August
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0746 Monday, 28 August 2006 From: Fran Helphinstine <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 25 Aug 2006 13:45:20 -0400 Subject: 17.0736 Stratford Productions Comment: Re: SHK 17.0736 Stratford Productions I saw Coriolanus, Duchess of Malfi and Ghosts. I was very impressed with the quality of the productions. In Malfi, the Dutch linen black costume reproductions of styles from paintings from the era made a breath taking spectacle. In keeping with that mode of design, even the naked mad men with dusty makeup to resemble early sketches was not offensive to me. To thematically tie the brother to the madmen, they had him get out of a bathtub naked, which was the least camouflaged with dusty make-up. I liked all the research into King James and his era which seemed to enhance the production. For Ghosts, I thought the hypocrisy was well explored. Although it was the 8th production I had seen in four days, the production held my attention every minute. I was thrilled to get to see a production of Coriolanus. Sitting on the front row, during the violent war scenes in the first act, I wondered if I was sitting too close, but the seats served wonderfully for the later scenes. I was pleased with how that Volumnia's role and the major figures were interpreted. Fran Helphinstine _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email 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.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0745 Monday, 28 August 2006 [1] From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 25 Aug 2006 17:37:42 +0100 Subj: Ades/Oakes Operatic Version of "The Tempest" [2] From: Mary Bess Whidden <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 27 Aug 2006 04:20:26 -0600 Subj: Ades "Tempest" [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 25 Aug 2006 17:37:42 +0100 Subject: Ades/Oakes Operatic Version of "The Tempest" Elliott Stone's recommendation of 'all 524 pages of Ted Hughes' "Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being" ' seems excessive. It is one of the great bores of recent Shakespearean criticism. Indeed, with its presentation of the avenging Boar as 'a sort of uterus on the loose . . . a mobile tub entirely made of female sexual parts, a woman-sized, multiple udder on trotters' it becomes ultimately ludicrous. T. Hawkes [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mary Bess Whidden <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 27 Aug 2006 04:20:26 -0600 Subject: Ades "Tempest" For its American premier, the new "Tempest" could hardly have found a more stimulating setting. From the Santa Fe Opera, without straining necks or scrambling for opera glasses, patrons see Pueblo lands as well as, not far away in the thin air, the lights of Los Alamos. Best, Mary Bess Whidden _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email 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.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0744 Monday, 28 August 2006 [1] From: David Frankel <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 25 Aug 2006 11:52:30 -0400 Subj: RE: SHK 17.0737 That "Julius Caesar" Production [2] From: Joseph Egert <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 28 Aug 2006 00:25:55 +0000 Subj: RE: SHK 17.0737 That "Julius Caesar" Production [1]----------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Frankel <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 25 Aug 2006 11:52:30 -0400 Subject: 17.0737 That "Julius Caesar" Production Comment: RE: SHK 17.0737 That "Julius Caesar" Production I saw the Julius Caesar at the RSC (along with Romeo and Juliet, Henry VI-1 -- on opening night), and both parts of Henry IV, performed by the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. I felt that James Hayes's performance as Caesar was one of the best in the production-he had the stature and gravitas of someone who knew he was in command-all the more surprising, as he is a very understated and slight person as a "civilian" (at least in my brief encounter with him). He certainly carried himself in a way that could be read as arrogant. I do not think he was pompous, but he certainly performed as he was the only "I" in Rome. I would take some issue, though, with Mr. Swilley's given's. Casca certainly doesn't speak well of Caesar, nor do the other conspirators (or freedom fighters). [2]------------------------------------------------------------- From: Joseph Egert <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Monday, 28 Aug 2006 00:25:55 +0000 Subject: 17.0737 That "Julius Caesar" Production Comment: RE: SHK 17.0737 That "Julius Caesar" Production L. Swilley writes on JULIUS CAESAR: >All characters - save Cassius - speak with admiration of the "great" Caesar.... But, LS, what about: --Caska? whose hands speak even more cuttingly; --Decius? the other Brutus, who can o'ersway and bend the flattered Caesar to his will; --party-poopers Flavius and Murellus? put to silence by a Caesar triumphant over Pompey's blood; --Plebeians 1 &3? who blow with the oratorical wind; --young Cato? the foe to tyrants; --Marcus Brutus? who admiringly murders his natural father, the unhatched serpent, for his ambition, that same evil spirit lurking inside the son as well; --and finally Antony, yes Antony, Caesar's avenger, his Lupercal errand boy, who projects that festering resentment onto Lepidus? Stay well, Joe Egert _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email 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.
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0743 Monday, 28 August 2006 From: Philip Parr <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 26 Aug 2006 10:38:58 +0100 Subject: Hamlet: The Actors Cut - Pitlochry List members will remember that at the beginning of the summer (UK) a production of the First Quarto version of Hamlet at the Pitlochry Theatre in Scotland was announced. Taking a day off from the Edinburgh Festivals circus, I had the pleasure of attending the opening night on Wednesday, and would commend this production to all as the clearest production of Hamlet that I have seen. Acting (there is a company of 9) is uniformly excellent, with some fine character delineation within those playing multiple smaller roles. John Durnin's direction is sharp and on a bare stage relies on clarity of thought and intention rather than gimmick and effect. I have one nagging question about a production choice, but will explore it with John at a later date, and will not raise it here as a spoiler. As a practitioner rather than an academic, I won't comment on the nuances of the textual differences other than to say that the variations of scenes and lines make for a refreshing absence of clich
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0742 Monday, 28 August 2006 From: Nabie Swaray <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 26 Aug 2006 21:08:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: My Reading of "The Tempest" As a native of Sierra Leone and from Africa, Shakespeare's "The Tempest" has a historic and Political significance for me. My re-reading of the late Samuel Beckett's play: "Waiting for Godot" forced me to adapt this play under the title: "Waiting for Beckett" to reflect the horrible and ridiculous existence of Man and his/her relationship to a God that hardly interferes in the condition of our existence. Witness the natural disasters that are present in our daily lives: The Tragedy of Kathrina, the September 11 catastrophe, the genocide of the Jews, and very recently that in Rwanda, and the outrageous civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. In my adaptation, the characters are not all Europeans as Beckett's intended. Instead, I created a mixed cast of characters that consists of an Arab (the slave dealer) an African (the slave) and two whites and a child who turned out to be a suicide bomber. This play will have a stage reading this fall. Does God matter or do gods really matter in our lives? Euripides, in his excellent play: "The Bacchae" had questioned our relationship with the gods, or in our today's world, with God. In my adaptation of "The Tempest," I have chosen to write a trilogy: The First Play: "Caliban, The Rap Man;" The Second Play: "Caliban's Island;" and The Third Play: "The Return of Prospero." In these three adaptations, my objective is to examine and re-examine the very nature of Caliban and why he lost his Island to Prospero. This is also an attempt to answer the vexing question: How did the Africans Lose Africa to the Europeans? One has to examine the very outrageous and frivolous nature of the ancient and modern Africans. The tragic flaws of Caliban greatly remind me of the lofty and tragic flaws of the African race. The second critique is the failure of Caliban to learn a rational and moral code that would have prepared him on how to manage his Island, or at least give us the impression that once Prospero leaves the Island, he would do a masterpiece job. We in Africa, both from Franco-phone and Anglo-phone Africa, have inherited the language of the master, and sometimes have all the verbal skills to express ourselves. But is inheriting the colonial language enough? Caliban has learnt how to use his master's language and does nothing but swear and curse. The futility of language will simply lead to rhetoric and Utopia. The result is nothing but the future of an illusion. Is this not what Rap is all about? Ariel knows how to make Caliban very uncomfortable and irritable. The Rappers in turn use language to upset and make the Caucasian race and other ethnic groups angry and uncomfortable. But what is the objective and outcome? This is what Coleridge once said of Iago's revenge as "Purposeless malignity." Or as a well known British Historian once referred to a European event as "a piece of sublime nonsense and sonorous nothing." Third, will the gross failure of black leadership in Africa prompt the return of Prospero, in this case, the Colonial masters? These are questions that I hope to answer in my three adaptations of "The Tempest." In fact, it is ludicrous for those misguided Caribbean scholars to have regarded Caliban as a hero and a freedom fighter. In all attempts to overthrow Prospero, Caliban failed miserably; he cannot conquer his nature or overcome Hobbes' stereotype of Man as nothing else but "an appetitive creature." Caliban exemplifies the very suits of woe and trappings that inhibit the African from freeing himself/herself from the bondage of the will and as an appetitive creature. Man is created for a higher purpose and not simply to eat, drink, have sex and then die. To achieve what Nietzsche refers to in his little book: "The Use and Abuse of History" as the longing to create "Monumental History." This Trilogy will be a critique and re-examination of the fate and nature of Caliban, and to answer the larger and hardly asked question: What is really wrong with the African Race? Cassius' reflection in his attempt to woo the noble Brutus in his conspiracy to kill Caesar said thus: "The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars/ But in ourselves that we are underlings." To end this self-re-examination, I would like to restate the very statement that Brechet's Galileo reminds his pupil, Andrea: Andrea: Unhappy is the country that has no hero. Galileo: Incorrect; Unhappy is the country that needs a hero. One must not make one's island or continent a couch for luxury, incest and damnation; one must reach for the impossible. Shakespeare's "The Tempest" is an excellent analysis and discourse why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians; it is so easy not to become of age. _______________________________________________________________ S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List Hardy M. Cook,This email 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.