THE GLOBE Act II: All the Globe's a Stage

So on Friday we did go inside the theatre, but we didn't get to take any pictures because a group was rehearsing on stage. Yesterday (after standing in line for about 40 minutes in the rain) we went inside to claim prime spots as groundlings right in front of the stage. (Shakespeare himself coined the term "groundling," FYI.) The set was up, but the actors weren't onstage, so we could take all the pictures we wanted. Back in Shakespeare's day, it only cost a penny to be a groundling, and to this day, you can get a groundling ticket for five pounds. Not to shabby, eh?

The underside of the canopy was painted to look like the heavens so it could represent, well, heaven. The stage represented the earth, and below the stage represented hell. 

Look--I was THIS CLOSE to the stage!

The boxes.

Hello!

We saw a Chicago Shakespeare group do a hip-hop version of Othello. For the 2012 season the Globe Theatre is doing a Globe to Globe program, where they have invited a different country to do each of Shakespeare's 37 plays and come perform it in the Globe Theatre. Othello was given to America.

Soo... what did I think?

Well, as you might expect from the setting, there was a fair amount of language and sexual innuendoes.

Quick rant here.

I get really SICK and TIRED of women being referred to as sexual objects and talked about in such degrading, crude terms--not just in plays or in the media at large, but by people in general, even people I've talked to personally. Yes, it was just as bad in Shakespeare's time, but that doesn't make it right. It irritates me to no end and makes me want to scream and throw things. I have a lot of deep-seated angst about this stuff.

Okay, rant over.

Setting that aside for a bit, being a groundling was a completely different theatre experience than anything I've done before. It was almost like a live concert setting, and if the play is engaging enough, you don't even notice that you've been standing for two and a half hours straight. And yes, this play was engaging. And yes, apart from the language and innuendoes, I liked it. It was a really fun dynamic. While I was hoping for some super sweet dance moves that never came, I thought the all-male troupe did an excellent job with characterization and delivering the rhyme/rap for the entire story. Like I said, a completely unique theatre experience.

But soft! What light through yonder cloudbank breaks?

'Tis not Juliet, but indeed, 'tis the SUN!

The sun hasn't shown its face around here very much, so when it did, I had to take a picture. You can't tell very well in the picture, but it's there. And yes, my classmates have been impressed with my random memorized snippets of Shakespeare. I can do part of Hamlet's famous speech too. You're impressed, I can tell.