Scripts for staged readings of James Joyce's Ulysses

Scripts for staged readings of James Joyce's Ulysses, as performed by the Wild Geese Players of Seattle.

Adapted from the 1922 text of Ulysses at Project Gutenberg.

Scripts

Scripts for each episode.

• 01-Telemachus
• 02-Nestor
• 03-Proteus
• 04-Calypso
• 05-TheLotusEaters
• 06-Hades
• 07-Aeolus
• 08-Lestrygonians
• 09-ScyllaAndCharybdis
• 10-WanderingRocks
• 11-Sirens
• 12-Cyclops
• 13-Nausicaa
• 14-OxenOfTheSun
• 15-Circe
• 16-Eumaeus
• 17-Ithaca
• 18-Penelope

Combined Scripts

To make for better 90–120-minute readings, some episodes have been combined or split.

• 01-04-Beginnings
• 02-05-Mornings
• 03-06-Isolation
• 07-08-Windiness
• 08-09-ShakyLibraries
• 15i-Circe
• 15ii-Circe

Resources

• RTÉ 25-hour broadcast of Ulysses (history)

Building the scripts

The scripts are typeset from plain-text LaTeX .tex files. This allows me to use a set of custom macros to get consistent formatting, which is independent of the underlying text written by Joyce. Furthermore, since the .tex files are laid out with a separate clause on each line, it is very easy to see exactly what changed between each Git commit. The scripts are not edited with a WYSIWYG tool, such as Microsoft Word.

Prerequisites

• Install TeX. Specifically, you need the XeLaTeX flavor of LaTeX, which supports Unicode input files, TrueType and OpenType fonts, and PDF generation.

  • Mac: install MacTeX
  • Windows or Linux: install TeX Live
  • Or install Tectonic on any platform

• Install the Libertinus fonts to get a high-quality, TeX-friendly seriffed font.

• Install the Noto Sans fonts to get a sans serif font used in a couple of places.

• Install a PDF viewer, if you don't have one already

  • Mac: use Preview (built-in) or install Skim or Adobe Acrobat Reader
  • Windows: install Adobe Acrobat Reader
  • Linux: install Okular

• If you want to make changes to the scripts, you'll need a good text editor, preferably one with syntax highlighting for TeX/LaTeX. Do not use Word, Notepad, or TextEdit: you will regret it.

  • Vim: the maps.vim file in each directory provides a set of Vim macros, mostly for adding LaTex markup.

• To submit changes as a pull request, you'll need a Git client.

Building a Script

To build the script (create a PDF from the .tex file), you'll need to use the command line. Open a terminal window on the directory (folder) containing the script; e.g. 11-Sirens:

• Windows: open Command Prompt on a folder
• Mac: open Terminal on a folder

If you have Gnu Make, you can use make to build the script:

make pdf

Otherwise, run xelatex against the main TeX file:

xelatex sirens.tex

Or run tectonic:

tectonic sirens.tex

If you see a warning like "LaTeX Warning: Label(s) may have changed. Rerun to get cross-references right", you will need to rebuild using make -B pdf.