My November Muse (or What You Blaspheme)

In a couple of my circles, a word association with me is Shakespeare. Yeah, I’m a little obsessed. Really. I don’t deny it. It’s a compulsion. An intellectual addiction. And I’m not kidding. When the elements are right – it is a drug on which I get high.

 

I don’t consider myself an expert. Uh uh. Yes, I can recite a lot of it from memory. But that’s just because I’m a dork and will play movies as background noise when I’m cleaning or sitting at my computer or driving in my car across the state. I like to have the dialogue float around in my head and peel away the layers of the story. I like the words. I am sad that so many people of this earth brush Shakespeare off as antiquated and irrelevant. No. Sorry. The dude said a lot of what we water down today in seven minute news feeds or 140 character status updates. He said it in a way I wish I had the brain to express myself. And I bastardize his phrases every single opportunity I can.

Yeah, I like to interpret. Fact is… well, it isn’t fact. I am agnostic about the actual person (this blog is not to address the author identity issue, but I’ll be happy to debate it with you). I’m not firmly on one side or the other. But I am pretty sure there is no way of KNOWING absolutely who the man or persons are behind my favorite texts. Thus, there is no real way of knowing what he actually meant when he wrote these plays. We can’t say he had an abusive childhood or a long lost love or a passion for Italy. We just know the words and the story… leaving it open to interpret with our own lives, loves, and passions for places abroad. To make the stories work for us. To bring them down off the ridiculous pedestal of perfection and make them real.

Really, I don’t have a clue. I just make it mean something to me. That’s how I approach history. I insert myself and my perspective into the details and try to process how my life would work or not work (as often the case may be) within them. I craft a character into the story that has elements of my will and my intellect and see the world through that perspective. I mean… isn’t that what we do as actors? We have a character assigned to us and then insert our mind into them.

Yeah, so I’m doing that right now. I’m assigning myself a part. But I’m not performing on the stage. I’m performing on the written page. I’m NOT using verse or iambic rhythms. Not even a thou. But I am taking the story that has haunted me since college and finally putting myself in it. 

It entered my head briefly over the summer when I finished my novel and wondered where I would take myself after vampires. Then, as a lark, I agreed to this National Novel Writing Month challenge. Hey, why not? This story definitely makes it less frustrating, more intoxicating, and … hm… maybe I’ll discover the root of my obsession in the process.

But for now, if you want to cut through all this speculative malarkey and see my first brain dump, check it out here.

I thought of offering a prize to the first person to guess the play. But, really, I don’t think you have to read it to figure out which play’s the thing.