California Gurls, Tiny Earrings, and Moose Heads
Plus: Which Shakespeare descendants ended up in Australia?
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Hey, look at these brilliant humans reading Timon. (photos by ARIN SANG-URAI/photojuice)
Stratford stage manager Nora Polley has alll the tea. (+ her book looks like a hoot)
“Have you ever seen tension between costumes and props?” / “Oh gosh yes.”
“Goldie Semple was playing Emilia in Othello and she went for a costume fitting…and they said to her ‘please don’t sit down in this’ and she said, ‘Sit down in it? I’m going to DIE in it.’”
On directors + a brilliant way to motivate a Hamlet scene change:
“…most directors, if you think you have a good idea, you have to try to manipulate it so that THEY think of it.”
On Adrian Noble directing Ben Carlson in Hamlet:
“…I think in the total rehearsal time that we had, I would think that we only spent about maybe 45 minutes on the soliloquies.” 😱
“[Julius Caesar] was directed by James McDonald from The Citadel who had just done Julius Caesar with I think 18 actors so he really didn’t know what to do when Stratford will give you 35.”2
Orlando Shakes’ Nurse (Suzanne O’Donnell) & Friar (Jim Helsinger) are married.
Actors from the London Stage work out how tf to do the last scene of As You with five actors.
“The fastest time to watch live productions of every play by William Shakespeare was completed by Dan Wilson in 328 days.” (source) (this feels breakable, no?)
A truly horrific Ophelia experience. (more / don’t do this)
Shakespeare by the Sea (the California one3) needs to raise $200,000 and the King’s Lynn’s Guildhall needs £30.5m.
Still no foils, but +1 for masks and rapiers are cool too. (background)
Edmund doesn’t like being reviewed.
During one of Edmund’s audience-traversing speeches, Martinez tried to grab the notebook out of my hand, a unique puncturing of theater critics’ imagined invisibility…
An Australian Taming with wine flights, puppet Macbeth in Chicago, and a Canadian Midsummer ballet set during the royal tour. (Bottom gets a moose head and lots of plaid)
When animating Shakespeare, humans are still important for “narrative and visual coherence.” So we’ve got that going for us.
You’ll be able to see n + 1 Midsummer’s in London this summer. (Globe, Open Air)
Your annual reminder that Shakespeare has Aussie descendants + other scandalous facts. (Features ale-tasting and syphilis)
The West End Romeo and Juliet has a production drama therapist. (as did Othello)
The outgoing Stratford AD as Laertes and Benedict Bridgerton getting his funeral oration on. (Also, if Alfie looks familiar, it’s because he’s Puck in the Bridge Midsummer.)
Not everything worked with Shakespearean times; Bops with too many contemporary references, like Perry’s “California Gurls,” were out of the mix.
Recommendations
“You think I’m a great editor,” he would say, “because I never edited you.”
“Musicals are intrusions on the detachment of spectatorship.” via The Paris Review
Essays on small arts organizations:
“Vision, capacity, and capital” via ArtsManaged Field Notes
“Such groups are self-sufficient (in the short term) because they are willing to work long hours for little pay and few resources to take big creative risks.”
“What Leaders of Small Arts Organizations Are Asked to Bear” via Emil J Kang
“You are not simply an executive director or managing director. You are often the chief fundraiser, head of programming, community liaison, institutional historian, human resources department, and moral center of the organization.”
+ “People, Not Stuff” via Adam Greenfield & Almanac
Like this one.
“Cinna’s girlfriend” is a character. I mean, DAMN. Titinius? Dardanius? Who the #&%$ is Clitus? (They are all there.)
I’m still working out Antonia-as-pelligrino-bottle-in-heel.
“Draw thy breath in pain to tell my story” gurgles
Really interesting curated collection. The bit about &Juliet cutting "California Gurls" for being too contemporary is kinda funny - like at what point does anachronism become too much for a show that's already about Juliet not dying? I ran into similar issues when doing some work on adapted shakespeare, there's always this weird tipping point where the audience goes from "this is clever" to "wait what." Also those stage manager interviews are gold.