Tlingit Shakespeare

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Cloud

what, you don't think the Tlingit people can relate to madness, murder, and betrayal?

Of course they can, they've been dealing with whites for hundreds of years.

I'm just happy to see Shakespeare played at all, and happy that disparate cultures can embrace it.

Why? Is this to their benefit in some way? Is no culture complete unless a smidgen of Shakespeare is shaken, not stirred, in to the mix?

Originally Posted by Aliantha

What about Romeo and Juliette? That's been redone so many times it's not funny. Along with many many many other shakespeare plays.
Every mills and boon novel is a taming of the shrew (just about).
Not to mention that practically every high school student has to create their own interpretation of one or the other of shakespeares plays.
I'm not sure what the problem is here. It's interpretational theatre. That's an expression of self, or in other words, art.

But why have these same plays been done to death? Why are they interpreted ad nausea? It's an expression of self to rehash the same thing again? You can't do it uniquely enough to be entirely original, because it's been done by so many, and still be recognizable as Shakespeare.

Originally Posted by wolf

Shakespeare being so well known has caused any number of theatre directors to feel the need to do something about the same old play seen over and over and over again, so they change the setting presumably to underline the universality of the themes. ~snip~
When you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way, from your first cigarette to your last dyin' day

I think your on to it, there.

OK, what is the value of Shakespeare? Why are the plays the subject of such adulation, the subject of countless lectures and the top dogs for actors?

They are old? No, lots of old writings aren't nearly revered.

The costumes? Nope, that even changes from production to production that are trying to maintain as much authenticity as possible.

The language? Strange sentence structure, words and spelling are pretty unique to that time, but if you're going to reimagine them, that uniqueness is lost.

The characters? Yeah, but if you reimagine the characters into a new time, place, and background, they aren't the same characters.

Plot/story line? Yes, those are timeless, founded in oral traditions, of the Minstrels and storytellers. They describe the basic truths about people, what they respond to, what makes them tick and the human condition.
I don't know if Willie was the first to put these basic plot lines on paper? Maybe he did it in a more entertaining way that anyone else had done. Or maybe he was in the right place at the right time, with a head full of plots and a command of the language, when the public was ready.

Yeah, I guess that must be it. When a theatrical production touches on any of those basic plot lines, Shakespeare gets credit, or name dropped, even though nothing else about the production, even remotely parallels Willie's originals.