Month: January 2012

Geeklet Story Time, Part 2

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

…so, where was I?

The 5yr old, after getting a shortened form of Macbeth, wants the one about the king who divides his kingdom up among his daughters. Here we go!

Once upon a time there was a king, who had gotten so old and tired that he didn’t want to be king anymore.  He decided to split his kingdom into three parts and give each part to one of his daughters.  So he called them all together and said, “Tell me how much you love me.  Whoever loves me the most gets the best part of my kingdom.”

Well, the first daughter got up and said “I love you *thhiisssss* much, and I love no one else but you.”  The king was pleased by this and gave her a share of the kingdom.

The second daughter got up and said, “Forget her, *I* love you *TTTTHHHIISSSS* much, and I, too, love no one else but you.”  The king was again very pleased, and gave the second daughter her share. 

He then turned to his third daughter, the youngest, and said, “And now let’s hear the best of all, because you are our favorite and we know that you love us the most of all.”

“No, father,” she told him.  “I love you very very much, but I will not lie to you and tell you that I only love you, because when I get married I will love my husband, and when we have children I will love them too.”

Well, her father the king was not happy with this answer at all. He got so mad that he said she would not have any share of the kingdom, and he banished her.

…at this point a choked little voice asks me, “But did he still love her?” And I am caught so by surprise that I don’t quite know what to do with myself.  My little guy has been hanging on every word, and he’s an emphathetic little bugger.

“Oh, he absolutely still loved her,” I told him, “He was just really really mad because he thought she was saying that she didn’t love him.  He didn’t understand her answer.  Are you sad?”

He nods, unable to get any words out.

I squeeze him a bit tighter and remind him that this story has a happy ending, remember?  “We’re going to find out that she loved him most of all.”

So, the story continues.  The king wanted to go live in the castle of the first daughter, but he wanted to have 100 soldiers with him just like any king should. But the soldiers ate all the food in the castle and made a big mess and didn’t pick up after themselves…

Again, I am stopped. “Why didn’t they pick up after themselves?”

“Well, soldiers can be pretty rowdy, and they really didn’t listen to anybody.  The king wasn’t the king anymore, so they didn’t think they had to do what he said.”

He thought about this.  “If I had 100 soldiers and I told them to pick up after themselves, would they listen to me?”

I assured him that absolutely, his soldiers would listen to him.

So, anyway, the first daughter told him that if he wanted to live there, he couldn’t have his soldiers.  So the king decided that he would go live with the second daughter.  But, alas, the second daughter agreed with the first and said that no, he could not have his soldiers with him there, either.

So the king, who was very old and starting to get really sick, said that he would live alone and went out into the forest in the really bad rain.  His remaining friends, Fool and Kent and Edgar, who were the most loyal of all, went out with him to protect him.

But remember the third daughter?  The one who was banished when the king got mad at her for not saying she loved him the most of all?  That daughter had gone out and formed an army of her own.  And with her army she came charging back into the kingdom to do battle with the two evil sisters. She beat them, took the kingdom back, and rescued her father from the forest and told him that he could come and live with her forever with as many soldiers as he wanted.  Because she really was the one that loved him the most of all.

And they all lived happily ever after.

“Were the other sisters allowed to come visit too?” asked my little empathetic guy, who didn’t want to see anybody’s feelings hurt.

“Oh, absolutely,” I told him.  “Once the third daughter came back and said that the king could live with her, everything was forgiven and they were all happy again.”

He’s probably going to hate me when he gets older and learns the real story, but if you’d heard his little voice crack over concern whether Lear still loved Cordelia, it would break your heart.

Geeklet Story Time

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

So tonight my wife’s at work and I’m putting the kids to bed. My older girls are in their rooms reading, and I’m laying (lying?) down in my 5yr old son’s bed with him.

“Daddy!” yells the 9yr old from her room, “There’s a Shakespeare quote in my book!”

“Which one?” I yell back.

“Life’s but a walking shadow…” she begins.

“…that struts and frets his hour upon the stage. A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” I reply.  And, yes, I missed a few words in the middle.

“Yes, that one,” comes the reply.

“Macbeth.  That’s a good one.”

“Why is that a good one?” asks the 5yr old.

“Well, he’s sad because his wife died,” I say.

Somehow I end up telling the story of Macbeth. To my 5yr old.  As a bedtime story.  My 5yr old who is prone to bad dreams as it is.

I now present my very shortened, very censored, off-the-top-of-my-head version of Macbeth, suitable for 5yr olds:

Once upon a time there was a soldier in the army named Macbeth. One day when he was coming home from the war he ran into a witch who said, “Greetings, King of Scotland!”

“I’m not king of Scotland, you crazy witch!” said Macbeth.

“Not yet!” said the witch.  “But you will be.”

So Macbeth went home and told his wife this crazy story.  “You know what we should do?” said his wife.  “We should invite the king over, and then when he’s sleeping we should take his crown!  Then you could be king!”

“I don’t know about that,” said Macbeth, “I mean, he’s a good king, he’s never really done anything to us.”

“What sort of chicken are you?!” his wife yelled at him.  “The witch said you are going to be king.  How do you expect that to happen if you don’t take action?”

Macbeth agreed, and they invited the king over to dinner.  Sure enough, that might while he slept they came into his room and stole his crown, and then Macbeth proclaimed himself king of Scotland.

Well this was just plain silly, as everybody knew you don’t get to be king just by taking the crown.  But Macbeth locked himself up in a castle and wouldn’t listen to anyone who tried to talk sense into him.

Meanwhile, the king’s family went off and rallied support to get their crown back.  They brought in Macduff, a brave warrior, to face Macbeth in hand-to-hand combat.  Macbeth thought that he would easily win because the witches told him that he would be king.  But Macduff won the battle, and rather than keep the crown for himself he gave it back to the original king who was the rightful owner.

“What happened to Macbeth?” my audience of 1 asks.

“He lost the battle,” I say, stalling.

“How did he lose the battle?”

“They had a sword fight, and he lost. Macduff made him surrender.”

“So did Macbeth go to jail?” I love the 5yr old perspective.

“You know,” I tell him, “I’m not sure.  The story doesn’t really say what happens next.  But I think you’re right, I think that he probably went to jail.”

At this point, and I am totally not kidding, my 5yr old decides that he’s in a Shakespeare mood, and he wants to hear the one about the father who has to divide his kingdom up among his three daughters but he gets mad because one says she doesn’t love him most of all.  I’m flabbergasted at this – I may have told him Lear like, once, a year or more ago.

As a matter of fact, I have this story that I told my middle daughter back in 2007, but my son was only 18months old! I know I’ve told him the story, but right now I can’t find a link to it.

…continued in part 2, because this is a very long post. 🙂

Fate v. Free Will in Romeo + Juliet (Plus, Changing The Ending?)

~ duane ~ 4 Comments

While cruising through Yahoo! Answers today I saw that somebody had asked about the theme of destiny in Romeo and Juliet.  Then something hit me.  It’s easy to point to the “star-crossed lovers” right in the prologue, and later Romeo, who is Fortune’s fool, defies to stars, etc etc etc.

But here’s the thing, I’ve also always thought of the play as a lesson to the parents about not being so stubborn in your ancient grudges and your own problems that you don’t realize what you’re about to lose. 

At the end of the play, the prince gives his great “All are punished” speech and the two families shake hands and build statues.  I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely left with a feeling of, “See how stupid you’ve been? If only you’d changed your ways and seen what was happening, this all could have been prevented.”

And there’s the problem.  Which is it?  Is Shakespeare giving us a story where we’re supposed to come away thinking that this tragedy could have been prevented?  Or that it was Fate, and that these kids were going to end up dead no matter what happened?

I’d never really thought of this before, but has anybody ever done an ending to this play where the Prince still gets to give his speech, but rather than the statue building stuff, the two families turn their backs on each other and the grudge continues?  I think that would be genius.  Depressing, but genius.  Then you’ve got the more helpless feeling that no, these kids never had a chance, the feud is never going to end even in the face of such overwhelming tragedy.

Sounds and Sweet Airs That Give Delight, and Hurt Not

~ duane ~ 3 Comments

So I’m walking my kids slowly through last year’s Tempest movie, now that I have it on DVD.  By slowly I mean about 5-10 minutes at a time before they go to bed, with heavy voiceover.  They seem to be confused (not understanding a word of the dialogue), but interested.

So we’re at the scene where Ariel, singing “Full fathom five,” guides Ferdinand across the island to where Miranda can see him.  It’s easy to see a how a big part of the play is missed here.  The kids can see Ariel, singing.  They ask me whether Ferdinand can see Ariel, I say no.  I try to explain this whole idea that, from the perspective of the shipwrecked sailors, all they know is that they miraculously survived the wreck, showed up on shore with their clothes completely dry, and they hear music. It’s very important in a number of scenes that they want to follow the music, which we as the audience know is Ariel’s way of bringing them where he wants them to go.  The music is so prevalent that even the child-monster Caliban gives his beautiful speech about how not only is this magical sound no big deal, but he’s actually come to quite love it.

Very hard to convey that on film, where we’ve become so used to separating out the idea of “soundtrack” that it’s difficult to understand when the characters on screen can hear the music and when they can’t. On top of that you have to get across the idea of “following” the music, which seems to be coming from over there somewhere.  To the film audience, the music is coming from the same place the dialogue is coming from, it has no direction.

So that gets me to my discussion question.  Let’s say that you’re staging a Tempest.  What sort of special things can you do with the music to get this point across?  I’m thinking of stuff like having speakers randomly behind and around (under?) the audience so we can feel where precisely the music is coming from, and have the characters actually come out into the crowd, literally trying to follow it.

That’s a very specific question, but I’m also curious about broader answers on the whole “What can you accomplish with live theater that is hard-to-impossible on film?”

The Return of Geeklet

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

My girls got Kindle Fires for Christmas, so my 5yr old son has basically taken my old iPhone and uses it for his own game playing.

Just now he wanders in, face in the screen, and says, “Daddy, I’m reading Shakespeare.”

I look at the iPhone and sure enough he’s gotten into my Shakespeare app.  Specifically, Winter’s Tale.

“Oh,” I tell him, “You’ve got Winter’s Tale there.  That’s a hard one.”  He is actually looking at the Dramatic Personae.

“Well I don’t know what the words say,” he tells me, “But I like to look at the words.”  He has never grown out of the little speech thing he has were all his “er” sounds come out like “or”, so “words” actually sounds like “wards” and it is the cutest darned thing. 🙂

“You can always sound out the words and find the ones you do know,” I tell him.

“Can you find me Hamlet?”

“Sure,” I tell him, and bring up Hamlet, Act I.

He tries to walk away reading it, then quickly comes back saying, “I don’t know these words. Can you find me To be or not to be?”

“Sure,” I tell him again, and show him how to look up Act III.  I find the speech he wants and show it to him.

Off he goes, reading Hamlet.  I’m sure he put it down 2 seconds after he left the room, but still, gotta love the boy.