john_ofdarkness | From Zjendjan

1. What's your most favorite thing ever?

I'm torn. There was a moment, when I was playing for a production of Otello, when the piano was in tune and the singers neither overacted nor undersang, and I really do believe it may have been the most perfect moment I have ever experienced. On the other hand, I think that 'sex' more regularly fits the description of 'most favorite thing ever.' Such a dilemma.

2. What are you afraid of?

Did you really expect an answer to that question?

3. Why do you call me duck?

Habit.

4. Do you call everyone duck?

Yes.

5. If so, why can't I get a better pet name?

Do you have a preference?

INSTRUCTIONS
01. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
02. I respond by asking you five questions of a very intimate and creepily personal nature. Or not so creepy/personal.
03. Update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
04. Include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
05. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

youngandhealthy.livejournal.com

*is suitably impressed - nor does the typist think bisexuals are untrustworthy, but agrees that Othello is, textually ~~though if you're in a play with Iago, your comparative reliability is already boosted substantially~~.*

From:

john-ofdarkness.livejournal.com

Are you impressed enough to consider picking up Coriolanus? (Has anyone at all read Coriolanus without my prompting?) We're working in a story with an unreliable narrator and an untrustworthy main character, in a tale about deception. It's fascinating. It's kind of like my expressionist-theatre reading of Hamlet.

From:

youngandhealthy.livejournal.com

I've actually been meaning to, but haven't yet. I've read Timon of Athens, if that counts for anything. ~~I did a presentation once about Hamlet and expressionism for my dramaturgy class! What did you do with it?~~

From:

john-ofdarkness.livejournal.com

You should. Coriolanus is like Michael Wolodyjowski, with tons of misanthropy and overbearing-mommy issues. And canon slash, in the literal sense of a character reading a homosexual relationship into a relationship that is at least overtly only homosocial. O___O You just made my day, miss. (Forgive the disjointed nature of my speculations in advance.) I was basically thinking that, in a reading with a mad Hamlet, the play itself shows what he's hallucinating/speculating/afraid of. For instance, when he says that his father died yesterday, and Ophelia corrects him that it's been 'twice two months,' to the audience, two months haven't passed--merely five hours. Just like Hamlet thinks. The 'villains' or 'enemies,' as well, become villainous only once Hamlet conceives of them as such; Claudius only starts acting guilty once Hamlet thinks he's guilty, and Laertes, who puts so much stock by honor and loyalty, becomes a poisoner simply because Hamlet has poison on the brain. Minor characters (Horatio especially) either vanish or completely alter characterization after Hamlet sees the ghost--Horatio himself changes characterization in almost every single scene in which he appears, becoming an instrument of confirming Hamlet's suspicions rather than (as he is in the first act) a rational doubter. The surest confirmation that there is a real narrative that's being imposed upon by Hamlet's mad narrative is the closet scene, in which he converses with a ghost that he can see but that his mother cannot--a ghost that the audience can also see. The play literally thrusts the audience within Hamlet's madness, showing us precisely what he is thinking and feeling and speculating--a kind of horrifying play within a play within a play. I'm not sure that's what Shakespeare intended, but that is still and may always be my reading of the play.

From:

john-ofdarkness.livejournal.com

... corrections:

but with tons of misanthropy
merely an hour or two, not five hours

From:

youngandhealthy.livejournal.com

Oo, I will have to check it out then, definitely. That's so intriguing. So then do you see Hamlet as taking over the play once he enters it, so that even the scenes in which he does not appear reflect his point of view? Or is it simply his madness that starts directly affecting audience point of view? For example, does Laertes' departure scene exist apart from Hamlet's perspective, because it happens before he meets the ghost, or are Laertes' warnings and Polonius' prohibitions a reflection of Hamlet's own doubts about his feelings for Ophelia? Is the first scene a sort of benchmark for an external reality, or is the whole play fractured through the lens of Hamlet's mind, in your reading?

From:

john-ofdarkness.livejournal.com

Definitely. It's my very favorite Shakespeare play, and the subject of most of my academic writing on Shakespeare. Those are wonderful questions that deeply, deeply excite me, and I kind of want to co-write a paper with you about this. I think that this depends entirely on how it's acted, and whether Hamlet was mad to begin with (the most likely explanation, if we take the ghost as a manifestation of his madness's sway over the play) or whether he goes mad upon meeting the ghost. I suspect that the parallels between Laertes's plot and Hamlet's plot make Laertes almost another agent of Hamlet's thoughts/plans/fears, in an always-mad-Hamlet play; in that case, there is no benchmark for external reality, and every scene is in some way slightly fractured. Some of them have been skewed (we might read Laertes's and Ophelia's parting scene as one of these, if your excellent speculation that this scene reflects Hamlet's fears for her is correct), other ones have been patently invented (I suspect Claudius's prayer scene would be one of these, in such a reading), and some perhaps really did occur (Claudius's speech in I.ii, for example). I definitely feel that the madness holds court just in the scenes in which Hamlet appears, but in all scenes of the play, but the degree to which this occurs is more subject to actor interpretation. (And I would love to come to some conclusive conclusion about what happens when Hamlet dies, in this reading. I suspect that it would be really amazing if, since Fortinbras and Hamlet are never onstage alive at the same time, Forti and Hamlet were played by the same actor, and this scene represented Hamlet's complete disassociation from the mad speculations of the play--his conquering and laying-to-rest of his fears, in a way.)

From:

john-ofdarkness.livejournal.com

Corrections, part two:

holds court not just in the scenes in which Hamlet appears

From:

youngandhealthy.livejournal.com

That's a really interesting reading of the end of the play. Part of the reason this fascinates me is that my favorite production of the play I've ever seen was, on the surface, very strongly committed to Hamlet only affecting madness and, in reality, being sane. However, as the play unfolds, it became clear that Hamlet was utterly sane from his own point of view, and that as an audience member, you ultimately had to choose whether Hamlet was mad or everyone else was. It's sounding gimmicky now, but was really quite effective at the time. Regardless, part of what the production played with was double casting and occasionally having actors switch parts even if they were actors who were onstage together, which was daring, even if the results were mixed. Surprisingly (or not, I suppose), one of the most interesting was that the actor and actress playing Laertes and Ophelia switched roles when Ophelia goes mad. So the same actor who was exhorting Ophelia to be careful of Hamlet when the play opens was the one performing Ophelia's mad scenes, which I thought pointed to a deep link or even confusion in Hamlet's thoughts about the siblings.

This did have a point. I think that the double casting of Fortinbras, which often happens since he's onstage so little, can be a great key to understanding how the director is approaching the play. In this version, Polonius and Fortinbras were played by the same actor, pointing to the possibility that Polonius wasn't such a fool as Hamlet thought him, or alternately that his choice of Fortinbras as the next king is, in the end, a meaningless one.

(And now I must go, but will look forward to seeing if that made any sense when I return tonight.)

From:

john-ofdarkness.livejournal.com

Oooh, I like the sound of that production. The Hamlets that have pleased me most are of that sort; I'm much enamoured of Campbell Scott for his portrayal, and not at all pleased with Mel Gibson, and only middling-pleased with Kenneth Branagh. (I have to see more. Zara, DF's Hamlet, would be disappointed with me.) In the realm of interesting adaptations, by the way, Kylee has at some previous point linked me to a description of a production in which everyone was played by multiple actors--occasionally at once--which got absolutely terrible reviews, except with regard to Ophelia's mad scene. In that scene, all of the Ophelia actors and actresses were onstage at once, and it was apparently this gorgeous and distracted and terrifying spectacle ... which I would have loved to have seen. (I am also, I feel I should mention, far more interested in Laertes's story than Hamlet's, so the idea that Laertes got to play the mad scene is a wonderful commentary for me on how utterly Polonius's death breaks their family, and how much Laertes deceives himself when he says that he will not cry for Ophelia's death. ~~I am very pointedly not going the slashy route. This is Serious Shakespeare, y0.~~)

And I agree with that--I think that part of my problem with Fortinbras is that he is such a cipher; he's difficult to assess rigidly, because there's no rigidity to him as a performance figure. On the other hand, though, his primary function within the play (aside from, you know, general menacing army-ness) is to serve as the audience for Horatio's story--Harold Bloom attempts to tell us that Horatio is the person with whom the audience most sympathizes, the access-point through which the audience perceives the play, but I suggest that the audience must access the play through Hamlet's mind, and then process the play through Fortinbras's. It almost makes sense, to double-cast the two--the audience doesn't have to make as drastic a shift in perceptive channels at the last minute. Unless you're one of the people who goes in for that kind of thing, I guess. (And unless last-minute costume changes bother your Hamlet-actor a great deal. There's no way around it--Hamlet has to stand up, stop being Hamlet, and make some physical move that changes him into Fortinbras for my proposed ending to work.)

(You made wonderful sense--have a good time at work!)

From:

notsincecarrie.livejournal.com

Lurking and finding this conversation fascinating, hi. :D Might I ask how Horatio and the others seeing the ghost works in your reading?

From:

john-ofdarkness.livejournal.com

Depends on if Hamlet was mad the whole time (in which case, he was just dreaming up both the ghost and their reactions to it) or if there really are ghosts, and they're awful enough to drive one mad if you get one-on-one time with one (in which case their seeing it actually happened, and they're jolly lucky it didn't feel like talking to them).

From:

notsincecarrie.livejournal.com

Ah, that works. And what about the Ophelia/Helena scenes? ...wait.

From:

john-ofdarkness.livejournal.com

Ophelia was gay, you know.

From:

notsincecarrie.livejournal.com

Oh, Buzz knows. :D

From:

youngandhealthy.livejournal.com

After taking an absolutely fabulous class on Shakespeare plays adapted to film, I think that film adaptations are a whole separate (if intrinsically related) issue. I confess that I dearly love Branagh's adaptation, overwrought as it is, but feel like it could never, ever work on stage. But I equally love Olivier's noir-influenced version. (The Mel Gibson one is mostly a travesty, though Ian Holm's Polonius is really interesting.)

I find myself, personally, directly in the middle - I'm fascinated by both Horatio and Laertes for totally different reasons. But I respectfully disagree with Bloom about Horatio's function, for the very fluidity you mentioned earlier. And by placing Horatio as the center of the play, Bloom seems (out of context, I grant, and please correct me if I go astray) to be implying that the audience needs an inherently likable character to relate to, which I think is underestimating the typical audience member. Your ending also is a nod to the inherent theatricality of the piece which you loose in a film adaptation.

...I think. I'm so fried.

From:

john-ofdarkness.livejournal.com

I am just in awe of your specialized classes. ^___^ I more or less just muddled along with my one course in 'Renaissance Heroes and Villains.' (O_o I totally had not noticed that was Ian Holm. Just like the Laertes in that version was the Cassio in the Lawrence Fishburne Othello. Wow.)

Laertes fills me with joy because he is ~~a choleric rebel, like all of my favorite Shakespeare characters~~ essentially what audiences want of Hamlet--they want a Hamlet who refuses to be juggled with, who openly confronts Claudius about the murder of his father, who is willing to take decisive action when he learns who has killed said father. He is also willing to hear testimony (Claudius's pleading his own innocence) and consider it, incorporating or discarding it based on whether it strikes him as valid or invalid. He is a creature of passion, perhaps, but he is also a creature of consideration, and I hate it when adaptations/stagings neglect that element of his character. (The fact that my mother's edition of of Hamlet had the note that Hamlet was cerebral and Laertes was not a thinker was seriously annoying to me.) I'm surprised that, if your reading of Bloom's opinion of Horatio is correct, more people don't see Laertes as the access-point character; he's a Hamlet who satisfies their wishes! Why not him? And I agree about the theatricality bit; one of the most amazing parts of the play of Love! Valour! Compassion!, from which John comes, is the scene in which John and his twin brother James (who are played by the same person) are onstage at once, talking to each other. In the film version, we lose the real poignance of watching one man playing both roles, being both characters simultaneously; I really felt cheated, not seeing that scene as it had been written.

You're doing remarkably well, though!

From:

youngandhealthy.livejournal.com

(Wasn't he the Roderigo? The Branagh Horatio showed up in that movie too, somewhere or other.) Yeah, the weirdness of my college boggles. But it was a really helpful class because I love theatre and I love film and yet so much theatre is absolutely awful to try and translate. And it is, in the most fundamental sense, a translation, like listening to an opera with a libretto in English which was originally Italian. It becomes something related, but new.

Maybe Bloom is worried about Laertes' long absence in the middle of the play? Who knows. But I think you're right. You could write a play about Laertes - in many ways The Spanish Tragedy by Kyd sort of does - but you couldn't really write a play about Horatio (unless you were purposely ignoring Aristotelean dramatics, of course).

From:

john-ofdarkness.livejournal.com

(Nope, IMDb informs us that Nathaniel Parker played Laertes and Cassio, although the Branagh Horatio was apparently Montano.) Exactly! I'm a little leary around theatre, despite having about five years of theatre background, because it's so difficult to pin down--to me, a translation of theatre into film is almost like a translation of water into ice, almost. True, it's a solid form that can be held and considered, but it loses its beautiful and slightly frightening malleability.

I and Polonius's player here are actually hoping to write Laertes's and Ophelia's story, someday. ^_^; If we ever get around to it. (Aristotelean dramatics, pffft. Shakespeare ignores them all the time!)

From:

youngandhealthy.livejournal.com

(Ha - I was thinking of Branagh's Laertes, Michael Maloney. Two Laertes in one movie. How confusing. I should rewatch that Othello, despite the fact that the Desdemona in that version makes me cringe.) That's an excellent metaphor. I may steal it.

And you utterly should. I've always found the two of them the emotional center of the play because, while Hamlet is fascinating, he never really lets you as an audience member close on a visceral level. For all his soliloquies, Hamlet's emotions over the loss of his father are never expressed anywhere near as painfully and succinctly as when Laertes appears onstage and demands to know where his father is. (And true, but not nearly as much as, say, Beckett. I just realized I should never say never about theatre.)

From:

john-ofdarkness.livejournal.com

(Aaah, you're right! Hah, it's like where Laerteses go to get stabbed and/or die. Not like in their play at all. And I think part of her problem was that she was seriously a non-native speaker. ^_^;;) Go ahead! ^__^ Always glad to help.

I completely agree. ~~I don't roleplay Laertes and Horatio and Osric in another game, what?~~ (Exactly. There's always 'The Bald Soprano' or Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad.)