Cross-Dressing and Gender-Bending

(image credit)

What happens when you throw three of Shakespeare's cross-dressing female leads into a boat upon a stormy sea?

The resulting conversation that delves into the issues of language, identity and gender is both dramatic and full of humor, said director Sara Catheryn Wolf. After all, you can't put Portia, Rosalind and Viola in a room without sparking a tempest of some kind.

Wolf, a seasoned Shakespearean actress, said "Good Men and True" is an ideal play for every kind of Shakespeare fan. If you're an iambic-pentameter aficionado, you'll love the mashup of three beloved plays. If you're a Bard beginner, you'll gravitate to the relatable storylines and modern language. Win-win, she noted.

Reference: 'Good Men': Shakespeare's cross-dressers facing fate. 

It sounds like a thought-provoking yet thoroughly enjoyable re-visioning of Shakespeare.  Portia, Rosalind and Viola are among the most intriguing characters in drama, precisely because they break gender barriers without, for the most part, revealing that they have done so.  What writer Karen Dybis may not have known is that in Shakespeare's time, young men often played the role of women, who in these particular plays then disguised themselves as men.  More the cross-dressing, this is gender bending at its finest.

Right Leadership for Shakespeare Festival

Rick Dildine

Dildine oversaw growth at Shakespeare Festival St. Louis in his previous tenure, with attendance increasing more than 30 percent. Dildine made more than $87,000 in fiscal 2013. But he resigned in June 2014 to become executive director and president of Shakespeare & Co. in Lenox, Massachusetts, which has an annual budget of about $5 million.

Reference: Shakespeare Festival’s executive director is back after resigning last year.
Unless an artistic troupe or organization has stable sponsorship, it must have a working business model to sustain itself over time.  Moreover, it must have the right capabilities in its leaders and staff, that is, those who ought to have some artistic prowess as well as business savvy and financial attention. 

Should Shakespeare be Censored?

(image credit)

Shakespeare’s plays contain anti-Semitism, racism and sexism, sexual abuse and violence; they magnify the tenor of their age. But should they be censored when they might offend a particular community?

Reference: Should Shakespeare be Censored?

My answer is an unequivocal no. An artist ought to have as much license as is rightful and reasonable to decide how he or she should create or portray discriminatory, offensive stuff.  We do live in highly tense, sensitive times, however, and an artistic expression that is benign for one group may be incendiary for another (rf. Charlie Hebdo massacre).  So an artist must be thoughtful, responsible and forthright with however he or she decides.
 

They All Want to Play Hamlet, by Carl Sandburg

THEY all want to play Hamlet.

They have not exactly seen their fathers killed

Nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill,

Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart,

Not exactly the spinning circles of singing golden spiders,

Not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of flowers—O flowers, flowers slung by a dancing girl—in the saddest play the inkfish, Shakespeare, ever wrote;

Yet they all want to play Hamlet because it is sad like all actors are sad and to stand by an open grave with a joker’s skull in the hand and then to say over slow and say over slow wise, keen, beautiful words masking a heart that’s breaking, breaking,

This is something that calls and calls to their blood.

They are acting when they talk about it and they know it is acting to be particular about it and yet: They all want to play Hamlet.

They All Want to Play Hamlet, by Carl Sandburg.

I suppose that because Hamlet is truly a complex, mythical figure in literature and theater, it is virtually impossible to grasp him wholly and discern the interiors of his character.  But I imagine any actor worth his or her salt will relish the challenge of playing him.

Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet

(image credit)

Now that my family and I have the means again to revel in film and theater, I must find a way to see new Shakespeare productions.  At the heels of an Academy Award nomination, as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, the talented Cumberbatch is poised to take on the anguished Danish Prince later this year.  I've seen him in 12 Years a Slave and Star Trek Into Darkness. 

Lynn Collins as Portia

Lynn Collins, as Portia

He said he wasn't impressed with the 2004 film adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, but thought that Lynn Collins was quite good.  He wasn't sure how much Shakespeare she had done, but apparently she has had a great deal of training in the Bard and she has played Ophelia and Juliet in the past.  I've seen her in The Lake House, Bug, The Number 23, and Unconditional, and I do believe the beautiful lady has good range in her acting.

William Shakespeare Plays Online

William Shakespeare

The University of Michigan, University of Oxford, and ProQuest are behind the Early English Books Online - Text Creation Partnership, which has published a whopping 25,000 texts online from the 1473 - 1700 period.  Another 40,000 texts, including those of William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Milton, are planned for release by the end of the decade (rf. U-M seeks to make Shakespeare, others available online) wow.  

In the meantime, FYI:

Before the publication of the First Folio in 1623, nineteen of the thirty-seven plays in Shakespeare's canon had appeared in quarto format. With the exception of Othello (1622), all of the quartos were published prior to the date of Shakespeare's retirement from the theatre in about 1611. It is unlikely that Shakespeare was involved directly with the printing of any of his plays, although it should be noted that two of his poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, were almost certainly printed under his direct supervision.

Here you will find the complete text of Shakespeare's plays, based primarily on the First Folio, and a variety of helpful resources, including extensive explanatory notes, character analysis, source information, and articles and book excerpts on a wide range of topics unique to each drama.

Reference: Shakespeare's Plays.