(no subject)

[ricardienne]

So here I am. Or, there I am, I suppose. The paper doesn't look so hopeless at the moment, although that may be optimism born of an airplane-numbed mind.

SW Shakespeare is doing Much Ado, and we saw it last night. It was a good way to end break, even if I did finish off the night with the usual breakdown. Natty and I both agreed that the MdN production was better though (well, in some ways, at least.) I was a little disconcerted by the director's pre-concert talk in which he more or less said, "well, we set it in 1840's California because we could,"* but I'm mostly over my phobia of non-traditional Shakespeare, and so it was fine. Actually, I think it was just an excuse to replace Balthasar with a Mariachi band. Otherwise, the setting was completely irelevant, although it did give the whole production a tinge of melodrama, thanks to a very emo Don John and general overacting. I suppose that one way of doing comedies is to have everyone wildly overact and go for slapstick, because, you know, it's supposed to be funny, but that didn't quite work here because of the intervening Claudio-Hero plot. The AZ Republic did not approve of the second half for this reason, although they noted that this was entirely Shakespeare's fault, for not writing a uniformly funny play. Also, they kind of ripped off the Kenneth Branaugh movie. But then, they did that when they did Henry V, too.
*Incidentally, I am wondering why, although people "update" Shakespeare regularly, no one every "backdates" him. Why not a Much Ado set in Roman Gaul, for example, or a Hamlet in Third Crusade Jerusalem? They would probably work as well as anything else. I suppose it wouldn't be "relevant," as a wholly modern one would be, but, when a company sets their production in 1880, for example, are they really intending any greater point other than "these are the costumes we happen to have handy," or maybe, "look: the Victorians had backward ideas about sexuality"?

And, now, because I've actually been tagged, for once, by forgtnsuitcase

Write a little paragraph about your name, why you chose it, what it means to you, etc.
When I made this livejournal I was going through one of my periodic Richard III obsessions. "Ricardienne" is sort of a pseudo-French version of "Ricardian" which is an adjective having to do with things related to Richard III, or anyone else named Richard. Now that it's my username, it doesn't really mean anything to me, though, as it has become too normalized.

What would you change your name to, if you were changing it?
I don't have anything at the moment. I'm happy with this name for several reasons:

Why's that?
1) It's one word
2) It isn't a really clear allusion to something such that couldn't mean anything else. If, for example, I had called myself "richard_iii_groupie" or something, it would be would be really weird when I went out of a Richard III phase.
3) I still like the way it sounds, or rather, the way it would sound if it were ever spoken out loud

What is your favorite username?
achyvi because it's an interesting combination of sounds.


courtesy of kaskait

ricardienne's LiveJournal popularity rating is 2.66/10. ricardienne is more popular than 84.7% of all LiveJournal users. ricardienne is more popular than 11.1% of their mutual friends. How popular are you? LJ Popularity created by thehumangame.

So I rank pretty low compared to most of my friends-list, but still almost in the top 15%. Scary.

Comments

[voglia-di-notte.livejournal.com]

It's sheroes that throws us off. We're friends with lots and lots of people on here that we wouldn't have met otherwise, so we've got abnormally large friends lists, etc. :P

[achyvi.livejournal.com]

Hooray for Welsh. <3

[achyvi.livejournal.com]

Also-also, you should make friends with a theatre major (or con Natalie to do it) and convince them to do it back in time. Why not Roman Gaul indeed?

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Companies in the nineteenth century occasionally set Hamlet in a quasi-Viking Denmark or Macbeth in a Dark Ages-looking Scotland, but I don't know if that counts since the events in both plays are supposed to take place back then even if they'd have been done in the dress of Shakespeare's day originally.

That said, someone on my flist said she saw a Richard II in which Richard's party were Romans and Bolingbroke's were Celts -- which is a stupid idea, but demonstrates that that sort of thing does happen. I don't know whether, like other plays set in Roman Britain, it contained druid buggery. (It did contain naked judicial combat. As I said, stupid idea.)

[saraken.livejournal.com]

I enjoy your username. It looks elegant.