Here's the video of my interview with Dr. Young!

It's finally up. I kept trying to load it as a project file instead of a movie file, but here it is: my first ever youtube video!

In this interview, Dr. Young gives many interesting and applicable points about how families work in Shakespeare's writings. I was surprised by just how well our new plays went along with Shakespeare's other works. I'm pretty sure no one had said anything about his play Coriolanus, but this play was in many ways similar to Meleager, yet different enough that the two could both have been written by Shakespeare and not just been a repeat of each other.

More on Interviewing Dr. Young

When I talked with Dr. Young today (an expert on family life in Shakespeare's time), we talked mainly about the plays Meleager and Star-Crossed. Dr. Young said that content-wise, both could have been in line with other Shakespeare works. Here's an overview of what he told me:

Concerning Meleager:
Shakespeare did write plays about ancient mythology; but those plays tended to have happy endings, while Meleager is a tragedy. However, he did write a play called Coriolanus that was based on Roman myth that was a tragedy as well, so we're still in the ballpark with this one.

Dr. Young said that his belief is that Shakespeare had a positive ideal for families, and that oftentimes, it's when families go wrong that there's a tragedy (i.e. it's the disrupted family that makes the tragedy tragic)--consider Hamlet & King Lear as other examples. Meleager fits right into this.

Scene from Coriolanus, a Shakespearean war tragedy

He also said that Althaea's willingness to kill her own son was somewhat similar to the mother figure in Coriolanus, who, although she didn't kill her own son (who was also a warrior, incidentally--good move there, guys), rejoiced when he came home from battle covered with scars, saying that she'd rather have her son injured than dishonored. So, Althaea's willingness to place the demands of morality over the life of her son might be able to fit into that category.

On courtship rituals:
When I asked him about the use of courtship rituals in Shakespeare's plays and how they were received by the audience, Dr. Young told me that even when his plays were set in foreign times & places, Shakespeare would insert a lot of English customs into them.

Titania & Co.

On Star-Crossed:
 Interactions between magical folk and mortals actually happened a lot in Shakespeare's plays; and oftentimes, these interactions could be funny. However, Dr. Young explained that with Shakespeare, humor wasn't always just funniness; it could be anything magical as well. So Puck's play could easily fall under the classification of a Shakespearean comedy.

Star-Crossed Soundtrack & Interview with Dr. Bruce Young

On Saturday, the Star-Crossed group went into the recording studio & found some really cool things, including a genuinely soundproof room complete with microphones & vents to keep the speakers from suffocating, as well as neat software to use with it. I captured a few photos & video clips of the studio that can go into the story-of team's overview documentary if there's still room.

 

 











By the way, here's a bit of social validation for Star-Crossed: when I showed a friend the videos, she thought the actors were reading genuine Shakespeare.

 

Speaking of validation, today I interviewed Dr. Bruce Young, author of the book Family Life in the Age of Shakespeare, and he said it was possible that this play about Puck might have been written by the bard.








And, just for fun, I'm putting up Andrew's tribute to one of the co-directors of the recording session.

Final Project Progress

Okey dokey: the story-of team has filmed a couple prototype videos about the lost plays and can be seen on Kim's blog.  I've composed an email to send to Dr. Bruce Young, author of Family Life in the Age of Shakespeare, to interview him about the legitimacy of the plays from the view of an expert on Shakespearean families. I'll run it by the story-of team today in lecture.  Besides that, I've been working on a little more music for star-crossed (on Puck's theme), but I don't have anything to post just yet.