Leaving Helsinor

Play #22 of '28Plays28Days' is in on time. Three hours ahead of the deadline. I love this writing challenge, simply love it. And - much to my amazement - I'm hanging in there and have twenty-two short plays to show for it. 

Today's challenge was presented in these terms:

Fan fiction is all the rage now...

Oh, boy!

So write something about your favourite characters doing something else. Or use their world to create new characters... Or something like that. (I'm not 100% sure I understand what fan fiction is... Would Rosencrantz and Guildenstern count?) Anyway, I trust you all to know better than me!

Who knows?! Maybe the next 50 Shades will come out of this challenge! (that was fan fiction, wasn't it?!)

Bonus points if you write your fan fiction on something theatrical, so no Harry Potter, please!

Ophelia
by John William Waterhouse, 1894

So I chose William Shakespeare's Hamlet as my starting point; giving it a near-contemporary setting: 1978 (which is contemporary for an old fart like me).

We reach Act III, Scene 2 - the play within a play part - and Hamlet is being a sexist boor with Ophelia. Rather than just sitting there deflecting the Prince, Ophelia tells Hamlet she's tired of his  incessant whining, like some kind of pseudo-adolescent brat (the Bard's original text tells us, after all, he's at least 30). Ophelia has had enough. She leaves Denmark to live as a single mum in a squat in Vauxhall, finding solace and inspiration in the inestimable musical talents of Gloria Gaynor. Some time later, when young Ham is about three, Ophelia is arrested for blocking the entrance to the Cruise missile base at Greenham Common alongside 30,000 other women peace campaigners.








Works for me.

Did I say? I love this writing challenge. Thank you East London's The Space.

A beautiful gift by Trevor Gill

Trevor Gill as Bottom. Pic: Topher McGrillis

The initial reason for travelling to the UK in June was to visit Belfast, meet old friends of almost forty years standing and catch my friend Trevor Gill play the role of Bottom in the Royal Shakespeare Company's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Trevor and his fellow amateur players were, quite simply, brilliant. It would have been impossible for anyone who didn't know the cast personally to tell which people on stage were the professionals, which the amateurs (accents aside).

Over this weekend the Belvoir Theatre mechanicals helped to bring the RSC Dream 2016 to a close at Stratford-upon-Avon. What a buzz. How richly deserved.

Trevor wrote of his feelings and impressions about being involved in this remarkable project for the last year. The RSC published his thoughts on the production's blog. Trevor started his short essay this way:

This Friday night, five of my good friends from The Belvoir Players and I will stand at the very heart of world drama. We will step out onto the stage at the RSC’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST), Stratford on Avon in the 400th anniversary year of William Shakespeare’s death. We follow in the footsteps of the great and the good of UK and international theatre. 

Sometimes I still find it hard to believe that it’s happening.

Read Trevor's whole piece here.

Lucy Ellinson (Puck), Spike, Trevor Gill (Bottom) and me at the Belfast show after-party.

If ever there could be a good reason to fly 10,000 miles around the globe it would be to cheer on Trevor and his team. We had fun. I can't imagine what it must have felt like for TG and the Belvoir Theatre players.

Macbeth

So ... I got my essay back this evening: 16 1/2 out of 20 or 8 2.5%, which is 1/2 a mark or 2.5 percentage points below a "high distinction". I assume that's deliberate, intended to make me try harder next time (with the Jane Austen question). Dr Morrison is probably right. An egotistical man rises to the challenge. Lay on Macduff indeed!!

Dickhead!

(Me rather than Fiona Morrison)
.

Macbeth

Finished my university preparation course essay this way:

Macbeth, clearest in his mind in moments of action, ultimately recognises that his fate is sealed and that his folly is to end life as the weird sisters foretold. His final words show him to be resigned to that fate and damnably unrepentant when, as he faces certain death at the hands of MacDuff, he defiantly calls out:

I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet,
And to be baited with the rabble's curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'

Heroic to the end but tragically flawed, Macbeth pays the ultimate price for his crimes.

I don't imagine I'm the first to draw such a conclusion but it's done. And that's the point.

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