I was wondering if they’d have this event again this year, and looks like they will indeed.  Gulu Gulu in Salem, MA, in partnership with Rebel Shakespeare, does an Open Shakespeare Mic Night in honor of you know who’s birthday.  This time it’s Thursday April 29.

I went last year and loved it.  With short notice on a weekday night, however, I don’t expect I’ll be able to attend this year.  🙁  Somebody go and tell me how it went!

And next year give me some notice and maybe have it on a weekend!  I know, I know, getting bar space on a weekend night to do Shakespeare is asking for trouble…

Regular readers of Shakespeare Geek may not recognize the name Joseph Mooney/Mahler but they’ll probably spot the initials, JM.  JM’s a regular contributor here, and we’ve developed something of a game where he comments on what I wrote and then I desperately try to understand what he said. 🙂  At the heart of our “disagreements,” however, I think we’re both in this for the same reasons.  We love this stuff, and we want to expose the world to it in any way we can.  He’s got his ideas for how to do it, and I’ve got mine.

As such, I’m happy to link my readers over to the mission statement for JM’s theShakespeareProject, his own very real world project for putting his stamp on the Shakespeare (and classic literature) universe:

theShakespeareProject is dedicated to the idea that a fresh
approach to these literary/dramatic gems, employing them as living
examples of excellence, might lead to a regeneration of heightened
interest–in the theatre, the classroom, the boardroom—even the family
room—and result in a natural and progressive repossession by the
community at the grass roots level.

I may say it differently, but how can I disagree with any of that? 

My kids love the American version of this show.  I can only hope that we get our own version of this one particular act, though I don’t expect I’d let my kids watch it:

54 year-old actor Jonathan Hartman, an American, claimed his dream
was “to make Shakespeare accessible to everybody.”

His real dream seemed to spank Rebecca, a buxom young English girl
with a well-proportioned backside, who was only too happy to oblige him.

I have to report, for my fellow Geeks, that the article does *not* say which play he recited, because I’m sure that you’re dying to know.  I was.  I’m thinking it just had to be Taming of the Shrew.

“I rather enjoyed that !” TV’s Piers Morgan told Hartman voting him through. “But then I like Shakespeare.”

Amen to that, brother.