{"id":4000,"date":"2010-09-21T20:20:24","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T00:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=4000"},"modified":"2010-09-21T20:20:24","modified_gmt":"2010-09-22T00:20:24","slug":"theater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2010\/09\/theater\/","title":{"rendered":"All the World’s a Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I did take an American theatre class this summer, it was at Villanova, which let\u2019s face it, is no Dickinson. And anyway, I\u2019m not qualified to the point where I could say anything valuable about the theatrical worth about the three plays we saw as a group, so I\u2019ll try to stick to more tangential attributes of the three outings. (For the record, my rankings, from most to least favorite: 1. \u201cThe Habit of Art\u201d<\/a> 2. \u201cThe Merry Wives of Windsor\u201d<\/a> 3. \u201c39 Steps\u201d<\/a>)<\/p>\n

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via Google Images<\/p><\/div>\n

I did not find the backstage tour of the National Theatre particularly fascinating. It just struck me as a lot of inside baseball about producing plays; perhaps if I knew more about the nitty-gritty of theatre, I would have enjoyed it more. But as we walked through the facility, something slowly began to hit me: there is nothing remotely comparable to this venue back in the States. On top of it being spectacularly massive, the NT also receives substantial subsidies from the national government. I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019m willing to make the blanket statement that Britain is more willing to spend taxpayer dollars on fine arts, as the NEA at home is a great, strongly funded institution. There can be no question however, that when it comes to the particular art of theatre, Britain has a certain national pride in the craft that leads to much stronger support for it.<\/p>\n

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We\u2019ve heard from both Rick Fisher and John The Tour Guide that the Globe is a silly endeavor, with Mr. Fisher going as far to call it \u201cfake Shakespeare.\u201d That said, it was undeniably cool to lean on the stage and pretend to myself for a minute that Shakespeare\u2019s company performed in a similar setting in the same place. And there was an element of the Elizabethan audience (infamous for its rowdiness) as the Nalgene bottle full of wine belonging to the gentleman standing next to us slowly was emptied as Falstaff\u2019s nefarious plot was uncovered. By the time \u201cSo Merrily\u201d was performed at the end, our neighbor was literally punching the stage as he thought he was tapping in time with the song. So while I didn\u2019t enjoy the play as much as that guy, I had a good time at the Globe.<\/p>\n

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via Google Images<\/p><\/div>\n

39 Steps was my least favorite of the three plays, but I still enjoyed it. The number one takeaway for me was that British humor is simply different. I found the play funny on the whole; that said, there were multiple moments where I did not laugh at all and the Brits in the audience were rolling on the floor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I did take an American theatre class this summer, it was at Villanova, which let\u2019s face it, is no Dickinson. And anyway, I\u2019m not qualified to the point where I could say anything valuable about the theatrical worth about the three plays we saw as a group, so I\u2019ll try to stick to more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":387,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6697,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010-dennis","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/387"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}