Matthew's Journal

This weekend was the third bardcamp. This time, we did classical plays. On Friday evening we had Timon of Athens, done using cue-scripts, which was a bit confusing. I'm not sure I'm entirely sold on it as an approach. The plot is fairly straightforward, but I'm a little suprised how obscure this play as, as it seemed pretty approachable to me.

Saturday, as ever, was a monster day, with 5 plays. We started with Troilus and Cressida, in which I played Hector, who was quite fun to do. Ulysses really loves the sound of his own voice, doesn't he? I'm still not sure what Shakespeare had against Achilles, though! The plot's a bit confused, though. Next was Julius Caesar, in which I had the title role; quite a tough thing to do, I think, since although in some sense the early part of the play is all about JC, he doesn't actually say a lot (it felt like I spent more time on stage as a corpse!). At least some people seemed to have like my performance, which is pleasing. As a play, it's growing on me. Cassius and Anthony were very well acted.

After lunch was Anthony and Cleopatra; I had a few very minor roles, which left me plenty of time to watch the action. Whilst Cleopatra is a great character, I'm not sold on the play as a whole - the narrative needs tightening, I think. After Anthony's greatness in JC, he's a bit of a drip in this play. I had great fun in Corilanus, being Junius Brutus, one of the tribunes who rabble-rouse, and get Coriolanus exiled. The crowd-actors were getting a bit carried away, which made it very hard work, though - although I suspect from an audience POV, having the tribunes really shout to be heard over the rabble was quite effective. gnimmel's Menenius was suitably offensive to us, too :)

Finally for Saturday was Lysistrata, translated from the Greek by libellum, and brought somewhat up-to-date (even the innuendoobscenity was translated into modern idiom!), with some sung numbers too. atreic was great as Demobilisa, despite being the only slightly-serious character. Excellent, if somewhat drunken, fun. The script even had footnotes! A car accident outside the place we were staying caused a brief distraction, and we had to send people without phalluses on out to check they were OK.

Sunday had only two plays, the first of which was MSND, which was somewhat cast against type (although not entirely); we managed to draw a lot of comedy out of it, which was fun, even if the "nice ass" pun was a bit painful...

In complete contrast, we finished with Titus Andronicus. I'd gone away expecting to play Bassianus, one of the nice guys, but was recast as Demetrius at the last minute. borusa were a pretty evil double act, and we managed to be suitably shocking, I think; the scene where we mock Lavinia having raped her and cut off her hands and tongue is particularly unpleasant. I found it slightly disturbing to do, but very rewarding too. verlaine was suitably doomed (and ironically Goth) as Titus, and there were a series of very strong performances, although at least some people shelted from the awfulness by finding bits of it funny.

Another great weekend. I look forward to the next one!