The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0639 Tuesday, 11 July 2006
[1] From: Mary Coy <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 10 Jul 2006 10:45:55 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
[2] From: Gabriel Egan <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 10 Jul 2006 16:35:24 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
[3] From: John W. Kennedy <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 10 Jul 2006 12:16:51 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
[4] From: John Briggs <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 10 Jul 2006 17:32:12 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
[5] From: Peter Bridgman <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 10 Jul 2006 18:36:32 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
[6] From: Aaron Azlant <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 10 Jul 2006 10:59:05 -0700
Subj: Re: SHK 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Mary Coy <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 10 Jul 2006 10:45:55 -0400
Subject: 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
>"Those who go to Shakespeare today in the hope of seeing the
characters convincingly
>embodied and successfully realized will not be gratified by all-male
productions."
I completely disagree!
I went to my first all-male Shakespeare with reservations. But Edward
Hall's MIDSUMMER a few years ago was very moving. For the first time the
four lovers were as funny as the mechanicals. Seeing a male Hermia
thrown around stage was funnier, the exchanges between Helena and Hermia
were funnier, the power struggle between Titania and Oberon was richer.
Hearing the language spoken with a range of male voices was also
powerful. Words resonated in the fairy forest in a way I hadn't heard
before. There was a new edge to the magic. I have enjoyed each of his
company's productions since that time.
However, the all-male MEASURE I saw in NYC (a re-mounting of Mark
Rylance's Globe production) did feel (at times) like camp. However, many
of my friends enjoyed it.
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Gabriel Egan <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 10 Jul 2006 16:35:24 +0100
Subject: 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
Charles Weinstein wrote that
>Shakespeare . . . chafed under the stupid and repressive laws that
>prevented him from witnesing Juliet, Marina, Perdita, Isabella,
>Hermione, Constance and, yes, Rosalind, Viola, Imogen and Julia
>brought to such vivid and truthful life [by being played by female
>actors]
I believe that there were no such laws. (If a Weinstein or anyone else
has evidence to the contrary, I'd be interested to hear it.) Without the
dead hand of Elizabethan authority to chafe against, it would seem that
Weinstein imagines Shakespeare chafing against the theatrical traditions
of the performance industry itself. What an odd way to think about one
of the most successful practitioners of the artform. It would be more
useful to explore to many ways in which Shakespeare exploited the comic
and tragic (and sexual, of course) potential generated by boys acting
female roles.
Gabriel Egan
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: John W. Kennedy <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 10 Jul 2006 12:16:51 -0400
Subject: 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
Charles Weinstein <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
>2. A director mounts an originalist production of Othello. He casts
>men as Emilia, Desdemona and Bianca, and he casts a white actor as
>Othello who performs the role in blackface. Some spectators are highly
>offended by the latter casting. When the director pleads fidelity to
>Jacobean practice, they respond by questioning the value of such
fidelity.
>"Why resurrect the racist conventions of four centuries past and inflict
>them upon our 21st-century sensibilities"? A question to be asked about
>the sexist conventions that kept women off the stage in the same
remote era.
"Racist"? Pray, how many Moorish tragedians were available to the King's
Men in 1604? This is simply snatching for the nearest fashionable insult.
>4. When Shakespeare's greatest female character spurns the thought of
>viewing "some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness," she is mocking
>the idea that she could be adequately incarnated by a male.
/Cleopatra/ may be mocking the idea, but to suppose that /Shakespeare/
is doing so at that crucial point in the tragedy is madness. On the
contrary, it shows his faith that his leading boy actor would turn in a
performance good enough for scene to hold.
>5. Women are much better at playing women than men are (to state
>the obvious). Compared to a genuine actress, the most skillful female
>impersonator is a cheap imitation. Perhaps audiences 400 years ago
>did not know this, but we do. Those who go to Shakespeare today
>in the hope of seeing the characters convincingly embodied and
>successfully realized will not be gratified by all-male productions.
>Swapping truth and authenticity for drag and camp is no bargain at all.
You know, your insistence, here and otherwise, on using the words "drag"
and "camp" begin to suggest a concern that is not wholly an artistic one.
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Briggs <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 10 Jul 2006 17:32:12 +0100
Subject: 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
Charles Weinstein wrote:
>4. When Shakespeare's greatest female character spurns the thought of
>viewing "some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness," she is mocking
>the idea that she could be adequately incarnated by a male.
Whatever point Shakespeare was making, Charles Weinstein has missed it.
John Briggs
[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Peter Bridgman <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 10 Jul 2006 18:36:32 +0100
Subject: 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
Charles Weinstein writes ...
>I think Shakespeare wanted to see his female characters played
.by real women. I think he chafed under the stupid and repressive
>laws that prevented him from witnesing Juliet, Marina, Perdita,
>Isabella, Hermione, Constance and, yes, Rosalind, Viola, Imogen
>and Julia brought to such vivid and truthful life.
Do you think he also chafed under the stupid convention that prevented
him having a real Dane to play Hamlet or a real aboriginal to play Caliban?
Peter Bridgman
[6]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Aaron Azlant <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 10 Jul 2006 10:59:05 -0700
Subject: 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
Comment: Re: SHK 17.0631 Against All-Male Productions
Though I definitely agree with the idea that one century's convention is
another century's camp and sexism, the one thing that I will say in
favor of all-male productions is that they unlock hidden dimensions of
the text. The best example that comes to mind is the extra heft given to
"and my poor fool is hanged!" in 5.2 if the same actor in /Lear/ plays
both Cordelia and the Fool.
Another example appears if you grant that the same actor may have played
both Ophelia and the First Gravedigger in /Hamlet/; this doubling
repeats the potential heroine / comedian pairing of /Lear/ and their
songs (note that they and Hamlet are the only characters that sing) are
thematically similar. But when Hamlet asks the First Gravedigger whose
grave he is digging, the response -- "Mine, sir" -- might have worked in
many dimensions at once for an audience if the same actor had also
played the character for whom the Gravedigger was now preparing a final
resting place.
--Aaron
_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook,
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>
DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the
opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the
editor assumes no responsibility for them.
|
