Just up on a Friday night thinking about how I'd stage Julius Caesar, specifically the death scene. Once the stabbing starts, Caesar starts fighting back like the 55yo veteran strategic campaigner that he is, methodically and mercilessly--equal parts John Wick and alley cat, both with bad knees. There's at least a solid two minutes of him beating the shit out of the senators who get within arm's reach, who nonetheless keep getting in lucky hits with their knives. The conspirators with military experience circle warily, only risking his reach to keep him disarmed when he's about to get his hands on a knife of his own. The audience can hear the crack of bones breaking and grown men howling in surprised agony. Conspirators push benches and their own bodies up against the entrances to keep anyone from interfering in the public murder of this very popular man. There is so much blood, almost all of it Caesar's, and the more of it that spills across the hands and arms of the conspirators, the more he slows. Long, loud, dragging, wet breaths, wordless warning growls that land like perfectly articulate curses. A moment of calm, conspirators orbiting, afraid of this dead man walking whose sandals are slipping in his own blood and will still hurt you if you get close. Maybe he's finally got a knife of his own, for all the good it will do him. And then, finally, Brutus.
Caesar wheels at the approach and we see in his whole body the visible relief at seeing the face of a friend, then he sees the knife in Brutus' hand, and we watch him speedrun the stages of betrayal and grief. And he closes the distance (possibly slipping in his own blood and then catching himself) and (if he's got his own knife at this point, he lets it clatter--or, given the blood, thunk) he takes Brutus' face in both bloody hands and kisses him full on the mouth, like a brother or a son, and asks, "Et tu, Bruté?" and wraps one bloody hand up in Brutus' hair to hold his gaze and wraps his other bloody hand around Brutus' forearm and after a beat to make sure Brutus is paying attention he pulls on the arm to force the dagger into his chest with enough sudden force that the audience hears the pop of the thoracic threshold yielding. And then Caesar rattles, somehow still loud enough for the whole chamber, but directed into Brutus' face, "Then fall, Caesar."
And he dies in Brutus' arms, Brutus' face a bloody peony, his mien hardening into the shocked rigor mortis of his honor, not to be stirred until Cassius speaks, perhaps a call-and-response of this moment as they rehearsed it, finally performed. It never really plays how you rehearsed.
When someone asks how often I think about the Roman empire, the answer is often, but it's mostly about this. Which I'm sure is normal.
