The whips and scorns of time

So, that was different. I have to admit that I had a lot of fun. I found it difficult to commit my lines to memory with so much going on. My play group was so close by the end of this. I think that this will attract a lot more people to the class when it is offered again. I have to admit though, it was a huge relief to see everyone else messing up too. The important thing is, we all know what it's like to perform on stage. I am grateful for this experience, and feel that I now have a better handle on what it means to perform in a play. It's hard work.

Nikki

You can't argue with fate...

Our conversation on fate got me thinking about predestination. I tend to believe that your fate is set. There is nothing you can do to change it. All of your actions ultimately lead up to creating it. In this respect, I guess you can't consider the three witches in Macbeth evil. When we say evil, are we in tern deciding that there is an author of it. And if so, who is that author in Macbeth. The credit has to be given to someone. I have often wondered, as a Protestant Christian, "If God created everything, then didn't It create evil too?" But that's just a tangent...Macbeth, is guilty of believing that he could control his own fate. Aren't we all guilty of this same infraction, and if so what does this mean? So, we're not in control. What would acting accordingly even look like if this is true? I'm excited to continue delving into this play in our class discussions.

Nikki

King Lear...Control issues.

I thought it was really interesting to bring up the issue of parental control being a theme in the play. I had truly controlling parents, and King Lear reminds me of that turmoil. It always felt as it my parents had forgotten that I was actually a separate human being than they were. They expected me to think and breathe on their cue. They tried to force me to believe what they believed, see what they saw, react how and when they said, and ultimately to live the life that they wished they would have. I can relate to Cordelia. Of all five of my parents children, My oldest sister rebelled wholly got pregnant at 16 and left home, which led to her moving in and out of the house, and forced her to have to kiss some major a#* each time. My brother fled to the Navy, after being kicked out the week before for not reorganizing the lawn chairs. My younger sister, is now 21 with 3 children, all born the last three consecutive July's. My baby sister is 17 and has a 6 month old daughter. My siblings hardly ever got in trouble growing up. They had the gift of flattery. I spent my childhood, and teen years, on restriction because of my mouth. I spoke up when I felt necessary, and didn't when I didn't see the point, always willing to except the consequences of my actions. I left home, was basically banished, at 17. I never returned. I ate top ramen every day for almost a year, worked a 45 hour split shift, and took 18 credits at a junior college in Cali. There is something to be said about being genuine. In the end, everyone can respect unwavering, sincere, honesty. Someone once said to me that, "beauty is honesty at the right time." In the beginning, King Lear seems to believe that his children exist for him, and not with him...because of him, and (God forbid) in spite of him. Perhaps this is the origin of parental angst in general. Once you lose control of your child, this means they are an adult...not a child...but still your child. I have a wonderful relationship with my parents today, I earned their respect by insisting on it (and never asking them for anything). That's what I love about Cordelia. It took for me to leave home, and never return for 4 years for my parents to see that I was serious, and reconsider their parenting-style. Luckily, it didn't take my life.

Just rambling....

Play Day #3...I think

Charlie was a huge help. I never knew that there were so many things to keep in mind during a performance, not to mention tricks of the trade when it comes to memorization. For instance, she taught us that if you say your lines while stepping in a box pattern (forward, left, back, and right, and repeat...) then it will help you get accustomed to saying your lines while moving. She also told us that if you add movements to your lines, then you'll be more likely to remember them. Something about how our brains work better when doing to things at once. Another point that I thought would be very useful, is that if you shake out your body before a performance, then you'll help relieve nervous tension. As far as our play group goes, I really hope that everything works out. I've started to memorize my lines, and I can see that this is going to be...interesting.

Peace.

Othello

When I read dated texts, such as historical fiction or informational literature, I don't tend to wonder about whether or not the author is condoning the subject matter. Perhaps all period pieces should be viewed as historical text. After all, isn't the text more so a documentation of the conventions and beliefs of its time than anything else? We can get a feel for the culture, and historical time-frame from which an author writes. The exception to this rule is fantansy. But maybe if we even dissect it, we could come up with inferences into the time-frame in which it was written. I believe this is how we should view Shakespeare. It wouldn't fit that a man who was such a radical in his time, would condone or justify its practices. Perhaps his work is just a way of documenting the forms that were typical to his culture. One could even look at his work as a sort of social commentary...At any rate, who knows what any dead author was thinking when they wrote anything? We can only speculate, and even then, we're just grasping at straws.

Peace, Love, and SooooulTrain;)

Orientalism

I find it slightly sickening that we as a nation have felt the need to define the other. We have manufactured them in a way that removes them from us, and therefore makes "them" less of a threat. I looked up the term exoticism, since it came up in class during the creation of our binary, on Wikipedia and found this: "Like orientalist subjects in 19th century painting, exoticism in the decorative arts and interior decoration was associated with fantasies of opulence. Exoticism, by definition, is 'the charm of the unfamiliar.' Scholar Alden Jones defines exoticism in art and literature as the representation of one culture for consumption by another." This makes me wonder if the culture surrounding Othello is consuming him. As we discussed in class, they really don't know all that much about him or his culture, and yet inferences are made. Perhaps this is what we do though. We guess. B/c if we can just find some sort of way to define the other, to compartmentalize them in our minds, the world is somehow a much safer place. Our world is somehow a much safer place... I look forward to more discussions on this text.

Peace

Blog Paper

Ashique S. Berry
Dr. Paul Gleason
English 327: Shakespeare: Tragedies
October 10, 2008
Blog Paper:
Perchance to Dream...
There is definitely something intriguing about tragedy. The honest truth is simply that I have within myself a deeply melancholy soul. Some might call it morbid. It is this melancholy within me, that draws me to Shakespeare's tragic works. Reading plays is a challenge for me. I find myself having to re-read many lines, and really work to imagine the playwrights vision. As far as the stages of reading development are concerned, I have to say that I disagree with the verbiage. I don't see reading, as it is being defined in this theory, as taking place in stages. As a reader in general I would place myself in the Text-World stage, but not necessarily meaning that I have gone through the other two-stages, as far as Shakespeare's work is concerned, to reach this point. It may be due my historical education on the Renaissance movement, that I find myself in the Text-World area of reading as it pertains to Shakespeare's work.
My first experience with shakespeare was when I was in the 6th grade. The students on my then favorite after school television show, Saved By the Bell, were putting on a production of Romeo and Juliet for their drama class. The successive experiences that I had with Shakespeare were similar to that. I had seen so many versions of Hamlet, including in movies like Billy Madison, as well as Romeo and Juliet, also in film, that I felt like I had a pretty good idea of the snooty high art attitude that came along with Shakespeare and performing his work. This best fits the Text-Other Texts reading criteria, except for the fact that I hadn't actually read the text. It wasn't that I was necessarily picking up on evidence from the text, but I was more so seeing a pattern of this certain texts frequency of appearing in television of films. But I suppose reading it in film would technically count. It made sense to me to assume that Shakespeare must have been a pretty important person. But I suppose reading it in film would technically count. My official first reading of Shakespeare took place in high school, although I don't remember what play we read (probably one of the aforemention two). I didn't wrestle with any of the real concepts, and attitudes surrounding Shakespeare, until I got to college. Perhaps it was my education up until this point, or maybe it was just due to my own affinity toward novels and such over plays, which I felt moved more slowly when read silently and were thus boring. What I can say, is that I was excited to read Hamlet in my English 150 class, in the fall of 2005.
I watched the movie Hamlet, by Kenneth Branagh, in my English 102 class, my Sophomore year of college. I don't remember having any extensive classroom discussions about play technique, directing style, or even more basically any possible reasons that Shakespeare may have had for writing the play in the first place. It was one of those “yay, we're not doing anything but watching a movie in class today” forgettable learning experiences. When we read the play in English 150, it seemed so much more interesting. I remember looking at the play from several points of view. We talked about the historical context of when it was written, we discussed possible intended audiences, as well as different director's visions and interpretations of Shakespeare's intentions for the performance of the play. I see this way of reading the play as best fitting the Text-World category.
As I have stated before, I believe myself to be dancing amongst the three stages of reading development. I am an excellent reader. I read very thoroughly, and I make a conscions effort to remember to read for the pleasure that it brings me to do so. I bring this with me when I take a new English course. I have learned to remove my opinions about a certain text, from the importance of the text itself apart from me. I want to always remember to enjoy reading. I believe that if I were to read with sheerly an “I-centered” view, I would miss out on so many other aspects of what reading has to offer. There is no right way to interpret text, and this is also something that I enjoyed exploring while reading Hamelt in the aforementioned English 150 class that I took.
From the very beginning of my education, I realized that there was a right and a wrong answer. This teaching was strongly reinforced by my intensly religious upbringing, that upheld this binary on a much more serious level: right=good, wrong=evil. The approval of the educators in my life became a validation for me as a “good/smart” student. I remember sitting in that English 150 class, with Dr. Paul Gleason, and raising my hand to give my take on the “symbolism” in Hamlet. I was shocked when he didn't make a face, commented with completely flat affect, and just called on the next person. I didn't know how to read this. Had I said something wrong? What did he mean by “symbol hunting”? Isn't that what the reader is supposed to do? Isn't that what I had always been taught to do? It was like a glass of cold water had been splashed onto the REM deep sleep mode of traditional English learning, that I had been so snuggly indulging in up until that point. Art for art's sake. There is no right answer. I was completely stripped. This is when I began my redezvous with a much more complex way of reading, interpreting, and just plain experiencing texts.
The best way that I can think to improve upon my reading, is just to keep doing it. To keep learning and growing; expanding my horizons. Reading is a personal-growth process, once you get past its fundamental rudimentary aspects. I cherish reading for it's aesthetic qualities if nothing else. This course has helped me in this aim. This is my third time reading Hamlet, for instance, and I still feel as though it is my first. The more I revisit the work, the more vivid it becomes, and the more it becomes a part of me.

Play Day for Hamlet, and...Titus

Sad endings are so much more complex...What I love, is that Shakespeare makes me reevaluate the way I view things. His work seem to have a knack for entertaining the parts of my humanity that I usually ignore. For instance, maybe it is nobler to die, than to live in dishonesty. There is a definite romanticization of death, that makes a part of me very uncomfortable, and yet another part sincerely intrigued. Our play group, The Great Danes, will be performing a worshipful production of the play. This play/acting experience is giving me an experience with the work that I would have never otherwise receive. I am excited to learn more about theater, Hamlet, and Shakespeare. As far as Titus goes, I am enjoying it. I cannot emphasize enough, how much more accessible it makes the play to watch it before I read it. Titus was a troubled man. It would be interesting to do a psychological analysis of him. I find myself paying much more attention to the stage direction in the written play, now that I am anticipating going about performing my own.

Nik

Romeo and Juliet production

I never realized how much really goes into a production. The truth is simply that I never really thought about it. In Monday's class activity, my group analyzed the makeup worn by the characters in the film adaptation of the play. For some reason, I had a hard time distinguishing makeup from costume. It is now so obvious that every aspect of a production demands meticulous and careful attention: an eye for detail. There is so much to this story. It begs the question of whether or not all this meticulous detail, by the director and production designer, is meant to lend any specific ideas about interpretation to the audience, or is the audience still free to come up with their own interpretations although there are no real blanks to fill in? Perhaps this is why some plays are performed with simple costumes and near-naked sets... Just a thought.

Shakepeare in Love, and Romeo and Juliet Act I

I found it incredibly useful to read the play and watch the movie at the same time. I initially tried to read the play first, but had a hard time visualising what was happening. So I decided to watch the movie first and then cut into the play, which helped immensely. As I watch the film I couldn't help but think that Leonardo was totally outshining Claire. Especially in the final scene, it seemed as though she was less into it then he was. His death was just so much more dramatic, and yet not too over the top. Maybe she was just trying to seem confused. Maybe she thought he was just ingesting a small vile of apple juice and then just took a fright at the utter shock of seeing that she was actually alive...I watched that part twice and left that moment angry that she didn't speak up sooner. I really did enjoy this adaptation of the work...all things considered.

Nikki Berry: Shakespeare in Love, Madden

I noticed quite a few similiarities between the reading assignement (ix-xxi in Romeo and Juliet) and the movie. For instance, on page xi it says that "income was sporadic, dependent on the passing of the hat or on the bounty of local patrons." This was evident throughout the film. Financing was done by a loan shark and also contingent on evidence of new plays. I also noted that the actors in the movie sometimes went unpaid. On page xi they talk about how plays were "performed every day (including Sundays....) except...or periods of plague." In the film, there is mention of the plague when Shakespeare hears coughing during the openning of one of the plays... I could go on and on, but what I'm trying to illustrate is that the director did his research, and it was nice to see the reading come to life in the film.

Nikki B.