Why Us? (don't ask me; ask the penguin)

macklesufficient:

lesbiancassius:

shakespeare characters having weird reactions to deaths: macbeth / hamlet / julius caesar

sorry to be pedantic outside of the tags but i love these as exhibits a b and c of why the “shakespeare is meant to be performed” cliche is real; on the page they look wild but actors know how to read the embedded stage directions

two of these examples can’t be shared lines of iambic pentameter (both gertrude’s line and brutus’ are already rushed and irregular at eleven syllables, so laertes and cassius both get their full ten beats for two or three words) and one of them doesn’t have to be (macduff and malcolm’s lines add up to ten beats indicating that it’s shared but no one will call the scansion cops on you if you split it into two and divvy up the extra ten syllables between them, which imo is the more playable option)

remember that verse is symphonic and that those extra syllables are notes in the orchestration of the scene— they have to go somewhere, either into beats of rest or sound. there’s a lot of ways to score any of these moments but one possibile notation for the first is

MACD: your royal father’s murdered.

(rest/ rest/ rest/ rest/ rest/)

MAL: oh.

(rest / rest / rest/ rest/ rest/) …

by whom?

all that silence affords the director a moment to let a lightning-fast scene (the entire cast pouring onstage in ones and twos, yelling over each other at varying levels of authenticity) come to a screeching halt, and the severity of the situation set in. for the actor it’s playable as all hell, and ultimately very human: the kind of raw shock that makes you ask stupid questions. you get the same thing with laertes. tbh i’ve always found “drowned? (rest / rest /) oh. (rest / rest / rest / rest/ rest /) …..where?” to be utterly goddamn devastating in how realistic it is, bc what else can you say to that? if someone told you with no warning that your sister drowned, what else would come out of your mouth in the moment but something stupid and mundane? oh. ……….where did it happen?

the other notable similarity in these three moments is the use of un-words: two ‘o’s and a ‘ha’ (they aren’t meant to be pronounced exactly like “Oh” or “Ha”; traditionally shakespearean un-words are performed as unarticulated sounds, sighs, groans, exhalations etc). un-words leap out to the actor because it is a character rendered speechless. i made a post a few weeks ago about how big of a deal it is when people written by william shakespeare dont have words for what they’re experiencing/when the pain is so big that even in a metanarrative universe where you are only the words you speak you are forced to admit that something is unspeakable, and every “o” or “ha” or “ah” etc is a moment of this horror, this defeat at the hands of your own medium

it’s a rich moment for actors because in classical text it’s frowned upon to act “outside” of the line (to waste vocal qualities on things that aren’t words, ie to take a pause from speaking your richly layered monologue to let out a pained exhale. “act on the line” says your director, smacking you on the knuckles with a copy of freeing shakespeare’s voice), it’s diva-y and amateurish to take more syllables than you’re given. but when you’re given the space of ten beats for “ha portia”, who will dare call you a scene hog for stretching that “ha” into five notes of agonized, wordless noise?

in the same way that lear’s “howl howl howl” is very much not just the word ‘howl’ said three times these moments demand full, shattering vulnerability from the actor, a dive into the place in the body where pain lives. maybe laertes and malcolm really do say “oh.”, quiet and childlike, or maybe that ‘o’ is a stand-in for the all-air sound that shakes out of you when you get punched in the lungs and try to talk through it, or for that deep animal groan you heard that made you think what was that before you realized it was coming out of your own throat

anyway you get what i mean. you wouldn’t look at a blueprint and say you saw the house, you wouldn’t read the sheet music and say you heard the symphony, etc

Reblogged from: ipomoea-batatas

teaboot:

beowulf22121:

queerce:

riseofthecommonwoodpile:

derinthemadscientist:

wetorturedsomefolks:

riseofthecommonwoodpile:

humans don’t have enough ornamentation. where’s the plumage, the antlers

i could go for a good vibrant throat sac i could display as i sing in the mating season

Humans have some of the most extreme hair variation over their bodies in the animal kingdom, with hair on some parts of our body a few millimetres long and fine enough to be almost invisible, and hair in other parts a good metre long if not artificially trimmed. Part of the inside of our mouths are turned out to make our lips bright red, we have comically oversized breasts and lack penis bones to make erections more indicative of impressive circulation, and have some of the most complex behavioural adaptations to self-ornamentation for courtship seen in anything that doesn’t spend half its life collecting blue bottle caps. How much ornamentation do you want?

I’d like antlers, as previously stated

I want bioluminescence

Sonar

Flared webbing would be nice

Reblogged from: deez-no-relation

shedglitter:

punkitt-is-here:

this duck LOVES pink drink

Humans will use tools and technologies to bring such joy to creatures that could not experience such pleasure by themselves.

Reblogged from: gaslightgallows

onefey:

chongoblog:

Wanna give a quick shoutout to the federal judge last week who struck down the Arkansas law that tried to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors, not only ruling it unconstitutional, but including 311 statements of fact all going against the gender-affirming care ban in a ruling that was 80 pages long. Especially since these statements make it harder for transphobes to appeal and iirc this is considered precedent.

name, don’t forget to credit him by name! BIG thank you to judge james moody jr. for protecting trans kids in my state!!

Reblogged from: the-moon-loves-the-sea

fattylime:

a study i did because i realized idk how to draw environments at all LMAO

Reblogged from: hauntedpearl

silassstingy:

dennis’ double life 12x10 // frank vs russia 16x04 & the gang inflates 16x01

inspired by this post from @emberphantom 🥴

Reblogged from: theaesthetickilljoy

werepires:

Blåhaj

Reblogged from: magnificent-winged-beast

catalogercas:

I love reading Ted Lasso fics set after s3 where Trent Crimm is just inexplicably still hanging out in the coaches offices at Nelson Road, no explanation whatsoever.

He already wrote his book. There’s no reason for him to be there.

So, my headcanon is that the team collectively decided he’s a good luck charm and he must permanently work on his writing there.

Reblogged from: catalogercas