The Sontaran Experiment
An exchange of email between me and pmcray (whom God preserve, of Utrecht) also trading as atomicrazorfeed.
The subject of 'The Splorch' had already come up via JWZ's blog http://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/08/ovipositive-2/ (not so much NSFW as the kind of thing that might be considered 'deeply disturbing'')
PMCray:
I should have said I discovered today that the person who plays Strax (and other Sontarans) in DW did Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge, which is the coolest degree there is, an undergraduate degree in Tolkien studies! I must try and persuade my one of brother's children do that (they speak Swedish, possibly some Hungarian).
Of course, playing Sontarans might be considered a somewhat niche metier.
Weasel: (quoting from Wikipedia and the play's website)
He played the enraged loner Simon in Muswell Hill by Torben Betts at Richmond's Orange Tree Theatre (Feb/March 2012) and was nominated as Best Male Performance at the 2012 Off West End Theatre Awards (Offies).
"Enranged loner"
Muswell Hill
January 2010 - an earthquake in Haiti leaves a hundred thousand people dead and almost two million homeless. Meanwhile in a leafy north London suburb, six individuals sit down to avocado and prawns - "so reassuringly 1970s" - followed by a monkfish stew. They admire their host's beautifully appointed kitchen, fret about their "ambitious" mortgages, make holiday plans, compare mobile phone tariffs, connect with Facebook friends, and worry that they might after all just be ordinary - will history remember any of them, and if so, what for? A social event in which much is said but little communicated rapidly disintegrates as the wine flows and some hard truths are told.
PMCray:
I imagine a person who has made a career playing Sontarans is likely to have much to bring to that kind of role.
Weasel:
He should play it in Sontaran costume, but he and the rest of the cast should make absolutely no reference to it
PMCray:
I think they should also find a way of introducing the use of the splorch.
But, yes, monkfish is absolutely perfect as the kind of thing that wouuld be served at a dinner party of that type.
Weasel:
Clearly we need to write a play. Working title 'pardon my splorch'
PMCray:
Well, it's something else for Mary, Tyler and Mooroe, the PVCs, to engage in. But, yes, I think we can see now how this would writre itself. MTM host a dinner party. No monkfish, natch, but perhaps Soylent 2.0. Their friend turns up as a Sontaran (but no-one comments on this so we never know whether he is a Sontaran or someone who is Otherkin or is cosplaying either as a hobby or lifestyle) and then decides to splorch himself in the middle of the meal leading to comic complications.
I think there needs to be a fifth character that contrasts with MTM and the Sontaran. Suggestions open, but it would be a woman to balance things up in a gender-binary way.
Weasel:
The simulated splorching will be a cause celebre, it will be The Romans In Britain for the 2010s
PMCray:
Simulated?
Think of live splorching on the stage of the Dorfman. Radical, transgressive theatre that would shake the foundations of bourgeois Britain.
The subject of 'The Splorch' had already come up via JWZ's blog http://www.jwz.org/blog/2015/08/ovipositive-2/ (not so much NSFW as the kind of thing that might be considered 'deeply disturbing'')
PMCray:
I should have said I discovered today that the person who plays Strax (and other Sontarans) in DW did Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge, which is the coolest degree there is, an undergraduate degree in Tolkien studies! I must try and persuade my one of brother's children do that (they speak Swedish, possibly some Hungarian).
Of course, playing Sontarans might be considered a somewhat niche metier.
Weasel: (quoting from Wikipedia and the play's website)
He played the enraged loner Simon in Muswell Hill by Torben Betts at Richmond's Orange Tree Theatre (Feb/March 2012) and was nominated as Best Male Performance at the 2012 Off West End Theatre Awards (Offies).
"Enranged loner"
Muswell Hill
January 2010 - an earthquake in Haiti leaves a hundred thousand people dead and almost two million homeless. Meanwhile in a leafy north London suburb, six individuals sit down to avocado and prawns - "so reassuringly 1970s" - followed by a monkfish stew. They admire their host's beautifully appointed kitchen, fret about their "ambitious" mortgages, make holiday plans, compare mobile phone tariffs, connect with Facebook friends, and worry that they might after all just be ordinary - will history remember any of them, and if so, what for? A social event in which much is said but little communicated rapidly disintegrates as the wine flows and some hard truths are told.
PMCray:
I imagine a person who has made a career playing Sontarans is likely to have much to bring to that kind of role.
Weasel:
He should play it in Sontaran costume, but he and the rest of the cast should make absolutely no reference to it
PMCray:
I think they should also find a way of introducing the use of the splorch.
But, yes, monkfish is absolutely perfect as the kind of thing that wouuld be served at a dinner party of that type.
Weasel:
Clearly we need to write a play. Working title 'pardon my splorch'
PMCray:
Well, it's something else for Mary, Tyler and Mooroe, the PVCs, to engage in. But, yes, I think we can see now how this would writre itself. MTM host a dinner party. No monkfish, natch, but perhaps Soylent 2.0. Their friend turns up as a Sontaran (but no-one comments on this so we never know whether he is a Sontaran or someone who is Otherkin or is cosplaying either as a hobby or lifestyle) and then decides to splorch himself in the middle of the meal leading to comic complications.
I think there needs to be a fifth character that contrasts with MTM and the Sontaran. Suggestions open, but it would be a woman to balance things up in a gender-binary way.
Weasel:
The simulated splorching will be a cause celebre, it will be The Romans In Britain for the 2010s
PMCray:
Simulated?
Think of live splorching on the stage of the Dorfman. Radical, transgressive theatre that would shake the foundations of bourgeois Britain.