Tag: Shakespeare

Looking for a couch (or 2) to crash on

Looking for a place or places in the Twin Cities to crash on the 9th and 10th of August, 2010.

Red Couch Project Set 8 (17 of 19)
We promise not to be this hard on your furniture :-)

Thomas is one of the 20 or so kids from the upper mid-west that have been selected to participate in the Guthrie Theater Shakespeare summer workshop next month. Cool, eh? This means that he and I get to spend 9 glorious days in Minneapolis, with Tom going off to study acting with really top notch actors and directors, and I hang around doing course prep and verifying that people still say inane but distractingly amusing things on the Internet. (Sue, in the meantime, gets another 9 days of quality time with the cats.)

We got a pretty good deal at the Faculty House and will be staying there except they couldn’t put us up until the 11th. That means that we’re looking for a place or places to crash for the nights of the 9th and 10th of August. Anyone in the Cities got a couch or two we can plop on? We can arrive pretty much whenever on the 9th, and he has to be at the Guthrie by 10am both the 10th and 11th, so proximity to the Guthrie isn’t a particular necessity.

Also, if any Cities folks want to do lunch or dinner or some such, let me know and we can make arrangements!

Thomas in the MAHS production of "The boys next door"
Thomas, worrying about where we're going to sleep

Tags: Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, Shakespeare, summer workshop, theater, Thomas, Tom

Related posts

Ladies’ night out

Black gypsy high-tops

The three of us saw an excellent production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus two weeks ago at the Mercury Theatre (see WeatherGirl’s excellent report), and last night we saw the companion piece, Julius Caesar.

One of the cool things they’ve done is use an all male cast for Coriolanus, and an all female cast for Julius Caesar. Both groups did a great job, and it was wonderful to see how quickly we came to see them as their characters, regardless of their gender. No particular effort was made to act like a man/woman, so no camp voices or crotch scratching. The focus instead was on the text and the characters, and they did a really fine job, showing how a powerful, honest delivery of the text can sell the characters irrespective of the physical bodies they inhabit.

I was also struck by how contemporary the language sounded in Coriolanus. Often Shakespeare can sound very Shakespeare, and you’re constantly reminded that you’re watching something old. Here, however, the (unaltered) text came off as much more contemporary, a tribute again to the quality of the cast and direction.

One might reasonably wonder why they chose to use these mono-gender casts. A decision was made to do Shakespeare’s two roman plays (Colchester is, after all, the ancient roman capital of Britain), while independently a list was being gathered of company members who wanted to participate in this fall’s season. The company list was roughly an even split on gender (a good sign and certainly not to be assumed, even today), while (not surprisingly) the list of parts was greatly imbalanced in favor of the gents. The two women that were organizing the productions (each directed one of the two plays, and assisted with the other) decided to boldly go, and chose to cast both plays along gender lines. Based on the performances, listening to the cast talk about their experiences, and the reviews, it must be regarded as a great success.

Tags: Colchester, drama, performance, Sabbatical, Shakespeare, theatre

Related posts