The Best Shakespeare Adaptation I've Seen in Years

Denzel Washington is incredible in this.

It's been literal years since I've seen a film of a Shakespeare play in which actors spoke the lines like human beings. If The Tragedy of Macbeth is notable for anything it's that Washington and the other actors behave and speak like real people and not like people speaking Shake-a-spear. 

The design, however, is a little baffling. The actors are human beings, but the production design is theatrical in the extreme. Joel Coen (working alone) shoots the film in black and white, and stages The Tragedy in a highly theatrical mode.

I didn't mind any of this. I was here for the whole thing. I thought Corey Hawkins and Kathryn Hunter were standouts in their supporting roles. (Alex Hassell, too.) And the cut of Shakespeare's text is very, very good, with (as is appropriate) a focus on Macbeth himself rather than a focus on the weird sisters or Lady M (as so many directors these days want to do).

And Denzel Washington. He's just extraordinary. It's an astounding performance.

I've heard rumors that Washington is going to give us more arthouse fare in the years to come. Anything he gives us like this is a blessing. This is an actor at the top of his game, and he loves to make big Hollywood nonsense, so if he started making arthouse fare? It's hard to imagine being so blessed.

Also: we're in a black-and-white moment, right? Passing and Belfast and C'mon, C'mon and The Tragedy of Macbeth? That seems like a lot of important movies in black and white for one year.

Theatre of Blood

Theatre of Blood is amazing, delightful campy fun. Vincent Price is a terrible actor who devises a series of murders based on Shakespearean deaths as revenge on the critics who refused to recognize his genius. Each murder is more insane than the last. It's hilarious. This is a must for any Shakespeare fan. It's also delightfully gruesome. I had a blast.

RIII (1955)

Laurence Olivier's Richard III is insanely, absurdly bad. The acting is awful, the scenery is terrible, the women all literally wear the same dress. Seriously. It's nuts. The wigs are absurd: you can see his awful wig in the poster. And Olivier rolls his rs incessantly throughout. 

John Gielgud has a really great couple of scenes before he is killed, and Mary Kerridge also comes off pretty well, but nearly everyone else was surely embarrassed by this. Oof. This RIII is apparently rather a classic, too, somehow! I really don't know how. It's a bad film. I think what makes it so bad is that Shakespeare's script just wasn't written for 20th century audiences, and so there are new characters every twenty minutes with whom we are supposed to bond immediately, and characters are killed off without the film seeming even to care. A 20th century writer would give us time with these characters. Films like Cromwell and Anne of the Thousand Days and A Man for All Seasons and Mary, Queen of Scots. But this one... Ugh. oh my god and the ghost sequence at the end. This thing is absurd.

The King (2019)

The King is directed terribly. David Michôd, as ever, seems to have no sense of urgency or stakes. The whole movie is ponderous, as if everything is very, very important, but the direction never seems to communicate that importance, only assume it. There is, accordingly, a great deal of slow-motion photography and an overburdened but beautiful score by Nicholas Britell.

This is a shame because everyone is doing very good work here, especially the armorer, the costumer, Joel Edgerton, the production designer, and every other actor. I think Timothée Chalamet is miscast slightly, but he is still doing good work. Edgerton, who co-wrote the screenplay by telescoping Shakespeare's 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV and focusing on a much adjusted version of Henry V, has given himself all the best lines and has turned Sir John Falstaff into a wise old sage. That is sort of delightful. There's even a gorgeous reference to a speech in Hamlet in The King's version of the St. Crispin's day speech from Henry V. But none of this can save this movie from what Michôd does to it.

Oh and the fights! I should say something about the fights. My housemate, who is a director and fight choreographer, watched the movie with me, and while we were watching I offhandedly said This looks like a fight from a Marvel movie. It makes no sense in the context of the medieval period we are watching. Turns out, the fights were choreographed by a guy who works on the Marvel stuff. Zzzzzz. Stop with all the punching! It's so boring. They're wearing armor, for fuck's sake!

Tilda Swinton Is a Vampire

I found Jim Jarmusch's new film Only Lovers Left Alive rather painful. It is in fact excruciatingly boring.

Which is sort of weird, because it involves Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, and John Hurt as vampires. And I love vampires – not as much as I love dragons, but vampires are one of my favorite mythical creatures (perhaps it is the long association in literature of vampirism with lesbianism). Also, it should be noted that the once-famous twitter handle @NotTildaSwinton, which created a sensation in the summer of 2012 (and then again in the summer of 2013), imagined the entirety of this film in a much cooler way than its actual execution, with tweets such as:

• I once waded the entire length of the Nile. I lost an arm to a hippo, but won it back in a game of Charades. I am stronger for it.
• Uncoil from a tree branch and silently lower yourself on a creature of prey. Instead of attacking, whisper "You are safe" in its ear.
• I am, have always been, and will forever be, negative 1 years old.
• I spent a decade with my mouth agape–birds tucked away by my gums; mating, birthing, dying. This was back when I only had three mouths.
• Of course I have received splinters. I do not remove them. Small branches emerge from me and bear fruit in the shape of my face.
• A tingle in your scalp. Do you feel it!? It crawls down your neck, along your extremities and back to the base of your skull. Bless.

You get the idea. Utter genius, in truth. And, of course, almost totally believable when you think about how Tilda probably understands her own ontology.

Tom/Adam and Tilda/Eve

Tilda is awesome/crazy. But Only Lovers Left Alive is not. In fact, it's kitschy nonsense – trying way too hard to be cool, and way more earnest than it ever ought to have been. Jarmusch's film takes its time, and takes that time doing, well, next to nothing. This is supposed to be a character study, but we learn little about the characters or their feelings, or their ways of being in the world. Jarmusch is content, instead, to make little jokes about the couple's third wedding, back in the 19th century, or about how old Tom Hiddleston's dressing gown is. Zzzzz.

Oh, hang on. I forgot to tell you that their names are Adam and Eve. No joke. And we find out in the film's first ten minutes that Eve's BFF in Tangier is none other than Christopher Marlowe, who, apparently, wrote the entirety of William Shakespeare's oeuvre after he faked his own death. (You will be relieved, perhaps or perhaps not, to find out that Only Lovers believes Kit Marlowe was a homosexual.) And so the film is peppered with little lines about how Shakespeare was a "zombie philistine" or how Adam used to play chess with Lord Byron or have sex with (of all people) the eighteenth-century feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. I read all of these little allusions as heavy-handed in-jokes for history buffs. It is possible that their purpose was more by way of character study, but they are so numerous and always so silly – Adam apparently once composed an adagio and asked Franz Schubert to pass it off as his own – that I couldn't really understand them  functioning as anything other than humorous little colorations. There are, in fact, so many references to Shakespeare's writing actually being Marlowe's that one might mistake this for a film like Roland Emmerich's Anonymous, with its absurd theories about the "real" Shakespeare.

In truth, this kind of thing happens a lot in Only Lovers, so if you're into that...

The film is otherwise plotless, although it spends a great deal of time musing about what a waste humans are, what a mess humankind has made of the world, how little we understand about true wisdom, forgiveness, pleasure, etc. I don't disagree with any of this necessarily – we do tend to make a mess of things – but all of these platitudes are delivered with relentless smugness, and an exhaustion with the world that comes from having lived, oh, you know, four centuries. I have a feeling I'd know a lot more about wisdom, forgiveness, and generosity if I were 500 years old, as well. And anyway neither Jarmusch nor Tilda herself is actually that old, and so perhaps they ought to give the rest of us a bit of a break.

I will say one good thing about Only Lovers Left Alive, there is a great deal of footage of the city of Detroit at night. Adam and Eve drive around the semi-abandoned city and think about abandonment and loneliness and such things – not that they have anything to say about it. The images in these sections of the movie are just gorgeous – eerie and beautiful and mysterious. I felt almost like I was trespassing. Further, these night treks into Detroit provided what was for me the only exciting moment in the film. This place will rise again; there's water here, Eve says. When the cities in the south are burning, this place will bloom. It might be literally the only thing of interest in the film's entirety.

On Gentleness in Critical Thought

My dear friend Cassidy and I recently appeared together on a panel at the ATHE LGBTQ pre-conference in which we were asked to present manifestos. Mine was less of a manifesto (I tend to feel less sure about things the older I get), and more of an attempt to puzzle through some recent debates on the internet about cultural appropriation and cultural stylistics. (I posted it here a week ago or so.)

Cassidy's manifesto was a plea for more critical generosity (a term I've heard rather often in recent days), and what Cassidy specifically argued against was what my friend termed the "call-out culture" of the internet. Cassidy's argument – as I understood it – was that the internet is a place where we hide, where we say things we wouldn't normally say about people we wouldn't normally denigrate, where (because of anonymity) we have the ability to take stands and make pronouncements that we wouldn't normally make. This, Cassidy acknowledged, was both a good thing and a bad thing, but what my friend was hoping for was more conversation, more dialogue between parties who disagreed. Generosity, dialogue, exchange, Cassidy argued, was what queer community was about.

I haven't really experienced much of this "calling out" on the internet. I avoid the comment section of all YouTube videos and most articles I read. These comment sections are invariably filled with angry, incoherent screeds penned hastily and unthinkingly, and I find that very little can be argued in the usually very small number of words in a posted comment. I avoid long rants on facebook, too, and when someone is rude on my wall, I simply block them so that they can't comment on what I post any longer. This is all because (as anyone who is close to me knows) I value politeness a great deal. I think that society, propriety, is really important. We should be nice to one another. We should treat one another with care and avoid being rude at all costs. Nobody likes a jerk, but if I notice someone being publicly rude, I am apt to turn against that person forever. Politeness, to me, is paramount: a way of moving through the world with grace and generosity.

I did, nonetheless, recently get embroiled in a minor spat on the facebooks. (I didn't respond to anything at all, but others spoke – quite rudely and unthinkingly, in fact – about something I had said with which they took issue.) I have been deeply troubled by this impoliteness for the last three days. I know we oughtn't to take such things personally, and I know people can say things hastily and without thinking because of their own feelings and sensitivities, and so I returned in my own thought to critical generosity and the power of dialogue between parties who disagree.

Meanwhile, I've been reading Madhavi Menon's Shakesqueer: a Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare, a volume that collects 48 different essays by various queer theorists, each of which treats a different text from the Shakespearean canon (and some Shakespearean apocrypha, as well) and tries to excavate queer theory from Shakespeare rather than to bring queer theory to the texts. In a book with nearly fifty essays they are not all going to be great, obviously, but I am a little over a third of the way through now and there are some really great ones. And sure enough, a couple of days ago I ran across an essay by Cary Howie entitled "Stay" that theorizes exactly the kind of critical generosity for which my friend Cassidy was arguing. And Howie uses Henry VI, Part 3 to theorize this, no less!

Howie points to the many times that characters in 3HenryVI ask other characters to "stay", and theorizes that The demand to stay is always, in other words, a demand to stay with someone, to keep someone company, to inhabit a shared time or sense of time. To refuse this demand is to refuse what could be said to be common, a refusal highlighted by Edward's ironic "we": togetherness, the acknowledgment that the first person plural binds us somehow. Howie tells us that requests for patience are often coded in the text as "feminine": (to stay is to acquiesce to the demands of a "wrangling woman").

He further argues that King Henry's own tendency to go off and think by himself is a fundamentally solitary one. It does not solve the problem of the social; it avoids the social altogether. What Howie tells us is that To stay with a text like Henry VI, Part 3 is also, then, to stay with one another, to acknowledge patiently what happens in the middle of things, where we are reading and living, singularly and in common, but also writing and fighting and waiting and dying; where one of the hardest things to do, but also one of the most necessary, is to resist the impulse to say what we will or will not become. But the alternative to this is not retreat – not withdrawing into ourselves or our own cliques where we can avoid conference and community.

Howie then asks us: What would a gentle criticism look like? Could it disrupt the violence that so often attends this play's staging of the body in haste? Could it even disrupt [...] the brokenness, the ungentle extremes, of our critical habits, accustomed as we so frequently are to the form and the fantasy of disputation? How can we begin to treat our texts and one another more gently? Henry VI, Part 3 provides us with at least one gesture toward a response. It invites us to stay here. Stay longer. Wait a while. Something or someone may still – may even, and this is the most shocking thing, gently – take us by surprise.

I am thankful to Cassidy (and also to John Fletcher) for thinking through these things, and for putting me on a road to thinking about them myself. The importance of such critical generosity in acrimonious times such as these ought not to be underestimated, particularly within groups we refer to as our own communities.

Anonymous.

So tonight my friend Julie and I watched Anonymous together. She's in New York and I'm in Florida, but we synchronized our watches so that we could text-message each other through the movie and make the whole thing more bearable. And, I have to say, it worked.

I'm not sure how much of this - if any of it - is funny, but we had a good time. A kind of double live-blog of Roland Emmerich's latest film:

Aaron: The ultimate expressions of humanity in the English language?
Julie: Our shakespeare. Our.
Aaron: This opening is stolen from Branagh's Henry V.
Julie: This art direction is stolen from Man in the Iron Mask circa 1998.
Aaron: Hahahahaha.
Julie: Well, naturally. Shakespeare stole everything, so that is fitting.
Julie: If I was in the audience, I'd be asking for my money back.
Aaron: Miss Jacobi is acting!
Julie: With a capital A.

Aaron: I suppose this is how The Globe burned down...
Aaron: Yep.
Julie: Ahahahahahahahaha.

Julie: We're only 7 minutes in and it already doesn't make sense.
Aaron: And it's jumped times twice.
Julie: I'm not sure if the drinking will help or hinder us.
Aaron: Hinder. Definitely.
Julie: Oh well. Absolutely necessary.

Julie: Is his hair crimped?
Aaron: Haha. I hope so.
Aaron: I love this guy's hair.
Julie: He could be in an 80s hair-band.

Aaron: Everything is brown in this film.
Julie: "Earth tones," A-ron. Earth tones.
Aaron: Sepia, methinks.
Aaron: Oh thank Jesus, some color.
Julie: Haha.


Aaron: Vanessa!!!! Love her.
Julie: Is she a butterfly?
Aaron: A walking Christmas Tree, I believe one historian called her.
Julie: Did men wear blue eyeshadow back in the day?
Aaron: And today.
Julie: True.
Julie: More time changes!
Aaron: What the hell?
Julie: When are we??
Aaron: The 1570s???
Julie: Is this baby Willy?
Aaron: Baby Edward De Vere, naturally.
Julie: Shit. I'm already drunk.
Aaron: Back to 1602?
Aaron: Actually I can't tell when this is supposed to be.
Julie: I have no idea either

Aaron: Cobblers are artists. How dare they! Ask Jimmy Choo.
Julie: HAHAHA!

Aaron: But why does he look so bored?
Julie: Rhys? Because he IS boring?
Aaron: These outdoor shots are terribly fake-looking.
Julie: Yeah, it's pretty terrible
Aaron: I need more rum. What is this scene of villainy in one-dimension.
Aaron: Time shift. Yet again!
Julie: No beauty! No art! Tyrant!
Aaron: Hahaha.
Aaron: This ugly little twerp! The film hates him.

Aaron: This Shakespeare actor is hot.
Aaron: I'm into it.
Julie: That's the rum talking

Aaron: This makeup is good! I think that's David Thewlis under all that old age.
Julie: Again, the rum.
Aaron: Hahaha.
Julie: Do I know him?
Julie: (You're right. IMDb)
Aaron: Lupin.

Aaron: "My poems are my soul"?
Aaron: Such clichés.
Julie: I've stopped listening. Just looking at the pretty boys. Time for more beer.
Aaron: Mozart's Requiem during the wedding?
Aaron: Stolen from Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth. This movie is all copies of other things.
Julie: Did you expect something else?
Aaron: I expected it to be a little more subtle. But I am a fool. It's Roland Emmerich.
Julie: I mean, the screenwriter wrote Legend of the Guardians. That owl movie.
Aaron: Hahaha.

Aaron: The Shakespearean acting is so bad!
Julie: I like the white sparkly outfit though.
Aaron: Ooo me too. Good call.
Aaron: More fake exterior shots!
Julie: His hair is scaring me.
Aaron: I'm having a feeling. Henry V is good!
Julie: Feelings! Those are not allowed here.
Aaron: i.e. rum.
Julie: HAHA

Aaron: Vidal Sassoon is back.
Julie: Hahahahahahahahahaha
Julie: That crimped hair! It kills me. Actually, it's like tiny spiral curls. I'm so intrigued.
Julie: Uh oh. Rhys is confused/angry?
Aaron: I love it.
Aaron: This is so fucking bad.
Julie: Ooooo angry.
Aaron: "Voice you have no voice."
Aaron: Ben Jonson? Seriously? He's a wonderful writer.

Julie: What is that top?
Aaron: Chanel.
Julie: Tim Burton?
Aaron: Yes. That's perfect. Burton.
Julie: "You're... Writing again!"
Aaron: You're listening again! Haha.
Aaron: "The voices I can't stop them!"
Julie: The voices! They're speaking to him!

Julie: Don't you wish Spielberg's goose would come out right about now? I need some comic relief.
Aaron: It was a duck.
Julie: Goose.

Aaron: Who's this chick?
Julie: Hahaha. I have no idea.
Aaron: Fake exterior shot #465
Julie: Haha. Glad you're keeping count for us.

Julie: Why are we arresting them again?
Aaron: They had sex, I think.

Aaron: Little boy is adorbs.
Julie: He has some nicely wind-swept hair.
Aaron: Indeed.
Aaron: This is way more confusing than Tinker Tailor.
Julie: Yes, but only because it's unintentional. This should not be a difficult story to follow. What was Roland smoking?
Aaron: These exteriors kill me.

Aaron: Who is Vidal Sassoon?
Julie: Hahahahahaha
Aaron: Is that his kid? Or is the other one his kid?
Aaron: Or both?
Julie: I don't know, but Rhys seems to know him
Aaron: They're both his sons, I think.
Julie: Words. Words.
Julie: Bastards? Who is he married to?
Aaron: The sister of the twerp who is now advising QEI.
Julie: OMG. So confused.

Julie: What. Is. She. wearing.
Julie: Have we been in the Rose yet? Or does Roland think the only theater in London was the Globe.

Julie: Ooo that art direction.
Aaron: Fucking fake exteriors.
Aaron: Where's John Fletcher?
Julie: Who?
Aaron: Who!?!?!
Julie: I was being ironic. Calm the fuck down, A-ron. Hahaha.
Aaron: Haha.

Aaron: Love Will's costume!
Aaron: Well QEI's costume is insanely weird.
Julie: Why are we rioting?
Julie: What the hell is going on?
Aaron: Words, Julie. Words.
Julie: Ha.
Aaron: This is such nonsense.
Julie: OMG these deaths are amazing. Play the melodrama, girl!

Julie: That head piece!
Aaron: I liked it.
Julie: Of course you did.
Aaron: I love a headpiece.
Aaron: She's like a 17th century Cher.
Julie: LOL
Julie: Is this exposition?
Aaron: No: act three monologues.
Julie: Emote!
Aaron: Why is he crying?
Aaron: The hunchback, I mean.
Julie: That was his moment! Let him have it!

Julie: Snow!
Julie: Nice fur.
Aaron: The first pretty exterior in the film.
Aaron: And then we're back to fake ones. That lake!
Julie: Truth.
Aaron: Thank god that wife of his explained this plot sequence because I was confused.

Julie: Those are some intense sleeves.
Aaron: They're like a duvet!

Julie: How is that old man still alive?
Aaron: Yeah. Hello continuity.
Aaron: He died!

Julie: Oh dear. That was dramatic.
Aaron: That was good. I liked that bit of writing.
Julie: That is the rum.
Aaron: Is Derek Jacobi gonna come back, too?
Julie: I hope so. Him and Mark Rylance. They'll do an epilogue.
Aaron: Tenors are singing. Should I be having a feeling?
Julie: Of disgust?
Aaron: They made King James I into a big old queen. (At least that's historically accurate)
Julie: Obvi Roland likes his queens.
Julie: Is that Mark?
Aaron: Yes!
Julie: In the white costume we like.
Julie: Yay!
Aaron: Yay!

The Duchess

In my play analysis class this semester, I decided to switch out a play that I've been teaching since I started teaching this course in 2008: Hamlet. The last time I taught the play the students just seemed bored by it, as though they knew everything about it and that no amount of effort I put toward new ways of approaching the text would convince them otherwise.

So, I said, I spent a year reading other plays from this time period. I will swap one of them in in place of Hamlet. I chose to replace Hamlet with John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. At first I was a little worried: the kids seemed very frustrated by the play and its language. Nothing happens, they protested.

But as we got to the end of the play, the play's outlook on life convinced me (again) of Webster's brilliance. I just want to share some of the play's final thoughts because I think they are fascinating, and have a completely different perspective on the world than I think we normally credit the Early Modern English with having had.

For me, Malfi demonstrates an almost total confusion about why human beings exist, a near utter hopelessness in the possibilities of good government, and only bewilderment and absence in the face of death.

Julia, for example, as she is dying, declares "I go I know not whither." Those are her last words!

And when Bosola commits murder accidentally he bemoans the fact that "We are merely the stars' tennis balls, struck and banded / Which way please them." And later:

Oh, this gloomy world --

In what a shadow or deep pit of darkness

Doth, womanish and fearful, mankind live!

Let worthy minds ne'er stagger in distrust

To suffer death or shame for what is just.

Mine is another voyage.

As for Antonio, he says that

In all our quest of greatness

Like wanton boys whose pastime is their care,

We follow after bubbles blown in th'air.

Pleasure of life -- what is't? Only the good hours

Of an ague, merely a preparative

To rest, to endure vexation.

I don't think I've ever read anything this bleak from the ostensible hero of a play.

This is a play that ends without the romance and sentimentality of, say, Othello or even of Hamlet, which at least ends with a son regaining his dead father's lands. On the contrary, The Duchess of Malfi has no such faith in the order of things. Instead it insists upon life as painful and confusing. Even the Duchess herself, probably the play's brightest character, questions why people are so fond of life:

Of what is't fools make such vain keeping?

Sin their conception, their birth weeping,

Their life a general mist of error,

Their death a hideous storm of terror.

I mean, damn, girl.

Thanksgiving in August: Wahima

I met Wahima in the Fall of 2000 when she started at Cal Poly Pomona. I had been in the department for a little while and it was starting to feel like home. I loved Wahima immediately, although we didn't become friends right away. First we were in Hamlet together (that must have been Winter 2001), and then by the end of the school year we must've been really close, because I have this picture of us from May or June of 2001 – I can tell because my hair is dyed black from when I played Elvis in Picasso at the Lapin Agile.

Wahima and I spent tons of time together after that. I am not sure we ever really acted in anything together, though, maybe a reading of Henry VI (parts 1, 2 & 3). Wahima was an extraordinary help on our production of Gross Indecency, and she was always helping out at the Pomona Downtown Center when a few others and I were trying to get a theatre company started up way back in the day (that whole situation is best forgotten and Wah would agree with me). More than anything, Wahima and I worked together with her as an actor and me as her director. She was Alice in my production of Closer, and she starred as Bernice in the Thornton Wilder short play of that name; she also played Silvia in my Two Gentlemen of Verona, and when J&E produced Howard Korder's Boys' Life in Westwood, they asked Wahima to play one of the women in that too.

We have worked together so much – and I think she is so incredibly talented – that Wah became one of those actors that I thought of whenever I read a play. Justin and Elizabeth were always that for me too. I read plays and think about which role Wahima would play if I directed it. (I still have a fabulous production of Normand Chaurette's The Queens in my mind with Wah and Fran Bennett and Linda and Ashley and Elizabeth that will probably never happen.) It's hard for me to really describe how important it is to have an actor like this in my life as a director. Because of my love for Wahima's abilities as a performer, her image works her way into my readings of things. I can see how productions would work, how roles can come alive. It is a wonderful gift for a director to have someone like that in his life.

Wahima has given me much more than that, of course. She has loved me unconditionally for years, even when I am difficult, when I do not have much to give, when I am testy or temperamental or sad. And she has always been incredibly generous with me, making space for me when I come to visit, taking time out of her schedule whenever I have needed it – both in California and in New York, where she now lives. And Wahima has made it so much easier for me to simply exist in my close-knit group of college friends, who have mostly been couples since we've known them. They have all been couples and Wahima and I have always had each other; we have been virtually our own couple, and it has been lovely. We have come to depend on each other for this relationality and for so much more.

Wah lived with me for a while in the Summer of 2006 when I still lived in Pasadena, and we used to get into this wonderful rhythm, coming home from work and spending time with one another. I was still working as an accountant, then, and Wahima would bring me sandwiches from Starbucks (where she worked) so that I would have something for lunch. I remember this time very fondly.

I only get to see Wahima once or twice a year these days, though we speak frequently and I visit New York when I can. Sometimes we meet up in California, as well (and recently, Kentucky, but that's another story). She is easily one of my favorite people in this world, and when I see her we are both usually really emotional. I picked her up from the Nashville airport in December last year and we both almost started to cry. I assume we all know this feeling of just being able to be with someone we love who we haven't seen in far too long. When Wah and I get the chance to see one another, this almost invariably happens. I am so grateful I have her in my life, so happy to be friends with someone as funny and beautiful and talented (both as a singer and an actor) as she is. Any time we spend together is not enough time.

Also: follow her on twitter – @Wickedwa 

Thanksgiving in August: Linda

I met Linda in 2001 when she arrived as an assistant professor at my undergrad as the new voice teacher. I had entered the theatre department in 1999 with a focus on voice; the head of voice when I arrived was an extremely charismatic teacher whom I adored. I had been devastated when my first teacher left in 2000. The department had also had an interim teacher for a year while we searched for a new position. I had taken every voice class the department had to offer by the time Linda arrived, and – as was typical for me at this stage in my life – had far more opinions about things than was good for me. I also was a sensitive actor with a lot of feelings about my self-worth and ability. In other words, when Linda and I met, it was I who had all the baggage and it was Linda who managed to deal with my baggage.

I took all the voice classes again so that I could take them with Linda. I figured the discipline would be good for me and make me better and more attuned to the work. I was right. Class with Linda was totally different from that to which I was used, but it was a great experience. My friend Justin and I to this day slip into the ridiculous Irish dialects from Juno and the Paycock that we did for Linda's dialect class. All my friends and I studied Shakespeare with Linda, too, and most of us were in her production of Othello in 2002 (I was in Canada studying when Linda directed her first show at Cal Poly). I played Roderigo in that Othello production, and Linda's husband Matt always tells me how much he loved my performance in that. I always protest when he does this – I am no actor, let's be honest – but I secretly love it. I gave my all to that show.

I studied acting with Linda as well, and something must've shifted in our relationship by the time I was ready to graduate, because I remember we were supposed to turn in our acting journals to her (oh my lord, acting journals), and I gave her my journal in an unexpurgated form. It was filled with all of my angst and love and sadness over Andrew in addition to (I wasn't that bad of a student) all of my acting and voice work. Linda read the whole thing and called me in to the office to spend time caretaking. It was such a special and generous gesture; it meant to me that I was not alone, that someone was listening, that – in a way – love had a voice. It was the perfect instance of someone knowing instinctively precisely what someone else needed in a moment.

After I graduated, Linda (and Bill Morse, who was our beloved chair for many years) hired me back to direct at the school. I directed maybe four or five shows for them during those years. I had an obsession with Thornton Wilder and did two productions of Wilder's work, one of which, The Long Christmas Dinner, Linda performed in beautifully. Linda also assigned me the job of directing a production of Dickens's Hard Times, a script that seemed impossibly difficult when she gave it to me. Linda always believed in me, though, always wrote me glowing recommendation letters, and got me directing jobs. She got me a job directing Shrew for a theatre company in Long Beach in 2004, and provided me the opportunity – with Southern California Shakespeare – to do Two Gentlemen the way I really wanted to the year after that.

More than anything else, though, Linda has become such a dear, dear friend. We speak on the phone frequently, and we talk about pedagogy and theatre and the struggles of teaching and working at the same time. This summer we had a hilarious conversation about sending students to grad school and after agreeing with each other about everything for about twenty minutes she said "Isn't it great that we're both just so smart!" We burst out laughing.

She is also a really wonderful actress. I have seen her in probably more shows than I can count, but each time I am struck by just how good a performer she is. She can make lines in Shakespeare that you had no idea contained comedy just zing. At the Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company, she frequently plays supporting roles and she always stands out, often as the best aspect of the production she's in (I am remembering off the top of my head a rather painful As You Like It where Linda absolutely soared in a laugh-out-loud performance of Phebe.)

I adore both her and her husband, and every time I am in California, Linda and Matt and I make a point to spend quality time together. Often this means having dinner at Linda's house. Linda is a fabulous cook, so we'll sit and chat until early in the morning, trading stories, catching up about old friends, and often talking about Shakespeare. Linda takes a great interest in my writing and has been one of my greatest supporters, and I cannot even articulate how much I love this woman and how deeply she has become a part of my life. It is a great blessing to have someone who has been my teacher become a treasured friend, and I am incredibly grateful for all she has taught me, as well as all of the support she continues to provide me through her friendship.

Thanksgiving in August: Danny & Ashley

I met Ashley in 2001 in college. She was bright and bubbly then, and she has the same good-hearted, kind energy now. We were both in a production of Tartuffe in college, and the next year we were in Othello. Ashley played Desdemona and – actually I don't know if I've ever told her this – I played Roderigo (who was in love with her character) and because I died early in act five, I was dragged offstage by a couple of actors and I used to sit in the wings and watch her death scene every night. Ashley was lovely in the show, and I would sit on stage right crying as Othello murdered her.

Ashley also introduced me to the Harry Potter books. She was convincing everyone to read them back then, and she got me hooked. I remember during Othello the whole cast went to a midnight screening of Chamber of Secrets after performing the show that night. I fell asleep. I've actually gone to several midnight showings of the Harry Potter movies with Ashley since then. I remember seeing the fourth one (I think) at Universal City at, like 12.45a one year. And most recently, I went with her and Danny and Justin and Elizabeth to the series' final installment in Westwood CA.

I met Danny when he and Ashley started dating, and I immediately loved him. Ashley was performing in a production of Taming of the Shrew I was directing in 2004 (turns out, Bianca can be really funny). I remember buying Danny a drink when he turned twenty-one: he drank Cape Cods back then. The following summer, I convinced Danny to act in a production of The Two Gentleman of Verona I was doing for the Southern California Shakespeare Festival. By then we were hanging out all the time.

D&A were both in the production of Boys' Life I did. Nowadays, they run the theatre where we staged that show. They are both wonderful performers and very funny comedians. As a group they are so funny that when they got married last year, Ashley had to put a moratorium on doing bits for twenty-four hours until the wedding was over. Speaking of marriages, I was privileged to be asked to perform Danny & Ashley's wedding on May 31st, 2010. It's a day I will never forget. It was a gorgeous ceremony, and I was so honored and proud to be able to play such a big part in such an amazing day. The feeling of standing between two of my dearest friends while they pledged their lives to each other was like nothing else in this world.

I am so eternally grateful to know and love these two people and to be such a large part of their lives. I can't imagine my world without them. Generous, funny, kind, warm, caring, and nurturing. These are two of my favorite people in the world, and I almost can't remember a time before the time that we were great friends. It feels like forever. I love you guys.

Thanksgiving in August: Catie

I think I met probably met Catie in the Spring of 2008 when we were both working on a (ludicrous but expensive) production of John Fletcher's The Woman's Prize. (Who does a random production of a Fletcher play from 1611 or whenever the Hell it was? FSU, that's who.) Catie was an understudy in the show, but listened attentively to every note I would give the actress she was understudying. She sat with me during rehearsals and paid close attention to anything and everything the director and I said.

In the summer of '08, a bunch of students got the idea to produce A Midsummer Night's Dream themselves and asked me to direct it. They had already pretty much cast the show themselves and my job was to make it look good, to make it work. I rearranged the cast and asked Catie to play both Peter Quince (she was ridiculously funny) and Hermia's eternally angry father Ægisthus. I didn't dress her as a man for either part, but we didn't change the genders at all. As Ægisthus we decided she would just be fabulous and pissed off the whole time. I wouldn't let her take her sunglasses off for the entirety of the show (in a nod to Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose). I cannot tell you the hilarity that ensued from this production. The show sold out almost every night and we would laugh ourselves silly with the antics we created. The lovers were funny, the mechanicals were funny, the fairies were funny. (The guy playing Bottom was awful, it must be said, but he was our only weak link.)

I kept getting assigned – or assigning myself – to shows with Catie after that. She was the star of an FSU production of She Stoops to Conquer (charming) in 2009. We learned together how to say mauvaise honte, how to hold our breaths for extended periods of time, and most importantly, how to talk across the room without anyone else knowing what we were saying.

The summer after her senior year, Catie and three of her close friends (all close friends of mine now) worked on a production of Sarah Kane's Crave with me. It was one of the most exciting projects I've ever done, and (oddly for the subject matter) the cast, designer, stage manager, assistant director, and I spent an inordinate amount of time laughing during rehearsal. In this show, Catie (and indeed the rest of the cast) proved themselves to be powerful, deeply moving performers, and the show was incredibly affecting, appropriately intense, and finally devastating. Several audience members came back more than once.

Catie and two other friends and I drove the twelve hours up to Endstation Theatre that summer, too, laughing the whole way. I will always find it difficult to say how much fun Catie and I have when we are together, whether we are mocking each other, or people we dislike, or people we like a whole lot.

Since Catie has moved away from Tallahassee (and atheist blessings for that), she has lived in London and in New York City, and we keep in touch frequently. Our relationship has deepened since she's left, and I have found myself relying on her for encouragement and support. We did the P90X program together, calling each other every day, texting photographs, pushing each other to work harder.I want to also say thank you to Catie for always making me laugh, sometimes until I can hardly stand it. The number of in-jokes and coded communications we have seem to be endless.

In May I was privileged to stand next to Catie in her bridal party as she got married (to her badass husband). It was such an honor, and I was so proud to be a part of such an important day. I am so grateful for this woman and for her presence in my life, and because, in a lot of ways, I have seen her grow up through college and into adulthood, I can also say that I am so proud of who she is becoming, where she is headed in her life, and of the work that I know she will do in the world.

Spending Time with Shakespeare

I am in Sweet Briar, Virginia again this year, working for a company called Endstation Theatre. This year's Shakespeare production is the Twelfth Night, and I am having a delightful time.

There are more penis jokes and ass jokes and vagina jokes than I remember ever seeing in a Shakespeare play. Or maybe I am just more attuned to them these days.

There's a great moment when Sir Toby Belch tells Cesario (who is actually the lady Viola in disguise as a boy) to dismount thy tuck which in our more modern idiom means something like unsheathe your knife and get ready to fight, but it also cannot help but mean: somebody's coming to fight you, dude, so get your dick out.

But it's not just penis jokes and bawdy humor, Shake-a-speare has down pat, and I'm gonna share another sonnet, since I'm thinking about him. The following is sonnet 14, which my friend Linda (she's calling herself the sonnet-bearer!) will be reciting at the wedding of two of my absolute best friends in the world. This sonnet contains some absolutely lovely sentiments, that I think bear directly on lasting love.

So, imagine the following as said to two people very much in love, as though it is advice from another.


Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
And yet, methinks, I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;

Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind;
Or say with princes if it shall go well,
By aught predict that I in heaven find;

But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive
If from thyselves, to store thou wouldst convert:

Or else of thee this I prognosticate,
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

Sonnets for the Wedding

I am performing as the minister in the wedding of two very dear friends of mine (my best friends in the whole world, actually) and another friend of ours will be reading a sonnet at the wedding. So I was looking over Shakespeare's Sonnets recently and I found some really great stuff for the wedding. I also (of course) came across my absolute favorite of Shakespeare's sonnets. Thought I'd share that today, since this blog has been so lately obsessed with the past and since I've been spending so much time reading about queerness and its particular melancholies. This is not going to be in the wedding, obviously.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 43:

When most I wink, then do my eyes best see;

For all the day they view things unrespected,

But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,

And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.

Then thou whose shadow shadows doth make bright,

How would thy shadow's form form happy show

To the clear day with thy much clearer light,

When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so?

How would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made

By looking on thee in the living day,

When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade

Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay?

All days are nights to see till I see thee,

And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

English Voodoo

Just read this in Joe Roach's "Cities of the Dead":

In a culture where memory has become saturated with written communication distributed and recorded by print, canon formation serves the function that "ancestor worship" once did. Like voodoo and hoodoo, the English classics help control the dead to serve the interests of the living. The pubic performance of canonical works ritualizes these devotions under the guise of the aesthetic, reconfiguring the spirit world into a secular mystery consistent with the physical and mental segregation of the dead. In this reinvention of ritual, performers become the caretakers of memory through many kinds of public action, including the decorous refinement of protocols of grief.

This obviously made me think of our annual performances of Shakespeare's works in the summer. He is constantly reinvented, restaged, reconceived, and all so that we can constantly be reminded that Shakespeare is "as relevant as ever" or that "these texts written four hundred years ago still speak to us across the centuries."

But how true also that these texts are a way that we tell ourselves who we are. They are, in so many important ways, the keepers of identity--both USAmerican and English--for so many people, and a way of including (subsuming?) others inside that identity. To speak positively, these performances, these ritual acts of memory, can also be a way of expanding Englishness/USAmericanness in order to include. If I am logical, of course, I find that we perform Shakespeare as a way of keeping him alive, as a way of keeping this identity alive. But if it must constantly be reinvented, reimagined, reworked, how alive is it? When does such reconception become resuscitation?

My Friend

I cannot attend Andrew's memorial gathering today, but I wanted to post some texts that always remind me of him whenever I read them. The first is from Shakespeare's Richard II. The monologue below is from Act 5, Scene 5. Make of it what you will; to me it describes Andrew so well I can hardly stand it. It is very clear to me why he loved this piece so much and why it spoke to him as it did.

I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world;
And, for because the world is populous
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul,
My soul the father, and these two beget
A generation of still-breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world,
In humours like the people of this world;
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermixed
With scruples, and do set the world itself
Against the word.
As thus: "Come, little ones"; and then again;
"It is as hard to come as for a camel
"To thread the postern of a small needle's eye".
Thoughts tending to ambition they do plot
Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage thorough the flinty ribs
Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls;
And for they cannot, die in their own pride.
Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of fortune's slaves,
Nor shall not be the last—like silly beggars
Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame,
That many have and others must sit there;
And in this thought they find a kind of ease,
Bearing their own misfortune on the back
Of such as have before endured the like.

Thus play I in one person many people,
And none contented. Sometimes am I king,
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am. Then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I kinged again, and by and by
Think that I am unkinged by Bolingbroke
And straight am nothing. But whate'er I be,
Nor I, nor any man that but man is,
With nothing shall be pleased, 'til he be eased
With being nothing.

Music do I hear?
Ha, ha! keep time—how sour sweet music is.
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To check time broke in a disordered string;
But for the concord of my state and time,
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke:
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numb'ring clock;
My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell—so sighs, and tears, and groans,
Show minutes, times, and hours. But my time
Runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy,
While I stand fooling here, his Jack of the clock.
This music made me. Let it sound no more;
For though it have holp mad men to their wits,
In me it seems it will make wise men mad.
Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me,
For 'tis a sign of love; and love to Richard
Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.

The other piece that always makes me think of him is one of Oscar Wilde's prose poems entitled "The House of Judgement." It is the text Moisés Kaufman uses to end Gross Indecency, so Andrew and the rest of the company used to recite the poem together every night:

And there was silence in the House of Judgement, and the Man came naked before God.

And God opened the Book of the Life of the Man.

And God said to the Man, 'Thy life hath been evil, and thou hast shown cruelty to those who were in need of succour, and to those who lacked help thou hast been bitter and hard of heart. The poor called to thee and thou didst not hearken, and thine ears were closed to the cry of My afflicted. The inheritance of the fatherless thou didst take unto thyself, and thou didst send the foxes into the vineyard of thy neighbour's field. Thou didst take the bread of the children and give it to the dogs to eat, and My lepers who lived in the marshes, and were at peace and praised Me, thou didst drive forth on to the highways, and on Mine earth out of which I made thee thou didst spill innocent blood'.

And the Man made answer and said, 'Even so did I'.

And again God opened the Book of the Life of the Man.

And God said to the Man, 'Thy life hath been evil, and the Beauty I have shown thou hast sought for, and the Good I have hidden thou didst pass by. The walls of thy chamber were painted with images, and from the bed of thine abominations thou didst rise up to the sound of flutes. Thou didst build seven altars to the sins I have suffered, and didst eat of the thing that may not be eaten, and the purple of thy raiment was broidered with the three signs of shame. Thine idols were neither of gold nor of silver that endure, but of flesh that dieth. Thou didst stain their hair with perfumes and put pomegranates in their hands. Thou didst stain their feet with saffron and spread carpets before them. With antimony thou didst stain their eyelids and their bodies thou didst smear with myrrh. Thou didst bow thyself to the ground before them, and the thrones of thine idols were set in the sun. Thou didst show to the sun thy shame and to the moon thy madness'.

And the Man made answer and said, 'Even so did I'.

And a third time God opened the Book of the Life of the Man.

And God said to the Man, 'Evil hath been thy life, and with evil didst thou requite good, and with wrongdoing kindness. The hands that fed thee thou didst wound, and the breasts that gave thee suck thou didst despise. He who came to thee with water went away thirsting, and the outlawed men who hid thee in their tents at night thou didst betray before dawn. Thine enemy who spared thee thou didst snare in an ambush, and the friend who walked with thee thou didst sell for a price, and to those who brought thee Love thou didst ever give Lust in thy turn'.

And the Man made answer and said, 'Even so did I'.

And God closed the Book of the Life of the Man, and said, 'Surely I will send thee into Hell. Even into Hell will I send thee'.

And the Man cried out, 'Thou canst not'.

And God said to the Man, 'Wherefore can I not send thee to Hell, and for what reason?'

'Because in Hell have I always lived', answered the Man.

And there was silence in the House of Judgement.

And after a space God spake, and said to the Man, 'Seeing that I may not send thee into Hell, surely I will send thee unto Heaven. Even unto Heaven will I send thee'.

And the Man cried out, 'Thou canst not'.

And God said to the Man, 'Wherefore can I not send thee unto Heaven, and for what reason?'

'Because never, and in no place, have I been able to imagine it', answered the Man.

And there was silence in the House of Judgement.

Hamlet Dos

I haven't posted about Andrew Fleming's Hamlet 2 because I kinda didn't like it. It is supposed to be a kind of Waiting for Guffman-style parody of high school theatre, I guess, but it never really succeeds.

The movie stars Steve Coogan as a kind of closeted (we all assume) drama teacher who can't seem to get his wife pregnant and appears to have no talents of any kind. Suddenly a whole bunch of kids join his drama class, which has had only two students for many years, and he decides to write an original show for them to perform.

The show is not original at all, it turns out. It is a sequel to William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

The real problem of the movie is that the idea of this fantastic show hangs over the entire film. And Hamlet 2 the play totally delivers. Those are a sublime twenty minutes or so. But, unfortunately, nothing before it is really funny at all, and Coogan overplays his hand. His character is a total fucking nutcase and a complete depressive and he's a little hard to like.

It seems odd to say that I liked the play better than I liked the movie, but, quite seriously, those final twenty minutes where the cast actually performs Hamlet 2, to pop songs sung by the Tucson (or is it Sedona?) Gay Men's Chorus, are brilliant. There is this whole musical number called "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" which is totally inspired. There is a time machine and all kinds of other nonsense, too. It's really quite a great sequence. If only the rest of the film were up to the play.

Little Sense

Tomorrow we are having a movie day in my class. I am showing the students The Lady in Question Is Charles Busch, the documentary about the theatre performer and playwright. I'm screening it because I am having them read Nicky Silver's Pterodactyls for Friday and I want to give them a notion of style. This way they can see some campy performance traditions and also learn about an important artist I don't have time to discuss properly in my class.

Today I rented the Max Reinhardt / William Dieterle film of A Midsummer Night's Dream from 1935 with Olivia de Havilland, Mickey Rooney and James Cagney. But I found it, quite frankly, unwatchable. I shut it off after about an hour. I just couldn't handle it. It's a terrible, terrible film. It's drawn-out and overly long and there's lots of maniacal laughing that makes no sense. Cagney is funny as Bottom, but there is nothing else to recommend the movie and I couldn't bear it for more than an hour. You know how I feel about bad Shakespeare.

Speaking of bad Shakespeare. I had my first truly bad rehearsal of my own Midsummer production tonight. Of course both my roommates had to be in attendance. I am almost positive I can fix all of this evening's problems in the six rehearsals I have left before we open, but it was more than a tad embarrassing for them to come see a show this unpolished. Of course I start to wonder if I know what I'm doing at all, and worry if I really have enough ability to take a directing class with the professor here in the fall... and all other sort of ego-driven questions run through my brain. But a good shower and a Stella Artois (or two?) have cured me of that for now. And I will just worry about fixing the show.

Midsummer, Bitches!

Midsummer & Script Analysis

For some reason, I don't feel guilty just sitting down and watching one movie after another at home if other people are doing it with me. Lately, because my roommates are obsessed and because the rest of the grad students stuck in Tallahassee have next-to-nothing to do, we have been celebrating scary movies at my house. Shutting off all the lights and watching one and then another scary movie and then all dispersing into the nights thinking about creepy children and ghosts and mysterious spiritual entities. But before I get to the rest of the scary movies I've been watching, a small report:

I am teaching a class right now. It meets Monday through Friday, five days a week, from 11:00a-12:15p. The class period is a little long, but so far I am having a lot of fun in the class. All of the students are theatre majors, so they have been trained to be talkative and share their opinions on things. The class is called Script Analysis, so it is supposed to be a class where we learn how to analyze plays. I don't know about you, but I am of the opinion that you don't need to learn HOW to do this, you need to DO it. So, in this six-week course, we are reading twelve plays. That's two plays a week. And I am giving them a quiz each time I assign a play, to make sure that they read the play. I have also made the quizzes worth 45% of their grade. So they basically HAVE to read, or they will not do well in the class. Since the most important thing in the class is whether they read or not, I wanted to put a little teeth in my request that they do all the reading.
Anyway, the class is going well so far (we have only met two days as of yet). Today we talked about Gustav Freytag and his analytical model of exciting force, rising action, climax, falling action, catastrophe, etc. Best part of today: one of the students mumbled something to her friend and I called her out on it. She apologized and then I said, "No, it's not that I don't want you to talk, I DO want you to talk; I just want everyone to be able to hear it." Turns out, she had mumbled something about Bambi. Everyone giggled and then I got the idea to have the class make Bambi fit into Freytag's analytical model. Of course, it does. So we talked about Bambi for at least fifteen minutes. And we all laughed. And then I asked them to talk about Iron Man in the same way. We debated it. The class was alive and excited. It was really fun. And they completely understand Freytag's model. It was really cool. And tomorrow, we're talking about Hedda Gabler. I am having a really good time.

Speaking of good times, I had my first rehearsal for A Midsummer Night's Dream last night. This is going to be fun for sure. I haven't directed anything in over a year (since last February!) and I'm not sure I totally remember what I'm doing, but half the cast met last night and we started working through the lovers' story and the Oberon/Titania plot. Our rehearsal was three hours. I was never bored. And I even got them on their feet at one point and started blocking them. I only have five weeks to put this show together, but I think I can manage. The actors are all quite good and all excited about the show. Some of them are still a little skeptical of me, but they will come around.