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Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 1, No. 7. Monday, 30 Jul 1990. Date: Mon July 30, 1990 From: Michael S. Hart <HART@UIUCVMD> Subject: Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg is not officially connected with the University of Illinois, at which the server resides, nor with any other institution, though we do have a working unofficial relationship with many. Besides the information included below, Project Gutenberg has expressed a great interest in the creation and distribution of electronic texts - etexts, especially of Shakespeare. We currently have been involved for several years in the creation and distribution of several editions, and are working on several more. By the time this gets posted, we hope and pray to have donated copies of the complete works FOR EVERY STUDENT AND THEATER GROUP MEMBER EVER TO ATTEND THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. The purpose of Project Gutenberg is to encourage the creation and distribution of English language electronic texts. 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Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 1, No. 6. Monday, 30 Jul 1990. (1) Date: Mon, 30 Jul 90 03:20:00 EDT (64 lines) From:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Subject: Modern Productions (2) Date: Mon, 30 Jul 90 11:10:25 EDT (67 lines) From: Ken Steele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: Branagh's Lear and MSND (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 30 Jul 90 03:20:00 EDT From:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Subject: Modern Productions Certainly one cannot complain about adapting Shakespeare to the modern stage if it works. But I do not think we can make comparisons between "modern" and "traditional" productions. The 19th Century's most popular productions involved what Michael Booth calls spectacular theatre, and the style of acting was entirely different from what we are used to. Henry Irving was considered the greatest Shakespearian actor of his day, but a recording of him doing Wolsey's final speech in *Henry VIII* had me rolling on the floor. An American journalist transcribed Irving's treatment of some lines in *The Merchant of Venice* as follows: Wa thane, ett no eperes Ah! um! yo ned m'elp. Ough! ough! Gaw too thane! Ha! um! Yo com'n say Ah! Shilock! Um! ouch! we wode hev moanies! (as qtd. in Ellen Terry, *The Story of My Life*. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1908. p. 273) But to most Victorian theatre-goers (both English and American), Irving's style of acting and production was perfectly acceptable-- even laudable. Irving was the first actor to be knighted. What I find interesting about contemporary productions of Shakespeare is how the theatre has changed its perception of Shakespeare's works completely. Now instead of seeing his plays as great temples of moral and cultural virtue, they are works for the "common people." Now the idea is to "popularize" Shakespeare, and make him "accessable" to the masses. And so I get to see *The Comedy of Errors* performed at Lincoln Center as schtick with the Flying Karamatzov Brothers, *The Taming of the Shrew* converted into the "Wild Bunch," and *A Midsummer Night's Dream* placed into "The Road Warrior." And how often do we see the comedies as opposed to the tragedies? Would the ratio today be the same as the 16th, 17th, 18th, or 19th Centuries? But I am not complaining about modern productions. I saw Kenneth Brannagh's productions of *Lear* and *Dream* when the Renaissance Theatre Company came to Toronto, and felt that they were very good. Emma Thompson's Fool was outstanding, and I feel her's will be considered one of the great interpretations of that role. And I did not agree with the Toronto critics, who for the most part panned both productions. For me, they were acting like snobs and saying, "We will not be taken in by this British company, because we are sophisticated Torontonians." They missed the point. Brannagh's interpretation of both plays, while seeking to be popular, employed a style that was "faithful" to the plays. My feeling is that we can compare styles, but to do so is more an exercise in theatrical and cultural history than one about Shakespeare. We can criticize and praise different productions, but we can never really talk about the "definitive" or even "traditional" productions any more than one can talk about the "definitive interpretation of the text. Stephen Matsuba York UniversityThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (2) --------------------------------------------------------------71---- Date: Mon, 30 Jul 90 11:10:25 EDT From: Ken Steele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: Branagh's Lear and MSND Well, perhaps this is somewhat tangential to the essential subject, but tangents are the foundation of most conversation. I don't believe that Toronto critics (and New York critics, and Los Angeles critics...) were being snobbish when panning Branagh's Lear and MSND. I found them both to be surprisingly *flat* productions: the cast was either tired or uninspired, and the audience soon caught this boredom from them. Ethna Roddy's Cordelia was truly awful; more than one noted Shakespearean has remarked to me that this was the only Cordelia they had ever seen whom they were actually glad to see die. I agree, Emma Thompson's fool was intriguing, and deserves the applause given it by almost every critic. Perhaps Branagh's Edgar and Quince would have been impressive, too, but understudies took both roles when I saw the productions. The staging for Branagh's Lear was expressive, but the endeavour to design a set for both MSND *and* Lear resulted in a set which was ideally suited for neither. Of course, twinned plays always create interesting resonances: I noted in particular that Snug carries a joint-stool around CONSTANTLY in MSND, but that in Lear's mock trial scene, the joint stool is purely a figment of his imagination. But the double feature at Stratford Ontario last year, combining the Comedy of Errors and Titus Andronicus in a single evening, did considerably more interesting things with the interconnections, I though, although they did justice to neither play in such abbreviated versions. Branagh's rain effect for the storm sequence was impressive -- a custom-designed sprinkler system created a semi-circular curtain of water cascading down into the ditch around the set -- but it was more spectacle than drama. More effective, for me, was the version of the storm on the heath presented on Toronto's Harbourfront by Theatresports, who staged a mock-King Lear in the duck pond wearing hip-waders. Lear and the Fool don goggles for the storm sequence, in which other actors hurl buckets of water from either side. But moving water does not assure moving drama. The workmen in Branagh's MSND were wonderful, of course -- the modern dress and tools brought their characters to life, and they ran away with the show (even Bottom was a disappointment compared to his peers). Perhaps the most hilarious moment of the play, though, was as Snug reverently approached Theseus and Hippolyta, and began handing out his business card to the members of the royal audience. Something I have noticed, though, is the phenomenal difference an audience can make to a production. Last year I saw David Williams' Shoemaker's Holiday twice at Stratford (Ontario, as always): the first time I saw it with a herd of Renaissance scholars, who applauded enthusiastically and added their energy to that of the players. I was convinced that this was the most successful play of the season. The second time, with my wife, I was mortally disappointed as the audience failed to grasp the jokes, sourly resisted applause, and the actors waned in enthusiasm as a result. Very different play, although only a few weeks had passed and the performance had not been altered. My point is that perhaps the Branagh production seemed equally remarkable during some of its performances, but I was not there during one. Branagh's cinematic Henry V, of course, is an amazing triumph which ranks him as Olivier's successor. Perhaps my expectations were too high for his stage productions -- or perhaps his true talent lies in directing film rather than stage productions. Ken Steele University of Toronto
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 1, No. 5. Sunday, 29 Jul 1990. Date: 28 July 1990, 07:21:25 EDT From: FLANNAGA at OUACCVMB Following Willard and Ken, I think modernizing Shakespeare should depend on what works. I first saw *Lear* in a Canadian production in Eskimo dress, and it worked very well--furs on Lear emphasizing his massiveness and slit tunics on Goneril and Regan emphazising their evil sexuality. I had the pleasure of interviewing Jonathan Miller this last spring, and he still has no problems with *Merchant of Venice* in 19th c. dress or with Bob Hoskins as a cockney Iago (Miller quoted Hoskins as saying "Well, oim a villain, ain't I?"). Miller did feel that there were extremes of bad taste represented in some productions. One fictionalized production in a forgettable movie cast Richard III as an offensively gay king, but I can imagine a well-done version of the same general idea, with Richard's relationship with Buckingham being emphasized, as well as his disgust with Anne. Roy Flannagan
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 1, No. 4. Friday, 27 Jul 1990. (1) Date: Thu, 26 Jul 90 20:15:21 EDT (34 lines) From: Willard McCarty <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: old plays in modern mode (2) Date: Fri, 27 Jul 90 05:51:12 EDT (35 lines) From: Ken Steele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: Modern Productions (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 26 Jul 90 20:15:21 EDT From: Willard McCarty <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: old plays in modern mode I recall hearing about a production of Euripides' Bacchae in Toronto during the early 1970s in which the Maenads and Bacchantes were played as hippies, Pentheus as a fascist dictator. According to my informant the followers of Dionysus had long hair, wore outrageous clothing, smoked joints, and so forth. It was hugely successful, I am told. Of course it did great violence to Euripides' play, which is nothing at all like that, and had it been, it most certainly would never have survived to our day. But does anyone say that it is WRONG to try such things? Or take Pasolini's version of Euripides' Medea, very different than what it is based on. I happen also to think that Pasolini didn't manage to bring it off, but that's neither here nor there. Or perhaps it is. Perhaps the only criterion is whether or not the thing works. As my wife (an artist) is constantly reminding me, artists are notorious thieves, often with no respect whatever for the scholarly virtue of faithfulness to time and place. They take what they can use. On the other hand, I have observed how some of the greatest of these thieves (e.g. Ovid) manage to remain extraordinarily faithful to their material, although not in an antiquarian's sense. I get the feeling with Ovid, for example, that he reaches the timeless and brings it into his own time. So, can we expand and refine the criteria by which we tell whether some new production, say of Shakespeare, is successful by comparing it with a good traditional one? Can a new production by comparison with the old open our eyes to what is good, or what we think is good, about the old one? Willard McCarty (2) --------------------------------------------------------------39---- Date: Fri, 27 Jul 90 05:51:12 EDT From: Ken Steele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: Modern Productions I think I would agree with Willard McCarty when he suggests that the most important criterion for a modern production's legitimacy is its success on-stage; if modern embellishments are faithful to the central theme and are drawn from the play's own imagery, they can be powerful and effective. (I hope I pointed out some of the ways that the French/English clash was suggested by Shakespeare's own language and how certain situations truly gained in the translation.) Almost immediately, however, I start to see complications on the horizon. Certain plays seem to demand greater fidelity to the author's purpose than others. The Comedy of Errors, for example, has been successfully performed in New York as a combination Vaudeville/Juggling/Acrobatics display, and in Toronto on a stage covered with sand with the actors all in bathing suits. Perhaps the distinction I am making is simply generic, and I am simply observing that more liberties can be taken with comedies than with tragedies. Akuro Kurosawa's *RAN* is a very effective version of King Lear, though, despite its considerable transformation of the original play. Perhaps something essential is retained nonetheless. Although I did not have the opportunity to see Mabou Mines' King Lear when it showed here in Toronto (and I understand it also showed in New York), it sounds rather more radical, swapping the gender of every major character and turning it into a matriarchal tragedy. From the few still photos I've seen, though, it looks more like a transvestite performance of a comedy than a tragedy (did anyone see this production? Am I right?). Just how far can a director alter a Shakespearean play to make it more "relevant" and "modern" without transforming it into something completely different, like Tom Stoppard's *Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead* or Anne-Marie MacDonald's *Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)* (both of which, incidentally, I enjoyed very much!) (and both of which, perhaps significantly, are comedies). Ken Steele
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 1, No. 3. Thursday, 26 Jul 1990. Date: Thu, 26 Jul 90 16:55:45 EDT From: Ken Steele <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Subject: Romeo & Juliette Rather than generating *heated* discussion by persecuting any Baconians who might be in our midst, I'll try to initiate an *illuminating* dialogue through recourse to my usual approach, describing a recent Shakespearean production I've seen. "Romeo & Juliette" [sic] played at the DuMaurier World Stage Festival on Toronto's Harbourfront last month. Nightcap Productions (Saskatchewan) set the play on the Canadian prairie, transforming the Montague/Capulet feud into a clash of English and French cultures. A la *West Side Story*, the drunken masquers attend the Capulet (pron. "Capulay") barbeque, where Paris in his business suit stands out from the rest of the country "hicks." Rapier duels are fought with baseball bats and tire irons, the balcony scenes take place over the tailgate of an ancient Fargo pickup truck, Romeo turns a pitchfork on himself in desperation, and the "Apothecary" is a drug pusher. This sort of modernization is familiar to everyone, I'm sure, but to what extent does it enhance the experience of Shakespeare's play and to what extent bury it? The bilingual feud was strikingly appropriate in the midst of Canada's Meech Lake crisis, and will be still more so this summer at the Stratford (Ontario) Festival now that Meech Lake has failed. The juxtaposition of French and English lines was fascinating for the audience, from the French soliloquies of Juliette to the closing lines, "For never was story of more woe, Que celle de Juliette et son Romeo." Romeo's wooing of Juliette is the more touching because he attempts to use her language, swearing "par la lune," and his attempts to communicate with Tybalt are all the more vain when he tries to express himself in halting French. Mercutio's lines about the French, "Signior Romeo, / <bon jour!> there's a French salutation to your French / slop" (2.4.43) suddenly gain new relevance, too. Shakespeare uses snatches of French in many of his plays, so the technique of combining languages is perhaps not totally alien to its conception. To some extent every production is a "translation," of course, but has anyone seen similar things done with Shakespeare's language in other productions? How does this compare with the experience of seeing a foreign production which is completely in translation? Does anyone feel it unjust to foist modern (or Canadian) political implications on a Renaissance play? Or can it *be* a Renaissance play when performed in 1990?