Riverside utterli
May 12, 2009
0
Here’s a map of the summer of the performances that I’ve somewhat decided on to this point. I will go back later and add in dates and all, but this will give you some perspective on where I’ll be going this summer. (You might just want to click on the 40 Plays in 40 Days link at the bottom to get a bigger map (you miss out on the West Coast fun if you don’t scroll over).
View 40 Plays in 40 Days in a larger map
So, here’s the update:
Dropping the trip to Stratford, ON and adding Shakespeare & Company (Lenox, MA).
I considered making another trip to the West Coast and hitting the Bard on the Beach Festival (Vancouver, BC), but I just can’t swing it.
So, the plays that I don’t think I’ll be finding are:
I probably could find these plays during the 2009-2010 production season, but I’ve decided on seeing all the plays in one summer. So, here’s the plan: public readings.
For instance, Richard II is being read aloud at the Nashville Shakespeare Company’s  “Shakespeare Allowed” in July (at the time we’re heading back home from Southern Tennesse). Though I might not be able to see a staged production of the above plays, I could help organize performances of the plays…yes?
I suppose this part of the project makes me more of an active participant, or it is an unexpected outcome of the experience. I, along with many others, will be promoting the reading of Shakepeare and perhaps reinforcing that idea that Shakespeare wrote for the masses and that everyone should have a chance to hear a play or two in the summer.
I’ve started to pencil in some of the plays and dates for the readings. For instance, I’d like to have a reading of Henry IV Part II on the Oregon trip after I see Part I of Henry IV. Also, I’m planning on recruiting some family members on our vacation in July to read Timon of Athens. If I’m coming to your area and you would like to help sponsor a reading, then let me know. This will be an interesting part of the project that I had not anticipated but one that I think will yield some interesting results.
Over the weekend, I decided to try and work out a first attempt at a calendar and by Sunday, I ended up with what I thought would happen: All comedies scheduled, almost all of the tragedies taken care of and, well, the poor histories not very well covered (except in England).
So, here’s the general structure of my schedule and the shared Google calendar is at the end of this post (and looking for a more effective way to show my journey…probably a mashup including GoogleMaps). Anyway, here’s the major brush strokes:
MidWest Tour (Mid June)
Run Up North (Stratford, ON):
Mid-Atlantic Tour (Mid-July)
California, Here We Come tour (end of July)
Oregon Trails (early August)
In all, I have 27 plays accounted for with three plays likely to find (including Hamlet, Othello, Henry V), probably can find (Timon of Athens, Richard II), and probably won’t find (Henry VI Parts 1, II, III and Two Noble Kinsmen). I currently have a plan to finish seeing all 38 plays by the end of summer (which I will share in about a week) and the other two “Shakespearean-themed” plays to see (R&G and Dead, and RSC Complete Works of Shakespeare-Abridged) are very popular this summer and I shouldn’t have a problem finding a production close by.
The summer’s shaping up to be pretty exciting. For more details on the mentioned plays and others, browse through the calendar (beginning with June 2009):
So, for those of you who have never heard of the play, there’s probably a good reason: it’s pretty rare. So, as I was musing on Twitter about the RSC had a part in the inspiration of my proposal, I decided to do a low-key search and after three pages about London’s production, I got the Hudson Shakespeare Company (New Jersey) summer schedule. (I had to go back a couple of times just to make sure that it was this year’s schedule).
So, now we’re back to eight more to find.
I was really looking forward to seeing friends who live by the NJ Shakespeare, but Timon was dropped in favor of another classic play and so I’m now looking for another place to see the Man from Athens.
So, after going through a few “guide to Shakespearean festival” sites and doing some low-key searching, I’m down to only 8 more plays and they’re the tricky ones and half of them were performed last summer.
Here’s my list:
It’s not an impossible list, but a challenging one. So, I’ll have to refine my searches and start to try other means of finding the plays.
The swing through California probably will happen as I’ll be able to catch at least one show a day in my run through the Golden State. And now I’m considering New England.
Though not a part of my original plan, I stumbled across a performance in late June of Henry IV Part I. As I’ve mentioned before (and acknowledged in my original proposal) it’s the History plays that are giving me the most grief (or challenge). At present count, I have all but two of the the Comedies, Tragedies and “Romances” spoken for…that is, somebody is performing those plays. (Don’t get me started with Midsummer Night’s Dream…I know it’s a fun play and people like it, but does every company have to perform the dang thing? I’ve got a project to do here people!)
So, I am considering a New England trip possibly in late June.
And, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ll start to sketch in plays and dates in a few weeks and make that information available here. Also, if you know of any production of a Shakespeare play in your community, please let me know (even if it’s just Midsummer Night’s Dream)…I’d like to know.
I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me, but my keen plan of flying into Salt Lake City, Utah and seeing the Utah Shakespearean Festival, then renting a car and driving to the Oregon Festival and then to Northern California before returning the car and hopping on a plane back home was a bit ambitious.
But isn’t that what this summer is about anyway?
Aside from the driving, which I think I would have been okay with, the major break up of the plan came when I did what I should have done awhile ago: find out where the Utah festival was at in the first place. And yes, it’s not in SLC and yes it is the opposite end of Utah. So that 2000-mile trek is out and another idea is forming.
Why not all of California?
And it’s not a bad idea: good festivals in the Bay Area and plenty of summer park productions in Southern California (and, thinking of hitting Lake Tahoe toward the end of the little stay in the Golden State).
So, as I continue to tag theater and park productions for the rest of the month, I let the geography breathe a bit and perhaps inhale the Pacific Ocean a bit more.
My task is to see all of Shakespeare’s plays in one summer and as I was working on the logistics of the plan, I defaulted to “ball parking” my schedule. That is to say: I found two really good sources for locating theater companies that performed Shakespeare (This one and That one) and then made a spread sheet listing all the plays and then dates and places of performances.
I’ve given up on that approach after I got the grant. I found out quickly that those two variables–time and place–would need to be easily searched and matched and the spreadsheet was only a flat way of organization. (I realize that there probably was a way to search my spreadsheet and that my brother-in-law probably could figure it out for me–he’s pretty smart with spreadsheets–I wanted to use something that not only made sense to me but that was very simple to use).
First choice: create a database. Dropped that after feeling as though I had to do double-entry transfer (find website, copy and paste information from that website to the database, then write some low-key queries). I like databases and am particularly fond of what sqlite has accomplished, but as I started thinking about the project as a whole, the database option had too many steps.
Second choice: 3×5 cards. And I actually love the simplicity of the 3×5 card: Play name on front, dates and places on back. Very tactile and very spacial (I could put ’em all up on a cork board and that would be definite major points on coolness factor). But, again, many steps. Find performance from website, copy down information on back of card, lock in a time frame on the cork board, enter in itinerary on website calendar. (I’m not giving up on this idea for good, but for meeting my needs at this point in the game, I’ll put down the 3×5 cards and walk away slowly).
Third Option: Delicious. And that’s how I’m organizing my schedule for now. Delicious is one of those interesting sites that allows you to enter and store your websites of interest. But not only can you save your websites, you can annotate those websites (comments) and, best of all, you can tag the site. Tagging digital information was an interesting theme in Everything is Miscellaneous and I believe David Weinberger has the right angle: instead of forcing information into predefined categories (like we do sometimes with our filing systems) tagging is a bit more free form and that metadata allows for more effective ways of finding information. The upshot for me: I find a website that has performances of Shakespeare, and I tag that site right there according to play(s), month of performance, and state performed in. I also tag all of these plays with “40plays” as to distinguish these sites from other sites where Shakespeare plays are saved.
So, for instance, if I want all plays I’ve found so far in the month of June, I go to the Delicious site, select the tags “40plays” “june” and here’s what I get (click here).
I know that this is a modified idea of the database, but I don’t like having to do the double-entry stuff: waste of time (when I could be eating a bowl of cereal). Using a social bookmarking site like Delicious, I’m tagging sites as I am on those sites and building a large cache of information. By the end of this month, I’m planning on taking this information and building a draft calendar so I can start making financial arrangements for this summer’s experience.
And, if you use Delicious and find performances that I haven’t tagged yet, go ahead and use, as one of the tags, 40plays, as I will able to access those sites in my search (and perhaps, I’ll explain that in another post).