Racoons, Venereal Disease, and a Slings and Arrows Prequel

Plus: "Have you got balls?"

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Quick Links

…and we’re back! There will be a daily newsletter Monday-Friday this week.

Shows seen:

• Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare in the Park), As You Like It (Hudson Valley Shakespeare), Othello, Midsummer, and The Tempest (Stratford Festival).

• Not-Shakespeare: The Light in the Piazza and A Streetcar Named Desire (Opera Theatre of St. Louis), Brokeback Mountain (Chicago Shakespeare), An Enemy of the People (TimeLine Theatre), Iceboy! (The Goodman), Guys and Dolls, Something Rotten, and The Importance of Being Earnest (Stratford Festival).

• Plus the concert world premiere of Trusted by the brilliant Aaron Israel Levin and Marella Martin Koch at Chicago Opera Theater.

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• 🚨🚨The Amateurs, a Slings and Arrows prequel, is having a one-night-only reading this Sunday and there are still tickets available. Hie thee thither!² 🚨🚨

• While you wait, check out some of the team working through Richard III.

• 🚨Shakespeare & Company is hosting a Fall Festival alumni night on Friday. 🚨

• Hudson Valley’s new theater looks like an animal… (“zoomorphic”) (more)

  Studio Gang managed to fit the Scripps’s 450 seats into just nine U-shaped rows…Why does that matter? Here’s how one of McCallum’s favorite books on theater design explains it: Every theater has a “limit of presence,” the threshold within which actors and crowds feel subconsciously “real” to each other.

• …and the old one had them.

  Nance Williamson keeps a running inventory of memories…playing the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet and stashing breast padding made from knee-highs filled with birdseed in a nearby microwave so raccoons wouldn’t get to it…

• Would it had worked.³ (Alas, alas for England)

• H.P. Lovecraft on Mickey Rooney as Puck. (his last letter – “HPL was found collapsed at his desk and in the midst of writing ✍🏻 this letter.”)

• Macbeth in Māori.

  In Māori, we learn, Lady Macbeth’s question to her husband, “Are you a man?”, makes no sense at all, so the translator Te Haumihiata Mason renders it as something roughly meaning “Have you got balls?” – “which is,” Hahn notes contentedly, “exactly what Lady M is asking.”

• Yes to Russian Winter’s Tale I’ve got that matryoshka bear poster ready to go.⁴

• This is a great article, but there is no way this picture is from Orson Welles’ Macbeth as captioned.⁵

• Iago making a dart board of Cassio’s face is a pointed choice + I’m pretty sure squirrels would be considered an invasive species on Cyprus.

• “There’s something perversely logical about a director of Othello doubling as the play’s Iago”

• A mask for Titus: “Made by Noh mask designer Hisahito Iwasaki, it combines the face of a demon with that of a grieving person.”

• Hot takes on the most overrated Shakespeare.

• A reminder that Romeo and Juliet with cats is a real movie that really happened and had an absolutely wild (feral?) cast. via Marella Koch.

• “And so to the Duke’s House; and there saw ‘Hamlett’ done, giving us fresh reason never to think enough of Betterton.”

• NY Classical partnered with AARP and Civics is Sexy.

• “I don’t think venereal disease is particularly funny, but he finds it interminably funny.”

• Comical-tragical.

• Cheek by Jowl is doing a Spanish Lear.

• The Greenshow at at Utah Shakes.

• Yup, an Icke-Strong Macbeth is definitely in the works. (previous)⁶

  “When he asked me, my initial reaction was, it’s done so much,” Strong says. “But as an actor, if you get the opportunity to play the part, you’ve got to play it…”

• And this should be in the works.

  What’s at the top of the wish list?

  Right now, probably Iago in Othello. The psychology of that character is deeply troubling. But, you know, what a part.

• Shakespeare wine-character pairings.

• This Connections was just rude.

Recommendations

• Fancy pop-ups.

• Singing Gorgons.

• Predicable similes.

• The bus with its own car.

• Mozart gives acting advice.

• The Helpless Case Shirt + he saved the egg shells.

• “It’s actually really hard to connect your scene partner when you’re vibrating…” via Natasha Tripney

• “In nonprofit theater, women have never held more than 27 percent of leadership positions at LORT member theaters.” via Emil J Kang. Also, this. And this.

  © 2026 Kate Pitt. All rights reserved. No reproduction without permission.

1. Like this one.

2. Have you seen Slings and Arrows? You should see Slings and Arrows.

3. The tradition of sticking “this realm” into English ads remains strong.

4. Not sure about Hermione-as-Ivan-the-Terrible’s daughter (better than son) but this fact is wild: “By the end of the 1580s, a quarter of the English Navy’s expenses went on Russian rope alone.”

5. Try Androcles and the Lion. Also Federal Theatre Project, also set in Rome, but more plumes, less fascism.

6. Curious how this would work with Shakespeare. (This seems a bit much.)

Another way he keeps the material alive is through a practice he calls “grenades.” They’re alternate lines or speeches that are secretly embedded into his plays as a way of keeping the actors on their toes during long runs.