A couple years ago the Oregon Shakespeare Festival made a bold move by commissioning 36 playwrights to translate the works of Shakespeare into modern English.  I honestly can’t tell you how it went, as I didn’t follow the project.  I’m not interested in your project if your premise is that Shakespeare has to be rewritten.

American Shakespeare Center is putting their own more interesting spin on this game, announcing this week that they will be commissioning a modern canon of 38 “companion pieces” to each of Shakespeare’s works. What constitutes a companion piece?  Straight from the Artistic Director Jim Warren:

We’re not looking for a retelling of Shakespeare plays. We’re looking for partner plays that are inspired by Shakespeare, plays that might be sequels or prequels to Shakespeare’s stories, plays that might tell the stories of minor characters in Shakespeare’s stories, plays that might dramatize Shakespeare’s company creating the first production of a title, plays that might include modern characters interacting with Shakespeare’s characters, plays that will be even more remarkable when staged in rotating repertory with their Shakespeare counterpart and actors playing the same characters who might appear in both plays, plays that not only will appeal to other Shakespeare theatres, but also to all types of theatres and audiences around the world.

The ambitious project stretches for the next twenty years and will pay out a million dollars in prize money.

I remember back in college, probably after being inspired by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, I tried my hand at a similar piece I called Ophelia’s Song. The premise was that Ophelia was in on Hamlet’s feigned madness, only it wasn’t feigned, so as he went insane in his own peculiar way, so did she.  They would speak in modern English during the original scenes, and then switch back to original Shakespeare dialogue for the “real” scenes.  It was never produced, but it was fun to write.

So, who’s going to enter?

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Bardfilm and I were having an interesting conversation yesterday about the great divide (from where I sit) in the Shakespeare Universe.  If you are not a professional Shakespearean (mostly thinking of academics and researchers, though I would have to say that full-time directors, actors, etc… would also count themselves among this group) … what do you call yourself?  How do you explain your relationship to Shakespeare and his works?

From what I have seen, academia prefers to refer to us as “fans”. If you are not a professional, you are a fan.

 

I hate that.  I am a fan of Pink Floyd.  I have not spent the last twelve years of my life writing thousands of posts about how Pink Floyd makes life better. I did not tell my kids The Wall as a bedtime story growing up. I do not have an ever-growing shrine to Roger Waters on my desk at work, and I don’t celebrate David Gilmour’s birthday like it’s a near-religious holiday.

I have invested a great deal of my life, and the lives of my friends and family, in Shakespeare. People that know me know more about Shakespeare because of me.  But for all of that, the way I am to describe myself (and those who feel the same way I do) as …. fans?

For fun I grabbed a random thesaurus entry for “fan” and here’s what it gave me to work with:

adherent, beau, believer, booster, boyfriend, buff, bug, cat, devotee, disciple, enthusiast, fan, fancier, fiend, follower, freak, girlfriend, groupie, hound, junkie, lover, nut, partisan, patron, rooter, suitor, supporter, swain, sweetheart, wooer, worshiper

You know what dawns on me is missing from that list?

Geek.

I didn’t originally pick that word because of my computer background.  It’s not supposed to be “The geek who is also into Shakespeare.”  It was more about a healthy obsession with learning everything I could about the subject. What Wikipedia has to say about the word isn’t bad, actually:

The word geek is a slang term originally used to describe eccentric or non-mainstream people; in current use, the word typically connotes an expert or enthusiast or a person obsessed with a hobby or intellectual pursuit, with a general pejorative meaning of a “peculiar person, especially one who is perceived to be overly intellectual, unfashionable, or socially awkward”.^[1]

I think I agree with almost all of that.  “Expert” is clearly tricky in this context because by definition we’re not trained professionals. Am I an expert? Are you? Who’s to say?  But we can all probably agree on enthusiast. Obsessed?  Check.  I think Shakespeare qualifies as an intellectual pursuit. And I’m even ok with the pejorative stuff – peculiar and socially awkward?  Well, yeah, I was that before I got into Shakespeare!

How about you? What do you call yourself when it comes up?

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Over on Facebook, Dana asked a good question, and I didn’t have an answer.  He asked:

Do you know of any books or articles that have attempted to identify the real people behind Shakespeare’s characters?

He cites the example of Jaques (As You Like It) possibly being modeled on Jacomo Francisci, a soldier of fortune under Sir William Stanley.  I suppose the other more obvious example would be that Polonius (Hamlet) is supposed to be William Cecil, Lord Burghley.  I also saw a theory that Falstaff (Henry IV) might have been at least partially based on Robert Greene, he whose wit is worth a groat.

I’m sure that each of these has some degree of evidence and plenty to dispute.  Dana’s interested in the subject and wondering if anybody’s collected them into a single work?  It seems like an interesting topic.  Anybody know of something published?

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Tis the summer of prime time Shakespeare!  TNT has announced that July 10, 2017 will be the premiere of their new series Will, chronicling the (fictional) rockstar life of up and coming playwright Will Shakespeare:

They’ll be playing catch up, though, because over on ABC, Shonda Rhimes imagines a sequel to Romeo and Juliet called Still Star-Crossed, which premieres May 29:

Which are you more excited for?  Which do you think has the better chance of surviving?

Be sure to check out the new Shakespeare Geek Merchandise page, new for 2017 on Amazon! All new designs!

You may have seen links in the footer already, or the sneak preview I sent out on Twitter a few days ago, but today is the official announcement that Shakespeare Geek T-Shirts have been approved for the “Merch by Amazon” program!

Starting now I’m going to roll out a whole new line of Shakespeare Geek t-shirts featuring the original material we’ve collected here over the years (hashtag games, knock knock jokes, etc…)  All new designs.  This is going to be stuff you can’t find anywhere else, and I’m hoping you like it!

I’ve been on Zazzle and Cafepress before, but this has the potential to be different.  Amazon changes whatever game it plays.  For starters, they approve everything ahead of time.  So right off the bat, the quality is that much better. They don’t allow copyright stuff, and in fact, will shut down your account if they find you infringing on anybody.  Plus, being Amazon, they work at a scale comparable to no one, so they can deliver a high-quality product and still keep it at a reasonable price.  Right now I’ve got a $17.99 tag on the shirts (down from the standard $19.99) but for other services I’ve seen it go double that just to get a reasonable royalty back to the creator.

The biggest advantage, though, will be placement in the Amazon search engine.  Now everybody who searches Amazon has a chance to see our Shakespeare Geek originals.  To that end, I’d like to request a favor.  If you do see any merchandise that you like enough to order, and you do find that you love it even more once you’ve got it, please come back and review it.  I’ve noticed already is that 99% of the product available is being cranked out by bots to flood the market. It’s all the exact same, no description, and no reviews.  If we could get the brand to stand out it would help the products rise in the search ratings. This kicks me up a tier for Amazon, allowing me to churn out more product for you!

I am creating new products as fast as Amazon lets me. They throttle you to just a couple a day to prevent the bots from taking over.  Even then you have to go through the approval process. At any given time I’ve got a few new shirts queued up and ready to go. So if you’ve got any ideas, let me know and I’ll happily try to get it made for you! Especially if it involves a product already out there and you didn’t like the color/style. It would make me sad if you saw one you wanted and it wasn’t available in the color you prefer. I can totally change that.

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