A much less glooming peace this morning with it brings

Shakespeare is like a drug for me. I don’t know how a neurologist might be able to explain it. If there is some sort of chemical reaction in my brain when I hear Elizabethan verse pronounced trippingly on a tongue. I have a slight recollection of a Charlie Rose interview with Branagh where they said something about emotional connection to memory… and how Shakespeare has the right rhythm… or something. Don’t quote me on that. It’s after midnight. And I’m drinking wine.

But… Shakespeare… it makes even my most wretched days feel better. My most banal moments interesting. I can’t tell you how many afternoons I have spent cleaning against the backdrop of my Much Ado VHS… or DVD. How many mindless games of solitaire have been played whilst I listen to Hamlet. Again and again… and again. I like the entirety of the plays to permeate into my memory. But sometimes I have the reason to remember by participating in my own live presentation – as a performer… or a director. One of my most treasured theater memories is Shakespeare… and conversely… my most wretched, too. Indeed, one play gets the qualification of both.

Shakespeare came up in conversation at work the other day. People know me. When they have some tidbit about that chunk of English literature, they know I’ll linger on a conversation. This conversation opened up to the authorship question (about which this blog is not, never fear)… which inspired my comment about the religious attitudes towards Shakespeare. And my dogged determination to maintain heathenism.

I wonder if that is because other people find Shakespeare intoxicating as I do. 

Anyway… Shakespeare is on the brain this week. In my pursuit of a relevant clip for my last blog, I found a number of Henry V clips on youtube. I have a decreasing sympathy for battle and war… but I listen to the St. Crispin speech (well not the Olivier something is stuck up my ass version) and feel I must… must absolutely go out and take those vasty fields of France. Who cares if it is nearly hopeless? For God, for Harry, for England. Those are rousing words… even to me… five hundred years later, listening on my laptop in Massachusetts. Man… I swear those words stir something within me.

I needed a fix. So… so tonight I decided to go see Romeo and Juliet.

I actually really… and I remembered this tonight … love this play. LOVE. I didn’t think I did until I directed it… twelve years ago. There is so much to it. So many ideas that spilled out one hot summer in the late 90’s. But I was young and naïve and… needed to do it again. So I did. Two years ago. The dam of creativity burst forth in my brain. So many ideas. So many inspirations. So much excitement. Very bad timing.

Yeah… that worst theater experience? That’s the one. It wasn’t the play. It was like a last meal before getting the flu. That piece of fish might not have caused the flu… but it was the thing that vomited in the attempt to purge the virus. Oy. So much bad, bad stuff.

I love this play. But since that negative experience, I haven’t been able to revisit it – in any capacity. If my audio version came up on the iTunes shuffle, a hasty skip this please. If it was on television, I felt my gorge rise at the very sight of the name on the channel listings. 

But that was… well, it’s coming up to two full years now. And… life is too short. I’ve forgiven most of what happened. Well, clearly not enough… considering I couldn’t even listen to some of the songs I used in that show without a phantom stab in the gut.

Does this Shakespeare drug inspire melodrama? Or an irrational determination to hold onto petty grievance? Maybe. But the funny thing is… tonight I saw that play. I enjoyed myself – to the point that I shared with the talented lady playing the Nurse, that I didn’t even check the time. And when I drove home, I healed.

So I don’t know. Maybe there is something about Shakespeare that pulls human emotion. Maybe it’s just me… but the way people argue how it’s supposed to be interpreted, how it should or should not be, what is right and what is wrong… I get the sense that a whole lot of people take Shakespeare pretty damn seriously. It is its own type of religion.

Maybe it really has nothing to do with that 16th/17th century playwright (whomever you think he really is). Maybe it’s my own diversionary projection. But… tonight the drug was a painkiller. No. It was an antibiotic. It cured me of that flu and let me go back to enjoying the last meal.

And you know what? On the way home from Sturbridge, I blasted Politik. And when Rebel Rebel came on the radio, I smiled.

And then I started thinking about directing this play a third time.