Loved your breakdown, felt like I saw this production despite not getting to.
as a Shakespeare lover and a leftist I'm dying for more theatre artists to examine the existing radical political potential of Shakespeare texts themselves (through inclusion of the biases and bigotry that existed 400 years ago and continue to exist today, and allowing the characters as people to grapple with them ... not sanitizing the plays ... I digress). Regardless, theses old ass plays only work if the people feel real, or even Ultra Real, speaking the language as though this is how they live and breathe
I say this, but my main thought is just that we should just do way less Shakespeare. Doing a new play that maybe makes some callbacks to whatever draws the creative political artist to think of Shakespeare in the first place tends to be much more effective. The "big concept" versions of these plays so rarely seem to stick, as doing the plays themselves well is so hard. And if you don't want to do the story that's in the play you can just do a new one, it's ALWAYS allowed!
Loved your breakdown, felt like I saw this production despite not getting to.
as a Shakespeare lover and a leftist I'm dying for more theatre artists to examine the existing radical political potential of Shakespeare texts themselves (through inclusion of the biases and bigotry that existed 400 years ago and continue to exist today, and allowing the characters as people to grapple with them ... not sanitizing the plays ... I digress). Regardless, theses old ass plays only work if the people feel real, or even Ultra Real, speaking the language as though this is how they live and breathe
I say this, but my main thought is just that we should just do way less Shakespeare. Doing a new play that maybe makes some callbacks to whatever draws the creative political artist to think of Shakespeare in the first place tends to be much more effective. The "big concept" versions of these plays so rarely seem to stick, as doing the plays themselves well is so hard. And if you don't want to do the story that's in the play you can just do a new one, it's ALWAYS allowed!
anywho free fucking Palestine