The Art of April 23

For lovers of literature and culture, April will always have a special significance. By tradition, that is the day on which William Shakespeare was born in 1564 (we know he was baptized 3 days later) and also the day on which he died in 1616.

The 400th anniversary of these milestones were bound to be celebrated with vigor and enthusiasm and such, indeed, was the case. Special events in England reached a crescendo, with special shows and broadcasts highlighting the notable performances of eminent actors. In the US, the Folger Library has sent several of the posthumously published 1623 First Folio to all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Bard fever is in the air and millions have joined a worldwide cultural celebration.

But there have been many quiet personal celebrations as well. Here are notes about a couple such celebrations.

On April 23, 1964, this envelope was used to send a letter home to Denmark (thought not to Elsinore Castle) from a visitor to Stratford-upon-Avon. The envelope and stamps were designed by the British Post, highlighting some iconic scenes and characters from Shakespeare's stories. But I find it intriguing to wonder who the visitor was that paused in his trip to Shakespeare's home to send this letter home to a family member or a friend.

52  years later to the day, exactly 400 years after Shakespeare died, this happened. The tattoo was inspired by the Hamlet statue at the Gower Memorial in Stratford-upon-Avon. This is not my Shakespeare tattoo. This is the BEGINNING of my Shakespeare tattoo...

Shakespeare's First Folio Visits Seattle

 

Tradition has it that William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England on April 23. 1564. During the course of his life, he wrote nearly 40 plays and co-wrote some number of others. He died on April 23, 1616. Yet for a man who lived 400 years ago, his impact on the world has been astonishing. He contributed dozens of common expressions to contemporary speech (e.g., jealousy as the "green eyed monster") and created a number of the most memorable characters in the Western Canon. Some even credit him with creating a model of human consciousness by examining the rich inner lives of his characters.

Yet there were times when these rich cultural treasures could have been lost forever. At the time of his death, only about half his plays had been collected together. Two of his contemporaries, John Heminges and Henry Condell, succeeded in getting the First Folio of Shakespeare's work published in 1623, restoring some nearly lost classics such as Macbeth and As You Like It. Later, legislation enacted by the Puritans crippled theatrical performance from 1642-1660. The Great London Fire of 1666 destroyed nearly half of all editions of the Third Folio.

Our extreme good fortune in having the work of Shakespeare available to us is why the world is celebrating the 400th anniversary of his passing, this year. One of the exceptional things happening this year is that the Folger Shakespeare Library, in cooperation with the Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association, is sending some of the 82 First Folios in its collection out on a nationwide tour. This tour includes all 50 states in the United States, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Seattle's turn started on March 21 and runs through April 17. Today was our day to visit the First Folio, at the Seattle Public Library..

The terrific thing about this exhibit is that, while it celebrates the First Folio, it was really about a lot more than that one (AMAZING) nearly 400 year old book. OK, I'll look at the First Folio first but there are more cool things to come.

 

 

These are the best pictures I got of the First Folio. Obviously, we didn't get to physically touch it but it was open to one of the most well known passages in world literature, Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech. Even being that close to it physically was like communing with the world of Elizabethan England in some inexplicable way. This IS one of the most famous and important books in the world.

 

However, Seattle was exceptionally fortunate in that we also had a copy of the Third Folio from the Pigott Collection on exhibit. Moreover, while the First Folio drew a crowd that had a constant stream of people walking in a queue past it, the Third Folio was not looked at quite so much...I got to linger there a bit. The Third Folio was open to As You Like it, specifically Jacques' "All the world's a stage" speech.

Seeing the Third Folio also was quite an unexpected bonus. It is nearly as rare as the First Folio, in that nearly half its printed run was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666.

We didn't get to physically touch the Third Folio, either, strangely. But the Seattle Library clearly anticipated this frustration by having a number of Folio copies that you could actually flip through. They were quite gorgeous...I think I'll have to add one to my Shakespeare shelves, some day.

 

There was also an exhibit which highlighted the rich tradition of Shakespeare play performances in Seattle. I've been a fan of the current Seattle Shakespeare company for years, now. It was fascinating to find out how far the area's tradition of performance goes back.

The library has also been hosting a series of performances and lectures to accompany this exhibit.

And there were mementos and kid activities accompanying the exhibit, too.

I really have to congratulate the Seattle Library and its people for doing such a phenomenal job with this exhibit. The exhibit itself was BRILLIANT and the people tracking tickets at its entrance were very friendly, helpful and enthusiastic.

The First Folio's visit to Seattle ends two weeks from today and online tickets were going fast. If you have the time, I seriously recommend try to go...some drop-in admission openings ARE available. Information here.

As You LOVE It!

Today, I was fortunate enough to see one of the best Shakespeare play productions that I've seen. It was a close thing because there was over an an hour's drive involved, not to mention other complications. But it was SO worth it!

We arrived at the Pickford Film Center in Bellingham with some trepidation, as there were some traffic signals unpowered for a few blocks. Sure enough, when we got to the theater, all the lights were out and a couple dozen polite Shakespeare fans were talking with the film center operators, who were obviously stressed about getting the film started before it shredded the day's schedule. Fortunately, the power came on and we were able to see this crackling version of As You Like It.

Honestly, I wasn't sure what to expect. The stage design was brilliant here, as it was when the National Theater had Benedict Cumberbatch play Hamlet. But that play was a little disappointing because while Cumberbatch is excellent, I felt like a couple crucial roles were weakly cast (Horatio and Polonius).

However, this play showed that that casting may have been a fluke. The casting for this production was actually astounding. Every SINGLE actor in this play brought excellence to their role and seemed passionate about acting heir heart out. Every actor.

For example, Leon Annor played the role of Charles the Wrestler. It is a role where the character only appears in a couple of scenes but it was still a standout performance.

As for the major roles: WOW! The role of Orlando is regarded as a bit of a numpty much of the time but Joe Bannister invested the role with a humanity, an enthusiasm tempered by a less than pleasant upbringing, that frankly surprised me. He did an excellent job,

Rosalind and Celia's actors, Rosalie Craig and Patsy Ferran respectively, were exquisite. Two multi-faceted, devoted friends, very bright, open to love and utterly gorgeous. Frankly, I find myself utterly smitten with both these performers. Paul Chahidi's Jacques and Mark Benton's Touchstone were also excellent. There is not a single performer here who I would not seek to congratulate. Hell, the actors playing the sheep invested their performances with a surprising humor.

Enough gushing...what does this performance have going for it? Well, the play itself is a favorite because it is a comedy, a fun romp that touches on serious themes but never leaves you worried that something seriously bad is going to befall someone. There is affection and nurturing aplenty...gender roles become very fluid because not only does Rosalind pretend to be a man through much of the play but male roles also involve a nurturing quality. And Shakespeare's right insights shine through: Jacques' 7 ages of men speech and Rosalind's epilogue are classics! (see below)

If you have a chance to see this performance or own the DVD eventually, SEE IT. You'll love it.

Jacques speech:

    All the world's a stage,
    And all the men and women merely players:
    They have their exits and their entrances;
    And one man in his time plays many parts,
    His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
    Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
    And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
    And shining morning face, creeping like snail
    Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
    Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
    Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
    Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
    Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
    Seeking the bubble reputation
    Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
    In fair round belly with good capon lined,
    With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
    Full of wise saws and modern instances;
    And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
    Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
    With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
    His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
    For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
    Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
    And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
    That ends this strange eventful history,
    Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
    Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Rosalind's epilogue:

   It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue;
    but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord
    the prologue. If it be true that good wine needs
    no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no
    epilogue; yet to good wine they do use good bushes,
    and good plays prove the better by the help of good
    epilogues. What a case am I in then, that am
    neither a good epilogue nor cannot insinuate with
    you in the behalf of a good play! I am not
    furnished like a beggar, therefore to beg will not
    become me: my way is to conjure you; and I'll begin
    with the women. I charge you, O women, for the love
    you bear to men, to like as much of this play as
    please you: and I charge you, O men, for the love
    you bear to women--as I perceive by your simpering,
    none of you hates them--that between you and the
    women the play may please. If I were a woman I
    would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased
    me, complexions that liked me and breaths that I
    defied not: and, I am sure, as many as have good
    beards or good faces or sweet breaths will, for my
    kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.

The Next Whedon Shakespeare

A couple days ago, there were some posts on Twitter, asking which Shakespeare play Joss Whedon should do next. To die-hard fans of Joss and the talented actors with whom he works, the possibilities for awesomeness are practically endless. Joss did a brilliant job with a Much Ado About Nothing. You could argue that Buffy that Vampire Slayer is the story of the seemingly under-prepared Prince Hal from Henry IV Part 1. That probably means that The First is Hotspur...

Limiting ourselves to the more well known plays, a few interesting possibilities that I would love to see would be:

• Clark Gregg as King Lear

• Alan Tudyk and Gina Torres reunited as the Macbeths

• Adam Baldwin as Hamlet

Heh. Adam Baldwin as Hamlet...

However, there is another play that's less well known, which I think would be a natural for Joss to take on next: Troilus and Cressida. This play is set during the Greek siege of Troy and tells the story of various pairs of lovers acting their parts on that stage: Troilus with Cressida, Diomedes with Cressida, Paris with Helen of Troy, Achilles and Patroclus.

This play is a gold mine of the material that Joss works with best. It is easily Shakespeare's snarkiest play, opening with a prologue that veers crazily from serious to sarcastic, repeatedly. It ends with the cheeky suggestion that viewers are free like the play or not...the playwright doesn't care.

The plot lines in Troilus and Cressida are both comic and tragic, genre-bending material at its finest and therefore natural Whedon fare. There is doomed love, there are doomed heroes, there are comic breaks during moments of tension. There is an epic eavesdropping scene, battles and pointless death. Done up by Joss, this would be FANTASTIC!

And half the fun would be casting it. I don't have it all worked out but these are some casting options that would be pretty excellent:

• Amy Acker, a lovely woman who seems to excel in all kinds of roles, funny and tragic, would be an epic Cressida.

•  Clark Gregg would be a fantastic Hector 

• Patton Oswalt would be great as Pandarus. Or maybe Thersites.

• My ideal cast might have Tricia Helfer be Helen of Troy. Hey, I can dream...

• How about Nathan Fillion as Ajax?

 This project would be brilliant. Let's urge Joss to make it happen!

Tackling Titus Andronicus

Seattle Shakespeare Company is presently performing its production of Titus Andronicus. For those unfamiliar with it, this is Shakespeare's first Roman play, exploring themes of indiscriminate, eye-for-an-eye violence made worse by the passion for chaos indulged by two of the play's central characters.


Seattle Shakespeare's program for the play says, regarding Shakespeare's less performed plays:

"...but the lesser known titles don't draw large audiences or...they are just plain difficult to stage for modern audiences. That's when a director's vision can make all the difference."


And then the company went on to prove it.




Maybe the infrequent performance of these plays is also an advantage for the performing companies. With the ultra-popular plays like Hamlet and Macbeth, there's an accretion of discoveries made in famous productions and well-known themes to be touched on...so much work to do up front that when the time comes to find original points of their own, there's barely time to discover them. With the lesser known plays, maybe there's more room for sifting for new nuggets of gold, more fun to be had?


So how did Seattle Shakespeare handle this famously violent and brutal play? Here's one indication: the stage crew mopping up the floor during intermission...

When you walk into the theater before the start of this play, there is a satire of a Hollywood B movie playing in a continuous loop on a screen. It is a great combination of The Shining, imagined battle scenes from Troilus & Cressida with a warriors eating his dead foe's heart, witchcraft and violence. Think of the unholy love child of Steven King and Dario Argento and you'll get the idea.

The schlocky horror of that reel was a nice touch, setting the tone that remained constant throughout this production. I have to admit, I didn't expect to enjoy this production as much as I did but for the most part, strange as it may sound, this play was FUN. The violence, plotting and mayhem are just so over the top that they become cathartic. The only point in bleak contrast to that, horrible and painful, are the scenes where Lavinia has just been raped and mutilated.

On to the plot. The play opens with Titus Andronicus returned victorious from 10 years of war with the Goths, bringing the Goth queen Tamora and her three sons as captives: The war has been costly to the Andronici: 21 of Titus's 25 sons have died in it. So when one of the sons asks for permission to slay one of Tamora's sons, Titus casually allows this murder of a prisoner, despite Tamora's pleas for mercy. He then denies the offered position of Emperor and picks the wrong son of the previous Emperor to be ruler. This series of bad judgements, the casual slaughter and off-handed giving of power to an ill-fit man will result in the ruin of the Andronicus family and the death of many bystanders.

Aaron the Moor, lover of Tamora, also accompanies the Goths into captivity. He really is a fascinating character, sort of a playful Iago: you don't LIKE him per se but he is a fascinating character. While Tamora marries Emperor Saturninus, she and Aaron maintain their scorching relationship and ultimately have a child together. It's unfortunate that their lust was built on such a taste for mayhem and chaos but then this play is built on a variety of people making bad choices. Tamora herself was played as a fascinating and very sexy woman.

Tamora brings with her her two remaining sons, Demetrius and Chiron. Like their mother, these two are wild and passionate and have a taste for mayhem. They are played in this production like members of a 60s biker movie. But later, their violence reaches an awful extreme which ultimately makes you glad of their destruction.

These people in power set the stage for the Andronicus family's suffering. Powerless now and out of favor, they become subject to the machinations of Tamora's circle. The daughter of Titus, Lavinia, sees her husband (brother of Saturninus) brutally murdered by Demetrius and Chiron. Two of her remaining brothers are framed for the murder. While that crime is being discovered, Lavinia has been raped and horribly mutilated by Demetrius and Chiron. That scene was the one part of this horror-comedy that was entirely a horror. And yet, the actress playing the part of Lavinia managed to find a moment of wry humor later, expressing exasperation at her father's idiotic interpretation of signs she is trying to make.

Though thought unable to communicate the identity of her attackers, Lavinia does find a way to identify them. This leads up to a bloodletting unparalleled in Shakespeare's other plays. Hint: if you ever attend a production of Titus Andronicus where the refreshments served include pie, be VERY wary of eating it.

Again, I enjoyed this play MUCH more than I expected to. The dread of Lavinia's mistreatment was vastly offset by the very creative staging of the play's black comedy. And there is something satisfying about seeing the "other" Shakespeare plays and finding less known bits of gold therein.

Every single part was also cast brilliantly and all of the actors deserve unreserved praise. Well done, Seattle Shakespeare Company! And if you haven't seen this play yet, you still have a week to do so!

Production Team
David Quicksall (Director)
Carol Wolfe Clay (Set Designer)
Jocelyne Fowler (Costume Designer)
Andrew D. Smith (Lighting Designer)
Nathan Wade (Sound Designer)
Marleigh Driscoll (Props Designer)
Geoff Alm (Fight Choreographer)
Julia Griffin (Blood Consultant)(She was VERY busy)
Lenore Bensinger (Dramaturg)
Louise Butler (Stage Manager).

Cast
Taylor Winfield Babcock (Mutius/Guard/Goth/Servant)
Ian Bond (Demetrius)
Adam Canne (Quintus/Caius/Goth)
Angelica Duncan (Lavinia)
Karen Jo Fairbrook (Nurse/Tribune/Aemilius)
Huntington Filson (Alarbus/Servant/Guard/Messenger/Goth)
Jim Gall (Marcus Andronicus)
Matthew Gilbert (Martius/Publius/Goth)
Rachel Glass (Tamora)
Sylvester Foday Kamara (Aaron)
Jason Marr (Bassianus/Tribune/1st Goth)
Trevor Young Marston (Lucius)
Andrew McGinn (Titus Andronicus)
Christopher Morson (Chiron)
George Mount (Saturninus)
Alex Silva (Young Lucius)

Space Oddity

A Space Oddity

Millions of people listened to all the David Bowie songs they could today. And while there are quite a lot of them, my favorite has always been "Space Oddity", Bowie's song about an astronaut who suffers an accident and disappears into the void while up in space.

But there's a also great 1983 reprise of Space Oddity, "Major Tom" by Peter Schilling. This song adds  a neat twist to the story, changing it from the tale of an adventurer dying doing what he loves into something more. Schilling's song ends with that hint that Major Tom is still alive....the words "this is my home....I'm coming home".

In other words, he hasn't died, he has gone home. Whether that home is Heaven, Valhalla or something else, there's the sense that Major Tom's story hasn't ended. It's just entered a new phase. I think that's a belief that many of us would like to hold

Whatever the truth is about life after death, David Bowie is now a step ahead of us. He knows the reality behind the Undiscovered Country.

Free associating now

Driving home tonight, I ended up listening to a favorite audiobook by Spider Robinson. If you've never of Spider or read any of his books, do yourself a favor and check him out! My favorite collection of his work is "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon". In fact, it's one of my favorite books of all time.

While science fiction is sometimes dry or overly technical, Spider's stories are primarily about humanity. There are real extraterrestrials in his books, both good and bad. But there is also a minister who time travels by being imprisoned in a South American jail cell with his wife until she dies. And it is as sad and depressing as it sounds. But Spider also tells the story of the next day and the day after that...how people take up the next day of their life after tragedy or hard times befall them.


(Unfortunately, Spider knows has known more than his share of hard times. His wife of 35 years and co-author Jeanne  Robinson died of cancer in 2010. And then his daughter died of metastatic breast cancer two years ago.)

The Spider Robinson book I was listening to tonight is a novel called "Stardance". In it, a bitter, cynical dancer becomes part of a mission sent to contact aliens who have entered the solar system. It is a story with loss but also with hope for humans finding the next step in our evolution by finding our destiny out among the stars.

Somehow, it just seemed appropriate now that David Bowie has left us.

Episode VII: More of the Same

The photo above could well be Harrison Ford rehearsing for the latest Star Wars movie.

I have to confess, when it comes to the question of "Star Wars" vs "Star Trek", I've always tended to fall on the "Star Trek" side. Maybe it's because the whole battle between the Jedi and the Sith reminds me dismally of American politics. It's like "Political informercials in space", whereas Star Trek is more like "Let's go out and find all the cool stuff we can find in space!!!"

A lot of people have said that the latest Star Wars is the best since "Return of the Jedi" and I had high hopes but to me, this one should have been titled "Episode VII: More of the Same". The characters Rey and Finn were pretty cool and a breath of fresh air, both badass in their own way. It was COOL that Finn couldn't bring himself to slaughter innocent civilians! Kylo Ren, on the other hand, reminded me of a badly acted high school production of Julius Caesar.

Leaving aside the new characters, a lot of this movie was spent trying to evoke nostalgia: the Millenium Falcon and its gaming board. Cute aliens with incomprehensible names. Cute robots not malfunctioning in a sandy environment. Leia and Han banter.

This was a good movie but I wouldn't give it more than 3 out of 5 stars.