On Shakespeare, and As You Like It

I saw As You Like It at the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre over the weekend, and it was fine. A nice little show, most everybody did a good job, and what do you expect from As You Like It? Frankly, I’m beginning to suspect that Shakespeare just wasn’t really a top-notch comedian.

But anyway, there’s a huge problem that I have with the play, and while I was watching it I think I stumbled on a way to solve it, and I want some opinions here. The problem that I have is this: Orlando is a complete fucking bonehead.

Untitled Theater Company 61’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

My review at io9.com:

Adapting Dick’s seminal novel is guaranteed to be a difficult process, and would have been even if Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner weren’t already a 30-year-old SF classic. Untitled Theater Company #61 took on the ambitious challenge. And mostly, it worked.

I think that “mostly it worked” was actually an edit; the problem with this play is that mostly it DIDN’T work.

On the Power of Livestreaming

ANNOUNCEMENT:  in concert with the science and speculative fiction site WWW.IO9.COM, the SOE will be livestreaming the opening night performance of Empress of the Moon.  As long as you go to io9 between the hours of 8:00 PM Eastern/Standard and…whenever the show is over (I think it’ll be around 10:00 PM), you will be able to watch Empress of the Moon, live, ON THE INTERNET.

Like, whoah.

Staged Readings: What Is the Point of Them?

I was a hair’s-breadth from using all of my (completely imaginary, entirely assumed) authority from flat-out issuing a moratorium on staged readings.  They are a pain in the ass, mostly, a lot of times they just feel like a scam, and, in my own, personal experience, they rarely provide any kind of useful feedback.

But, in defiance of the life lessons I learned from Niccolo Machiavelli, rather than simply declaring an enemy and waging war on it, I think an investigation into the subject is in order.

Empress of the Moon: the Lives of Aphra Behn

(cross-posted at Threat Quality Press)

So. My new play, The Empress of the Moon, is done-ish. First draft done, anyway. We start rehearsals for it today, and we can spend a week or so doing some major re-writes to it, because I have to start choreographing the MILLION swordfights that it requires. Right now, I want to take a minute though, and talk about why, even if this play doesn’t turn out to be really great, I think it’s important that it got written.

[EDIT:  Done, done.  Done!  Buy tickets, or watch the livecast on August 13th!]

There are a lot of women that work in the theater.