Tlingit Shakespeare

[xoxoxoBruce]

Well, it's in English, so I can read the words, but someone is going to have to explain what this means?

Originally Posted by Smithsonian

HURLY-BURLY
A troupe of Tlingit actors takes the stage at the American Indian museum, March 8 through 18, in a new production of Macbeth reimagined with dances, drums and costumes of southeast Alaska's Native people.

Italics, theirs.

I'm gobsmacked. What is Macbeth reimagined? Somebody takes Macbeth and changes it so it's not Macbeth? wtf? Why?
If they say were doing an original work, they won't sell as many seats, but name dropping will draw a crowd?

To hunt, or pig out--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
Seakdivers BBQ and outrageous portions
Or to take alka-seltzer with a sea of bubbles
And by opposing burp them. To die for, to sleep--
No more--tossing and turning to say we end
The heartburn, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to.

Yeah, I know it's Hamlet, but I reimagined it.

[Trilby]

Dude. This is OUTSIDER ART which, even when terrible to the point of puke, is totally hip. It may even be terminally hip, coz I don't know from hip. This seems a bit like peanutbutter art---kinda dry and bullshitty and doesn't go down well without some jelly.

Look. Some people want to "re-imagine" Dr. Faust as Brad Pitt---same kinda thing.

[Trilby]

BTW--for my money--Faust would be played by either Christopher Walken or Harvey Keitel.

[barefoot serpent]

The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry 'Hold, hold!'

[xoxoxoBruce]

That's my point, but you forgot to reimagine.

[Cloud]

Shakespeare is universal enough to be re-imagined and performed in many different ways.

If you are arguing for some kind of "purity" in performing Shakespeare, you are defeated from the beginning, because there was never any attempt in his own day to portray the times where plays were set accurately.

This is part of the 6-month Shakespeare in Washington festival. I almost went to see King Lear there in my trip, but unfortunately I got snowed in. That performance was by the Harlem Classical Theatre and was set in ancient Mesopotamia (as opposed to ancient Britain as Shakespeare wrote it). So what? Did you know that for 150 years King Lear was performed with a happy ending?

See first statement.

[footfootfoot]

My brain has just folded in on itself. Our resident sexgoddess is schooling xob on Outsider art, and noone has yet mentioned the AWESOME remaking of Macbeth that is:

my brain just misfired.

Scotland, PA.

Put it on your Queue now. Do not post on this thread until you've seen the movie.

This thread is hereby clsoed to anyone who hasn't seen the movie.

Go! Shoo!
Scat!

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Well, it's in English, so I can read the words, but someone is going to have to explain what this means?
Italics, theirs.

I'm gobsmacked. What is Macbeth reimagined?

Like Ian McKellen's Richard III in a WWII-ish setting.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Cloud

Shakespeare is universal enough to be re-imagined and performed in many different ways.

If you are arguing for some kind of "purity" in performing Shakespeare, you are defeated from the beginning, because there was never any attempt in his own day to portray the times where plays were set accurately.

This is part of the 6-month Shakespeare in Washington festival. I almost went to see King Lear there in my trip, but unfortunately I got snowed in. That performance was by the Harlem Classical Theatre and was set in ancient Mesopotamia (as opposed to ancient Britain as Shakespeare wrote it). So what? Did you know that for 150 years King Lear was performed with a happy ending?

See first statement.

If it's reimagined and played in many different ways, it ain't Macbeth. A million plays, movies, and TV shows have done the same basic treachery and tragedy, of the rich and famous, story line without alluding to being based on Macbeth. But of course they didn't have to fit into the theme of a, "6-month Shakespeare in Washington festival". That would sort of explain it.

I don't give a hoot about keeping Shakespeare "pure", they weren't meant to be "the classics" in their day, as I understand it. Just entertainment for anyone willing to cough up a coin to keep Willie from starving or getting a day job.

It's going to take a hell of a lot of re-imagining to make Macbeth a musical, in the Tlingit tradition. Are you sure those red devils aren't stealing our culture?

[seakdivers]

I have no idea of what this whole Tlinget/ Shakespeare thing is about - they are probably from Juneau or Ketchikan, not Sitka.

I like the ode to my BBQ!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Thank You.

[Cloud]

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

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

[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.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

My brain has just folded in on itself. Our resident sexgoddess is schooling xob on Outsider art, and noone has yet mentioned the AWESOME remaking of Macbeth that is:

my brain just misfired.

Scotland, PA.

Put it on your Queue now. Do not post on this thread until you've seen the movie.

This thread is hereby clsoed to anyone who hasn't seen the movie.

Go! Shoo!
Scat!

I love this movie. An insurance reviewer recommended it to me. It was the second film I rented from Netflix. Absolutely everyone must see this movie.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I'm gobsmacked. What is Macbeth reimagined? Somebody takes Macbeth and changes it so it's not Macbeth? wtf? Why?
If they say were doing an original work, they won't sell as many seats, but name dropping will draw a crowd?

It could be worse.

It could be in Klingon.

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. The "modern day" reimagining has been about done to death, but sometimes, a quirky film like Scotland, PA, takes things to a totally new level. Shakespeare is about the story and the emotion, not about the tights and doublet. Even Hamlet, which you'd think would be sacrosanct, has gotten the modern update treatment more than once. Akira Kurosawa steals a plotline from Shakespeare and he's brilliant, a bunch of guys in furs and feathers do it and it's mindboggling?

When you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way, from your first cigarette to your last dyin' day

I'd actually kind of like to see the Tlinglit Macbeth.