the play is the thing

[deird1]

Shakespeare should always be performed rather than read.


Saw some friends perform As You Like It this evening. I can guarantee you - if I'd tried sitting down and reading that play, I wouldn't have got more than two pages in. But watching it? Fantastic! It's so hilarious!

Especially when the actors get the fact that Shakespeare's comedies were more "low burlesque" than "high opera".* They're silly, and should be treated as such. Whereas when people think "Shakespeare=formal" and try treating it solemnly and giving the most serious and staid performances of their lives... it just doesn't work.




* I have an entirely different rant ready about how opera is more low burlesque than high opera - but that would go against the point I'm trying to make in this paragraph, so I'll leave it for now.

Comments

[jl-in-the-lane.livejournal.com]

Now, isn't this interesting, because I was just thinking last night when I could 't sleep about this very thing and noting that this is why I'm a spoiler-whore / spoiler-slut -

WHICH IS IT? so then I ended up on this whole tangent (seriously, I thought through all of this before my brain got back to the other bit) because the one I'm most familiar with is 'spoiler-whore', but I'm sure it should really be 'spoiler-slut', right? unless you're saying that you're trading your purity for something you want.

... anyway, Shakespeare.
So, I'm frantically into seeing Shakespeare as it was written. i.e. to be performed live., so students can appreicate his brilliance at entertaining the crowd.
And I reckon teachers should publish Dickens weekly so the students can appreciate it in serial form and appreicate his mastery of keeping everyone desperate for the next issue.

Because what I'm REALLY INTO, I've decided,

rather than appreciating the Text in its Pure Form

is understanding story and how it's created, and a huge part of that is how the writers play the audience.

Paul Eddington, in his autobiography, was talking about timing and how you have to feel just how long it takes the audience to make the mental jump to predict what is about to happen, before fulfilling / averting their expectations.
I LOVE THIS.

I think that spoilers and interview comments and promos are an integral part of how the writers play the audience with their story, so for me it's a big part of seeing what happens.

(AND I DON'T LIKE IT WHEN OTHER PEOPLE DECIDE TO BE BIGSHOTS AND RELEASE THEIR OWN SPOILERS because then you're wrecking what the author has tried to do.)

and I believe I hypothesised teaching English and getting students to have an LJ-type thing and getting them to publish and comment on each other's work and seeing whether they liked one shots or serials or discussions and


... anyway, this is what my brain gets up to when it's busy Not Sleeping.