If you’ve not yet read it, seen it, or heard people talk about it, Wicked is what happens when somebody takes a well-known story (The Wizard of Oz) with a nasty villain (The Wicked Witch of the West), and retells the story from the villain’s point of view.  In the process the villain ends up the sympathetic character.  She wasn’t born wicked, she was just born different. It’s what the rest of the world does to her that makes her the way she ends up. Which Shakespeare play would be most ripe for this treatment?  Which villain could you make the star of his (or her) own show, and in the process make her (or him) come out looking like the sympathetic character? 

Looks like I’m not the only one working on a book – Bill over at Shakespeare Teacher has announced the publication of Literary Education and Digital Learning: Methods and Technologies for Humanities Studies, where he’s a contributing author!  Congratulations, Bill! Stealing from Bill’s summary of his own work:

So I developed and implemented a unit to teach Macbeth to a fifth-grade class in the South Bronx, using process-based dramatic activities, a stage production of the play performed for their school, and a web-based study guide to apply what they had learned. The idea was to use collaborative projects to get the kids to work together to make collective sense of the play.

Sounds awesome, actually.  To not only teach Shakespeare, but develop your own teaching methods for doing it?  And then write up and publish your results? For more details, visit the original post – make sure he gets the traffic and any affiliate clicks from people looking to check out the book.  I don’t want to steal any of his thunder, I just want to make sure more people hear it.

…again, you tell me. This post is a deliberate complement to yesterday’s post about plays that don’t get enough credit. So now, answer me this:

No matter how many different productions are made available, whether on stage, in the park or on film, whether by children, amateurs or the Royal Shakespeare Company, I will always try to see …. ?

Pick one.  It’s too easy to say “They’re all good, so, all of them.”  Don’t do that.  I plan on doing something with this information, so humor me. (If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years of blogging its to clearly define your question so people don’t just ignore it and write about whatever interpretation of their question they prefer :)). I’ll start with The Tempest. It’s primarily for personal reasons, as I’m sure longtime readers know (it’s the first play I taught my children).  But it answers my opening question. I’ve seen it performed in the middle of a strip mall, I’ve seen it performed in the park by professionals, I’ve seen it done with puppets. When Julie Taymor’s movie comes out I will see it, I’m just not sure whether I’ll take the kids until I know how much sex and violence she put into the thing.  If a local group had done it this summer, I would have gone. I can’t lie and say Hamlet – I haven’t sat through Ethan Hawke’s version, though I’ve had plenty of opportunity.  And King Lear isn’t only Mt. Everest to play, it’s a challenge in its own right to watch repeatedly. I sat through McKellan’s version but skipped to the good parts of the James Earl Jones’.  Both those break my rule.

Letter to the editor after “The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged” comes to Tennessee. I bet you already know where this is, perhaps unfairly, going?

Some may wonder if I was just shielding young, innocent ears. No, had my wife and I been alone that night, we too would have walked out. And we weren’t the only ones. The couple we met in the parking garage elevator had a college-aged child and a college graduate with them, and all four were amazed at the total lack of decency. But then once again, I did get to teach my children the difference between what is decent and what is utterly crude.

In fairness to Tennessee I point readers back to this January 2010 article on a similar topic.  This time, however, Will O’Hare – Education Director for the Classic Theatre Project – came to his group’s defense.

As I sit here with my kids watching the original 1966 Batman movie, a character mentions Charles Dickens.  This makes me wonder whether there will be any Shakespeare references, which makes me remember that Shakespeare is credited with first use of the term “what the dickens.” Then it dawns on me … is there a connection there?  What came first, the family or the expression? The House of Names website tells me that Dickens as a family name dates back to Norman origins from 1066. I have to admit, I’m curious.  That would suggest that Dickens as a surname was plenty common during the time Shakespeare wrote “I can not tell what the dickens his name is” (Merry Wives, by the way). So, what’s the joke?