The worst Shakespeare staging I ever saw was Hamlet done at the hoity toity actors school at Yale. I think it was meant to be experimental, but the stage was designed with ramparts attached to the ceiling, so that the ooutside parts and the inside parts of the play could happen without scene change, and during an interlude between Hamlet and Ophelia the ceiling started to, um, decline. We finally realized it was because an outside scene was happening next, but we spent those brief minutes hoping that the ceiling would crush Hamlet to death and we would be able to leave.
The best Hamlet I saw was the National Theatre of the Deaf, staging it all from Ophelia's point of view. (She doesn't drown till after everybody else is dead, so you actually get to the end of the play and double-back.) It really worked, showing with visual language as Ophelia falls into a river made of the arms of the two people asking each other (in sign) "Drowned?" "Drowned."
Also, I just liked that Ophelia got to step in and slap characters around when they were being morons. Which was often, this being Hamlet.
We finally realized it was because an outside scene was happening next, but we spent those brief minutes hoping that the ceiling would crush Hamlet to death and we would be able to leave.
I am now flashing like a strobe on the South Park episode in which the boys recklessly promise to have Terence and Philip perform in their town, and track down one of them, performing Shakespeare live. Forget which play, but probably Hamlet. About halfway through the performance, one of the boys (I think Stanley) asks, in an exasperated headtone, "Jesus Tapdancing Christ, how long does this frickin' thing TAKE?!?"
Lilty, you all should have ordered the director out of the building immediately and made her stay there for at least half an hour.
People do get seriously nervy and edgy when the Scots play is anywhere about. I got asked about that superstition at a couple of the high schools where I lectured on the play. My own feeling is that at least a part of its heavy-duty thing is that mirror it makes you look into. I mean, all classics do that, surely, turn your face to a mirror in the play and make you look. Thing is, if you look into Macbeth's mirror and see yourself reflected, you're meat.
People do get seriously nervy and edgy when the Scots play is anywhere about.
I wasn't a believer until all that happened. (Although I still wouldn't say the name in a theater.) But too much went wrong after that for me to not be skittish. When we finally got to open a week later, a leading man twisted his ankle, and a couple of freshmen were making out by the lighting rig and, I'm told, leaned on something that came very close to bringing a string of lights down on my head.
On a slightly lighter - okay, seriously lighter - note, may I offer the Superhero Supply Store?
The first one was Dave Eggars' place here in the Mission, and the Brooklyn one sounds like equally good fun. Right over in Park Slope.
(edit: shit. needs a sign-in.)
Bruce Wayne Is on the Mailing List, and Mr. Chips Is in the Back Room
By EMILY WEINSTEIN
Published: June 20, 2004
he sign for the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company reads, in no-nonsense block print: "Ask inside! We can custom-order alter egos." Promising capes, masks and shrinking gas, the sign adds, "If we don't have it, a superhero doesn't need it."
Further curiosities lie within. In the rear, past floor-to-ceiling shelves bearing grappling hooks and utility belts, a secret door masked by a steel bookshelf swings open to reveal - shazam - a tutoring center.
Superhero Supply Company, which opens Friday at 372 Fifth Avenue, near Fifth Street, in Park Slope, has an alter ego. It's also the home of a nonprofit drop-in tutoring center called 826NYC.
A sibling of the 826 Valencia learning lab and pirate-goods store in San Francisco started by Dave Eggers, 826NYC borrows the formula that made its California counterpart so successful: a volunteer-driven tutoring program housed in a distinctly unexpected setting.
"The atmosphere is loose, even eccentric, and that puts kids at ease,'' said Mr. Eggers, who, though he lives in San Francisco, is a familiar figure in Brooklyn, the place where he founded McSweeney's literary journal.
While the superhero supply store will function as a retail space, providing income to support the center, it was conceived as a way to captivate young writers and passers-by.
"If you put 'free tutoring' on the banner, nobody's going to come in,'' said Scott Seeley, the director of operations, who established the center with Doug Bowmen, its educational director. "But if you put 'superhero' - we're already getting a constant flow of people asking questions."
The store has everything a modern, well-equipped superhero might need: leotards, boots, tights, magnets, chain ladders, nets and other tools of the villain-fighting trade. "We don't sell comic books or figurines,'' Mr. Seeley said. "It's literally what a superhero would use.''
Because there aren't too many superhero supply stores around, many products and gadgets had to be custom made. One is the cape-tester, a platform rigged with fans stationed under a 1,000-watt floodlight where a superhero can strike a pose and check to see how a cape will billow in the breeze. On a wall-size map of Brooklyn, neighborhoods in distress light up to alert superheroes to brewing crises. Perpetrators can be expeditiously dispatched to a cagelike "villain containment unit" that stands by the front door.
Many ideas for the store came courtesy of prominent literary figures like Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem, although it was Mr. Eggers who insisted on adding the functioning secret door to the tutoring area. He is hoping that the unusual storefront will entice students in need of academic help, just as they have been lured in San Francisco.
"I remember as a kid going to cold-feeling rooms after school, with walls made of those huge fire-resistant bricks and linoleum floors,'' he said. "It wasn't a place you went to willingly. But the kids in San Francisco are running from school to 826 Valencia. They're running to their after-school tutoring appointments. We expect the same thing to happen in Brooklyn."
Maysa: Yeah, I too read WD at age 11, loved it, and tried to read the Plague Dogs, but it was too upseting to finish. I can't deal with animal testing.
Oh please – do give this one another try. Skip past the upsetting laboratory part, which is only the set up for delivering the goods at the end. Plague Dogs has one of the best endings, ever. So very worth it, I promise.
Loved Watership Down and the personable rabbits, especially noble Bigwig, solid Hazel, and visionary Fiver. Surprisingly, I also loved the movie and the Art Garfunkle song. I have a copy of the sequel, “Tales from Watership Down” or whatever it’s called; and it makes my eyes glaze over. I never have been able to finish reading it.
There's a general Buffista log in for NY Times:
buffista
foamy
So no one has to register.
And there's always this: [link]
You know what I want?
A Lord Peter Wimsey of my very own, that's what.
(Been re-reading
Murder Must Advertise
and
Strong Poison.)
