Month: October 2011

Shakespeare Slam for Guy Fawkes’ Day

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

I went to this event last year, and they’re doing it again – November 5, just in time for you-know-who’s day.

What is it?  Shakespeare, Open Mic.  If you’ve got something to perform, put your name on the list and get up and do it! 

I didn’t love it last year, but that was mostly due to the circumstances.  I’d brought the kids, but it’s not really a kid-friendly place (practically standing room only, and getting food in the bar’s backroom where it was held proved pretty tricky).  Plus I had no idea what to expect, and what I saw looked to me like a bunch of people who already knew each other, getting up and doing set pieces.  I wasn’t sure where the open part was coming from.

But I spoke with the organizer after the event (that’s what that second link is, up there), and he told me that while yes, they did deliberately schedule some “anchor acts” to make sure that the night had some structure, most of the acts were indeed just individuals who’d signed up and gotten up. 

If you’re in the neighborhood (Somerville, MA), go check it out!  Don’t bring the kids. 

My Sonnet

~ duane ~ 2 Comments

(From the archives – August, 2005)

I think that many (most?) of you probably weren’t hanging around back in 2005, just a few short months after I started this blog.  So I think that very few people saw this.  Today I was helping out over on Yahoo! Answers, talking about sonnets, and was reminded of my own venture into this world. Thought I’d share a bit of a walk down memory lane…

———————————————-

A Gift for My Daughter

Ok, here goes nothing. When my daughter Katherine was born I wrote
her a baby diary detailing every day of Kerry’s pregnancy. One of
those, “It’s not something she’ll understand now, but maybe when she
gets older she’ll appreciate it” gifts.

When Kerry was pregnant
with Elizabeth I knew that I’d have to do something similar, but not
the same. It hasn’t been easy, and I haven’t been doing a very good
job of trying. Her first birthday is next week and I owe her this
special gift.

So, I present a sonnet. I hope it’s good.

She looks at me and all my cares of mind
Dissolve like fleeting clouds from sun-warm’d skies.
Halt, Time! Preserve this wonder that I find
When I behold the heavens in her eyes.

But would the echoes of her laughter fade,
A cold eternal silence in their wake?
What dreams left unfulfilled, what bliss delayed,
If I should all of her tomorrows take?

Her future’s yet to come, mine lies unfurl’d:
‘Tis not for me alone that she exists.
For no imagination in the world
Could e’er conceive of beauty such as this.

So put your hand in mine and walk with me,
And know that all my life, I live for thee.

Updated 8/22: Changed a few words around.

I have no idea if it’s any good, but I think the most important thing right now has been to finish it. Being the Shakespeare
geek I am I did my best to get the Elizabethan form down. It helps
that my daughter’s name is Elizabeth, because that makes it all the more
geeky :), even if I’m the only one in my family gets the joke.

I’m
hoping to print it, frame it, and stick it on a wall until she’s about
15 years old or so, in high school, and learns what a sonnet is. Then I
can point to it and see what she thinks.

Her birthday is
Wednesday so I still have a few ideas to futz over it and tweak a word
here and there, this is really just the first complete draft. But,
again, I want to commit myself to it so that I finish the fool thing and
don’t put it on the shelf with all the other great ideas.
—————————————————
File this one as complete, by the way – a matted, framed version hangs from her bedroom wall.

Is Lion King supposed to be Hamlet? Answered.

~ duane ~ 6 Comments

When I first saw Lion King, I never recognized it as a Hamlet story. In fact, I’ve never really bought it as a deliberate Hamlet story – I always thought that the similarities were coincidental at best.  Not every “Uncle kills the father, son avenges” story is Hamlet.

Well now, with the new 3D release of the movie, we can confirm the answer (courtesy of The Hamlet Weblog):

When we first pitched the revised outline of the movie to Michael
Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Peter Schneider and Tom Schumacher, someone
in the room announced that Hamlet was similar in its themes and
relationships. Everyone responded favorably to the idea that we were
doing something Shakespearean and so we continued to look for ways to
model our film on that all time classic.

This may or may not be the answer you were looking for. It was not written to be Hamlet.  How many “ways to model” their film they found, we don’t know.