Who are the Pallahaxi Players? What is Readers
Theatre?
“Reader's theatre or Reader's theater is a style
of theater in which the actors do not memorize their lines.
Actors use only vocal expression to help the audience understand the story …
This style of performance of literature was initially lauded because it
emphasized hearing a written text as a new way to understand literature.” Wikipedia
The Pallahaxi Players
is a group of fans and authors who like to perform (scripts in hand) short
plays for the audiences of VCon—Vancouver’s
premier science fiction, fantasy, and gaming convention. We are following in
the tradition of Lonely Cry Theatre, founded by Michael G. Coney, who with
fellow writers and hangers on entertained VCon audiences for years. Our name is
an homage to the world found in his novels Hello,
Summer, Goodbye (alternately published as Rax and Pallahaxi Tide)
and I Remember Pallahaxi.
Recipient of the British
Science Fiction Association Award, one Nebula, and five Aurora Awards, Michael G.
Coney was a well loved man and an influential writer in the 1970s British
Invasion, writing a variety of works that often lulled the reader into thinking
she was reading fantasy only to discover it was finely wrought science fiction.
Humour, character, place, and plot all played a large part in Mike’s works. He is
greatly missed by those who knew him.
This year at VCon, as
part of our celebration of the British Invasion, the Pallahaxi Players will be
performing Mike’s first Lonely Cry offering, “Sex and Perversion in Gnomedom.”
VCON
42/Canvention 38: Science Fiction, Fantasy and Games: 5-7 October 2018. Hosted by WCSFA - West Coast Science Fiction
Association and VCON.
Visit our Facebook page!
Mike Coney, External References:
“I
think that [writing] has taught me always to be completely honest with the
reader and never allow myself to take the easy way out for the sake of glib
plot device.”
Casey June Wolf’s first
contact with Mike Coney’s books (“though I’d known Mike and his Lonely Cry Readers
Theatre for some years”): “Pallahaxi
Mike,” Den Page of
Casey June Wolf, Friday, September 16, 2005.
“Michael
Coney: Science-fiction writer whose
readability hid inner depths”
by Christopher
Priest. The Guardian, Thu
1 Dec 2005 09.31 GMT.
Michael's
Spyglass: an Interview with Mike Coney by C. June Wolf. Strange
Horizons, Issue: 6 february 2006.
Review of “Hello
Summer, Goodbye and I Remember Pallahaxi by Michael G. Coney” by Colin Harvey. Strange
Horizons, Issue: 28 July 2008.
Excerpt
from Pallahaxi Tide by Michael G. Coney, read by Casey
June Wolf. FintanSparky,
22 Oct 2011.
Michael
G. Coney Wikipedia
page.
Summary
Bibliography: Michael G. Coney, The Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
