Literary Gladiators: Coming In February

I mentioned in my Christmas post that I was working on a literary web show that I thought up after being inspired by the discussions that were held in American Literature class. The only major difference would be that instead of a moderator coming up with various ideas that we would add in to, the moderator would have the simple task of introducing the topic in the form of a question that a panel of four English majors would answer to the best of their ability. From there, I constructed what would be a first season containing just so many episodes that we would release weekly. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we filmed a pilot and ten episodes, we plan on filming an additional segment toward the end of the month, and on Tuesday, February 11th, we plan on going viral!

My original plan was to invite my American Literature instructor to serve as the moderator, but that didn't fall through, so we found a friend that expressed enough interest to attend each of our gatherings to which we filmed the pilot and ten episodes. We're going to call him "Mr. Moderator," for he spends the series behind the camera and feeding us our questions that we feast on each episode. While American Lit I and II inspired me environment wise, I was also inspired by my chemistry with two students from each class respectively. Jim from the first class has expressed a lot of wit and charisma, and he's one of the most intelligent individuals you will ever set your mind to. He doesn't hold back any punches and I cannot promise you he will remain clean. In my second class, I attended with Charlie, who's going to be the lovable goofball of the series. In addition to his regular status on the panel along with Jim and I, he is also the musical director who will come up with the opening. To quench his love for drumming, Charlie opens up each show with a drum routine that is bound to change each episode. I should mention that Charlie as loves cookies and vacuum cleaners.

When I brought the idea up to Jim, he told me I should stop talking about it and start acting upon it, providing me with enough confidence to move forward with the web show, which would be deemed Literary Gladiators. Aside from Jim, Charlie, and I, we thought about bringing in a rotating guest that will sit alongside us each episode. On that note, we will be bringing in Christine, Nicole, and Brianna. Christine, in addition to appearing in plenty of episodes, has been deemed the video coordinator. She's in charge of anything having to do with uploading videos and editing them so they look good. She's also the only one that can prohibit Charlie from eating cookies while filming. With Nicole and Brianna, you have someone that has a feisty, fiery personality for literature and someone who has a thorough range in literary work, especially Transcendentalism.

As for my role, aside from appearing on the panel, I am also the creative director, arranging sessions, material, and panelists. I do take suggestions from those who are interested (Jim has plenty) and fit rotating guests into the episodes they feel works best for them. After all was said and done, we came up with this lineup for season one...

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost (The Pilot)
"Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
"Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note" by Amiri Baraka
"Araby" by James Joyce
The Stranger by Albert Camus
"We Are Seven" by William Wordsworth
Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger
"Howl" by Allen Ginsberg
The Poetry of Emily Dickinson
Emerson vs. Thoreau
The Work That Inspired you to Become a Literary Enthusaist

This may be the order of release as well, but that will be to be determined. If the first season comes off as a success, we hold high interest in taping a much larger second season. We're already deciding what we plan on discussing and how many and which rotating guests we plan on having on the show.

Literary Gladiators will release new episodes on Tuesdays for eleven weeks (the first week will likely have two). If you enjoy reading my posts (especially the literary based posts) on my blog, you should enjoy watching what I have to say. I'll upload the episodes as they release and I encourage you to subscribe. I will provide updates as they come about.