Hamlet: like a new fandom, only not new and not actually fandom

I am reading the thingy about the play, the programme.
I realise I know nothing about Hamlet. In fact I possibly know wrong things. There's a bunch of different versions and important speeches are in different orders and things.
This might be one more reason this one made more sense in my head.

I totally need to study this.



Also I got to a sentence they just did and sort of got stuck because it rings true like church bells, very big noise, make a sort of sense.

Someone once said that madness is when people stop trying to understand you.



That would make madness be in other people, what they're doing towards the mad.

Huh.


Also more practical sounding stuff like "The text may allow ambiguity, but actors can't act it. We need to make choices. That's the difference between reading a play and acting it."

Then I go hmmm and poke that statement a bit. Because yeah but...

other bits of interesting. mention of how it's a world of surveillance. all sorts of neat stuff.

... I'm totally going to look stuff up at college.
because clearly I don't have enough reading to do that goes towards actual grades.

... I'm so in the right subject area.

(no subject)

I feel all... brain hungry. Want to know things! Do big thinking!
I'm reading very small sections of college books and having big long thinks about Hamlet between paragraphs. It's not the quickest way to get college reading done, but it has interesting.
Also, by 'big long thinks' I might possibly mean 'imaginary conversations with DT', which, um, pretty.

I like thinking things about the relation between the physical arrangement of the stage and the impact and meaning of the play. There's a whole section of chapter in books about that.
Finding someone to talk to about it who would consider it interesting is... a bit more of a challenge.

It was on a stage that stuck out in the middle of all the people. Much different than those that hide behind the curtains. And everywhere was shiny mirrors. Art to life. Shiny floor, shiny backdrop.
... and there was one family that just got up and climbed over the stage to get back to their seats after the interval. I did not think that was polite theatre. Especially since there had been theatre people on stage in the interval with brushes and mops and things making sure it was clean and dry and tidy. What if someone had spilled a drink? Or scratched it with high heels? Or got oil there? There was a sword fight and lots of running around, getting slippery on it would be Very Bad.

All the running around went through paths through the audience. That's a whole different experience than running around away from audience. I like it.

... I think I especially like things that make it different than cinema. If everything is hid behind the curtain level then it may as well be on a screen, because you see it flat. Yeah, oversimplification, but. When you've got a stage right in the middle of people and there's running around through people and appearing at the edge of the stage in between people and everything, that's not like cinema. And it would be totally different from one of the other two sides of seats. Well, not totally, but a bunch different. And that's not like cinema neither, where you get roughly the same flat thing wherever you sit.

This is part of why I think feet and hair acting is nifty. Because in cinema you'd get one or the other. The camera would focus in on important things and if an actor was wandering around with no pants on you'd never know it if the camera didn't want you to. On stage there's no such selection. All acting all everywhere all the time. And to change your focus the actors have to do things or not do things in patterns. Someone be quiet, someone look at someone, the stage have shiny lights or not, props set out an area, all that. It's clever and different and I want to turn it around and figure out how it works and pay attention to it a lot.

If I'd been to more than two plays in my adult life it would also be a bit more familiar to me and I'd maybe get more out of plays because of being better at reading them.



I was thinking of bare feet in cinema and all I came up with was River in Serenity. Bare feet are crazy apparently.


I am random.

And not wearing shoes.