November 2010 – Sprockets and Springes

Two Gentlemen of Lebowski: A Pub Reading

Do you like The Big Lebowski? How about Shakespeare? And Tuscaloosa’s Downtown Pub?

Join us on Monday, December 6th at 9:00pm at the Downtown Pub to read Adam Bertocci’s Two Gentlemen of Lebowski, a Shakespearean adaptation of the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski. Expect swirlies, bowling, and lots of ‘abiding’ in true Elizabethan style.

I should note that this is not a performance: the Coen Brothers reserve the adaptation rights to The Big Lebowski, and they’re not granting the stage rights to anyone. This is a group reading of Bertocci’s play. Buy a copy from Amazon.com (here) and come to the Pub on the 6th. We’ll assign parts as we go and dive right into the exploits of Geoffrey ‘The Knave’ Lebowski.

So:

Monday, Dec 6th
9:00pm
The Downtown Pub

Required:

Your presence!
A copy of Bertocci’s Two Gentlemen of Lebowski

The Knave Abideth.

Program notes: King Lear

Thanks to everyone (actors, audience, and crew) who made Wednesday’s reading a success. Program notes below.

Shakespeare’s King Lear is about the inexpressible. What can a child say to an unruly parent? What can a king say once he’s given away his crown? What can we say once we’ve seen “unaccommodated man?” King Lear is an apocalypse of language, the final revelation of the parent who holds the speechless body of his dead child: “Look there! Look there!”

The tragedy of the play lies not in what is said (or unsaid), but in what is heard and seen. The shock of King Lear 1.1 comes not from the abdication, nor from the love test, nor from Cordelia’s refusal or inability to play the game. The shock comes from Lear’s reaction to Cordelia’s words: “Let it be so. Thy truth then be thy dower.” There is a gap at this moment, a chasm between Cordelia’s words and Lear’s reaction to them, and through that gap spills the Apocalypse: here it is that Lear first calls upon the heavens and the gods, here he first invokes the end of time, here he first conjures up cannibalistic images of the family in the “barbarous Scythian” who eats his own children. What does Lear hear in Cordelia’s words that leads to this response? Could she have said anything to avoid it? Here communication breaks down not on the side of the message but on the side of interpretation. Propriety is not enough to fill the gap, nor is self-expression. All the sympathy of Albany, Edgar, Gloucester, Kent, and the Fool is not enough to stop the downward spiral, which continues until Lear holds Cordelia’s corpse in his arms, only moments from his own death: “I might have saved her” (5.2.268). But how? Lear leaves us with a question rather than an answer.

At the play’s end, we are left with the “image of that horror,” a parent holding his dead child and looking into her eyes: “Do you see this? Look on her: look, her lips, / Look there, look there!” The question is not: what does Lear see? The question is: what do you see?

~nrhelms~

King Lear: November 17 at the Ferguson Theatre

In 1810, critic Charles Lamb claimed that “Lear is essentially impossible to be represented on a stage” (‘On the Tragedies of Shakespeare’).

We’re taking Lamb’s statement as a challenge.

Shakespeare’s King Lear is about the inexpressible. What can a child say to an unruly parent? What can a king say once he’s given away his crown? What can we say once we’ve seen “unaccommodated man” (KL 3.4.105)? King Lear is an apocalypse of language, the final revelation of the parent who holds the speechless body of his dead child: “Look there! Look there!” (KL 5.3.309). Come. See.

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010
The Ferguson Theatre
7:30 pm (pre-show music at 7:00 pm)

Free admission

(Despite the Georgia State game on Nov 18th, parking on campus will not be an issue.)

Lear…………………………..Steve Burch

Goneril……………………….Deborah Parker

Regan…………………………Amy Handra

Cordelia/Fool……………….Regan Stevens

Albany…………………………David Ainsworth

Cornwall………………………Mark Hughes Cobb

Gloucester……………………Charles Prosser

Edmund……………………….Derrick Williams

Edgar…………………………..Peyton Conley

Kent…………………………….Matt Lewis

Oswald…………………………Wescott Youngson

France/Ensemble…………..Cooper Kennard

Burgundy/Ensemble……….Jerrell Bowden

Drums…………………………..Laurie Arizumi

Director………………………..Nic Helms

Assistant Director…………..Whitney Graham