WELL, BACK IN LONDON

With the American elections just over a week away, Mrs. C encouraged me to post this picture of a statue of the Bard located in Leicester Square. Um, conspiracy theorists? Enemies of democracy? (Recall that another Englishman, Mr. Churchill, said that democracy is the worst form of government ever invented, except for all the others.)

We might also think of the sentence the playwright gave Puck, What fools these mortals be.             

Rap-Off

So one of the variations on the Fringe's Midsummer Night's Dream parody was what you might call a rap-off. Cast members wearing oversized baseball caps, including the traditional New York Yankees' hat (although the one in the third picture says Pickleman's Cafe - just a little extra joke), assume the identity of a character in the play, hurling rhymed insults at one another. Demetrius calls out Lysander's momma. Oberon and Titania diss each other over Pucks tricks. And so on. Pretty clever.

It's been a really bad week at work and I had a couple of thousand pictures from last weekend. Tough doing sorting, editing and getting posts written. I'll plod ahead as I can. More to come this Friday and Saturday.   

Consent

One of the sections of Or What You Will was a skit called Consent. A way too peppy teacher is talking to what appear to be a high school sex ed class. The students are bored into a stupor. It's all that no means no and yes means yes stuff. Can a man go onto the, um, next step without specific consent from the woman, a spoken yes? No, teacher. And so on.

But eventually the subject of Puck comes up, although not by name. Is it okay for someone to take a juice from a magic flower and sprinkle it on the eyes of a sleeping person, making them love the first person they see when they awake? No, teacher. Has the sleeping person given consent to fall in love with that first person? No, teacher. At which point the actor playing the sprinkler states in a stuttering monotone I am sorry I did the wrong thing. I will go away now. The actress playing the sprinklee says in the same kind of voice I do not wish to marry you. Goodbye. Cut. 

As Puck himself said, what fools these mortals be.  

Or What You Will, Part Deux, Part 1

Ok, so I think this is the deal. Start with Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. (You know it, right? Or not.) Apply William S. Burroughs' (a proud son of St. Louis) cut-up technique, using scissors to slice pages of text into chunks and re-arrange them randomly. Turn the drama into a contest, scene versus scene, with the audience voting for their favorites.  Attempt to perform this with a group of young actors on acid and speed. You may end up with Or What You Will, Part Deux.

I don't have time this morning to provide more details but this deserves another post. We're going to the baseball game tonight so I'm not sure when I'll get it uploaded.