Reading Actors on Shakespeare

 I finally started reading Judi Dench's "Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent." 

It's always such a pleasure to explore Shakespeare with the great British actors. Every time I read something like this I want to run off and try to join the RSC. Or find a local production. Or take a class. Something to immerse myself more deeply in the plays in more than an isolated, intellectual way.

This book is a dialogue, and Dench effortlessly glides between discussing how Shakespeare's verse provides direction to the actors, how she approached the roles, tells stories about rehearsals and performances, and clearly is having a wonderful time reflecting on a glorious - and fun - career. I'm only 18% in, and I want to call in sick to work and spend the rest of the day reading.

Of course, I frequently want to do that. . . 

I need a Shakespare icon. Currently my only theater-related icon is of Charlie Brown with a megaphone that says "Director." Which doesn't work on a post like this.

Grand Theft Hamlet

During college I was involved with two very different productions of Hamlet. One of them was while taking an English class taught by one of my school's legendary teachers. Each semester she offered either "Comedies and Histories" or "Tragedies and Romances." The class engaged in in-depth lectures and discussions about four or five plays, but one play was assigned purely for performance. The 80-person class (in a school where most classes had 10-12 people) counted off by 5. The number you got was the act of the play of the semester. The five groups met independently to organize themselves, rehearse, and ultimately perform that act of the play at the end of the semester. The act could be performed anywhere on the five connected campuses, and the epic Saturday performance was always attended by a lot of people who hadn't been in the class and often ended up walking more than a mile from site to site. I ended up playing Horatio in Act 1 of Hamlet, set in "a banana republic dictatorship." (Do people use that phrase anymore? This was the mid 1980's. . .) The next year I stage managed an uncut mainstage production, directed by the toughest, most demanding of our theater department professors that involved very deep dives into the text.

Because of those two experiences and their close proximity I became something of a Hamlet fan, and I love seeing different productions which illuminate different aspects of the play. I love being surprised by the different nuances actors bring to "To be or not to be" and other famous speeches and scenes. (Watching Derek Jacobi's Hamlet and Patrick Stewart's Claudius in the Moustrap scene and after was amazing. Stewart's "Give me some light. . ." went totally against every other interpretation I'd seen.)

Which brings me to the discovery of the theatrical release of "Grand Theft Hamlet," a production developed, cast, and performed within the video game Grand Theft Auto. The funny thing is that however outrageous it sounds, the trailer suggests a deeply sincere, insanely creative effort that I really, really want to see.

Watch on YouTube