http://liveforfilm.blogspot.com/2009/06/kenneth-branagh-acted-out-whole-thor.html
I thought this story funny about how the people involved with the new Thor movie would get “a three hour one-man show” from the “very Shakespearean” Kenneth Branagh as he’d walk through every single part.
Comic geeks may not appreciate that as much as we Shakespeare geeks who are left wondering if there’s a bit of old Bully Bottom in Mr. Branagh?

“An I may hide my face, let me play Odin too!”

    “Have you Loki’s part written?”

”Let me play Loki too! I will roar and it will do any man’s heart good to hear me.”

Ok, who wants to help me out with an idea? I’m tired of missing the good shows because I don’t hear about them until too late.  I may not get to go to many anyway, but at least if I know about them ahead of time I have a shot at it.  I’m sure others are in the same boat. So here’s what I’d like to try. I’m setting up a public calendar to track Shakespeare events.  Once I get a few on it I’ll send the link around.  Using Google Calendar you can get an RSS feed of events as they come up, too, and thus always be alerted to new ones.  Not to mention the integration with Google Maps so you can see immediately whether an event is half a country away from you. What I need, of course, are events.  If you’re in charge of an event and you’d like to be on the calendar, please send me the following info:

1. Event / Organization Name
2. Play(s) Performed / Description of event
3. Dates it will run
4. Location
5. Link for more info

Thanks!  Should be interesting to see if I get quickly overwhelmed.  If I do, I’ll just open up the calendar so anybody can contribute.

Saw this as a Google search term in my logs today, thought it was interesting. Not exactly two words I tend to put together, empathy and Tybalt. Am I missing something? Is he not the classic example of everything that is wrong with this sort of situation? The whole “We hate each other and nobody can seem to remember why….but I don’t really care, I don’t need a reason” type of character? Maybe there’s something to this. Let’s look where we see him: Jumping into a fight in the very first scene. Not, like Benvolio, trying to stop it. Heck, Tybalt doesn’t know how it started or who started it, he just sees swords drawn and wants in on the action. Later he’s willing to ruin Capulet’s party by starting a fight in the middle of it. Maybe, *maybe* we can start to side with him here a little if you truly believe that he’s defending his family honor, that he believes Romeo is there to ruin the fun. We know it’s not the case, but part of empathy is being able to see things through other people’s eyes. Next up, he challenges Romeo to a duel. This is just logical behavior for him, as predictable as Laertes coming after Claudius to avenge Polonius’ death. In Tybalt’s world, if you are dishonored, you challenge the person to a duel. Primitive by today’s standards? Sure. But he’s not acting by today’s standards. Here’s where it gets interesting, because of Romeo’s reaction to the challenge. Tybalt doesn’t know it, but Romeo is now his family (having secretly married Juliet). So Romeo showers him with love like a brother. What’s going through Tybalt’s head? Obviously he thinks he’s being mocked. Here he is trying to do the right and honorable thing to do, reclaiming his honor (although much like the bad guy in Karate Kid II (Ralph Macchio Goes To Japan) he never seems to realize that he is the one costing them their honor, not restoring it). Had Mercutio not been in the picture, things might have turned out differently. Tybalt might have declared Romeo a lunatic and refused to battle. Instead – Mercutio drew first. Don’t forget that. Mercutio did not defend Romeo from harm. It was Mercutio who basically attacked Tybalt unprovoked (we can do “empathy for Mercutio” later). Well, we all know what happens next, Tybalt gets in the lucky (cheap?) shot, Mercutio dies. How’s that play out for Tybalt, though? Does anybody think Tybalt was actually trying to kill him? Or was it an accident? It was a dirty blow, no doubt about it, but that doesn’t mean it was supposed to be a killing one.

I think here’s it’s strictly up to interpretation. Back in the Zeffirelli version it was played out more like “kids taking things too far” – but in the Luhrman version with Jon Leguizamo, Tybalt *is* physically beating Romeo, and Mercutio’s rescue is much different. They really are trying to kill each other:
What do you think?

http://geek.shakespearezone.com/?p=1769 As You Like It, for kids – with stuffed animal puppets.  Sounds like the kind of thing I’d rush to, if it wasn’t in Toronto.  But, hey, maybe some of my readers are in the neighborhood. [If anybody knows of local performance like this, variations on Shakespeare for kids, please let me know. I’m happy to spread the word.  I can’t post every announcement about every adult traditional Shakespeare show, but I do like to help popularize the kid versions.]

http://current.com/items/90169852_convicts-use-shakespearean-dialect-to-smuggle-cawbe-fool-shades.htm This story’s about a week old and reasonably silly, but it was not until I re-heard it on NPR that I caught the Shakespeare hook.  Whether it’s true or not, the story goes that criminals behind bars in England have resurrected centuries old slang as a sort of modern code, using words like “cawbe” for cocaine and “inick” for cell phone. Depending on which story you read the slang is either Elizabethan or “more than 500 years old” (are those the same thing? how long did that woman reign??), and may or may not have actually appeared in Shakespeare’s text. What I think is quite silly is the quote about this being “the most ingenious secret code we have ever come across.”  For starters, you’ve already cracked it, haven’t you?  I mean, I’m hearing about it on NPR Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me.  How good could it have been?  I’d think that the most ingenious ones are, in fact, the ones you don’t know anything about yet 🙂