Slings and Arrows: Recaps and Commentary on DCTS!

Remember back when I talked about Season 1 of this fabulous little show? It was really hard to condense everything that is wonderful about it into a few short paragraphs. The show is so rich with thoughtful detail and tiny nuance that if I'd try to list every instance of "aha!" It would take, oh I don't know, an 18-week serial mining each episode for it's wonderful content.

LUCKILY, that is what is now happening!

Friend and fellow-blogger, Johnny D had been writing re-caps of Smash and Glee from the perspective of a musical theatre actor for DC Theatre Scene. In the summer hiatus (and also Smash's permanent hiatus), he's taken on the challenge of re-capping every episode of the behind-the-scenes farce-drama and collecting varying perspectives on how "true-to-life" it is. Since I shouldn't talk about it from the real-life perspective of where I have worked, I'm contributing as a Shakespeare fan and "afficionado."

So! Here's Episode 1:01 Oliver's Dream featuring John's outstanding re-cap; a few words on familiarity from small-but-growing-fast-theatre Artistic Director, Michael Dove; and me!

Love Disguised, Lisa Klein

As I've mentioned before, Lisa Klein once held the dubious distinction of having written my so-far favorite Shakespearean YA adaptation, which I've yet to review, and my least favorite, at the time. (Since then I've read So. Much. Worse.)

So when an ARC of Klein's new book fell into my colleague's hands earlier this year, I wasn't sure what to think. Another take on the unknown life of young Will Shakespeare? I'm always open, but I worried that this would have too much familiar material to be very entertaining.

I needn't have worried. I believe this is Klein's best work yet - her humor, knowledge, and apparent passion for the bard's work shines through this novel again and again. There's really so much that is good that I could talk about, I think I have to break it down to just a couple of things:

Spunky Female Heroine: Meg is one of those characters you just love. Sure, as a teenage girl she sometimes does or thinks things that are a shakeable offense, but she's mostly a bold, thoughtful, whipsmart young woman who gets the job done - even if she's uncomfortable doing it. You don't often see barmaids renowned for their ability to kick ruffians out of the tavern by herself, and though you do often see girls dressing as boys in these tales, Meg pulls it off honestly and well.

Honest Will: How do you write such a famous character so that he fits within his own timeline and also exhibits the qualities of a real human being that we could get to know? This Will was one of my top Wills of all time. His reaction to the Hathaway sisters was very honest, his single-minded focus on becoming a writer is understandable, and his braggadocio as a young man recounting his run-ins with ruffians is kind of adorable.

Comedic Inspiration: Too often, I feel, the good books out there in this genre are based on the tragedies - which are wonderful and insightful and ok we get it. There's only so much you can mine out of Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet before it all starts to feel the same. And I haven't really seen the comedies done very well - I love the magical elements, but very few of the plays are based in magic, so it is refreshing to see an entirely human cast for Will to draw from - the Hathaway sisters, little Violetta's romantic entanglements, Meg's own disguising as her (fake) twin brother, Mack, his father's run-ins with the law, and London's own host of characters. Plus, yes, MAJOR points for Klein using Pyramus and Thisbe at the Boar's Head Inn where Will earns his keep (after losing his father's money to thieves) by writing plays to be produced in their courtyard.

What it boils down to is that this book was actually a refreshing read for me. Well-drawn characters with clear inspiration from the text and Shakespeare's own blurry past. It was a real treat for me, and you will love it when it's released later this summer.

Love Disguised

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens; 1 edition (July 30, 2013)
• ISBN-10: 1599909685
• ISBN-13: 978-1599909684

Warm Bodies, Isaac Marion

It's been awhile, eh? Apologies. Please indulge me for a moment while I clue you into my headspace: it has been a day. Not just a day, it has been a week. No, it's been a month of relentless to-do's and events and tasks and jobs and news and things. Many of you are here because last week the Globe shared my Tragedies graphic and you were resourceful enough to google my name. Some of you have been here longer because a facebook fan page shared it at the beginning of the month. Some because I idiotically shared it on Pinterest months ago. These more recent events are a mixture of terror and triumph for me, and that was all on top of the cocktail of anxiety and aplomb I usually struggle to keep in check being bombarded between the business of spring (but is this spring, really?),  and the news that my husband has been accepted to Yale. So the scientific beaker of Me is especially volatile right now, treading lightly between messy explosion and quietly falling apart inside.

Tonight I decided to curl up in my reading chair with a good book and a couple of ciders and relax my mind into something that can tackle the weeks ahead. I thought I had chosen a darkly funny, somehow poetical, twisted novel that blent Shakespeare with Shaun of the Dead. This was, of course, based on the movie previews that made it seem that way and my preview on my kindle, but what I got was so much more enjoyable and necessary.

In a dilapidated international airport somewhere in the post-apocalypse, a lonely zombie, R, shuffles through "life." He struggles to piece together who he was and what his meaning is now, but can't find a reference point in the shrugging apathy of the Dead. Nearby, an empty city surrounds the survivalist compound of Living enclosed in a once-Stadium. Occasionally, they scavenge for supplies, risking attack from the zombie hoarde - the after-effects of the plague that destroyed mankind as they know it. R leads an attack on a group of young scavengers, and somehow while consuming their leader, Perry's, brain, something that had fluttered briefly against his consciousness takes hold and ignites something within what was once his heart. He rescues Perry's former lover, Julie, from the attack, and brings her home with him. The Boneys lead the Dead with their unequivocal inevitability, as unsettling as it is unarguable. Meanwhile, Julie's father is a harsh leader of the survivors in the stadium: strict, unfeeling, thinking day-to-day for how to survive together. But what no one is considering is the future, and R and Julie are about to change it.

On top of being a powerful love story, the book explores how we react to the situations presented us, and how our feelings define us at a fixed point in time. What resonates most clearly with me right now is one of Perry's memories, which R relives throughout the novel having consumed Perry's brain. That hope is the anti-memory. Hope is what builds on what we know to keep moving into the future. Perry responds that that could be fear, but Julie refuses to think that.

Hope is exactly what Romeo and Juliet had, but they did not have the courage to change their world that R and Julie do. Romeo and Juliet saw only walls and a lack of choice, where R and Julie see options in abundance and choose to be different. Instead of hiding in R's 747 for the rest of their lives, they move among everyone in both circles as safely as they can: flaunting their choice to change. Walls spring up around them, but still they change. Adaptation isn't just about survival, the civilizations that sprung up in the apocalypse have the young of both sides trained more to kill the Other than learn to read. Symbols replace street names, and writing begins to look like a wasteful hobby. Finding solutions to the immediate problems did not solve the original cause.

During his whip-smart weapons demonstrations at the Folger during our festival, Casey Kaleba made a point that really struck home for me this year: at the end of Romeo and Juliet, an entire generation is wiped out. There is no more future for these families. There is no more Hope. In the darkest of times if one of these youths had used their Hope to fuel the courage to change the way the world worked - daunting as that may have been - the story could have had a different ending.

It's easy if you try. Change doesn't just happen because we want it to. Change happens because we try. In the face of insurmountable odds, we try. Nothing will come of nothing.

I needed this book immensely. It doesn't make the world seem less gargantuan, but it does make Hope seem less frail. Plus, it is one of the best-written books I've ever read. I highlighted about a quarter of it as I read, and gasped and cried and... well... immediately dug up an old laptop so I could tell you about it this late at night.

Warm Bodies

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books; Reprint edition (November 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439192324
• ISBN-13: 978-1439192320

I, Malvolio (and I, Shakespeare) by Tim Crouch

I have a bleeding heart for the characters that do the right thing. Not the underdog or the hero who overcomes adversity to save the day (though I admire them, of course), but the ones who un-popularly set rules and stick to the letter of the law in an attempt to create order in the chaos around them. The Javert, the Vice Principal Guber, the Malvolio. The one who takes abuse because they know what they're doing is the right thing to do even if no one likes them for it. Sure, as the audience we know they're seeing black and white where there should be gray, and maybe we jeer along with the other characters. Come on, Javert, have a heart! Get outta here, Guber, these teachers are trying to reach those kids! Shut UP, Malvolio, we're just trying to have a bit of fun!

I was jealous of my colleagues getting to see one of Tim's hour-long adaptations for young audiences in London over the summer when they attended the Worlds Together conference. So when I suddenly had plans to be in NYC this past weekend and got a notice from a Shakespeare crawler that Tim's I, Malvolio was playing, I begged my friends to see it with me. Luckily, they're all nerds, too, and more luckily, I have friends who have friends at NYC theatres and got us comped in!

Tim started onstage while the audience filed in, wearing very dirty long underwear and a couple of ridiculous head-gears which made him look mad. When we were settled, he crumpled up a piece of paper and asked us where he should throw it - on the floor? Sure what's the problem with throwing one piece of paper on the floor? And then a little more detritus, and then a little more garbage, and then a lot more? Why not skip church to have a little fun? Why not? And each innocent question snowballed into outrageous imaginary chaos, and I saw Malvolio's eternal struggle to maintain order as the world around him went horribly mad then turned on him. And then that's exactly the story he told - how well he maintained order, the first signs of change, and the unjust torture he was subjected to by his enemies. The whole time he's also accusing the audience of enjoying his humiliation, for being part of the snowball of chaos he was trying to contain. We laughed at his discomfort, we sat passively while he called on audience members to assist in his suicide (which, spoilers, he doesn't go through with because we don't deserve the satisfaction), we sided against him during the play because we wanted things to be fun. We were ashamed.

It was such a smart take on Twelfth Night and fit right in with my perspective of Malvolio as the unpopular rule-enforcer. I bought the collection of plays (so far) that Tim has written in this series, and read them on the bus on the way home: In I, Banquo, Macbeth's former best friend, formerly alive, asks the audience to imagine what they would do in either man's place while he dips his hands and arms into a cauldron of blood. I, Caliban has him telling The Tempest from Caliban's perspective as he repeats over and over that he is a monster and so horribly alone. The Midsummer re-telling, I, Peaseblossom, is a series of dreams and nightmares in the memory of Titania's fairy who doesn't understand love from what he's seen.

All were written for student audiences, and all are meant to be for young people. There were plenty of children at the performance of I, Malvolio that we saw, but that made it even more uncomfortable for us as they were not only asked to assist him with re-dressing, but also with assisting in his suicide. That's... can you do that? Am I too coddling? Macbeth's dark material is obviously still ok by students, but how much are they going to get out of these plays? Do they see this before or after studying or seeing the full play? Are these the sorts of questions they should be asking themselves? When I discussed the show with my friends we all had a lot of discomfort with the show being meant for children as it seemed so intellectually above their experience of the play and with human behavior.

I feel ashamed writing it, since I'm obviously wrong. Tim's been doing these plays for student audiences for almost a decade, and is still being commissioned for more. I, Cinna (the poet) is currently being written, and I would see an I, Friar Lawrence, or I, Shylock if they were ever done and have more great lessons from which to learn. And I'm the last person to not believe in the intellectual prowess of young children, and the last, too, to think that they should be protected from disturbing things just because they're young. So I don't have a definitive feeling about these plays being for students. It's just a huge point of what the plays are that I can't wrap my head completely around. If you've seen or read one of these plays (or something like them), what am I missing?

The final thought is that the one I saw was an amazing theatrical experience which respected and elaborated on the original text. The ones I read seemed to do the same with varying levels of strict faithfulness to the original text (I, Banquo seemed to just retell the whole story without having much more to say). I'm a sucker for a familiar story from a different perspective, and these plays are ripe for re-telling. I'm especially glad, though, that the one I saw was I, Malvolio.

I, Shakespeare

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Oberon Books Ltd (17 May 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1849431264
• ISBN-13: 978-1849431262