Part one of my most excellent weekend
Okay, so here's the monster post I've undoubtedly been promising for ages at this point -- my fabulous Shakespeare's Globe adventure (such as it is ;) ). It's rather a long entry, so I've broken it up into LJ cuts, and further am making in two posts. I don't get to the actual reviewing until the second part; this is just a lot of silly miscellanea, although there's some fun stuff in Chapter the Second, including one bit of very good news.
Our story begins after class on Friday morning. I let them go early -- I'm sure they were thrilled. ;) On the way out, one of them asked my advice on what the best Shakespeare play was -- I said that it's a highly subjective matter, and that "best" and "favorite" weren't the same, but if we want to feign objectivity you could do worse than King Lear. Unfortunately, the conversation broke up before I had a chance to plug DSP. Well, next time!
After class got out I made the very, very long drive up to Michigan (thankfully, I had my classic rock CDs with me to stave off tedium and drowsiness). I stayed at my sisters' apartment -- that building looks worse and worse ever year. I don't remember it being such a pit when I lived in it...
And I had an odd but interesting conversation with one of my sisters about Shakespeare, poetry, religion, and why our dad should not be allowed to read King Lear. Quote: "I identify with Bolingbroke's iconoclasm and commitment to stamping out government corruption." See, John -- I told you she'd be rooting for you... ;)
Saturday, as it turned out, was a rather festive day in Ann Arbor -- the performance coincided with the event that was on the minds of most people, namely the Michigan-Ohio State game. Happily, Michigan won, which means a trip to the Rose Bowl -- w00t! It was pretty odd, though, because I was totally centered on Shakespeare, and surrounded by football talk, when everyone knows that Shakespeare is much more important (and I say this as a fan of U-M football, so there's no misunderstanding about it)!
When I arrived at the Union I found that in the front of the ballroom-cum-theater, instead of the free-for-all I was expecting (and I'd imagined I could have elbowed my way to the front!) people who had general-admission tickets were asked to queue up. So I got in line, behind two older women who were trying to remember what they knew about the play, and with whom I eventually struck up a conversation ("Yes, this is the play that starts with 'If music be the food of love, play on...'"). They lamented the lack of younger people at most theater performances they'd been to, which is, alas, all too true. The people behind me were talking about the football game (score at this point: Michigan 21, OSU 0).
It was at this point, too, that I experienced the first major bit of good news of the day. I was flipping through the program, which the ushers had been handing out to the people in line, and found this note, buried at the end of the acknowledgements:
"For information on the Fall 2004 North American tour of Shakespeare's Globe's Original Practices production of Richard II, contact 2Luck Concepts."
This is the same production I desperately wanted to see and, as most of you will remember, spent much of the summer bitching about not being able to see thanks to lack of funds. I almost bit my finger off trying (and mostly succeeding) not to shriek aloud (and, since I couldn't then: squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! ;) )
After a long and rather sweaty wait they finally opened the house, and the line slowly began to trudge into the Michigan Union ballroom, which had been festooned with candles and greenery (Twelfth Night, don't you know) and a whole bunch of chairs (obviously) and a specially built replica of the kind of screen they'd have used for entrances and exits in the original Middle Temple Hall staging. Except for the exit signs and the anachronistic chairs I could almost pretend that it was 1603 rather than 2003. I followed the mass of people into the room, looking frantically for a seat at least somewhat near the front (I imagined the first row would have filled up at that point), when lo and behold, an old guy with an aisle seat pointed out that the two seats front and more or less center. If you look at this picture -- it's actually of MTH, but the setup is the same -- I was right downstage, on what would be the bottom of the pic to the viewer's left, and in the very first row. This was my second major stroke of luck.
So I took my seat, and there, about six feet away from me, was Mark Rylance putting on his socks. It's a bit of a surreal experience to be sitting that close to a man donning Elizabethan drag, especially when it's someone you've wanted to see in performance for a long time, thanks to the very favorable reviews of friends (*waves to Palin*). And at one point he noticed me sitting there in the front row looking completely blissed out and smiled at me. Which was neat. :D
At one point, too, one of the actors wandered over to where I was sitting, and remarked, in this plummy British accent: "You certainly look excited to be here!" I imagine I did, as I was grinning like a dope. ;) (I explained that I was a PhD student, really into Shakespeare, and this was the first chance I'd had to see a production like this. Later I found that the guy's name is Terry McGinity, and he played several minor roles, such as one of Orsino's attendants and the priest who presides at the marriage of Olivia and Sebastian.)
After a rather lengthy period of sitting there being generally thrilled to be where I was, it was finally time to get down to business -- business, in this case, being some introductory music by the Globe musicians, who were exceedingly cool. There was a guy playing the sackbut. Isn't that the best instrument name ever?
But I'll talk more about this in Chapter the Third, which will probably be up tomorrow, as I need to make my remarks on the play sound more intelligent than the gush-fest I've been coming up with... ;)
Our story begins after class on Friday morning. I let them go early -- I'm sure they were thrilled. ;) On the way out, one of them asked my advice on what the best Shakespeare play was -- I said that it's a highly subjective matter, and that "best" and "favorite" weren't the same, but if we want to feign objectivity you could do worse than King Lear. Unfortunately, the conversation broke up before I had a chance to plug DSP. Well, next time!
After class got out I made the very, very long drive up to Michigan (thankfully, I had my classic rock CDs with me to stave off tedium and drowsiness). I stayed at my sisters' apartment -- that building looks worse and worse ever year. I don't remember it being such a pit when I lived in it...
And I had an odd but interesting conversation with one of my sisters about Shakespeare, poetry, religion, and why our dad should not be allowed to read King Lear. Quote: "I identify with Bolingbroke's iconoclasm and commitment to stamping out government corruption." See, John -- I told you she'd be rooting for you... ;)
Saturday, as it turned out, was a rather festive day in Ann Arbor -- the performance coincided with the event that was on the minds of most people, namely the Michigan-Ohio State game. Happily, Michigan won, which means a trip to the Rose Bowl -- w00t! It was pretty odd, though, because I was totally centered on Shakespeare, and surrounded by football talk, when everyone knows that Shakespeare is much more important (and I say this as a fan of U-M football, so there's no misunderstanding about it)!
When I arrived at the Union I found that in the front of the ballroom-cum-theater, instead of the free-for-all I was expecting (and I'd imagined I could have elbowed my way to the front!) people who had general-admission tickets were asked to queue up. So I got in line, behind two older women who were trying to remember what they knew about the play, and with whom I eventually struck up a conversation ("Yes, this is the play that starts with 'If music be the food of love, play on...'"). They lamented the lack of younger people at most theater performances they'd been to, which is, alas, all too true. The people behind me were talking about the football game (score at this point: Michigan 21, OSU 0).
It was at this point, too, that I experienced the first major bit of good news of the day. I was flipping through the program, which the ushers had been handing out to the people in line, and found this note, buried at the end of the acknowledgements:
"For information on the Fall 2004 North American tour of Shakespeare's Globe's Original Practices production of Richard II, contact 2Luck Concepts."
This is the same production I desperately wanted to see and, as most of you will remember, spent much of the summer bitching about not being able to see thanks to lack of funds. I almost bit my finger off trying (and mostly succeeding) not to shriek aloud (and, since I couldn't then: squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! ;) )
After a long and rather sweaty wait they finally opened the house, and the line slowly began to trudge into the Michigan Union ballroom, which had been festooned with candles and greenery (Twelfth Night, don't you know) and a whole bunch of chairs (obviously) and a specially built replica of the kind of screen they'd have used for entrances and exits in the original Middle Temple Hall staging. Except for the exit signs and the anachronistic chairs I could almost pretend that it was 1603 rather than 2003. I followed the mass of people into the room, looking frantically for a seat at least somewhat near the front (I imagined the first row would have filled up at that point), when lo and behold, an old guy with an aisle seat pointed out that the two seats front and more or less center. If you look at this picture -- it's actually of MTH, but the setup is the same -- I was right downstage, on what would be the bottom of the pic to the viewer's left, and in the very first row. This was my second major stroke of luck.
So I took my seat, and there, about six feet away from me, was Mark Rylance putting on his socks. It's a bit of a surreal experience to be sitting that close to a man donning Elizabethan drag, especially when it's someone you've wanted to see in performance for a long time, thanks to the very favorable reviews of friends (*waves to Palin*). And at one point he noticed me sitting there in the front row looking completely blissed out and smiled at me. Which was neat. :D
At one point, too, one of the actors wandered over to where I was sitting, and remarked, in this plummy British accent: "You certainly look excited to be here!" I imagine I did, as I was grinning like a dope. ;) (I explained that I was a PhD student, really into Shakespeare, and this was the first chance I'd had to see a production like this. Later I found that the guy's name is Terry McGinity, and he played several minor roles, such as one of Orsino's attendants and the priest who presides at the marriage of Olivia and Sebastian.)
After a rather lengthy period of sitting there being generally thrilled to be where I was, it was finally time to get down to business -- business, in this case, being some introductory music by the Globe musicians, who were exceedingly cool. There was a guy playing the sackbut. Isn't that the best instrument name ever?
But I'll talk more about this in Chapter the Third, which will probably be up tomorrow, as I need to make my remarks on the play sound more intelligent than the gush-fest I've been coming up with... ;)