Month: June 2009

http://geek.shakespearezone.com/?p=1769 As You Like It, for kids – with stuffed animal puppets.  Sounds like the kind of thing I’d rush to, if it wasn’t in Toronto.  But, hey, maybe some of my readers are in the neighborhood. [If anybody knows of local performance like this, variations on Shakespeare for kids, please let me know. I’m happy to spread the word.  I can’t post every announcement about every adult traditional Shakespeare show, but I do like to help popularize the kid versions.]

http://current.com/items/90169852_convicts-use-shakespearean-dialect-to-smuggle-cawbe-fool-shades.htm This story’s about a week old and reasonably silly, but it was not until I re-heard it on NPR that I caught the Shakespeare hook.  Whether it’s true or not, the story goes that criminals behind bars in England have resurrected centuries old slang as a sort of modern code, using words like “cawbe” for cocaine and “inick” for cell phone. Depending on which story you read the slang is either Elizabethan or “more than 500 years old” (are those the same thing? how long did that woman reign??), and may or may not have actually appeared in Shakespeare’s text. What I think is quite silly is the quote about this being “the most ingenious secret code we have ever come across.”  For starters, you’ve already cracked it, haven’t you?  I mean, I’m hearing about it on NPR Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me.  How good could it have been?  I’d think that the most ingenious ones are, in fact, the ones you don’t know anything about yet 🙂

Here’s a question that’s maybe better for the philosophy blogs, but I heard this phrase – “in praise of melancholy” – the other day, and it made me think of King Lear. Now, nobody will say King Lear is a happy play.  Words thrown around tend to be more like “gutwrenching” and “agonizing”.  It is also heralded widely as one of greatest pieces of literature in the English language. Nobody sees King Lear and comes out of it saying “Well, that was fun.”  But here’s my question – does it make you happy?  Do you, at some deep level, feel better about…things?  I’m not talking about the entertainment of seeing a good production.  I’m talking about watching the story of King Lear play out on the stage as if you were watching the lives of real people. I’m trying to think of the best way to explain it.  I think it’s similar to when people say they enjoy a good cry, or enjoy scaring themselves near to death.  There is value in expanding the range of how you experience life – both the highs and the lows.  Another analogy that comes to mind is going to the gym and waking up the next morning in pain.  The pain is really only at one level, and though it certainly hurts, your brain is able to go a level beyond and say, “Yes, but that’s good for me, I’m happy that I got the workout because it will ultimately improve my quality of life.” Know what I’m talking about?  Who can say it better than I’m doing here?

http://pixton.com/comics/tagged-with/shakespeare After learning about a high school group that won an award for their work with creating a comic The Tempest I decided to check out Pixton, the comic creator.  I’m quite pleased with all the Shakespeare I found. True, it’s not like most of these will be winning awards anytime soon.  But that’s not really the point.  If there are classrooms out there where the project is to create a comic book out of a Shakespeare play, and that helps the kids actually follow along with character and plot, I’m all for it.  I guess I’d just hope that if all you’re aiming for is character and plot that elementary school kids could do this.  If you’re talking about high school kids then I’d like a little bit more understanding than just “Brutus kills Caesar because that’s what it says he does.”

http://www.wirenh.com/Stage/Stage_-_general/Shakespeare_enters_the_21st_century_200906103633.html This one caught my eye for a number of reasons: * It’s relatively local (Maine) so I have a shot at getting to see one of their productions. * One of Shakespeare’s few historically factual plays, “Caesar” is based on the Roman leader’s assassination by his Senate.   (Is that true?  I suppose ‘factual’ is what makes the point, there.) * “This play may be the single most brilliantly executed and relevant performance I’ve seen in the last six years.”   The reviewer seems a little too pre-occupied with the political climate for me.  Both Brutus and Portia are played by women, which is fine, but the fact that nobody added any lesbian references, showing that it is “just a marriage”, is somehow a “poke at the topical issue” of gay marriage?  No, no more so than making Caesar also a woman is somehow necessarily a Hillary Clinton reference.