Hello Everyone,
There are so many of you I donot know but now that I finally have had the chance to read the many emails of the past few weeks, I feel I do know many of you.
I deeply appreciate and identify with Susan's testimonial of what Winedale has meant to her. When I was 19 and a lost soul in 1973, Doc introduced me to Winedale, a book called The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and lots of characters, whose impact I feel to this day. From 1973 to 1975, I watched Robert Jackson and Terry Galloway embody comic anarchy in Taming of the Shrew, fell in love with Alice Gordon as Beatrice (it's ok, my wife knows all about it), and learned to play Falstaff by falling off the roof of the theater barn during a raging rainstorm. It's great to know others have had similar experiences over the years (although not the broken leg, I hope) and to know that blessing we call Winedale is alive and well. It's also gratifying to know 37 years later Robert Jackson still worries about learning his lines and is obsessed with scenes about pitching woo and Alice and Mary still have the ability to organise our lives.
Your recommendations of scenes greatly influenced my suggestions, especially Clayton's eloquence about the power of the space there, Jayne and Kathy's "La Ronde" idea, and Gail's thoughts on the nature of the Winedale "family."
Of course, I'm cool with whatever everyone decides.
The scenes that I'm recommending are not only influenced by your thoughts, but, selfishly are scenes I would enjoy and would want to see as an audience member.
Notes on a few of my selects:
Like others, I feel Bottom's dream
Is a perfect beginning. I also feel the very end of MND is a perfect, magical ending.
The Richard II speech is something that has resonated with me politically as strongly today as it was when I first heard it during the reign of Richard Nixon. It has immense dramatic power.
And I am convinced that the last scene of Winter's Tale out of context of the complete play is a satisfying, complete play in itself.
The * are full scenes, the other
speeches are very brief and in many cases would serve as transitions between the fuller scenes.
First half - Conflict/Indecision
Bottom's Dream 4.1 lines 200-219
*Merchant of Venice 1.2 lines 1-133 Portia's suitors can be done very creatively with lots of actors acting out the stories told.
Romeo and Juliet 1.4 lines 53-95
Queen Mab speech
*King Lear 2.4 lines 1-309 Lear
confronts Regan and Goneril (intense-lots of characters)
Cymbeline 4.2 lines 291-332
Imogen (Fidele) awakens with a dead body next to her
*Taming of the Shrew 4.2 lines 1-211 Petruchio returns home with Kate (lots of characters-comic anarchy)
Tempest 4.1 lines 148-163
"Our revels now are ended............
A turn or two I'll walk
To still my beating mind."
Second half- Reconciliation/Resolution
*Brush Up Your Shakespeare
(Everybody involved should be
part of an extended rendition)
*2Henry IV 3.2 lines 1-219
Shallow/Silence/Falstaff/others
Reminiscences about the past with their pals and then conscription of a few reprobate soldiers
(Lots of characters)
*King Lear 4.6 lines 1-80 Edgar/Gloucester father/son reconcile
*Much Ado 4.1 lines 255-336
Beatrice and Benedick reconcile
(the real wedding) following the aborted wedding
Richard II 3.2 lines 144-177
"Let's talk of graves, of worms, of epitaphs...............subjected thus,
How can you say to me I am a king?"
*Winter's Tale 5.3 lines 1-155
(Entire scene is a play in itself--
Lots of characters, magical and
surprising)
*Midsummer Night's Dream 5.1
Lines 371-438 Oberon/Titania/Puck
(As many ethereal fairies as possible should take part)
All the best,
mb