a door in winter's face

Okay! Obviously, I love Wolf 359. The available scripts for Wolf 359 are recording scripts, meaning they're inaccurate in a ton of places when it comes to finalized or improvised dialogue, and don't function well as transcripts (especially since the scripts for the live show and some of the mini episodes were never made available.) That said, I think everyone should read the scripts; the sheer amount of physical description that you can feel in the show, even if you can't see it... I guarantee it will enhance your listening experience. Most visual show to ever be an audio drama. So, in pursuit of both of these goals at once, I went over every word in the scripts, and wrote up new scripts for the unavailable ones. Some of the sound effects described - especially in early episodes - might not line up exactly, because I didn't want to mess with the non-dialogue portion of the show, but I hope this strikes a good balance and can be a useful resource.

Next up: the heron! Another from this series.

love shakespeare. did a hamlet run tonight, looked someone dead in the eye to say “am i a coward?” during a speech and the fucker shrugged and nodded

we literally ruined society when we invented the fourth wall. let’s bring back call and response. heckling, even. fuck you hamlet you dumb piece of shit kill your uncle or shut up

"When we took Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” into a maximum security woman’s prison on the West Side… there’s a scene there where a young woman is told by a very powerful official that “If you sleep with me, I will pardon your brother. And if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll execute him.” And he leaves the stage. And this character, Isabel, turned out to the audience and said: “To whom should I complain?” And a woman in the audience shouted: “The Police!” And then she looked right at that woman and said: “If I did relate this, who would believe me?” And the woman answered back, “No one, girl.”

And it was astonishing because not only was it an amazing sense of connection between the audience and the actress, but you also realized that this was a kind of an historical lesson in theater reception. That’s what must have happened at The Globe. These soliloquies were not simply monologues that people spoke, they were call and response to the audience. And you realized that vibrancy, that that sense of connectedness is not only what makes theater great in prisons, it’s what makes theater great, period."

Oskar Eustis on ArtBeat Nation

I was in the front row of a Hamlet performance where the "Am I a coward?" was directed at me and I, being a no-impulse-control gremlin, hollered back "Yes!!" (they'd primed us ahead of time that audience interaction was encouraged). Hamlet got right up in my face as he kept talking and just kept going until I gently pushed him back; I forget what line it was on when it happened but he took the direction of the push and reeled away across the stage.

This meant that I had marked myself as someone willing to be fucked with, and so during the graveyard scene later he approached me again. "Here hung those lips that I have kissed--" he booped my mouth with the skull's "-- I know not how oft."

I have stories related to me from those at Blackfriars, the American Shakespeare Center (they play in a replica of the original Blackfriars, with modern safety conventions like lightbulbs in the chandeliers, but a great dedication to the way structure shaped the original work in the original Blackfriars. Their house is only about 45 ft deep (roughly 15 m I think), which is about the max distance two sighted people can be from each other and still make eye contact. They play with the stage and house equally lit, they talk to the audience, they enter from the audience, they whip up crowds from within the audience. It’s fantastic. But anyway, on to the stories.)

#Oh I have SO many stories from peak audience moments at the American shakespeare center#I have been to plays there that legit felt more like rock concerts#And I don't even mean the parts of the show where the cast is also a live band and they play#Covers of songs relating to the show#Fair maid of the west with Ginna Hoben#We were all SO on her side we absolutely lost our whole shit any time she even entered or exited#Knight of the burning pestle where Rick would pick a random audience member to be his lady love he was fighting for every night#And one time (I saw it thrice) he picked an older lady#And there's a part of the show where iirc he like gets almost defeated?#And he calls out to his lady love to like inspire him to keep fighting smth like that#And she Got Up Out Of Her Seat and went over to him and kissed him on the cheek#And no one was expecting that least of all Rick#And we all lost our shit whooping and hollering#They did a hamlet where...I forget who was polonius that year but there's a line where he's like 'what was I gonna say again'#And he paused SO long on that line you were legit unsure if he the actor had actually forgotten it#And once someone in the audience called out the next line and he was like 'oh that's right' and carried on#It was scripted though there were other nights no one said anything and we all sat there#In wonderful horrid awkward silence#Until he resumed#Please go if you get a chance#And sit stateside (via @rootingformephistopheles)

chk!

Least Bittern (Ixobrychus exilis), family Ardeidae, order Pelicaniformes, Wakodahatchee Wetlands, Delray Beach, FL, USA

photograph by Tim Peach

I’ll never forget the time I was sitting with this guy, nice kid, didn’t know him well, I think we must have had a bottle of wine or some questionable hashish or something, and in response to an awkward silence I just started talking and ended up going on a long meandering rant about how ugly American robins are. I’m talking a full monologue. I had an intro and conclusion. It was pointlessly vehement. I have never been so mean or loquacious about anything in my life.

Consider my horror when this perfectly nice guy wordlessly lifted his shirt to reveal a full-torso prismacolor tattoo of his spiritual soul animal, the American robin.

Their scientific name sounds like "Migrating Turd" but otherwise I find them charming if fairly derpy and mundane. I don't know if I'd get a tattoo of one though. They're like the potato of American birds.

I have no actual animosity towards them. They’re fine. I like them. They remind me if my college roommate and beloved friend. I don’t know why I said any of that—I was grasping at straws for something kind of provocative to say and failed so catastrophically that I was catapulted into a Seinfeld skit.

eerily similar to the time in college someone tried to make conversation by making fun of a silly book a former high school teacher of theirs had written only for me to just pull out a physical copy of the exact book because i’d realized he was talking about my dad

the foot seeks the mouth like leaves seek the sun

yesterday was the ten year anniversary of my insensitive American Robin comment and my tattooed friend messaged me to celebrate the “funniest thing that had ever happened to him” so sometimes critically failing a charisma check leads to a whole decade of joy for someone else

hello opera tumblr im new here and dont know all too much abt opera but i really enjoyed a production of don giovanni that i havent seen anyone mention so i wanted to bring it to more ppl :pp

come to the 2005 teatro real production we have

Dance Yrself Clean | LCD Soundsystem

The plot structures of movies need to start taking more cues from classic opera. Open with a fucker in a hat who directly addresses the audience and explains what's going on in a way that raises far more questions than it answers, then immediately drop the viewer into the middle of a shouting argument between three of the weirdest people you can possibly imagine.

why be a flamingo in a flock of pigeons when you’re presented with the grand opportunity of being a shoebill in a flock of flamingos

"Are you not well, Billy?"

Least Bittern my love....fundamentally unserious beast

i know everyone (including me) loves the teatro comunale di bologna posters but i feel like we need to talk about the don giovanni one. they understand the assignment, which is 'this guy has to look like a trust fund grade-A SHITHEAD'. truly incredible

Unfortunately this post has breached opera containment and now i am seeing people claiming “This guy fucks”. Unaware of the horrors :(

all of these words are in the king in yellow