Derek and Margaret: the Musical

Theatre is back! We as Ant hropologists of Oceania, always cresting the trend, are happy to bring back the theatrical classic, Derek and Margaret : the Musical, based (loosely) on the life and times of anthropologist Derek Freeman who dediated his academic career to the besmirching of Margaret Mead's. You will recall the hammy hostrionics of the eighties, when we learned that Derek had secured the warbled remembrances of octogenarian Samoans who, as teenagers, laughed, gossiped, played string figure games and, most crucially, HOAXED young Margaret into believing they were sexually active (and how cruel we felt this to be, especially after seeing those shots of young Madge all kitted out in tapa cloth and tube top---you have to admit, she met them halfway); when we learned that Madge was actually two-timing them with dishy Samoan boys; when we further learned that Derek's affectations and nail filing and document shredding were only matched by Margaret's Sappho leanings, leading us to wonder (in the spirit of all this) who was really the injured party?/ Who was hoaxing whom?; and when we looked back on that gilded age of early 20th C anthropologist when men were men, women were women, and a bottle of Jack Daniel's in the right tent at the right time could secure tenure, fame and a dubious reputation for all time.

Accordingly we have placed an open casting call for the following characters. Your job is to match the head shot with the role... We should note that suggestions have already been made regarding the choreography of Sweeney Todd and the type casting of the eternally seductive Marlene Deitrich (who, Bryant Allen has noted, know one or two things about cannibals). Remember: it is a musical---high kicks and headdresses and jazz pants.

Derek Freeman

Maragaret Mead

Ted Schwartz

Franz Boas

Ruth Benedict

Reo Fortune

Gregory Bateson

Edward Sapir

Luther Cressman

Bronislaw Malinowski

Annette Weiner

Marilyn Strathern (a walk on)

Bill Mitchell (a walk on)

and of course, 'the Samoans' (walk- ons one and all). Song, Act, Scene and Play Title suggestions:

The Hymen Monologues

Fa Samoa Buffa, the opera

The Borneo Chronicles: broken artefacts (in several parts):

Welcome to the Derek Freeman Museum of Very Scientific Proofs Against Heresies (dir by Tim Burton of course)

The Derek-Margaret Myth Cycle

The Poison Kava Chalice 

Derek, we hardly knew ye

The Oedipal Aztec

Grad School: the Musical

Postcards from Over the Edge

Wicked (revived)

Stomp (on your forebears)

Anthropologist on a Hot Tin Roof

I'll Wash that Margaret Right Outta My Hair!

Les Lettres Dangereuses

Madge 'n Reo's Wedding

Sunday in the Museum with Derek

The Guillotine, the Nail Buffer and the Aztec statue (stage directed by a CS Lewis)

O Borneo!

Comments

[Strong]

I'm thinking Frances McDormand (Fargo) in the role of Margaret Mead, at least in the role of an older Margaret Mead, but I don't know if she can sing. Maybe Lilly Taylor?

[David Ketepa]

It's great to see some of my folks in Mount Hagen, WHP, PNG in the pictures. Great pictures!!

David

Georgia, USA