ROYALTY WAVES AS IT TWEETS + CRUISES BY

Not only is the Royal Shakespeare Company on Twitter, but they are running a tweet a love poem into “As You Like It” Contest(deadline 6/22/09). And the RSC search started with a Peter Aspden Culture column about tweeting, culture and the relevancy of the classics.

Good lunch with the FT with E-bay Billionaire and current philanthropist/movie mogul Jeff Skoll.

Vanessa Friedman, always informed and provoking of thought, this past weekend discusses Isabel Toledo.

Good Peter Aspden review of The World and Its Double: The Life and Work Of Otto Preminger.

And on a #tamingshakespeare note, have been working on Taming Of The Shrew both in rehearsals and out (currently trying to decide on image or word focus for t-shirt –actually, better to say, I am negotiating that point with Gayle. I have been informed that although it is not wide, the boardwalk problem has been solved) and I am enthralled by how much Taming is about clothes. Lines keep popping into my head: “I confess the cape” has always been one of my favorites. More recently, I have been mulling Petruchio’s succinct description of what his bride is getting into: “To me she’s married, not unto my clothes.” And then there is the lovely scene with the tailor where Shakespeare lets a character rant, and this one is right up there with the lovers’ ranting from Midsummer*. Out tailor is about 1/3 the size of our Petruchio so the contrast should be interesting:

“O monstrous arrogance! Thou liest, thou thread,
thou thimble,
Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail!
Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket thou!
Braved in mine own house with a skein of thread?
Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant;
Or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard
As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou livest!
I tell thee, I, that thou hast marr’d her gown.”

I think if I were inclined to check myself back into an academic’s garb, I might be inclined to write a thesis on the clothes of Kate Hall. Could be scintillating.

And on a quick Disney note, the Wizards with Hannah On Deck event looks like a blast. I don’t think we have a show that night (7/17) — Flash is not liking the rehearsal schedule, seems to still be growing and now we have What I Like About You time after rehearsal. The N has, of course, incurred our wrath with DeGrassi again — bumping What I Like on the weekends….and yes, I still miss Radio Free Roscoe being on a time I’m actually awake.

That’s a wrap, I believe. Looking forward to seeing The Proposal on Friday, then Metamorphoses on Saturday (friend in the cast, plus, yes, fan of Ovid — are you really surprised?), Sunday, back to Shakespeare –we do Act IV and V until they sparkle which means I could not be home ’til Monday — Shrew has SO many characters on stage at most times. I had blanked out the horrible traffic jams.

*Hermia’s rant:
“Puppet? why so? ay, that way goes the game.
Now I perceive that she hath made compare
Between our statures; she hath urged her height;
And with her personage, her tall personage,
Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail’d with him.
And are you grown so high in his esteem;
Because I am so dwarfish and so low?
How low am I, thou painted maypole? speak;
How low am I? I am not yet so low
But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.”

Followed later by Lysander’s dismissal:
“Get you gone, you dwarf;
You minimus, of hindering knot-grass made;
You bead, you acorn.”

Oh, just read the whole scene here (thank you, MIT)