Metaverse Shakespeare Company’s 2010 Main Canon: Twelfth Night, Act 2 – Open-Ended Run

Shakespeare, Second Life—The Metaverse Shakespeare Company (MSC), formerly SL Shakespeare Company (SLSC), next Tuesday will open its long-awaited 2010 Main Canon production of Twelfth Night, Act 2—“As you will it!” in an open-ended run to occur every Tuesday at 6 PM SLT (PDT), and every Sunday at 1 PM SLT (PDT). Set to occur at the 4-sim SL Globe Theatre (http://visit.mshakespeare.com) in the virtual world of Second Life—this live theatrical performance, available anywhere with an Internet connection, continues the troupe’s 2009 production of Twelfth Night, Act 1—but, with a fresher, riper take, and its own amalgam of the year’s innovations in virtual theatre.

Artistic Director Ina Centaur has crafted an interpretation that conveys the topsy-turvy nature of the play and the era of its creation, without being bound by the constraints of a historically-accurate production, “Even though this production is set in a pre-modernity ‘generic past,’ there’s still plenty of Elizabethan bawdry and notions… There’s the presentation of class-crossing as a ridicule-prone absurdity, both directly, through a miasma of brooding, obsessive maliciousness as Maria and Co. plan their ‘practical joke’, and indirectly like when Sir Aguecheek… that ducat-flowing knave knight… impersonates a dog playing catch in Scene 3, with paupers Feste and Toby as his masters… And, then there’s some intense visual portrayal of that heavily-cozy-explicit language—with a wild bit where a drunk-betimes Sir Toby Belch urinates live on-stage to “[fill] an unfill’d can (II.iii).” Says Centaur on the music of Twelfth Night and the spirit of the open-ended run, “We’re providing sheet music and instrumental-only clips for all of our songs on the mShakespeare Blog, so that audience members can sing along with our live show (with their SL mic’s off, in the privacy of their own home) or in their own Metaverse Shakespeare theatre-inspired karaoke events… For most shows, we’re sticking with an orthodox interpretation and traditional songs, drawn from eras before and Shakespeare’s contemporaries. But, this being an open-ended run, be braced for variations, and character metamorphosis—in both act and appearance.”

This Open-Ended run of Twelfth Night, Act 2—“As you will it!”, like Act 1, will evolve into a final form, per audience interaction on the play’s progression. These interpretations are based on archetypes, grounded in the play’s intrinsic elements, such as character relationships. In April, the troupe will begin weaving “Variations” to its main interpretation, where certain characters will undergo some dramatic metamorphoses. Antonio and Sebastian will oscillate between varying degrees of a close-friendship, from the orthodox interpretation of caring-companionship to, in the words of Artistic Director Ina Centaur, “a homo-erotic or quasi-masochistic relationship to finally settle down and arrive at the one that fits best!” Most curiously, Malvolio, that time-weathered face, will de-age, becoming, as described by an anonymous patron, “a complexion that e’en you may fancy”, in the virtual world’s take on new scholarship interpretations of Shakespeare’s tragic villain-victim as a young man. For select shows, gender-experimentation interpretations will manifest in all-female or all-male or even switched-gender productions of the play. The troupe will once again show its April Fools “Super Spoof” edition in a special performance on Thursday, April 1, that will explore the character relations of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night via a medley of parodies inspired by popular modern shows.

While this will be the troupe’s first production under its new name of Metaverse Shakespeare Company, Centaur asserts that the production continues to uphold the company’s founding ideals of creating quality, memorable productions, while developing this nascent field of virtual theatre, “As with every Main Canon production, we spend about a thousand hours rehearsing and analyzing, building and designing, and also applying new technologies to virtual theatre… For Twelfth Night, Act 2, our three technological innovations include the usage of physics, moving automatons, and visual illusion on the virtual stage. You’ll see physics on-stage, in both built-in and scripted forms in our apple catches in Scene 3, and wilting rose motif in Scene 4—and, in the crawlspace of Scene 3, you’d see prim-based automaton actors in the form of rats!”

Special to this production, the MSC introduces the concept of “crowdsourced interactive set design,” which allows anyone to submit a graffiti message or poster/flyer idea to be plastered onto the “City Wall of Illyria” set in Act 2, Scene 1. More details at http://bit.ly/illyriangraffiti

The live show, presented via SL Voice, is also available in closed-captioning with live subtitles in English, Esperanto, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish.

Starting March 2, shows occur
Tuesdays at 6 PM SLT (PDT)
Sundays at 1 PM SLT (PDT)
only at the SL Globe Theatre at Shakespeare (255,255,25), Second Life

All shows are free (“pay as you will”), except for VIP performances, occurring on the last Tuesday and Sunday of each performance month.

About Twelfth Night, Act 2
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a multiplot story with plentiful songs and bawdry topsy-turviness. On one hand it’s the story of a shipwrecked girl named Viola, whose choice to go incognito as a boy eunuch results in myriad complications—including a gender-bending love triangle. On another, it chronicles the fallacious rise and tragic fall of a Puritanical steward named Malvolio, who becomes a victim of his too-lofty dream. Act 2 sets the basics for his downfall—his dysfunctional relationship with the other servants provokes a practical joke involving a certain forged letter, that would eventually ruin him—but, Act 2 sparks only of joviality; tragedy is due in a later act.

About the Metaverse Shakespeare Company (mShakespeare)
Headquartered in the virtual world of Second Life (SL), the Metaverse Shakespeare Company (MSC) is the flagship project of sLiterary’s Virtual Reality Shakespeare Initiative (VRSI). MSC is a professional virtual theatre company that embraces the best of what the metaverse has to offer. While it is primarily known to provide quality live Shakespearean theatre available to anyone in any location, MSC is also the curator of the most historically accurate theatres and architecture in virtual worlds relating to William Shakespeare.

Website: http://mshakespeare.com
Press Center: http://mshakespeare.com/press
Blog: http://blog.mshakespeare.com
Playbills: http://playbills.mshakespeare.com
Programmes: http://programmes.mshakespeare.com

About sLiterary
sLiterary, Inc. is a nonprofit organization dedicated to furthering literary and artistic endeavors in Second Life and other virtual worlds.

About Second Life
Second Life is a free online virtual world imagined and created by its residents.

Neither the Metaverse Shakespeare Company nor sLiterary is affiliated with Linden Lab. Second Life is a trademark of Linden Lab. No infringement is intended.

I haven’t been posting because, other than a few absent-minded releases and such, I have not had much time to spend on SL, and thus haven’t really done “much on SL these days” (of course, knowing me, my “much” is rather relative to my voracious appetite for more [read: insatiable ego]). Anyhow, I have been spending around 95% of my time in RL, which means dealing with plentiful politics in academia, and in trying to obtain RL funding for my virtual artistic endeavors. Both endeavors have proven to be complete wastes of both time and creativity, especially the latter. The epitome of bad PR aside, it doesn’t help that there are times when it seems that Linden Lab is imploding on itself.

This means we have basically less than 2 months left to try to raise funding for the SL Shakespeare sims. Last year, the SOS Campaign took us over a year to raise the funds whose original deadline had been 3 months. The good part is that we have some leftover after paying tier last round (as shown in SLSC Transparency); this is due to LindeX fluctuations and people donating directly (such as Wunderlichs), but we still have the better part of the ~L$700k needed for tier for 3 island sims, paid 6 months in advance. The bad part is that I simply don’t have the time or energy (what’s the point!) to run another SOS Campaign. And thanks to my merchant reputation being selectively sabotaged by Linden Lab, nor do I have the $L to secretly “pitch in” the missing and needed chunk of $L (like I have done each time in past SLSC fundraisers), without breaking my Fundamental Principle. Anyway, I want to be able to use my free time on SL to create shows, such as the stalled but long-awaited SL Shakespeare  Company’s Twelfth Night, Act 2! And, for the few of you who have actually seen SLSC main canon shows, you understand that we simply cannot do these shows without a four sim infrastructure! What to do, what to do…

Onto happier news… stuff that don’t relate to the maladies of a starving artist trying to paint in a borked virtual world…

About two weeks ago, I chanced upon meeting Hunny Larimore. Before I knew it, I started writing the code that would become the backbone of the HB Bunny SL “AI” application.  I was a total SL AI animals virgin, and it wasn’t until just a few days ago that I finally looked at other SL AI animals; as a result, I not only started coding from scratch, but also designing from scratch, thinking up my own ways of how to make certain processes work. More on my findings and musings about life, the universe, and everything per this project in the next post

Alongside RL celebrities like Ray Kurzweil and Jeff Barr, I was lucky enough to present on the BizTrack and EdTrack, and sit on two panels on the FashionTrack at SLCC 2009 (Second Life Convention) at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. Here are my presentation PowerPoints (ppt) slides:

BizTrack presentation:

“Branding for a Cause - Two Case Studies in the Arts” was a two-part presentation by avant garde virtual world artists Eshi Otawara and Ina Centaur, that tells the story of each artistic brand name that both sustains and is their art, in a very economically-materialistic virtual world. The presentation started with an introduction (slideshare | ppt) that set the “status quo” of Second Life, and how that really isn’t a medium for art or any endeavor that requires the input of abundant time, care, and love:

And continued with - Eshi Otawara’s presentation, which is available on Eshi’s site.

And, concluded with my presentation (and an informal Q&A), entitled “Ina Centaur and The Creation of the SL Shakespeare Company” (slideshare | ppt)

EdTrack presentations:

Shakespeare’s Virtual Theatre (The Ina Centaur SL Shakespeare Company - The SLCC Introduction) (slideshare | ppt)

Primtings: A Museum of 3d “Primmed” Paintings (slideshare | ppt)

sLiterary, Inc.: A Mini-Overview (slideshare | ppt)

I’ve just created a really super-open Transparency subsite for SL Shakespeare Company public funds. Here is perhaps the core of my naivety: as explained on the site, all funds raised go towards paying tier to Linden Lab — and there is a significant debt just in that arena, not even getting towards actual non-venue production costs–basically, people who do the most work don’t get paid at all in funds, and end up putting in both time and money themselves, so it’s just for artistic license. It’s truly art for art, the cause qua cause, which, imhno, is the way an ideal nonprofit should be run.
This is the policy that I’ve always worked with since I first entered SL. Back then, I was much more naive about money, believing in donated land and ideal collaborations. When owners of donated land became destructive, I realized that such a model doesn’t work. That was why I ended up purchasing four islands on SL for my artistic endeavors. As you might have noticed with my less-and-less frequent endeavors on SL, that idealism doesn’t work in RL. When I started, I had a significant personal fund saved up to do something like this, but that’s been pretty much depleted. It seems the largest source of disputes centered on my creativity–few people could believe that I worked without pay in my long-term maniac-loads of time put in to create on SL. That might also stem from envy, to an extent–whether of people who would wish for such a chance, or for inferiority-superiority reasons. But, for what it’s worth, I am making public the meager funds we’ve raised and explaining their usage in SLSC Transparency.

I’ve been musing on creating a Shakespeare Concordance that includes side-by-side comparison of Folio, playscript (as used by my SL Shakespeare Company), and (interpretive) Modern English editions, as well as other language editions, with video and audio segments (SLSC again!) and inline notes (and perhaps even some rudimentary scansion — stray syllable counts, if not some de-dum marks!) Beautiful(ish) layout with jQuery perkiness, and just convenience, in general, especially for acting troupes who use the first folio for analysis.

Today I’ve gone through creating its first data file (and, there are also several foreign language files, aside from some of the Mandarin Chinese, all translated by volunteers, each one lined up by row numbers).

It’s initially a series of flat files, for reference for actors. At the current rate, aiming to produce a Shakespearean-play-a-year, it’d probably take a bit for the actual lexicon to fill up. The spreadsheet above should easily convert to csv for php’s text processing functions to shrill!

It started when I was trying to catch up on what our original Mandarin Chinese translator was supposed to translate, but didn’t get to do. Fortunately, for OEP1, I’d finished much of the wardrobe assignments and scenic design items months ago in our preview season in late 2008 - so I had some time for manual labor. But, the Chinese texts I found were all so sterile, I ended up translating my own versions, where I attempted to convey more of the poetry and interpretive meaning I’ve applied in directing Twelfth Night. (You can see a bit of what I mean in the “first data file,” especially my Modern English interpretive translation.)  This unexpected bout of creativity made me remember how when I first encountered Shakespeare’s plays in seventh grade, I’d read them quite differently than the standard interpretation. So, it’s given me chance to (literally!) find my own meaning in the play, where I disagree with the various editions (and, it seems, that many words in the concordance are taken out of context — or perhaps not viewed as creatively, as should — for example, there’s the reference of fools’ breast in Act 2, which might have been taken literally, with a drunken Andrew noting Feste’s breasty breast!, instead of interpreted as voice).

Reposting an article I wrote on Bard’s Birthday 2009 on SLSC Blog:

As announced, the Blackfriars Museum (a.k.a. the Blackfriars Theatre Museum) grand opens TODAY on the Bard’s Birthday 2009! The museum is a humble shack adjacent to the north end of the Blackfriars Theatre, as such it’s more of a mini-exhibit, but should give you a good overview of the historic elements behind the construction of the world’s only complete replica of Shakespeare’s indoor playhouse, the Blackfriars Theatre in Shakespeare, Second Life.

While creating this exhibit (the sketches are modified from Irwin Smith and the Public Domain; the text is mine), I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between a cathedral floorplan and that of a theatre, and so here’s my sort of “pet paradigm”:

The above, in context, is displayed on a wall in the Blackfriars Museum, unedited SL photos as shown below. (Clicking on the “Cathedral in a Theatre” panel inworld also gives you a free inworld info HUD so that you can take these three panels home–or anywhere on SL–with you!)

The Museum illuminates the historical basis for the construction of the Blackfriars Theatre, which was actually built within a building inside a lavishly *rich* Dominican Monastery (hence the name Black Friars — the Dominicans wore a black cloak over their habits). Conjectural diagrams of the monastery are shown, although only the building segment housing the Blackfriars is built (due to funding shortages — I can’t afford to buy another sim for my pet projects anymore but, if you’re crazy enough to fund a sim dedicated to a build of the *complete* Dominican priory that the Blackfriars Theatre was set in, give me a poke!). In addition to… yet more diagrams… the museum also shows a scaled-down version of the roof structure, explaining for its historical basis. Faux-original documents, such as Piers Plowman and diagrams/photos from archaeological digs are also displayed in context (emphasis on faux-original — admittedly, they’re made to look da-Vinci-Code-esque, i.e., Hollywood style imitations of ori doc’s).

For the detail-pious, just a note of excitement to look forward to in the next few months: The Blackfriars Theatre will have both rushes and candlelight installed for our summer staged reading series in preparation for our 2010 production of Henry VIII (and stage stools!). We’ll also make use of the rear-stage, and trap-doors as well even though it’s a staged reading series! Last year, we tried a costumed staged reading series, but this year, we’ll try a staged reading series with (perhaps?) some basic blocking. For sure, we will be going for an Tudor-accurate production of Henry VIII, when we start showing the full ensemble performances in 2010!

As future Challenge Productions, we also hope to try out a couple (at least?) of the many historic play manuscripts with explicit blocking for the Blackfriars!

But, for now, I bid thee check out the Blackfriars Museum! And, happy birthday Shakespeare!

The Super Spoof plays @ 5 PM on April 1. ONE DAY ONLY. The SL Shakespeare Company is going to multi-parody a whole bunch of things from 2008, and see if they flow with Twelfth Night–that is, this is the SLSC’s “Twelfth Night - Popular Culture Analogues” Edition.

Everything is summarized by the playbill above. Please feel free to link. This is a strictly unofficial fan production; the SUPER SPOOF-esque version of Twelfth Night just for April Fools Day 2009 - just for fun - join us at the SL Globe Theatre at 5 PM PST (GMT-8).

While many mediocre stories have used the crutch of recycling a famous plot, I honestly believe the forced adaption of Hamlet was the greatest tragedy in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. [Then again, I read it in part because it’s a Hamlet-derivative (and fiction of that nature is a requisite on my reading list), and in part because it’s a top 10 New York Times Bestseller. Though it butchered the story, I suppose the forced adaption helped marketing.]

Until Part III, the story was largely extremely pastoral–which could be insanely boring to some, but then, that was the nature and substance of the story–the “personality” of the story, so to speak, was slow and lumbering and went about (in horrid depths) pretty much everything about Edgar and Trudy. I think I might have been content reading a long drawn-out “slice of life” novel that just went about the everyday more-or-less eventless (other than farm stuffs) lives of these people and their amazing (but fictional) dogs — dogs smart enough to read sign language. I truly grew to love these characters, although the novel dragged on, and unlike other novels, I never shed a tear for any of them (even when pretty much everyone dies in the end–it’s a Hamlet-wannabe, you expected that!). The sudden change in Part III with the forced “inciting incident” of Edgar (Hamlet) discovering the death of his father being foul play — a needle, as delivered by his Uncle Claude — left a bad taste in my mouth, and after that, my goal was just to finish the novel to find out what the hype is about and to experience the whole thing to formulate my version of what’s wrong with the novel.

Suffice it to say, the novel’s popularity has probably less to do with the writing and more to do with its subject and its rather unique setting–the hundred acre woods, the farm of the Sawtelles and their very specially-bred dogs, and the remarkable boy who can’t speak (but can hear) but manages to communicate and bond with these dogs — and the reader — on a decently deep level. (Again, it’s not a profound level in that I didn’t cry in his demise–or that of any character’s. Edgar had “bartered with his own life” to be with the people he loved–and I was like, “Oh, well, that seems like something a confused teenager might conclude at.” I didn’t cry. And I’m horribly sentimental. So, the novel didn’t quite pass in the emotional dept.)

There are scenes in the first part of the novel that are memorable because of their clearly supernatural aura; it’s a realistic setting thus far, and yet you have characters who seem not just creepy but of-an-inhuman-wisdom like Ida Paine. And there’s the eerie symbolism like the appearance and death of the wolf pup, buried next to Trudy’s stillborn. And though it’s a farm, little is mentioned of the death of the dogs on the farm, and yet death is nearby. The portrayal of Trudy’s wish for a child is made even more poignant with the scene with that trail of blood from the bedroom to the bathroom, where she and her stillborn sat in the tub soaked in blood–it could have been taken from a horror story, and yet you can see it from her perspective and also the human beauty in the tragic scene. And Edgar’s birth, her distress at the docs not finding anything wrong with him, and yet Edgar being unable to speak though he had all the physical wirings for it. You can sympathize with the characters, and though nothing really happens to them until the last third of the book, you’re kind of happy just reading about them.

The novel’s portrayal of the perspective of the dogs is poetic and nearly brilliant. Almondine’s view progresses from that of a naive dog to that of a truly poetic being in her finale. She has a tendency to try speaking to inanimate objects; before Edgar’s arrival, she’d tried asking these objects for the secret they seemed to know - and which is revealed to her on Edgar’s arrival; and in her finale, knowing Edgar had gone, she’d tried speaking to the angry “traveller” (car).

The novel has these uncanny sparks of symmetry: the two graves that preceded Edgar’s birth and the two graves that preceded his death ; cars as being vessels leading to trouble in Claude’s driving lesson and then Henry’s drive to town ; Essay’s reluctance to be cowed by danger in both the tornado and fire scene, but only relents when she realizes in the latter, it’s Edgar’s choice.

(The POV of each Hamlet-canonical analogue is also interesting. Possibly helpful in studies of those characters (especially for theatre) as a different and specific modern-ish persona to explore each character analogue. Especially the likelihood of Hamlet being a delusional teenager who’s talented in expressing himself in words, and yet can’t quite communicate his inner depth to the people closest to him. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark = The Tale of Edgar Sawtelle Analogies: Almondine = Ophelia ; Trudy = Gertrude ; Claude = Claudius; Dr P = Polonius ; Glenn = Laertes ; “Call of the Wild [what reclaims the dogs, or the Sawtelle Legacy] = Norway; “Sawtelle Farm” = Denmark; Starchild Colony = England ; Forte = Fortinbras; Essay = Horatio ; Tinder & Baboo = Rosencrantz & Guildenstern [?])

I guess the novel regains its own “self” (somewhat?) in the end, when the Sawtelle dogs run free after Edgar’s passing. That they were tied to Edgar, that Forte represented the wild, and Essay, the link.

But, the novel isn’t poetic enough to pass as a poetry novel, and parts of it (the parts that dragged, the parts that seemed jarringly non sequitur — as if another writer had taken on the job without reading the beginning) just screams out, “I NEED TO BE EDITED (and swiped and torn apart)”–so ultimately, the reading itself was a tragedy. I’m sorry. But, at least the dogs are out and free - and we’ll always love the dogs.