City stories
The City Stories (Engl. Tales of the City ) are a series of novels and a television series which from which San Francisco coming writer Armistead Maupin were written. The first volume is also entitled City Stories . The first four books in the series originally appeared as sequels in the San Francisco Chronicle , and the fifth book in the San Francisco Examiner . The following volumes were published directly as novels.
The series describes the San Francisco lifestyle in the 1970s and 1980s, while the final books are set after 2000. Aspects of sexual orientation as well as gender and transgender are central to the plot. The lives and careers of a group of people who meet at 28 Barbary Lane, where they live, are portrayed in individual, repeatedly linked storylines.
Emergence
The stories were first published as a series (Title: The Serial ) in a short-lived San Francisco issue of Pacific Sun, a Marin County weekly . After five episodes, the San Francisco branch of Pacific Sun was discontinued. As a result, a new series, set in Marin County, was written by Cyra McFadden for the main issue of the magazine. (This material later became a bestseller as a book and was also the basis of a film in 1980). A San Francisco Chronicle columnist who regularly visited relatives in Marin County recalled that the series originated in San Francisco. He convinced the Chronicle editor to find the writer of the original stories. They found Maupin, who went out of the same characters, and now renamed the series Tales of the City (Tales of the City) .
In 1993, the first book was filmed as a mini television series on the British channel Channel 4 . In the United States, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired the series in 1994. The film adaptations of the second and third books were broadcast in 1998 and 2001. The scripts were written by Maupin and Richard Kramer. At a reading at the Bloomsbury Theater in July 2007, Maupin mentioned that further filming was unlikely.
Maupin has also worked on a number of musical projects for the book series. The musical Anna Madrigal Remembers, composed by Jake Haggie with a libretto by Maupin, was interpreted by the Chanticleer choir and the mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade in 1999.
In 2007, 18 years after the sixth volume (Sure of You), Maupin published the book Michael Tolliver Lives ( Michael Tolliver Lives. The Latest City Stories, 2008). Although the book focuses on one of the series' main characters, Maupin originally stated that it was not a continuation of the city tales and that it would certainly not be the seventh book in the series. He later admitted: “I stopped denying that it was the seventh book, which it clearly is [...] I think I didn't want to mess with the audience by changing the format, because it is a narrative in the I-form acts differently from the city stories that are written in the third person. In addition, a figure is also the focus - with its relationships to other figures. Nonetheless, it is of course a sequel, and I have found that it was time for me to return to this field. ”In the eighth volume, Mary Ann in Autumn ( Mary Ann in Autumn, 2012), Maupin revisited the style of earlier city histories on, with several intertwined storylines. In 2011 he began work on the final book for the series, which was finally published in early 2014 under the title The Days of Anna Madrigal .
Key characters
The series begins with the arrival of Mary Ann Singleton, a young naive woman from Cleveland, Ohio, in San Francisco. She finds an apartment at 28 Barbary Lane owned by the eccentric cannabis breeder Anna Madrigal. Mary Ann befriends other tenants: the bisexual hippie woman Mona Ramsey (who, although a central character, does not appear in all books), the straight-haired philanderer Brian Hawkins, the creepy and cunning rooftop Norman Neal Williams, and Michael Tolliver, the sympathetic gay, who is called Mouse by friends and who is increasingly becoming the focus of the series. Beyond the house, lovers and friends accompany Mary Ann on her adventures in San Francisco. Mona's ex-lover D'orothea Wilson is returning from a photo model assignment from New York, while Michael's lover and DeDes gynecologist Jon Fielding are accepted into the circle of friends. Edgar Halcyon, the boss of Mary Ann and Mona, DeDe Halcyon-Day and her scheming bisexual husband Beauchamp Day provide a glimpse into a wealthier Californian class, while Anna Madrigal's mother, a brothel owner, provides secrets and weird variety. In the last two books, Thack Sweeney joins as Michael's lover. Real life finds its way into the book series through cult leader Jim Jones and a scantily clad Elizabeth Taylor .
Realism in the city stories
Current events found their way into the history of the city again and again. The short time lag between writing and publication meant that Maupin was able to react quickly to current events. Maupin's books are also among the first to address the AIDS epidemic.
The books
- Tales of the City, 1978 ( City Stories, 1993)
- More Tales of the City, 1980 ( More Tales of the City , 1993)
- Further Tales of the City, 1982 ( Even more city stories, 1993)
- Babycakes, 1984 ( Tolliver's Travels, 1993)
- Significant Others, 1987 ( Am Breast of Nature, 1993)
- Sure of You, 1989 ( No more fun, 1994)
- Michael Tolliver Lives, 2007 ( Michael Tolliver Lives, 2008)
- Mary Ann in Autumn, 2010 ( Mary Ann in Autumn, 2012)
- The Days of Anna Madrigal, 2014 ( The Days of Anna Madrigal, 2017)
In Maupin's novels Maybe the Moon (The Small) and The Night Listener (The Night Listener) occur figures from the City Stories on.
The musical
In early summer 2011, a musical version of Maupin's city stories will be presented for the first time at the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco . The piece, entitled Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City - A New Musical is from May 18 to previews shown; the premiere is scheduled for June 1, and further performances are on the theater's program until June 10 . The book wrote Jeff Whitty , author of three Tony Awards winning musical Avenue Q on the basis of the first two volumes of Maupin's Tales of the City ( Tales of the City and More Tales of the City ), music and lyrics come from Jake Shears , the lead singer of the band Scissor Sisters and from John Garden. Larry Keigwin is responsible for the choreography ; the director of the production is in the hands of Jason Moore.
Judy Kaye (Anna Madrigal), Mary Birdsong (Mona Ramsey), Matthew Saldivar (Brian Hawkins), Manoel Felciano (Norman Neal Williams), Wesley Taylor (Michael "Mouse" Tolliver), Betsy Wolfe (Mary Ann Singleton) will play and sing. , Josh Breckenridge (Jon Fielding), Richard Poe (Edgar Halcyon), Kathleen Elizabeth Monteleone (DeDe Halcyon-Day), Andrew Samonsky (Beauchamp Day) and many others.
Web links
- ArmisteadMaupin.com - Official website of Armistead Maupin
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael Tolliver Lives (Tales of the City Series # 7). BarnesandNoble.com, accessed November 23, 2013 .
- ^ "I might well come back to Mr Tolliver one more time". PinkPaper.com, archived from the original on July 4, 2007 ; accessed on November 23, 2013 (English).
- ^ Saying Goodbye to a City and Its Characters. Retrieved March 15, 2014 .
- ↑ American Conservatory Theater: Tales of the City - A New Musical ( Memento of the original from April 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (April 2011)
- ↑ American Conservatory Theater: Cast announcement ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (March 18, 2011)
- ↑ Playbill: Cast Report (March 18, 2011)
