i can has bedtime?
Mar. 19th, 2008 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaydeefalls
Man, I do not know what's wrong with me today, but I just can't seem to wake up. And, y'know, it's already after 4pm, and I've been at work since 9am. I just completely lack energy, and all I've wanted since I dragged myself out of bed this morning was to go back to sleep. I'm supposed to go to the gym after work, and I need to make a grocery run as well. I wonder how much of that will actually happen. Seriously, I deeply resent the phone every time it rings, because that means I actually have to open my eyes. Not my day, apparently.
Oh! That tell-me-what-to-blog-about meme. I posted that last week.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
msilverstar asked: Which is your favorite Shakespeare play, and which is your favorite non-Shakespeare? and a little bit of why.
Okay, I kind of had a mini-rant boiling up about the tendency to sort all theater into "Shakespeare" and "everything else", which bothers me in all kinds of ways and is positively ENDEMIC in Anglo-American theater in particular, but that's neither here nor there. :) So anyway. I don't really know why, but Much Ado About Nothing remains my all-time favorite Shakespearean play. I certainly don't think it's his best, but my god, do I love Beatrice and Benedick to a degree that is truly stupid. Just. *flails* The witty banter! The intelligence and cynicism and sudden blossoming of love beyond all expectations! I think it's because I was exposed to the Kenneth Branagh film at a young age; come to think of it, that may well have been my very first exposure to Shakespeare in any form. Anyway. It fills me with glee.
In the VAST realm of plays-that-are-not-Shakespeare, I think...christ. This is just silly. I can barely decide what my favorite musical or my favorite Stoppard play or my favorite Victorian-era play or my favorite...well, you get the idea. Shakespeare wrote, what, 50 plays? And then I have to narrow all the rest of the plays ever written in the history of ever down to one choice? Do you see how this classification system is flawed? How about this: top play that I want to direct someday -- no, wait, there are at least ten on my current shortlist. Play that I could see fifty different stagings of without getting bored? That might narrow it down to fifteen or so. There's Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, Frank McGuinness's Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Suzan-Lori Parks's Topdog/Underdog, Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest, Alan Bennet's The History Boys, Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods, Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9, Tom Murphy's A Whistle in the Dark, Marie Jones's Stones in his Pockets, Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, Marina Carr's By the Bog of Cats... This is just off the top of my head, I'm probably leaving out another twenty or so plays of awesomeness that I'll have to resist coming back and editing in. Dear god, this IS my career, you know? :)
Oh! That tell-me-what-to-blog-about meme. I posted that last week.
msilverstar asked: Which is your favorite Shakespeare play, and which is your favorite non-Shakespeare? and a little bit of why.Okay, I kind of had a mini-rant boiling up about the tendency to sort all theater into "Shakespeare" and "everything else", which bothers me in all kinds of ways and is positively ENDEMIC in Anglo-American theater in particular, but that's neither here nor there. :) So anyway. I don't really know why, but Much Ado About Nothing remains my all-time favorite Shakespearean play. I certainly don't think it's his best, but my god, do I love Beatrice and Benedick to a degree that is truly stupid. Just. *flails* The witty banter! The intelligence and cynicism and sudden blossoming of love beyond all expectations! I think it's because I was exposed to the Kenneth Branagh film at a young age; come to think of it, that may well have been my very first exposure to Shakespeare in any form. Anyway. It fills me with glee.
In the VAST realm of plays-that-are-not-Shakespeare, I think...christ. This is just silly. I can barely decide what my favorite musical or my favorite Stoppard play or my favorite Victorian-era play or my favorite...well, you get the idea. Shakespeare wrote, what, 50 plays? And then I have to narrow all the rest of the plays ever written in the history of ever down to one choice? Do you see how this classification system is flawed? How about this: top play that I want to direct someday -- no, wait, there are at least ten on my current shortlist. Play that I could see fifty different stagings of without getting bored? That might narrow it down to fifteen or so. There's Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, Frank McGuinness's Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, Suzan-Lori Parks's Topdog/Underdog, Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest, Alan Bennet's The History Boys, Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods, Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9, Tom Murphy's A Whistle in the Dark, Marie Jones's Stones in his Pockets, Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, Marina Carr's By the Bog of Cats... This is just off the top of my head, I'm probably leaving out another twenty or so plays of awesomeness that I'll have to resist coming back and editing in. Dear god, this IS my career, you know? :)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-24 01:20 am (UTC)As for your choices, I find them fascinating. The Branaugh version of Much Ado is amazingly good considering the hokey stuff in there.
Shortlist is better than "best" -- I promise to ask for that next time. All of the ones you include that I've seen, I've loved, so yes!
no subject
Date: 2008-03-27 10:16 pm (UTC)