Currently viewing the tag: "Shakespeare"

Stephen Marche? Again?

By On 29/10/2012 · 13 Comments

My old friend Stephen Marche, the renowned Shakespearean, is at it again, this time with an impassioned piece preaching the massively controversial credo that “Literature is not Data.” It’s an attack on authors and academics. Or on digital humanists. Or on algorithms (which are, saith Marche, fascist). Or something. [...]

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Stratford Thoughts

By On 02/09/2012 · 1 Comment

A four hour drive through Ontario nothingness, almost $200 for tickets alone, barely suppressed rage at inane audience comments (it boggles the mind how much damage Harold Bloom has done to Shakespeare): totally worth it for Elektra. For Cymbeline, not so much.

Robert Cushman and Kelly Nestruck have written nicely detailed [...]

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Toronto Theatre: A Response to Jacob Zimmer

By On 22/08/2012 · 6 Comments

Before I respond to Jacob Zimmer’s thoughtful and generous comments on my “5 Points of Contention,” I first have to give him, or rather his company, Small Wooden Shoe, massive kudos for staging a reading of, would you believe it, Kleist’s Prince of Homburg on Monday — by sheer coincidence, one [...]

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“Classical” Theatre

By On 11/08/2012 · Leave a Comment

I’ll have more to say on this later on, but here, for your consideration, two lengthy-ish quotations from not altogether recent works about what’s wrong with some approaches to staging the classics — approaches that remain, sadly, utterly dominant in Canada.

In chronological order, first, here’s Bertolt Brecht, from “Intimidation through Classicism” (1954), a short [...]

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