Are you eager to read this story?
It’s about “The Angry Grammarian: A New Musical” a world premiere musical rom-com on grammar opening soon in Philadelphia.
If eager, perhaps it’s because you’ve always loved a good song about commas or have received a small reading bribe from writer Jane M. Von Bergen.
Or, maybe you are anxious to read this story.
Yes, you are going to read, but you are worried the mention of an Oxford comma will be triggering, you loathe musicals, and you often find Von Bergen’s humor a little nauseating.
Jeffrey Barg, both “The Angry Grammarian” playwright and Philadelphia Inquirer Angry Grammarian columnist, maintains a long list of crimes against language – and these days, the misuse of eager versus anxious is right near the top.
“I’m eager to correct it – not anxious to correct it,” he said.
Barg is probably both eager and anxious to see how audiences react to the play he wrote with Jersey theater artist David Lee White, who teaches advanced improvisation, theater history and dramatic analysis at Drexel University.
Performed by the Pier Players Theatre Co. at Theatre Exile March 7-16, “Angry Grammarian” charts the romance of two language fans who fall in love over a shared passion for grammar and punctuation.
That’s not to say that they agree. In fact, they don’t. For both, small differences in punctuation etiquette stand in for large differences in life philosophies. In the end, what rules? The heart or the semi-colon?
Will they resolve their differences or will they be two independent clauses passing in the night?
Barg’s goal for the audience?
“Honestly, a good time, I want them to be entertained,” Barg said. “I’m not looking to give grammar lessons through the show. I’m using grammar and language as a way to tell a story.”
And song.
No musical about grammar and punctuation would be complete without at least a tune attuned to the debate over the Oxford comma, and so, “The Comma With Too Many Names” nearly closes first act. It comes after “Lie With Me and Lay With Me,” “They’re There,” and “Like Subject and Verb.”
Barg began developing “The Angry Grammarian: A New Musical” more than a decade ago, loosely stringing together some grammar song parodies he had written. He credits White with bringing order and a plot to the work, which has an eight-member cast.
The lead character, Greg, who writes a grammar column, “wants to use grammar and language to make the world a better place which it is possible to do,” Barg explained. “But you aren’t making the world a better place if you are a jerk. Remember, it is called the Angry Grammarian.”
Like Greg, Barg wants to use grammar and language to make the world a better place, Although he can’t help but notice every flaw, “I work really hard to not edit somebody unless they ask me to,” he said.
Barg, a director at Ceisler Media & Issue Advocacy, said he has always had an interest in grammar and language. Early in his career, he became a copy editor at the Philadelphia Weekly. As a group, copy editors love to debate the fine points of punctuation and word usage, so Barg fit right in.
Inspired by books on writing and by the work of speechwriter and New York Times language columnist William Safire, Barg asked his editors at Philadelphia Weekly if he could try out a language column.
They humored him and later, Barg began writing for the Inquirer. Among his recent columns was an analysis of a Taylor Swift lyric, a condemnation of a Florida policy that banned dictionaries, a fervent plea to abandon the words rizz and cheugy.
We’re nearly at the end of this article and you are probably wondering if we’re ever going to get around to the most important question of all: How does Barg feel about the Oxford comma? In the world of editors, it prompts a lively debate, with or without alcohol.
“It gets people riled up and that’s the kind of anger we like to foster with the Angry Grammarian,” Barg said.
The Oxford comma, also known as the Harvard comma or the serial comma works in a list. For example: We are writing about theater, a musical, and Barg’s life. The Oxford comma is the comma after musical and before the word and.
“Oxford commas, except for when they are necessary, are distracting to the reader,” Barg said, coming down solidly in the anti-Oxford camp. “Every unnecessary comma you put in makes readers pause in tiny imperceptible ways. Those things add up.
“We want to give the readers as few reasons to pause as possible.”
FYI“The Angry Grammarian: A New Musical,” Pier Players Theatre Co., (March 7-16), Theatre Exile, 1340 S. 13th St., Phila.
