23 June 2000

I woke up feeling well today!  Back to myself!

Then I went off for the big EPAG meeting.  It was excellent!  All of the individual product managers offered an update on their services, and there was excellent conversation.  I found myself being an extremely active participant, asking questions, offering suggestions, doing all of the things I usually do but have not been able to do all week because of feeling so poorly.

I also offered some frank comments about how good and experienced EPAG is, but how nobody knows it because we've never marketed ourselves very well, whether it's via the web, mail, media, etc.  When the conversation returned to the topic, I was volunteered to head up an effort to implement a marketing presence for our group on the internet.  What a difference a day makes!  Freedom and authority to pursue something I know about, as it ought to be pursued.  It will be an interesting project.

* * * *

I saw Graham's play tonight.  It was beautifully done, but it raised some pretty serious questions about textual analysis in my mind.  It seems the play is translated from an original German text.  Apparently, the translation is not terribly faithful to the original, which I have not read.  I'm told in the original, there is a strongly political message that is meant as a condemnation of the sort of groupthink that led decent people to embrace Nazism (or at least not to reject it).

Unfortunately, the English translation, so far as I can tell from skimming it prior to the play, does not, in my mind, convey a strongly political message at all.  Rather, from the translation I skimmed (and this while sick, so I might be wrong about this), I took the tension of the play to be entirely moral, although it could be interpreted politically (i.e. with the male hero of the play being portrayed somewhat as Socrates) to an extent.  But the real tension for me was this:  the heroine of the play sets out  to take her revenge upon a man, and to do so by exposing the hypocrisy of the same small minded townspeople who had once dismissed her in the name of "humanity."  The heroine early in the play reminds me completely of Gail Wynand.  Thus, the fairly strong allusions at the end to Nazism seemed overdone, even a bit of a reach.  However, from what I hear about the original text, this seems TRUE to that text.  I like the translation better I guess, and interpreted by itself, rather than in accordance with the original; it's so different, however, as to be a completely different play, I suspect!

Kellas told me that it was likely I would draw things from the play that he had never even considered.  I suppose turning it into an exercise in textual analysis might be what he had in mind?

I did think the play was beautifully done, from the costumes, to the set design, to the dialogue, to the crispness of it all.  Petroleum economist by day, brilliant director by night.  That's my good friend Mr. Kellas.