I saw twelfth night at the globe theatre today

So the theatre itself amazing. Great viewing points, and a really authentic feel to it. The globe is historically accurate which is superb.
HOWEVER, the play had waaaay to much artistic freedom.

>there were female actors (should be all male)
> the play was set in 1979
> literally had lines cut out from the play
> malvolio was played by a woman. Malvolio' character is supposed to be a blundering goodie two shoes idioit that we laugh at. Yet he's a woman. Women aren't funny for bombastic roles like that.
>music was way too loud
> way too much music

Artistic freedom and diverse cast are great. But come on, in the globe theatre are we really going to have a transexual playing feste? We are in a replica of Shakespeare's theatre yet we have a play that completely diverges from the actual fucking text? Could we not have these non tradionalist plays set in any other fucking theatre?

user first I'm going to ask you why you choose to disengage and unenjoy what should be an objectively delightful experience; and I will add that Shakespeare wrote much more for the groundlings than for the critics. Critics are leeches user and theater is a living thing which will always defy convention at least i hope but in the USA where I live it is dying a slow death.

>Artistic freedom and diverse cast are great.
Are they, though? For portraying a very carefully constructed narrative, derivation from the source material is almost unquestionably a negative.

Who said I didn't enjoy it? However I would have enjoyed a far more tradionalist approach. I'm all for artistic creativity but if we are going to have a replica of Shakespeare's theatre we may as well have a replica of how his plays would have been, otherwise the theatres potential is squandered.

They literally used men for women at the time of original production because of social convention why wouldn't new conventions mean a new interpretation?

there are no groundlings in 21st century theater

In other contexts thats an ok argument. However the actual globe theatre is an accurate replica of the real theatre. Surely if we are going to go through the effort of making a historically accurate theatre we will make the theatre show historically accurate interpretations ?

Also, Shakespeare wrote specifically in mind with the knowledge that men would perform his plays. This means the play itself to be truly understood must have male actors. For example having the female character viola played by a man, but disguised as a man in the play actually brings about a complex metatheatrical aspect. We can then consider the possibility that Shakespeare is alluding to the fact that many male actors would have been catamites.

New artistic director known for the boldness of her staging. I dont get it either, its not being a philistine to say there is every other theatre and performance space in the world for that.

Its also a mean trick to play on tourists but Londoners are very arrogant that way.

>New artistic director known for the boldness of her staging
>Her
Oh, okay. That explains it completely. Women always like throwing away tradition to prove how smart they are. At least as much as they can get away with. I assume that that particular theatre keeps the directors in check a bit.

Emma Rice, the Globe director, is absolute cancer. Admittedly she's very good at staging and production, and was hired mostly to bring "pizazz" to the Globe. Unfortunately she is not a Shakespearean. In fact she celebrated precisely this at her appointment (think "Shakespeare isn't just for the dusty old ivory tower elite" kind of schtick"). I can't be bothered finding the exact quotes, but my paraphrasing will be pretty close. She's said things along the lines of Shakespeare made her want to go to sleep, she'd rather watch the Archers, and that she didn't really "get" Shakespeare, but "getting" Shakespeare wasn't very important anyway. She had only directed Shakespeare once before.

She is also one of these radfems who see the fact that there are an uneven amount of male and female roles in Shakespeare's plays as a profound problem, which she elected to solve simply by giving a fuckload of male roles to women. This, naturally, upsets the harmony of the plays. One of the more egregious examples was her Midsummer Night's Dream, in which one of the men (Demetrius, I think) was turned into a female role. Considering that the entire partnering logic of the play hinges on the assumption of one man matches with one woman, it just totally undermines the play.

Fortunately the public and Globe's board of directors' outcry against Shakespeare being mistreated like this has been great enough that Rice and the Globe have agreed to part ways, by "mutual decision". She complained that her artistic freedom was being restricted. It's scary to think what she would have done to Shakespeare if her artistic freedom had been let loose completely.

Thank fuck she is leaving.

>>historically accurate
>>literally had lines cut out from the play
>>play was set in 1979

The Globe which stands on the south bank today is (if memory serves) 33% larger than the historical Globe and holds half as many people.

The 1623 folio is a posthumous collection made by W.S.'s friends and colleagues. The practice at the time was one of "cue scripts". Since printing was expensive, and not everyone needed the full play, an actor was given simply his lines and the line of the other character after which he was supposed to speak. The plays underwent revisions as they ran, and so more cue scripts were distributed. This is why Hamlet is "4 hours long" and why many of W.S.'s plays contain internal contradictions and information (exposition) being repeated numerous times by various characters. Cutting from a draft is as natural as eating grass.

Shakespeare's actors never wore costumes. They simply wore a very nice set of clothing. Even for the plays set in Greece or Rome, they just wore fancy shit: the equivalent of a $1000 custom suit. The tradition of dressing actors with a mindset of "historical accuracy" is an invention of much, much later drama.

tl;dr : just watch the fucking play and don't let your ill-founded preconceptions distract you from what's happening on stage. It's beautiful to watch people behave honestly and presently with one another in a totally made up circumstance.

Shakespeare is played out. If every adaptation tried to be in the 'original' style, then it would get tiresome very quick, especially for the actors who have been doing Shakespeare since they were small children, and also for viewers who have already read and seen the plays several times.
Shakespeare is one of those authors where you can get something new out of the play from every viewing, because of the layers to his writing, and doing these new interpretations helps give us a fresh look at the lines. Yeah, a lot of these portrayals suck, and (I remember seeing a particularly pretentious MacBeth adaptation based on WWI in undergrad) but a lot of them are very cool and, in the case of the comedies funny in new and creative ways.

>it holds more people

Ok OK, but reletive to ever other theatre in existence the theatre is historically accurate therefore I can confidently say that the globe is historically accurate.


> Ill founded preconception


so thinking that we should have no female actors is a false preconction? Even though having female actors completely misrepresents the actual text? Sorry but I disagree.

>if every adaption tried to be like the original it would be boring

Sure, I agree. But I'm specifically talking about the globe theatre not "every adaption ".

You're right. Having untrained, 13 year old boys play those parts really lets the text sing. We should probably also get some prostitutes to wander around the back of the theater, use actual gunpowder for thunder/war sound effects, and all of the actors should be speaking like pirates (because that's what Shakespeare's dialect most likely sounded like).

Let's hop right on that.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not entirely sure it's historically accurate to have it performed in the Globe at all. It premiered at court, as part of a celebration that only rich (noble) people could go to. Sorry, user, you didn't get invited.

The globe theater puts on a shitload of Shakespeare productions though, it's almost all they do (I think they also do Milton sometimes), so even if we're just talking about the Globe, then it would still get boring very quickly.

>untrained 13 year old boys

If we train people to act as untrained boy would have acted, sure that would be impressive.

>prostitute

We literally don't need prostitutes for historical accuracy, but sure have people actors pretend to be prostitutes.

>gunpowder

Sure have fake gunpowder


Having an experience so realistic would be absolutely fascinating. Everything so far sounds great.


> historically inaccurate to show twelfth night to people who aren't noble

Firstly, you need to provide a source for this. If you don't provide a source your statement is meaningless. I was under the impression that twelfth night would have eventually been performed for the lower classes.


Even if it was not the case that the lower classes could see twelfth night then yes, I'd be willing to go for some historical inaccuracy. There's no point in having historical accuracy in the first place if we don't have people who can actually appreciate the accuracy. My aim is greatness, not deluded perfection

why is historical accuracy important? it already happened lmao

Why IS historical accuracy important in staging a Shakespeare production, though? Shakespeare certainly didn't care about taking liberties with the facts.

Your perspective on theater is so plebeian I think the only theater you could possible appreciate would be one of those animatronic nightmare bands at Chuck E. Cheese sorry if you don't get that reference

Do you think that the audience should be able to interrupt the play to make dumb comments?

Because that was considered acceptable in Elizabethan theater.

Well if historical accuracy doesn't matter than what's the point of having the globe theatre?

>Having untrained, 13 year old boys play those parts really lets the text sing.
i would not object to this

What's the point of anything? The point is different to everyone. In fact we are all points in this multidimensional matrix known as consciousness.

Typical. Whenever someone is cornered into seeing that they are being illogical they can always to resort to "everything is relative tho", " maybe were like all in a simulation or something. Classic.


Now tell me, why have a historically accurate theatre while simultaneously performing plays that completey differ from historical accuracy?

The funniest part of seeing twelfth night today was seeing how duke Orsino interacted with the audience. My viewing experience would still be very enjoyable. It was also great seeing sir Toby throwing mock golf balls into the audience.

Having a Shakespeare play be akin to seeing a live music performance? That actually sounds like a unique and fun experience.

Surely you can see how it would be nice to have a realistic live impression of how it would have been? Can you genuinely say that wouldn't enjoy that?

Okay, not an argument. Yep, I don't get the reference. Can you explain it please?

If historical accuracy doesn't matter whats the point of even having the globe theatre in the first place? Could have a theatre with less accuracy but with far better seating and lighting.

Also, why don't you like the idea of gunpowder,prostitutes,ect. These all sound cool to me. Sure, I'm very plebien, let's hear you refined opinion on why these things are bad.

>there were female actors (should be all male)

There have been successfull productions with a full-male cast before (I think it's on piratebay too), but I don't see how is that a problem in this case, even if it's Twelfth Night we are talking about.

>the play was set in 1979

So what?

>literally had lines cut out from the play

Is this your first time watching Shakespeare? That happens in quite literally all productions of any play.

>malvolio was played by a woman

Artistic freedom, yes, but it opens possibilities for interpretation.

>music was way too loud
>way too much music

That is actually a problem.

You should have gone to the national theatre production with Tamsin grieg, was far superior.
The globe used to be good, especially when mark rylance was still involved, the new director is too gimmicky to work in the space, she needs a modern theatre for her ideas to fly

I love the Globe and was going to take my parents to see something there this year but Emma Rice put me off. I'm going to wait until she leaves before I go again.

Jesus Christ
You probably saw a live play for the first time in your life, stop spouting your bullshit all over the place.
>omg they LITERALLY CUT THE LINES THAT'S NOT WHAT THE SHAKSPERE INTEND'D!!!!!1

I've been to a modern showing of Macbeth there, and I quite like how they updated it. The idea you were going to get a full Elizabethan showing is a lack of research.
Can't remember the company that did the version of Macbeth when I went but they dropped stones into a bucket whenever anyone died, and Macbeth's a really good play to do that with. The witches wore sunglasses to tell they were playing witch roles (since they doubled roles) and overall, it stuck to the make it cheap production values that it would have suffered back in the day and was better for it. I felt bad for anyone in the grumbles though because it's a long as play to stand for, and I was happy to pay the cushion rental for my seat.

>tasmin grieg
nice
Catherine Tate played there and she's insanely good at Shakespeare (not just compared to her other characters, but in general), but at the time the guy who played Dr Who was in the lead, and he was shite and couldn't remember his lines when I saw him on tv advertising it so I skipped that performance.

You know (((why))) it happened.

to make money off of pseuds like you tbqh

I see no problem with any of that.
One thing you can criticise the Globe for is that the groundlings are far too well behaved. Someone fucks up a line, they should be pelted with a half-eaten pie.

In one of the Jasper Fforde novels they go to a Richard III performance which it rapidly transpires is basically the Rocky Horror Show of that alternative world.

I'd much prefer that to 'edgy' staging. I'm no fan of the weird Victorian reverence that often attaches to Shakespeare but this 'modernisation' is no better either.

It seems to me modernisation of Shakespeare staging is a dull old-fashioned late 20th century idea.

Look at classical music, what little life it has now has come from adopting Historically Inspired Performance practices.

>>yfw first-hand evidence of earliest performance is a diary describing its performance at court.
>>yfw its on the 12th Night wikipedia page.
>>yfw you are literally too stupid to google.

(?)I guess it's a good thing Shakespeare wasn't a contemporary writer, then! (?)

>Artistic freedom and diverse cast are great.

No they aren't.

>>there were female actors (should be all male)
wat. You know just because there weren't female actors in Shakespeare's day doesn't mean we have to adhere to that now, right? However, I agree with you that all this other bullshit and having Malvolio played by a woman is pretty ridiculous.