film – Sprockets and Springes

Shakesnews: Events for October 13th and 16th

The staged reading of Richard III was a great success, and I’ll have some audio posted from it later this week. First I have an announcement about two Shakepseare events happening next week.

Shakespeare Behind Bars

Hudson Strode’s next Shakespeare On Film offering will be Shakespeare Behind Bars, next Monday, October 13th, at 7:30pm at the Bama Theatre. Here’s what Ben Moran has to say about the film:

Shakespeare Behind Bars, directed by Hank Rogerson and Jilann Spitzmiller (2005)

The Luther Luckett Correctional Complex might be the last place one would expect to find Shakespeare. A medium-security Kentucky prison surrounded by guard towers and razor-wire, it houses 1100 convicts, including murderers, rapists, and child molesters. Yet once a week, Curt Tofteland, program director of Shakespeare Behind Bars, visits this island of concrete and steel to help a group of inmates prepare a Shakespearean play. As part of their rehabilitative efforts, the members of this troupe spend a year with one text, rehearsing for a springtime production to be staged before their families and fellow inmates. For the year depicted in Shakespeare Behind Bars, the cast selects The Tempest as its play. Almost instantly, the prisoners begin unwittingly merging with the characters they perform. Between rehearsals, they play out their own anger and guilt, relaying, as Prospero does, their histories and the causes of their present conditions. Hal (Prospero) grapples with his troubled family history, sexuality, and role as a father, all while playing a different father on stage. Red (Miranda) initially rebels against his role; he bickers with his stage father during practice before recounting his own difficult upbringing. A beast of a man, Big G (Caliban) also must come to terms with his crime and the fact that he, like Caliban, has grown up in bondage. Each man has reason enough to remain angry at the world around him. Yet each holds onto the hope that somehow he can atone for his sins. Realizing they too are “such stuff / As dreams are made on,” bound to fade “like this insubstantial pageant,” the cast members desire the smallest of salvations. As Leonard (Antonio) articulates, they can only aspire to be remembered for something other than the worst things they have done. Staging Shakespeare does not resolve their problems, but by the time of their spring performance, the prison troupe gives us reason to believe that doing so has set their sole aspiration within reach.

~Ben Moran

Shakespeare and the First Folio

On Thursday, October 16th at 7:30pm at the Paul R. Jones art gallery, IF will hold its third Shakespeare in Performance workshop, Shakespeare’s First Folio: An Actor’s Tool, led by Nic Barilar. This hour-long workshop explores the creative and interpretative hints “hidden” in Shakespeare’s First Folio and how actors use these cues in performance. The workshop will include an introductory history of the Folio (the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623), a demonstration of some of the major differences between the Folio and modern editions of the plays, and, of course, explanations regarding how to use the text in performance. The evening will conclude with a brief exercise practicing the technique.

10 Things I Love About This Film

Here’s what Dr. Natalie Loper had to say about 10 Things I Hate About You, the first film in the Strode series this fall.

The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

10 Things I Hate About You is an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, which is one of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies and remains one of his most popular. This popularity troubles many people, fearful that the play’s treatment of women is inappropriate in the 21^st century. They do have a point, since the play participates in a long tradition of anti-feminist literature, including folk tales, ballads, and puppet shows in which unruly women are bullied, humiliated, and even beaten into submission. In Shakespeare’s England, women who did not conform to social norms—who scolded their husbands, disobeyed their fathers, or were a nuisance to their neighbors—could be forced to wear a metal bridle with a bit between their teeth, pulled through town on the back of a horse-drawn cart, or strapped to a “cucking stool” and dunked in a river until they agreed to be quiet. Church homilies and English laws upheld the rights of husbands to govern their wives. Pamphlets advised husbands on how to tame their wives, often using methods used to tame hawks for hunting, and Shrew shows Petruchio using them, too. Shakespeare’s Kate is described as a shrew and a scold; she flies into rages, hits people, and throws things. Only one man, Petruchio of Padua, is up to the challenge of marrying her, and by the end of the play, Kate seems to have been reformed; she submits to her husband’s will and advises other women to do the same. Her sister, Bianca, changes, too. At the beginning of the play, she is the model woman: quiet and submissive, she publicly defers to her father’s authority. Privately, however, she slyly manipulates her three suitors and her father in order to marry the man she desires. Is Shakespeare using popular stereotypes about women to entertain people, to reinforce social norms, or to critique a misogynistic culture? The debate has yet to be decided.

10 Things I Hate About You, directed by Gil Junger (1999)

10 Things I Hate About You stars Julia Stiles as Kat Stratford, an unruly teenager who would rather read Sylvia Plath and listen to Riot Grrrl music than attend what she calls “antiquated mating ritual[s]” such as keg parties and her high school’s prom. This causes a problem for her younger sister Bianca (played by Larisa Oleynik), who wants to be popular and date popular boys. The problem? Their father has decreed that Bianca can’t date unless Kat does. Luckily, Bianca has two suitors who scheme to get around this rule: nerdy new kid Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) provides the brains, while pretty-boy Joey Donner (Andrew Keegan) provides the money. Their goal is to convince the mysterious and scary Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger) to date Kat. The results of this scheme have divided critics nearly as much as Shakespeare’s play has. Some people applaud the film for how it updates Shakespeare’s play: Kat’s reputation as a shrew stems from her feminist ideals, and the film is seen as a journey of self-discovery rather than a forced submission to social norms. Others think the film offers a restrictive view of feminism and claim that Kat’s transformation is no less disturbing than Kate’s because it perpetuates gender stereotypes and upholds the status quo. Even so, the film remains a popular 1990s teen film, and it contains many elements of the genre: distinct high school cliques, adults whose authority is questionable but nonetheless maintained, and teens who struggle to balance competing desires for autonomy, acceptance, and approval from their peers, parents, and teachers.

~Dr. Natalie Loper

April 14th, Hudson Strode presents Caesar Must Die

Hudson Strode presents Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s *Caesar Must Die* (2012) on April 14th, 2014 at the Bama Theatre. The film is set in a prison in Rome, where inmates rehearse for a prison performance of Shakespeare’s *Julius Caesar.* The screening is free and open to the public.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2177511/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_Must_Die

ShakesFilm: Pasolini’s Oedipus Rex

This film is neither a Shakespeare adaptation nor a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It is, however, a pretty good way to spend two hours. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Oedipus Rex, MR 301, Sunday at 7:00pm.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061613/