{"id":1518,"date":"2013-07-28T15:59:34","date_gmt":"2013-07-28T23:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/?p=1518"},"modified":"2013-07-28T15:59:34","modified_gmt":"2013-07-28T23:59:34","slug":"a-parallelogram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/a-parallelogram\/","title":{"rendered":"A Parallelogram"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8220;Purple parallelogram I got in Amsterdam, made me dream a dream I didn&#8217;t understand.&#8221; &#8212; The Lemonheads<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Checked out time-travel play\u00c2\u00a0<em>A Parallelogram<\/em> this weekend and really dug it. <strong>Warning: Spoilers Below&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The play focuses on Bee, a thirty-something woman who recently met her time traveler future self that &#8212; ala\u00c2\u00a0<em>Quantum Leap<\/em> and\/or\u00c2\u00a0<em>Timely Persuasion<\/em> &#8212; only she can see or hear. The first act intersperses an argument with Bee&#8217;s boyfriend Jay between musings by the two Bees on the future and why it can&#8217;t be changed, sprinkling in some fun replaying of the Bee &amp; Jay scenes via a time travel inducing remote control. Older Bee eventually lets it slip that Jay is going to leave Bee because he thinks she&#8217;s crazy.<\/p>\n<p>That leads us into the second act, where Jay visits Bee in the hospital. Older Bee is also here. To Jay she&#8217;s the doctor, but to young Bee she&#8217;s still older Bee and converses as such in a brilliantly clever bit of three-way dialogue. The big reveal here is that Bee may have a brain tumor, which calls into question whether or not the future Bee is real or a hallucination. This becomes the central idea for the rest of the play.<\/p>\n<p>Some random thoughts, observations and ponderings:<\/p>\n<p>(Again &#8212; <em><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>heavy on the spoilers<\/strong><\/span><\/em>, so stop here if you don&#8217;t want anything else given away.)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 13px;\">The time travel bits during act one were a lot of fun and handled very well in a live setting. \u00c2\u00a0Loved it every time Jay would walk into the bathroom and re-enter through the bedroom door replaying his previous scene.<\/span><\/li>\n<li>At one point Bee reveals a tattoo of a blue jay on her arm for Jay, and future Bee simultaneously reveals the same tattoo to the audience. \u00c2\u00a0Since Bee later ends up dating J.J., it would have been cool if future Bee had two blue jays tattooed on her arm. (It&#8217;s possible she did and I missed it, but that&#8217;s what I would have done.)<\/li>\n<li>Older Bee&#8217;s monologue to the audience about the bird virus epidemic comes shortly after J.J.&#8217;s theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs and will one day regain their slot at the top of the food chain. Under the hallucination scenario, the timing works out that young Bee is making up the epidemic as older Bee is addressing the audience. This could be further supported by the way she tells the story, especially the &#8220;you&#8217;ll think I&#8217;m making this part up&#8230;&#8221; in the middle.<\/li>\n<li>Related: At one point when older Bee is giving her monologue she talks with her hands a lot &#8212; and in the background young Bee is on the bed having a muted conversation mirroring the hand motions exactly. Brilliantly done.<\/li>\n<li>Under the time travel scenario, you could argue that the presence of older Bee caused the chain of events that plays out in acts two and three in either classic &#8220;whatever happened, happened&#8221; style or the equally common &#8220;your solution was actually the cause&#8230;&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>The bit with the missing TV remote control that young Bee later mistakes for the time travel remote was a nice touch that feeds both sides of the debate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Though I always get giddy over time travel, I&#8217;m equally a fan of a well done mindf**k so this play delighted me from both angles.<\/p>\n<p>Tying it back to my opening song lyric quote,\u00c2\u00a0&#8220;Purple Parallelogram&#8221; was a song allegedly co-written by Evan Dando of the Lemonheads and Noel Gallagher of Oasis. It was slated to appear on the Lemonheads\u00c2\u00a0<em>Car Button Cloth<\/em> album, but was dropped at the last minute due to a request by Noel Gallagher.<\/p>\n<p>Did it really happen, or did Evan Dando hallucinate the whole thing? Hmmm&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Purple parallelogram I got in Amsterdam, made me dream a dream I didn&#8217;t understand.&#8221; &#8212; The Lemonheads Checked out time-travel play\u00c2\u00a0A Parallelogram this weekend and really dug it. Warning: Spoilers Below&#8230; The play focuses on Bee, a thirty-something woman who recently met her time traveler future self that &#8212; ala\u00c2\u00a0Quantum Leap and\/or\u00c2\u00a0Timely Persuasion &#8212; only&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-time-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfx3-ou","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2240,"url":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/lx-commentary-10-all-youve-got-to-do-is-fall-in-love\/","url_meta":{"origin":1518,"position":0},"title":"LX Commentary #10: All You&#8217;ve Got To Do Is Fall In Love","author":"LBDG","date":"July 22, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Upon deciding to run with this fairytale interlude for the rest of side B, my storytelling goal became connecting the dots from Benji & Jessica to Benji & L while moving things towards a confrontation in \"The Tower\"\u2014whatever that might turn out to be. So easy to do, right? :)My\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Behind the Scenes&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Behind the Scenes","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/category\/behind-the-scenes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Screen-Shot-2021-11-30-at-9.58.58-PM.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":125,"url":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/revisiting-replay-part-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":1518,"position":1},"title":"Revisiting Replay (Part 1)","author":"LBDG","date":"September 10, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I recently started my annual re-reading of my favorite novel, Replay by Ken Grimwood.\u00c2\u00a0 Since I consider the book to be at the core of my time travel trinity (taking the literary slot alongside Quantum Leap for TV and Back To The Future for film), I thought it would be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Time Travel&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Time Travel","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/category\/time-travel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":45,"url":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/commentary-21-now-we-are-twenty-one\/","url_meta":{"origin":1518,"position":2},"title":"Commentary 21: Now We Are Twenty-One","author":"LBDG","date":"June 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Flashback to the future where everything started with the old man in this mythology heavy chapter. I really like the concept of the evolution of time travel covered here. \u00a0And crazy as it sounds, part of me actually believes in the underlying \"constant, subconscious messages from your future self\" phenomenon\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Behind the Scenes&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Behind the Scenes","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/category\/behind-the-scenes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":192,"url":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/the-quantum-leap-connection\/","url_meta":{"origin":1518,"position":3},"title":"The Quantum Leap Connection","author":"LBDG","date":"October 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I pointed out a few times in the commentary posts that Quantum Leap was a big influence of mine.\u00c2\u00a0 It's even specifically referred to in the book more than once.\u00c2\u00a0 What I haven't talked about in depth is how Quantum Leap (and more specifically, Al the holographic observer) served as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Behind the Scenes&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Behind the Scenes","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/category\/behind-the-scenes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1359,"url":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/looper\/","url_meta":{"origin":1518,"position":4},"title":"Looper","author":"LBDG","date":"September 30, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Feels like I've been waiting forever for Looper to come out. Finally got to see it last night. Funny pre-amble: \u00c2\u00a0As I was buying tickets, the previous show was letting out. I've gone out of my way for months to not watch trailers, not read interviews, and otherwise not be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Time Travel&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Time Travel","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/category\/time-travel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30,"url":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/commentary-11-won-one\/","url_meta":{"origin":1518,"position":5},"title":"Commentary 11: Won One","author":"LBDG","date":"May 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The idea to name the chapters after song titles came to me out of nowhere at 2 o'clock in the morning, and I immediately got out of bed to start brainstorming. It ended up being an easier exercise than I anticipated, though number 11 was the one I had the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Behind the Scenes&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Behind the Scenes","link":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/category\/behind-the-scenes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1518"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1534,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518\/revisions\/1534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.timelypersuasion.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}