Category: Shakespeare Geek

When You’re A Jet (West Side Story Reboot Is Coming)

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Are we ready for a new West Side Story?

What if I told you Stephen Spielberg is directing?

The casting call is up!  September 11.

The announcement comes from the office of casting director Cindy Tolan. Auditions will take place at Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet in Brooklyn, with the sign-in for men beginning at 9AM and the sign-in for women beginning at 1PM.

The call stipulates auditionees should be between 15 and 25 years old with a strong dance background and ability to sing, and also specifies: “the Sharks are Latinx, the Jets are Caucasian.”

The original is certainly dated (look at that dialogue!) so that’s screaming for a rewrite. Will all those dance numbers still hold an audience’s attention?  All the “coming to America” songs and aspects of the story are still as strong as ever, but I hope they don’t go over the top and make it purely commentary on the current administration.

West Side Story
A little bit of West Side Story dialogue.

 

Shakespeare Doesn’t Pay The Bills, I Guess

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

Here’s a weird coincidence.  There’s a story this week about how actor Geoffrey Owens, perhaps most well known for his role as Elvin on The Cosby Show, was spotted bagging groceries at a Trader Joe’s.

I didn’t really pay much attention.  Hey, honest day’s work, right?  But then, by the magic of customized news feeds, I got a link to a Shakespeare acting class by Geoffrey Owens?

I’m not sure the timing.  I don’t know if the class is an older thing that’s no longer around, or if it’s a very small window of time and not a full-time job, or what the story is. I hope that, if he wanted to support himself teaching Shakespeare, he could.

 

 

Is Shakespeare’s Library Still Out There?

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

It’s long been one of the go-to arguments of the authorship question.  Shakespeare’s work proves knowledge of certain topics and literary works. Therefore he must have had books for researching and referencing those topics.  We have no record of his books, therefore he owned no books, therefore he cannot have had that knowledge, therefore he didn’t write the plays.  Then again, as Bill Bryson pointed out in The World As Stage, there’s no evidence that Shakespeare owned pants, either.  Therefore he must not have. Surely he would have willed his pants to someone!

Apparently there are people who still hold out hope that a trove of books inscribed “Property of William Shakespeare” is going to turn up any day now.  A new book by Stuart Kells details his quest to find it.

While positing that of course Shakespeare had a personal library, the article only barely hints at what happened to it.  Shakespeare’s friend Ben Jonson had a fire at his place. Maybe Shakespeare gave Jonson his books, and they were all lost in that fire?  That’s the same kind of reasoning that the authorship people use.  “I have no proof this didn’t happen, and it supports my argument if it did, so…”

I support any research that turns up actual facts about Shakespeare. I just don’t know how many of those this guy is finding. Besides that, this particular author loses credibility with me for citing the story of Samuel Ireland and his son “finding” the letters and diaries of Shakespeare that “turned out to be forgeries.”  Yes – because Ireland’s son was the one who forged them. You forgot to mention that part.

 

 

 

 

Shakespeare and Friends

~ duane ~ Leave a comment

I admit it, this post is a complete advertisement for my latest merchandise. I think I honestly do a pretty reasonable job of not spamming you folks every time I put up a new t-shirt design, don’t I?  So surely you won’t begrudge me a Friday afternoon commercial.

When I’m working at night, chances are Netflix is on in the background. I’m one of those folks that just likes the noise. I would love to churn through all the new original shows they’re making, but then I have to pay attention to what’s on, rather than letting it just drone in the background. So instead I turn to old series that I  know I like, that have a lot of episodes (that will auto play, you see).  You see where I’m going with this.

The entire ten season run of Friends has graced my television so often I think I’ve memorized all the episodes.  But it wasn’t until recently that the idea hit me … that opening font of theirs is absolutely iconic.  If you do “Skip Intro” you may never even notice it, but when you see it that classic scribble font with the little colored dots you’re definitely thinking, “I recognize that!”

Shakespeare and Friends

I wasn’t even sure Amazon would let these up, so I didn’t go crazy with the “Look! It’s Friends!” keywords.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t tell the real story here.  To get started I made a bunch of versions of Shakespeare’s most iconic characters – Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo, Juliet, Mercutio. All are available in both t-shirt and hoodie. The t-shirts are available in men’s, women’s and youth sizes (the hoodies are unisex). All the images below are clickable, where you can see the colors available for each.

What do you think? Did I miss your favorite character?  What do you think looks better, character names or play names? For those first couple it doesn’t matter 🙂 but I soon ran out of 5-7 character single words. 🙂 Should I make Prospero and Malvolio and Viola and some other more lesser known characters?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

 

 

 

Your Favorite Hamlet

~ duane ~ 1 Comment
As far as I know, Sir Ian’s version is not available on video.

So at work the other day, my CEO asked which Hamlet was my favorite.  At the time, in context, I assumed that he meant film version, as in, something that other people could then go watch.  Not a live production that, if you missed it, telling somebody that it was your favorite didn’t serve much purpose because they couldn’t go take advantage of that information.

I decided to ask the question on Twitter.  I had no idea I’d get the kind of response.  Taking out the people who pretended not to understand the question (answering with the names of cozy little villages, or “Q1”, etc..), I still got over 20 different Hamlets to choose from.  Not all of them are available on video, but that’s been changing lately with live broadcasts of many.

For the record I’d not even heard several of these names, but was happy to discover them.  Some performances are even on YouTube in full!

One Vote

Papaa Essiedu (Royal Shakespeare Company, 2016)

Oscar Isaac (The Public Theatre, 2017)

Andrew Scott (Almeida Theatre, 2017)

Campbell Scott (2000)

Adrian Lester (2002 directed by Peter Brook)

Tom Hiddleston (2017, as directed by Kenneth Branagh)

Richard Chamberlain (Hallmark Hall of Fame, 1970)

Ruth Negga  (coming in late 2018)

Two Votes

Derek Jacobi (1980)

Mark Rylance (1989).

Coming in Second, with Four Votes

Kenneth Branagh (1996) comes in with 4 votes,

Our Winner, with Six Votes is …

David Tennant (RSC 2009)!

Did you get to vote?  Who is your pick?  For the record, I told me CEO Branagh was my choice because as I said I was limiting myself to film versions I thought he might have a chance of seeing if he wanted to. I wasn’t going to give it to Mel Gibson or Ethan Hawke, the other two that leaped immediately to mind.  At the time I didn’t even think of Tennant, but on reflection I think I’d still keep my choice as Branagh. I found Tennant’s a little too … hyper?  OCD?  Can’t remember the words I used at the time.  But then we start to get into a debate about whether we’re talking about the movie as a whole, or about the character.  It’s probably true that Tennant’s Hamlet character was better than Branagh’s, but I like Branagh’s movie better as a whole.

(No love for Kevin Kline (1990), I notice.  I wonder if people simply never saw it?)