My show of shows

A year ago my younger son told me that his 7^th grade class was studying Shakespeare.  I suggested that I should come in and show some of my collection of playbills, signatures, memorabilia and the like.  I don’t know if was because I was intrigued by the possibility, if it was because the boy didn’t think I’d do it, or perhaps it was because he thought I would, but I emailed his teacher and next thing I knew, there I was in front of a group of 7^th graders explaining what I liked about the Bard.  When I left I told her I would be glad to do it again.  Last week I was back, a return engagement if you will, regaling another class of 7^th graders with tales of theater, theaters and the Bard.

 I began my presentation telling the students that I was there to talk about riots, murders and explosions.  In other words, I wanted to talk about 19^th century American theater.  I started with the first real American Star, Edwin Forrest.  As talented and as ground breaking as he was, today he’s most often remembered for the Astor Place riots.  To quickly summarize, in 1849, his fans surrounded a theater where his theatrical rival, Charles Macready, was performing MacBeth.  Within the theater Forrest’s fans disrupted the play forcing Macready to mime the play because he couldn’t be heard.  In fairness, Forrest’s fans were only doing to Macready what they believed Macready’s fans had done to Forrest on a recent European tour.  Outside the theater, armed guards hired by the theater later fired into the crowd, killing 25 and injuring about 80. 

Edwin Forrest had a friend, or at least an admirer, in Junius Brutus Booth, an English actor who had moved to Baltimore.  Booth named his elder son after Forrest.  Edwin Booth grew to become one of, if not the greatest American stage actor of the 19^th century.  My discussion of Edwin Booth included my trip in 2000 to The Players, the club Booth started for actors still located in Gramercy Park in New York.  My historical memorabilia collection centers mostly on Edwin Booth. I showed multiple pictures, playbills, cigarette cards, magazine articles, biographies and his signature.  .  I ended my discussion of the life of Edwin Booth with the fact that although he was his father’s more talented son, he was not the more famous son.  That honor goes to his younger brother, John Wilkes.

I then talked about Joseph Jefferson.  Although Jefferson was more known for comic acting (“Rip Van Winkle” especially) rather than the Bard, he is important for those of us in the Chicago area in that he is the namesake of the local theater awards (the Joseph Jefferson award).  I have several examples of Jefferson’s autographs, along with a letter, some pictures and his autobiography.  While I was dwelling on the Chicago angle, I talked about the Iroquois Theater fire and pointed out to the students where they could find the most haunted alley in Chicago.

After talking about Jefferson I jumped to the modern day with examples of playbills and autographs and links to the actors involved that a seventh grader would recognize.  I showed my autographed picture of Kenneth Branagh from Hamlet (recognizable to a seventh grader perhaps as Gilderoy Lockhart from Harry Potter).  A quick discussion followed of the time I saw Branagh and his then-wife Emma Thompson do King Lear.  (Emma Thompson would be known as Sybil Trelawny, also from Harry Potter).  I then showed the playbill from a 2000 production of Coriolanus starring Ralph Fiennes (known to the class as Lord Voldemort).  I showed them my signed Timon of Athens playbill from Ian McDiarmid (better known to the class as the Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars movies).

I felt I was running out of time so I quickly moved into ways the students could watch modern versions of Shakespeare stories, often without knowing it.  I pointed out that Disney’s “The Lion King” had many of the Hamlet story points in it.  More specifically I suggested “West Side Story” (R & J), “She’s the Man” (Twelfth Night) and “O” (Othello).  The class was getting ready to read “Taming of the Shrew” so I highly recommended “10 Things I Hate About You.”  Of course I pointed out that the last suggestion starred the late Heath Ledger, he of the Joker fame.

Feeling that I used up my time (I had gone on almost an hour) the teacher asked for questions.  And then the questions came.  (For some it was a choice between questioning me or school work so those students were motivated).  What was my favorite play? (Hamlet).  How much does a theater ticket cost?  (long answer) What was the most popular Shakespeare play?  (Most produced: Midsummer) How many copies of Shakespeare’s plays do I own? (2).  If I went back in time and could ask Shakespeare one question, what would it be? (Did you write these plays?).  Were you ever in a play?  (Not really.  I had a walk on part in a college production of King Lear).

The next day I received a pile of thank you notes from the class which were quite enjoyable to read.  They will in fact become part of my collection as well.  But the next day I received an invitation for a repeat performance.  Apparently the students in this class were talking to the students in another, similar class and that teacher talked to my son’s teacher and voila, I’m set up to do it all again this next week.  This time I want to bring in John Barrymore to the discussion and perhaps a few more pictures.  All I need to remember is to “suit the action to the word, the word to action.”