Good Folk/jazz/swing Music Recs?

Good folk/jazz/swing music recs?

I’m trying to find some jazzy folk music for a friend who swing dances. We don’t overlap on music a ton, but I showed them “Curses” by the Crane Wives and they absolutely loved it! I’m trying to put a playlist together of potential music (some Hadestown songs are already on there), but I need some ideas.

Any suggestions?

Thoughts on Casting Don John as a Woman

Let’s face: as far as villains go, Don John is not particularly villainous. His motivations are shaky at best; he hates his brother and wants to bring him down by... breaking up the relationship of his brother’s best friend? Not to mention that he doesn’t even come up with the plan to disrupt Claudio’s faith in Hero - he just pays the guy who does all the dirty work!

For how much I love the play, this is one of the biggest weaknesses no matter the production. But as a role that is not explicitly tied to gender, Don John is one character that can be shifted more easily than most. However, that’s not to say that there wouldn’t be implications if Don John was cast as a woman.

If Don John is a woman (Let’s call her Don Joan, shall we?), the character will certainly hold a different type of motivation that her male counterpart cannot. For instance, she can certainly hold the same jealousy of Don Pedro for his higher rank. But this anger can come from a broader perspective by having her also be constrained by her expected role in society (a la Lady Macbeth, perhaps?). However, by casting her like this, it’s certainly problematic - at the end of the day, the character will be inevitably in the wrong, even if her anger is understandable.

Casting a Don Joan also affects her relationships with other characters. Personally, I think it would be interesting to make her exes with Claudio. That would certainly give her more motivation to be cruel to him as well as having a determination to keep Hero away from him. Although this could lose some of the play’s message if not handled right, I think it’d be interesting that, instead of displaying how a man may believe another man who he dislikes over a woman he loves, she would be aware in manipulating the misogyny by knowing the men will believe doubt a woman instead of actually trusting her.

Naturally, a similar effect of creating a “Don Joan” pining for Claudio could also be done by having Don John just be a gay man in love with Claudio. But having Don Joan as a woman could highlight not only misogyny the men have but also the effects of internalized misogyny as Don Joan and Hero could as clear foils to one another (the “ideal” girl vs the “outsider” girl). Of course, this could be disputed as problematic by making the non-conforming girl the villains, but a production could overcome this by highlighting how unconventional Beatrice is but also how she’ll stick by her cousin’s side no matter what.

Honestly, these are just random musings, but the implications of “Don Joan” on the plot and underlying messages are just so interesting to me.

Mister Impossible will (hopefully) be the Blue Lily Lily Blue of the Dreamer Trilogy

First it’s visceral hate, then acceptance

Hopefully

Reasons Why Howl Moved to Ingary:

1)      The magic! The fashion! The wizardly aesthetic!

2)      Tax avoidance

One of my favourite items ever left behind at my work has to be this fancy-looking cane. It didn’t seem like anything special (a bit of pretty detail work, sure), but then my co-worker picked it up one time and it rattled. So, he tried unscrewing it, and you know what that cane was?

A DAGGER CANE.

Like this:

Seriously, the top part of this cane is a dagger!?!?!? Totally unexpected, probably pretty dangerous, but now all I can imagine is Kaz Brekker wielding one of these bad boys and duping everyone into thinking he’s unarmed.

Check Please Should Be An Animated Series

Honestly, with the fact that there are so many animated series now that a) have an older audience following and b) have an LGBT audience following, this is kind of the perfect series to adapt!

Just imagine:

Ransom and Holster have an actual theme song for “Hockey Shit with Random and Holster”! I can picture exactly how it sounds in my head, and Jack’s still the only one who can hear it

Not enough material for a full season? ANIMATE BITTY’S TWEETS/THE EXTRAS!!! 

Wait, ANIMATE ASK A WELLIE! Make it another segment like “Hockey Shit”!

Also we could totally include the ghosts haunting Ransom, poor guy

John Johnson the existential goalie 110% has all of his dialogue appear in a speech bubble as he talks (though we don’t see him), but the words are Star Wars intro style

Also I just want Ollie and Wicks randomly appearing throughout the series and commenting on things

IMAGINE HEARING JACK’S VOICE WITH A FRENCH CANADIAN ACCENT

JACK SPEAKING FRENCH

JACK AS AN UGLY BABY

JACK JACK JACK JACK JACK

Bitty and his accent!!!

I’ll probably think of more later (and please add more!), but just - Check Please: the Animated Series!!!