that's too long for a play.

We’re all set! June the 6th. I think this is the first time in my life I’ve ever felt happy.

Happy 1st Wedding Anniversary to Vanessa and Dennis!

butchhamlet rec of the day is twofold: first, this article on shakespearean productions that claim to just "trust the text," and second, one of the shows referenced in it, The Woke Tragedy of Richard III Dyke of Gloucester

...to say that Dyke of Gloucester doesn’t “trust the text” or “understand the characters” would be to misunderstand the work of adaptation. Strong adaptation is not about mistrusting the text, but about working with it deeply, reading it in a new way. It takes no understanding to blindly recite the words as written; it takes deep understanding to analyze for moments where the language and themes can support an innovative reading. Richard III is about a king whose body is considered monstrous, and who is monsterized by extension. The connection to trans lived experience is obvious to anyone who has ever so much as eavesdropped Susan Stryker’s name. And Dyke of Gloucester is, despite a few pronoun changes and significant cutting, essentially just the original text of Richard III, directed and designed to sharpen under a particular focus. You might notice that this process of sharpening is what those in the academy call literary analysis. This is what research in my field—my “text-focused” field—looks like: applying theoretical methods and making a coherent argument for what they can reveal. I’m trying to imagine showing up to a seminar and saying, I actually didn’t write anything, I just decided to trust the text. This is why I find it so disingenuous and self-congratulatory to refer to conservative productions as “text-focused”, as if a close focus on the text could only ever reveal the least interpretive, most obvious conclusions. And of course, there is no such thing as a non-interpretive production. What is achieved by striving for non-interpretation is only an unmasking of the things which the creative team takes for granted.