The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.1460  Tuesday, 8 August 2000.

From:           Sam Small <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >
Date:           Monday, 07 Aug 2000 16:57:23 +0100
Subject: 11.1459 Re: Soap Bard
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.1459 Re: Soap Bard

Kezia Vanmeter Sproat wrote:

Respecting soaps: A New York City soap opera director, Barnet Kellman,
directed the very best Shakespeare production I ever saw, at Kenyon
Festival Theater in 1980, MND with Carol Kane as Hippolyta and Titania.
Soaps have scant dialogue and every syllable is wrung for meaning.
Taking that approach to Shakespeare, every word was treated, acted,
played. It was an incredibly good production.

Yes, Kesia, that makes perfect sense and takes away the ultimate
performance arbitration meted out by God-like establishment
theatricals.  This brought a linked thought to my poor head.  And this
was how much the "Jerry Springer Show" must have been like the
Elizabethan theatre.  Consider.  Young people on a stage yelling, being
dramatic about jealous spouses and lovers; broken by betrayals;
pompously arrogant young men; ambitious women; plotting; threatening -
and all the while the audience shouting out their own views of the
relative morality of what they are seeing.  What is missing, of course,
is the poetry and psychological understanding - but the raw material is
the same.

SAM