The play is the thing
I wondered how long it was going to take for me to break the basic rule of writing in this journal every Saturday, and post an in-between entry. As I said before, it's OK to write more often than once a week. What can't be done is to skip a Saturday. In my imagination, if I do that, the ghosts of Anaïs Nin, and Samuel Pepys, and Amiel, and Jonathan Swift, and Helena Morley, and Anne Frank, and Allen Ginsberg, and André Gide, and the Goncourt Brothers, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and Katherine Mansfield, and Edmund Wilson, and a few more famous diarists will come and give me hell. Not the sort of thing to look forward to.
Just the other day, Lisa wrote something that gave me a lot to think about. Certain things she likes to read as a book that she can touch, turn the pages with her own fingers, and then put back on a shelf, not on a computer's HD. How I understand her! Not for anything I have amassed such an absurd amount of books. I promise myself not to buy anymore and then buy heaps of them. My behavior with books is totally insane. I don't even feel guilty for buying more of them knowing only too well that there's no space left and one of these days they will crumble down on top of me.
Yesterday, for example, I bought four (one for a present). I meant to buy two: the one I want to give as a present and the beautiful edition of the new translation of Hamlet done by an American scholar named Barbara Harrington, who lives and works in Brazil, in collaboration with Aderbal Freire Filho, who directed the production for which the new translation was commissioned, and Wagner Moura, the exceptionally talented actor who produced and played Hamlet.
I couldn't see the show. They did it in São Paulo first, and then very briefly in Rio, when I was busy in the evenings and couldn't go. From what I hear, Wagner Moura was extraordinary as usual, the production was very beautiful (as can be seen in the awsome pictures that occupy half of the book), but had its faults here and there.
I'm not a director. But if I were, I suppose I woudn't want to direct Shakespeare, much as I love the plays. In the 21st century it has become impossible to stage this author without becoming the object of all sorts of attacks from people who enter the theater with a preconceived idea of what the production should be and then react as if any differences between that and what they see on the stage were meant to insult them.
In 1980, in his production of Hamlet, in London, director Richard Eyre did something extraordinary. He wanted the ghost scene, when Hamlet hears from his recently deceased father that he was murdered, to be effective enough to make it believable that the ghost prompts Hamlet to do what he does. But he thought that by and large audiences had become too skeptical to accept that a spirit might come to talk to his son. So he staged the scene as if Hamlet were schizophrenic and was being possessed. There was only one actor on the stage. Since this actor was Jonathan Pryce, the result was unforgettable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrMoWcHyw9c
The lonely figure on the stage was both the terrified prince and the ghost. This is precisely the sort of thing that makes Shakespeare interesting to modern audiences. It's not distorting him. On the contrary, it's keeping him alive by inviting audiences to embark together on the investigation of a new aspect. Yes, Hamlet could have had schizophrenic traits. And yes, he could be overtaken by the belief that he is possessed by his father's ghost. Like any other character, Hamlet could be many things. Directors should be given credit and feel free to stage the play as they want to.
In my humble opinion, the most extraordinary thing about Shakespeare is his freshness. He's our contemporary. His plays mustn't be staged in such a way that people come out of the theater as if they were coming out of Madame Tussaud's. They must be staged as if they had just been written. But this is nothing but a waste of time. Blah blah blah. People like to raise caine about all sorts of things and how Shakespeare should be produced is too juicy a dish to be discarded.
The other books I bought besides the one to be given as a birthday present were another volume (the third) of the complete Poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Brazil's most celebrated poet, whose work is being republished in separate volumes that reproduce the exact original edition of each book, and last but certainly not least, the latest volume (the ninth) of the complete stories of Chekhov directly translated from Russian into Portuguese. The series is being published in Portugal and the entire text reflects that. Its one of my passions. I find it absolutely fascinating to read the classics in Portuguese from Portugal. It sounds so quaint!
I've been working very hard to finish the definitive version of my play so as to have it copyrighted. It's not a good idea to let it circulate without being protected. The definitive version is quite different from the one that was read in public at the Midrash Cultural Center in November of last year. It's shorter and more focused. Also, since I cut the entire ending, which was long, and substituted a new finale that works much better, I could permit myself to add a new scene towards the end that made me very happy.
For the sake of space, a lot was cut from the beginning. Then I started being sad about the fact that practically everything that was cut was comedy material, so that the play was funny in the beginning and then became so philosophical and reflexive as to get dangerously close to boredom. The new scene has the ghost of Olga Knipper-Chekhova, Chekhov's widow, talking and behaving first as the grande dame she is, and then as a typical member of Rio's underworld in 2014.
The explanation is that, the young man who's writing a book about the orchestra conductor who once met Olga Knipper, smoked pot and rewrote lots of lines in the scene he had written when sober. Trouble is that he didn't rewrite all the lines. Just some. I like to think the result is very funny, especially because Olga Knipper is going to be played by a wonderful actress who is a real Russian and speaks Portuguese with a genuine accent.
There is a lot of expectation in my life right now. I'm very tense. I wish I could sleep better. Also, there are quite a few health issues to be dealt with. I don't know what's wrong with my right hip. It hurts. And there's also the matter of some dentist going having been bypassed.
O, what rogues and peasant slaves we folks are!
Just the other day, Lisa wrote something that gave me a lot to think about. Certain things she likes to read as a book that she can touch, turn the pages with her own fingers, and then put back on a shelf, not on a computer's HD. How I understand her! Not for anything I have amassed such an absurd amount of books. I promise myself not to buy anymore and then buy heaps of them. My behavior with books is totally insane. I don't even feel guilty for buying more of them knowing only too well that there's no space left and one of these days they will crumble down on top of me.
Yesterday, for example, I bought four (one for a present). I meant to buy two: the one I want to give as a present and the beautiful edition of the new translation of Hamlet done by an American scholar named Barbara Harrington, who lives and works in Brazil, in collaboration with Aderbal Freire Filho, who directed the production for which the new translation was commissioned, and Wagner Moura, the exceptionally talented actor who produced and played Hamlet.
I couldn't see the show. They did it in São Paulo first, and then very briefly in Rio, when I was busy in the evenings and couldn't go. From what I hear, Wagner Moura was extraordinary as usual, the production was very beautiful (as can be seen in the awsome pictures that occupy half of the book), but had its faults here and there.
I'm not a director. But if I were, I suppose I woudn't want to direct Shakespeare, much as I love the plays. In the 21st century it has become impossible to stage this author without becoming the object of all sorts of attacks from people who enter the theater with a preconceived idea of what the production should be and then react as if any differences between that and what they see on the stage were meant to insult them.
In 1980, in his production of Hamlet, in London, director Richard Eyre did something extraordinary. He wanted the ghost scene, when Hamlet hears from his recently deceased father that he was murdered, to be effective enough to make it believable that the ghost prompts Hamlet to do what he does. But he thought that by and large audiences had become too skeptical to accept that a spirit might come to talk to his son. So he staged the scene as if Hamlet were schizophrenic and was being possessed. There was only one actor on the stage. Since this actor was Jonathan Pryce, the result was unforgettable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrMoWcHyw9c
The lonely figure on the stage was both the terrified prince and the ghost. This is precisely the sort of thing that makes Shakespeare interesting to modern audiences. It's not distorting him. On the contrary, it's keeping him alive by inviting audiences to embark together on the investigation of a new aspect. Yes, Hamlet could have had schizophrenic traits. And yes, he could be overtaken by the belief that he is possessed by his father's ghost. Like any other character, Hamlet could be many things. Directors should be given credit and feel free to stage the play as they want to.
In my humble opinion, the most extraordinary thing about Shakespeare is his freshness. He's our contemporary. His plays mustn't be staged in such a way that people come out of the theater as if they were coming out of Madame Tussaud's. They must be staged as if they had just been written. But this is nothing but a waste of time. Blah blah blah. People like to raise caine about all sorts of things and how Shakespeare should be produced is too juicy a dish to be discarded.
The other books I bought besides the one to be given as a birthday present were another volume (the third) of the complete Poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Brazil's most celebrated poet, whose work is being republished in separate volumes that reproduce the exact original edition of each book, and last but certainly not least, the latest volume (the ninth) of the complete stories of Chekhov directly translated from Russian into Portuguese. The series is being published in Portugal and the entire text reflects that. Its one of my passions. I find it absolutely fascinating to read the classics in Portuguese from Portugal. It sounds so quaint!
I've been working very hard to finish the definitive version of my play so as to have it copyrighted. It's not a good idea to let it circulate without being protected. The definitive version is quite different from the one that was read in public at the Midrash Cultural Center in November of last year. It's shorter and more focused. Also, since I cut the entire ending, which was long, and substituted a new finale that works much better, I could permit myself to add a new scene towards the end that made me very happy.
For the sake of space, a lot was cut from the beginning. Then I started being sad about the fact that practically everything that was cut was comedy material, so that the play was funny in the beginning and then became so philosophical and reflexive as to get dangerously close to boredom. The new scene has the ghost of Olga Knipper-Chekhova, Chekhov's widow, talking and behaving first as the grande dame she is, and then as a typical member of Rio's underworld in 2014.
The explanation is that, the young man who's writing a book about the orchestra conductor who once met Olga Knipper, smoked pot and rewrote lots of lines in the scene he had written when sober. Trouble is that he didn't rewrite all the lines. Just some. I like to think the result is very funny, especially because Olga Knipper is going to be played by a wonderful actress who is a real Russian and speaks Portuguese with a genuine accent.
There is a lot of expectation in my life right now. I'm very tense. I wish I could sleep better. Also, there are quite a few health issues to be dealt with. I don't know what's wrong with my right hip. It hurts. And there's also the matter of some dentist going having been bypassed.
O, what rogues and peasant slaves we folks are!