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.

Last night, I went to see the BYU production of Love's Labour's Lost. I thought it was interesting the way they tried to tie it into the WW2/ 1940s style while still using the original Shakespearean language.  Having a background of war--and not just any generic war, but one which our grandparents experienced and has become a part of our heritage; a war where we can still see pictures of the soldiers and civilians who died--having this serious background really added some depth to the play. When the princess's father died, I imagined it as a casualty of this war. It made more sense that the boys would want to get married quickly because they were soldiers at war and might not ever come back. It also made the girls' demands that they wait a year seem less personal and more patriotic: "Go out and serve your country, man; prove to me and the world and yourself what you're made of, and I'll be waiting when you return." The war made the ending darker than in the original, and even though there was still laughter, dancing, and music before the curtains closed, I left with a subdued and reverent feeling.

One thing I'm also wondering about is the fact that these productions (Merchant of Venice, LLL) keep changing characters' genders. Mote was a girl in love with Don Armado (her lines actually fit pretty well in that context, surprisingly); Boyet was a girl, which allowed her to enter the dressing room. Then Nathaniel & the other boy-turned-girl (I forgot his/her name) were really awkwardly in love (that part was funny, even though it wasn't in the original script).  I've decided it must be one or a mix of 4 things: 1) it's a conspiracy where people are trying to say that Shakespeare supported homosexuality, 2) they're saying it's okay since Shakespeare had people cross-dressing the other way around, 3) it's funny, &/or 4) they didn't have enough guys to act the parts.

Another thing I noticed was that this production seemed to bring out the social aspect of the play more than the educational facet that seemed more prominent in reading it; and I guess that makes sense since most social interaction is nonverbal. Maybe the director had an influence on this, too--I found a bulletin board in the HFAC after the performance with a newspaper article about the play that mentioned that the director based the production off of her grandparents' story (they met at a dance in the WW2 era and were married a few weeks later at another dance; she said Biron & Rosalind's witty banter reminded her of them).

Finally, here's some music!

Here's a 30-second clip of a tune I came up with that we could use as part of the Star-Crossed production or elsewhere!  It isn't perfect recording, but I think it sounds kind of mysterious/beautiful & could be used at a part where there is magic being used--maybe where Puck is forgetting his love because it's kind of bittersweet.

Strange Ending for a Comedy

It seems that I wasn't the only one thrown off by the strange twist of events at the end of Love's Labour's Lost; it was so weird & it didn't really seem to be consistent with the rest of the play. That and the fact that this play was so much shorter than what I'm used to from Shakespeare made me wonder if this wasn't just an unfinished play--But it was published in 1598, in the middle of Shakespeare's career.

That question made me think, though, that if any group is having trouble coming up with an ending for their play, it might be because it was unfinished at the time of Shakespeare's death.