And Yet Another Play, Even Better!

Today I went to the Great River Shakespeare Festival production of The Winter's Tale, and it was stellar.  I so enjoyed it!  Paulina was amazing, just superb.

They did some really interesting staging.  For example, in the trial scene when Hermione dies, they covered her with a light white cloth on a big chest, the sort of chest you might imagine being used on a cruise in the 1890s.  (Chests and such were the main stage furniture.)  The scene with Antigonus and the baby followed, and when he talked about her dream, the actor stood up, covered with the white cloth (through which she could be semi-seen), and said the lines instead of Antigonus saying them.  They did that sort of thing several times, and it was effective.

The other thing:  it really stood out to me after seeing A Midsummer Night's Dream the other day, how well I could hear and understand everything these actors said, and how deep their range of emotional representation was.  They could represent anger without yelling, and then when they raised their voice, it was effective at showing greater anger.

So, if you're in the Winona area, be sure to see The Winter's Tale before it closes!

And Another Play!

Yesterday, I went to the brand new Wisconsin Shakespeare Festival's production of As You Like It, in Eau Claire, at the newish Pablo Center.  The Wisconsin Shakespeare Festival was announced a couple of years ago, but the opening was postponed, and this is the first year.  It's also had some paring, so, for example, a student production of The Tempest was on the books, but isn't happening this year.

Eau Claire's got a lively amateur theater community, and a number of locals were in this production.  The rest of the cast looked to be (from the intro paragraphs), college students and recent graduates. 

The Pablo Center is a beautiful venue, right at the confluence of the Chippewa and Eau Claire rivers; they've put together what they say is a replica of the Globe, but it's less a replica of the Globe than maybe something such as Blackfriars.  As you can see from the picture at the link, and from the image below:

the seating doesn't take advantage of a thrust stage, nor does it have standing room.  It's basically a pseudo Tudo backdrop to a semi-proscenium arch stage.  The lighting reflects that sensibility, so the audience's attention of fully on the stage, and there's little to no interaction between actors and audience through most of the performance.  (The exception is when the court folks join the first row of the audience to watch the guildsmen's performance.)

The performance was basically a strong student performance, a bit hard to hear clearly (I wasn't the only one who found this), but pretty solid.  Bottom was the stand out performer, and did a really lovely job.  The guildsmen's performance was especially fun, with a really creative wall part that I enjoyed a lot.

It's hard for me to think that another Shakespeare focused theater "festival" is going to be able to compete against the Guthrie in the twin cities, American Player's Theater in Spring Green, and the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona.  Ticket prices are pretty high (as they almost always are at the Pablo) for what's basically a student production, especially compared to what's available in the other venues which are fully professional productions.  On the other hand, it's always good to see new theater opportunities trying to make a go of things!

There was a fun and interesting talk after by a local Shakespearean, which I enjoyed a lot!

I went to a play!

Ahhh, retirement!  I went to As You Like It at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, MN.  I haven't been to the GRSF for a long time, I guess, or at least hadn't blogged about it.  Then I saw Taming, and while I liked the production well enough, I guess, it reinforced my hatred of the play.

On the other hand, their production of AYLI was a delight!  Very fun romp of a production, with some wonderfully creative moments.  For example, they made a lot more of the wrestling scene (which was more mixed martial arts with kicks and punches) than usual, and every so often would go into super slow motion.  One of those times, Orlando leaned back in the way that Keanu Reeves did in The Matrix, except instead of some fancy special effects, they had another actor back to back with him which was both effective and added humor.

And every time two characters "fell in love" (not necessarily at first site, since it happened to Corin and Sylvia after she was stuck with him), everything would come to a stop, special lights and music would hit for a moment, and Voila, LOVE!

Best of all, the three main characters, Rosalind, Celia, and Orlando, were played by stellar actors, who were not only individually good, but who had really beautiful chemistry on stage together.  Celia and Rosalind just seemed to have such joy in each other; when they teased, it was fun.

If you're in the area, I highly recommend AYLI.  They're also doing The Winter's Tale and another play I don't know (Imbroglio).  I'm hoping to go to another of their plays before the season ends.

Week 52/66: Working at the Library and Playing in London

What a busy time it's been!  Since I last wrote, I had a lovely visit with my cousin's daughter, M, who's studying at St. Andrew's.  (M is A's sister, the ballet dancer I visited in Pittsburgh.)  First, like A, M is wonderful.  Gosh, my cousins have been doing a great job raising kids!  M is kind and nice, also smart, feminist, and fun!

M got here in the mid-afternoon Saturday, to King's Cross, and I showed her the British Library first.  Then off to our hotel.  We had a few minutes in the British Museum (before it closed) and then went and saw The Play that Goes Wrong together, and enjoyed that.  The next morning, we went to see the changing of the guard along with a couple thousand of our closest friends.  I didn't see much, but I hope that M, being a tad taller and nearer, was able to see a bit more.  We walked from there to Horse Guards Parade, which was closed for a service (but saw a band march by), and then on to the Tower!  As usual, the Tower was fun.  We spent most of the day there, and then went over the Thames to Southwark, had dinner, and went to see Pericles.

Pericles was very good.  They played it with a cast of 8, which necessitated some cutting (They cut the "read aloud the shield things" for example).  But the energy was good, the audience reactive, and the played moved well.  I thought they did an especially good job with the Antiochus/incest part, and with Pericles communicating his fears about Simonides.

In the age of "Me, too," I was worried that the prostitution part, or the "Marina's too pure to be prostituted" part would feel flat, but it didn't.  Marina was just great at playing that seriously, but not innocently.  She was really good.

The next morning, Monday, we reconvened and M chose the Tate Modern for the morning.  We'd figured we would spend the morning at the Tate Modern and then go to the British Museum for a bit before her train, but the Tate Modern was so good that we spent the time there.  She can come back for more another time.

On Tuesday, back to the Library, except I left early to see a matinee of 12th Night.  This was played by the same 8 person cast that played Pericles, and again, the small cast necessitated some cuts (which I noticed more because I've taught it a fair bit.)  It was very good!  They cross-gender cast the four romantic roles, but not Malvolio or Antonio.  Feste was super.

I walked and ate at The George in Southwark, which is supposed to be one of the oldest staging pubs in London.  The food was okay, the ambience okay...

I have to admit that I like the uneven stuff you sometimes see with older buildings.

That night, I went to see 1 Henry IV, played by the same cast that had played H5, except with a much fuller house, on a nicer evening, and voila, much more energetic performance.  They did the fighting mostly by waving around flags, which I thought worked pretty darned well.  Hotspur was outstanding.  Hal only slightly less so.  Falstaff didn't do much for me.  A woman played the role, but I don't think that was it.  I'm not sure...

On Wednesday, I spent an almost full day at the Library, but then went to 2H4,  and it was a drizzly feeling evening (I don't think it actually drizzled, but if felt like it might), cool, and the crowd was VERY thin (and got thinner after the intermission).  And the play just felt flat.  Hal was very good in the crown scene, but Falstaff wore on me.  H4 was good throughout.  It might be that the play just has never worked as well for me as part 1.

The rest of the week was, predictably, Library time!  And a very good time it was!

I read about this travel narrative by Gerrit de Veer about the exploration voyages of William Barents (1594, 1595, 1596), and read that the Winter's Tale bear eating bit might have been inspired by an image there:  (Sorry to be sideways; I've tried to correct it.)  (Notice the Paddleboarders in the mid-ground!)

This picture is from the 1853 edition.  But I've looked at the 1609 edition, and there aren't any images, certainly not this fabulous bear eating the guy's head.  I haven't been able to figure out where the image came from, or if it's later (as I suspect) and thus couldn't have inspired Shakespeare.

I've been falling into two holes, good ones, I think, one about the bears, and one about arts and such, which I think is actually way more fruitful right now.  I was reading Henry Peacham's Graphice, from 1609, and found some fun additions:

The date of 1678 make this too late for the poet Thomas Carew, but there's a lawyer of that name on Wikipedia active at that time, who died a couple of years later.  I have no idea who the shield thing belongs to, but if anyone has thoughts, I'd love to learn!

Okay, more later on my big Sunday outing!

Henry 5 at the Globe

I went to see H5 at the Globe last night.  H5 was played by a Black woman, who was very good, very commanding.  Overall, though, it was a cool evening, had rained earlier, and the house was probably less than half full, so the cast had difficulty developing the energy I usually see.  I like to think we're all happy with gender and race blind casting.  I thought I was.  But then the Alice and Princess Katherine scene came, and I decided maybe I wasn't so comfortable as I complacently thought I was.  Katherine was played by a middle aged white man, not in drag; that is, there was no attempt to look "feminine" except that he wore a dress.   He didn't seem to have a wig on (was partly balding with short hair), and he seemed definitely middle-aged. And boy, did that challenge me! For those not familiar with Henry 5: French Princess Katharine pretty much knows she's going to be married off to Henry, the English king; in this scene, she's with her waiting gentlewoman, who seems to know a bit of English, and starts asking for translations of words for body parts.  Hands, fingers, arm, elbow, neck, chin, feet.  For those who have French and English, there are near homophones of "naughty" words in the pronunciations, "dilbo," "cun" "foot" and so forth. Some of the amusement from the scene traditionally comes from watching a presumably innocent young woman talking sexy, and finding the license to say "foot" for example, funny.  With this Katherine, however, the humor there didn't really work for me, which weirdly made the sort of cruel gap of the knowing audience laughing at the innocent young woman stand out all the more.  So that was interesting. And when the courting scene (where Henry meets Katherine and "courts" her, though we all know this is a pretense since her father will decide and she has no choice) came, I didn't feel any of the amusement in the teasing from Henry about language and such.  Maybe the two actors didn't have chemistry, or maybe it was my hangup with the man playing Katherine? Usually, in race and gender blind casting, at least in Shakespeare, you see people of color playing white roles, and women playing men's roles.  On one level, that makes sense because there's a paucity of roles for women and people of color in the plays.  But it means that you have actors from traditionally less powerful groups (people of color, women) playing characters from a more powerful group (white men).  But in Katherine's casting, a white man played a woman, and a woman with pretty much no power at all (since she's basically a political pawn). *** Otherwise: the production seemed a bit rough at the edges, with people either stepping on each other's lines in the prologue, or not quite speaking together (if they were supposed to be speaking together). There were times I really couldn't hear well (I was in the upper gallery for the first time, front row). But usually I could. And I couldn't always understand what I was hearing, and not only because it was French... *** I'm trying to find reviews of this production, but don't see any. I'm wondering how long it's been playing? (It's pretty early in the season, after all.)

Week 49/66: Back from SAA

SAA is the Shakespeare Association of America, the conference I went to this past week.  I didn't take my computer, so I didn't blog.

Thoughts about SAA?

I had a good time, mostly because I spent time with a friend from grad school who's super nice, smart, and all the things we want friends to be.  I also chatted with DG, who I met a couple of years ago.

I heard people saying good things about seminars this year, mostly, more than in most years, it seems.  I thought the papers in my seminar were sort of all over the place, but our conversation was really good because it brought together the bigger picture issues well.  And many of us had a lovely dinner afterwards.

It was expensive, and none of the grad students came; I wonder if they looked up the restaurant ahead of time and decided they couldn't afford it?  One of the plusher folks picked up most of the tab for a couple of others, which was generous.  I must admit, I looked at the menu and saw no prices, and was worried--and asked.  It was a fixed price for an amazing dinner sort of thing, and delicious, but I don't think I've ever spent as much on a meal before.  (And the plusher person was exclaiming about how cheap it was, but then, they live in a very expensive area.)

Before my seminar, I was sitting outside in a nice sitting area (the hotel had REALLY comfy, relatively quiet sitting areas around the meeting room floor, which was great), and a young, white man was talking to another person, who asked if he'd had a good time in his seminar.  He expressed disappointment that his paper hadn't been talked about, and the two people who'd responded to him were grad students who didn't know much about the issues he was addressing.  He went on to say that famous person 1 and 2 should have been his respondents because they would have known what he was talking about.  He went on to say that his dissertation director really isn't an expert in his area, so he really did need that sort of response.

So, on one hand, I'm sort of sympathetic: one always hopes to get helpful responses.  On the other hand, I was sort of irritated, too.  We all want good responses to our papers, always, and yes, we all tend to be focused on our stuff more than other peoples' stuff.  But I would have had more sympathy if he'd expressed the slightest awareness that maybe his paper really wasn't as incredibly important and wonderful as he thought?

I mean, he says he's not working with an expert in the area, so maybe his director isn't pushing him, or hasn't told him that he's behind the times, and the conversation he thinks is super vital was done three years ago or more, done and dusted.

I wish I'd asked him what he learned from famous people 1&2's papers, and I wished I'd asked him what he'd learned from the papers of the other grad students.

The sad part of the SAA, or maybe not, is that I was going to good panels and seminars, and barely got outside.  And because of when my own seminar was, I didn't play tourist at all.  But I learned stuff!

It seems like a new generation has taken over, and that's quite promising.  And in the process, schools that used to be early modern power-houses, with lots of panel presentations and such coming from them, have faded and other schools are coming forward, usually public R1s now.  But still, the focus is totally on R1s, of course.

Some previous SAA responses: 2014  in which I talked about some folks who teach doctoral students and the job market.


***

I'm signed up to help with bird banding tomorrow!

Review: Coriolanus (RSC)

On Wednesday last, a small group from the college went to the local movie theater to watch a live broadcast of the RSC's Coriolanus from Stratford-upon-Avon.

I hesitated about going because Coriolanus isn't in my top 25 Shakespeare plays, and I've had a cold and sore back and am busy.  But finally I decided to go since I've never seen it before and live theater's not that easy for me to get to, even in a movie theater.

I think the RSC is doing all the Roman plays this year, so Coriolanus came along for the ride.  And for the most part, the production felt like it.  Workmanlike.  It got the job done.  Overall, the first three Acts could have been a step faster all through.

But I want more out of theater.  I want to be challenged to think (or rethink) things.  I want to be excited, or saddened, to be reached at an emotional level or an intellectual level.    And this production didn't do that for me.  The actors were fine in their parts, but no one struck me as especially good.

The Roman plays are all political, and this one happened in modern dress, which seems more effective than togas these days.

I'm not quite sure what I want from a filmed version of a staged play.  I found the camera work (changing points of view, changing distance, and so on) a bit distracting.  When I watch a play, I sometimes find myself watching side action, and I couldn't do that often with this camera work.

I did think the casting of two women actors to play the Tribunes, Martina Laird as Junius Brutus and Jackie Morrison as Sicinius Veletus, was interesting because the rather tall and athletically built men really felt threatening when they loomed over the Tribunes.  And Menenius seemed to be mansplaining in ways I don't think I've felt before when I thought of the Tribunes as male characters.  The effect for me was to make me identify even more closely with the Tribunes than otherwise.

I remember first studying Coriolanus in a course and talking extensively about same sex desire, so I expected to see a real sense of that on stage.  In Act 4, scene 5, the scene where Coriolanus goes to Aufidius to join with him, when Aufidius says,

                            Know thou first,
I loved the maid I married; never man
Sigh'd truer breath; but that I see thee here,
Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart
Than when I first my wedded mistress saw
Bestride my threshold. Why, thou Mars! I tell thee,
We have a power on foot; and I had purpose
Once more to hew thy target from thy brawn,
Or lose mine arm fort: thou hast beat me out
Twelve several times, and I have nightly since
Dreamt of encounters 'twixt thyself and me;
We have been down together in my sleep,
Unbuckling helms, fisting each other's throat,
And waked half dead with nothing. (Source)

it's nigh impossible to miss the homoerotic aspects.  But in the RSC's production, Aufidius was more smirking than convincing, more like a teenager showing off a bit rather than a man who's had dreams.  And that was that.  The play didn't take Aufidius's dreams or desires to heart, didn't give them a Greco-Roman context of homoerotics between soldiers.  It just sort of sat there and then was over.  (I'm sure the actor did as directed, and could have done the part very differently if so directed.)

All in all, then, I was disappointed.  I want so much more out of plays than I got from this production.  Is it me?  the play?  or the production?

Catching Up: London, The Globe, National Portrait Gallery, Part Two

On Sunday morning, I left my hotel after the breakfast, and took my bag to the Left Luggage at the train station before getting on the Tube and heading to Trafalgar Square.  I had 10 am tickets to "The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt" (that link will probably go dead when the show ends, alas).  But since it was only 9, I started wandering, and saw that St. Martin's-in-the-Fields was open, and people were going in and out.

So I went in and took a seat in one of the rear pews.  When I was in London before, I'd visited, but hadn't been able to go in the main building, just the lower area, the Crypt, where they have a café.  They were getting ready for a service at 10am, and people were about, very friendly, and didn't seem to mind my sitting quietly.  What a glorious building!  It's got to be one of the most beautiful spaces to just sit quietly (like the Banqueting Hall).

There was a family with two toddlers doing a practice run for baptism with a priest; they were all quite adorable.

And then the organ started in, and the choir started practicing, and it was glorious!  I wished I'd had time to stay for the service.

But I left about 15 minutes before, bought and downed a bottle of water, and went to the National Portrait Gallery.  So fun.  The drawing exhibit was marvelous.  And I learned that they can tell from the cross-hatching that Holbein was left handed.  So that's very cool.

As you'd guess, I left there, got a sandwich to go, and went off to the Globe matinee of Much Ado About Nothing.  It was Mexican themed, set in maybe the last part of the 19th century, with a wooden freight car as the backdrop.

That was an interesting idea, but I never quite got the why of it.  Beatrice was superb, Benedick almost as good, and overall, very fun.  They played Dogberry as a US film maker, but with an uneven accent, and some changes that didn't quite work for me.  

Still, all in all, well worth the visit!

This time, I sat in the lower gallery, and it was very good except that when they showed the film bits, I couldn't see because of the pillar.  Oops!

Catching Up: London, The Globe, National Portrait Gallery, Part One

On Saturday morning (3 September), I went into London..  I had time, so dropped my bag at my hotel and then took the tube to Temple.  I got off and had a nice walk to the Millenial Bridge, across, adn then saw King Lear (matinee) at the Globe.

It was a sort of post-modern production, starting when the actors walked on in modern dress, carrying bags and such through the audience.  The move to "hey, let's put on a play" wasn't quite clear to me, but then the play was, and it was really interesting and good.  I thought Gloucester was really effective, and Edmund, but found the Fool and Edgar less, ummm, satisfying?

And I didn't really cry at the end (I cry quite easily at plays and such, so I guess I wasn't super caught up in it).  

When I went to the Globe back in 2011, I was only able to get standing tickets.  This time, a bit more experienced in buying tickets, I bought mine when I found out I'd be coming, so I got to sit.  The first play I sat in the middle gallery, and it was really good.  I had good sight lines and could hear well.

After the play, I went to Southwark Cathedral to visit some dead folks.

I also visited Gower and Lancelot Andrewes again, as one does.

That done, I walked along the Thames and enjoyed the festival atmosphere.  I crossed again at Tower Bridge, and walked a bit around the Tower (outside, sine it was closed by then), took the tube, and got dinner before going to bed at the hotel.

Review: Will

I watched the first couple of episodes of Will last night, thanks to my Sister-in-Law who told me it was on and where to find it.  (Because I'm slow on pop culture stuffs.)

Things I liked:
It felt like the producers/directors were trying more to catch the sense of shockingness, wildness, and "on the make-ness" of early modern London (especially from the point of view of a newcomer from a smaller community, Shakespeare), rather than being "accurate" in terms of music, costuming, and so forth.  It was like watching a really good modern production of Shakespeare that's trying to do the same sort of thing.  (It's sort of like making some things feel familiar rather than emphasizing the estrangement of the past.)
Cast diversity.  (First, England in the early modern period was more diverse than popularly thought, and second, give those actors a job!)
Music.  (I laughed at "London Calling"; I liked that it wasn't all Purcell and lutes.)
Staging the Theatre.  (That dance scene early on with Will Kemp: chaos.  Fun.  You definitely get a sense that the audience had a lot of power and was active in the theatre.  I found putting women in the background/offstage at the Theatre interesting, but I'm not sure I buy it.)
Edward III.  (They gave it to Shakespeare, which was interesting.)

Things I didn't like:
Torture.  (I just can't watch torture.  Or won't.  Showing torture in explicit ways seems really popular on TV in the past couple of years, and probably contributes to me watching less TV.)
Shakespeare's Catholic.  (Maybe.  No one really knows.  It gives them lots of tension.  I usually don't get that much sense when I read early modern lit and such that most people were really focused on anti-Catholicism in the 1590s because Mary Stuart was dead and the Armada defeated.)  (I bet they read Stephen Greenblatt, eh?)
Chronology?  (Shakespeare's first plays get performed in the early 1590s, but they've killed off James Burbage via torture, though he didn't die until 1597.  I don't know how he died, but it seems like they missed opportunities to do more with Burbage.)

If this becomes a "thing," then we can expect our students to declare with confidence that Shakespeare was Catholic and so forth.  Worse things have happened.  (At least it doesn't show Oxford or Bacon writing the plays, right?)

I'm probably not going to watch more because I really dislike torture.

To the Shakespeare Association Conference

I'm headed out early tomorrow for SAA, which is in Atlanta this year. 

I have mixed feelings about conferences.  On one hand, it's great to go and see Shakespeare folks, talk Shakespeare and early modern lit.

On the other hand, it reminds me how isolated I feel intellectually here, and how many resources just aren't anywhere near.

It's great to get away, especially to somewhere warmer.

But it's also a pain to make arrangements for classes to be covered, plants to be brought in/taken out, travel, and to pick up the extra expense, because NWU never quite covers everything.

At any rate, I'm heading out.  I'm not taking my computer, so I won't be posting.

Shakespeare Writes a New Play!

Or not.

The Guardian has an article this morning that talks about the new edition of The New Oxford Shakespeare (ed. Gary Taylor), which credits Marlowe with collaborating on the Henry VI plays and names Shakespeare as the author of Arden of Faversham.

I'm not much into authorship issues.  I think it's pretty clear to me that theater is wildly collaborative, but I wouldn't have thought Marlowe would write with Shakespeare at that point in their careers, when Marlowe was already popular, and Shakespeare was a beginner. 

As to Arden, which is a blast of a play to teach, I'm reminded of Don Foster's work claiming that "Elegy" as Shakespeare's based on computer analysis, and then deciding later that it wasn't.  Of course, everyone would love to find another work by Shakespeare. 

I don't think it's the first time Shakespeare's been suggested as the author of Arden.  The question is, how does it change things?

For folks who use The New Oxford to teach (and I don't think Shakespeare anthologies sell much outside of teaching requirements), then it will make it easy to include Arden in a Shakespeare course.  I don't know if that will happen much, though.  I think it's easy to choose, say, Titus as one of the tragedies to teach in a survey, especially if you're going to teach Hamlet later, or Othello, because it brings forward revenge tragedy as a genre and race, both of which make for fruitful discussion.  And there's lots to talk about re gender, violence, masculinities, social order, etc.  But I don't think I'd choose Arden to do the same work in a class.  I'm sure some folks will choose it, and make it work well for them.

If Oxford puts out a new edition of Arden as Shakespeare, that's interesting.  (It's already available for a reasonable price in their World's Classics series, along with A Woman Killed with Kindness and Other Domestic Plays.  And there's the Methuen edition, which is reasonably priced and useful.)

Other than that, how do these findings change what we write or teach about Shakespeare?  How do they change what we see on stage?

Maybe Arden will get some more stage time, which is good, because I think it would work really well on stage (I've never seen it).

I doubt it changes much for the Henry VI plays; they'll still get taught in Shakespeare courses, and in drama courses, and maybe they'll get added to the occasional Marlowe course.

Syllabus Number Three: Shakespeare Topics

My topic is geographies.  What I want to do is bring together my interest in physical space/resources, race, ecocriticism.

I've mapped out some, a little.

We'll start with the physical space of the stage.  (I could use suggestions beyond Weimann for this.)

And a little bit on the physical space of printed pages, because Folios and Quartos are so interesting!

Then we'll move into the stage in London, and London in England.

And then we'll move into the Mediterranean and broader Europe and the world, sort of.


I've chosen the plays:

Merry Wives
1 Henry IV
Anthony and Cleopatra
Merchant of Venice
Winter's Tale
Tempest

What do you think?  Suggestions for readings, fun stuff to do?

I love trying to teach new combinations and approaches, but it's also always lots of hard work.

Projects!

I gave the presentation I talked about here.  It went well. 


About three weeks before the presentation, I went to visit the venue (it's a gallery in a small store) and talked to someone there about the set up.  The person I talked to (a store worker) said they were well able to set up power points and such, and I could bring my own computer or a flash drive.  I gave him my name and number; he said the person responsible would call a bit ahead to check what I needed.


But I didn't get a call.  I thought about going into the store again, but I was busy (see below), and since I'd gone in earlier, I didn't go again.  I did prep the talk with a powerpoint (to show some pictures), and a handout (for text passages), and put my powerpoint on my computer and on a flashdrive.


So I went in 45 minutes early on the day of.  The chairs were ready, the podium was ready, but they weren't at all ready for anything computerish.  But they got on it.  The person working the store called someone else, and they figured it out, connected their Mac, and I used my flash drive.


Then the person in charge of the local group came in and was surprised that I needed computerish stuff.  She said that the person responsible had called her, but she'd told them that we wouldn't need any computer stuff.  And it didn't occur to her to check with the actual speaker (me) about that, or to give them my name and number.  (And who knows what happened to the information I gave the first store worker.)


But, as I said, it went well.  There was a small but appreciative audience.


After I'd done the initial prep, as I predicted, I felt free to do other stuff. 


I woke up one morning, and decided that the other stuff would be sanding down and repainting the woodwork on the front porch.


Here's what I started with:

I'm lucky to have good neighbors, who lent me a sander, which was wonderful.

But as I was working on that, I thought about what to do about the bench, too.

It used to look nice, but it's really weathered since I got it (maybe 14 or so years ago).  I consulted with my neighbor, and decided to get some yellow paint for the wood and gray rust stuff for the metal.

I took it all apart, sanded.  There was a lot of sanding and priming.  Everything got two coats of priming.

Then I decided on another pair of projects, the ugly yellow circle on the front door and the woodwork around the garage door.





Once you're sanding, priming and painting a bunch, you may as well go for it.  All the house stuff would be the same color (the sort of light buff around the garage), and I chose a nice yellow for the bench.

I'm pretty happy with the results.  Look!

So now I'm off for a week's vacation visiting a friend in a somewhat far away city.





Back into the Swing

I'm back from a fabulous SAA!  I learned so much!  So MUCH!

My seminar had a great conversation; it's absolutely wonderful to get to learn from these folks.  And learn I did.

I also saw a really superb Race and Pedagogy workshop, a couple of good panel talks, and met some neat people.

I'm eternally grateful to one of the folks I met; we happened to be heading the same way home, and so were chatting on the airport shuttle.  Then at the airport.  Our flight boarded, and then there was a mechanical problem.  We were deplaned, and (while waiting in line) then got a text from the airline saying that we were being put on a 9:30 pm flight.  That would have put me into Minneapolis at about midnight, well after the last shuttle left, leaving me to wait at the airport until after 7am, when the next shuttle left.

BUT, DG came to me in line and pointed out that there was another flight to Minneapolis about to leave, and so I went and managed to get the very last seat. 

So, DG knew about this flight, and instead of taking it himself (which he could have done, and who would have blamed him), he sent me over.  And I got on and so got home just before midnight.  The other way would have left me trashed for work on Sunday, but this way I managed to finish the things I needed to finish to be ready.

Thanks, DG!  Eternal gratitude to a scholar and a gentleman in the best senses of the word!

And now, on to all the things.

My next big thing is a Shakespeare concert in mid-April, a collaborative event with a bunch of our music and theater folks!  I'm excited!

And then a bunch of people I care about and like are doing recitals, so it's going to be a good month for music!

I practiced my violin yesterday.  At first, everything felt so strange, like it was my very first time.  And after a bit, I sounded every bit as great as I had before.  Which is to say, not great, but getting a little less horribly grinding as I work on stuffs.

***

When I opened the door to my office, I saw that the desk was cleared and everything was much cleaner.  And it was like someone had broken in and made my office nice!  I forgot until that moment that I'd spent some time early in the break cleaning up when I came in to record the midterm exam grades.  That was a nice surprise!

Shakespeare! Help!

He's still dead.  So it's not that.


Nope, I'm scheduled to teach our upper level Shakespeare course again this fall.  I hadn't taught it for like 8 years, and suddenly, two years in a row.  Very cool.


I posted before, asking for suggestions, and now I'm going to ask again for help with ideas for a topics in the study of Shakespeare sort of class.


Last semester, I did a "Green Shakespeare" course, focusing on ecocriticism and Shakespeare.  Before that, I did an ecocriticism and early modern drama senior seminar.  This semester, I'm doing a senior seminar on race in/and early modern drama.


I'm thinking a Shakespeare and Race course would be good.  It would be nice to teach some of the other Shakespeare plays and use critical race theory, which I'm using in the current senior seminar. 


I don't have to worry much about students taking a senior seminar and then a junior level course, so it would be an opportunity for a different group of students, and I'm feeling pretty well read on race and early modern drama stuffs.


On the other hand, I'd like to think further about ecocriticism stuffs, and have an idea for a paper on a Shakespeare play to work on.


I've thought about Feminism and Shakespeare, but it seems like the heyday of Feminist criticism was in the 90s, and I want to look more foreward.


Thoughts, please?

Wrapping Up

I gave my two finals yesterday, and by the end of the second day, I'd graded the easy "half" (essay) of each.  I still have the passages and short answer parts, but I feel suddenly totally less stressed about grading.

My goal for the essay part of exams is that students will put what they've learned over the semester together somewhat, that they'll be able to work with what they've learned in a somewhat fuller way.

To that end, I start a couple weeks out with brainstorming, and have them make a list of topics that might be good on the exam, and give them the parameters (works from across the term, theory/critical works if an upper level course).  They take that list, and then do some work (either individually or in groups, or both) to try crafting some essay questions.  Then I take their essay question and work them into a list of questions, shaping them a bit. 

At that point, I bring those questions back to the class and they narrow the choices.  Then, if need be, I narrow the choices, until I have five, which I work into real essay questions, so that I think each of them could be used to write a really good exam essay.

And then, about a week before the exam, I take those to the students, and they choose the final three.  Of those three, two will appear on the final exam, and they'll write about one of them.  They can use books and notes on that part of the final.

So, they have a week to prepare to write about two of the questions, and can do whatever level of preparation they wish.  (I do warn them about the dangers of not preparing and thinking they can just look at notes or whatever during the exam.)  A lot of students do two essay outlines, and then mark things in their texts or notes to bring in.  A few write the actual essays and then copy them out during the exam.  (That seems overkill to me, but oh well.)

The thing is, they have time to spend really thinking about the essay questions, so by and large, they tend to write good exam essays, and some of them really bring things together in super ways.

In my intro course, which I blogged about re the calendar, and the initial challenge, back in May, and choosing the longer works here, students brought up race/racism, family, social class/wealth, and other good stuff in their initial brainstorming, and when I gave them the final, with a question about how the literature represented race/racism and a question about how the lit represented families, about half chose the race/racism question, and overall, everyone did a good job.  A few of them really wrote well (or else they wrote well about what they thought I wanted them to write about.  Is there a difference?).

More than one or two of the race/racism essays talked about being a white person, and not having experienced racism, and so reading about it made them think about their own experiences in different ways.

A few of the family essays were insightful and thoughtful, too.  (Most intro writing course essays were intro writing course essays.  They did the job as such, and did it just fine.)

Overall, then, I'm feeling pretty good about that course, the literature I taught, and what students learned.

My favorite piece from the semester is Kwame Alexander's "Life" (which is still under copyright, so I guess you have to go look in a library!).  I showed students pictures of termites, and talked about what it means to be a "liberal" and why that might not be enough, and what it means to use "termite" as a metaphor for white folks, and how that makes me think, and so forth.  So I felt a bit vulnerable teaching it, but it made me think and rethink!

***

I taught Timon of Athens in the Green Shakespeare course (and it worked pretty well, and I liked it a whole lot more on rereading than I had before).  As I'd blogged about here, Timon was the last play I hadn't yet taught.  And now I've taught it, so I've finally achieved one of my weird goals from when I first started teaching.

All in all, a challenging semester with lots of new stuff to teach, and all in all, I think a good semester.  Next semester, new challenges!  But for now, a massage and then some more grading.

Crying in Class

I cried in class yesterday.

Yeah.  A bit embarrassing.  It's the Paulina's last speech in The Winter's Tale that gets me every time.  It didn't used to.  But then my Dad died.  And the thing is, I'm not crying out of thinking about my grief that my Dad died, but rather, I cry because I'm thinking about my Mom's grief.  It's been 16 years, and my Mom's doing well, but I know that she misses my Dad, her husband of many years, deeply every single day.

So when I cry at those lines by Paulina, I'm not grieving Antigonus, but grieving for Paulina's pain, which feels very real to me in a way it didn't 17 years ago.  And I know, despite Leonte's attempt to wrap things up neatly with the marriage to Camillo, Paulina's still going to know grief.  Or, well, I imagine the character would if she existed at all once the scene ends.

Shakespeare doesn't really represent many grown up married couples who seem to have good marriages, and even fewer widows or widowers who grieve their partner.  Macbeth doesn't have time, nor do Antony and Cleopatra, and their in such a different world, where suicide makes sense as a response.

Antigonus and Paulina seem to have a decent relationship.  In 2.3, the scene where Leontes tells Antigonus to make Paulina "stay her tongue," Antigonus basically says he can't, and doesn't seem particularly bothered that he can't.  Leontes threatens to kill both Antigonus and his wife if Antigonus doesn't carry out his wishes regarding the baby (later Perdita), and thus can force Antigonus to commit what he's pretty sure will be murder.  Thus, his tie to Paulina distinguishes his act of obedience to Leontes' murderous intent from Camillo's avoidance of obedience to the order to kill Polixenes.  Camillo can, apparently, go into exile because he leaves no one behind for Leontes to attack, while Antigonus leaves Paulina and

 ... three daughters; the eldest is eleven
The second and the third, nine, and some five (2.1)

 He has a lot to worry about.  (The daughters are never mentioned again, and seem to be there more for momentary effect than plotting; in 2.1, Antigonus is trying to convince Leontes that Hermione was chaste, as was Paulina, and if they aren't, he'd "geld" his daughters to prevent them producing "false generations."

And so, there's Paulina 16 years later, seemingly alone with her grief, still remembering Antigonus in the midst of others' celebration:

There's time enough for that;
Lest they desire upon this push to trouble
Your joys with like relation. Go together,
You precious winners all; your exultation
Partake to every one. I, an old turtle,
Will wing me to some wither'd bough and there
My mate, that's never to be found again,
Lament till I am lost. 

She reminds us that death and grief are, in this play, still real and powerful.  So, yeah, I cried.

(All quotations from The Winter's Tale from: the MIT Text site.)

Six Hundred Years

This is the 600th year anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, memorialized so stirringly by Shakespeare in Henry V:

Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

A good many people died that day for the ambitions of Henry V and others, and though they were promised, by Shakespeare at least, to live in memory to the ending of the world, they don't live in most of our memories.  And they didn't when Shakespeare wrote the play.

Let's be cautious about what we promise will be remembered to the ending of the world, and careful of our ambitions.

Reading Anew

I'm teaching a play I've taught many, many times in my Shakespeare and Ecocriticism course, and I've been rereading with an eye to what to say about ecocriticism and this play.

And suddenly, I feel like I'm reading a new play.  Stuff I've totally missed jumps out.  Coolness!

I can say this about teaching Shakespeare: I'll never be bored!