Bard Talk: The Shakespeare Thread

Er, not quite sure what you're talking about there. Unfortunately, I hate to diminish your post, but you've just given me an excuse to post here again without doubleposting.

And I need to post here, because the decision of next semester's play by my school's group is quite frankly very interesting.

It's Othello. But not just any Othello...

...Steampunk Othello! No, seriously...our shows are guided by very particular visions and in this one, the idea is that Othello is set apart because everyone but him has all sorts of clockwork cybernetic enhancements and he's just an ordinary guy. Interesting take...hope it doesn't turn out to be totally stupid. I know one of the directors somewhat well, actually.

Oh, instead of being another race. That's actually a pretty cool idea.

^^^^^ I imagine it would look really good in business suits, given all the money and betrayal involved. The version I saw had a really cool visual theme of the 'friends' being ravens, scavenging from Timon. they even had a massive net over the theatre (being open-air) on which the 'ravens' could 'fly'.

^^ Steampunk Othello... I never thought I'd see or hear anything like that. Sounds cool, though.

I'm re-reading Romeo & Juliet for an analysis, and have only recently noticed exactly how good Shakespeare is. On my third read-through I realised a subtle Call-Back in Lord Capulet's words (his speech about disowning Juliet includes the line '...for by my soul I'll ne'er acknowledge thee!' and his words upon finding her dead includes 'my soul, my soul and not my child!') I have no idea why exactly, but realising that made me respect his writings on a whole new level.

edited 24th Dec '10 1:29:47 PM by MadeOfAxes

Out of curiosity, has anyone seen the David Tennant-Patrick Stewart version of Hamlet? I snagged the movie version (and just rewatched most of it but it's 3 in the morning so I haven't finished it...oops), but I dearly wish I could have seen the real RSC production. Alas, that would require plane tickets and money that I do not have.

Steampunk Othello sounds FASCINATING. Please let us know how it works out!

I remember going to see Twelfth Night in my high school senior year. They updated the setting to the Jazz Age, but it actually worked quite well. The girl who played the Fool absolutely stole the show, as did the chap laying Toby. Good stuff. Sadly, I was never in an English class that particularly appreciated Shakespeare. Yay for wooden reading of lines with all the emoting of a crumpled notecard. Although (also in senior year) I did get to snark that if Romeo and Juliet hadn't killed themselves, they probably would've broken up soon after because they would've realized they knew pretty much nothing about each other and had absolutely nothing in common. I'm sure that's an exaggeration, but it did make my teacher laugh.

Yeah, I got that feeling as well. Romeo is impulsive and easily infatuated, and Juliet has no idea what love is, it's not suprising they'd fall in 'love' so easily and shallowly.

Also, I recieved a copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, and am beginning to read some of it.

So, the directors of Steamthello (as we're calling it) were happy to hear that people on the internet liked their idea. The show has been cast and is now in initial rehearsals. At an open mic last Saturday, I got to see a demo of the makeup for...er...Bianca, I think. It was impressive, but didn't exactly seem very steampunk or clockwork to me. Oh well, I'm sure things will turn out fine in the end. We've got one of our current best male leads for Othello (no, he's not black, that's not the point in our setting) and cross-cast Iago (the actress in question isn't that feminine for what it's worth...did a great job as Autolycus in Winter's Tale last semester), hardly unusual for us considering that we did the same for nearly every lead in Julius Caesar except for the title character, and the Benvolio/Mercutio/Tybalt trio in Romeo and Juliet, and...yeah, we do it a lot. I'd say we got the perfect Desdemona, unless you never imagined her as blonde and pale, but this isn't exactly the original setting, so it's a bit less unconventional. And beyond that I don't know much about the cast except that I believe we got a rather badass guy who normally is on the crew to actually act this time.

Also, I tentatively agreed to help photograph or film a day of "guerilla Shakespeare" around Boston, in which a bunch of our actors will go around the city on public transportation, stop by public spaces, and spontaneously do famous scenes. This from a group whose previous crowning achievement in that regard was when that girl-who-played-Caliban+Hamlet+Tybalt+Brutus got up on an IHOP table in the middle of the night and started monologuing at full force, earning the cheers of fellow patrons and a bit of a reprimand from a cop who happened to be there. Or so I heard. If I already told that story somewhere in the thread, I'm sorry. I think you can tell by now that I rather admire that girl and wish I had been at that IHOP.

edited 3rd Feb '11 10:11:45 PM by frog753

Do you know what you personally will be doing?

So are you guys going to rewrite the lines? I mean, apart from the time period issue, there are a few places where characters say something racist about Othello. And cross-casting Iago sounds fine, although I have to admit, I always pictured Iago's interactions with Othello as very masculine. But hey, in a version this radically different, it's not a problem.

I hate to break it to you, but I'm not actually involved in the production per se. I think at this point, I'm sort of considered a member of the Shakespeare group in general because I helped them sell tickets once, I'm on their email listserv, and the last open mic I attended was also sort of a businesslike meeting in the beginning, but I've never actually been involved with cast and crew of any production because I feel that I don't have time. Most of my closest friends are part of it, though, so I consider myself at least somehow involved, hence my constant use of "we" when referring to the group.

I presume the racist lines are being somehow rewritten or removed. The directors seem talented in this regard, I trust their judgment. As for our rampant history of cross-casting, it always works surprisingly well. We kind of don't have a choice, there just aren't that many guys involved with Shakespeare here. I always got used to it, and it helps that we have a sort of abundance of Bifauxnen types. None of the girls who played major male roles in any of the productions I've seen were necessarily the epitome of traditional feminine beauty, though for those that were, a lot of roles over the years have ended up with the character gender-flipped outright.

..Hi?

Finished King Lear in class just recently, it was a good book and made me want to read his other plays. I found places online where I can read them, but none of the places I found have footnotes that will explain the different meanings of the words, which I feel like I might need. Does anyone know of any ways to help? I might go checking out my local library, too, and while I'm asking, what plays would you guys reccomend and why?

The Riverside Shakespeare is good. Most of the Penguin editions are pretty well footnoted. There is also a version annotated by Isaac Asimov, that might be kind of hard to find.

Asimov annotated Shakespeare? I think I just nerdgasmed.

Regarding Steamthello - first of all, great idea, second of all, maybe the program will explain something like — in this world, Morocco is seen as the really backwards nation, and Moors are just the term for anyone technologically inferior. And blackness is a related term in that way. Like how "red" refers to a political ideology and not appearance. Sounds cool!

@Black Dove: King Lear, huh? Well, if you want to keep going with the tragedies, everyone likes Macbeth and Hamlet. Histories: I always liked Julius Caesar, but some of the others are probably better. Comedies: The Tempest is great, Midsummer Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice are also brilliant (but not very funny).

Maybe. Maybe it doesn't literally involve Morocco, actually, I have no idea how much of an alternate world it is...I do know that either the guy playing Othello or one of the directors said that Othello does come from a culture in this setting that eschews cybernetic enhancement, and that he didn't have the opportunity to get them anyway for years because he was a slave.

edited 5th Mar '11 7:51:48 AM by frog753

Alright, I was wondering if you guys could help me with something Shakespeare-related.

For an essay I'm working on, I have to talk about more modern adaptations of Shakespearian works. As in, those in forms of media that either didn't exist or weren't popular a few decades ago. I have the graphic novel Kill Shakespeare and the anime Romeo X Juliet, and I was curious as to any others that you guys know of. My teacher mentioned something about groups doing CD adaptations, so any info you had about that would be good too.

So are film and television not an option?

Well, it's tech week for what is by now almost officially known within its own production as Steamthello, and of course my friends have therefore mostly vanished, and when I do see them they will probably be exhausted. This will really be awesome for me because it's probably our most daring concept yet out of what I've seen. (Nebulously modern Romeo and Juliet...somewhat interesting. Directly post-WWII Julius Caesar...pretty interesting. Very "typically Shakespearean-looking" Winter's Tale...not that interesting. Steampunk/Clockpunk Othello...extremely interesting!) Well, I hope it lives up to my expectations. I have intentionally avoided seeking out any info on the set, costumes, and makeup, so it really will be a genuine surprise.

I'll probably be seeing the show on Thusday or Friday, and I'll report in full afterwards, because it does seem like you guys have been curious ever since I announced it.

Please do!

In the meantime...

This is kind of silly, but I don't think I ever laid out my semi-Insane Troll Logic theory of "Why Tybalt is a ninja".

According to Real Ultimate Power...

• Ninjas are mammals.

• Ninjas fight ALL the time.

• The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.

Or something like that. Now, if we look at Tybalt...

• He's obviously a mammal.

• Between his temperament and reputation as a great duelist, it would seem that he's implied to be fighting almost all the time.

• The purpose of Tybalt within Romeo And Juliet is basically just to flip out and kill Mercutio, then get killed and cause all sorts of bad stuff to happen as a result. Close enough to the third point, right?

Therefore, Tybalt must be a ninja. If you're wondering why I care about him so much...well, he's kind of badass, but mainly I'm a fan because he was played by Frances in our production and I kind of love everything she does...

edited 30th Mar '11 10:19:00 PM by frog753

I liked Tybalt. Mercutio was cooler, though.

Yeah, totally...not saying he's not awesome. I just like my ninja joke far too much.

As for Steamthello...it was pretty awesome, and of course tragic...I really don't have time to report on it tonight, but maybe tomorrow! Let's just say that as usually happens with our productions, I will now be unable to imagine Othello any other way unless I see some really good other production of it.

I will never view Romeo And Juliet the same way again now.

No mention of The Reduced Shakespeare Company yet? For shame. First part here, if you don't mind piracy. (Buy the DVD, it's totally worth it!)

So, yeah, time for the rundown on Steamthello!

Most people associate steampunk with the Victorian era, but that would be aiming about a century too far in this case. The costumes were more Regency-era, and therefore still looked quite awesome. Not everyone had swords all the time, I guess because maybe we didn't have that many to work with...I'm not really sure. That was a shame because Cassio had this awesome saber at first but it vanished from the rest of the play. As for all the enhancements and modifications...well, considering that it's just a small college club production, they weren't that elaborate, but they got the point across. They were mostly represented through a combination of stuff painted on people's faces, devices attached to arms or chests...yeah, that sort of stuff was basically the norm. Had they been even more elaborate and professionally done, perhaps Othello's lack of them would have stood out more, though he still stood out well enough.

The whole basic concept worked. I never really found myself minding that it wasn't a racial thing, that "Moor" didn't mean North African. The drama of it really just pulls you in, and we had an excellent Othello and Iago. Well, excellent everyone really, but those two are important. Iago was played well enough that I was almost starting to feel sympathetic to him...until everyone started dying. Along with of course Romeo and Juliet, and I suppose Julius Caesar, this was one of the most powerful and moving of the four plays I've seen here, and I think I did get a bit choked up over the whole extended course of the last act.

The Duke of Venice, Brabantio, and Gratiano were gender-flipped, which had an interesting effect on things and definitely helped make this Venice feel like a whole other world. Ludovico was cross-cast but technically kept male...consider him yet another Bishōnen I suppose. (I say "yet another" because we have a habit of doing this. It certainly happened with Frances's characters over the years) Iago was also cross-cast, but this really worked fine...he was played by an actress who's never really played a major female role in any production that I can recall, and who I almost don't even think of as female in the usual sense. In an interesting and probably intentional twist, her real-life...um...I guess girlfriend would be a passable if somewhat inadequate term...played Emilia. Thankfully, that provides no parallels to their real relationship!

The talkback afterward was great, mostly for the sake of shedding light on how they came to do it this way (besides the fact that there were really no black actors of the right sort available to us), which revealed interesting tidbits. Like, they were originally planning to do it with Othello as the only cyborg in a society of ordinary people, but they decided it would work better the other way around because that veered into Unfortunate Implications in some way that I can't quite recall. And then there was the story of how when one of the directors presented the idea to a steampunk forum she frequents, people got angry at her and said it was wrong to do it any way but "straight". Politcal Correctness Gone Mad? People still not being able to really talk about race? It's hard to say, but that discovery kind of shocked and annoyed me. And we did a huge amount of talking about Iago's motivations, and it turned out that they were definitely using the Ho Yay here. In a fairly complex way that I really can't explain. Well, I can try. Basically, Iago was here interpreted as obsessed with Othello and jealous at Cassio for taking his position of closeness to Othello. But the reasons for his obsession were rather fascinating. Apparently, it was determined that Iago is big into concepts of sin and damnation and believes that almost everyone around him is going to hell...except for Othello, who he sees as being so perfect and virtuous. Add in the fact that Othello is also the only natural, unaltered man among them...and Iago sees him as like double-ultra-perfect. Hence his deep obsession and love for him.

So yeah, it was interesting.

Well, this is sort of a bump because I know people kind of ignore this thread in general, but I'm a bit miffed that you all said you wanted to hear about this production and I wrote this long thing and then no one responded.

But anyway, bump because we got a...mixed review in one of the school papers. Once again (as with Romeo and Juliet) the reviewer seemed confused by the setting, although with Othello, I guess you have slightly more of a right to be annoyed. Or do you? Downplaying race is not necessarily as bad as it might seem. I have an argument to back this up, but I don't have time to deploy it now. I will return!