Act III is really good. In fact, we skimmed over it a bit too fast, and I think we're going to have to have an episode about the monologues at some point. The monologues are so important, and have so much content, they certainly justify it.
For more info about how the audience sat on chairs on the stage in Shakespeare's time (and other details about the audience and the stage): http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=1434 http://www.shakespeare-online.com/essays/shakespeareaudience.html
Choice Conversations interviewed us: choiceconversations.libsyn.com
I asked the director of Hamlet: The Series for a more detailed description of the project, and here it is:
"Hamlet: The Series is an adaptation of the play into a six-episode web series in the original language, but with modern dress and an abstract modern setting.
For more info about how the audience sat on chairs on the stage in Shakespeare's time (and other details about the audience and the stage): http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=1434 http://www.shakespeare-online.com/essays/shakespeareaudience.html
Choice Conversations interviewed us: choiceconversations.libsyn.com
I asked the director of Hamlet: The Series for a more detailed description of the project, and here it is:
"Hamlet: The Series is an adaptation of the play into a six-episode web series in the original language, but with modern dress and an abstract modern setting.
-Episodes
are divided so that each takes place over about a one-day period, so
that the audience can feel how each scene connects to the next. The
amount of time between episodes however is left uncertain, as in the
play itself.
-The
early and late episodes follow the Quarto act breaks, but the middle
ones do not, because the breaks didn't match up to where I felt the days
began & ended.
-Several roles have been switched male-to-female, both to give it a more modern feel and to point out how some of
the themes still play in the modern world.
The main website is hamletseries.com.
There's also a Hamlet: The Series group on Facebook that people can
"Like". It will be available free on Youtube, for rental or digital
purchase on Amazon Instant Video, and for DVD-purchase on Amazon. Episodes 1 - 3 should be available by about the time your Podcast goes live, the last three sometime in the Spring of this year."
Thanks very much for the kind words, guys. And I found it fun that while I "made up" my Episode 3 act break (right after the Very Witching Hour speech) your guys' editions break at two different other points. Shakespeare is what you make of it, even when people aren't, as Horatio will soon say, botching to words up to fit their own ends.
ReplyDelete- Bob Koester / Hamlet: The Series
p.s. I pronounce it like Kester, with a short e. No worries, everyone gets it wrong. The German would be somewhat like Goethe, but we've long since anglicized the pronunciation even though we get the spelling.
You couldn't be more right about the Shakespeare in modern dress convention encountered so often these days. I've acted in or co-directed countless Shakespearean productions and, as much as I love Elizabethan "period" dress, it can be goshdarn hard for a smaller theater company to accommodate such elaborate costume requirements. Falling back on costumery that is more readily accessible is a natural choice. What's more, it allows directors and audiences to play around with their conceptions of Shakespeare and his stories.
ReplyDeleteOf my numerous Shakespearean rôles over the years, I think I've only done three or four with tights and ruffs.