Shakespeare's Rehearsal Conditions

Right now, I'm on the travel portion of a Shakespeare-related travel course. We've been studying the theatrical context of Shakespeare's writing - what it took to write and stage a show in Elizabethan England. The theater we're visiting is a replica of an Elizabethan stage (yes, they had closed-roof theaters back then). During their Renaissance season, they stage shows similar to how Shakespeare's actors would have done it.
What does that mean for the actors?

1. Instead of getting full scripts of the whole show, the actors only get "cue scripts."  This means that the 12 members of the company get books with their lines and 1-3 words of the line before.
2. The actors have about 48 hours to do group rehearsals before the show goes up. If a show is supposed to open on Friday, this does not mean the actors put in 8 hours a day from Sunday to Friday. This means that they start rehearsing in group for Friday's show on Wednesday. (I assume the actors DO have their lines at least 80% committed when they walk in for rehearsal on Wednesday, though.)
3. The actors direct themselves. When we sat in for part of a rehearsal on Friday, one of the actors mentioned bringing in a bed, since the scene was in a bedroom, and her character "probably wouldn't sit on the floor" for one of her scene partners. The actors in the scene, after some discussion of How To Get The Bed Onstage, took the note and ran with it. (This resulted in an action-movie-style dive over the bed to aim a gun at someone.) The staging, the props, the blocking, the costumes - everything is up to the actors.

Obviously, this is a really intense process, and the theater we're visiting only invites actors who are experienced with the company to work in the Renaissance season. There's a lot of trust involved in the process of staging a show without a director; someone with my level of acting experience (i.e. have barely done acting since high school) just isn't cut out for doing this level of rehearsal intensity. (I was once called upon to be in a show with a few days rehearsal time; however, I had a director, I was in three or four bit parts, and everything was pretty much already staged, I just had to be told where to stand.)

In all, our stay here has been really cool, and I've enjoyed it immensely.

apologies/ late post for Friday

This should be on Friday.... sorry....

In my defense, the wi-fi was out at the hotel we're staying at.  I should have scheduled a post for today in the event that happens, but now I know that I should do that thing.

I'm currently on a school trip until Wednesday; we're doing cool Shakespeare-y things at cool theaters and stuff. More on that when we get back to school.

Tonight, however, I'm writing about working out - going to the gym and stuff.

Most of the time, when I tell people I'm trying to work out and get in shape, the first thing they say is, "but you look fine. You don't need to go to the gym." This doesn't help.

I do need to go to the gym. The CDC recommends that adults get 2.5 hours of moderate exercise per week (half an hour, five days a week), or 1.25 hours of vigorous exercise per week (15 minutes, five days a week). I did that in high school. During 2014, I didn't really do that. I didn't really eat too well, either. I'm not expecting myself to get back to my high school level of fitness, but I do expect myself to get onto a healthy track. Though weight loss is part of my goal, it is only one part. Going to the gym every day is more important than the number on the scale.

What troubles me is how people react to my announcement that I'm Trying To Be Healthier - the gut reaction of "oh, you look fine, you don't need to go to the gym more often." The implication seems to be that there's only one reason for going to the gym - to lose weight. Again, weight loss is a part of the goal, but not the whole goal. My bigger goal is to lower my mile time and increase my muscle training. If that means my weight stays the same, so be it. There are more important things than the number on the scale.

I can't help but wonder, though, why people keep telling me that I look fine and that I don't need to go to the gym. People on sports teams aren't told that they look fine and don't have to go to the gym. People who are already very fit and muscular aren't told that they don't need to go to the gym; those folks are expected to be in the gym every day. So why not me, too? Why not everyone?

It could be that people are trying to be complimentary when they say these things - that does seem like the overt sentiment. Somehow, though, it seems like there's something underlying that compliment. It seems as if the people are saying, "you shouldn't go to the gym. I don't go to the gym. You look reasonably fit, and if you're increasing your gym time, I feel bad about myself because I haven't gone to the gym all semester, and I want to maintain my good body image, so please don't increase your gym time because now I feel worse about myself."

In the end, it doesn't matter wherefore or whether people think I should or should not work out more. The only thing that really matters is maintaining a healthy lifestyle, which includes increased time working out. If people are insecure about maintenance of health, maybe they should look at their own health and why they're insecure about it.

Game of Thrones Post 2: chapter 2 and 3 (Caetlyn and Daenerys)

To recap what we learned last week:
- death is a thing that happens
- Others are creepy
- First People are apparently Different People than the Rest Of Westeros's People
- Stark kings need to kill people in person
- people don't trust direwolves


ON TO THIS WEEK'S POST!

Caetlyn's chapter
Caetlyn, originally of House Tully and married into House Stark, seems to be an expositional character. She finds Ned (her husband) in the godswood after killing the dude mentioned in Bran's chapter. It seems that a godswood is a forest dedicated to prayer, it seems. One tree of importance seems to be the weirwood tree, which has had a face carved into it for a very long time. (No clues to why there is a face carved into the tree, or why most of the other weirwood trees have been, according to the text, "cut down or burned out a thousand years ago... Up here [in the north] it was different. Here every castle had its godswood, and every godswood had its heart tree, and every heart tree its face").
Other things that are established in this chapter:
- Ned asks about the kids first
- "Winter is coming" is an unusual phrase for Family Words; apparently, the Starks are the only family not to talk about honor, glory, loyalty, etc.
- "beyond the Wall" is something nobody wants to hear as a destination - no clues to why, but still.
- more information about the Others: that they have been gone for eight thousand years, like the children of the forest.
- Jon Arryn is dead. Apparently this is a bad thing - he is Ned's brother-in-law, married to Caetlyn's sister.
- Ned had apparently been fostered with Robert Baratheon
- Robert Baratheon is KING (of... what, exactly?) and is COMING TO VISIT NED

QUESTIONS:
- who the crap are the children of the forest?
- why is Robert coming to visit Ned?
- are we at the inciting action yet?


DAENERYS
NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!
Apparently, from what I can gather, 13-year-old Daenerys and her brother, Viserys, may or may not be descended from dragons. They have purple eyes, an affinity for dragons, and their family has copulated amongst siblings to "keep the family pure," or something; since dragons don't have sex with common farm animals, neither should the Targaryens. Apparently, Daenerys is about to break that cycle, because Viserys is about to marry her off to Khal Drogo, who is Dothraki. Viserys is marrying his 13-year-old sister to a man with an army because Viserys demands REVENGE. Since the Usurper and the Kingslayer had killed the Targaryen rulers (the parents of Dany and Viserys), Viserys can't get over the defeat and needs VENGEANCE. So he marries his 13-year-old sister off to a non-Targaryen with 40,000 warriors, because VENGEANCE.
Viserys also mentions that he would let his sister endure some very unpleasant sexual things if it meant getting the 40,000 warriors on his side.
I hope he gets smited. He seems like an ass.
I can see where Viserys is coming from - he's styled himself as a beggar king because he and Dany are essentially homeless after their entire family was killed, and it's EVERYONE ELSE'S FAULT. But, personally, I'd try not to alienate my only living relative before I got my 40,000-man army.

MENTIONED IN THIS CHAPTER:
Illyro of Pentos - master of one of the Nine Free Cities; current host to Daenerys and Viserys
The Usurper and the Kingslayer - the Kingslayer is Jamie Lannister (I think), who killed Dad Targaryen; the Usurper is Robert Barantheon, who took the throne later.
Ser Jorah Mormont - this is a knight amongst the Dothraki. Since this is a rare occurrence, I'm including him. He may become imporant.
Khal Drogo - Dany's future husband.

QUESTIONS:
- who are the Dothraki?
- Why is Ser Jorah among the Dothraki? What did he do to make the Usurper want his head?
- Why did he go to the Dothraki?
- How do the Dothraki feel about this?
- Will Viserys succeed?

New Shakespearean Information

The works of William Shakespeare can come off to a modern reader as some highbrow material that they hated reading in high school (and maybe college). It's not difficult to see why - we can barely understand the word order sometimes, much less why there has to be two second-person forms of address. How the crap did someone write everything in such a prolific manner and get the second-person pronouns right?

The short story is that Shakespeare was the master of stereotypes. He was writing for a theater company that put up six different shows a week, and not all of them were performed a second or third time. He had to write for his actors, because there was so little rehearsal time; unlike today, when actors have a few weeks to get inside the character's head, Shakespeare's actors had several hours of personal rehearsal time and only one or two group rehearsals total. They had to already be inside the character's head, so Shakespeare wrote characters based on the personality traits of his actors; similarly, the actors could play a prince or a pauper as long as the character had similar traits to him. One actor often played the Fool archetype, but he could do it differently than another actor. One actor played a Natural Fool, who is genuinely just stupid, and so Shakespeare wrote a bunch of Natural Fool characters throughout the plays for this one actor. When that actor left, Shakespeare needed to hire a new actor; the man he hired tended to play a Wise Fool - someone who acted stupid but who was truly insightful (think Touchstone from As You Like It).

It's hard to say whether or not Shakespeare is truly genius because of this. On one hand, the archetypal roles allowed Shakespeare to churn out dozens of plays; on the other hand, though there are some intentional parallels among the plays, there is still a formula to them.

Game of Thrones Post 1: Prologue and Chapter 1 (no POV and Bran)

SUMMARY OF PROLOGUE
There are three guys named Will, Gared, and Ser Waymar Royce, who are going through the forest. They are, apparently, members of the Night Watch. Will and Gared have lots of experience and Royce, an 18-year-old noble, doesn't have so much. Guess which one's in charge? (If you said "Gared the 50-something-year-old man who has over 40 years of experience and would be the logical choice to head something like this," guess again. If you guessed "the 18-year-old lordling," you are correct). Royce frustrates me. He's the sort of guy who might say things like "being scared is for sissies. Don't make a fire when it's well below freezing and there's snow on the ground. Fires are for sissies."
Of course, Royce is the first casualty in Game of Thrones. He is struck down by an "Other," which either kills him or turns him into a zombie-Other; it's hard to tell which. (Well, to be fair, you have to be dead to be a zombie, so maybe they killed him and made him a zombie-Other). What the crap is an "Other," anyway? I assume "Other" is capitalized because that's the name of the kind of creature - sort of like how Elves can be capitalized in Lord of the Rings. From what I can tell, the Others are some kind of super-deadly, super-mysterious ice monster thing.
At any rate, Royce is definitely the first to collapse, but he turns into an Other-type thing and kills Will. Gared is nowhere to be found.

QUESTIONS RAISED BY THE PROLOGUE:
1. WHY IS AN 18-YEAR-OLD NOOB GIVEN AUTHORITY OVER A 50-SOMETHING WITH 40 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE?
2. WHY DOESN'T SAID 18-YEAR-OLD NOOB RESPECT THE WISDOM OF SOMEONE WITH LITERALLY DECADES MORE EXPERIENCE?
3. WHAT THE CRAP IS AN "OTHER?"
4. WHERE THE CRAP IS GARED AT THE END?


BRAN'S CHAPTER
There are several Stark children - in this chapter, you know there are five (plus Jon Snow the bastard and Theo Greyjoy the ward), but you only meet Robb (14), Jon (14), and Bran (7); Rickon (3) is also mentioned. Ned Stark, the head of the family, has to kill some guy for treason. There's an interesting passage here about how kings become too separated from death if they hire out executioners.


SPOILER SIDE NOTE (highlight over the text to see what it says):
I find it interesting that Ned dies by execution. Not sure the circumstances, but keep that in mind.


END SPOILER SIDE NOTE

Anyway, at the end of the chapter Jon finds a litter of five abandoned direwolves. This may be significant because the sigil of the Stark household, Winterfell, is a direwolf. Jon finds himself an albino direwolf to take care of, and he and Robb insist that the kids are capable of raising the direwolves on their own. Ned agrees, so long as the kids do it and not anyone else.



QUESTIONS RAISED BY THIS CHAPTER:
1. Ned mentions to Bran that they are descended from the First People, or something like that. According to My Roommate the GoT History Buff, the First People are important because they're a different species of people than the rest of the world. Like Homo Erectus vs. Homo Sapiens, or something? Anyway, will this be explored?
2. Why are they trusting the care of direwolves to kids 14 and younger? They say themselves that direwolves are bigger than the normal wolves - possibly bigger than Bran's pony. Sure, they're only pups, but 3-year-old Rickon won't be able to actually direct the direwolf, and Ned said that none of the staff should be involved with the raising of the direwolves. HOW THE CRAP IS A 3-YEAR-OLD GOING TO RAISE A DIREWOLF?
3. What's the deal with Bran having to see the death?

On public gyms

I went home for a volunteer gig this weekend. While home, my mom and I pursued our quests for personal fitness by going to the community center to use the workout machines. I have no problem with this. I like this plan.

The part I always forget about public workout facilities is that they're public. Technically, there is nothing wrong with this. When I'm home, however, I'm used to running on trails in regional parks - outdoors and alone. The only real social courtesies you have to remember are to make sure the people ahead of you hear if you want to pass them, and not to let your dog poop on the trail without picking it up. However fast or slow you go is up to you - and you run into all speeds and skill levels.

Public gyms put everyone in the same room and add a social layer of visibility: no matter you fitness level or mile time, THEY CAN SEE YOU. Sometimes the only consolation I can offer myself on a bad day is that only God and I saw the whole run. When I'm in a public gym, though, I'm plagued by self-doubt - usually along the lines of "I bet that five-year-old chasing his dad around the track is running faster than me" and "I'm sure those teenagers playing basketball are secretly laughing at my lack of endurance" and "those gray-haired individuals probably think this 20-year-old is a wimp."

The thing is, most of those are probably untrue and are very self-centered. I dom't have any kids I have to look after, so I have many years of training to make sure I can keep up with any five-year-olds I may wind up having custody of. As judgmental as people can get, I'm pretty sure the teenagers and gray-haired people alike care more about their own games of basketball and badminton than they care about my mile time.

And yet, all the fears I have are directly proportionate to how many other people per square foot there are in the workout area. There are few times anyone else cares about my pace: to make sure they can get their basketball off the track before I (or any other runner) accidentally run them over, or when my mom is wondering when I'm done. So why do I care so much? The very fact that I'm priming my muscles for fitness should send the signal that I am working on being a physically viable member of the species, and that I am resisting the urge to sit on the couch and marathon Doctor Who with a bunch of yarn and cookies.  Maybe I'm scared that people would realize I sometimes prefer the TV-and-cookies route and call me an imposter?

In the end, though, nobody really cares. Just like in real life, be polite to people in the gym. And that's all. 

I'm back! AGAIN!

1. happy 2015! I'm excited to spend the new year here. I'm also excited to try and actually post on a regular schedule.
2. The third sentence of #1 was a lie. I'm not excited for many things schedule-related, but I'm doing the thing anyway.
3. It's time to unveil THE NEW 2015 POST SCHEDULE!!!!!!

I'm going to try and post three times a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Mondays are going to be THESE ARE OBSERVATIONS ABOUT LIFE. For example, it could involve Things I Did This Weekend, or I AM SO ANGRY AT THIS HIGH-PROFILE INCIDENT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT IT.
Wednesdays are going to be Read Game of Thrones with Wild Card. It will be my attempt to finally get through reading the books, so I might as well document it. I'm going to try to do a few chapters every week, starting with next week. Although the first book (and the first season of the TV show) have been out for a while, people laugh at me for being worried about spoilers; I don't care. In case you're concerned with Game of Thrones spoilers, as I am, please read the following: THERE WILL PROBABLY BE SPOILERS. TREAD CAUTIOUSLY ON WEDNESDAYS. I WILL TAG THE GAME OF THRONES POSTS, BUT I DON'T KNOW HOW TO BLOCK TAGS ON BLOGGER. PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
THIS HAS BEEN YOUR SPOILER ALERT.
Fridays will be something thematic, too - probably some sort of history thing that I'm curious about, or some story from my life that week.
Farewell til then!