Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Becoming Bottom

Puck the fairy and Bottom the weaver who's turned into a donkey by Puck are the outstanding characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and several girlettes want to play the two roles.
So we're having multiples.
Why not?

FrankColumbo immediately popped on the strainer I'd brought home from metal recycling:
Donkey ears!

I'm fine with remixing Shakespeare--most of his stuff was revisioned material too.

Russell T Davies (of Doctor Who) tweaked AMND for the BBC in 2016.
In a Guardian interview, "It sounds like a sex version of Midsummer Night's Dream. And it's not", he explains:

In the original script, all the women at some point refer to killing themselves.
“But I refuse to transmit those lines now.
In 2016 I’m not having lovelorn women say they’ll kill themselves. I’m not putting that on BBC1; I absolutely refuse. Because I hope young girls will be watching this, and I don’t think it’s an appropriate thing to say – ‘I love you so much, if you don’t love me I’ll kill myself.’
I think that’s untransmittable, I’m not having it.”

He also changes the ending to give the two powerful women a fitting finale:
In the original, the fairy queen Titania caves into Oberon, and the Amazon Hippolyta is forcibly wed her enemy Theseus. In Davies's version, instead the women (are fairies women?) end up kissing each other.

Davies says:

"We shouldn’t start having headlines about a lesbian kiss – because it’s better than that.
[Theseus is an Athenian fascist dictator] So he's got to fall, you’ve got to get rid of him – because that bigger, sexier, joyous world of the supernatural that unites everyone and allows everyone to fall in love is at the window, it’s encroaching on Athens.
Let it in!”
So if we have a play with many versions of two characters, that'd be swell!
Anyway, the girlettes aren't going to put on the whole play anyway--they mostly just want to dress up and make sets.
And by "they", I mean "I".

Still Settling In

Day 13 of living in my new apartment--almost two weeks!
I'm still unpacking and settling in. Every daily task is new--I have to think, How do I drain the dishes dry? Where do I put my toothbrush?
It's a lot to process, and I am a tip-toer.

This morning I did my laundry for the first time. There's some Law that says if 4 people live in a building, two of them will want to do the laundry at the same time.
And sure enough, one of my neighbors took my clean, wet laundry out of the machine and put hers in. Which is fine and fair--just funny.
The other women in the building seem very nice, but I've just met them in passing.

I haven't been cooking much, but I've gone to two farmers markets. So this morning I took a heap of the wilting veg in the fridge and made vegetable stock.
We've been having a weirdly pleasant July--often it's too hot and humid to turn on the stove, even in the early morning, but it was cool enough.

I've been in a great mood for a while now--not just from moving, which makes me deliriously happy, but even before I started looking for an apartment.
I put it down to Jupiter in Pisces. Must be the stars, right? because Earth isn't exactly a bundle of joy. I don't read the news, but it's all around.
And work, as usual, could be the setting for a comedy of errors.
So, yeah, must be some planet a billion miles away making me happy.

Whatever. I'll take it.

2 comments:

  1. The strainer: also good if there’s any fencing. : )

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  2. MICHAEL: There must be fencing in some Shakespeare play? Hm, or maybe just sword fights--no face mask.
    I will keep an eye out for another little strainer and the girlettes can have a Safe Sword scene. :)

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