Gender and Shakespeare

In Shakespeare's Women,  a documentary about Claire Bloom and her one-woman show (she calls it a "recital"), the actress muses about the more difficult female roles and wonders just how well equipped the boys of the time were equipped to play them. She points out that the boy-actors playing the women would have all been prepubescent, very young to have the knowledge she believes is needed to pull off some of the roles. (Bloom has a lot to say about sexual power in some of Shakespeare's most famous characters, particularly Juliet, and it's worth tracking down the documentary, which is available used on Amazon and also streaming on Netflix.)

I was thinking about this documentary when I stumbled across the website of the Los Angeles   Women's Shakespeare Company. The company's artistic director is actress/director Lisa Wolpe, who is currently working with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon.  This is their mission statement: 

The Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company (LAWSC) is a nonprofit organization which produces professional productions of Shakespeare's plays with an all-female ensemble. We provide opportunities for collaboration between multiracial, highly accomplished artists who are actors, producers, directors, choreographers, designers and educators. LAWSC contributes to a transformation of the perceptions of women's roles in our society by working to create a deeper, more powerful, unbounded view of women's potential. Our productions illuminate contemporary issues through a classical context, offering a unique political and social perspective. Our ongoing mission is to provide a creative forum for the exploration of violence, victimization, power, love, race, and gender issues, and to provide positive role models for women and girls. 
 
I'm intrigued by the goals of the group because I've always felt that productions where women play male roles were a little ... gimmicky just like white actors playing Othello in black face (like Olivier did back in the day and more recently, Anthony Hopkins). In the context of what the LAWSC is trying to do, though, such productions make sense. I look forward to Wolpe returning to Los Angeles so I can attend one of her productions. Her version of Iago (pictured) won rave reviews.

Here's an interview with Wolpe in Footlights. Interesting stuff.

A quest for the story "Spidersong."

While searching for a story to post for today's 365 Short Story Challenge, I ran across a mention of a story called "Spidersong" by an author named Susan C. Petry. The story won the Hugo Award for best short story in 1981, the year after Petry died. There is a Clarion Workshop Scholarship dedicated to her memory (writer Kathe Koja won it in 1984) and that's about all I can find out about her. On the scholarship site there's a mention of a book that compiled her stories (Gifts of Blood) but they don't make it easy for you to buy it. (No link, no way to buy it online from them.) You can buy the book new on Amazon for $49 or used for a penny and $3.99 postage.  Most of the stories seem to be about a race of healer/vampires with intense world-building involved.  I had hoped to find the story online, perhaps in the Magazine of SF&F, where it originally appeared, but no such luck.  You know what that means?  I HAVE to buy another book. 

Adventures in Shakespeare--San Diego's Old Globe Theater

Neil Patrick Harris & Emily Bergl; photo by Ken Howard

I used to drive down to San Diego's Old Globe Theater pretty regularly to get my Shakespeare fix. (This season they're doing As You Like It, Richard III in rep with Inherit the Wind.) The last play I saw there (in 1998!) was Romeo and Juliet starring Emily Bergl and Neil Patrick Harris, who was very good in the role. The play was performed on the theater's outside stage, which was fine until... the seals at the zoo next door started barking during some of the play's most intense moments.
The actors stayed in character, the play went on, but the seals did not shut up. 
Not your usual audience participation moment.

Feminist Fiction Friday--odds and ends

Janet Evanovich has signed a deal to write several more Stephanie Plum novels, but more excitingly, she's teaming up with crime writer Lee Goldberg (co-creator of the Dead Man series, amongst other thing) to write a new series. starring a female FBI agent and a dashing male fugitive. Will lovejinks ensue as well as crime? You can read the details here.

The Library of Congress has released a list of 88 Books that Shaped America.  (Why not 100 or 50?  Eighty-eight seems like a really odd number.)  They are listed in the order they were published and the first woman author appears at #9--Amelia Simmons' American Cookery (1796).  Billed as "the first American cookbook," an exact reproduction of the book is available on Amazon. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is number 18, with Louisa May Alcott's Little Women coming in at a few notches lower.  (Seriously--it's like a rule you have to read this book if you are a girl.  It should have been #1 no matter when it was published.) Toni Morrison's 1987 novel Beloved is the last book written by a woman on the list, at #86.

In the oldies department, I just ran across an anthology called This is Not Chick Lit, published in 2006.  Subtitled "Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers," it's crazily affordable.  Amazon -affiliate sellers offer it for a penny plus $3.98 shipping.  (And btw, I don't have an Amazon affiliate account--they were discontinued in California awhile ago, so I'm not making any money by shilling books and videos for them.)  Of the women listed, I only know the work of two of them, so I am looking forward to my introduction to Dika Lam, Judy Budnitz, Samantha Hurt, and the rest of the ladies.

You sir, are a whoreson zed! Shakespeare's insults

I am bored with the F-word. I have heard it used too many times in too many dreary ways for it to have any power any longer. And when it is used as part of an insult, the person hurling the invective often descends into word salad, sputtering the expletive over and over without a hint of art or grace.
I admire someone who can curse with conviction and originality. (The movie Sexy Beast offers a very good example of fluent cursing.)
Shakespeare's curses are marvelous things, layered and nuanced and pointed as a dagger.  Take "whoreson zed' for example. "Whoreson" has the advantage of combining the notion of bastardy with the ever-popular "son of a bitch." Then add "zed" and the insult takes on an extra gloss of intelligence--especially for Americans, since we don't use the word and it sounds exotic.
It certainly sounds more insulting than calling someone a douche-bag.
I'm not the only one who thinks we need a better caliber of swear. Check out a couple of offerings available on YouTube.
Here's a woman named Simone Haruko sharing her 50 favorite Shakespearean insults (including "Thou whoreson zed."
Here's TedEd's deconstruction of a couple of Shakespeare's famous insults in a way that makes you want to now more.

Paris in the Summer

So, you're not going to be able to travel to Paris this summer? Paris-live.comhttp://www.paris-live.com/ has you covered. You can log into web cam views all over the city, including neighborhoods, shops, traffic cameras, and cafes.  There's not one but six cameras outside the Eiffel Tower.  Which makes me wonder if there's not a Luc Besson movie in the making here.  Bored Francophile streaming video sees a murder.  No one reports it. He tries to do the right thing but it only brings trouble to his door in the shape of a beautiful Frenchwoman. And well, what lonely nerd can't use a little dangerous in his life.  Action-jinks ensue.

A Tale of Three Richards

Portrait of Richard III by Mark Satchwill

One of the pleasures of seeing multiple productions of a play is being able to compare and contrast the way each actor plays a role and makes it his or her own. I recently saw both versions of the filmed production of Danny Boyle's Frankenstein, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller. The two men switched off in the roles and although I think Cumberbatch is a terrific actor, I thought Miller was better in both parts. (I thought Cumberbatch was way too remote as Dr. Frankenstein, and a little too "Sherlockian." And his physicality worked against him as the creature whereas Miller's stockier, shorter form suited the "base creaure" more solidly.)
Richard the III is one of the best villains Shakespeare (or anyone else) ever imagined, a real-life player in the Game of Thrones who murdered and manipulated his way to the crown, only to lose it just two  years later. He was only 33 when he died, but like another historical figure who died at 33, his legacy lives on.
Richard III was a hunchback and it's intriguing to see how some actors exploit that physical trait and others don't. Here's Laurence Olivier in the play's most famous scene--the wooing of Lady Anne, the widow of a man Richard III has had murdered. That's Claire Bloom as Lady Anne. (More about her later in the summer. And what's up with that headdress she's wearing? It looks like it came from a low-budget high school production.)
The 1955 Olivier Richard III is available on YouTube in 15 parts if you have the patience to watch it a bit at a time. (Pretend you're watching it old school on a weekend television movie marathon with a zillion commercials.)