Looking through a New Lens

I’ve been watching, reading, thinking about, and collecting Shakespeare for years. But tonight I did something brand-spanking-new in my Shakespeare fan-girlishness:

I auditioned for a Shakespeare production!

Tragedy on Tragedy

It’s November 30th, which means only one more post to complete my NaBloPoMo pledge. Unfortunately, I’m not feeling particularly inspired. Instead, having finished reading King Lear and commenced watching the Eamonn Walker/Zoe Tapper Othello today, I am feeling bit on the verge of gutted.

And things haven’t even gone bad yet in Othello….

Classical Comics: Midsummer Night’s Dream

I’ve finally finished the second of the two graphic novel adaptations of Midsummer I checked out from the library: Classical Comics‘ “Original Text” version of the play.

That phrase “Original Text” is crucial, for it points to the way that this company takes a different approach to creating a Shakespearian on-ramp than Stone Arch Books did.

My Sweet Fool

Re-reading King Lear for the #ShakesMOOC has me very much aware of how long it’s been since I looked at this play. I know I read it senior year of high school, and it might have been included in my senior seminar in college. I know I haven’t looked at it since, because it did not feature in my graduate studies, nor has it been a play I’ve added to my “collection” as of yet.* So: best case scenario, it’s been 23 years since I looked at Lear; worst case, it’s been 27.**

And that’s a lot of time to forget lots of details.

How this has functioned for me mostly is characters, lines, events jogging my memory about a scene or two in advance.

For the Discerning Reader’s Christmas List

Mr. Mezzo and I have a shared Pinterest board called “Dear Santa,” where we park photos and links of things that we’d enjoy receiving as gifts, should some enterprising, computer-savvy elf be looking for ideas.

I know: how very postmodern consumerist of us!

Anyhow, anyone want to bet the expression on my Mr’s face if I were to add this to my online wish list?

A Bard for Every Age

(I’m still in medias res on all the source material for future posts I summarized back on Saturday. Ah, the tragic costs of having to attend to one’s job and family obligations!* But the obligations of NaBloPoMo continue through the end of the weekend, so I’ll be digging into the memory-banks tonight.)

I’m remembering a moment when I was very strongly reminded of how tempting it is for us to reverse engineer modern concepts of life onto historical figures — like the time I saw 20-some undergraduates get totally caught up in the mythology of Shakespeare in Love.

A King for Every Suit

(Yet another post inspired by #ShakesMOOC.) Our first class on Lear focused entirely on the complexities of 1.1, with Professor Ko spending time in his lecture exploring the ambiguities in motivation for both Lear and for Cordelia in this strange game of conditional love and inheritance that’s being played around the division of the map into separate territories.

Is Lear setting this game up as an expression of his tyrannical nature? Does it betray a sense of paternal insecurity? The onset of dementia?

Is Cordelia’s refusal to play along truly because she is so full of emotion and lacking in confident voice that she really “cannot heave [her] heart into [her] mouth” (1.1.93-94)?* Or is there more a tone of active rebellion against the game’s cruelty, a bit of a “fuck you” tone to things?**

When Lear disowns his youngest daughter, to what degree is he driven by hurt feelings and to what degree by anger?

So many choices.

Strange Magic

Choir rehearses tonight this week (I daresay the conductor was rightfully concerned that there would be way too many absences if he kept us scheduled for the busiest travel day of the year). So my usual Wednesday-night quick-and-dirty post will be happening tonight instead.

Verona Teens Texting

I have a number of halfway-things and thoughts that will eventually turn into posts. For example, I’ve begun re-reading King Lear for the ShakesMOOC, and I’m also about a third of the way through the second of those two Midsummer graphic novels I checked out from the library. And one of these weekends I’ll actually follow through on my vague plan to start regularly watching Shakespearean performances and films every week. But all of these ideas are only half-baked cookie dough. I have not yet begun watching relevant DVDs, I want to get to the end of the graphic novel before writing about it, and even though I’m not waiting till the end of Lear to write anything about it, I do want to get a bit further in and gather my thoughts a wee bit before taking it on. Tonight, I’m just following an idle thought that hit me last night as I was drifting off to sleep. I was remembering this “Facebook recap” of the Red Wedding episode of Game of Thrones (I’m assuming the episode has been out long enough that I don’t need to go overboard with spoiler warnings?), and I realized that there had to be some sort of analogous version of Romeo and Juliet somewhere out in the wild, wild web. Come on, it’s a perfect notion: young teenage love, the obsession with social media. What’s not to enjoy? So I went looking. As it turns out, there are (were?) several versions. But most of them seem to have expired.

A Dream of a Stone Arch

I grabbed 2 different graphic novel adaptations of Midsummer from the library recently. Lots of elements went into that decision — looking to make sure I have enough material to carry me through NaBloPoMo, being inspired by the concatenation of my comics and ShakesMOOC experiences, trying to gain new habits of seeing what resources my library card and Netflix subscription can get me, instead of always buying books and DVDs that catch my eye. Obviously, the atavistic shopping impulse that happened when I saw Brick Shakespeare shows I have some progress yet to make in that latter score, but hey: any step in the right direction is a good one, right?

Anyhow, both these books are due on Tuesday, so I wanted to make sure I could at least return one of them on time. So today, in addition to my “domestic duties” and beginning to read King Lear (our next ShakesMOOC play), I spent a bit of time looking through Stone Arch Books’ graphic novel adaptation of Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I’ll have more detailed discussion below the jump, but here’s the headline:

Now, that is how you do an on-ramp text.