Hey Matt. Good to hear your voice again. I'm getting old: please help me with the coded language. So where are you and what are you doing?
Your suggestion about gathering to read some of the lesser played or read plays: actually, our faculty Shakespeare reading group did that in the early '80s and found some very good things to talk about afterward. And I vividly remember sitting on the floor in my office in '85 with an energetic group of former Sh at W students reading Titus Andronicus. Those were the days......
I suppose I prompted the "turkey" approach to Coriolanus when I wrote Michael that I I really did not like it, could never figure it out, did not find favor with the characters. That prompted some very interesting exchanges. Even prompted some folks to read the play. So what happened from that and what James has done at Winedale has given us all a chance to explore something new. Some I talked to after the performance I saw thought that the play was a travesty of Roman values, a sort of "mock-heroic" effort. Several thought, like myself, that it was irony, satire. Several were simply confused. Some thought that it was absolutely wonderful. The latter prompted deservingly, I think, by the spirited effort of the class. The e-mail exchanges brought forth some very valuable critical and personal insights. All of this suddenly made me think of Wallace Stevens and "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."
Well, after it all, I still have problems with Coriolanus, the play and the man-kid. But the exchanges have opened up some very interesting approaches to everything. And that is good, I think. And it connected me with some I've not heard from in a while, like Joe Jordan!
Before your time, Matt, in the Spring '98, I took on the 1603 "BAD QUARTO" of Hamlet and then, with s group of former students, took the same "BAD" play to the Globe Theater in London where it became "GOOD," surprising not a few theater folks there. I heard the sounds and then the silence. Hmmmm.
In '08, a Camp Shakespeare group of 14 11-16 yr olds performed the same play at Winedale. Former students and the faithful Winedale audience said that the "BAD" play was the "BEST" play EVER performed on the Winedale stage. Wow!
You just have to be there.
Cheers,
Doc
On Aug 9, 2012, at 3:20 PM, Matt McNutt wrote:
Dear fellow Winos,
Please forgive this least intellectual of brainwaves inspired by the recent thread of references to "Shakespeare's Turkeys", but each time I hear that phrase, all I can think about is, in lieu of the now-ended UT/Aggie football game tradition, it seems like there could be opportunity to REALLY celebrate Shakespeare and turkey ;-)
Perhaps even an express venue FOR the "turkeys"? Some folks, some food, some Shakes and some scenes from his turkeys? Just like the first settlers when they performed Shakespeare with the natives -- a classic T-givs, if ever there was one!
I realize this may not require the Winedale property just to occur, and I imagine it may be a less exciting suggestion to those of you who actually manage Winedale and any sanctioned time there...but you know what they say about there being a Will...(that there may be students or alum happy to assist any grassroots effort? ;-).
Alas, sneakily, I am not a likely candidate for that, so long as I am not in Austin. But I do enjoy the connection allowed via ye olde internete, so consider this a "just thinking of y'all", if nothing else.
--Matt
Spring '99, Summer '00
PS - I also realize informal get-togethers involving Shakes' is not a novel suggestion, here
& PPS - Apparently, there IS a Turkey day football game against TCU.
On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 10:55 AM, Clayton Stromberger
<cstromberger@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
Thank you Casey, Doc and all who've shared your thoughts on Coriolanus, the play and the performance. A wonderful conversation to listen in on. And thanks again Mike for setting up this list two years ago.
Like Kate I don't know the play well but am looking forward to giving it some attention soon. I did see one performance of it with James long long ago in London, a small-stage Kick Theatre production directed by Deborah Warner, and I must confess my only lasting memory of that evening is that just as I was nodding off about halfway through, lulled into a trance state by the incessant jawing of various indistinguishable (to me, then) plebians and tribunes, I suddenly had the strange feeling, asserting itself through the fog in my head, that something had changed onstage... oh, wait a minute, the guy playing Coriolanus... he's not wearing any clothes..... Helllllo! Oh, Calcutta! He was showing his scars. All of 'em. I was awake for at least another act after that.
I will be seeing the summer class performance Saturday afternoon and look forward to re-reading the emails afterwards. Speaking of threads, I trust none of the students are pulling an Ian McKellan and dropping trou (or toga) in this one.
Though I have nothing helpful to say about the play right yet, other than to advise you to watch out for naked people in it, I did want to tip a hat in the direction of Dr. James Loehlin, whose decision to invite some of Shakespeare's "turkeys" (as Terry put it) into the Barn made this roundtable discussion possible. Over the past few years I have sensed that James's students bring a special energy to the lesser-known plays, perhaps reflecting in part their teacher's excitement at taking on a work never before assayed in full in the Barn. And it's wonderful, as someone who's read and listened to Shakespeare performances for almost 30 years, to sit and watch a play under the cedar beams and actually not know what's going to happen next in the story. So thanks for that, James.
The well-loved plays can certainly be fresh and surprising with each approach, and the great achievement there perhaps is to make us forget, for a while, that we've seen the play before, and to lead us into experiencing it anew. Watching the Camp "Macbeth" gave me that feeling many times last month. But it's been very interesting to get a wide-angle view on Shakespeare by experiencing some of his less successful or brilliant work. You never know when those little flashes of genius will spark up, even in the turkeys. Failures are as interesting in their own way as successes.
I never could get very far into the Henry VI plays as a reader, but now have a much better sense of their possibilities thanks to James and the summer classes. Doc has done much of the same thing for all of us over the years by leading students and audiences to Pericles, Cymbeline, the first-quarto Hamlet, and other Elizabethan plays such as Shoemaker's Holiday. The lifelong learning continues.
I have heard James say he wants to eventually take on at Winedale every play Shakespeare wrote, which means, at some point before too long, Titus, Timon, Henry VIII.... Gobble gobble. Turkey sandwiches for all. I'll bring the mayo.
cs
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