Word: mikado
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and is now a professor of economics, Alfred Kahn, 63, has polished up his act. A robust bass, he regularly turns up in local Gilbert and Sullivan productions, playing the modern Major General in Pirates of Penzance, Ko-ko in The Mikado and Jack Point in Yeoman of the Guards. Asked to aid a local fund raiser, Kahn happily swapped his tweedy academic threads for the lounge-lizard's black tie. "It was more a benefit for me," says he. "I'd give up my career to sing the role...
...skill. Whether it is a matter of getting the light just right in a college cloister, or of perfectly framing a group of runners in training on an ocean beach, or of making one feel that one has seen just how a D'Oyly Carte production of The Mikado must have looked in the '20s, Hudson painstakingly makes an obscure corner of history reverberate in a nearly mythic way. It is lovely work. And like old snapshots of forgotten people from another time, strangely evocative and moving. -By Richard Schickel
...pedantic style: "Careful writers use dived rather than dove in the past tense." But even less frequent notes on the origin or phrases turn up interesting information; the term "poobah," for example, a person who holds many offices at once, comes from a character in Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado...
Similarly, the Hasty Pudding's justification for their racist stereotype is more liberal jargon. In his letter to the editor, the president of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals states that their characters "poke fun at the stereotypes themselves by illustrating their complete absurdity." He also states that, like the Mikado, "the shows attempt to make fun of ignorance." He then apologizes for the fact that "our characterizations might be misconstrued." Racial stereotypes are both racist and absurd. If the Hasty Pudding wants to demonstrate absurdity of stereotypes, they should "poke fun" at those who make stereotypes, not perpetutate these negative images...
...show derives from ludicrous characterizations at which the audience can laugh without feeling insulted. Edgar Foo Yung is such a character. He bears no resemblance to any Asian person past or present. He is designed to poke fun at an absurd 19th century stereotype. This is what the Mikado, which played this fall at the Agassiz, has been doing on a much larger scale for years. Both shows attempt to make fun of ignorance...