Thursday, November 27, 2014
Strangest Shakespeare Productions
Flavorwire: After seeing The Public’s most recent production of King Lear this summer, Ira Glass came to the incendiary conclusion that “Shakespeare sucks.” The comment riled many, for reasons that are largely obvious to anyone who understands the Bard’s place in the literary canon, but also because of the threat that such an influential public figure’s disapproval poses to an art form that’s already been noted to be “dying” at the slow pace of a stabbed Shakespearean character. Now, some would counter that theater’s adherence to the past is what’s dooming it in the first place, and that our reverence toward Shakespeare in particular is the core of the problem. But Shakespeare has actually proven to be one of the most vital vessels for change in theater: among directors who aren’t too reverent, who see it as a basis rather than a bible, his old texts have contributed to a great deal of innovation and theatrical radicalism.
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9 comments:
Wow these are beautiful. Some more than others.
I never really liked the idea of minimalist Shakespeare but seeing some of these designs made me think I spoke too soon. The cubist Hamlet is one of my favorites. The set perfectly resembles the feel of the play, and I would have loved to see it!
Shakespeare is beautiful and can be incredible when done right. I would have loved to have seen most of these (maybe with the exception of naked Macbeth)
This is a really cool article because it is almost like a map of the evolution of Shakespeare’s plays. His are incredibly adaptable and to see what people do with them over the years is really great. One example that I love is the Macbeth of the Voodoo Macbeth, the 1938 Orson Welles production. It is great when theatre can make a stand for injustice (in this case unequal rights) by using a script from hundreds of years before its time. The Haitian set, burlesque style production was highly controversial at the time as Mr. Welles even got attacked for trying to stage it. On a side note I would have loved to see that production, the burlesque style Shakespeare sounds exciting. I think that in light of recent events, theatre can step up to the occasion with a controversial production. I think it has been too long since there was a real envelope pushing production, but that is just my opinion.
A lot of these variations on Shakespeare seem to have a common theme of switching either genders or races- I think one of the most interesting ones was Patrick Stewart as Othello with an otherwise all-black cast. It's an interesting concept, and I would think it would be pretty controversial. I'm no expert on race relations, but I know there's a big difference between one black person in a group of white people and one white person in a group of black people. One scenario has a history of centuries of international systemic oppression and violence, while the other is just... kind of awkward. "Otherness" is one thing to explore, and I'm glad Patrick Stewart got his shot at his dream role, but I wonder if this detracted at all from the impact of the play.
Let's be honest Shakespeare plays an be very dull and very hard to sit through if they are not done right and these alternate showings of them seem like it would make sitting through the shows a little easier. One of the recreations that seems the most exciting to me is Sleep No More. I love the idea of theater that is interactive like this and allows you to choose what you see. Plus you are not confined to a seat for the length of a Shakespeare play which is definitely an added bonus. It was also interesting to see how different countries take on different adaptations of Shakespeare plays in a variety of ways.
While it's really unfortunate that a public figure like Ira Glass would conclude something so broad as "Shakespeare sucks" especially just after seeing one Shakespeare play, there are times when Shakespeare does suck, if not prepared well. Critics and historians everywhere have said over and over that Shakespeare was a genius, and there is a reason why his work is still performed, but he's at a disadvantage today because he didn't writing for a modern audience, he wrote for his own time. Obviously, taking a direct translation and expecting it to go over well is not going to work. However, there a lot of universal themes that are still applicable, which it seems like a lot of the adaptations listed in the article focused on and used to their advantage, making them much less "boring" than traditional Shakespeare.
While it might seem like sacrilege to say so, I actually prefer to see adaptions of Shakespeare than those that stick to what the Bard may have originally intended. This isn't because I am unenamored of Shakespeare's beautiful prose, or because I am too irreverent of what is past, but because I believe it is pointless to do a play that has been done before.
I adore productions of Shakespeare, but I don't want to see ruffs and tights. I also don't want to see yet another plain-dress "modern" production. I know how that play ends. These plays have existed for hundreds of years. I don't care about them. What I want to see in re-adaption of existing shows is something new. I want to see plays through a different lens than I have ever seen before, I want to see new perspectives, and I want to leave the theatre with something that I wouldn't have left with in any other production of this play. It's the same with any play, though most relevant for the oft-overdone William S. Why this play now? What do you think you can add to the story?
If you are planning on telling these plays the same way they have been told since their conception, then I think I'll pass. If I wanted to see the same version of a production over and over, I'll watch the movie. I go to the theatre to see something daring, new, exciting. I go to see the fresh, human element. Without that, to quote Ira Glass, any play will "suck."
What really drew me into this article was my disappointment in the Ira Glass comment. I am pretty big fan of his work and it makes me sad to think that someone whose opinion I generally value so much would denounce such a significant body of work. I would like to get more context for this comment. That aside, this is a really excellent collection of Shakespeare productions that were pushing the expectations of theatre in their time. It is really interesting to consider why various Shakespeare plays were done at different points throughout history. Something we are taught to consider is why this play was chosen to be produced at the time is was produced. This article does a good job including historical and cultural context for each production in its respective time. This only further drives home the idea that Shakespeare will continue to be relevant to human culture, no matter how different we think it has become since the 16th century.
Shakespeare is not a good indicator as to how the rest of the theater world will fare. Shakespeare was written for a time when it was the highest-tech, most progressive form of entertainment. Shakespeare on the live stage seems to be forced, for the most part, into either the traditional Victorian style or some abstract concept thought up by the director. The former does not relate to a modern audience, and the latter doesn’t relate to normal people too often. There are so few effective productions of Shakespeare that I have seen. But this does not mean that theater will go the way of the Bard.
Many condemn Shakespeare and those who still perform his works for being too mired in the past. However, those who make these complaints are often the first to forget that, especially in his time, Shakespeare was revolutionary. There was literally nothing else during Shakespeare's time with the exception of executions which found such a societal mix or such content so unabashedly discussed or dealt with. And some of the most successful productions moving forward have not been those who aim for shock value, but those who seek to meaningfully entertain their audiences, in the same spirit they were first put on with. Shakespeare, I dare say, will never be irrelevant because the content and emotions and feelings that he immortalized are so deeply ingrained in the human condition that we feel them today as poignantly as they were felt hundreds of years ago. The only reason the plays have begun to feel dated is because instead of making the play accessible to audiences of today while retaining their emotional and human truths, we chose to paint new facades over the original works, obfuscating their meaning and worth.
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