Starstruck

Glossary Entry: Thrace-Smythe, Sambo

 

Emotional Colors #3: Angst and Agony

Emotional Colors #3: Angst and Agony

Well-known director and playwright, famous for producing very big works, with very big names, and of a quasi-religious nature. Little is known of his early life. He left the Boones Dock Academy of Speech and Drama in AE 23 after having lost his scholarship to an unknown performance artist. With the aid of an obsolete Miz Fix It droid (see: Handy Andi) and a Thialine Drone, he captured a Rootersnoos Beacon in the Noh Zone and began broadcasting the cult classic audio series, WHY? “WHY,” the voice echoed electronically down the back streets of the galaxy, “…or Blown from the Ass of God! The continuing adventures of Perplexus Eqs Youth! (dramatic music) Journey with me to the thrilling daze of yestercycle, when magic was real and every new beginning had a new name. (more dramatic music) My name? (ditto) Just call me…(echo effect) A CRY IN THE NOTHINGNESS!” By the time Rootersnoos discovered what was going on and sent someone to check it out, the voidspace surrounding the beacon was packed out to 58 sparlons with the ships and stellercopters of loyal fans that looked, from a distance, like a school of Aguatunesian tuna. WHY? was syndicated, Thrace-Smythe an overunit success. Between AE 29 and 92, he would write, produce, and direct more than 50 plays including Paraplegia, Metamorphica, Metaphorica and the enormously successful Aeriopagitica. Between Cycles 93 and 120 he became disillusioned and depressed and did his famous “blue period” work, the eternally running soap opera, Cycles Infinitum and the silly but financially rewarding musical, Let Go and Let God! In Cycle 128, Thrace-Smythe staged what was, by all accounts, the worst play ever produced: ArcheOrganaApocolypsia. Due to the public humiliation and the outcry at the ritual deaths of the Troikani actors Personus/Ex/Mahkina, Thrace-Smythe went underground for 9 cycles and emerged in AE 137 as a director of lasarounds. He directed 13 lasarounds and then disappeared mysteriously at the opening of his 14th, Phoenixflowerotica (based on Lotti Bo Sugar’s best-selling autobiography, How I Inadvertently Stumbled Into a Scientific Breakthrough and Was Blinded. He was never seen again. One explanation of his disappearance can be found in Kettle Black’s controversial play, The Persecution and Assassination of Sambo Thrace-Smythe, as Performed by the Members of the Guernican Art Squad, Under the Direction of Teronia Ta (or Thrace-Smythe/Ta). During the course of the play, Black (playing herself) recreates the scene in which she and two other members of the squad capture Thrace-Smythe. He is murdered horribly and his emotional essence, preserved at the last milirebec of his life, is bottled by Brush and Blaster ® (the Art Squad’s mercenary division) and sold as their famous “Emotional Colors #3, Angst and Agony.” Emotional Colors are mixed with any pigment and add to a finished painting a palpable aura of feeling.