Chasing Julius Caesar

I really persevered to get into the Shakespeare Free For All this year. I didn't make it until the last day and the website was so bogged down, that pages wouldn't load so I could enter the online lottery for tickets. I called to register for the lottery via phone, but I wasn't selected. I kinda gave up, but when I check Facebook on my phone after church, I saw that on their Facebook page the theater was telling people to show up for "standby" passes.

Instead of being in line for hours ahead of the regular giveaway, I got a standby pass, sat down for 1/2 an hour and then got in line to see if I'd make it into the show. I thought of calling it a day because 73 seemed like a high number. I heard a man who was 102 on his cell phone talking about how confident he was that he'd get in and I told myself it'd be better to wait.
So I made it in and I'm glad I waited. I'd never seen Julius Caesar (though I think I read it in high school) and since I really like Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies, a free performance was a great way to test out a historical play. Here is what stood out for me:

-->The rhythm of the speech when Cassius tells Brutus that the there is no reason why the name of Caesar should be "sounded" more than Brutus (Act 1, Scene 2) reminded me of the "a rose by any other name"speech in Romeo and Juliet. They are talking about very different things of course, but the questioning nature of it made me think of Juliet.

-->The audience laughed when Caska said "it was Greek to me" and I wondered if audiences in Shakespeare's day would have had the same reaction. The line wasn't really played for laughs, but the recognition of that phrase was amusing in a way that other familiar phrases ("dogs of war" "Friends, Romans, Countrymen) were not.

-->The idea Brutus has for the conspirators to run out into the streets with bloody hands and daggers and crying "Peace! Liberty! Freedom!" to allay any fears the people might have after Caesar is assassinated (Act 3 Scene 1) seemed appalling to me…but then I thought of modern political maneuvers that fit into that mold. It is more graphic to run in the streets with blood on your hands but washing your hands first before you cry peace doesn't make it better.

-->Speaking of blood…this production was very bloody, but that is the point of the story. Seeing murder onstage and knowing they are using fake blood capsules doesn't make it less unsettling. People all around (including me at times) were on the edge of their seats.

-->The "Friends, Romans" phrase and "Et tu, Brute" are the parts of the play that I hear most often in popular culture so I was caught unaware by the masterful manipulation of Mark Antony. The woman next to me and I discussed it at intermission. He was cold.

-->Mark Antony's speech and the way he had the people on puppet strings, plus tragedy that befell a man in the wrong place at the wrong time who had the same name as one of the conspirators made me think about Brutus speech about "a tide in the affairs of men."

Full of hubris, Caesar got killed, but he overshadowed Rome and its people for years to come. He isn't even alive past intermission in the play and he has been long gone, but we still talk about him because he worked to ensure that his legacy would live on.

-->With all the blood and political intrigue, I'm surprised Julius Caesar is not modernized more often. The production I saw was quite riveting.

On a lighter note, Caska was played by Geoffrey Owens, who also played Elvin on The Cosby Show. And before now, I'd only seen bits of Julius Caesar acted out on The Cosby Show.

Theo and Cockroach rap version of Mark Antony's speech

Visiting professors and Grandpa Huxtable recite passages of Julius Caesar for the family

Clybourne Park, a twist on A Raisin in the Sun

Last year, I intended to see Clybourne Park at Woolly Mammoth and didn't get around to it. Since then it won a Pulitzer, so that plus all of the buzz from last year means that the line wrapped around the inside of the building more than once at the one pay-what-you-can performance they held. They only had standing room tix left and I was feet away from the counter when the declared the show to be sold out. So, I bit the bullet and bought a ticket.

I wrote about the play for Examiner.com: Clybourne Park, a twist on A Raisin in the Sun

The playwright (who is also an actor) says he wrote the play, in part because he was really into the play as a kid, and that he never got to play Karl Lindner (who I think is the play's only white male character). I understand wanting to see yourself represented in a play...so while I watched it, I identified with the maid in the first act (since she is the only black woman in the play). She placates because she has to.

And then in the second act, the corresponding black female character, who is not a maid, can't get a word in edgewise. I was understanding her frustration until she egged on another character's foolish wish to tell a racist joke. Then she told an insulting joke herself and I didn't get her motivation. She was frustrated when she was continually disregarded, but nothing she had done seemed to lend itself to her stoking the fires of the verbal brawl that ensued after the joke was told.

Oedipus el Rey

I just wrote a post on Oedipus el Rey, a play I recently saw, at my Examiner.com blog. I thought the play was amazing and that makes me all academic. The good think about blogging is that I can write a mini-paper about something I find intriguing without having to really write one that is 20 pages or so and get graded.

Oedipus el Rey is a Chicano update of Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King), the ancient Greek play by Sophocles. In the Greek play, Oedipus is the son of a king who is adopted by the king of a nearby kingdom. In Oedipus el Rey, Oedipus is the son of a gang leader who keeps talking about how he wants to be a king. The tragic end is the same...but the Greek Oedipus does not doubt that he is of royal birth, while in the update, the Chicano Oedipus keeps saying he wants to be a king. He is looking for the recognition and respect that so many young men look for outside of themselves and attempt to "take" by violent means.

The Ramayana: Behind the Scenes (or Sound the Alarm)


I wrote a blog post for Examiner.com about The Ramayana, the Constellation Theatre Company's latest production. But what I didn't mention was that at one point we had to evacuate the theater...

One of the characters, a monkey, had just said something about 'being late for school,' when an alarm bell rang. Considering that it started just after that line, for a nanosecond I thought it might have been some strange, anachronistic sound effect. Sure, the play take place in Asia in ancient times, but since monkeys were talking, anything was fair game, right?

The actors looked hesitant, but in true "the show must go on" fashion, they did not stop. My eye darted to where I knew the director was sitting. She had a strange look on her face and she too looked hesitant. The alarm continued to ring and the director stood up and told us we all had to leave.

Once the fire department cleared us, we re-entered and watched the rest of the show. The same thing happened while I was watching a movie once. For some reason it was must easier to get back into the play than it was to get back into the movie...I'm not sure why.

The movie theater gave us nothing for our trouble, while Constellation did provide us with an easy-to-remember discount code to reduced-price tickets to their first show of the next season.

Stuff I Wrote: Mary McLeod Bethune & Eleanor Roosevelt Brought to Life at National Portrait Gallery Performance

While at the performance, I saw Johnnetta B. Cole, the first "Sista Prez" of my alma mater, Spelman College,sitting in the first row. Before Cole got the job, Spelman, an HBCU for black women had never had a black woman as president. We exchanged cards. How cool is that?

Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt Brought to Life at National Portrait Gallery Performance

A Tale of Two Pillows

A long while back, I bought two cloth placemats that I never used as such for some reason. Less than a long while back, I bought a pillow from IKEA, that I did use as such...until it got all weird and lumpy and the insides separated into individual tufts of cottage cheese. And then a while back I got the idea that I could combine these two purchases into a pillow. But of course, I proceeded to just let these items sit in unused.

Until one day when I was especially mopey and decided I needed some creative project to give me some instant gratification. I finally made the pillow I'd thought about, sewing it by hand. Being all proud of my handiwork, I informed my mother, who really was not all that impressed.

Later I learned that she was less than thrilled because unbeknownst to me, she'd also been thinking that I should make a pillow and give an item a new life. Somehow she managed to keep this to herself while I talked about the pillow I'd made since her pillow-making materials were in a box that hadn't arrived at my house yet.

She had saved a rice sack, even though she didn't know what to do with it. Then she came across an article about how vintage grain sacks were very chic at the moment. And it hit her-she'd send me her rice sack and some pillow stuffing. But then she couldn't find any pillow stuffing materials. So after she hunted some down, she gets a phone call from me where I tell her that I just made a pillow from an old one that I had laying around and that I had another old pillow that could be used to make even more pillows.

Great minds think alike and although my mother was kind of dismayed, I told her at least she did not sell her hair to buy me a chain for my watch (If you don't get that because haven't read The Gift of the Magi, you need to read it. It is one of the greatest short stories of all time.)

All's well that ends well, I say. Now I have two pillows.

The 2009 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Drama--Ruined

I was given the opportunity to interview Lynn Nottage, author of Ruined, the play that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The Kennedy Center and the Enough Project present a staged reading of Ruined

Lynn Nottage takes her 2009 Pulitzer-prize winning play, Ruined, on the road

Do the Clothes Make the Man?

So after attending an open rehearsal and the theological discussion, I finally saw King Lear starring Stacy Keach--

Modern Setting Makes King Lear More Relevant

All's Well that Ends Well...

I am big nerd (in a literary way) and I love that now I can go to literary lectures and discussions without them having to take notes or feeling like I had to ingest it all to get a good grade as I did in college. The Shakespeare Theatre Company had a theological discussion called "King Lear: A Family Divided," which I attended and wrote about for Examiner.com--

King Lear...with a Happy Ending?

August Wilson's Radio Golf

This past weekend I ushered so I could see Radio Golf, the last play in August Wilson's 10-play cycle about the African-American experience. He did a play for each decade and Radio Golf covers the 1990s. This play covers the 1990s. I've been seeing quite a few plays lately, and I am always amazed at how a few people and a few props can keep me mesmerized for a couple of hours. It starts with the words on a page, but then with the direction and the acting, the lights, the costumes, they've created a different world that audiences get to step into for a bit.

But back to Radio Golf--many have wondered what Wilson would have thought of Barack Obama's presidency. Of course there is no real way of knowing, but in Radio Golf, he has one character say that a Black mayor or Black CEO will not erase all of Black folks' problems, win us automatic acceptance or make everything alright.

Radio Golf is an amazing play and you can read more (but not too many) details about it on my Examiner.com blog:

Radio Golf illustrates the tension between "progress" and preserving our connection to the past

Double Take

The other morning as I was in between sleep and something like wakefulness, I heard a commercial for some new flavors of a certain soft drink. At that time, all I thought about was the different flavors, marveling at all the ways they could come up with to shove sugar down our throats...

But the next day, I was slightly more awake and not just getting up when I heard the same commercial. During this listening, it occurred to me that this commercial might be some kind of pastiche* of The Vagina Monologues. They even called termed this 30-second beverage reverie, "The [Diet Soft Drink] Monologues." And the woman in the commercial, talked about how women weren't indecisive, they were open to the physics of various soft drink flavors (this is why we stock every flavor, you know, just in case).

Considering all that The Vagina Monologues stand for, should I be offended? Or just chalk it up to everyday capitalism?



*Nerd writer alert--I really love the word pastiche and rarely find the opportunity to use it in any meaningful way...

Just Like Romeo and Juliet

"Women may fall, when there's no strength in men."
-Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene III

When Jennifer over at Regal and Regular heard that I was going to see "Romeo and Juliet" at The Harman Center for the Arts, she asked me to blog about it. And since I would do anything for my regal readership, I am doing just that.

I've seen various versions from the West Side Story movie to Synetic Theater's stunning silent adaptation, but I hadn't seen the play performed on a stage. So you know not only did I have to go see it done the old-fashioned way, I ended up seeing it done old school for real: as in all the characters were portrayed by men, just as it would have been done in Willie Shakespeare's day. Both the ancient Greeks and the Elizabethans thought that the stage was no place for a woman, so men played men and prepubescent boys and men played women. One of my friends thought that Romeo was a better girl than Juliet. For years scholars have pointed to Romeo's weakness and Juliet's strength throughout the play, although both teenagers' dramatic tendencies get the tragedy going.

The intro in the program drew my attention to the lines that characterized women and it made me look at the play in a whole new way. They wanted to emphasize the male posturing that leads to violence. The violence on the streets of Verona could be the violence anywhere, but we see it differently because Shakespeare is viewed as classic.

It is funny that Shakespeare is thought of as a high school thing because anyone who has seen a performance will tell you that it is much bawdier than it seems. (And in a different way, this does make Shakespeare very much a high school thing.) Modern play companies tend to emphasize Shakespeare's innuendo and double entendres to remind us that his plays were much more grounded than we are led to believe.