Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Julius Caesar

Director: Jack Read

Assistant Director: Amy Ippolito

Dramaturg: Savannah Nine

Stage Manager: Shaggy Bryant

Production Manager: Mary Rose Valentine

What We Did Today

Today, we rehearsed and our filming is nearly at a wrap. Brutus and Cassius are coming to terms with the consequences of their actions, and Antony and Octavius are preparing to avenge Caesar. We ended rehearsal with a ~completely serious~ rehearsal of Brutus and Cassius in the tent scene.

Quick And Quotable

• From the Play: “When think you that the sword goes up again? / Never, till Caesar’s three and thirty wounds / Be well avenged.”
• From the Director: “Sage slayed. And that’s really fun to say.”
• From the Cast: “‘Mischief, thou art afoot. Take thou what course thou wilt.’ …I’m just gonna boogie.” -Sage

Production Insights

Shakespeare’s Romans have a flair for the dramatic, even for the stage. They never do anything halfway. To express strong friendship, they use “love,” which is usually not a word to be casually thrown around by our standards. In my opinion, the word “love” can sometimes cover too much. There are many different kinds of love, and the Ancient Greeks had different words for them, but English only has the one, that usually refers to romantic love. Not to get technical, but I think the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis plays a huge role (the hypothesis, paraphrased, basically states that the words we call things mold how we think of them.) When each use of “love” uses the same word, the romantic connotations are sometimes too strong to ignore. The differences between kinds of love are lost under the umbrella word. If we had other words for love, what kind or kinds of love would we find in Brutus and Cassius’s relationship? How would it change Shakespeare’s words and writing?