Beezus, Beezus and Romana and the rest of the Romana series when I was younger. Sarah Larson wrote a beautiful piece in The New Yorker two years ago to celebrate Beverly Clearly's 100th birthday and the influence she had on her childhood. Sarah writes: "People have been talking about how her books lure kids into a thrilling world of independent reading, which is still true. Cleary was an early pioneer of emotional realism in children’s writing, respecting young readers enough to write about the feelings provoked by the joys and embarrassments of the world as it was, for children and their allies, animals." Her piece gives me a cozy feeling and is making me think of all of the magical books that defined by childhood. I picture sitting next to my mom on the couch as she read me the Little House on the Prairie series or anything written by E. B. White, becoming inspired to write after reading Andrew Clements' The School Story and then re-reading it time and time again, and I remember my feeling of surprise when I read that Ramona fell through her friend's attic floor in Ramona's World.
