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white-throated-packrat:
smallest-feeblest-boggart:
amuseoffyre:
nerdyblogname:
shesafunnyshoney:
pettybitchcatullus:
foxhounders:
ppl who dont even like shakespeare: WOW how DARE you alter the original text these are CLASSICS have you no RESPECT, going around DESECRATING these sacred texts in the name of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS!!!!!!!!!
people who love shakespeare: im going to stage a production of hamlet where all the actors are dogs
it’s what he would have wanted
Okay so the universal law of Shakespeare, as I’ve heard it, is that you can take things out, you can rearrange them, you just cannot add anything in that conflicts with the original texts. So while you cannot have a production of romeo and juliet where the houses get along and they get married, it’s perfectly acceptable to replace all the actors with dogs in hamlet because the characters are never outright stated to not be dogs.
“The characters are never outright stated not to be dogs”
“It was never a part of their journey” but better.
Things I have seen:
Hamlet set in a psychiatric institution where it was heavily implied the whole thing was his imagination
Romeo and Juliet where the Montagues were aliens
Steampunk Hungarian Romeo and Juliet musical with a fleet of rapping white boys
Russian King Lear which was the bleakest thing I have ever seen
Richard III set in the 1930s including fascist iconography
The Tempest in Space
Meiji Era Twelfth Night set in a Kabuki theatre in a fascinating meta examination of the role of women and men who play women (being performed entirely by a company of women)
Romeo & Juliet, Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure and Hamlet each with a single very drunk performer.
I love seeing what different productions bring to the table, because it’s so much fun! It’s also fun to watch Shakespeare purists pitch a fit about it being wrong. Bitch, stfu. I know for a fact that when Shakespeare’s globe burned down, one of the drunken audience members put out his burning trousers with his pint. This was not high-brow sober art. This was for the people and they loved it.
fun fact, i played the prince in a high school production of The Tempest and looking back it so easily could have been set in space
For The Tempest set in space, you need to watch Forbidden Planet. It really is The Tempest, complete with drunken clowns.
I have seen:
The Tempest where all of the fairy costumes were based on sub-Saharan African masks, Caliban was wearing medieval Arabian dress, and Prospero, Miranda et al were wearing Italian Renaissance, thereby implying all sorts of things about colonialism and the Age of Exploration; also, Ariel was on a wire harness and his feet didn’t touch the floor until Prospero freed him.
The Tempest where the stage was most bare, but the goddesses and fairies were larger-than-life puppets.
Macbeth were all the men were wearing Soviet-style uniforms, and the tines of the crown everyone was fighting over were made of actual bullet cartridges.
Antony and Cleopatra where Ceasar’s assassination was acted out on stage in silence by the senators putting on red gloves; when they mobbed him and touched him, they left bloody handprints on him, until he collapsed.
Avery Brooks playing Othello, though sadly not the run ten years before the one I saw, where Brooks played Othello, and Andre Braugher played Iago.
Othello where two other Iagoes jump out of mirrors and follow Iago around whispering things to him and handing him knives.
Twelfth Night performed in Russian by an all-male troupe and set in the 1920s, ending with Malvolio on a darkened stage, standing under a spotlight saying “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.” in a way that was terrifying
Much Ado About Nothing set in 1950s Las Vegas, and the duel was on motorcycles.
King Lear where everyone was a white-faced clown… agh! So creepy!
I really liked a production of Macbeth set in Uganda Last King of Scotland style, and acted out in a massive abandoned warehouse where the audience had to run after the cast as they moved from set to set.
Also there was an absolutely awesome production of Othello where Othello was white and everyone else was black, and Patrick Steward had the title role. It was called the ‘photo-negative Othello’
white-throated-packrat:
smallest-feeblest-boggart:
amuseoffyre:
nerdyblogname:
shesafunnyshoney:
pettybitchcatullus:
foxhounders:
ppl who dont even like shakespeare: WOW how DARE you alter the original text these are CLASSICS have you no RESPECT, going around DESECRATING these sacred texts in the name of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS!!!!!!!!!
people who love shakespeare: im going to stage a production of hamlet where all the actors are dogs
it’s what he would have wanted
Okay so the universal law of Shakespeare, as I’ve heard it, is that you can take things out, you can rearrange them, you just cannot add anything in that conflicts with the original texts. So while you cannot have a production of romeo and juliet where the houses get along and they get married, it’s perfectly acceptable to replace all the actors with dogs in hamlet because the characters are never outright stated to not be dogs.
“The characters are never outright stated not to be dogs”
“It was never a part of their journey” but better.
Things I have seen:
Hamlet set in a psychiatric institution where it was heavily implied the whole thing was his imagination
Romeo and Juliet where the Montagues were aliens
Steampunk Hungarian Romeo and Juliet musical with a fleet of rapping white boys
Russian King Lear which was the bleakest thing I have ever seen
Richard III set in the 1930s including fascist iconography
The Tempest in Space
Meiji Era Twelfth Night set in a Kabuki theatre in a fascinating meta examination of the role of women and men who play women (being performed entirely by a company of women)
Romeo & Juliet, Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure and Hamlet each with a single very drunk performer.
I love seeing what different productions bring to the table, because it’s so much fun! It’s also fun to watch Shakespeare purists pitch a fit about it being wrong. Bitch, stfu. I know for a fact that when Shakespeare’s globe burned down, one of the drunken audience members put out his burning trousers with his pint. This was not high-brow sober art. This was for the people and they loved it.
fun fact, i played the prince in a high school production of The Tempest and looking back it so easily could have been set in space
For The Tempest set in space, you need to watch Forbidden Planet. It really is The Tempest, complete with drunken clowns.
I have seen:
The Tempest where all of the fairy costumes were based on sub-Saharan African masks, Caliban was wearing medieval Arabian dress, and Prospero, Miranda et al were wearing Italian Renaissance, thereby implying all sorts of things about colonialism and the Age of Exploration; also, Ariel was on a wire harness and his feet didn’t touch the floor until Prospero freed him.
The Tempest where the stage was most bare, but the goddesses and fairies were larger-than-life puppets.
Macbeth were all the men were wearing Soviet-style uniforms, and the tines of the crown everyone was fighting over were made of actual bullet cartridges.
Antony and Cleopatra where Ceasar’s assassination was acted out on stage in silence by the senators putting on red gloves; when they mobbed him and touched him, they left bloody handprints on him, until he collapsed.
Avery Brooks playing Othello, though sadly not the run ten years before the one I saw, where Brooks played Othello, and Andre Braugher played Iago.
Othello where two other Iagoes jump out of mirrors and follow Iago around whispering things to him and handing him knives.
Twelfth Night performed in Russian by an all-male troupe and set in the 1920s, ending with Malvolio on a darkened stage, standing under a spotlight saying “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.” in a way that was terrifying
Much Ado About Nothing set in 1950s Las Vegas, and the duel was on motorcycles.
King Lear where everyone was a white-faced clown… agh! So creepy!
I really liked a production of Macbeth set in Uganda Last King of Scotland style, and acted out in a massive abandoned warehouse where the audience had to run after the cast as they moved from set to set.
Also there was an absolutely awesome production of Othello where Othello was white and everyone else was black, and Patrick Steward had the title role. It was called the ‘photo-negative Othello’