It would seem that theatre companies used to actually make money. We know that Shakespeare was a shareholder in his. I wonder if there were shareholders who weren’t PART of the company. Were there theatre company investors?
We don’t really HAVE investors in theatre anymore.-just patrons and donors. I wonder what would happen if we could come up with a legitimate investment scheme with Theatres. Would we get more investment in a metaphoric sense? Or would it simply become another empty exercise in moneymaking?
Wait- how is that different from most of the American theatre now?
Maybe we just need to be honest about it. Most theatres simply exist to benefit the patrons’ and their friends – the rest of you be damned.
But what would happen if a tiny company like mine had some Actual investors? Would we actually be able to make more work? Find some recognition? Or something?
Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers – if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me – with two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?
It would be great if all it took to join a theatre company was a crazy outfit featuring feathers and shoes. I’d have tried that technique straight out of the gate. No auditioning required – just get a lot of feathers and some funny shoes.
And then I could join a “CRY” of players. Is that really the collective of players? Like a murder of crows? A cry of players?
It makes a great deal of sense. First, a great deal of crying happens on stage and Second, a player’s life probably had a great deal of crying off stage as well.
I suppose, though, that it’s not just his outfit but also the play he just put on that might get him his membership in the players. So – write a play, put on the shoes and some feathers – get a membership in a theatre company.
I have written a great many plays – and since I started a theatre company –in order to produce them, I guess it worked! Now all we need are the feathers and the shoes.
Thus runs the world away.
The world tiptoed up to Venus’ door and rang her doorbell. The planet’s gravity was strong but the world had its own gravity so it could sneak in, ring the doorbell and then make a break for it. The world ran to hide in the cloud cover nearby – ones that really looked like bushes. It laughed and laughed when Venus opened the door, and looked around.
“Hello?” she asked, “Is that Earth again? You and Mercury, always joking around.”
The world laughed all the way back into its own orbit.
For some must watch, while some must sleep.
I volunteer to be one of the sleeping ones.
I mean, I guess the idea is that we take turns – that the one who watches watches so that the other may sleep and so – we must switch at some point.
But – if it’s an either or situation. I’ll sleep.
My boyfriend calls me a championship sleeper.
I’m pretty good at sleeping.
I’m not a genius at getting to sleep – he’s much better at that – but at staying asleep? Sometimes it feels like I could go for days just sleeping and sleeping. It’s like, once I get started, I just don’t want to stop.
So if we’re choosing watching or sleeping. I’m gonna go with sleeping. Also, because there are dreams.
Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalléd play.
What ARE you on about, Hamlet?
The rhythm, I understand –
It’s like, nursery rhyme time
Time to celebrate or gloat or tease.
And I get, too, the metaphorical –
The deer, struck by an arrow, let’s say, is Claudius, with the arrow of the play struck home and Hamlet’s fine to let him go weep, go nurse the wound. I imagine in hunting that this might be a practice of striking, then allowing the animal to do what it needs to before following along and finishing the job.
But what about the hart? While it’s often prey, too, it’s ungalléd here, unbothered.
I guess Hamlet is the hart?
Claudius = deer going off bleeding
Hamlet = hart cavorting in the fields
Metaphorically makes some sense.
But is this a saying?
It sounds like one – though not a terribly logical saying. Unless it’s a mnemonic hunting policy – like you should always let the deer slink off and leave harts alone without bothering them?
Could be I guess.
Could be a “liquor before beer never fear” sort of saying – a little rhyme-y reminder for hunters but it feels more likely that Hamlet just makes this one up.
Lights, lights, lights!
I love lighting designers. I’ve thought sometimes about how it might be possible to make a show with just lighting designers – because they are just so delightful to work with.
They are usually extremely generous people with very little ego. I wonder if this is just part of the job – they are continually just doing their best to make everyone and everything else look good. They literally shine a light on others and that light shows people at their best. Their art is literally reflective. It brings out the best in those who are in it.
Their work often comes last in the line-up. They take what comes before them and shine it up, bathe it in their own glory before showing it to the world.
I’d give a lot to work with actors and designers and directors and so on who were so ready to support, to buoy, to make everything look better.
Next show: Just lights. A series of short light pieces completely created by different lighting designers.
And we’d add only elements that the lighting designers wanted to see in their lights.
Away!
The magnetisim of trouble.
We see the king struggling. Is he in pain? Is he ill?
We gather round to see what’s happened to see what we can do?
We get ready to offer water or a hand or comfort.
But we are repelled. The gathering is the last thing this man in trouble needs. He wants solitude – and quickly, too. He pushes us back, like an opposing magnet to our magnets.
We are drawn to the difficulty and the difficulty repels us.
Give me some light.
My mother has seasonal affective disorder. She got herself a special light to help combat the effects of it. It is remarkable that light is so powerful – powerful enough to impact your entire mood and sense of well being.
But when the days shorten and the world is darker, for those with sensitivity to it, there’s a metaphorical darkness that descends.
As the daughter of a light sensitive person, it occurs to me that I might have the same quirk. One which I surely magnify by keeping late hours and missing early morning daylight time. Nocturnal Light Sensitive Artist ISO LIGHT. Light.
Give o’er the play.
Actors will keep going through the most extraordinary circumstances. We’ve got “The Show Must Go On” in our blood and it will continue to pulse no matter what.
Is the Player King onstage still convulsing in his death throes while this drama with Claudius is happening?
I don’t know many performers who’d stop just because of a disturbance in the audience. I’d like to see what’s happening in the stage within the stage in this bit. What do the performers do with this little bubble in their performance before Polonius has to shut it down?
Most performances I’ve seen feature everyone stopping and staring as soon as the King rises – but I’d be curious to see some play go on and give Polonius a reason to stop them.
How fares my lord?
I’m always asking my fella how he’s doing even when I know he won’t tell me.
I ask when he comes in, silent and illegible.
I ask when he’s boiling with fury.
I ask when his eyes are frozen open like a picture of eyes instead of actual eyes.
I ask when I know and when I don’t.
He tends to either lie or joke or deny.
“Great!” he’ll say, when he’s clearly not.
Or today, I asked, “Are you okay?” and he said, “Define okay.”
The Queen here is asking in the third person.
She’s probably asking him in his kingly persona – or she could be asking someone else how he’s doing. Someone who’s gotten to him first – someone who’d know how he is.
Or maybe he’s like my fella and wouldn’t say when he isn’t okay.
The Hamlet Project 