Women of Will

Not too long ago, I saw the Kenneth Branagh version of Much Ado About Nothing. And after swooning over Emma Thompson (or Beatrice... or both actress and character) I realized I was swooning more over the interpretation of Beatrice as a woman who has enormous verbal veracity and could take down any of the dudes with her incredible wit and who doesn't let that sharp-tongue go after she marries the equally quick Benedick.

THEN, I got to thinking about Kate in Taming of the Shrew. (Taming can be wildly and irreverently summed up as the story of Petruchio trying to tame the beastly shrew, Kate, much to the chagrin of families and then there's a subplot with Bianca and some other people. But in the end, Kate ends up with Petruchio.) That last speech... ohhh that last speech. For those who don't know, wikipedia explains the end of the play:

Katherina is the only one of the three who comes, winning the wager for Petruchio. At the end of the play, after the other two wives have been hauled into the room by Katherina, she gives them a hyperbolic speech on the subject of why wives should always obey their husbands, and tells them that their husbands ask only "love, fair looks and true obedience" (5.2.153).

Wikipedia is interpreting that speech! What if the speech was drenched in sarcasm? What if it isn't about women and men's roles at all but about self-sacrificing love? Don't interpret my Shakespeare, Wikipedia.

Anyway, so I was thinking about different ways of interpreting that last speech and how Shakespeare himself would have thought about it and then I found this article! It's a NYTimes review of a two-person production called Women of Will by Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, MA. This production is a project by Tina Packer to prove her thesis, that Ben Brantly has already written so I won't re-write it:

It is her thesis that as Shakespeare developed as a playwright, his women increasingly became his artistic alter egos, marginalized figures who stood to the side of the power makers, observing and interpreting. (She estimates that there are only 177 female characters in the canon, as opposed to 770 male roles.) Through a mixture of acting and annotation, Ms. Packer, assisted by Mr. Gore, chronologically traces this evolution, from the demonized, sorceresslike Joan of Arc in “Henry VI, Part 1” (probably his first play) to the beneficent healer Marina of the late romance “Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

I think this is an example of how modern audiences must interpret Shakespeare. We cannot know what Willy himself thought. We cannot know if he was totally a product of his patriarchal society or if he was a radical or if he could have potentially written his women characters to be his artistic alter-ego. But that doesn't mean we should stop trying to uncover new meanings from these old texts. Even if Packer's thesis is wrong (it can never be proven unless Shakespeare was brought back to life), she lays out a strong argument for a way of interpretation that is suited to our time. She portrays Juliet as a "could-be poet" whose words twist around her thoughts rather than the starry-eyed innocent that is stereotypical. She does Kate's final monologue, that wikipedia described as being about "why wives should always obey their husbands," multiple times with multiple interpretations. Even if she can't prove Shakespeare's intentions, in my mind Packer proves that the Women of Will are not as black and white as they might have been in the past.

In other news, I'm still in my pajamas and here's a panda:

Bye!
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Branding Broadway

Warning: I'm not promising to present any new ideas or answers in this post... I'm also no authority on these subjects... I'm just typing some stuff that I'm interested in.

Back when I was in college (a whole week ago) the relationship between marketing and artistry was brought up quite a bit by people in the Arts Marketing class... and although I didn't take the class, I lived with someone who did so I got the cliff notes version and found it interesting.

So today when I found this article in the NY Times I was thrown back to the good 'ole days of flip cup, dancing in basements, and sitting around talking about branding with theatre management extraordinaire Reed Wilkerson. The quote that stood out to me the most in this interview with the New York Times theatre critics Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood was when they were talking about the celebritization (I made that word up) of Broadway and how the productions that have been monetarily successful on Broadway in recent years were the ones that utilize the "depressing star factor" as Isherwood calls it. To quote Brantley, "On Broadway you’ve got to start off with a brand name today. Clearly, audiences want something that they’ve seen before, or at least they know what they’re getting into, the way they would pick up a certain brand of ice cream or a piece of J. Crew clothing. And then, if they’re surprised by something, all the better. Which is not a climate conducive to experimentation."

Disheartening right? But why do audiences respond this way? Brantley says it's familiarity that audiences want. Are they responding to images of these "stars" that are put in front of them daily by the media? They become familiar with Jude Law so going to see him in Hamlet makes the foreign Shakespearean language itself seem more familiar. It can be argued that modern theatre, as a whole, produces that same feeling of something "foreign" because it isn't part of mainstream entertainment anymore, due to the popularity and accessibility of TV and movies... plus, the tremendous ticket prices in commercial theatres. But theatres don't just use star-power. They seek to make the audience comfortable with continuity in logos, season selection, and the theatrical experience as a whole. When you're fighting an uphill battle to get people in the seats you want to make the audience as comfortable as possible. When looking at it like that... yeah! Audiences need something familiar to latch onto in order to get butts in the seats! Like Vanessa Williams in Into the Woods:

Or P. Diddy in A Raisin in the Sun:

Or Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury in A Little Night Music:

But what about the idea that producing a live performance speaks to audiences in itself and it shouldn't need celebrities to do it!? The idea that theatre can speak to some core part of human beings. I have trouble articulating what it is about theatre that does that. It has something to do with another individual being vulnerable in front of us, telling the audience a story. Is that notion outdated? Idealistic? Call me an idealist and slap me silly, but I think there is something special about theatre that can move audiences to change, think, reflect, engage, and a bajillion other inspiring verbs. But, in the world of Broadway where breaking even on a lavish production will take a ridiculous number of performances can you afford to take a risk on the "magic of theatre?"

My answer, in the case of Broadway, is no. So, my semi-educated, probably naive opinion is that branding is what gets people in the door and the experience itself, the "theatre magic," if you will, is what keeps them coming back. Balancing these is essential, especially in commercial markets. Showcase Kelsey Grammar or Jude Law or P. Diddy on the billboards use modern aesthetic conventions like projections, hydraulics, laser beams, ushers on segways whatever... BUT provide a product that causes the audience to understand something in a new way, or feel something that needed to be tapped into, or relate to a situation... that's what keeps them coming back. If a star is there just to be a star... and not to tell the story in an exciting, engaging, moving way it's a sell out.

This conflict will probably be why I work in non-profits for the rest of my life. Helloooooo 501(c)3 forms! (Also... if you made it all the way to the end of this post... I'm impressed, it was longer than I expected. :o))