Girl Scouts, Gilmore Girls, and Generative AI
Plus: A Wild West Romeo and Juliet
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New News
The new Globe season looks fascinating: “Shakespeare’s most masculine play ever”1and a Wild West Romeo and Juliet.2
There will be no outdoor performances at The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey this summer. “The combined increase in expenses and challenging weather conditions has made the program untenable at this time.”
A Henry V goof in “Gilmore Girls” that might also be a Harvard dig?
Tell us your favorite Girl Scout Cookie and we’ll tell you what Shakespeare play to read next.
A “psycho-geographic exploration” of Shakespeare using Generative Artificial Intelligence.3
The director of “Captain America: Brave New World” reminds everyone that “You can put [Anthony Mackie] in Shakespeare.”4
Jared Harris “can measure out his life in Hamlets.” In one, his father Richard Harris6 appeared on film as the ghost.
I didn’t realise I was such a nutcase. But if you encountered the ghost of your dead father, who confirmed all the things you’ve done wrong that you’re going to pay for in the afterlife and finally goes, ‘I want you to go and kill the bastard who killed me’ — it would f*** your mind.
Keir Starmer’s communication coach was Patrick Stewart’s Lavinia.
Please please tell me I don’t need to read Wittgenstein now.
Michael Dobson reviews three books on Shakespeare and race.7 (This link is paywalled, a saved snapshot is available via Archive.today.)
[Peter] Sellars has a fascinating exchange with Ayanna Thompson in which they discuss the paradoxical advantages enjoyed by performances of Shakespeare’s plays in prisons over those in commercial theatres: for one thing, in jail you automatically get representatively diverse casting, if single-sexed.
“It helps enormously that we have a 6-foot-5 actor [Kieffer] as Puck.” (The Guthrie’s Midsummer looks gorgeous.)
“Shakespeare on Poker” (1906) is still available for purchase.
Everything That Never Happened starts performances at Baltimore Center Stage this week.
Whether you love Shakespeare or detest Shylock, this story lives between The Merchant of Venice and the realities of Jewish history. Jessica and Lorenzo are in love, but to be together they must plan an escape from her father’s house, the Venetian ghetto, and her entire culture.
Vintage News
King Edward VII gave actress Lillie Langtry a necklace that she wore onstage during the opening night of Antony and Cleopatra in 1890. Meryl Streep wore it in The Devil Wears Prada in 2006.
Madeline Miller on how co-directing Troilus and Cressida inspired The Song of Achilles. (skip 36 minutes in)8
"I don’t want to write my master’s thesis about this. This is a novel. The argument I want to make is an emotional argument.”
Oh, to have seen Christopher Walken as Bassanio!
“We will be performing the Bard’s comedies as modern tragedies outside Whole Foods across town.”
“One recent morning at Lincoln Center, while alternately smoking cigarettes and eating yogurt (a contrast of opposites such as one finds in a Lamos production), he spoke about the alterations in his Measure for Measure.”
Recommendations
Chris Jones remembers theater critic Jack Helbig and that time Tracy Letts “hurled a retaliatory insult across a crowded room that compared Helbig to an equine appendage.”
The translator of Three Sisters at the Globe on the difference between “were you in love…” and “did you love…”
“Women under tree” or, Oscar Wilde’s ideas for A Woman of No Importance.
I’m 100% on board with Troilus and Cressida. My question is about the key art: why is the giant statue head in the middle of the Globe Michelangelo’s David? There are so many Greek (or Roman) statues *of the actual characters in the play.* Does The David read as “Big White Statue” and therefore “Ancient Greek”? (Leaving aside polychromy for the moment.)
There are plenty of Wild West Tamings (including one with Robin Williams!) and the musical Wild West Measure for Measure but I’ve never seen an R&J.
No, I don’t get it either.
Anyone else start singing “Barking Ophelia” to the tune of “Waltzing Matilda” in their head?
I will never, ever miss an opportunity to link to Richard Harris’ story about playing the Doctor in Macbeth.
Thanks to Surekha Davies for the link, her new book Humans: A Monsterous History is out now!
She describes the play as "bitter and nasty and funny and snide and snarky" and “not depressing…just really interesting.”
But it didn't really occur to me that I could sort of write my own version, that I could then adapt it myself, until actually theater….getting to work with that as a director, as a storyteller, for the first time, getting to shape how Cassandra or Helen or Achilles or Ajax were delivering their lines, how they were standing on the stage, how they were coming off, suddenly made me realize all these things that I have been wanting to say about these characters, yes, I do want to say them in an academic essay, but also I want to say them in a novel.
Thank you to R.M. Fradkin for the link and for patiently listening to me describe the improbable plots of various operas I’ve dramaturged over the years.