So today we had parent teacher conferences for all three of my kids. If you don’t know the drill, basically you sit down in your 15 minute window and the teacher tries to calm all your fears, say nice things, and generally keep optimistic.

So, I find out that my middle child (7yrs old) is off the charts on her reading skills.  “126 words per minute with 97% accuracy,” the teacher says, “Normally at this level we expect to see 50 word per minute and 70% accuracy.”  The topic turns to coming up with challenging books for her, and the difference between “reads a lot” and “can read complex things.”

The teacher explains that she’s not a fan of challenging kids to the point of making them hate reading, and that she’d rather then tear through books that are easy, yet fun, rather than harder for them but boring.  Then she hits me with it.  “It’s not like I’m going to assign them Shakespeare,” she says.  “I hated Shakespeare in school, it was so hard and so boring and I just hated it.”

“Funny you should mention him,” I say with an ear-to-ear smirk.

“Why,” she asks, “Are you a Shakespeare fan?”

“This is his thing,” my wife jumps in with, “He does Shakespeare on the internet.”

“Oh, really? How interesting!”

“I run a bunch of sites about Shakespeare, yes,” I say.  “My kids have been raised on Shakespeare.  Go ahead and ask Elizabeth about the subject, see what she says.”

“She could probably teach me!” laughs the teacher.

She probably could :).

“He could be one of your guest readers,” my wife suggests.

Long story short? I may end up teaching a unit on Shakespeare to my daughter’s second grade class.  Good times!

Long-time readers will remember that this is not my first rodeo — I went into my oldest daughter’s first grade class and tried reading them The Tempest. I think this time would go better.  Not only is it an older class, and not only am I more experienced at this game, but this time would be more about getting butts out of the seats and having *them* act it out, rather than trying to keep their attention while I read it.

I’ll keep everybody updated on where that plan goes.

UPDATE!  There’s a press release. Either that is new, or it was hidden or something because I didn’t see anybody mention it a few hours ago.

Looks like this is the real deal – contains the cast breakdown and everything.  Shot in black and white in just a couple of weeks, by a new studio that’s going to focus on exactly this kind of festival-friendly indie film.  Should be completed in the spring.  Awesome!

Geeks of all types are abuzz this morning about the news that Joss Whedon has managed to crank out a Shakespeare movie in secret, in his spare time:  Much Ado, The Movie


Whedon is legend among the geeky set for his work on Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, and if this movie is the real deal he brings with him his regular cast of players including Nathan Fillion, Sean Maher, Tom Lenk and Amy Acker.


Here’s the thing, though.  Everybody’s wondering if it’s the real thing, or an elaborate joke.  Some points to consider:


* The man’s in the middle of The Avengers, the biggest comic book movie in a generation of comic book movies.  And he managed to sneak in a Shakespeare movie in his spare time?


* He did it entirely in secret.  Who does that these days? How does a cast of characters like that manage to evade all of the gossip rags for however long it took, without word getting out?


* The only evidence that we have is a screen shot (which, obviously, could be fake), and the cast all tweeting “It’s real!” which, of course, they would do if they were in on the joke.


* The screen shot, if you didn’t notice, never mentions Shakespeare.  It just says “Based on a play.”  So either that’s a very low key “Look at us, we’re doing Shakespeare!” or it’s part of the joke and this is not a Shakespeare project.


* Interesting choice of play.  The title itself could be the joke, no?  The world gets all excited about what they think is a Shakespeare movie, and it turns out to be something completely different?  Much Ado About Nothing, no?


One curious point — back on Oct 9 I spotted Nathan Fillion making Shakespeare references on Twitter.  That clearly came and went with no buzz (unlike last night), so maybe that wasn’t part of the joke, maybe that was real?  But if so, what the heck?  He’s reciting Shakespeare on 10/9 and by 10/23 filming is complete?  Does it really happen that quickly?


Here’s my guess, for the record – I think it is real. I think that it’s probably going to be a web project, like their Dr. Horrible from a few years back.  I think that, as a bunch of friends, they all basically got together in Whedon’s back yard (figuratively speaking) and banged it out.  That way it’s quick, it’s among friends – easy to keep it a secret and do it during downtime.  No one said it was a *big* project.


Let’s see how I do.

We don’t discuss interpretation of the text enough these days. I really should make more progress in R3, but that’s a different story :).

The other day I answered somebody’s question on Macbeth, asking what this quote means:

I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent

I pointed out that this quote is only partial, and when you look at the rest it makes more sense:

I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself
And falls on the other.

This quote comes from Macbeth himself, trying to pump up for the bloody deed he’s about do (namely, kill the king).  My best summary for this particular passage was, “Nothing personal, Duncan.  I don’t have to do this because of anything that you did.  You’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I want to be king, and that means you gotta go.”

I know that’s a gross over simplification, but sometimes that’s all these kids want.  When I think of “translating Shakespeare into modern speech” this is what I think of.

Anybody want to help flesh out (or correct) that answer?  The next time somebody googles for the meaning of that quote I’d love for them to land here and see some interesting discussion about what that passage means.

I can’t say I know much about Dr. Battis, but his resume is impressive to say the least and I felt that his contributions to our beloved playwright deserved a little recognition. Dr. Battis died this past weekend due to complications from bladder cancer.

Read the whole obituary to get the full span of this man’s achievements – I’ll list only a few here:

• He played more than 90 characters in Shakespearean plays and,
  he often noted, had only one onstage kiss in his life.
• He worked at
  Baltimore’s Centerstage before moving in 1984 to Washington, where he
  appeared in almost 70 productions of the Shakespeare Theatre. He
  received a Helen Hayes Award for his lifetime contributions to
  Washington theater in 2002.
• Dr. Battis
  acted in all but one of Shakespeare’s 37 plays — the lone exception was
  “Cymbeline” — and gave his final performance as Marcade in a 2006
  production of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” in the Bard’s home town of
  Stratford-upon-Avon in England
• Battis’s
  Falstaff, one critic wrote, “was all that Shakespeare wrote the
  character to be: braggart, glutton, coward, liar, obscene buffoon, yet
  blessed with an indomitable spirit and an ability to laugh at himself.”
• After a 1967 performance in Ohio, the Cleveland Plain Dealer
  proclaimed Dr. Battis’s interpretation “the best Lear of our
  generation.”

Sounds like we lost one of the good ones. Anybody out there happen to know his work, and can share any stories/experiences?

Flights of angels, Dr. Battis.  RIP.