Category Archives: On Writing

Orlando, Here We Come! – Risk Theatre 2023

Yeah! Just got accepted into the Comparative Drama Conference in Orlando, Florida, March 30 to April 1, 2023. The Comparative Drama Conference is an international, interdisciplinary conference founded by Dr. Karelisa Hartigan at the University of Florida in 1977. Every year, approximately 200 scholars are invited to present and discuss their work in the field of drama and 2-4 new plays receive a staged reading. The conference draws participants from both the Humanities and the Arts. The papers delivered range over the entire field of theatre research and production. Over the past 40 years, participants have come from 32 nations and all 50 states. Each year a distinguished theatre scholar or artist is invited to address the participants in the Keynote Event.

Here’s a copy of my proposal and bio that I went in a few months ago:

How to Set Up an International Playwriting Competition

Abstract: 

Have you ever wanted to take a dramatic theory from the page to the stage? One way to do this is to create a playwriting competition. In 2018, I did exactly this. I had a new theory of tragedy identifying the dramatic fulcrum as a low-probability, high-consequence event. After teaming up with a local theatre, I launched the Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Playwriting Competition (risktheatre.com). The competition awards $14,000 in cash prizes each year in addition to running a workshop and staged reading for the winner. The competition is now in its fifth year.

Over the years, people have asked me for advice on how to set up a playwriting competition. In this talk, I’ll go over the logistics from partnering with a theatre to setting up the website, finding jurors, funding, and getting the word out. I’ll also share with you the lessons I’ve learned along the way. In every way, it’s been an amazing journey. The competition has opened doors for me and introduced me to new friends and experiences along the way. I’d love to share my story with you. Bring your questions.

Bio:

Edwin Wong has been dubbed “an Aristotle for the 21st century” by David Konstan at NYU for exploring the intersection between risk and theatre. He has published two books and over a dozen articles and book chapters on this topic. In 2022, he was one of three international academics to receive the Ben Jonson Discoveries Award for his work on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In 2018, he founded the Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Playwriting Competition, and has talked at venues from the Kennedy Center and the University of Coimbra to conferences hosted by the National New Play Network, Canadian Association of Theatre Research, Society of Classical Studies, and Classical Association of the Middle West and South. He was educated at Brown University and is on Twitter @TheoryOfTragedy.

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The nice thing about this acceptance is that it shows that the Risk Theatre Competition–now in its fifth year–has reached a certain stage in its development. I’ve proposed talks on how I set up the competition at different conferences in prior years, but there was little interest. With people I’ve known, run across, and chatted with in the past, however, there always was interest: “How did you set this up?” has always been a common question. But, until the competition got into its fifth year, it didn’t have enough “street cred” to interest conference organizers. I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my experiences at the Comparative Drama Conference in 2023. And the experience has taught me a critical lesson: when you have a dream, persistence over time is the key. Success isn’t measure in months and years, but in decades.

Keep going, friends. Never stop.

– – –

Don’t forget me. I’m Edwin Wong and I do Melpomene’s work.
sine memoria nihil

Routledge Press Book Chapter Proposal

Gotta keep on truckin’. Here’s my latest: a book chapter proposal for a forthcoming book by Routledge Press called Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage. Risk theatre seems to fit the call for chapter proposal like a glove. Time will tell!

Here’s my proposal:

Book Chapter Proposal “How might we move beyond Aristotle’s predominance in the classroom?”

One interesting, but laborious, way to move beyond established structures in theatre is to start from the ground up with a new theory of drama. Yesterday’s models of drama served the past well: Aristotle taught us to consider our emotions; Hegel made plays a springboard into discussions on ethics; Nietzsche paved the way for Strindberg and O’Neill to explore the subconscious through theatre. Yesterday’s theorists touched on cardinal themes in the yesteryear. That was then. Today’s theory must speak to today’s audiences.

Whether the murder of George Floyd, the pandemic, climate change, or growing nativist movements, one theme that binds modernity together is risk. Risk is to moderns what pity and fear were to the ancients, ethics were to neoclassicists, and Dionysus to existentialists. Risk encapsulates the highest concerns of our pre-postindustrial age: uncertainty, hazard, unintended consequences, daring, strife, volatility, and the impact of the highly improbable. We are haunted by our past and wary of our future.

In 2018, I launched an international playwriting competition inviting playwrights to explore risk (risktheatre.com). In addition to a workshop and staged reading, the competition–now in its fourth year–awards over $12,000 cash to playwrights annually. In 2019, I presented a template of how to make risk the dramatic fulcrum of the action in my book, The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. My second book, When Life Gives You Risk, Make Risk Theatre: Three Tragedies and Six Essays, will come out in 2022. It brings together prize-winning plays from the competition along with essays on chance, uncertainty, and the unexpected. Theatre enthusiasts all over the world from diverse backgrounds—from playwrights to jurors, dramaturgs, actors, and audiences—are exploring the dramatic possibilities of risk like never before.

I would like to contribute an essay to Decentered Playwriting on how we can move beyond Aristotle’s predominance in the classroom by reimagining theatre as a stage of risk. Risk theatre is igniting an important twenty-first century arts movement that is bringing together artists, teachers, playwrights, dramaturgs, and academics across a variety of disciplines, backgrounds, and lifestyles. While we cannot all agree on Aristotle, we can agree on risk. Theatre is a dress rehearsal for life. When risk is the fulcrum of the action, new voices can use the theatre as a stage to model, simulate, and explore risk in all its guises. If you build it, they will come.

Sample Playwriting Exercise

Risk is linked with reward. To take a risk, however, is to gamble because risk involves uncertainty. If the uncertainty were removed, there would be no risk. Think of tragic protagonists as gamblers who have a foolproof plan, but are struck down by unexpected, low-probability, high-consequence events. Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Macbeth has a perfect plan to become king. He antes up the milk of human kindness. But he is struck down when, against all odds, Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill. Joe Keller in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons has a perfect plan to support his family. He lays his honesty on the line. But he is struck down when the highly improbable happens: Annie arrives with a letter from the past. Oedipus in Sophocles’s Oedipus rex has the perfect plan to lift the plague. He stakes his reputation on his success: having outsmarted the Sphinx, he is the cleverest person in the room. But he is undone, when, unexpectedly, he comes face to face with two old acquaintances: the Corinthian Messenger and the Shepherd.

In this exercise, create a protagonist-gambler who wagers all-in on a sure-fire bet. Then come up with an unexpected event (unexpected to the protagonist but one which the audience can see coming) that strikes the protagonist down. Make the audience feel anticipation for the magnitude of the protagonist’s wager and apprehension for how it will all go wrong. Give us a brief synopsis, in a few sentences, of how the risk event unfolds.

Bio

Edwin Wong is an Asian-Canadian theatre maker who specializes in the intersection between probability and drama. He has been called “an Aristotle for the 21st century” (David Konstan, NYU). He has been invited to speak at venues from the Kennedy Center to the National New Play Network, the Canadian Association of Theatre Research, Working Title Playwrights, the Society of Classical Studies, the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, and many theatres and universities across North America and Europe. Current projects include his second book, When Life Gives You Risk, Make Risk Theatre, and a series of essays for Salem Press on the role of probability, chance, and the unexpected in tragedy, comedy, and the novel. Recent essays for Salem Press include: “Greek Tragedy, Black Swans, and the Coronavirus: The Consolation of Theatre,” “Faces of Chance in Shakespeare’s Tragedies: Othello’s Handkerchief and Macbeth’s Moving Grove,” “The Price of Patriotism: Opportunity Cost and the American Dream in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons,” “Aeschylus’s Seven against Thebes: A Patriot’s Portrait of a Patriot,” “Tragedy, Comedy, and Chance in Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd,” and “But Who Does Caesar Render Unto? Three Faces of Risk in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.” He curates the international Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Playwriting Competition. He was educated at Brown University, where he read ancient theatre and lives in Victoria, Canada.

And here’s the original Call for Chapter Proposal:

​Call for Chapter Proposal:
Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage Forthcoming by Routledge Press

Co-Editors: Carolyn Dunn, PhD; Eric Micha Holmes, MFA; Les Hunter, PhD

Theatre is the place which best allows me to figure out how the world works. —Suzan-Lori Parks

Theater artists in all parts of our industry are questioning with renewed intensity not only the ways we write plays but how we teach writing plays. In the summer of 2020, the murder of George Floyd, coupled with a global pandemic, the devastating effects of climate change, and growing nativist movements across the US revealed how theatre and theatre educational institutions are failing the demand for new approaches. For example, most US college playwriting classes still focus on traditional “closed,” white, male-centric, Aristotelian dramatic structures and techniques. And when only one in five plays read in US introductory playwriting classes is written by a female and/or Black, Indigenous, Asian, Arab, Latinx, Hispanic playwright (“Contemporary Playwriting Pedagogies” in

Teaching Critical Performance Theory), it begs the questions:

● What other storytelling techniques, arising from various narrative traditions, practices, rituals, and movements, can be introduced to playwriting students?
● How does this global moment of racial reckoning cause us to reframe dramatic writing with a sense of play, freedom, opportunity, and abundance?

● What non-Eurocentric structures can help deepen our writing practices
● In what ways can pedagogical methods be reimagined?
● How do playwrights as both writers and educators unlearn their own implicit biases?
● How can the craft of playwriting become a more inclusive practice?
● How might we move beyond Aristotle’s predominance in the classroom?
● Is it possible to utilize playwriting practices from other cultures without appropriating them?
● How might the classroom be a space to create a more diverse and inclusive pipeline of new voices, practices, theories, and techniques for creating dramatic work?
● How do we study, teach, and produce texts that recover and/or support underrepresented narratological practices?
● How might we use pedagogical techniques to redress systemic bias?
● What kinds of playwriting techniques might we turn to in order to fully re-present a fuller spectrum of humanity and storytelling?

Decentered Playwriting is a collection of short essays and exercises by teaching artists, playwrights, dramaturgs, and academics in the fields of playwriting and dramaturgy that investigates these questions and more. This textbook explores new and alternative strategies for dramatic writing that incorporate non-Western, indigenous, and other underrepresented storytelling traditions, theories, and techniques.

Details/Logistics for Submissions:
We are seeking an array of proposals from a great diversity of playwriting techniques and backgrounds. We are particularly interested in proposals that are craft-forward and come from underrepresented voices in playwriting curriculum.

We have a strong interest in increasing a larger global representation of playwriting techniques including but not limited to those arising out of Asian, African, the Caribbean, South American, Middle Eastern, and European traditions and strategies. We strongly encourage proposals from Black, Asian, Indigenous, Latinx, Hispanic and LGBTQIA+ contributors.

Interested authors should send a 300-600 word abstract proposal including a short playwriting exercise based on the technique explored, and a 100-200 word bio. Please send all work to [email protected]. Only previously unpublished work will be considered.

Deadline for Submissions: November 1, 2021.

Wish good luck to the good guy!

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Don’t forget me, I’m Edwin Wong and I do Melpomene’s work.
sine memoria nihil

Road to Book #2 – WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU RISK, MAKE RISK THEATRE: THREE TRAGEDIES AND SIX ESSAYS

The road to book two is underway. Half a year ago, I approached six publishers. Nary a word came back from my proposals: one wrote back quickly with a polite decline and nothing, nada, nix from the others. Some of these proposals are quite intensive!–read similar books in their back catalog, comment on how your book fits in an essay comprising thousands of words, submit chapters, etc., It would have been nice to at least get a reply. But hey, that’s life. I’m sure they are inundated with proposals–during the pandemic, everyone has probably become a writer. If the gatekeepers lock you out of the mansion on the hill, find a back way in.

My first book was published by FriesenPress, the self-publishing arm of the Friesen Corporation,  an international publishing giant. They did a wonderful job and the book went on to sell thousands of copies, which is, for a book on dramatic tragic literary theory, nothing short of amazing. I’ve teamed up with Friesen again for my second book. Self-publishing is the back way in. When the gates are locked and the gatekeepers to the mansion on the hill are nowhere to be seen, one must get creative.

My second back, provocatively titled: When Life Gives You Risk, Make Risk Theatre: Three Tragedies and Six Essays is, as the title suggests, a collection of plays and essays. The plays consist of prize-winning plays from my Risk Theatre Playwriting Competition: Gabriel Jason Dean’s In Bloom, Nicholas Dunn’s The Value, and Emily McClain’s Children of Combs & Watch Chains. The essays consist of six pieces I’ve written that have appeared in various Critical Insights volumes published by Salem Press. Each essay looks at a major play from the perspective of risk, chance, and the unexpected. One of the essays even brings my risk theatre theory of drama to the novel. Things are starting to get interesting right around now.

As part of the path to production, each author’s manuscript gets reviewed by an anonymous editor at Friesen. This is, in a way, the book’s first review. The editor’s review just came back to me a few days ago, and I’m excited to share it with you here. It makes me very happy to be able to say that I think the editor liked it very much. Judge for yourself. PDF of review attached for your reading pleasure.

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Don’t forget me. I’m Edwin Wong and I do Melpomene’s work.
sine memoria nihil

Editor's Manuscript Evaluation - When Life Gives You Risk Make Risk Theatre

2022 CAMWS Presentation Abstract for a talk on Aeschylus’s SEVEN AGAINST THEBES

At the 2022 Classical Association of the Middle West and South AGM in Winston-Salem NC, I’ll be  directing a staged reading of Aeschylus’s tragedy Seven against Thebes with TIGR, the Theater in Greece and Rome committee. Since I’ve got my tickets to fly to North Carolina already, I thought I’d go ALL-IN and see if the conference participant would also be interested in hearing a short, fifteen minute presentation on Aeschylus’s play. In the past, Eteocles, the protagonist of Seven, has been seen as a blundering leader who suddenly loses nerve halfway through the play. In my presentation, I argue that his response to the crisis is, from a leadership perspective, well-thought out. He is an effective leader.

Hot off the press is my 477 word abstract for CAMWS’s consideration. Fingers crossed!

Eteocles’s Patriotic Response in Aeschylus’s Seven against Thebes

Aeschylus gives the audience, in his character of Eteocles, a portrait of an effective and patriotic leader. As a soldier who distinguished himself in the four major engagements of the Persian Wars, from Marathon (where his brother Cynegirus perished), to Artemisium, Salamis, and Plataea, Aeschylus knew of effective leadership. Furthermore, sixty-two years after Seven against Thebes was first produced, audiences still remembered it for its patriotism: in Aristophanes’s Frogs, the fictional Aeschylus says that every single person who watched Seven against Thebes “was hot to be warlike” (1019–22). Unless Eteocles was perceived to be an effective and patriotic leader, it would have been unlikely that the play could have inspired audiences “hot to be warlike.”

Eteocles’s treatment of the chorus of Theban women has been seen as questionable at best, and misogynistic at worst. Through a concept recently popularized by philosopher, mathematician, and essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb called “skin in the game,” I will argue that Eteocles pursues a patriotic and effective strategy in his debate with the chorus (Taleb 2018). By investing the chorus with “skin in the game”—involving them with a share in the victory—Eteocles moves them away from their negative prayers (e.g. “May the enemy not slaughter us”) to positive forms of prayer (e.g. “May the gods strike down our enemies”). His is a patriotic and effective strategy.

Eteocles’s reduction of the Argive attackers into the “other” may also seem counterintuitive to modern notions of humanizing and understanding the enemy. Through the lens of sociobiology, a scientific discipline grounding human nature in biological origins proposed by biologist E. O. Wilson in the 1970s, I will argue that, by reducing the enemy into the “other,” Eteocles activates primal and deep-seated behaviours of territoriality in the defenders (Wilson 1978). It is an ambivalent strategy that anthropologists can identify in cultures today from the Nyae Nyae and !Kung Bushmen to various fringe groups.

I will conclude by talking about how Aeschylus’s Seven against Thebes, in promoting the behaviour of patriotism, simultaneously highlights the problem of patriotism: too little patriotism and society fragments but, too much patriotism, and nationalism and racism rise, stalling the spread of culture and information. A character such as Lasthenes walks a thin line. Being “hateful to strangers” (Echthroxenos, 621), he is an effective sentry. His value, in peacetime, however, is debatable.

Patriotism highlights the limitation of biology, the problem of how to build a space age society from genes adapted to Stone and Heroic Age environments. Seven against Thebes is a most crucial play, as it provides a springboard into a broader discussion of patriotism, leadership, nationalism, and other critical issues we face in the twenty-first century.

Bibliography

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life. Random House, 2018

Wilson, E. O. On Human Nature. Harvard UP, 1978

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Don’t forget me. I’m Edwin Wong and I do Melpomene’s work.
sine memoria nihil

Back Cover Blurb for New Risk Theatre Book – WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU RISK, MAKE RISK THEATRE: THREE TRAGEDIES AND SIX ESSAYS

Starting to put together the second book in the risk theatre series. The book is called: WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU RISK, MAKE RISK THEATRE: THREE TRAGEDIES AND SIX ESSAYS. Coming out 2022. Been playing with back cover blurbs, here’s the latest:

CREATORS, INNOVATORS, AND THEATREMAKERS:
DEFY THE SMALLNESS OF THE STAGE
BY THE GREATNESS OF YOUR DARING …

Not only did Wong’s first book upend tragic literary theory by arguing that risk is the dramatic fulcrum of the action, it launched the world’s largest competition for the writing of tragedy (risktheatre.com). In his second book on the risk theatre theory of tragedy, Wong continues to present his case that chance and probability are two of the most powerful yet least understood forces directing life on and off the stage.

Inside you will find three prize-winning risk theatre tragedies by acclaimed playwrights: In Bloom by Gabriel Jason Dean, The Value by Nicholas Dunn, and Children of Combs & Watch Chains by Emily McClain. From the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the motel rooms and doctors’ offices lining the interstate expressways, they set the stage afire with deeds of daring. These plays will open your eyes to how extraordinary daring triggers extraordinary events.

Six new risk theatre essays round off this volume. In a dazzling display from Aeschylus to Shakespeare and Miller, Wong reinterprets theatre through chance and probability theory. The final essay on Hardy breaks a path forwards: not only does risk crack the novel, it provides the basis of a grand unified theory of drama governing both tragedy and comedy. After risk theatre, you will never look at literature in the same way.

… TOMORROW, WHOEVER SAYS DRAMA WILL SAY RISK

Edwin Wong (1974-) is a classicist and theatre researcher specializing in the impact of the highly improbable. He has been invited to talk about risk theatre at venues from the Kennedy Center and the University of Coimbra in Portugal to international conferences held by the National New Play Network, the Canadian Association of Theatre Research, the Society of Classical Studies, and the Classical Association of the Middle West and South. His last book, The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected is igniting an international arts movement. He was educated at Brown and lives in Victoria, Canada. Follow him on melpomeneswork.com and Twitter @TheoryOfTragedy.

Cover: The Tower © Matt Hughes

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Don’t forget me, I’m Edwin Wong and I do Melpomene’s work
sine memoria nihil

Dear Publisher: Please Publish My Book WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU RISK, MAKE RISK THEATRE

Risk Theatre Performing Arts Book Proposal

Four years ago, seventeen publishers shut the door on my book The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. After a year of aporia, FriesenPress, the self-publishing arm of the printing behemoth Friesens Corporation, released it. Today, my second book, When Life Gives You Risk, Make Risk Theatre: Three Plays and Five Essays, is coming together. Let’s give the traditional publishers a knock on the door. Maybe the gatekeepers will be more receptive this time. This time, things are different. Before, risk theatre was unknown and untested. Now risk theatre is going from peak to peak. The name of the game is to keep going. Never stop.

Here’s the template of the pitch letter. It’s short (326 words). It gives them a reason to be excited (who doesn’t like a new arts movement?). It builds upon the successes of the previous book (it was a terrific stroke of luck for my little self-published book to get two glowing reviews in peer-reviewed theatre journals). Will it be enough?– Please…

Dear Publisher,

I curate The Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Playwriting Competition, the world’s largest competition for the writing of tragedy (risktheatre.com). The competition, now in its fourth year, is based on my self-published book: The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy (2019). It presents a new theory of drama by arguing that downside risk is the dramatic fulcrum of the action in tragedy. Hundreds of playwrights (from sixteen countries, including some former Soviet republics) have entered the competition and the book has sold over 2700 copies. In the last two years, I have been invited to talk about risk theatre at the Kennedy Center, the National New Play Network, Working Title Playwrights (Atlanta), the Society of Classical Studies, the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Marionet Teatro (Portugal), as well as many universities and theatres. Risk theatre is an exciting and growing twenty-first century arts movement.

To commemorate the fourth year of the playwriting competition, I have put together a compilation called: When Life Gives You Risk, Make Risk Theatre: Three Plays and Five Essays. Three finalist and winning playwrights have agreed to have their plays published. In addition, they will contribute new introductory essays discussing the significance of risk. The second half of the compilation consists of five essays I wrote applying risk theatre to the interpretation of plays from Aeschylus to Arthur Miller as well as to the novel.

Risk theatre is changing the way people look at the dramatic art form of tragedy. Would you be interested in participating in this exciting, bold, and important arts movement by publishing When Life Gives You Risk, Make Risk Theatre: Three Plays and Five Essays?

Attached are reviews of my first book from the peer-reviewed journals Theatre History Studies and NJ Drama Australia Journal. You may also see enthusiastic customer reviews of my first book at Goodreads and Amazon (links below).

Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions. I look forward to hearing from you.

All best,

Edwin Wong

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43999168-the-risk-theatre-model-of-tragedy

21.02.12theatrehistorystudiesREVIEW NJ Drama Australia The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy Gambling Drama and the Unexpected

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Don’t forget me, I’m Edwin Wong and I do Melpomene’s work
sine memoria nihil

Men and Women of Destiny from Helen of Troy to Cus D’Amato

Types of Individuals and Subtypes

In the Judgement of Paris, three goddesses vie for the Golden Apple. A mortal, Paris, decides who gets the Golden Apple. Not knowing what type of individual Paris is, each goddess bribes Paris according to the basic human drive she represents. Aphrodite offers sensuousness. Athena offers wisdom. Hera offers power. Three goddesses vie for the Golden Apple because there are three basic individual types: epicures, sages, and suits.

Epicures, sages, and suits: each person falls into one of these three broad categories of people. In each of these categories are various subcategories. Among the epicures there are different pleasures. Among the sages the branches of knowledge are various. Among the suits, power take on different faces. There is the face of a CEO, the one wearing cuff links on a crisp shirt. There is the face of a mob boss with the clean shorn head. There is the face a Queen who plays one suitor against another. These are the faces of temporal power. But there is yet another, rarer, face of power. There is the atemporal face of power, the call of destiny. This is power in the dative case. It is in the dative case because it is power to those for whom the world is not enough. Whereas the industrialist, the boss, and the politician project their power for reasons they grasp, those to whom destiny calls project their power for reasons they do not fully grasp. It calls. They follow. The results are larger than life.

Achilles and Agamemnon

If Paris were the first epicure of the Western world, then Achilles and Agamemnon were the first suits. But they were suits of different types. Agamemnon wore the temporal face of power. The sceptre he carries is a visual analogy of his face of power. Achilles power is different. Like Agamemnon, he is a fighter and a nobleman. He is greater as a fighter and lesser as a nobleman. But this isn’t what differentiates them. The power he projects is atemporal. He is more a mystic. Achilles understands something that Agamemnon and the other warriors can hardly comprehend, and that is the call of destiny:

My mother Thetis the goddess of the silver feet tells me
I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either,
if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans,
my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting;
the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life
left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly.

We know the other heroes can hardly comprehend Achilles because Homer records their reaction:

So he [Achilles] spoke, and all of them stayed stricken to silence
in amazement at his words. He had spoken to them very strongly.

Then, as now, people are wary when individuals start talking of a destiny. Those to whom a higher task was not vouchsafed have only heard the distant rumour of destiny, most often spoken by fools and lunatics.

Achilles’ words can be read literally, or as an allegory. Read literally, his twin destinies provide the pivot of the poem. When he comes back to the field, the poem will be sung forever, but he will die quick. Read allegorically, his words speak to those whom destiny has called. His words say to them that destiny comes at a great price. Achilles will pay the price, and so will those who follow him.

Helen: Woman of Destiny

It is a shame Achilles and Helen never meet in the Iliad. They would have much to talk about. Besides Achilles, Helen is the only other character who understands the weight of destiny. During one of the fifty-one or so days in the Iliad, the tide (as it so often does) turns, this time against the Trojans. Hector goes back to fortress Troy to placate the gods. While inside, he runs into his brother Paris and his sister-in-law Helen. Helen, seeing Hector gore-covered and weary–weary of war and weary of worry–placates him:

Yet since the gods had brought it about that these vile things must be,
I wish I had been the wife of a better man than this is [Paris],
one who knew modesty and all things of shame that men say.
But this man’s heart is no steadfast thing, nor yet will it be so
ever hereafter; for that I think he shall take the consequence.
But come now, come in and rest on this chair, my brother,
since it is on your heart beyond all that the hard work has fallen
for the sake of dishonoured me and the blind act of Alexandros [an alternate name for Paris],
us two, on whom Zeus set a vile destiny, so that hereafter
we shall be made into things of song for the men of the future.

Her strategy of placating Hector is fascinating. First, she denigrates herself and Paris, for whom many excellent Trojans have died. Then there is the epic cop-out, similar to the one Agamemnon uses when many excellent Achaeans die because he slighted Achilles, their best warrior. Agamemnon blames Zeus as well for blinding his wits the moment he slighted Achilles. So too, Helen blames Zeus for their “vile destiny.” But then–and this is the fascinating part–she adds a metaphysical justification for why Zeus had set a vile destiny: he did so to make them “into things of song for the men of the future.” Why is this fascinating? Helen could not have known that Homer, centuries later, would memorialize their lives in the Iliad. How then was Helen able to make this statement? She was able to because she felt destiny calling her forwards.

While Achilles’ sense of destiny highlights the sacrifice that destiny demands, Helen’s sense of destiny highlights two separate facets of destiny. First, destiny takes place within a tradition. No one feels destined to do something that has never been done before. Destiny calls you to take your place in a long line of others who have had the same calling. In the case of Helen, she understood that the Trojan War was a great war, and, just as the bards in her day recounted the wars of old, the bards of the future would recount her story. Destiny is seeing beyond the present day. It is a higher awareness. While the others can only see the day-to-day contingencies of war, destiny calls Helen to join the great ones in the days of yore. What is more, we can see another aspect of destiny in the example of Helen. Those who hear destiny’s call are not for their time: they are born posthumously in the future times when their destiny is fulfilled. Every time Troy is sung, Helen lives. Such is the destiny of those made into things of song for the men of the future. Destiny is not a phenomenon of this world and this time, but a thing for another world in the times to come.

Philip II of Macedon, Olympias, and Alexander the Great

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “destiny” as:

The predetermined course of events; that which is destined to happen; the fate of a particular person, country, etc.; the ultimate condition; a person’s lot in life.

If destiny is “predetermined,” a “fate” hurtling toward “the ultimate condition,” it would seem that it is congenital, something written in the stars or woven by the Fates, and not something learned. Or is it? Could destiny be a learned asset? The case of Alexander suggests the feeling of destiny can, like the assets of emotional intelligence or geometry, be taught.

Alexander, from a young age, was told by his mother Olympias that it was his destiny to conquer Persia, the reigning world-power. So too he was told by his father Philip: “My son, ask for thyself another kingdom, for that which I leave is too small for thee.” From the iron sense of destiny imparted on him by Olympias and Philip, we can see why he would rebuke his soldiers, exhausted from his never-ending campaigns: “Go home, and tell them you left Alexander to conquer the world alone.”

In Alexander it is possible to see how destiny can be taught. Destiny is like that unattainable peak. We may never get there, but destiny is also the belief that we can. Alexander never achieved the kingdom he sought. But by believing in destiny, he went much further than could be expected or even imagined.

We are held back so often from our true capacities from our own beliefs. Destiny in the Alexandrian sense is a belief in oneself that allows one to transcend what was thought possible. Destiny as a tool to achieve the impossible reminds me of the story of martial artist and movie star Tony Jaa. Have you seen the staircase fight scene in The Protector, the one where Jaa ascends a series of grand staircases in leaps and bounds, all while taking out a small army or martial arts mercenaries? Well, the whole four-minute sequence was done in one shot, and it includes some serious gravity defying leaps that were done without wirework. How was this possible?

While growing up, Jaa watched wuxia wire fu shows such as The Legend of the Condor Heroes. In these shows, the old masters practised a gravity-defying discipline called “quinggong.” They could ascend sheer rock faces in a bound, run across lakes, and jump over fortress walls. In the movies, actors achieved these effects with trampolines and wirework, hence the name “wire fu.” Jaa, however, wasn’t aware of this. He thought quinggong was for real. And he practised his leaps and bound every day. He never got to the point where he could fly. But, if you watch The Protector, he gets halfway there. That is the advantage of destiny. By believing the impossible, you may not get there, but you will go further than how far people tell you is possible.

Incidentally, if you found it unlikely that a child could believe in quinggong, I believed it was possible until my mid-teens. To “practise” quinggong, I would jump off all sorts of things, stairs, balconies, and, in one case, a second storey window (fortunately my legs are robust!). I never got to Jaa’s level, but one time, in grade ten, they tested the basketball team’s standing vertical jump. In this test you stand with both legs planted on the ground and jump as high as you can. Your vertical jump or “vert,” as we called it, was the distance between the ground and your feet as maximum elevation. Most of the guys had a vert between 12-18 inches. My vert at age 15 was 24 inches. The average standing vertical (e.g. stationary, not running) jump of adult NBA players today is 28 inches. This was quite an impressive result. Even if you don’t believe in destiny, belief is a game changer. The feeling of destiny is belief multiplied by infinity.

In the case of Alexander, we see that destiny can be a learned attribute. Not only that, we see that the men and women of destiny have an affinity for one another. On visiting the grave of Achilles, Alexander said: “Oh fortunate youth, who found a Homer to proclaim thy valour!” Out of a hundred people, there is likely less than one who feels the call of immortality. It is looked on by others as a strange aberration. Perhaps it is for this reason that we can see how intrigued those who feel destiny’s allure are with one another.

Julius Caesar: “The Die is Cast”

The Rubicon, a small stream 300 kilometers north of Rome, marked the point where returning governors would have to take leave of their legions. Governors could roam with their legions north of the Rubicon. In Italy proper–the area south of the Rubicon–only elected officials could maintain armies. So it was in the dying days of the Roman Republic.

When Caesar was 31, he saw a statue of Alexander. Seeing the statue put Caesar in to a state of reflection. At 31, all Caesar had to show for himself was a quaestorship while at that same age Alexander had conquered the known world. Like Alexander, Caesar also wanted immortality. Later on, he would one up Alexander. While Alexander could only marvel how Achilles had a Homer to write of his deeds, Caesar would become his own historiographer, writing both The Gallic Wars and The Civil War. Such is the call of destiny. If help is not forthcoming, one must go at it alone.

Through Caesar we can see the incredible appetite for life that makes the man of destiny: the lavish games he put on, the unending wars of conquest that he brought home after all the enemies had been conquered, the massive feats of engineering he took on. But the one element of destiny with Caesar that fascinate me most is in 49 BC when he took the thirteenth legion across the Rubicon and started the Civil War. In particular, the thing that interest me most is what Caesar said as he crossed the tiny stream: alea iacta est “The die is cast.”

When Caesar says that the die is cast, he refers to the moment one offers oneself, almost as a sacrifice, to destiny. Destiny transcends the natural processes of this world, it is a metaphysical mood. Who, in the final examination, knows the difference between the call of destiny, madness, and megalomania? When one hears destiny’s call, one must, like Caesar at the Rubicon, either accept or reject the call. And if one accepts the call, one gives oneself up to higher and indeterminate powers. One becomes thrall to the unknown. Caesar, in a brilliant image, equates this unknown quantity to the randomness of the die.

There is some magic in destiny. It may call you to immortality. But, even though it calls, you may or may not get there. And whether or not you get there is beyond your control, no matter how great your resources and ingenuity. This is Caesar’s contribution to our discussion of destiny.

The Jews: A Destined People

For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God, and the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth. Deuteronomy 14:2

With the Jews, we can see the effect of destiny on an entire people. God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah establishes the Jews as a people chosen for a greater destiny. Having a greater destiny is awesome, but we can also see that with great power comes great sacrifice: as soon as God chooses the Jews as his people, he also tells them how they must comport themselves. To be the people of destiny, there are many commandments and restrictions to follow. From the history of the Jews, we can make a general inference regarding destiny: destiny declines when discipline decays. To have a destiny means to comport oneself to the highest standards.

Because the covenant includes a whole race of people, we can see the effect of destiny on many people, many of whom we don’t typically see as being involved with destiny. Sure, we see Alexander and Caesar as people of destiny, but the covenant also involves Joe the plumber in the conversation. The first thing we notice in the history of the Jews is that it is extremely hard to live up to the demands of destiny. The nation would rather live free, would rather live under the golden calf than bear the burden of destiny. Destiny is an incredible weight.

The second thing that we notice, however, is that despite its weight, destiny compels those who feel its allure–if they don’t destroy themselves–to outperform. How many Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, or Jebusites do you know today? And how many Jews do you know today? Of the tribes living in the Promised Land, only the Jews trace an unbroken line from biblical times to the present day. We can see from the history of the Jews how destiny makes it believers robust so that, against long odds, they prevail.

In the history of the Jews, we can also observe a third facet of destiny: to have a destiny sets you apart from others. The effect of professing that one has a destiny is to be, by others, sometimes misunderstood, sometimes scorned, and at other times persecuted. If one has a destiny, one searches out for others that are also marked by destiny. At the same time, if one has a destiny, one is marked as an object of contempt by the ones who are without their own destiny. There is something of human nature in this.

Nietzsche: A Philosopher in between Destiny and Madness

From the 1870s, Nietzsche knew that his task (die Aufgabe, as he endlessly referred to it) would be all-consuming, and that it would involve him exploding the boundaries of his professional credentials as an Altphilologe, a classical philologist of ancient Greece and Rome. From the early 1880s, his destiny became ever clearer: he would change the world forevermore with his revaluation of all values. Writing to Paul Lanzsky in 1884, he claimed that Thus Spake Zarathustra was “the most significant book of all times and of peoples that ever existed.” In 1887, although he was still (and would be until long after his death) a nobody, when an earthquake struck Nice on February 23 and the hotel where he was staying had collapsed, he observed: “It will be an advantage for the posterity to have a pilgrimage less to make.” These statements go beyond the sorts of statements made by most people. In Nietzsche we see the relationship between destiny and madness. For many, destiny calls, and madness comes running up. These anecdotes, by the way, are from philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jasper’s introduction to Nietzsche, which I reviewed here.

For many years, it was thought that syphilis drove Nietzsche mad. That diagnosis is now disputed. The current belief is that he succumbed from a slowly growing right-sided retro-orbital meningioma, or, in other words, a brain cancer behind the right eye. Left untreated, the tumour displaced his right frontal lobe giving him a frontal lobotomy. A meningioma on the right side can lead to headaches on the right side, blindness in the right eye, visual disturbances, mania, and paranoia, all symptoms which Nietzsche experienced. Consider this report from Resa von Schirnhofer who visited Nietzsche in August 1884 at Sils-Maria:

As I stood waiting by the table, the door of the adjacent room on the right opened, and Nietzsche appeared. With a distraught expression on his pale face, he leaned wearily against the post of the half-opened door and immediately began to speak about the unbearableness of his ailment. He described to me how, when he closed his eyes, he saw an abundance of fantastic flowers, winding and intertwining, constantly growing and changing forms and colors in exotic luxuriance, sprouting one out of the other. “I never get any rest,” he complained, words which were implanted in my mind. Then, with his large, dark eyes looking straight at me he asked in his weak voice with disquieting urgency: “Don’t you believe this condition is a symptom of incipient madness?”

There is a biological foundation to destiny’s call. In Nietzsche’s case, we can see how, in the months leading up to his collapse in January 1889, even as he felt more certain that he would complete his task and assure his place in the pantheon, the biological factor–the cancer that would lobotomize him–was also growing. It is easy to speculate that his euphoria and his madness have a common physical root: the meningioma displacing his frontal lobe. The feeling of the certainty of destiny may be the results of a physical aberration of the brain rather than a metaphysical call from a higher power. It may even be that, one day in the future, the sociobiologists will identify a gene behind destiny’s call. We will see.

Cus D’Amato and Mike Tyson

It took the oldest heavyweight champ to make one of the most insightful comments on the youngest heavyweight champ. At 45, George Foreman defeated Michael Moorer in 1994 to take the crown. At the other end of the age scale, at 20 years of age Mike Tyson knocked out Trevor Berbick in 1986 to become the youngest champ. Although they were both active at the same time, they never fought. Years later, when asked why the fight never happened, Foreman said he wanted nothing to do with Tyson and Cus. That was a great comment as it shows how Foreman recognized so much of Tyson’s legacy was the product not of Tyson, but of his trainer, manager, and foster parent Cus D’Amato. Despite how often–to this day–Tyson talks up Cus, including writing a book Iron Ambition: My Life with Cus D’Amato, so few understand that there could be no Iron Mike without Cus D’Amato.

D’Amato lived life for a singular purpose: to train heavyweight boxing champions of the world with the peek-a-book style of boxing he pioneered. Like Bruce Lee, it was more than about the fights. It was a way of life in which the end goal is to be remembered forever. To this end, D’Amato studied the ancient classics and history–Homer, Achilles, Alexander, and Caesar–and applied their limitless ambition to the sphere of boxing, the sweet science. He immersed himself in psychology, arguing that the ring is where the superior character prevails. He also took up philosophy to increase his odds, familiarizing himself with the works of Nietzsche and Machiavelli. D’Amato himself knew no limits. He fought the mob, and the mob backed down. He took his peek-a-boo style, disparaged for its mechanical soul and awkwardness in attack, and produced not one, but three heavyweight hall-of-famers: José Torres–the first Latin American light heavyweight champ–Floyd Patterson–the champ between Rocky Marciano and Ali–and Mike Tyson.

D’Amato felt that he had a destiny, and this feeling drove him to perform, and to get his fighters to perform (from Mike Tyson’s recollections):

Cus was a believer in destiny. Even as a young boy, he felt that he’d be famous someday; he always had a feeling that “there was something different” about him. I had the same exact feeling. So it felt right that I would move in with Cus and Camille. Cus was so happy. I couldn’t understand why this white man was so happy about me. He would look at me and laugh hysterically. Then he’d get on the phone and tell people, “Lightning has struck twice. I have another heavyweight champion. He’s only thirteen.”

One of the first nights that I stayed over at the house on one of the home visits, Cus took me into the living room, where we could talk alone. “You know I’ve been waiting for you,” he told me. “I’ve been thinking about you since 1969. If you meditate long enough on something, you get a picture. And the picture told me that I would make another champion. I conjured you up with my mind and now you’re finally here.”

Like the previous examples, we can see in the case of D’Amato that destiny involves appetite, a belief, and a euphoria going beyond reason that borders on lunacy.

In the life of D’Amato, we can see how all-consuming the call of destiny is. Though he managed three heavyweight world champs, when he died, all that he had to his name was his station-wagon that he used to drive his fighters to the gym. This reminds me of the story of another fighter, one from the ancient times:

When he [Alexander the Great] divided his revenues among his friends, while preparing his Asian campaign, and Perdiccas asked him what he retained for himself, he answered, “Hope.”

To those whom destiny calls, money is not legal tender. Glory is legal tender. In another anecdote, D’Amato uses money to get Tyson’s interests, and, at the right time, tells him it’s not about the money, but about a greater purpose: immortality:

I used to ask Cus, “What does it mean being the greatest fighter of all time? Most of those guys are all dead.” “Listen, they’re dead, but we’re talking about them now, this is all about immortality.” That fucked me up. It changed the whole game. I just thought it would be about riches, the big cars, the big mansions he used to point out to me. But now he was taking it to a whole other level. He got me hooked with the riches, but now he suddenly said, “You’re going to be a god.” This was the real deal, and the real fucked me up real good. Then he said, “Forget that money.” Once he told me that shit, it blew my mind. He was talking immortality and I’m figuring out what that is.

D’Amato met Tyson when Tyson was thirteen. Tyson could hardly read at the time. He had just started learning how to read as a precondition of weekend boxing sessions with Bobby Stewart, his juvenile detention counsellor, a Golden Glove champ who had fought on the undercard in the infamous “Rumble in the Jungle.” Stewart was a Cus D’Amato fighter and the link between Tyson and D’Amato. Once D’Amato took on Tyson, in addition to the physical training, he kindled Tyson’s interest in history and philosophy and got Tyson reading about Achilles, Alexander the Great, and Nietzsche. By sixteen, Tyson got it:

Even at sixteen years old, I believed that all the heroes and gods of war–Achilles, Ares, and all these gods, and all the old fighters–were watching me and I had to represent them, I had to be bloodthirsty, and gut-wrenching. I realized through Cus that we were fighting for immortality. Nothing else mattered than being worshipped by the entire world. When Cus talked to me about immortality he wasn’t just talking about me, he was talking about himself too. I wasn’t just fighting for my glory, I was fighting for his too. Nobody loved boxers and boxing more than Cus. He devoted his whole life to service, first to the poor Italians in his neighborhood in the Bronx and later to all the wayward kids like me, and Patterson and Kevin Rooney and Joe Juliano and on and on and on. We trained hard, we fought hard, but it was worth every minute.

Looking back decades later, many years after the belts and the limelight, Tyson would look back at it all from a retrospective position and say:

Cus’s friend the CBS boxing consultant Mort Sharnik wanted to do a program about Cus before he died. In one of the interviews for the show, he asked Cus if he thought about his legacy and the whole point of his life. Cus said, “All I want to do is make one small scratch on this big rock before I go. I want them to know that Cus D’Amato was here.” You got it, Cus. Now there are two scratches on that rock, side by side. And whenever anyone remembers Mike Tyson, they’ll know the name of Cus D’Amato too. Until the end of time.

People think of Mike Tyson as a savage. And he is. Recently, when Tyson went back into the ring at age 54 to face Roy Jones Jr., Joe Rogan interviewed Tyson. Rogan was so intimidated by Tyson’s physical presence, that he had a new table made up for his podcast, one which placed another two feet between him and his guest. In this way, Tyson is like one of his idols: Achilles. Achilles was also a savage, but also capable of the highest poetic expression: while Diomedes and Odysseus speak with power, only when Achilles talks is the audience stunned into silence. Tyson’s words on fulfilling D’Amato’s legacy are among the most beautiful I have read, in any language.

The story of D’Amato and Tyson shows the social side of destiny: it’s not enough to go at it alone. Destiny is a combination of drive, character, luck, and, above, all, love. Their story is the story of a young boy learning from the old master. As a fan of Homer, I’m so happy to see how the old stories continue to inspire–in places where one would have least thought.

The Faces of Destiny

These are the faces of destiny. From Achilles, destiny is about the price that you pay. From Helen, destiny is a higher level of awareness. From Philip, Olympias, and Alexander the Great, destiny is a sense of wonder that can be passed from generation to generation. From Caesar, to accept destiny is to place yourself in the hands of a higher power. From the Jews, destiny is an intolerable harness that allows believers to go further than the rest. From Nietzsche, destiny is a mental state with a biological foundation closely related with madness. From Cus D’Amato and Mike Tyson, destiny is the love between two driven individuals. And from all these types, destiny has always been appetite for life.

Through these portraits of destiny, we can see how the people of destiny are intrigued by one another, and learn the trade of destiny by researching one another. If you are touched by destiny, learn from the others the lightning has struck. Make yourself indispensable to the heritage within which you work, and your odds of being remembered increases. Today, no one can study Jack Dempsey, Battling Nelson, Joe Gans, and others without going through Tyson’s interpretation of them. Tyson has made himself indispensable. So too, no one can study Schopenhauer, Plato, or Hegel today without going through Nietzsche’s interpretation of them. Nietzsche has made himself indispensable to the tradition.

Those who do not feel destiny will look at those struck by destiny as aberrations. But those who have been struck will look at them as the greatest models. “If I were not Napoleon,” said Napoleon, “I would be Alexander.”

 

Don’t forget me. I’m Edwin Wong, and I do Melpomene’s work.

sine memoria nihil

2021 CATR Canadian Association of Theatre Research Paper Proposal

Earlier this year, I had a chance to talk about my new theory of tragedy called “Risk Theatre” at the Canadian Association of Theatre Research (CATR) conference. Let’s see if risk theatre can make a second appearance at CATR next year. Here’s my 250 word proposal. If it’s accepted, it’ll end up as a 15 minute presentation. Fingers crossed!

Low-probability, High-consequence Events in Life and in Shakespeare’s Macbeth
If we look at theatre as a stage where low-probability, high-consequence events play out, it will help us understand today’s crisis. But this requires reimagining the way we interpret theatre. In life, when crises break out, they are often unforeseen and unpredictable. We have mental biases, however, that compel us to come up with simplistic explanations of how they could have been prevented. Our mental biases do not admit to the action of the random element. As a result of these biases, our sense of security is misplaced.
Interpreters of theatre, like the engineers and scientists who analyze what went wrong, have these same mental biases. They look at what went wrong and find simplistic explanations. “This character had hubris,” some say. “This one was too trusty,” others say. The play becomes a moral lesson. But what if dramatists were trying to say something else? What if they were dramatizing the effects of the unexpected?
I will demonstrate this idea by reading a play we all know—Shakespeare’s Macbeth—through the lens of probability. I will argue that Shakespeare creates a world in which Macbeth’s confidence is justified. The problem is not the plan, but rather the impact of the highly improbable. The play then ceases to be a moral lesson and becomes instead a warning that the improbable may impact us more than our biases allow us to believe. The art of tragedy, I argue, talks to us in times of crisis because it simulates the effect of unknown unknowns on the stage.
Don’t forget me. I’m Edwin Wong and I do Melpomene’s work.

Wishing Shelf Book Awards Reviews THE RISK THEATRE MODEL OF TRAGEDY

Anonymous feedback for writers is valuable because there’s always the risk of failure, of a negative review. I’ve had my share of these, but not today. Thank you to UK literary awards WISHING SHELF for reviewing my book on literary theory. I’m particularly happy to see how their readers found the book approachable and recognized that approaching theatre from the perspective of risk works. Here’s what their assiduous readers had to say:
 
Title: The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected
Author: Edwin Wong
 
Readers’ Comments
‘Theatre analyzed in terms of risk! What a very clever way of looking at things. This author seems to be a very smart fellow. Intriguing.’ Male reader, aged 72
‘What I loved the most about this was how original it was. I read a lot of theatre-related books and this was totally different. The writing is concise and the author’s knowledge of the subject is apparent on every page.’ Female reader, aged 52
‘An interesting, thought-provoking look at classical theatre and risk and how modern theatre must find a way of relating to the modern audience. Although it’s rather wordy and a little re-reading was often in order, it was still a gripping read.’ Female reader, aged 61
‘A cleverly worked out theory on risk/tragedy in theatre and how the audience can connect to it.’ Male reader, aged 52
 
Star Rating: 4.5 Stars
Number of Readers: 17
Stats
Editing: 8/10
Writing Style: 7/10
Content: 9/10
Cover: 10/10
Of the 17 readers:
14 would read another book by this author.
17 thought the cover was good or excellent.
11 felt it was easy to follow.
14 would recommend this story to another reader to try.
Of all the readers, 12 felt the author’s strongest skill was ‘subject knowledge’.
Of all the readers, 5 felt the author’s strongest skill was ‘writing style’.
15 felt the pacing was good or excellent.
14 thought the author understood the readership and what they wanted.
 
To Sum It Up:
‘A thought-provoking look at tragedy in theatre. A FINALIST and highly recommended.’ The Wishing Shelf Book Awards
 
Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong, and I’m doing Melpomene’s work

Drama Australia National Journal (NJ) Reviews THE RISK THEATRE MODEL OF TRAGEDY

THANK YOU to NJ Drama Australia National Journal and University of Newcastle lecturer Carol Carter for reviewing The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy: Gambling, Drama, and the Unexpected. Highlights from this milestone review–the first from an internationally respected peer-reviewed journal– include:

This book presents fresh approaches and perspectives in relation to the teaching and writing of tragedy and, as such, is a useful resource, particularly for theatre studies and secondary drama teachers.

…

I was enticed by this thought-provoking, insightful and compelling read that, once started, was extremely engaging and impossible to put down.

…

The Book is divided into four separate parts which systematically cover the topic and flow efficiently and cohesively from one to the other in building up a strong argument underpinned by examples and an extremely broad and extensive knowledge base.

…

Of interest in this part of the book is Wong’s discussion of Comedy as an open system of ‘milk and honey’ versus tragedy as a closed system of ‘perpetual shortage and rolling blackouts’. He describes tragic heroes as strong, charismatic and with a sense of endurance versus incompetent, weak comic characters. We are led to a deep understanding of the proposed model and why Wong believes so passionately in the role of tragedy in today’s society. In the final (ninth) chapter, which is concerned with ‘why risk theatre today’, Wong concludes with these words ‘Tragedy, by forever dramatizing risk, adds to our understanding of risk. And I think that tragedy, because it adds to our understanding of such a captivating and elusive concept, has a claim of being the greatest show on earth’.

The journey my book has taken in this last year has been amazing and humbling. It reminds me of what Anthony Hopkins said a few years ago when interviewed by Jimmy Kimmel. Hopkins was a few months from his eightieth birthday. Kimmel asked him if the years had given him any important life lessons. Without batting an eye, Hopkins responded immediately, and with conviction: “Don’t stop. Keep going.”

Persistence is the key. But persistence can be hard. Last February, I made a list of theatre, classics, and literary theory journals all over the world. In March, I started mailing out complimentary copies of The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy. Each package would go out with a custom-tailored letter asking the journal if they would be interested in reviewing and a press release. Of course, there wasn’t much to put on the press release as the book didn’t have any rewards or reviews yet. There were about seventy to send out. Each night, after coming home from work, I’d be able to put together a couple of packages. It takes a surprising time to type up the letter, address the packages, and fill out the customs forms. I’d put together two or three packages, and then I’d go to bed.

After a month and a half of this, I grew to wonder–was this worth it? I mean, I was coming home from work, cramming some food down my throat, and then putting together the packages. The reward was uncertain. But the work was very certain. It wasn’t only the time, the costs would add up as well. My cost for the paperback itself is just under $15. Then there’s the shipping, which would range from $17 (domestic) to $27 (international). Most of the journals were outside Canada, so that’s about $40 to send each copy.

I began to doubt. How worthwhile was this expenditure? Would any journals put the book on their “Books for Review” list? Would any reviewers want to review the book? And then, if they did, what sort of review would my questionable book receive? All these questions gnawed away at me. But fortunately, Hopkins dogged advice stuck in my head: “Don’t stop. Keep going.” And so, I kept going.

After the review copies had gone out, I’d check to see if there was any action. A few copies would make it into their “Books for Review” lists. And then, for months, nothing. Then last night, this wonderful, glowing review from Carol Carter in NJ Drama Australia National Journal. I sincerely hope that her review piques the interest of theatre practitioners worldwide. Would that I could get a few more breaks like this one! Go NJ!

The moral of the story? When you don’t stop and when you keep going, sometimes some luck and a little bit of magic will come your way. If you give up, you’ll never know how close you were. To everyone: do like Anthony Hopkins. No matter the odds, if you believe the value of your endeavour, keep looking ahead. You never know.

There’s one curious coincidence I’d like to add. Many moons ago, when I was almost young, I wrote an article on fate and free will in Homer’s Iliad. Only one journal–an Australian journal–accepted it. The article is called The Harmony of Fixed Fate and Free Will in the Iliad and it was published by Antichthon in 2002. Here’s the link. This got me a foothold into the academic world. A strange sense overcomes me now, many years later, when, out of seventy tries, it is again an Australian journal that comes through. Please ask your local library to carry this groundbreaking book and read it today.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong, and I’m doing Melpomene’s work by sponsoring the Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy Playwriting Competition (https://risktheatre.com/). No risk, no reward.

NJ Drama Australia The Risk Theatre Model of Tragedy Gambling Drama and the Unexpected