http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/sep/13/judi-dench-shakespeare-theatre Dame Judi Dench, who made movie trivia history by playing Queen Elizabeth in two movies simultaneously (and winning an Oscar for one of them though I can’t remember which), was given the theatre set from Shakespeare in Love as a gift.  What to do with such a thing? Why, donate it to a trust that’s going to set it up as a permanent structure, of course.

Dench wants to see the set turned into a full-scale replica of the Rose theatre, which stood close to the Globe on the south bank of the Thames and was also used by Shakespeare. The actor, who was born in York, has donated the set to the touring British Shakespeare Company for re-use as a permanent Shakespeare centre in the north of England.

Dench said her husband, the actor Michael Williams, had called her mad to accept the present, but she had been determined to see the open-air apron stage, with its horseshoe of galleries and open space for cheap ticket "groundlings", used as a working theatre. Structural reinforcement will be needed, but the building parts are basically sound and it held up to heavy, sometimes rowdy, use during the making of the film.

I may never get a chance to see such things, but I’m glad there are people in the world who want to make such things happen.

http://shanghailow.typepad.com/home/ An old friend of the blog, David “Master of Verona” Blixt, has got a new project going that I thought I’d plug.  For a quick summary I borrow from their basics page:

Shanghai Low Theatricals is a group of craftspeople engaged in the development of literary adaptations for – but not limited to – the stage.

The company is a non-profit 501(c)3 arts organization based in Chicago, Illinois – and, as a whole, constitutes one playwright.

Anyway, the link of interest is the fundraiser / coloring contest that they’re doing, with profits going to benefit the non-profit Illinois Arts Organization. The contest?  Coloring stuff.  It doesn’t even say you have to stay in the lines. The prize?  Books and Chocolate. Sounds like win all around.  Check it out.

http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/05/worst-mothers-in-literature.html

8. Gertrude from Hamlet by Shakespeare

The fact that she marries her brother in law, who killed her husband, is proof that she’s nuts but what really makes Gertrude a certifiable psycho is that despite all the adultery and killing she tries a little too hard to show compassion to Hamlet giving the kid a serious Oedipus complex.

Mostly blogging this one because Gertrude’s on the list.  I’m not sure I even agree.  I tend to have more sympathy for Gertrude.  She certainly never says “Screw what my son thinks, I’m doing what’s right for me.”  Maybe she was in an unhappy marriage with Hamlet’s dad and is glad to be free of it.  Maybe she was having an affair with Claudius right along.  Maybe she’s just still in mourning over her husband so deeply that she doesn’t even fully recognize what she’s done.  I’m leaving out the Oedipus stuff, since that’s all baggage that Freud brought to the table well after Shakespeare put words to paper. What do we Shakespeare geeks think?  Should she be higher, lower?  Is there a better mother to put on the list?

Imagine Will Shakespeare on his death bed, visited by his friend Ben Jonson.  What would they talk about? Such is apparently the premise of The Careful Glover, a new play by Jim Baines:

Ben arrives and meets spirited, restless Judith almost immediately. She takes him to her father, where the two swap memories, sing songs and get soused. It is in these moments that Will admits to having one more script almost finished, one that should get tongues wagging again back in London. Will gets Ben to promise to get the play produced.

I think I’d like this one. Maybe somebody here can help me with something, though.  Does this sentence make any sense?

There are some yawning minutes in Act II when Will is awash on his own version of Macbeth’s moor, a storm raging in a transparent nod to Shakespeare’s fondness to show nature’s fury when earthly relationships — individuals, families, countries — go awry.

Is that a Macbeth thing, or a Lear thing? Took me a couple of readings of “moor” to realize he wasn’t talking about Othello. 🙂

I, too, am unfamiliar with this “Accelerated Reader” program and perhaps I’m the better off for it.  Books are assigned a point value, and students, upon reading those books and passing a test, are awarded those points.  It’s unclear what happens when you reach your point goal. Putting aside the debate over whether any of that is a good idea, we jump to the meat of the matter, the point list.  For a formula that is supposedly based on reading difficulty and word count, we get a list in which the big fat Harry Potter books score a 44 out of 50, while Hamlet scores a 7.  Gossip Girl (I thought that was just a movie, shows how old I am) even rated an 8. I think the problem should be obvious.  Hamlet, being a play rather than an overrated novel written specifically to turn into a movie franchise, has far far fewer words than JK Rowling’s juggernaut.  It’s all dialogue.  Even with a brief swag at it, you look at say 800 pages of Harry Potter compared to the maybe 30-50 pages that it takes to print Hamlet, and it’s no contest. That would be even somewhat acceptable if the other variable, reading level, was realistic.  And that, obviously, is where it fails.  Maybe Harry Potter gets a 2nd or 3rd grade reading level, while Hamlet gets 10th grade.  Who knows, but really, who cares? Harry is still going to win. I think this system needs a third variable.  Maybe we call it “depth”, “value” or even “relevance”. Harry Potter books?  2. Hamlet? 1000 Now we can have a conversation about relative merit. http://lyndalepress.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/gossip-girl-vs-hamlet/