Creative Retelling in a Virtual World: First Year Final Projects from Simon Fraser University’s GLS 2020 Cohort
Start Date
18-6-2021 6:30 PM
End Date
18-11-2021 7:30 PM
Abstract
These are a selection of short Creative Retellings based on the Modernist principle of drawing on the past and “making it new.” The projects take inspiration from critical essays and texts, ranging from Sophocles to Anne Carson, that comprise the introductory course sequence for students entering Simon Fraser University’s Graduate Liberal Studies Program. Like their creators, whose first year coincided with a global lockdown, the projects assumed an intimate and distinct relationship with technology and digital forms, and a Modernist irreverence in their reflections on society, alienation, and the desire to connect.
Presentations
Tessa Perkins Deneault: Tapping through Time: A Postmodern Pastiche of Themes in LS801
My retelling is a postmodern pastiche of some themes encountered in the texts of LS801. I selected songs that share themes with works we read and then used those to inspire some original tap dance choreography. I created a compilation video, which was recorded during zoom meetings with myself – an arguably postmodern method. The compilation includes short dances to “If I Die Young” by The Band Perry, which shares themes with Antigone; “Impulse” by Charlie Parker – who is one of Sonny’s favourite musicians in Sonny's Blues; “Forbidden Fruit” by Nina Simone, inspired by Goblin Market; Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “16 Tons,” which evokes themes from William Morris' Useful Work vs. Useless Toil; “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt which shares themes with Death in Venice; “Clocks” by Coldplay, referring to Mrs. Dalloway; and the grand finale, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel, which contains themes of modernism. The image shown before “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is a cardboard replica house that artist Chris Larson created only to burn down, symbolizing the end of modernism.
Richard Fisher: ANTIGONE: THINK AGAIN
A creative re-telling of Sophocles' Antigone in the form of an advertising campaign.
Diane McGee: Rank Modernism: Generating responsive echoes to old texts using Google
This project is a response to a Creative Retelling assignment and the imperatives of lockdown. In the spirit of the Modernists’ exploitation of the past, rejection of convention, and the invention of new forms, I plugged titles from our course syllabus into Google. From the search results, I extracted words or phrases, in sequence, from lines visible in the site descriptions, moving in descending order of rank, culling this language, allowing only minimal adjustments to punctuation, until I felt a complete piece had formed. What emerged from this experimentation were poetic compositions imbued with strong, often humorous echoes of their progenitor, or flash fiction which assumed a life of its own. Finally, as post-modernists assert, the medium is the message, so the retelling took shape as a digital presentation for conveyance on Zoom.
Linda Quibell: Flowers for Clarissa (Mrs. Dalloway)
In June 1923, Clarissa Dalloway crosses London to buy flowers for her society party. In April 2021, I attempt to cross Seattle under lockdown, to buy flowers for no reason other than pleasure. A pandemic video touching on our hesitant opening to beauty.
Vanessa Rigolo: In the Pines
I have modified the words to the Appalachian murder ballad "In The Pines" to tell the story of Sophocles' Antigone. To make it new and bring it in to the 21st century, I recorded it as a TikTok.
Teresa Stolarskyj: Things Fall Apart at the Elephant and Castle
A re-telling of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, with London's Elephant and Castle mall as allegory for a colonized African village. Just as in the imperial period, capital today continues to drive judgment about who is worthy, who belongs, and who holds power. As community and tradition is waylaid in the pursuit of profit, things fall apart. The tragedy is that they never really had to. Music: "Elephants and Castles" by George Martin & His Orchestra, 1968.
Griffin Tedeschini: Fever Dream
In Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, at the end of the story we see Herakles and Ancash together. Fever Dream is a poetic exploration/retelling of Ancash’s journey, of his escape from, and eventual rising above of Herakles' toxic "love". His redemption is set within the backdrop of the opioid crisis in the Downtown East Side of Vancouver. I chose this as I’m curious why Ancash chooses to stay with Herakles, who is the real monster of the narrative. It begs the question – can love sometimes be as destructive as it is seductive?
Lynda Prince: “The Morning After”
Description: Secrets consume and isolate. What if Carson’s character Geryon truly did belong to a race of people who survived the volcanoes of Peru? People who tucked themselves into the world, hiding their truths. How did they integrate; did their secrets define them? Do they live among us? Did Clarissa Dalloway’s secrets define her? At what cost? What if her secrets were revealed? Lynda explores the metaphorical and supernatural bond that Geryon and Clarissa (may) share. Taking the story out of the hands of a single story teller, Anna Morse’s animation offers an alternate perspective and visual dimension to this portrait of internal exile.
Creative Retelling in a Virtual World: First Year Final Projects from Simon Fraser University’s GLS 2020 Cohort
These are a selection of short Creative Retellings based on the Modernist principle of drawing on the past and “making it new.” The projects take inspiration from critical essays and texts, ranging from Sophocles to Anne Carson, that comprise the introductory course sequence for students entering Simon Fraser University’s Graduate Liberal Studies Program. Like their creators, whose first year coincided with a global lockdown, the projects assumed an intimate and distinct relationship with technology and digital forms, and a Modernist irreverence in their reflections on society, alienation, and the desire to connect.
Presentations
Tessa Perkins Deneault: Tapping through Time: A Postmodern Pastiche of Themes in LS801
My retelling is a postmodern pastiche of some themes encountered in the texts of LS801. I selected songs that share themes with works we read and then used those to inspire some original tap dance choreography. I created a compilation video, which was recorded during zoom meetings with myself – an arguably postmodern method. The compilation includes short dances to “If I Die Young” by The Band Perry, which shares themes with Antigone; “Impulse” by Charlie Parker – who is one of Sonny’s favourite musicians in Sonny's Blues; “Forbidden Fruit” by Nina Simone, inspired by Goblin Market; Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “16 Tons,” which evokes themes from William Morris' Useful Work vs. Useless Toil; “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt which shares themes with Death in Venice; “Clocks” by Coldplay, referring to Mrs. Dalloway; and the grand finale, “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel, which contains themes of modernism. The image shown before “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is a cardboard replica house that artist Chris Larson created only to burn down, symbolizing the end of modernism.
Richard Fisher: ANTIGONE: THINK AGAIN
A creative re-telling of Sophocles' Antigone in the form of an advertising campaign.
Diane McGee: Rank Modernism: Generating responsive echoes to old texts using Google
This project is a response to a Creative Retelling assignment and the imperatives of lockdown. In the spirit of the Modernists’ exploitation of the past, rejection of convention, and the invention of new forms, I plugged titles from our course syllabus into Google. From the search results, I extracted words or phrases, in sequence, from lines visible in the site descriptions, moving in descending order of rank, culling this language, allowing only minimal adjustments to punctuation, until I felt a complete piece had formed. What emerged from this experimentation were poetic compositions imbued with strong, often humorous echoes of their progenitor, or flash fiction which assumed a life of its own. Finally, as post-modernists assert, the medium is the message, so the retelling took shape as a digital presentation for conveyance on Zoom.
Linda Quibell: Flowers for Clarissa (Mrs. Dalloway)
In June 1923, Clarissa Dalloway crosses London to buy flowers for her society party. In April 2021, I attempt to cross Seattle under lockdown, to buy flowers for no reason other than pleasure. A pandemic video touching on our hesitant opening to beauty.
Vanessa Rigolo: In the Pines
I have modified the words to the Appalachian murder ballad "In The Pines" to tell the story of Sophocles' Antigone. To make it new and bring it in to the 21st century, I recorded it as a TikTok.
Teresa Stolarskyj: Things Fall Apart at the Elephant and Castle
A re-telling of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, with London's Elephant and Castle mall as allegory for a colonized African village. Just as in the imperial period, capital today continues to drive judgment about who is worthy, who belongs, and who holds power. As community and tradition is waylaid in the pursuit of profit, things fall apart. The tragedy is that they never really had to. Music: "Elephants and Castles" by George Martin & His Orchestra, 1968.
Griffin Tedeschini: Fever Dream
In Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, at the end of the story we see Herakles and Ancash together. Fever Dream is a poetic exploration/retelling of Ancash’s journey, of his escape from, and eventual rising above of Herakles' toxic "love". His redemption is set within the backdrop of the opioid crisis in the Downtown East Side of Vancouver. I chose this as I’m curious why Ancash chooses to stay with Herakles, who is the real monster of the narrative. It begs the question – can love sometimes be as destructive as it is seductive?
Lynda Prince: “The Morning After”
Description: Secrets consume and isolate. What if Carson’s character Geryon truly did belong to a race of people who survived the volcanoes of Peru? People who tucked themselves into the world, hiding their truths. How did they integrate; did their secrets define them? Do they live among us? Did Clarissa Dalloway’s secrets define her? At what cost? What if her secrets were revealed? Lynda explores the metaphorical and supernatural bond that Geryon and Clarissa (may) share. Taking the story out of the hands of a single story teller, Anna Morse’s animation offers an alternate perspective and visual dimension to this portrait of internal exile.
Presenter Biography
Tessa Perkins Deneault is an arts journalist and freelance writer based in Surrey, BC, Canada (unceded territories of the Semiahmoo, Katzie, Kwikwetlem, Kwantlen, Qayqayt and Tsawwassen First Nations). Her writing can be seen in magazines including Dance International and The Dance Current. She manages communications for the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology at Simon Fraser University and is an MA candidate in SFU's Liberal Studies program. More at www.tessaperkins.ca.
Richard Fisher has 35 years advertising and marketing experience in London, New York, Toronto and now, Vancouver. Richard was the first Chief Marketing Officer at York University (Toronto) and the first Chief Communications Officer at UBC. He has a BA in French and Spanish from Exeter University, UK, and is studying for an MA in Liberal Studies at SFU in Vancouver, Canada. He also has a communications consultancy called “brevity
Diane McGee is a Los Angeles-based writer and performance professional specializing in script creation, development, and adaptation for film, theater, and the web. She is a member of Simon Fraser's 2020 GLS cohort.
Linda Quibell has over 40 years experience in the theatre: actor, singer, dancer, writer, and artistic director. She wrote and performed The Compleat Works of Love and Salman Rusdie and Me…a love story for her company Felix Culpa, and has been on the stages of most theatres in Vancouver. One of her proudest accomplishments was a 24 hour solo reading of James Joyce's Ulysses as a fundraiser for the Carnegie Centre on the Bloomsday centenary in 2004.
Vanessa Rigolo holds a BA (Honors) in English Literature from Queen's University and is currently pursuing a part-time Masters of Liberal Studies degree from Simon Fraser University.
Teresa Stolarskyj is a Graduate Liberal Studies candidate at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. Her research interests include: identity, memory and belonging; the relationship between popular culture and citizenship; heritage and history; and individual and social well-being in urban and economic contexts. An avid music historian and singer, she is eager to resume practice and performance once pandemic restrictions allow.
Griffin Tedeschini is a writer of poetry, spoken word, and fiction. They have participated in the Canadian national spoken word festival, and in the past six years has explored both the Calgary and Vancouver poetry and story slam scenes. Griffin is currently enrolled in Graduate, Liberal Studies at SFU, and continues to explore the alchemy of prose and poetry, inspired by their idol Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red.
Lynda Prince spent much of her life working with words. After graduating in Literature from UC Berkeley, she worked as a publisher, editor and freelance writer for magazines, books and literary journals. Today, she is enjoying a renewed exploration of literary analysis at SFU. Answering the modernist call for perspective, Lynda enlisted MICA painting major, Anna Morse to interpret and create an animated companion piece to her story.