Tuesday, March 16, 2010

If Only I Had a Research Grant

Okay, maybe it's just me, but have you ever been struck by a topic and thought of what an awesome topic it would make for someone's Master's thesis? Like, I don't know, a comparison of Jewish male sexuality in Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus and Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, or the evolution of the dead relative appearing on stage as a character, or something like that. Because I'm sometimes struck by such ideas, and wish I had the ability to follow them to their conclusions, or hire someone to do it for me.

Which is all by way of saying: If anyone wants to write "The Nightmares Came Today": Violence, Disorder, and the Apocalypse in the Works of David Bowie, they should contact me at their earliest convenience.

3 comments:

Monica Reida said...

Well, you've given me an idea for my master's in English thesis with the Roth/Chabon idea.

I've had quite a few that have struck me for thesis ideas. Such as Theater Marketing and Median Audience Age, Season Planning and Median Audience Age, Theater Styles and Median Audience Age, Storefront Theater and the Theater World Outside of Chicago (Yes, it does exist), Impoverished Areas, Storytelling and Theater; The Intelligence of Children and the future of Theatre for Young Audiences, The Future of Theaters in Relation to Their Acceptance of New Media Forms, Misogyny and the Works of Neil LaBute. Although, my favorite idea is this:

Matriarchies, Female Dominance and Feminism in "August: Osage County.".

Mr. K said...

I love how with Bowie, even saying "Someone Up There Likes Me" ends up sounding like the end of the world.

And while I wouldn't say a moratorium on dead relatives (it works everywhere from Hamlet to Eurydice), I do want to end the trend of white people grief porn. No more plays solely about someone in your family dying, unless it incites you to do something else. I mean, give the House Theatre this much, when they did their play about losing a child, they gussied it up with time travel and meta-narratives.

Jessica said...

The only part of academia I now have any interest in is getting pizza and cheap beer and feeling oppressed in a vague sort of way.

Oppressed by how awesome David Bowie is.

That is all.