Month: June 2012

I tweeted yesterday about the rumor going around that a fourth season of Slings & Arrows might be in the works.  Here’s a link to an interview with one of the writers where he says it is, quote “Well, it’s more than a dream, I’ll tell you that much. I’ll stop now, before I’m hoisted by my own petard.

For those that have never seen it, the short-lived Canadian TV series takes place backstage at a fictional Shakespeare theatre festival.  If you’ve not seen it, you must drop everything and go watch all 3 seasons.  This is not just another random drama that happened to throw some Shakespeare into the background.  This is a show *about* Shakespeareans *performing* Shakespeare.  The jokes are Shakespeare jokes.  You’ve got your overly dramatic Ophelia who throws herself into the river when she’s upset.  You’ve got to the bad director who SET THE TEMPEST IN NAZI GERMANY!  You’ve got an insane director who sees ghosts.  And most of that is just in the first season.

If you have seen it, what do you think of a fourth season?  I mean, they kind of swung for the fences in the first three seasons, tackling Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear (with a bit of Romeo and Juliet thrown in for good measure).  How do you follow that up?

I mentioned quickly on Twitter Friday (? is that the right order of those words ?) that my 95yr old grandmother was on her deathbed.  This was not an unexpected thing, she has lived in a nursing home or the last 4 years and has been on the decline.  This weekend was just a sharper turn.

“To me, fair Friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed
Such seems your beauty still.”  This one might be a little unusual to recite over your 95yr old grandmother, but I still like the point.  We all know that old age will eventually come.  But it’s up to us to decide how we deal with it.

Awhile back I put a question out on Twitter asking which day of the week Shakespeare mentions the most.  Bardfilm reminds me that I never posted the answer.

For simple analytical / search questions I head over to Shakespeare.Clusty.com.  It is here that I punched in the various days, and here’s the results:

Sunday:  9 occurrences in 5 works
Monday: 7 occurrences in 5 works
Tuesday: 7 occurrences in 7 works
Wednesday: 15 occurrences in 9 works
Thursday:  15 occurrences in 3 works
Friday: 5 occurrences in 5 works
Saturday: 2 occurrences in 2 works

So Saturday is the clear loser, mentioned the least frequently across all the plays.

But the winner … should we call it Wednesday, or Thursday?  Notice that Thursday is only mentioned in 3 plays, despite having the most mentions at 15.  This is because 12 of those mentions come in Romeo and Juliet while they plan the wedding.  Comparatively, only 3 mentions of Wednesday in R+J.

I think we can to declare Wednesday the winner.  Mentioned the most often, across the widest number of plays.

Straight from longtime Shakespeare Geek contributor David Blixt comes the disappointing (and highly surprising) news that his beloved Michigan Shakespeare Festival has fallen on hard financial times:

The Michigan Shakespeare Festival has issued an urgent plea for aid from its friends and donors as a result of an unexpected shortfall in financial support from several key sources. The call came from Bart Williams, managing director, who described the crisis. “With so much momentum going into this coming season, it is distressing now find several funding sources we had counted on did not come through.” Williams described the budget shortfall as in the “mid five figures,” and that emergency measures were needed to fill this gap within the next few weeks. Without additional funds, the season might be shortened or cancelled altogether.

This is no struggling group trying to keep their head about water.  The MSF has been alive and thriving for quite some time, and boasts the likes of Shakespearean gods like Dame Judi Dench and Stacey Keach among  those who have endorsed their work.

Please check out the links and help spread the word.  Thanks!