Porters, Pepys, and Pens
Plus: Romeo and Juliet and Godzilla
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The brilliant folks at St. Johns hosted the Shakespeare Theatre Association conference last week. Adventures were had.
Obituaries for Tina Packer (more) and Carmen de Lavallade (as Titania).
Shakespeare in American Communities grant intentions are due at the end of the month and ASC is looking for a Director of Education & Community Engagement.
Patrick Page is playing Titus, Michael Potts and [many others] are playing Lear (more2), Whitney White’s All Is But Fantasy starts at the RSC (more), the Riz Ahmed Hamlet has a trailer (more), take the PATH to Richard III, Ivo Van Hove is doing Hamlet, and you can catch a screening of Thomas Ostermeier’s French Twelfth Night in NYC.
Hamnet roundup:
Read the screenplay, check out the costumes and sets, and book a stay in the stand-in for Anne Hathaway’s cottage. (£1547 for 3 nights)
The “real history” (or is it? and do we care?) from the Smithsonian and BBC.
The film is a “gut punch,” but is it also “grief porn,” “manipulative,” or “something worse” / “missing the point”? (And what about Ur-Hamlet?)
“This is a strange segue, but I heard Chloe Zhou – Oscar-winning director – had you actually get drunk for one of your scenes.”3 (more)
“Paul Mescal Recalls ‘Having to Embody a Penis’ During a Tantric ‘Hamnet’ Rehearsal”
“[‘To Be’] didn’t come from the intellectual mind…“It came from the tension in the body.” vs. “That’s balls.”
Deborah Warner is a Shakespearean powerhouse and the new AD at the Armory.
“A Sydney production of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice has been postponed and tickets refunded because actors were reluctant to stage the play featuring antisemitic themes, one month after the Bondi terror attack.”
Carrie Coon on APT: “I was in in Wisconsin…” “WOO” “Doing Shakespeare…”
Adjoa Andoh MBE is the inaugural resident in the Folger’s Director’s Residency.
Salieri’s Falstaff. (yes, please cut Fenton) + All the Verdi.
Josh Brolin did Caesar speeches on the “Wake Up Dead Man” set.
Former Alabama Shakespeare Managing Director Alan Harrison on cuts:
“See what the company looks like with a $6 million budget.” These were some of the final words spoken to me by a board member at the then-$12 million Alabama Shakespeare Festival.
Pepys sees Twelfth Night, thinks it is “a silly play.” (1662/63)
It is, however, the most-quoted Shakespeare play in Sherlock Holmes.
“Lakota-centered adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ in development.”
Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Romeo and Juliet are among the top-10 most-assigned high school books in the last 60 years.
A new play about what the %#$& the Porter is doing after Act II.
F. Murray Abraham keeps a mildly distressing Shylock portrait in his home.4
Recommendations
Like this one.
Worth reading for the description of one actor as “majestically cuddly.”
Insert [“My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”] here.
