When making comparisons between Eastern and Western theatre, Shakespeare as Noh might not be the first combination that comes to mind. In many ways, the more energetic and crowd-pleasing Kabuki seems like a better parallel to Shakespeare than the more sedate and cerebral Noh. Still, one artist disagrees and has spent the past two and a half decades translating Shakespeare plays into Noh drama.

The latest play getting his attention is King Lear, and in order to make it fit the Japanese genre, the author has had to make some serious cuts. How serious? Well, remember Act One? Buh-bye. Acts Two through Four? Yeah, there’s not so much of them either. In fact, a considerable percentage of the text itself has been removed. This may sound blasphemous, but it is ultimately necessary to make the play work as Noh Drama.

Traditionally, Noh texts aren’t terribly long; in translation, some are only five to seven pages. In performance, however, the plays take quite a long time. Almost all of the dialogue is sung and accompanied by highly stylized movement. Though the words are few, the gestures communicate a considerable amount of information to the audience. In Noh, the physicalization of the actors are part of the “script” of the play. Symbolism is heavily employed throughout, and many of the actors wear masks. Emotion is communicated through poetic reflection rather than onstage torment. To appreciate this King Lear is to completely surrender all notions of what Shakespeare and theatre mean.

We live in a Smackdown world. Awards shows, blogs and critical essays are often dedicated to deciding which things, people or ideas are better than the next. Shakespeare has certainly been the subject of much debate, particularly from those who believe that his mega-fame has come at the expense of the reputations and explorations of other contemporary and non-contemporary artists. For some, Will is always seated at a table for one.

The latest compare-athon pits Shakespeare versus the poet John Milton. This examination is book-length and features extended passages of Milton (most famous for Paradise Lost) that make up nearly half the book. The author of the book asserts that Milton is a far superior poet in terms of his subject matter, tone, and technique. The reviewer took a decidedly different bent, noting the impact of length upon audiences’ perception of them.

The reviewer noted that Shakespeare is immensely quotable. You can get a good bon mot from him in two sentences or less. Milton is a different story. His written may not be any less intricate or accomplished, but it comes in more complicated packaging. He might need half a page to get an idea totally off the runway. That’s not a bad thing, but it might give one reason why he hasn’t enjoyed the historical and literary acclaim that the modestly educated man from Stratford has. Maybe if he’d been more pithily poetic, Milton wouldn’t have ended up the same way Paradise did.

A new review of the “Roman Repertory” of Shakespeare’s plays (Julius Caesar and Antony & Cleopatra) used the “T” word again: traditional. The two productions are being presented as a kind of larger work, and this particular reviewer was relieved that the plays were presented in togas with relatively little overt theatricality or conceptual intrusion. In the process, said writer dropped a diss on the recent modern-dress Broadway production of Julius Caesar starring a certain Oscar-winning movie star.

So, it seems that old is the new new. To be fair, this reviewer was in no way a fuddy-duddy; he acknowledged that he’s loved Shakespearean productions both overtly conceptual and not. Still, there was a sense that he was relieved that someone let the plays do most of the talking. While the sets, costumes and other design elements were far from ordinary, they were clearly geared towards period representation.

In a way, I can see where the reviewer is coming from. It seems that the distinction he is making is the concept for the sake of concept is rarely successful. There are tons of Shakespeare productions and some clearly bear the mark of trying too hard to be different. What’s wrong with that is an inherent mistrust of the plays themselves. If a director and her team find something new in the play, great; however, they can do that whether they set the play in Ancient Rome or three thousand years in the future.

In the world of Shakespearean scholarship, there are loads of websites, books, and publications to choose from.  I, for one, am guilty of loading my bookshelves with more books on Shakespeare and his plays than just about any other subject (although medieval and Renaissance history may be a close second).  These resources are fabulous and I wouldn’t want to replace them with anything…I just want to add more and more to my library, as often as I can get away with it!

The Shakespeare Papers is a wonderful new publication that examines smaller portions of the Bard’s works.  As they say on their website, “The Shakespearean works are rich, deep, complex, and often overwhelming. In these small booklets, we aim to present small bits at a time instead of big pictures. That is, rather than a lengthy discussion of the powerful themes in King Lear, for instance, we might just look at the symbolic flowers and weeds in the play….Looking at the wee bits, we believe, allows us to gain an even greater appreciation of the whole. Over time, these collectible booklets provide a valuable compendium of delightful and different journeys into the works.”

In a world of vast tomes about the many complexities of Shakespeare’s works, these booklets are a breath of fresh air!  In addition to outstanding scholarship on their topic of choice for each issue, the graphic design of each booklet is remarkable!  Ranging from original illustrations to photographs to woodcuts to fine art, and combining those illustrations with a lovely, simple design element, these booklets are treasures to enjoy for many years to come.

I was also impressed with how quickly I received my first issue after paying through Paypal from The Shakespeare Papers’ website.  It arrived within the week, which was unexpected but very welcome!  Shortly after enjoying that first issue (Volume 1, Number 1), whose topic was Morning, I received the second issue on meat and fowl dishes.  I especially enjoyed seeing quotes from The Taming of the Shrew, including, “What say you to a neat’s foot?”  These booklets do not just provide quotes from the plays - they also explain classical and Renaissance allusions that oftentimes make Shakespeare difficult to understand.  Their third issue will be the annual Language edition and will focus on words that Shakespeare invented that didn’t catch on.  I am looking forward to sharing that one with my English students!

I am pleased to recommend The Shakespeare Papers for anyone interested in learning a bit more about the many themes contained in Shakespeare’s works.  Be sure to check their website for more information:

www.theshakespearepapers.com

Do you think you’re up for A Night in Elsinore? With murders, potential incest, suicides and some poisonous sword fighting, it might not be the getaway it sounds like. A Night in Elsinore is a new production that, what else, parodies Shakespeare. The object of its ribbing is none other than Hamlet. More than any other of The Bard’s plays, Hamlet has taken its share of ribbing. Some plays have one-off jokes about mommy issues or troubled monarchies. Other plays devote their entirety to rethinking the classic story from a comic point of view.

In a way, it makes sense. A comic rip-off of King John probably wouldn’t be as successful due to the dearth of productions of the play. Still, are there things about Hamlet that make it ripe for roasting other than its fame? Making fun of tragedies dates as far back as Ancient Greece, when playwrights would present three tragedies followed by a short comic piece that often made fun of the works that preceded it. I know if I watched a day’s worth of Greek tragedies, I’d need a few chuckles.

Hamlet is no more or less grave than some of the other tragedies, it is just further suffused into pop culture. A riff on King John would be a riff on King John. A riff on Hamlet is a riff not just on the play, but also on its integration into pop culture. In a way, we’re not laughing at Hamlet, we’re laughing at ourselves laughing at Hamlet.

A recent interview with Boston-area actor/playwright John Kuntz was entitled “From Snoopy to Shakespeare.” The title refers to a school production in which he appeared onstage for the very first time as a musical version of the pooch from Peanuts. The title, while amusing and anecdotal, reflects a real challenge facing actors today: how to perform the works of different playwrights written in vastly different styles. How does an actor change working styles depending on what type of play she/he is in?

The answer for some actors is….they don’t. They develop an approach to their work over time and apply it to each character they portray, whether it was written two thousand years ago or yesterday. Yet, for an actor like Kuntz, who has appeared in everything from Shakespeare to dark, disturbing contemporary pieces like The Pillowman or Mr. Marmalade, this is not as easy as it might appear.

Shakespeare demands something very different from actors than twenty-first-century realistic pieces do. As a result, some actors reinvent their process from production to production. This may sound ideal, but there are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches. The one-system approach keeps an actor grounded in his process, but risks being too narrow for works that are too disparate. Actors with a chameleon-like process may be adaptable, but highly inconsistent. While Kuntz does not delve into which approach he follows, he does speak to the universal truth that of the exhausting nature of investing so much in one’s work, no matter who wrote it.

A theatre company in New Jersey is currently performing Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. Although not among my favorites, it holds a significant place in Shakespeare’s oeuvre and in dramatic literature as a whole. It is one of Shakespeare’s earliest efforts as well as one of his shortest, and it was both highly influential upon later works and highly influenced by those that preceded it.

For inspiration, Shakespeare went back to the comedies of Ancient Rome (one of many reasons why people believe he was not educated enough to be able to write what he did). Shakespeare used the plots of not one but two comedies by Plautus to create The Comedy of Errors, the most significant inspiration coming from The Menaechmi (which also features a mistaken identity plot involving twins).

This particular production earned high marks for its casting, particularly the actors playing the two sets of twins with the same name (Antipholus and Dromio). One of the unique challenges of the play is to make non-twin actors believable as identical twins. Not only do the actors have to resemble each other physically, they must also mirror each other’s vocal patterns and physical mannerisms. As is often the case, this production features a significant amount of slapstick comedy, a nod to the play’s raucous origins. Therein is the challenge of The Comedy of Errors. It is a very simple story that demands an extremely high level of technical ability from its actors

No consensus has been reached within the educational community regarding the best way to teach Shakespeare. Some of the issues that surround this topic are language, period, and content. Most recently, the debate has shifted focus to age (i.e. when can you start to expose children to Shakespeare?). There seem to be two key strands of discussion that tend to overlap. First, the concern for educators is how best to do justice to the texts, their history, and the author himself. The second, related element is how to teach the material to students in a way that generates and perpetuates interest.

A recent article brought up an issue that puts these two potentially harmonious desires in direct conflict with each other. The item centered on the idea of teaching students segments of Shakespeare’s plays rather than looking at the works as a whole. Teachers might use highly edited versions of the plays or simply work on key scenes with famous lines or dialogue that highlights the uniqueness of The Bard’s writing style.

Those opposed to this approach cite the negative influence of standardized tests and overly rigid curriculum in “dumbing down’ the plays. In the battle of accessibility versus credibility, no one seems to win. Some educators compromise by teaching smaller or simplified versions to younger students and then graduating them to the full length originals when they get older. What seems to be troubling is where to draw the line and who gets to make that call. There are some middle schoolers fully capable of reading Shakespeare and others who cannot. In order to have any hope of resolution, educators must find a compromise that does not privilege smart kids at the expense of average or below-average ones (or vice versa).

A recent news brief included a complete hodgepodge of listings from Mother’s Day stuff a performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The article did so without any hint of irony, yet I was struck by the idea of celebrating Mother’s Day by seeing a play that is often interpreted in a highly Freudian manner. So, in an effort to make a really sweet holiday seem as icky as possible, I’m going to ask what the deal really is with Gertrude. Is the mommy obsession in Hamlet something that comes from the text or from certain high profile interpretations that have colored our reading of the play.

The evidence used for Hamlet’s potential Oedipal complex stems from his apparent obsession with Gertrude’s sex life with Claudius. Throwing out phrases like “nasty sty” and “inseamed bed” have certainly bolstered that interpretation. Still, the make-or-break scene in the play is when Gertrude summons him to her chambers and he accidentally murders Polonius. The debate over this issue and this scene is complicated and contentious, with scholars going the rounds over whether or not there might have been a bed onstage when it was staged in Elizabethan England. That bed, whether it is real or imaginary, is the elephant in the room (and attempts to prove its existence are clearly related to the “Shakespeare would have wanted it that way” defense).

I’m not saying you can’t stage Hamlet with an Oedipal approach (although Mel Gibson’s assault of Glenn Close’s Gertrude in the 1990 film version is a teensy bit lacking in the subtlety department). I do, however, wonder if the play will be forever in the shadow of that interpretation. Will Gertrude and Hamlet ever be just a mother and son?

If ever there was a classical smackdown, it is the one currently going on in New York. The City that Never Sleeps has always been the focal point of the country’s theatrical activity. Now, it is playing host to the biggest fight in town: Macbeth versus Macbeth. While Patrick Stewart is asking Broadway audiences eight times a week if there’s a dagger before him, nearby Verdi’s opera based on the very same play is also dazzling audiences. A New York Times piece on both productions pitted the two against each other and suggested a possible draw, if not a win in favor of the opera.

In discussing the ups and downs of the two Macbeths, the writer also made comparisons between Verdi’s other Shakespearean operas and the original source material. For this writer, the operas sometimes are move evocative than the plays upon which they are based. The argument put forth is that music is more visceral than words and can evoke a clearer response from an audience far more quickly. The writer admits that Shakespeare purists would balk at such a notion and compromises by saying that the two productions can coexist quite nicely because they are both so strong (in different ways).

Is that true? Are the majority of Shakespeare aficionados actually Bard Snobs? I’ve recently complained about an updated version of a classic play that includes jokes about contemporary pop stars. Am I putting Shakespeare before all else? It’s possibly that artists, critics and theatergoers like to be contrary, and this particular columnist is no different. In order to make the daring statement that Shakespeare isn’t all that and a bag of chips (yes, I know that catchphrase has expired, but I haven’t found anything to take its place), he has to assume that Will’s fans are stodgy, old, and clinging to dusty leatherbound copies of his plays as if they were sacred texts. Maybe in order to make the two Macbeths sound like a battle, you have to spin it like everything else.