And yes, it is art to play the plays as Shakespeare intended them to be played. They were made for the masses. (I use to say that if Shakespeare were born today, he would make "Jerry Bruckheimer" movies.)
The actors were interrupted by the audience and forced to react spontaneously to the verbal intrusions. Can you believe that to happen in a "respectable theatre"? I can't.
I've witnessed an actor complaining to his audience because it could not keep quiet. How lame is that? A good actor would have stayed in his role and lectured the audience accordingly.
In Shakespeare's time, plays were not considered what they are considered now: high art. During the middle ages, plays had been effectively suppressed, apart from the re-enactment of the Christmas story in church. Only in the early modern age, plays were again being written. The most prestigious art of the English court (and therefore Shakespeare's, too) was sonnets! By the time Shakespeare came around, the sonnets had been around for long and he ridiculed them in his sonnet circle.
(If you read it closely, you'll notice that most of them are directed towards a boy and the rest to a dark lady. Now, the lyrical I has stong feelings for both of them and in one sonnet is highly jealous because something happened between the boy and the lady. But I digress.)
Also, if a play was no longer making any money, it was cast aside and S. sat down and wrote another one. Just like todays movies.
Needless to say that S.'s plays do have a quality of their own, but that is mainly because they feature topics that are still appealing to us today: love, revenge, hate.
There is no need to reinterpret Macbeth with Nazi insignia, to give a crude but nonetheless valid example. There is just a need of decent actors. (Many hobby-actors on renaissance fairs would give pros a run for their money as on these fairs a great deal of stage-audience interaction is still present.)
Greetz,
Tex
Ok, Shakespeare of course is great and he made great art - for his century.
I think it´s a question of understanding the meaning of art - wich is naturally individual.
For me art is a process of constructing reality, making people wake up from living blind (in the matrix of media-constructed reality) . Producing consciousness is really hard today. In Shakespeares time he gets reactions of people with his provacative intended plays. So his kind of stuff interested people and gets them thinking. Of course this sort of stuff is always current, but it doesn´t reach most people in the historical way of presentation.
Today there must be much more provocation to get people thinking. To put a play on stage like it has been in the 18th century is a replay, a try to construct a historic view but it will not wake up many people. Watching literature as a mirror of the time, in which the author lived is surely interesting but I think it´s even not possible to know what Shakespeare intended.
The actors reacting with the visitors is a special thing. I think this could be very intersting, and I know some kind of theaters (improvisation) in wich this is often used, but there are even special visitors. It would be very complicated to get these media-contaminated viewers to a reaction on what they see - so even more provacation is needed.
Nearly every author and director would be proud if his play would produce a reaction in the viewers crowd. Some really negative provocations are the result. I don´t need any naked people on stage, but some directors seem to be under coercion to integrate some. Meanwhile it is boring an destroys the making of consciousness.
:wink:
