Sunday Theatre Spot: Mind The Cat
I met a theatre cat on Friday night, and he was typically imperious and graciously accepting the admiration that is naturally his due. Anybody else know a theatre cat or two?
Friday Hoyden: Yvonne Brewster
Director Yvonne Brewster founded Britain’s most prominent Black theatre company, Talawa, in 1986, in order to produce work that showcased actors from a diversity of racial backgrounds, who were not getting the work they should have been in the large, subsidised theatres.
Obnoxious pantomime alert: “trAnnie”
And the Sydney Opera House legitimises this. This is vicious, blatant sexist transphobia, masquerading as light-hearted entertainment.
Shakespeare and the Bechdel Test
We all know which way the Avengers falls, but have you ever wondered whether Shakespeare passes the Bechdel test?
Friday Hoyden: Lucy Lawless
Lucy Lawless has to be about the only awesome Kiwi we Australians haven’t unofficially adopted and claimed as our own.
Friday Hoyden: Dora Chance
Dora and Nora Chance (the “Lucky Chances”, naturally) are twins born into post- war London, on the wrong side of the theatrical tracks. Bastard children of a grand Shakespearean actor, Dora and Nora learn to dance to work their passage through a world that makes a great fuss of legitimacy, but likes to have less licit elements on call as well. Dora narrates, and you accompany her giddy passions, frantic hopes and pragmatic compromises.
Blegging: Name Orlando’s Book
My first book is to be published later this year, and I am still not happy with the title. It is an academic text, but one I hope will have a broader appeal for people interested in the theatre, and the way women are presented on stage.
Friday Hoyden: Emilia
In Othello, it is Emilia, unfortunate wife of the villainous Iago, who delivers the woman’s equivalent of Shylock’s more famous “Has not a Jew eyes?” speech.
Such is the focus on the central couple that it is easy to forget that two husbands kill their wives in this play.
Whoydensday Quicklink: Doctor and Donna do the Bard
Kinda. David Tennant and Catherine Tate will reunite to perform Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (as Benedick and Beatrice, respectively) for a season at Wyndham’s Theatre in London’s West End.
Paging @BoganetteNZ to the light relief phone
I figured Boganette could do with a bit of light relief from her position as inadvertent heart of a Twitterstorm (That Shall Not Be Otherwise Mentioned In This Thread*, because then it wouldn’t be light relief at all).
On Ophelia, Who Never Got to Be a Hoyden
The casual use of violence perpetrated on the female body in telling a story about a man’s experience will not be news to most people here, but it might be enlightening to look at it in the context of what is often considered to be one of the great works of humanist literature, one that still carries more cultural weight than possibly any other, and is often claimed to speak to all people, everywhere.
Blogiversary! and Gratuitous Benedict Cumberbatch blogging
This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for the last fortnight hoping for a stroke of brilliance to strike so that I could post something suitably amusing and symbolic of the last 5 years of blogging. Thanks so much to all of you who continue to drop by here to read and comment. [...]
Friday Hoyden: Nellie Donegan, roller skater, 1913
Photo comes from the State Library online gallery on Flickr (via @dogpossum on Twitter): just look at the vitality and mischief of her!
Sunday Hoyden: Vale Bea Arthur
I only just caught her fabulous turn as Vera Charles a couple of days ago in the movie Mame! and thought to myself “what a great hoyden”, and today I heard the news that she has died, aged 86.
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