The Tipsy Critics: Hamlet (Part 1)

The Corresponding Society is drunk to present a new semi-regular video feature for our blog, The Tipsy Critics. The premise of the videos will be pretty simple: writers Mae Saslaw and Lonely Christopher sit down to discuss works of classic literature over drinks (lots of drinks). For our inaugural video, which apparently is going to turn out to be a two-parter (we had sixty minutes of soused footage to edit down), we decided upon tackling the immortal classic Hamlet by William Shakespeare. A few drinks in, we also got around a bit to the Twilight movies, but it’s mostly Hamlet. So, Internet, here come the Tipsy Critics:

Tipsy Critics Present Hamlet, Part I from Mae Saslaw on Vimeo.

Play Records

We have discovered some new media related to recent dramatic endeavors of two familiar poet-dramatists, viz. Robert Snyderman and Lonely Christopher, who have both collaborated with others for productions of their own scenarios for the stage.
The first item is an audio recording of an event put on at Philadelphia’s Mostly Books. Robert Snyderman had previously presented the play he created --- with Lisandre Whitty, Gabrielle Doyon-Hanson, Chanelle Bergeron, and Christopher Sweeney --- as part of “The Institutionalized Theater presents a Night of Superstition and Intellect,” a run of three short plays at Red Hook’s Jalopy Theatre. Shortly thereafter The Fingertips of the Vital Blackbirds: A Ballad traveled to Philadelphia for a challenging performance in a bookstore (much different, logistically, from the theater it premiered in). The event also featured a reading by Ish Klein, author of Union!. The recording of this entire event can be found here!

Secondly, a video recording of the latest play by Lonely Christopher is now online; the play was given two performances in Alphabet City as part of the “Way of the Word: Poems to Plays” program, a collaboration between Republic Worldwide and Everywhere Theater. The play is titled Pages from a Course in General Linguistics; it was directed by Teddy Nicholas; the sound design was by Brendan Byrne; and the cast included T. Ramon Campbell (A), Tricia Cramer (B), and Kristopher W. Imperati (Z). To watch the videotaped version of the encore presentation, find it here!

Poems to Plays

from our friends at Republic Worldwide:

Way of the Word: Poems to Plays

April 5th, 2010
@ Bar On A
170 Avenue A, NYC

The first installment of REPUBLIC Worldwide presents: Way of the Word featured readings by poets inspired by timeless thinkers such as Saussure, Nietzsche and Walt Whitman. In an attempt to expound on the creative vision and unique interpretations of these renown masters of language, three of those original poems from Way of the Word have been transformed into three one act plays by the of the original authors.

Produced by Marissa Forbes and directed by the founding members of Everywhere Theatre Group, Way of the Word: Poems to Plays, promises to be a unique and entertaining evening of poetic theater beginning with Lonely Christopher's adaptation of "For Example" into "Pages from a Course in General Linguistics" directed by Teddy Nicholas, performed by T. Ramon Campbell, Tricia Cramer, and Kristopher W. Imperati, with sound by Brendan Bryne; followed by Marissa Forbes' "Scrabble (or Nietzsche)", directed by Chase Voorhees, performed by Dan Whalen and Mary Hynes, concluding with "Big Talk" by Katie Przybylski, directed by Leah Winkler, performed by David Wienhiemer, Nikki Dillion, Rachel Pearl, and Gary Ferrer.

Doors open at 8pm, performances begin at 8:30. The evening will conclude with a meet and greet with REPUBLIC Worldwide, the playwrights/poets, performers, and directors.

Way of the Word's first poetry anthology, featuring the poems transformed into plays and poems from around the nation will be available for purchase online and at the door for $10. Portions of the proceeds will be donated to Reading Excellence and Discovery (READ), a foundation that promotes literacy by pairing qualified high school tutors with elementary students who demonstrate below grade level reading skills.

Drink specials are provided by Bar On A from 8pm until 9pm. Bar On A (or B.O.A.) is located at 170 Avenue A, between 10th and 11th Streets, NYC.

For more information about Way of the Word, Everywhere Theatre Group, READ or Republic Worldwide please contact Jason Voegele or Marissa Forbes at info@republicworldwide.com, or call 443-528-6761.

Two Happenings

The following two events are not to miss:

The Corresponding Society Presents a Birthday Party

Saturday, March 27
7-9pm
at Unnameable Books
600 Vanderbilt Ave (at St. Marks), Brooklyn

This is a birthday party. There will be cake; the cake might be an inedible metaphor. There will be a triad of queer writers. There will be a confusion of forms, a conversation in problems, a bunch of shapes with sharp edges but lacking boundaries. The Corresponding Society presents a fun time in the basement of a bookstore, a queer party of documents on Lonely Christopher’s birthday, a parade of monsters and glamour galore. Let them eat the alphabet.

Featured Readers:

Marc Andreottola has been published in Lifted Brow, Ganymede, Killing the Buddha, 2010 Wilde Stories, K48, Dennis Cooper’s anthology of new writers, Userlands, and elsewhere. He had a play in the 2008 NY Fringe Festival that Time Out NY called “sick and bizarre”. He has an CDR of his electronic music being released by the Houston label, Disaro, under the name, Fostercare. He also does occult video art, which has been shown in Brooklyn, France and Minneapolis.

Ryan Doyle May's work has appeared in Almagre Literary Journal, Guilty As Charged, Bombay Gin, and Ganymede. His chapbook, The Anatomy of Gray is forthcoming on Corresponding Society Press. He has MFA in Creative Writing at The New School and blogs at thereckoningroom.blogspot.com.

Lonely Christopher is the birthday boy.

With! Master of ceremonies Rachel Levitsky (Under the Sun, Neighbor) and other birthday surprises!


The Institutionalized Theater Presents an Evening of Superstition and Intellect

3 New Plays! 3 Nights only!

The Jalopy Theater
315 Columbia Street
Brooklyn

"Reverie of the Succubus" by Jody Buchman
"Endymion Dreams the Moon" by Lonely Christopher
"Fingertips of the Vital Blackbirds: A Ballad" by Robert Snyderman et al.

March 28, 8pm
March 29, 7pm
March 30, 8pm
$5


Three new plays by the founding members of The Institutionalized Theater. The works share a commonality in the exploration of poetics, consciousness, superstition and intellect, but differ greatly in aesthetic and function.

The first, "Reverie of a Succubus," by Jody Buchman stars a castrated witch doctor. Passion, delirium and magic are confronted in this hallucinated poem. This play stars Jody Buchman as Pretty, and Lauren Buxten as the Succubus.

"Endymion Dreams the Moon" by Lonely Christopher is the second play. In this play some winsome teen poet insomniac (Andy Egelhoff) likes writing verse in the margin of wakefulness and dreams but lately can’t get a grasp on his surroundings as a pushy stranger (Simon Dooley) arrives memorializing his good looks and refusing to leave him alone. The stranger pronounces on matters of temporality, love, youth, and beauty, but might be a stalker obsessed with the confused kid. The truth threatens to emerge in unlikely places: a dream, outer space, and a hospital room in New Jersey.

Lisandre Whitty and Robert Snyderman wrote and will direct "Fingertips of the Vital Blackbirds: A Ballad" The Vital Blackbirds will be a drawing and a map of notes. Noisy souls within mute consciousness. Will take place within a traveler’s satchel. Will be the worn of the travel-worn satchel. Tales told from first-hand and second-hand experience. Will be a resistance to patience and to impatience. Will be North American. Will tell of a journey that did not end. The play features Actors/Musicians: Gabrielle Doyon-Hanson, Fareed Sajan, Chanelle Bergeron, Lisandre Whitty and Robert Snyderman

The Institutionalized Theater was founded in the year 2007 by Jody Buchman, Lonely Christopher, and Robert Snyderman. The concept behind the project was to provide a venue for young creative writers to explore a theatrical grammar developed from their emerging poetics and formal perspectives. The company was born at the Pratt Institute and operated turbulently under that academic rubric through several on-campus productions that became instant scandals and celebrations. Institutionalized programs have also appeared at the Bowery Poetry Club (including Today’s Vengeance by Robert Snyderman; Slump Boat Sway by A.E. Wilson; Retardo and Gay Play 1 by Lonely Christopher), the Ontological-Hysteric (Sleep Shit by Robert Snyderman), and other venues (I Am Happy and Gay Play 2 by Lonely Christopher). This evening of superstition and intellect marks the first time all three founding members have directed plays for the same event.

More info here.

Revenge Hamlet!

Hamlet’s Dad from Hell
a terrific misreading
by Lonely Christopher

The villain of Hamlet is the ghost: a spectral dad beckoning his entire family to murder. Hamlet basically: a supernatural revenge thriller where some fancy-costumed royalty frown and yell in a haunted castle before they all kill each other. Every bad thing happens in the play because of the ghost, who is already menacing some poor sentinels at the very outset. Admittedly, the ghost (who undeniably exists, that is he’s not hallucinated, according to the play’s dramatic logic) happened to become so phantomy because he was murdered. Withal, the regicidal villain (his bro, ouch) forthwith assumed his victim’s crown and wife. Unfortunately for undead Old Hamlet, he was a prayer shy of heaven thus imprisoned as a disappointed wraith. Still, to apply a worn axiom, two wrongs don’t make a right. Demanding his melancholy son to perform unspecified revenge (hint: probably stabbing) has no nutritional value outside restoring nominal moral order to the court. (Restoring morality when nobody realizes the crime even happened would mean, for most involved, having to create the problem in order to solve it.) The ghost doesn’t think about the consequences and doesn’t want Hamlet to tarry either. His spooky instructions aren’t very helpful (not to mention delivered with Satanic theatrics that end up traumatizing his son) --- and even if Hamlet had immediately followed through in deposing Claudius (in such a way that was recognized as just by all), the political result would probably include being conquered by Norway. Claudius had to poison his own brother to achieve the crown, but he was diplomatically competent enough to do so in such a way that nobody suspected his crime; he also seemed to be expertly managing/resolving the threat of foreign invasion --- Hamlet doesn’t have very mature problem solving skills and, considering his mental illness withal (that is, melancholia not his fake antic disposition), his future as a leader is suspect. We know Old Hamlet was brave in combat, but if he was as reckless alive as dead, maybe Denmark ended up better off with Claudius. After “stealing” the vacant throne from Hamlet by being elected, Claudius is a little worried about further hurting his sensitive nephew’s feelings (hence telling him to drop out of school the better to be monitored at home), but otherwise he treats Hamlet like a stepfather who just wants to be liked. Meanwhile, Hamlet’s real dad is back from hell (okay, purgatory), lurking around battlements, and haunting his son screeching terrible, unfounded accusations and demands for revenge. Horatio warns that the ghost might be a disguised devil --- the kind that has fun driving melancholiacs to madness before pushing them off cliffs (it was a different time). Even if the ghost is honest that doesn’t stop him from causing a far bloodier end than a crazy leap off a cliff. Some claim that this is a play about skepticism. Olivier famously introduced his film version as a story about a man who couldn’t make up his mind. The thematic scope is larger, though, because Hamlet agonizes over more than critical indecision. The problem is so much more enormous than helping a ghost --- the problem is the nature of the ghost attack itself. When dad visits him from his nether-universe of negation, Hamlet’s brain comes unstuck from the dramatic context of this royal thriller and everything problematizes doing anything (he’s dissociated). Hamlet dearly hopes, once shuffled off this mortal coil, the rest is silence --- after his transfiguration into a failure hero, all the mental torture, and having caused the death of almost everybody around him (including two women he loved), there better be a universe of nothing but silence waiting because the joke just keeps getting worse if he ends up burning with dad in purgatory. We’ve Old Hamlet’s posthumous bad parenting to thank for the mess that makes up the play (without the ghost the action would be limited to Hamlet moping around Elsinore whining about how slutty his mom is); the revenge hungry spook is the foundational conceit of the narrative progression. Hamlet goes kind of crazy (offstage and hatless) over the problem of the ghost’s nature and purpose. He wonders if the figure of his father is a spirit of health or goblin damned. The former doesn’t really fit, considering the suicide mission the ghost pushes Hamlet into; whether demon or dead king the apparition has no concern for Hamlet’s wellbeing --- he wants to be remembered, damn it, and avenged! --- and only pokes his floaty head into the action once more to threaten to spank Hamlet for wasting time in killing more of the court (he’s not too happy about the boy slapping his mother around, either, more evidence of his selective morality). If he just slept on it another night maybe the ghost would have given Hamlet different advice: “I’m upset your uncle killed me for my wife and crown --- not to mention before my sins were forgiven, so I’m a damn ghost purging my misdeeds in flame most of the day --- but since we didn’t get to talk before brain-melting distilment was poured in my ear porches, I just want you to know I love ya. I realize you expected to be my heir when I died, but don’t let it get you down; first of all, the king is elected by popular vote, so you would have had to campaign (no fun), and also you’re still a teenager and way more interested in demonology and theater than international politics --- maybe one day, kid. And hey: I know she let us down, but take care of your mom, that slut, and be nice to your girlfriend because she’s fragile --- oh, and stay in school. Also, no big deal, but please at some point kill your uncle. Eye for an eye, right? But only when you feel ready.” Oh well! Old Hamlet wasn’t the only problem father of the play. Fortinbras’ dad was irresponsible enough to get killed (by Old Hamlet no less) in a macho land gamble and Polonius messed his daughter the fuck up and paid a spy to follow his son while spreading rumors he likes prostitutes. These hapless children, following Hamlet’s example, idolized their fathers even when doing so played directly into harm that the fathers were usually responsible for. Polonius is a real jerk to Ophelia (at least way overprotective), but she continues to love him so much that when he’s killed she goes crazy, falls out of a tree, and drowns. Fittingly, the bloodbath finale begins with a showdown between two kids with dead dads, both after bloody revenge. At that point Hamlet’s heart isn’t even in it anymore; he just wants to get it over with already. And: everyone dies. Except Horatio, he survives everybody and, coincidentally, never mentions his father the whole play.

This Is Going To Be Fun

Here is an announcement about an exciting event coming soon to Brooklyn’s Unnameable Books (one of the city’s best literature merchants, which, incidentally, stocks all three titles of the Corresponding Society’s “No Know” chapbook series, fyi):

Gay Play 3
a new play by Lonely Christopher
presented in a dramatic reading at Unnameable Books
25 September, that is Friday, 8pm, free and one night only!
600 Vanderbilt (at St Marks), Brooklyn

This is going to be fun. Lonely Christopher presents a dramatic reading of the third installment in his internationally produced Gay Play trilogy. Gay Play 3 is something like a closet opera about queer history, shortly before Stonewall, made into a soupy meal using leftovers of Beckett, “The Boys in the Band,” a textbook on structuralism, and Greek tragedy. One day it will be staged entirely in an inflatable pool. Each entry in the trilogy is a standalone piece; familiarity with the previous installments is not required for enjoyment. Gay Play 1 was first staged last summer at the Bowery Poetry Club, Gay Play 2 premiered in dual Mandarin/English productions this August in ChengDu, China, and this event marks the first ever presentation of Gay Play 3.

a dramatic reading featuring:
Jake Abrams
Taylor Derwin
Sam Kline
& Lonely Christopher

A Night at the Opera

Richard Foreman’s and John Zorn’s Astronome
by Lonely Christopher



A note from Richard Foreman: “Most theater and film offers narrative examples of how human beings navigate daily life --- either mundane or extreme situations. I admit this doesn’t interest me.” The divorce of theater from mimesis has such severity here that that statement is comically brusque. In Foreman’s work, the signification of all the elements of theater aren’t clumsy methods for reaching some meaning that the signification is supposed to jab at while simultaneously obstructing somewhat. The audience wants to get behind the mechanics of signification as if there is anything there. The man with a puffy stomach and green face sticks his tongue out and points to it. A figure enters with a grandfather clock on his back; presently he is curtained with a sheet held by two others. The audience is being shown nonrepresentational activities, which is actually uncomfortable but fascinating: we want these unfolding disclosures to transparently deliver us to a signified, a narrative, an objective correlative. Foreman makes everything available on the surface. This is not a theater of deceit or misdirection --- it is not rude/silly either (unlike, maybe, Offending the Audience). The audience is told beforehand that John Zorn’s music will begin five minutes into the performance --- it does. This anticipatory gesture imbues all the creaks and swishing incidental noises with serious import before the score kicks in to drown them out with Zorn’s self-aware, heavy metal racket. There isn’t much silence thereafter, or talking. I only remember one line of dialog, repeated maybe twice by the same woman, something like: “Hi! I believe everything that comes out of a human mouth.” The drama is an accumulation of mimed negotiations. What happens is not choreography: rarely do the actors seem to have any awareness of the score. Foreman explains: “John’s music, alternately calm and intense, presents a challenging occasion within which I have tried to situate my own aesthetic program.” A play like this goes maybe about as far into nondenotative territory achievable within the form. I am almost amazed it never comes off as tacky or facile. I read the reason for its success in Foreman’s mention of an “aesthetic program,” the rubric under which all aspects of his theater are organized --- this provides relationships between everything. Get with the program: Astronome runs through April 5 at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater of St Mark’s Church, details here.

Pigeons on the Grass, Alas

All Saints
Re an opera to be sung: the recent staged oratorio version of Four Saints in Three Acts presented at the CUNY Graduate Center as part of an event celebrating the 75th anniversary of its Broadway premiere
by Lonely Christopher



Gertrude Stein is not known for her libretti, but her first collaboration with composer Virgil Thomson, Four Saints in Three Acts makes radical use of the operatic form and, paradoxically, was popularly received on Broadway in 1934. The night before I became accidentally aware of a program, at the CUNY Graduate Center, dedicated to the opera, I fell asleep --- drunk, wearing shoes --- listening to The Mother of Us All, Stein’s opera about Susan B. Anthony. Hungover at work in the morning, I happened to read a notice about this daylong event that was already in progress and would conclude with an oratorio performance of Four Saints in the evening. I abandoned my employment and got on the subway. The train is where I remember reading Tender Buttons for the first time. Stein has been the most important writer to me for years --- curiously, only recently did I find and begin to listen to recordings of the two operas. My avoidance was casual, encouraged by what little critical treatment of the project I’d read. I became aware of Four Saints from a biography of Stein that described it as rightly ignored because the conservative music (churchy and juvenile, even) didn’t match the radical text; Alex Ross, in his survey of music in the 20th century, dismisses the opera as silly and the original production as racist. The Broadway run featured an all-black cast, which was unheard of then. Virgil Thomson failed to articulately explain this decision, but Ross’ reaction is embarrassingly starchy. The singular concept, with its historical significance, can be understood as problematic or liberatory. Accusations of insensitivity aren’t helped by Stein’s cringingly worded opinion: “I still do not like the idea of showing the Negro bodies.” I’m aware of some alternative critical perspectives that are more thoughtful: the hypothesis that that aspect resulted from white composers’ hip admiration of black culture and/or blackness characteristic of the musical climate of the time (Show Boat and Porgy and Bess are examples of this tendency, maybe) and then a queer reading positing the otherness of the black saints as a locum tenens for the outsider position of homosexuals (which both collaborators could only address using the encoded conceits of the closet). Regardless, the whole project was so bizarre that its status as Broadway hit seems impossibly uncanny --- black saints arranged in tableaus on a set wrapped in cellophane and fabric (to abstractly represent Spain), no narrative progression, and sung text such as, “Letting pin in letting let in let in in in in in let in let in wet in wed in dead in dead wed led in led wed dead in dead in led in wed in said in said led wed dead wed dead said led led said wed dead wed dead led in led in wed in wed in said in wed in led in said in dead in dead wed said led led said wed dead.” The success dates from a period where Stein received general recognition (long awaited) for her bestselling memoir, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas: she returned to America for a sensational lecture tour, saw her name in lights in Times Square, was the subject of intense national press coverage as well as innumerable jokes and references (the theme of a department store window display was based on the opera’s title; New Yorker cartoons poked respectful fun at her; a headline announced her arrival stateside, accompanied by her “secretary,” describing her as the author whom few comprehend). Her celebrity was partly serious but also the product of bemusement; today it’s inconceivable. She’s now relegated to a specialized corner of academia, as evidenced by the program of lectures and panel discussions leading up to the performance at the Graduate Center. The audience was small and old; the organizers and participants were critics, writers, scholars, curators, &c. --- all with major Stein related projects. The woman who introduced everyone is the author of a book (which looks rather self-published, egotistic, and is printed in a really tacky narrow sans serif font) mostly about a libretto she wrote about Gertrude. The atmosphere was one of esoteric devotion (I wondered if Ulla Dydo was there): at one point I witnessed a scholar (who is preparing a book on Stein as well as related curatorial work) itemizing a display of memorabilia that was provided by a private collector (who was there, proudly assisting her list making). Eventually people who had never written a book/thesis/libretto (or even an essay or blog entry) about Stein arrived for the oratorio performance and the recital hall was filled to capacity. I sat between individuals who, like me, were clearly alone: a lady who produced the text of the libretto and read along the entire time and a man who chuckled at almost everything. I am not a frequent concertgoer --- and when I manage it the circumstances usually find me stuck at the upsetting remove of the fifteen buck standing room seats at the Met (never try that) or sitting in the second mezzanine directly behind a large pole at BAM --- so I appreciated the intimacy afforded by the space. The stage just fit the orchestra, choir, and principal singers (and left no room for the three dancers) --- when the concert began, the startling and waltz-like opening blurts struck me like a vehicle; the sound had presence/immediacy that the album hadn’t educated me in or, to start, prepared me for (and yet the sung imploration is to “prepare for saints”). I understand how Thomson’s style could be derided as simplistic and insubstantial, but that’s also a common complaint about Stein --- I think nothing of it in that example because my enjoyment of her has metastasized in earnest (I’m helpless: it’s a final property). When the music began I wasn’t intellectualizing, I was silently allowing for the pulverizing relationship between what I heard and that I heard. Unfortunately the epiphanic and teary amazement of the opening wasn’t sustainable under the circumstances, although I don’t know if it’s valid to complain that a performance failed to constantly make me feel that the only tense is the present and that I am made of pure light. The whole thing was indescribably enjoyable, although the minimal dramatization was questionably staged and there were several annoying glitches. The director apparently began her career with an early production of The Mother of Us All. I’ve been listening more to The Mother of Us All lately than Four Saints although it’s less complete/resounding and, compared to the unlikely novelty of the earlier collaboration, of a much more conservative bent (imagine Stein writing a celebratory scene, the music patriotic and march-like, with the lines, “The vote! The vote! The women have the vote! They have it each and every one. It is glorious! glorious! glorious!”). The recent preferment of the second opera is sort of shallowly motivated --- The Mother of Us All is way catchier. The director’s history with Thomson wasn’t demonstrated in this staging, unfortunately: the sentimental smiles forcefully plastered on the singers’ faces quickly turned creepy/sinister, the costumes looked like pageant robes borrowed from the basement of a Midwestern church, the lead baritone had some vocal trouble and generally seemed wrong, a stage door kept slipping open and accidentally revealing a wheelchair ramp, and corny images (possibly the results of hurried Google image searches for “sky” and “water droplets”) were projected insincerely on the upstage wall. Regardless, nothing could prevent Four Saints from actualizing its avant-garde gorgeousness. Many will never experience this opera as originally presented --- or as later interpreted by Robert Wilson --- but the opportunity of even a weakly dramatized oratorio abridgement provides an uncommon profit after being restricted to on an old vinyl recording transferred to digital format. Four Saints doesn’t operate according to operatic convention --- it is a pageant exemplifying the holiness of that which “makes it be not be makes it not be at the time. The time that it is as well as it could be leave it when when it was to be that it was to be when it was went away.” Which is a fact.

Shakespeare & Failure

The Drama Club
or, Hamlet is cancelled and the kid director feels sorry and low
by Lonely Christopher

Preface,
Everything is the same failure. The moon landing was filmed underwater in the wreckage of the sunken Titanic. I’ve only ever seen two episodes of “Seinfeld”: the last one and the one that takes place in a parking garage.

A Pathetic Variorum,
Shakespeare is hegemony. Shakespeare is a monolithic prayer. We were born in love with Shakespeare. Shakespeare was bald and gay. Shakespeare was a black woman. What is foundational about Shakespeare? Shakespeare is our vocabulary. Shakespeare is an interesting subject for a new critical study. What is Shakespearean? Shakespeare is encoded with secret messages. Shakespeare is a teenager taking the retarded kid from her gym period to junior prom. We can’t help Shakespeare. Shakespeare isn’t responsible. Shakespeare is a cathedral. Shakespeare is Palestine. Shakespeare is the periodic table of elements. There is no language without Shakespeare. Shakespeare freed the slaves. Shakespeare voted for Proposition Eight. Shakespeare ran over the neighbor’s dog backing out of the driveway on the way to the airport. Shakespeare is someone else. Shakespeare is my document. Shakespeare is a federal prison. Shakespeare is pedophilic sex tourism. Shakespeare is not plural; Shakespeare is a wedding. Shakespeare is nothing. What is reading Shakespeare? Shakespeare’s name is unpronounceable. Shakespeare is a lady’s magazine. Shakespeare is a gun cabinet. Shakespeare is modern medicine. I am going to murder myself by jumping off Shakespeare into the cold river far below. Shakespeare is an English poet and playwright and he wrote Hamlet and King Lear. I sat on a sofa with a girl and she said her brother said Shakespeare hated me. Shakespeare is a divorce lawyer. Shakespeare is Helen Keller wearing a dress soaked in kerosene. Shakespeare is my definition. Shakespeare is our hometown. Shakespeare is a perfect example. Shakespeare is some puffy engine, a cereal box. Shakespeare is the information. We understand Shakespeare. This is a lesson in Shakespeare. Shakespeare is exhausted. When will Shakespeare not matter? Shakespeare is logical pornography. Shakespeare is the military. Shakespeare is the woods outside of town. Shakespeare isn’t out of the woods yet, kids. Shakespeare is terrorism. As far as Shakespeare goes: we liked his early stuff, you know, before he sold out. Shakespeare is a happy camper. Shakespeare is collectable commemorative plates. Shakespeare is a peasant woman watching her only child starve in a gray ditch. Shakespeare is the shape we’re in. I don’t know.

The VHS Bin,
Kenneth Branagh weeps when he gets a new haircut. Kenneth Branagh recites the Gettysburg Address with a belt tightened around his neck. Kenneth Branagh’s spine hurts from carrying a writing desk up ten flights of stairs to the roof. Kenneth Branagh pours salt water into his morning tea. The audience applauds and turns into the film “Jurassic Park” and its first sequel. Lawrence Olivier wipes the shoe polish off his face with the bed sheets; the juicy red flesh inside his mouth is a spooky punctuation mark. Lawrence Oliver bullies a journalist into omitting from a forthcoming article any mention of his having fathered a severely autistic daughter he keeps in a home for invalids and never visits. Lawrence Oliver is an old queen, wearing too much eye makeup, hunched unnoticed at the far end of the bar, nursing a warm Cherry Coke, wincing at the pretty boys all around the joint. Lawrence Oliver makes the waitresses on the breakfast shift uncomfortable. Lawrence Oliver enters pirouetting and fucks his mom, shoving lace curtains down her throat; he goes to sleep presently and has an obvious dream. There are fingerprints blanketing the crime scene like recent snowfall over a yellow prairie of rape. Ethan Hawke dropped out of college in the second semester of his junior year as a political science major. Ethan Hawke prints out a picture of a Nintendo Gameboy from 1998 that he found on the Internet; he tapes it above his bed, which is plastic and shaped like a racecar. Mel Gibson is a dump truck or a sort of plow, some yellow machinery for moving heavy objects around a construction site. Mel Gibson barfs football jocks of stupidly digested scenery during the Christmas pageant. Mel Gibson masturbates to drawings of the character Storm in some wrinkled X-Men comics. Mel Gibson touches his girlfriend’s face like it’s a lump of greasy ham; he doesn’t know what her vulva is. I make unimportant decisions for my friends when they are asleep or in the other room. This house is on fire and burning to the ground. Everything we learn becomes tacky in retrospect; nobody knew what to do when the pregnant farmer’s daughter miscarried an ugly pink germy thing in the parking lot during the lawn social. The town was sick of tire fires and gay bashings. Disneyland was built on an Indian graveyard.

My Dying Voice,
Shakespeare is a tuxedo worn at an awards ceremony. My Hamlet presupposes the tragic end by not happening. This fancy language remains dumped inside my friends’ brains like a baby abandoned inside a parked car, windows rolled, on a hot summer day: the mother on her way to the tattoo parlor before she gets on the bus, her purse fat with nylon stockings and snack cakes. I couldn’t read a clock until after the second grade. I didn’t write this. I made my friends move around in light; I was allowed because I made a play make promises. We don’t have the kind of insurance that covers this scenario. My defeat is a swimming pool filled with the public education system. I don’t care: I want a Shakespeare. The text doesn’t end. My failures are the corpse of a daughter; I carry her, bringing the body in. I edit my victims. I am a drear, greedy murder suspect. I choke on my tongue until a bloody soup gurgles up in my throat. I pray you undo this button. The undone can’t be undone, nothing can be made from nothing. My conclusion is wrapped ingloriously in my nervous system like a dangerous coloring book. A sparrow drops from the firmament and splatters on the pavement in front of Wal-Mart. I watch her pretty guts stain her feathers and bleed around bits of gravel. She’s dead as earth. Do you see this? Look there, look there:

What Is The Bad Quarto?

As The Institutionalized Theater continues to build our production of Hamlet, I continue to write notes and ideas on both the play and this project as a way to develop my directorial approach. The following is an essay I wrote in the summer (around the time we moved out of the research phase and toward production) as a way to clarify textual matters. I was frequently asked what my “take” on Hamlet was --- my first answer was that we’re doing The Bad Quarto, which usually prompted a second question re what that meant. I wrote an essay focused on the textual complexities of Hamlet so I wouldn’t have to repeat my explanation awkwardly every time the question arose. I was going to use this essay in the show’s programme, but I think I’ve decided it’s too detailed for that purpose. Here it is:

A Document in Variance
by Lonely Christopher

Works titled The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark were printed in different editions in the form of the quarto, comparable to a paperback, and the folio, often not dissimilar from thicker books of Shakespeare’s collected plays, most notably from 1603 to 1623; of all the extant texts three primary variants are remarkably distinguished: the First Quarto, the Second Quarto, and the First Folio. All three are accredited to Shakespeare, and insist upon legitimacy, but the disparities amongst them are so profound that it’s impossible to conceive of one cohesive and uncomplicated text representative of the impregnable, quintessential Hamlet. Hamlet is plural; it is a congregation of sources, manuscripts, editorial influences, and cultural perspectives. The Second Quarto (1605), which in content comfortably resembles the popular understanding of a “definitive” Hamlet, most likely derives from an authorial manuscript (foul papers). The especially complicated late Folio edition (1623) probably originates from a different source; in content it is seven percent unique, although ten percent of the Second Quarto’s dialog is absent from it. The First Quarto (1603), which we are using as a script for this production, is the most radically different and is seventy-nine percent shorter than the Second Quarto. The sources for Shakespeare’s Hamlet include anterior material such as a Nordic tale recorded in Latin circa 1200 CE by Saxo Grammaticus --- maybe by way of Francois de Belleforest’s Histoires Tragique --- aspects of Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, and the indefinable lost Ur-Hamlet of which little is known besides it must have existed (though it is posited by some that Kyd was the likely author). In those preceding works the broad outlines of our Hamlet are discernable --- though the blunt tropes of storytelling have yet to be rendered poetically ambiguous and complex by Shakespeare. The extensive accumulations of pertinent data are manipulated by editors until a recognizable Hamlet is wrought from heterogeneous texts. In the introduction to Arden’s new two-volume Hamlet, Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor summarize the ways in which the data can be presented for a general readership: “1. A photographic, or diplomatic, facsimile of a particular copy of a particular printed book [...]; 2. An old-spelling, or modernized, edition of such a copy of Hamlet; 3. An old-spelling, or modernized, edition of an ‘ideal’ [...] printed edition of a text [...]; 4. An old-spelling, or modernized, edition of the reconstructed text of a lost manuscript assumed to lie behind a printed edition [...]; 5. An old-spelling, or modernized, edition of a play (e.g. Shakespeare’s Hamlet).” A common production title Hamlet uses an idealized conflation of the Second Quarto and Folio; abridging it to a standard play length by excising dialog, scenes, and whole plot threads. The First Quarto constitutes the initial appearance in print of a play --- accredited to William Shakespeare --- titled The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, but what it is exactly is unconcluded. It entered the discourse of textual scholarship in 1823 when it was “discovered,” but a satisfactory explanation of its existence has never been reached. An early popular theory was that it is an altogether different play beside the other Hamlets attributed to Shakespeare --- an adaptation of another source text entirely. The story is more similar in minutiae to the Second Quarto than the Nordic tale, but certain names and aspects of narrative, not to mention dialog, are drastically unlike the canonized idea of Hamlet. Another mostly discounted theory is that the First Quarto represents an embarrassing first draft of what would eventually be crafted into Shakespeare’s “true” Hamlet --- or that it’s even the Ur-Hamlet itself. The fashionable theory, which has given rise to the accusation that the text is a bad quarto reflecting poor authorial fidelity, is that this version of the play is a memorial reconstruction. An actor (most likely he who played Marcellus and Voltemar judging by how closely his lines resemble the dialog of the other texts) wrote down what he remembered of the play and sold it to be printed first for his own gain. Thus the consequent Second Quarto is understood as a correction and usurpation of the initial edition; an effort that presumably reflects much more authorial fidelity. It is surprising to a modern reader how unstable all of the extant material is. For example, in the Second Quarto Hamlet is considered by others a youthful student until his age is remarkably revealed to be thirty in the last act, whereas the Bad Quarto features a reasonably teenaged Hamlet. Additionally, though the title Claudius is traditionally given to the character of the King it is doubtful that any conception of Shakespeare as a singular and historical author ever thought of the King with that name. Claudius is only named as such once at the beginning of the Second Quarto and the Folio and thereafter only referenced by his position; in the Bad Quarto he is never given a name at all. When one remembers that, in the Second Quarto, eventually an attendant mentions to the King a character named Claudio, the practice of calling the King Claudius seems more like an editorial imposition based on a printer’s quirk than the reflection of one definitive play. In the Bad Quarto many of the names are what might generally be considered “nonstandard.” Our Queen Gertred, Ofelia and her father Corambis, and Montano all suggest a Hamlet as the Shakespearean manifestation of antecedent stories of Hamnet, or Hamblet, or Amleth, or Amlodi. While the names Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are, rendered thus, widely recognizable they actually represent editorially systematized interpretations --- whereas in the three major versions of the play those specific names vary significantly even within each individual text in a way resulting from and illustrating the non-codified spelling of Elizabethan drama that is almost always modernized in print. In the Bad Quarto the dialog is abbreviated and less poetic --- scenes are shuffled, revised in another context, abridged, and deleted withal. Scene fourteen, in which Horatio clandestinely plots with the Queen, is notorious because it is found in no other version. In the Bad Quarto, opportunities to confront the play’s textuality are significant and unique. Threadbare edges of the material present interpretive challenges that must be met with ardent conceptualism. After I confronted the badness of the Bad Quarto, it was given out that this misfit Hamlet, while unpopular and estranged, seems superlative in is freakishness. Hamlet refuses to cohere into something neatly definitional or a successful “organic whole” expressing an “objective correlative” --- through the lens of postmodernity the “real figure” of the greatest writer ever (the author of humanity according to Bloom) seems untranslatable; ergo I posit that we can now say Shakespeare are authors. I think through that statement much more available surface area of the work is discoverable. As Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor wrote in the introduction to the new Arden Hamlet, “If by ‘Hamlet’ we mean a public representation of a ‘Hamlet’ narrative --- that is, a story involving a character called Hamlet who has some continuity of identity with the Amlodi figure of Nordic myth --- then these three texts are just three ‘expressions’ of Hamlet out of the infinite number of Hamlets which have or could have come into existence.” The textual and narrative multiplicity of data that are available to an interpreter can enable a reaching toward the Shakespearean infinite space.

Upon Directing Hamlet

Tom Newman: Hamlet isn't just Hamlet. Oh no, no, no. Oh, no. Hamlet is me. Hamlet is Bosnia. Hamlet is this desk. Hamlet is the air. Hamlet is my grandmother. Hamlet is everything you ever thought about sex, about geology…

Joe Harper: Geology?

Tom Newman: In a very loose sense, or course.

--- from Kenneth Branagh’s In the Bleak Midwinter

I’ve never seen the film in which the above lines are delivered but, out of context, they seem to me to address the greatness of Hamlet. The exchange not only suggests the multiplicity of the play but also the meta-textual arena through which we must experience it. Hamlet isn’t singularly profound according to an “objective” literary valuation --- we make it great (I couldn’t decide whether to italicize “we” or “make” right there). Appreciation of Shakespeare’s writing is often directed (imposed?) by academic context but, better looked into, the apparatus of valuation becomes as complicated and informative as the work (in its “central” position --- though I use the idea of centrality tentatively because the two aspects that perpetuate the text are probably inseparable and centrifugal). As a director I have developed an approach to Hamlet that I’m now applying through performance; I have come to understand that unqualified awe must be eschewed with deconstructive rigor in a movement toward significant awareness of the play. Since actors that I work with tend to be more comfortable with a process reliant on psychological causality and empathy it’s a challenge to expect them to be able to apply conceptualism that dislodges a motivational approach. Example: my sense of the “character” of Hamlet, developed by protracted close readings through various critical lenses, became more of a critique of coherent identity (or a positive recasting of Eliot’s complaints predicated on an attachment to an “objective correlative”) that reinterpreted Hamlet’s conflict as a schizophrenic fragmentation of selves unable to properly conflate within the dramatic context of the play. That’s a terribly devilish, maybe nearly impossible, intellectualization to ask an actor to viscerally express. Yet, according to a formalist reading, performative identity is a major theme. It’s not a matter of striking a balance between the soldier, courtier, and scholar that are remarked to be all in him --- Hamlet must also be an intertextual being; he must somehow also be this desk. One of the many stylistic/thematic choices we’ve made in rehearsals is to represent Yorrick’s skull with a large mirror that Hamlet stands in front of as he recites his famous lines --- upon considering death’s invalidation of personal existence Hamlet is facing not only a reflection of himself but of the entire audience seated behind him. The thematic conflation that constitutes the skull unfolds into a visualized network of meaning that encompasses not just the fictive situation of the drama but also the context of the production itself. This is the most challenging project I have ever attempted in my life. Although I work often as an (autodidactic) director, I am a writer, both by vocation and education, and feel most operational when embracing the gifts of solitude and interiority that practitioners of my craft tend to put to best use. The collaborative plane on which theater occurs messily affronts my abilities of artistic expression in ways both destabilizing and engaging. The writer’s struggle is private and intellectual while the director’s is discursive and interpersonal. In rehearsal the other day I had to instruct an actor how to move as slow as possible across the stage, without ever standing still, while carrying a very heavy and gnarled tree trunk on his back and delivering lines --- the experience, uncannily, felt like a literalized rendition of the introverted endeavor of the writer in a way that used the interactive grammar of performance. The aspect of theater that I most enjoy when I direct is watching and shaping the relational movement of bodies and beings articulating a text in exciting ways. While watching actors find their way through the material and across the stage with each other, when it really works, I sometimes find myself unable to remain still and begin to pace eagerly in the shadows where I attentively observe. Putting on Hamlet is a way of becoming Hamlet; maybe that’s as much a part of the thing as reading it and thinking about it.

(Lonely Christopher, web editor.)

Theater on YouTube and in Long Island City

YouTube Follies

Something I forgot to mention was that the Institutionalized Theater, an affiliate with this very press, presented two one-act plays at The Bowery Poetry Club at the end of August. Gay Play, written and directed by this self-same web editor, was unfortunately not recorded for posterity⎯but the other piece, Slump Boat Sway, was filmed on some sort of cheap digital camera and is now available online. The monologue was directed by (presumed Corresponding Society member) A.E. Wilson and features performances by Lonely Christopher and MK Chillemi. Although the image is pixilated to the point of abstraction and the sound quality is so poor it sounds like I have a serious speech impediment, interested parties are yet welcomed to check it out at the following links: Part I, Part II, & Part III. And since I am on the subject of video clips of Institutionalized performances that are available on YouTube, I might as well mention some older material as well. The following clips are from our very first show (which was a scrappy endeavor that ended up the subject of at least one major scandal) that culminated in a cacophonic madhouse of a dramatic event called Morning Morning, conceived by Corresponding Society member and Poem Shop writer Robert Snyderman. You can watch the end here: Part I & Part II. It’s peculiar how much stuff ends up on this YouTube. Somebody even took the time to post a video of me tripping over a difficult poem after somebody set a camera flash off in my face at a Small Anchor Press reading a while back (though I won’t post the link to that out of embarrassment). Of course YouTube is all well and good, but I would recommend UbuWeb, an archive of avant-garde materials managed by Kenneth Goldsmith. PennSound, directed by Charles Bernstein and Al Filreis, is also a tremendously valuable resource.

With Golden Thread on One End



This isn’t really related to matters of the Corresponding Society or its affiliates, but certainly worth mentioning. I am currently working as an Assistant Stage Manager on a play, presented at The Chocolate Factory (it’s in Queens!), titled 1965UU. It’s by Mac Wellman, directed by Steve Mellor, and stars Paul Lazar. The show is basically a monologue; the text is quite dense and linguistically tangled, but it still manages to be playful, marvelously humorous, and ultimately profoundly ruminative. The show is running Thursdays through Saturdays until October 4th⎯go see it. For the occasional reader who (for whatever inexcusable reason) does not live in New York City (it’s okay if you don’t live in Queens, Queens is weird), I wholly recommend picking up a copy of Wellman’s collection The Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds (from which 1965UU is adapted). The book is among the few that make me feel a little better about the state of contemporary short fiction (the only other two that occur to me right now are selected bits of Gary Lutz and Girl with Curious Hair by the recently departed David Foster Wallace). Working with the likes of Mac, Steve, and Paul has been a really exciting and beneficial experience for me. Here’s a picture of Paul in costume as the ingenuous Dr. Ravenello: