Nowadays, you can just follow someone by clicking a button via your chosen social media but there were times when following someone, an artist, a band, a theatre, meant actually following them. It meant bringing ones body to the chosen follower and following what they did with one’s eyes or literally following them one foot after the other. Make a parade through the streets and follow us to the show. On a good day, one’s followers would fall right in step, on others not everyone feels like following.

How did a theatre in this time measure its success? There weren’t newspapers, no written reviews. You didn’t get public critics. I doubt someone stood on the box in the center of the square proclaiming opinions on theatrical productions. Samuel Pepys had his opinions, of course, but those were in his diary. It really must have all been word of mouth. Actual, literal word of mouth to actual ear. And your box office numbers were likely the only real barometer. Well, that and royal commendations and such.

Whereas my residence, both in reputation and profit, has been negligible both ways. It has been fruitful in the making of things, in collaborations, in creating things I love and others loved as well – but reputation and profit? Not so much. It is time to travel I suppose.

It would seem that the economics of theatrical production were such that a company would be sort of 2nd tier. The successful company remains in residence but when times get tough they hit the road. I haven’t really seen it work that way these days. If the Guthrie, for example, decides to tour, it is in addition to their home season. It doesn’t close up shop and take the show on the road. But then so much of theatre these days is building-centric. The season is created to raise money to keep the building operational. Even for the tiny producer like me, we have to rent a building to do a show. Touring is an advanced skill, not a 2nd choice. It may be a money maker but it is also a money taker. Most people do it to increase their reputations more than to improve their circumstances.
Me, I’m desperate to travel. But I can’t figure out how to afford it.

I would have asked this question first. I’m not sure I’d welcome just any old troupe of players to my castle. Some, sure, I’d be delighted to see but others, it would be like inviting a group of preening roosters to campout in my drawing room. Most shows I see are performed by preening roosters and having them roosting in my parlor would likely be just as unpleasant as watching their show. Some people don’t mind that sort of thing; They enjoy a little bird poop on the carpet and feathers scattered across their cushions. Me, I’d at least want to make sure the roosters were doing a play I liked.

This is as good a reason as any to have the lady speak her mind. I don’t much care why a lady gets to say her mind as long as she does. And I’d like to add that she should get to say her mind freely and not suffer threats because of it.

The preponderance of rape and death threats against women speaking up about misogyny, rape culture and other feminist issues is pretty horrifying. It also explains a certain reluctance women have to speak freely. It explains why I was afraid to do it myself. It’s all well and good to say everyone is free to speak their minds but if the direct consequences of doing so are so unpleasant, well, anyone would quickly learn not to do it.

I can only hope that the virulence that has been emerging when women speak their minds freely is evidence that times are changing and that the virulence is the last grasp of a dying patriarchy.

The clown lives in bafflement. She is best when she doesn’t understand what is happening.

This phrase for example is pretty baffling. I would like to watch a clown try to work out how to tickle someone’s lungs. Or figure out what o’th’sere might be. Or solve the grammar of “lungs are tickle.” Would she find her own lungs suddenly tickling her? That would be a funny clown turn. Clown with tickling lungs. I would watch that show.

What is the journey of the word “humor”? How did a word that once meant moody come to mean comedy? At first blush, I looked at this line and thought, “What would a funny guy want to end his part with peace for? What good would that be?” but then I realized – humorous is suggesting some battling his humors. The bile (Black and Green) the choler, the phlegm and so on, making him angry or irritable or depressive or petulant or snapish or aggressive. And someone running that gamut of moods could absolutely use some peace. And a lot of it.

But how did humorous come to mean funny? How how how? Possible trajectory: to be in good humor meant to be free of all the bad moods – good humors meaning feeling good was often provoked by jokes, so jokes came to be called humor for short, losing the good and becoming almost the opposite of itself in meaning.

And THAT is some scholarly making shit up.

It would be amazing to be compensated for sighs. Being in love is, of course, its own reward but given how hard it can be to prioritize anything else in that state, it would be great insurance to have some payment per sigh situation. So you missed work because you couldn’t bear to be parted from your lover, no worries, every genuine sigh is money in the bank. Rack ’em up. The sighing stage won’t last forever.

Couple this with Flute’s hope that Thisby is a wandering knight and it would seem that knights played a rather regular role in drama of the period. Now, whether that’s Shakespeare’s period or an idea of period’s prior, I am not certain. But at some point there was a certain expectation that knights would show up in a play. Maybe that is what is missing from contemporary theatre. There are simply not enough knights. There are certainly insufficient sword fights – a problem which an increase in knights might go a long way to mend.

We saw a very dull and badly acted As You Like It a few months ago. We left at intermission because dinner seemed much more appealing than more of the same nonsense and we knew how the story turned out. I don’t know how we came to it but at a certain point we thought of Mr. T and how much improved the production would have been by his presence. I mean, sure, it would have disrupted the entire show but a show that banal needs disruption. And at least Mr. T has some stage presence. We thought we might have found a new way to say something sucked. We could just say, “That show could have used Mr. T.”

Knights could be like that, but actually true. I mean, you couldn’t actually get Mr. T to play King Lear but you could throw a knight into a tepid production of ‘Night Mother or a floundering Glen Garry Glen Ross. No explanation, just send a guy in armor galloping across the stage at some point, with foil and target.