Final Blogging

And so another semester comes to a close. I've really enjoyed everything that we were able to put together over the course of the semester. So, to wrap things up, I've prepared one final blog post.

Engaging Shakespeare

I thought the event was very successful. I wasn't able to stay the entire time, but between rehearsals and everything, I was able to see all of the projects. I was really impressed both by how much time my classmates were willing to devote, and how much talent they were willing to share. I think the whole came thing together really well, especially given the amount of time the class had to put it together. 

I feel like an audio-recording is not necessarily the most presentational final project, but I was glad that the audience was into it enough to ask questions about it. I think that, as far as presentations go, the play, the music video, and the art groups were a lot more engaging than we were able to be, simply because of the nature of our project. I'm not maligning our project (I actually think the final product turned out really well, so shout out to Amy and her willingness to be our sound-editor), but I think that it would have worked better under different circumstances.

How have I gained Shakespeare literacy?

I think making the audio recording of Hamlet helped me to really understand the play in a way I hadn't before. We really had to decide what the essential themes and ideas were, and how to effectively convey them in a very short period of time. I also reached a deeper understanding of the characters. Well, no. With Hamlet, that might not be quite accurate. It's more accurate to say that I am now able to look at the characters through multiple different lenses. I don't think a single one of them has a concrete motivation, and in doing multiple close readings of the script, I was able to consider who these people really were. I know that they're fictional, but that doesn't mean that they're one-dimensional. Even characters like Claudius, who seem really one-note and token, have the capacity to be extremely complex.

Because of my acting background, I was very eager to get into the character's heads. Initially, it was just Polonius, because he is the character I voiced. But as I read the script over and over and over, I found myself trying to understand all of the characters we worked with, even the ones with fewer lines and apparently more direct motivation. I found that I could imagine scenarios in which Claudius is the hero and the Ghost is the villain. I could imagine scenarios in which Hamlet was the villain. I could imagine scenarios in which Gertrude was a tragically sympathetic character. I don't think any of these ideas are wrong, because so little in the text is explicit.

The most important thing that I learned was that these characters didn't live in a vacuum. They had whole lives before the play started, and just because they weren't laid out doesn't mean they aren't important. Trying to figure out these character's lives and who they really are has proved endlessly fascinating, and it makes me appreciate Shakespeare's genius so much more than I did. 

How have I analyzed Shakespeare critically?

Although we haven't read a ton of new material since the midterm, I tried to be on the lookout for opportunities to analyze Shakespeare in interesting ways. I think my favorite post was about eye-gouging as an appropriate punishment for treason. In that post, I tracked down a book about treason laws and punishments during Shakespeare's time, and I found that eye-gouging was actually fairly tame, compared to what could have happened. I also did a textual analysis of Edmund's Bastard speech from King Lear.

How have I engaged Shakespeare creatively?

I put a lot of focus on engaging Shakespeare creatively since the midterm. I wrote two posts on costuming, the first about The Taming of the Shrew and The Winter's Tale, and the second about Hamlet. These were the blog posts I had the most fun coming up with, because they tied into something that's interesting for me. I like to look at the ways that costumes are used in movies and TV shows and onstage. Very rarely does someone say "Yeah, just wear that, whatever." Clothes are used to make statements about characters, and it was fun to explore how I would do that. 

How have I shared Shakespeare meaningfully?

I focused a lot on global sharing, because I fundamentally don't really get it. I haven't received much feedback (except from my husband, but I wouldn't call that global), but it was an interesting experiment. I wrote an online review for King Lear, as well as a review for Hamlet. I think that the Engaging Shakespeare event was also a very good way to share Shakespeare. An audio recording isn't necessarily the most presentational project in the world, but we've also put our audio recording on YouTube. At least theoretically, people from all over the world could listen to it. It currently has three whole views, so that's exciting.

Overall, I tried to be very cognizant of reaching the learning outcomes. Blogging twice a week for six weeks doesn't leave a lot of space to get really in-depth, but I think that in the time I had, I was able to do a lot. I was able to learn a lot. I have to say a big thank you to both of my groups (blogging and final), because this never would have worked without them.

An Alternate Reality

As a follow-up to my last post, I was considering the character of Claudius. Specifically, I was considering whether there was any possible way his character could be viewed as sympathetic. I think there is, but it hinges on a lot of things that you don't see onstage or in the text.

In examining the character of Claudius, we must consider the following questions:
- Why did he kill his brother?
- Why did he marry Gertrude?
- Why did he want to kill Hamlet?

As far as Hamlet (the character) is concerned, Claudius is a traitorous, power-mad villain. However, we see from the beginning that Hamlet doesn't know the full story. He isn't even aware that his father was murdered until the ghost appears and tells him.

Even though he doesn't know everything, the entire play is told from Hamlet's point of view. Our perceptions are colored by his biases and preconceived notions. We know nothing, except what Hamlet tells us. What if Hamlet is lying? What is Hamlet is wrong? What if Hamlet's real reasons for vengeance aren't as noble as they seem?

Imagine, if you will, a loveless and abusive marriage. The brother watches from the sidelines as the woman he has long loved is battered and maligned. She is forced to bear a child to provide the kingdom with an heir. That child grows up and is just like his father - selfish, cruel, egomaniacal. The brother continues to watch, powerlessly, as father and son continue to sap the woman of everything she has to give. She's miserable and contemplates suicide. The brother knows that he has to take action. But what can he do? If they run, they will be followed. Murder, it seems, is the only choice.

In that scenario, Claudius would not only be a sympathetic character, he would be a hero. I'm sure there are countless books and movies with this exact plot. It's basically the plot to the Princess Bride, only Wesley let Humperdink live (and there are tons of articles on why that was a bad idea) and Humperdink and Buttercup never had a kid. But it's got the jerky royal figure who treats his royal significant other like crap, and the lifelong true love stepping in to save the day.

I'm not necessarily saying that I think that Claudius is a saint. I just think that we too-easily dismiss him as the token bad guy with no redeeming characteristics. No one is one-dimensional. Plus, Hamlet isn't what you would call nice or respectful to his mom. I don't care how upset you are - nice people do not call their mothers "adulterate beasts" unless those mothers are crack addicts who left said nice people at the bus station after giving birth to them. For that reason, it wouldn't surprise me if Hamlet (by this time, a thirty-year-old man) had a habit of not treating his mother with respect. Additionally, children usually pick up on how they're supposed to treat their mothers from their fathers. Plus, this was the 16th century, before anyone realized that women were people.

Again, I'm not saying that Hamlet and his dad were definitely the real bad guys. I'm just saying that I can envision a semi-plausible scenario in which things are not what they seem.

Global Sharing With Hamlet

As a final follow-up to The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear, I've posted a Goodreads review on Hamlet. It can be found here. Maybe this will be the time where I get validation from someone other than my husband.

Writing this review was interesting, because reviewing begs the question "Was it any good?" I feel like most people would say "It's Hamlet. It has to be good. It's a classic." My answer is somewhat different: It depends on who's reading it.

Hamlet is, moreso than any of Shakespeare's other plays, a blank canvas. Almost no one has a clear motivation or objective. When we read the play ourselves, we see reflections of ourselves.

When I first read Hamlet this semester, I saw Hamlet as an under-developed manchild who never had an adult relationship with his father. I thought that he was stuck in the phase where you think that your parents are perfect and immortal and superhuman. I also thought that he was using his father's death as an excuse to justify his inappropriate behavior. I still think that's a valid interpretation. That being said, I don't think I would have seen the character that way if I hadn't known a person who was just like that. I inserted my own consciousness into the character.

The text allows readers to project their own psyches onto the characters. If you're a woman with kids who is working through her second marriage, I think it's more likely that you would view Gertrude sympathetically than if you were someone whose mom married some rich guy as soon as the divorce to your dad was finalized. Either one of those people could play the character, and they would likely play her in drastically different ways. One would strongly identify with and like the character, and the other would despise the character. Neither is wrong, because Gertrude is such an ambiguous character. I think everyone in Hamlet is incredibly ambiguous, and I think that's the genius of the writing.

Friday Blogging Part II

Once again, I forgot I was supposed to blog today. And, once again, I don't feel like I have a whole lot to discuss.

The final project recording of Hamlet is going well. We currently have at least one take of each scene recorded, so even if something goes horribly, horribly wrong, we'll at least have something to present. We're meeting on Saturday (4-6 in the recording booth) to fine-tune and add sound effects and the like. I actually think this could be a relatively decent final project. I'm especially happy with how each character has a distinct voice. I think that's really important for the clarity of the piece.

I also feel like I'm understanding the play in a deeper way. Over the past few weeks, I've read our cut script probably six or seven times. When I played Ophelia, I focused largely on my own lines. I made sure I understood my lines and the scenes I was in, but I didn't care as much about the greater narrative. I knew the plot, of course, but I didn't take the time to read and try to understand the other roles (partially because we only had like six weeks to throw the production together). I had to be cute and heartbroken and crazy and dead. Now, I feel like I'm getting that kind of familiarity with the entirety of the play.

Referencing my previous post, I've not received any responses or comments on my Lear review on Goodreads (except for from my husband, who apparently liked it). I'm continuing to reach out, but I'm discovering that most people on the internet don't want to talk to a complete stranger, even if it is about a shared interest.

Global Sharing With King Lear

Per the course objectives, I'm trying to continue to share Shakespeare globally. In order to facilitate this, I've written another Goodreads review, this time on King Lear. You can read it here. Once again, it doesn't cover anything you, my classmates, haven't heard me say before. I really feel like King Lear is a cautionary tale against bad parenting. If Lear and Gloucester alike had had a bit more compassion on certain of their children during various points in their lives, I think that much, if not all, of the conflict in King Lear could have been avoided. Edmund would have the validation he was seeking, so that would effectively cancel out his entire plot line. Cordelia would stay with Lear and care for him, so he wouldn't need to move in with Regan and Goneril. If he never moved in with Regan or Goneril, he would never be kicked out, he'd never lose his mind, and his life would probably be a great deal longer.

It wouldn't have made for a good play, but I can't help but think of these characters as real people. If these were real people, I would want Edmund to be loved by his father and accepted by his brother. I would want Lear to be kind to his daughters and to respect them as adults. I think that Lear is a very flawed individual as a whole (pompous, a poor leader, self-aggrandizing, etc). However, he could have cut down on his own suffering, not to mention Cordelia's, if he had wanted to be a father first, and God of the Universe second.

In Coppelia Kahn's paper "The Absent Mother in King Lear," Kahn asserts that the relationship between Cordelia and Lear is a reversal of the parent/child roles. Lear wants to be babied by his daughter, and his daughter wants to be an independent adult. Lear interprets this much in the same as a child interprets maternal abandonment. I'm not sure whether I agree with this interpretation, but I do think that Lear is a very childish man, and that he lacks the maturity to be a real father to his children.

Costumes, Part II

For my first costume post, I covered The Taming of the Shrew and The Winter's Tale. Today, as a tie-in for the final project, I'm going to focus on a modernization of Hamlet. Specifically, I'm going to be looking at Hamlet, Ophelia, Gertrude, and Claudius. I choose the costume pieces I do based very strongly on how I see the characters. In many ways, the characters are archetypes or stereotypes that I flesh out, using clothing as a medium. 

Ophelia: The Manic Pixie Dream Girl

The phrase "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" was first coined to describe Kirsten Dunst's character in Elizabethtown. A MPDG is a girl who is quirky and spastic but still pretty in a traditional way. Her free-spirited ways usually inspire the uptight, generally nerdy male protagonist to shed convention and embrace life. If you've ever seen a movie with Zooey Deschanel, you've seen a MPGD. This is very much the way I view Ophelia, albiet in a much more tragic way than is generally portrayed. This Ophelia is a modern girl with a very pronounced romantic side. As such, her clothing is going to be fairly modern with some very classic details. Also, she's the kind of girl who can pull off thigh-high socks with her miniskirts. 

 

Recording

So, yesterday was the audio group's first day working in the recording studio. I personally thought that it was really, really, really fun. But like, really fun. We ran into some technical difficulties, but the nice (if somewhat crotchety) bearded man working in the HLRC was very helpful in getting them squared away. I have little to no idea how these kinds of things actually work, so I'm glad that there are some people in the group who know what they're doing.

I'm reading the part of Polonius (there are way more male parts than female parts, and our group is like sixty-five percent female). At first, I was like "Meh. That's kind of a whatever part. Whatever." I was SO WRONG. Polonius is so much fun. He's kind of senile and isn't necessarily completely on top of things, and his assumptions are always totally off base. He thinks of himself as the wise old man, but he's really kind of a buffoon in a lot of ways. It's fun to play up.

At first, I was a little bit nervous about taking on this project. I've had many experiences where I've worked with people who were like "We're going to do this, and it's going to be awesome!" and then it was complete crap. I don't think that this will be complete crap.

Eye Gouging

There's been a lot of discussion about Gloucester losing his eyes, and whether or not it was an over-the-top punishment for his perceived crime. I kind of doubted it, and here's why. As far as Cornwall knows, Gloucester was a traitor. Going into this, I didn't know tons about penalties for treason, but I did know that people who were branded as traitors tended to be pretty harshly punished.

I googled the phrase "eye-gouging as punishment for treason," and I came across the book The Law of Treason and Treason Trials in Medieval France by S.H. Cuttler. I know that King Lear isn't set in France, but the time period is about right. Here's what he has to say on the subject: "Not all the penalties [for treason] were capital: one could be put on the pillory or on the rack, or have one's eyes gouged out. Because treason could take many forms, the punishment could be made to fit the crime."

It sounds to me like eye-gouging was a fairly normal punishment - at least normal enough to come up in a completely unrelated, scholarly discussion on treason. In fact, for a traitor, Gloucester may have even gotten off easy - a courtesy from Cornwall, who had to have been devastated and betrayed. Granted, Gloucester actually wasn't a traitor, so the fact that he lost his eyes for a crime he didn't commit was hugely unfortunate. That being said, if Gloucester actually was a traitor, we the audience would feel that Cornwall was completely justified. We might actually be surprised that Cornwall didn't kill him.

 I suspect that Shakespeare would have been very aware of treason and its punishment. After all, he didn't exist in a vacuum, and the idea of treason was an especially big deal during the reigns of Henry VII though Elizabeth I. If historical accounts (and Phillipa Gregory novels) are to be believed, so-called traitors were getting hauled off to the Tower left and right.

Friday Blogging

Right, so blogging. I'll be honest: I don't feel like I have much to say.

For the final project, I'm in the Audio group. We're doing a cut-down audio version of Hamlet, which could be interesting. One of the things I was considering was the possibility of creating background noises and music ourselves. That might be too hefty of an undertaking, I'm not completely sure. It's just that creative commons music is invariably awful and generic, because it's created to work with any number of unrelated audio/visual projects. Usually, though, with classical music, the performance is what's copyrighted. Yo-Yo Ma wants you to buy his CDs, so he's not going to let people use his music for free, but anyone can perform Mozart if they want to. I don't know if it's in any way feasible, but I think that some a capella vocals in the background could lend a nice ambience.

To wrap up, I'm going to share a painfully embarrassing example of my own stunning voice-over work. I was like sixteen, and word got around that I had studied voice-over in conservatory, so I got this tremendous opportunity.

AV Club

Quick Note on the Final Project: I've been listening to a number of audio representations of Hamlet.  I've been looking at cut versions of Hamlet. There's not much online, but I'm trying to track down my script from when I was involved in a short production. I'm going to try to have some audio samples up on Friday, if I can figure out how Garage Band actually works.

Now, on to King Lear:

Edmund has been quite the hot topic lately, and I love it. He's such a deliciously complex character. Lear is a senile old bag, as well as kind of a jerk. In fact, I think that Lear is one of the worst literary parents I've ever read. If the majority of his kids grew up to be mean, selfish twits, it's probably because the he messed up somewhere. Gloucester is better, but not by much. He picked and chose which of his children to give affection to. However, his poor parenting gave rise to this amazing character. (Amazing from a literary standpoint. I wouldn't want to have lunch with him.)  I feel like I can relate to him more so than any other Shakespearean character we've read. I mean, he does some horrible things, and I know he's supposed to be the villain, but I find him incredibly sympathetic. I'd like to share his speech from Act I:


Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!


I love this speech. This speech is a banner for people who feel unwanted or disliked to rally around. I feel like everyone in the world can relate to this at some point in their lives. We all get rejected by people we want to love us. We all try to find legitimacy in who we are. Edmund claimss that he is a more legitimate son than Edgar, because there was love and passion present when Edmund was conceived. Edgar was the product of a passionless, but legal, marriage. Then there's this idea of custom. People do horrible, horrible things in the name of custom. Edmund was cast off and reviled from childhood because of custom. I say: Shame on everyone.

I hate the idea that some people deserve less than others because of factors they cannot control. I mean, in the 16th Century, there was this idea of divine right. Kings were kings because God appointed them to be so. There was the idea that you were born into the role that God appointed to you. I hate that idea. I think it's awful. Kids deserve to be loved by their parents, period the end. Gloucester might not have been an inherently bad guy, but he was not the ideal parent.

I tend to think that Lear was a terrible father. I mean, two of his three children turned out to be horrible, and one of them he banished for not sufficiently kissing up. I feel like good parents can turn out a bad seed or two, but if two out of three children grew up to be jerks (and the third is a boring Christ archetype introduced for the sake of the plot), it's probably because of less-than-satisfactory parenting.

Final Project?

Okay, so I don't know how many of you have things nailed down for final projects, but I would love to work on a theoretical production. I love doing costumes and hair and makeup design, and there's just so much that can be done as far as interesting interpretations go.

This is what I've come up with so far:
- The Tempest, a la Alice and Wonderland
- The Winter's Tale, a la Gone With the Wind
- The Comedy of Errors, set in Marseilles in the 1950s.

I'm open to other ideas. Would anyone be up for collaborating with me?

Intro To King Lear

I completely forgot about needing to blog today. Usually I try to write my posts the night before, but I was so excited about my last post (of which there will be more similar posts), that I forgot.

King Lear. I have not had the best of experiences with King Lear. I once saw a live production of King Lear in Cedar City. My mom and I had driven up from Phoenix, which is about an eight hour drive. That part was fine. I like roadtrips and my mom and I have gone on several together throughout the course of my time living with her. We saw several other plays before we saw King Lear (my favorite being Bernard Shaw's Candida. Love the Shaw).

Anyway. King Lear. It was in an amphitheater, which, under normal circumstances is fine. Unfortunately, in this case it was raining pretty heavily. It was also extremely cold. I also had to pee really, really badly, and I couldn't go anywhere until intermission, which they saved until after Act III. It. Was. Awful. But almost none of my bad experiences were the fault of the production. The actors were fine, as I recall. Lear was suitably senile, which is a quality I like in my Lears. I mean, he does so many asinine things throughout the course of the play that it's hard for me to imagine him not completely senile. He's like somebody's great-grandpa who isn't allowed to drive or use the toilet by himself, but for some reason, he's been tasked with running a kingdom. Questions all around.

Costumes, Costumes, Costumes

One of the things Professor Burton and I talked about in my self-assessment was finding more ways to explore Shakespeare creatively. Fun fact about me, I would love to move to LA right now and be a costume designer for a television show. Costume design, as you know, is really dictated by the needs of a production - you can't just walk into Neiman Marcus and buy six Nazi uniforms off the rack. So, for period costumes, or alternate world costumes, you have two choices: go to a costume house (and the quality can vary greatly), or design and make the costumes yourself. For modern productions, the costume designer will often go out and purchase a bunch of individual pieces of clothing to turn into outfits. Especially on TV (in movies as well, but not as consistently), characters often have signature pieces that they wear over and over again. Buffy had a necklace and Spike had his duster. Rick Castle has purple shirts. Detective Stabler has sleeveless undershirts. These are constant motifs that the costume designer chooses to include to say something about the character.

What am I getting at with this? Two things. One, I would like to be a costume designer, so if anyone knows anyone, let me know. Secondly, I've taken the initiative to design some costumes for some dream productions. I've put together costumes for The Winter's Tale, and for The Taming of the Shrew. I only did two key characters from each (I'm not made of time and no one is paying me for this - YET), but if you guys will bear with me, I'll walk you through the concepts for each show. This is kind of long (AGAIN), so I'm sorry, but I think it's at least one of my more interesting posts. Oh, and I should mention, these are my dream productions where I have no budgetary constraints whatsoever.

Midterm Evaluation

This is going to be a long one, I can feel it already.

1. How Have I Gained Shakespeare Literacy?
I've read all of the assigned plays, including a couple that I was entirely unfamiliar with. With the help of my group, I explored themes and analyzed characters in ways that I would have never considered, if left to my own devices.

2. How Have I Analyzed Shakespeare Critically?
I think I've done a relatively good job with the analysis I've done. If you look back on previous blog posts, you'll probably see that I've focused on the characters, and how the characters function within the constraints of the plot. I tried to look at these plays as I would any other piece of literature, and not put it on a big pedestal because it's Shakespeare. I'm coming to the conclusion that Shakespeare didn't view his characters as real people, but as vehicles to further the plot to his liking. Additionally, I spent a lot of time connecting Shakespearean text to modern social issues.

3. How Have I Engaged Shakespeare Creatively?
I saw two live productions: one good, and one really so-so. I connected the things I saw to my own understandings of the play, as well as my expectations for decent theatre. There's this interesting idea that permeates through classical performance of any kind: if you stand really still and talk really loudly and really slowly, then it's powerful, and the audience will be moved through the power of your words. I am here to tell you that is not the case at all. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Theatre is a visual medium, which means you can't neglect the visual aspect of performance.

I also watched 10 Things I Hate About You, a modern incarnation of The Taming of the Shrew. I felt it was a really good adaptation for several reasons. It made Shakespeare accessible to a younger, modern audience. It maintained the plot while removing some of the themes that wouldn't be acceptable to a modern audience. It stayed true to the intended comedic feel without alienating viewers.

4. How Have I Shared Shakespeare Meaningfully?
Well, I blog. I blog a lot. I've also had a number of really productive and insightful conversations with my group. Outside of class, I've spent a lot of time talking to my husband about what I'm learning. Through Facebook, I connected with other family members and friends, and was able to engage in a really great dialog about social issues, connected through Shakespeare. Through GroupReads, I was able to converse with people outside of my immediate circle about Shakespeare, and was able to gain new perspectives.

Self Directed Learning:
Well, again, I blog a lot. I also write a lot of blog comments, in an attempt to contribute to the conversation. I spend a lot of time discussing social issues as introduced by Shakespeare's themes. I spent a lot of time trying to research the background of each play, so I could understand the themes and issues that would have affected Shakespearean viewers. For example, it was really helpful to know that Love's Labour's Lost was written for a group of barristers, because barristers would have been well-educated and would have been more likely to enjoy the hyperintellecualization of the play.
I don't expressly know how a person can measure one's own learning. That being said, I think I've done a good job of documenting the questions I want to explore, figuring out an answer (even if it's not the right answer), and coming back to report. I've utilized web resources like Wikipedia and Sparknotes to give me context, and I've shared my thoughts with other well-informed people.

Collaborative and Social Learning
I think that Kellan and Melanie have helped me a lot. They're very consistent in their blogging, and they always have interesting things to say. It's clear that they are really reading and critically thinking about each play that we're assigned. I think our group is generally working pretty well together, although some of us have experienced some technical difficulties with the blogging that have made things more difficult.

I've already spoken pretty extensively about how I'm involving others outside of class, but I'll do a quick recap: I talk to my husband about what I'm reading and learning all the time. I've connected with other family members and friends on Facebook. I wrote my own Goodreads review and commented on other reviews.

Looking Ahead
I feel like I've met the learning outcomes insofar as that's possible at this point. I have a couple of ideas for my final project. The one I'm most passionate about is designing a dream production. I want to design the costumes, and maybe someone could do the set, and someone else could do the hair and makeup, since we're supposed to be collaborating. Then, to share globally, we could post our designs on DeviantArt.

Was There A Two-Drink Minimum No One Told Me About?

Going to see The Tempest was, at best, an incredibly questionable experience. This play had a serious problem. That problem was the directing. When I first saw the set, I was very excited. The set was amazing. Unfortunately, the set was just about the only amazing thing about the production. The acting was incredibly mediocre. I felt like I was watching a bunch of teenagers who had never done Shakespeare before, not seasoned professionals with years of Equity work under their belts. They should have been amazing. The actress who played Ariel was the only remotely interesting person in the cast, and she wasn't on stage enough to make up for the mind-numbing bore that was the rest of the show.

The blocking (stage movement) was SO BORING. Anyone delivering a long soliloquy just stood there and did took some noncommittal shuffling steps back and forth. I mean, performing Shakespeare should be so freeing! There are no stage directions! You can do whatever you want! The world is your oyster! This play is so exciting and exuberant. You could do practically anything, so why the horrible boring blocking? If I was just interested in the words, I'd buy an audiobook. Theatre is a visual medium. Thus, when I go to the theatre, I expect visual stimulus.

I feel like this entire production just stopped short of its potential. I could see where they were going, but I don't think they took it far enough. They didn't utilize the space, I don't think they successfully portrayed the more subtle relationships between the characters (namely Prospero and Ariel), the costumes were too subtle. Caliban's acting, also, was incredibly inconsistent. Sometimes he crouched, sometimes he didn't. The fact that he ever kneeled at all did not fit with the crouchy, semi-crablike physicality he was trying to create. Sometimes he had a voice affectation, sometimes he didn't. I was watching to see if it changed when he felt safer or more powerful, but it was just spotty and inconsistent across the board.

Also, not a single actor could pronounce the word "Milan" correctly. Milan is a real place. It's currently the second-largest city in Italy, and there's a specific way to pronounce it in English. Mihl-ahn. Not Millin. Had no one in the entire cast or crew ever heard of Milan Fashion Week? The La Scala Opera House? The Italian Renaissance? No? Just me? Okay.

People kept laughing at the "jokes," and I don't understand why. Per the title of this post, I feel like I was supposed to have had a few drinks before I entered the theatre. Was this play the Shakespeare equivalent of a crappy comedy club? Was this like seeing the Shakespeare version of Andy Dick standup? Although if I were watching Andy Dick, there would be a decent chance of roller skates and neon hot pants, and that at least would have been visually interesting.

Macbeth, Macbeth!

So, I just got home from watching Macbeth at the Castle Amphitheater, and I wanted to blog about it before I forget all my pertinent thoughts. It was hugely enjoyable, and it turns out that the guy who played Macbeth is one of my husband's old friends. I think he enjoyed the play more than I did, for that reason.

Okay, so, the production: I loved the amount of audience participation. We as the audience were encouraged to be vocal during the performance. I overheard one of the actors saying the less the audience participated, the harder they had to work. I really feel like it added quite a bit to the production, because I wasn't just sitting there watching the actors have fun. I was able to participate in the fun.

There were no set-pieces at all. It was just a blank stage with a couple of ladders and a scrim in the back. The actors were responsible for coming up with their own costumes and props, so it was something of a hodge-podge, but I didn't mind. The whole production had a really organic feel to it, which I really enjoyed. It didn't feel like your average Shakespeare production, where old people stand on stage and slowly recite monologues, because they think that talking slow means talking powerfully. It was just a bunch of young, vibrant people playing around and having fun and allowing the audience to share the fun with them.

Social and Global Networking

As assigned, I discussed The Taming of the Shrew on a local level, with my friends, and on a global level for all the internet to see. This post is kind of a long one, so brace yourselves.

I created a note on Facebook, where I outlined my thoughts about the gender war in The Taming of the Shrew and asked for input. I honestly represented my opinion, such as they are. That being said, I'm well-aware that I often get stuck up on my high horse, ranting and raving about things. As such, I try to get other people to give me some perspective, to see if I'm justified in feeling the way that I do, or if I need to calm down a little bit. I'll post the responses I got (there are only three - most people just clicked the "Like" button), in their unedited entireties:

Questions of Character

Prospero: God-Like Figure or Egomaniacal Dictator?

Caliban: Evil By Nature or Victim of a Crappy Childhood?

Ariel: Holy Spirit or Indentured Servant? 

I'm not 100% sure why Satan is the Predalien.

The answer to all of these is the same, I think. It depends on whether we're viewing the play as a metaphor or whether we're viewing these characters as real people. I would never give an actual human being God-like power and expect him to make the choices that are legitimately best for the masses. I would expect that human being to do things that are best for himself. I would, however, be comfortable with an all-powerful, benevolent God.

Further, I don't believe that anyone is born evil. I think that people are born selfish, and we have to learn how to be honest and selfless, but I don't think that anyone is born purely evil. I have a hard time buying into movies like The Omen or Rosemary's Baby for that reason. For the metaphor in the play to work, however, there needs to be a Satan figure.

I don't know if anyone has read Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens. It's one of my favorite books, and it deals with the end of the world. One of the primary characters is called Adam, and he is the antichrist. He was supposed to be raised by Satan's minions, but due to an accidental mix-up at the hospital, he ends up in a completely normal human family. Because of his up-bringing, he ends up as a completely normal twelve year old boy (who happens to have the powers of Hell at his disposal, but he doesn't know that).

My point is that I sincerely doubt that Caliban would have been evil, no matter what his inherent nature, if he had experienced a semi-normal upbringing.

I don't fully understand what's going on with Ariel. I don't fully understand why he's hanging out with Prospero and doing his bidding. Again, if we're looking at the metaphor, it makes perfect sense that the God character would have a Holy Spirit character as a companion. If we're looking it like these are real people, I think it's kind of questionable for Prospero to be keeping Ariel hostage.

This Took a Turn for the Uncomfortably Serious

Per instruction, I've been attempting to have discussions with my peers about the issues within The Taming of the Shrew. Mostly, my peers amount to my husband, but we're having a double-date tonight and maybe I'll try to bring it up then. I expect that it will make the other couple extremely uncomfortable as Nate and I rant and rave about the unequal treatment of women within literature and the media (ever read The Woman in White? Ridiculously misogynistic).

I have a hard time talking about women's issues with people - I tend to come on too strong, and it freaks lots of people out (especially around here, where "feminist" seems to be a dirty word to a lot of people). I've been trying, though. It's hard for me not to get onto my bra-burning high horse when I talk about the treatment of women in popular culture (that, and the MPAA just really get me a-ranting. Seriously, can we talk about how flawed the movie-rating system is in this country? Something else to make the other couple uncomfortable).

Moving on: I did something of a textual analysis last week, but what the hey, I'll do some more. I'm going to analyze the ways that Petruchio can be considered verbally or emotionally abusive toward Kate.

The Importance Of Gender

I know I'm technically supposed to be blogging on Wednesdays and Fridays, but I don't get up early enough on Wednesdays or Fridays to have a post up by nine.

Anyway, I want to talk about the character of Ariel. Ariel is kind of fairy-like, kind of like the little ball of light that follows you around in Legend of Zelda. Ariel's gender has also been the subject of hotly-contested debate for a very long time.

Traditionally, Ariel is viewed as a male character. He's referred to with male pronouns (all of twice in the entire play), but the part is commonly played by women. I've heard people posit that this might be because more male characters = fewer straw wigs, since women weren't allowed to be actors. From my days at the Southwest Shakespeare conservatory, I've heard that women commonly use Ariel's monologues for auditions.  There are so few female parts in most of Shakespeare's plays, so you kind of have to take what you can get.

So, open question: Does the character of Ariel significantly change when his/her gender changes? Does it make a difference? I honestly can't decide. I mean, Ariel is kind of sexless regardless of who plays the character, but water/arial elements tend to have a more feminine quality to them. Also, in our society, Ariel is an exclusively female name. As such, I tend to think of Ariel as a female, but I'm open to other ideas.

I Am Conflicted

I just want to state for the record that I did, in fact, read The Taming of the Shrew and watch Ten Things I Hate About You. The Taming of the Shrew with Elizabeth Taylor is proving more difficult to track down than I anticipated. Netflix has it, but Nate and I only just got around to watching Lars and the Real Girl yesterday (and I heartily recommend it, by the way. Don't be scared off by the way the plot sounds), and it's still sitting on our coffee table, waiting to be mailed. The local Blockbuster doesn't have it, probably because it didn't come out in the past ten years or heavily feature explosions or women in bikinis.

I liked the play, generally. I think. I don't know. I feel like I should like it. Everyone else likes it. I've been trying to find some feminist interpretations, where I can like it and still retain my self-respect. The thing is, it's aggressively anti-woman. 10 Things I Hate About You toned it down and made it about the relationship between the Petruchio character and the Katherina character more about how all human beings, regardless of gender, need emotionally fulfilling relationships in their lives. That's a moral I can get behind, and Kat didn't have to sacrifice her individual identity to get there. She didn't change the way she dressed or the way she talked and she didn't suddenly start putting up with people's crap. She just let her guard down enough to have a legitimate emotional connection with another person, and I would say that the gender of the other person was, in this situation, largely irrelevant.

Further, the father character (an OB-GYN) was motivated by fear that his daughters would get into trouble if they were allowed to date before they were ready, whatever that means. He wasn't on a power trip, the way Baptista was. He was a single father afraid he couldn't protect his children, and I completely respect that.

According to the ever-infallible Wikipedia, there's some controversy regarding the way the play is supposed to be read. Apparently some people think that Shakespeare didn't mean what he was saying (that women should submit themselves to men), and thus did not say it at all. Which...makes no sense. You can't write a book about how great it is to be a white supremacist and then turn around and claim that you didn't mean it, so the theme of the book is the opposite of what you wrote.

I tend to think that the people who hold that theory are probably people who just want to believe that Shakespeare was a great person who believed in social equality and was a paragon of moral goodness (in which case, they probably ignore the rumors that Shakespeare was having an extramarital affair with a teenage boy). The more I'm exposed to Shakespeare, the less I like him.

Rhetoric Is Overrated

I think I've decided why I'm not connecting to Love's Labour's Lost. It's contrived. It is contrived and boring and inauthentic. By inauthentic, I mean that the characters don't seem to be fully fleshed out, they don't tend to have much character development, and their motives are stale. There's nothing real about them.

Contrast these characters with Hamlet. Hamlet had a constant, hugely complex inner monologue through the duration of the play, regardless of the actor's or director's interpretation. The inner monologues for these characters can be summed up as follows:

Men: "I wanna get laid, I wanna get laid, I wanna get laid, I wanna get laid. But I don't want to look stupid."
Women: "I wanna get laid, but I'm playing hard to get."

And that's it, with maybe a couple exceptions. The plot is like a maze, preventing stale, wooden characters from getting laid via artificial obstacles.

It seems to me that this play is just an excuse for Shakespeare to show off how clever he could be. It's not about the characters or the plot or anything that would make a compelling story - it's Shakespeare showing off his intellect.

Let's take the scene in act V between Sir Nathaniel and Holofernes, where they're speaking Latin for no apparent reason. It does nothing to further the plot or develop the characters, it's more like "HEY EVERYBODY I CAN SPEAK LATIN ISN'T THAT COOL DON'T I LOOK SMART BECAUSE I CAN SPEAK LATIN." In this case, Shakespeare is Dwight Shrute, and we the audience are people who don't really care about beet farming or martial arts or paper sales. Only Shakespeare isn't as funny.

A Witty Palaver?

Once again, I want to discuss The Taming of the Shrew. The Taming of the Shrew is famed for its witty conversations, especially between Kate and Petruchio. Some of them are delightful. Others, not so much.

Honestly, there are portions of it that kind of make me mad. Let's take, for example, this portion from Act II:

"Thou must be married to no man but me,
For I am he am born to tame you, Kate,
And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate
Conformable as other household Kates."

Tyler Shields Photography

That's Petruchio speaking, as is probably obvious. Now, the wildcat/wild Kate pun aside, quotes like this make me fume. I know that this play was written before gender equality was invented, but as a modern woman I can't help but be upset by this. Firstly, Petruchio and Kate's father completely remove the issue of consent. Just prior to this, Petruchio basically says "We're getting married whether you like it or not. Your dad already ponied up the dowry, and it's happening regardless of your personal feelings." 


("Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented
That you shall be my wife, your dowry ‘greed on,And will you, nill you, I will marry you.")


 Now, I know that even the United States government didn't recognize marital rape as a crime until the 1990's, but what about that is supposed to make me feel like this is a positive, non-abusive relationship? I'm having a hard time differentiating this sort of forced marriage from sex slavery. 


Secondly, I really resent the idea that women who don't just laugh at men's jokes and want to put out need to be "tamed." I had a boyfriend in high school who told me that I was intimidating because "you're too smart." Women do not exist to feed men's egos and fuel their sex drives. This play has, thus far, completely ignored the validity of women having identities independent from the men in their lives.


Thirdly, I think the idea that a woman needs to be barefoot and pregnant and cooking in the kitchen to fulfill her "womanly duties" is a load of crap. I hate the idea of a woman being compelled to conform to all of the brainless breeders who want nothing more than to pop out babies and make sandwiches for the rest of their lives. Now, if you want to have a bunch of kids, or you want to be a stay at home mother, I think that's a perfectly valid option. I don't think that anyone should be forced into that lifestyle who doesn't actively desire it. 

If I be waspish, best beware my sting.

For my individual play, I'm reading The Taming of the Shrew. I'm pretty excited, if only because it inspired one of my favorite movies of all time.

The Plot: A Paduan lord, Baptista, decrees that his younger, more attractive, more likable, more airheaded daughter Bianca cannot get married to one of her many suitors until her older, angrier, presumably less-attractive, but also less airheaded daughter Katherina gets married. Unfortunately, no one wants to marry her. Some Italian guy named Petruchio comes to town and is immediately recruited by not one, but two of Bianca's suitors to please, for the love of God, take Katherina off the market. Naturally, hilarity and possible gender discrimination ensue.

My question for the duration of the play, and upon which I will be focusing: The Taming of the Shrew is incredibly sexist. True or False?

Now, as of this moment, I think the answer is very obviously and overwhelmingly true. However, I've already had one discussion about it with someone who disagrees (and a female someone, no less), so I will try to consider both sides of the argument.

I'm seriously considering hosting a viewing party for two fantastic film adaptations. One stars the lovely and glamorous Elizabeth Taylor (I still get sad when I remember she's dead), and the other, the somewhat forgettable Julia Stiles. I think that Julia Stiles is so basic, and I don't understand why she was cast in not one, but TWO Shakespearean adaptations. But I digress.

I expect that we'll be dealing with themes of power, namely, who holds the power in a romantic relationship and why it's important, as well as themes of love. Based on what I know at this point, I have a hard time believing that the relationship between Katherina and Petruchio could be legitimate or long-lasting. As I delve deeper into the characters, I hope to find out.

I'm very excited to look at this from a performance perspective as well. I plan on utilizing the book Speak the Speech!, a book of Shakespearean monologues put in context of the events of the play and possible character motivation. I feel I will be able to easily identify with Katherina, but I question how well I'll be able to understand Bianca or most (if not all) of the male characters. 

I See How This Is Going

I'll be honest. I'm having trouble deciding what I want to blog about at this juncture. I confess, I'm not gripped by Love's Labour's Lost quite yet.

We talked about the tradition of monasticism that may have inspired some of the introductory events in Love's Labour's Lost. People sequester themselves away from the world for a period of time and focus on God and learning. My understanding, however, was that joining a monastery was generally optional.

I find myself wondering what motivated Ferdinand to decide that he didn't want any women near his court for a three year period. Like, none at all. No one in his court is even allowed to talk to women. This seems so mind-bogglingly stupid that I can't understand why he would do this. Bad breakup? I've heard that you should take at least fifty percent of the time you were in the relationship to get over it. Maybe he was in a six-year relationship that went south, and he wants to spend the next three years eating ice cream and watching Beaches (that's what guys do after breakups, right?). Maybe he's not sure he likes women and he doesn't want people asking him why he isn't dating. Maybe his ex was super clingy and now he just wants some bro-time, and plans on spending the next three years eating the 16th century equivalent of buffalo wings and watching the 16th century equivalent of Anchorman (Turkey legs and bear baiting?). Who can say?

From Left To Right: Biron, Ferdinand, Longaville, Dumain

Quite frankly, I can't really think of any reason a straight guy would choose to only hang out with dudes.   This may have preceded the era of cross-gender platonic friendships, but it seems like it would get rull lame, rull fast.

The Magical Qualities of Music

We spent a good deal of class discussing the role music plays in a staged production. I didn't see The Winter's Tale this weekend, so I can't say whether that particular production used music well. I can, however, cite an example of music NOT being used well.

I once saw a high school production of Romeo and Juliet. They decided to modernize it, which is fine. I think they were going for a Leo Dicaprio/ Claire Danes kind of vibe, and it didn't quite get there. I mean, everyone on stage was like sixteen and had no idea what they were saying. They used music pretty extensively throughout the show, which, in theory, is fine. Unfortunately, they only used one song.

This was the ONLY song they used. Literally the only one. Capulet's Party? Crawling. Marriage scene? Crawling. Mercutio got killed? Crawling. They also played it over their horribly long scene changes, and it was almost never appropriate for what was happening.

I love ambient music for a stage play, and I think it can add a lot. Unfortunately, it can also be terribly, terribly distracting if not done well.

Will It Last?

My question for today is: Will Perdita and Florizel's relationship last beyond the play? When the play closes, they're happy and married and everyone is alive and everything is wonderful, but can it stay that way?

 OR 

I tend to think...probably not. Firstly, their entire courtship was based on a lie. Florizel spent the whole time pretending to be someone he wasn't. Regardless of how much he purported to care for her, Florizel still spent their entire relationship lying to Perdita about who he was. How legitimate a relationship can it be if one party doesn't feel the need to be truthful with the other? How long until they realize they don't trust each other?

Secondly, how is Perdita going to adjust to life as royalty? As far as she knew, she was just some country girl who had to shear sheep and make butter. Living as a princess probably entails a greater degree of socioeconomic comfort, but there are a huge number of other responsibilities. It's been speculated that that's what ultimately got to Princess Diana - she was a lovely, intelligent girl, but she hadn't been brought up to know how a princess and future Queen of England should act, and she was crushed by the pressure.

Thirdly, how much is their relationship based on physical attraction and idealization of one another's characters? I didn't spend a ton of time looking, but I didn't see anything about how much they enjoy each other's personalities. Florizel spends a decent amont of time calling Perdita "fair" and "queenly," but that doesn't mean that he'll want to hang out with her when she gets old and fat. Which she will. Or she'll get pregnant and have stretch marks and be too tired to want to have sex. Or he'll see her in the morning without her makeup and realize she's not as young as she was. Or she'll move in with him only to find that he leaves his dirty underwear on the floor and wet towels on the bed and he lets himself go because there's no one to impress.

Fun fact: My husband has gained about thirty pounds in the fourteen months we've been married. It happens. He was horribly underweight when we first got together, but still. He walks around in his underwear and flosses his teeth while we're watching TV, and it is kind of off-putting. If I had just married him because I thought he was attractive and I thought he was some fantasy man, we would probably be divorced by now. I know it's a cliche, but my husband really is my best friend. If we weren't married, we'd still hang out all the time. We like being around each other even when we're not at our best.

When you get married, you have to be able to make a life. A life is not a fantasy. Bad things happen. Your spouse, who you love regardless, does gross or annoying things. Work and school and life get stressful, and you are crabby sometimes. Sometimes you don't handle things well. You'll both be sick but have to go to work anyway. You'll have financial problems. Your spouse should be there to pick up the slack and creatively problem-solve and deal with your personal brand of crazy. I don't believe that Perdita and Florizel are prepared for what married life is really like.

Comedy and Kids Will be Kids

I know there's been a lot of upheaval about the genre of The Winter's Tale. I don't necessarily want to get into that right now, except to say that I think it is, at it's heart, basically a comedy. Comedy didn't always mean humorous - it's traditional theatrical meaning was simply "it has a happy ending." Which The Winter's Tale does. So, I'm using it as an excuse to post this video.

This is from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Abridged. I used to own it, but I lent my copy to someone else and he never gave it back.

Now, I want to switch gears briefly and talk about Florizel. One of my group members raised the question "Why didn't he just tell his dad about Perdita? His dad would have been cool with it." I don't know what Shakespeare was thinking, but it seems so obvious to me because I was Florizel.

When I was a teenager, it was a time. I was always having these big dramatic problems and everything was the end of the world. Some things were actually very serious - I struggled with depression for about three years before I told my mother and got help for it. It seems really obvious now for someone to say "Well, why didn't you just tell her? She was cool with it." In my crazy, emotional teenage mind, I thought that there was no way she'd understand what I was going through. I thought she'd be disappointed. I thought she'd be angry. I thought she'd think I was stupid or weak.

It seems likely to me that Florizel had thought his entire life that he was going to marry a princess and be king of the country, which is huge, burdensome responsibility. In some ways, he may have felt that any element of choice about his life had been taken away from him. Then, he meets this girl and she's awesome and he loves her immediately, but she's not a princess. As far as he knows, she's just some girl. By choosing her, he may have felt like he was ruining all the plans. When you're young, everything is heightened, and fear of losing something important drives people to do crazy things all the time. It seems to me that he didn't tell his dad because Florizel didn't want to risk anyone getting in the way and messing it up.

Elements of Production

I was a little torn about what to blog about today. I think I want to focus on aspects of production - what I would do with The Winter's Tale if I were the director. I'll happily admit that The Winter's Tale wouldn't be my first choice, but I like to think that I could be creative. 

I'm aware that this is an image from Spamalot,
but that's more or less where this is going.

The first aspect to consider is, of course, the setting. I don't think The Winter's Tale lends itself to interesting adaptations as much as some of Shakespeare's other plays, but I think I would go with an Arthurian England motif. Not quite on the nose, but not so far removed that things wouldn't make sense. I love the idea of green, rolling hills and thatched cottages. It might be hard to execute, but we're just brainstorming.

The second thing I thought about was costuming. Actually, to be honest, I thought about costumes first because, in my opinion, the costumes are the best thing about any show. For a long time, I dreamed of becoming a professional costume designer for stage and film, so it's something I've spent a lot of time thinking about.

In an ideal world, I would have sat down and drawn out all of my costume ideas for the major characters, but unfortunately, this isn't my only class. So, instead, for the men's costumes I will point you toward the picture above, and I've found a Butterick pattern that more or less exemplifies what I would do for the ladies. I was originally thinking that I wanted Perdita in kind of a German Oktoberfest kind of dress with tons of cleavage, but I don't know if that fits the setting. But in my mind, shepherdesses are all dressed like they've come from Oktoberfest.

The third thing I considered was the lighting, but that's too boring and technical for me to want to discuss here. In a nutshell, darker lighting when things are going bad, and brighter lighting when things are going good. The first three acts would be pretty dark, and then the lights would come up slowly as Time gives his/her big speech.

I really love Time as a character, even though his/her part is so brief. I think, in my own production, I would try to expand Time's role somewhat and try to make the impression that Time is present for everything that's happening. I don't know how I would do that without it being hokey, but it's something I would try to work out. I think, perhaps, I would cast Time as a woman and have her in the background in as many scenes as I could sneak her into. I don't want her to be overt, I just want her to be there.

Sir, Spare Your Threats

I'm still on a pro-Hermione kick, and, to be honest, probably will continue to be. It's probably partly because she's so easy to sympathize with - she did nothing wrong, but her name is dragged through the mud

I think it's interesting, in contrast to Hamlet, how there's so little ambiguity in the character's motivations. In Hamlet, it was almost impossible to tell who was being sincere and who wasn't at any given time. That's not the case here. It seems like almost everyone is being sincere almost all the time. Leontes sincerely thinks that Hermione cheated on him with Polixenes. Hermione is sincere in her denial and her grief. There's a pureness to the characters that I don't think existed in Hamlet.

It makes for a very interesting dynamic. In Hamlet, everyone was running around deceiving everyone else. You, as the reader or the audience member, knew that you couldn't trust anyone. In The Winter's Tale, you know that people are going to act on their convictions, but their convictions might be crazy.

Hermione, Hermione

Hermione from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale is one of my favorite characters in all of literary history. Shakespeare doesn't often create fully fleshed-out female characters, but Hermione is awesome. She's amazingly steadfast and strong. I think it's fascinating when she's contrasted with Leontes. Leontes is her perfect foil: the second a seed of doubt was planted in his head, he turned on his wife.

The question is often raised as to whether Shakespeare was a misogynist. I don't know whether he was or not. It's true that there are few female characters in his work, but we have to consider the fact that women weren't legally allowed to act on stage. The lack of female characters could have been logistical, as much as anything else.

Then, of course, there's the issue of the culture of the time. It's true that England had a female monarch ruling single-handedly, but there was quite a bit of turmoil on that subject. Most people, including most women, still genuinely believed that women were inferior and subordinate to men, and that men were set above women by God. Misogyny is a disgusting and horrible thing, but that was the world at the time. I don't think it was right, but that was the culture Shakespeare lived in.

In general, I think that most writers have trouble writing about their opposite gender. Men can write about men, and women can write about women, but I think that things tend to get dicey when men try to write female characters or women try to write male characters. Shakespeare wasn't a woman. He could only guess what being a woman is actually like. He knew women, and he probably liked some women, but that doesn't mean that he understood why women of his age did the things they did.

On the other hand, there are some amazing women in Shakespeare's writing. Some of them, like Catherine from the Taming of the Shrew, got a bad rap of being un-womanish, but others, like Hermione, were fascinating and complex portraits of life as a woman. Interestingly, Hermione embodies some traditionally "masculine" characteristics - she's brave, she's tough, and she's insanely loyal. I think her characterization adds so much to the play as a whole.



Also, The Winter's Tale has the distinction of having a man eaten by a bear for no discernable reason, so that's exciting.

This is Hamlet We're Talking About Here, Hamlet!

I love Hamlet. I know it's cliche, but I really, really love Hamlet.

As previously mentioned, I tend to look at Shakespeare through an actor's lens. With that in mind, I'm going to share a theory that a friend of mine put forward as her PhD thesis in theatre acting:

Hamlet should never be performed. Hamlet should be bound up and venerated and kept forever, but it should never be performed. The idea is that Hamlet has so much inner turmoil that no actor would be able to adequately perform it without losing his mind. I don't completely agree, but I can certainly see her point. I never got to read her thesis, but I can come up with several arguments that support it.

It was brought up in class today where the character separates from the actor. In my mind, There isn't much of a distinction. The characters we play are parts of us, or we would not be able to play them. The best actors do one of two things: they use who they are to play the character, or they turn the character into who they are.

In the first case, there is almost no one who has enough negative life experience to adequately play Hamlet in the Meisner technique. Most people simply do not have enough to draw on to manufacture the emotions that Hamlet experiences. I mean, let's examine this for a second: His father has been murdered, probably by his uncle. His mother is in an incestuous relationship with said uncle. He is having spectres appear to him, leading him to wonder if he's being led down the right path, whether he's being deceived by a devil, or whether he's losing his mind altogether. His love life is completely messed up, and he makes it worse by accidentally killing his girlfriend's dad. That girlfriend then goes on to kill herself as a direct result of his actions. Also, he's inheriting a country that is at risk of war. He's not sure whether to kill himself, kill his uncle, or whether to kill anyone at all.

And these are only the issues explicitly brought up in the text. Never mind subtext, the actor's life-blood. I mean, what if Hamlet was also in love with his mother? Or Laertes? What if Hamlet knew that his mother's affair with his uncle started before his father was dead? What if Hamlet secretly hated his dad, adding even more confusion to his father's post-mortem cry for vengeance? There is not a person alive who has had a wall of crap like that fall upon him. I'd be pretty surprised if there was anyone who even came close.

Then, of course, there's the issue of whether Hamlet is actually saying what he means. Shakespeare uses verbal irony pretty extensively - there are any number of places where Hamlet could be sarcastic. Here's a passage from act I. What if Hamlet hated his father?

O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?
And shall I couple hell? Hold, hold, my heart!
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter. Yes, by Heaven!

If Hamlet is saying this sarcastically, it takes on a completely different meaning. Rather than telling his father how he plans to take on the task of vengeance out of love and respect, he is telling his father how much he hates him. He might seek revenge strictly out of sonly obligation (although hating your father and hating your uncle aren't mutually exclusive). I think we all know how much it sucks to do something for a parent that we don't want to do. I think most people are familiar with being guilt-tripped into something. If we look at this passage as sarcastic, the entire play takes on a completely different tone.

Is it really possible that one person is carrying around enough emotional baggage to really do Hamlet justice? If not, acting by experience is probably out.

If the actor were to embody Hamlet, he could end up dead or psychologically broken. One of the best examples of the danger of deep method acting is Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger was, by all accounts, a nice normal guy. He had a kid and friends and a life. In order to play the Joker successfully, he became the unhinged, sadistic, amoral character. He played the character beautifully, but I wonder if anyone thinks it was worth the consequences. In order to become the character, method actors bring upon themselves the traumas of their character's lives. They wear their character's clothes and sleep in their character's beds and speak in the character's voices. Rather than becoming the character, the character becomes them. By all accounts, that takes an enormous psychological toll.

I'm not saying that I agree that Hamlet should never be performed. I think most of us can relate to having a messed-up family or a messed-up love life. I don't think that the character needs to be taken as far as it's written. I can, however, see the potential danger in performing the role of Hamlet.

You could probably make the case that Hamlet is the most conflicted character in literary history. Usually, Shakespeare spreads the issues out among everybody, but it seems like all of the other characters in Hamlet have pretty clear motives and ambitions. They're surprisingly one-dimensional, if we adhere strictly to the text. Polonius is a nosy old man who wants to be actively involved in his children's lives. Ophelia does what she's told until she loses her mind. Gertrude is a slave to her desires. Claudius is a competent king, but an evil and ambitious man. It seems like Shakespeare reserved all the complexity in the play for Hamlet himself, and he may have gone somewhat overboard. It's certainly his magnum opus, but it makes for an extremely difficult performance.

Shakespeare in General

Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare. We meet again.

I have a hard time reading Shakespeare as literature. I think of Shakespeare from an actor's perspective - how his plays are meant to be performed. This is probably largely because most of the experience I've had with Shakespeare has been as an actor.

When I was sixteen, I was accepted into the Southwest Shakespeare Company's summer conservatory. It was the first year they had ever accepted anyone who wasn't college-age. This isn't indicative of my great talent so much as their desperation for bodies, but and it was all Shakespeare, all the time. It was a six-week, twelve credit crash course. Many of the teachers and affiliates referred to it as "Shakespeare Boot Camp," and they weren't exaggerating. We had classes from 8am to 6pm devoted to grammar, diction, movement, and performance, and it was all centered around the Bard.

That same summer, I was given the opportunity to play Helena in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The director chose to set the play in Haiti, and rather than the traditional interpretation, we interpreted the fairies as voodoo loa, and Oberon and Titania as voodoo deities.

The year after that, I was accepted into the New York Conservatory of Dramatic Arts summer program. It was somewhat less Shakespeare-intensive, but I did have a class devoted exclusively to Shakespearean diction. We spent the entire summer workshopping monologues until we could perform them with perfect diction.

Later that year, I was cast as Ophelia in a production of Hamlet. That was probably my favorite part in any play I've ever been involved in. I especially enjoyed Act V, Scene 1 where they bring in Ophelia's dead body. The man playing Laertes kept protesting that he didn't want to hug "creepy dead Cassie."

One of the fun things about Shakespeare, at least from an acting standpoint, is the complete lack of stage directions. Shakespeare indicates when people enter, when they exit, and when a bear chases them offstage. Other than that, directors and actors are free to move how they see fit. Some people see the lack of stage directions as frustrating or confining, but I find it very liberating. Shakespeare's writing, even his tragedies, are generally pretty whimsical. There is a freedom and an energy of purpose behind everything that he wrote. As such, performances should be vibrant with emotion and intent. Shakespeare shouldn't be stuffy or dry or boring or monotonous, because it wasn't written that way.