I just had the TV on while I was online job hunting. I turned it on TCM when I saw that there was a Doris Day film on. It was an adorably hokey film about Ms. Day’s character hitting it big as a singer and finding love along the way. Enjoyable, as all her films are.
When the film ended there was a maybe ten minute segment about Frank Capra, whose films have more than stood the test of time and on which one could write forever. But after that Ben Mankiewicz, who presents many of the films on TCM came on and began to discuss a new show on their sister network, TNT. That show, Will, is a new take on the life and times of William Shakespeare. Tonight TCM is airing films inspired by Shakespeare and to help present, Mr. Mankiewicz had the director and writer of the premier episode of Will. The writer, Craig Pearce, wrote the screenplays for director Baz Luhrman’s Red Curtain Trilogy (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo+Juliet, and Moulin Rouge!) and 2013’s The Great Gatsby. The director of the premier episode of Will, Shekhar Kapur, directed the Queen Elizabeth I biopics Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
Immediately, I’m riveted. This is the writer and the director of some of my favorite films. As they began to discuss how they got involved with the show and their take on Shakespeare my mind is swirling in a million directions. I love television, film and theatre. And while, I haven’t seen Will yet, I will most definitely give it a shot. As I contemplated all these things that I so enjoy, I thought to myself “Do I like theatre because I was involved in theatre in school, or at least do I like it more because of that?” And this stuck. Did I start doing theatre in high school because I like theatre or do I like theatre because I did it in school? This may be too much of a the chicken or the egg type question.
I don’t know that I could tell you the first play I ever saw in person. I danced as a child and certainly attended ballets by age five or six. So even if I had not attended a play, I was certainly familiar with going to the theatre. I do, however, vividly recall seeing my first live musical. There used to be an outdoor theatre in my hometown and when I was in about the third grade my family went to see a production of Fiddler on the Roof. I made my mom take me again the next week. I’ve been hooked ever since.
In junior high I started participating in my school’s fall musical. To my recollection, I only did this because a lot of my friends were. At the time, my school had the rather odd rule that anyone and everyone could be a part of the play, so long as they met the academic requirements and attended all required rehearsals. There were usually about forty kids acting in each show. The only way to consistently accommodate that many actors is to produce musicals. Unfortunately for me, I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, so I was always relegated to the choir. But I still loved it. Hanging out with friends, learning goofy dance moves, painting and constructing sets, sewing costumes. I enjoyed every second of it.
I continued to be involved in theatre in college. And in a exciting stroke of luck, one of the classes I was required to take when I did study abroad in London was an English class that focused on modern plays, modern being anything from about 1700 to now. We didn’t read almost any of them; we went and saw them. At least one play a week the whole semester. Ten years later, I’m pretty sure I can still name them all.
Musicals are amazing. They speak to us in a way that even the best theatre somehow can’t. And while I truly love musicals; it’s opera that just kills me every time. I started going to the opera at the Kennedy Center while I was living outside DC after college. For a few years I went to every show each season. Generally, I went by myself. Even for theatre and music lovers, opera is an acquired taste. But for me, I’ve never seen a bad opera. I remember as a child my mother watching opera on TV; I’m sure it was PBS. For a long time, I assumed that she like it and I think a lot of my initial interest came from that assumption and the memory of watching it together. It wasn’t until much more recently that she told me that she really only watched the operas because she was taking a music class in college and it was required.
The first time I managed to get someone to go to an opera with me, it was my college best friend and at the time roommate. We went to see Don Giovanni. It was a lovely production. When we left we dissected everything about the show. The costumes, the sets, the lighting, the singing. My friend had attended a theatre program at governor’s school in Richmond for high school. She is even more knowledgeable than I am. And she can actually sing.
She’s my favorite kind of person to attend the theatre with. Even if the show we see isn’t our favorite, she, like me, still takes so much away from it.
It baffles me that there are people who don’t like the theatre. There are shows out there for everyone. There are certainly more types of shows and more styles and more genres than you could list. From classical productions of Shakespeare, or even Sophocles, to the most modern of plays, the theatre is as varied as the human race, if only one would take the time to examine it.
Whether it was the chicken or the egg doesn’t really matter, I guess. I’m just glad this chicken hatched and is always on the lookout for the next great show.
ethel isn't really my name 