If at first you don't succeed

Hooboy.

Today's been one of those flurry of activity days that catch you off guard with their urgency.
I just finished a preliminary version of a production proposal I'm including in an application to a directing residency.

It's an amazing opportunity I heard about just in time -- the application is due tomorrow. So an artistic statement and two project statements later, I started labouring over Love's Labour's Lost, putting together a quick proposal of what I would like to do with a production of that play.

Good thing I was allowed to read the play today during telemarketing, because I'd never read it before. But when in doubt, especially in times of crisis, I always choose Shakespeare.

I was struck at first by how sassy and snarky the play is. It's really a lot faster and smarter than a lot of the early comedies, though at times it's very incoherent. But it was pretty easy to follow, until shit just got crazy at the end with another play-within-a-play a la Midsummer and then absolutely no one getting laid. Quite the let down of an ending.

Felt like a frat party to me, all the waving around to see who was the smartest and had the biggest dick in the room. The sorority girls acting all unimpressed, manipulating the boys into acting like fools. Everyone's just out to screw each other, and screw each other over. Everyone's quick to manipulate words to get around their meanings. Everyone's quick to lust. I didn't see much love.

Then the dudes dress up as fucking Russians (?) and try to impress the ladies, who are masked and switch identities. Immediately I googled "what did Muscovites mean to the English in the 1600s?" and found an article about Hermione's reference in The Winter's Tale to her Russian father, and how Russians were really just first starting to interact with the English around this time. They were of course associated with intense winters, and merciless tyrannical rulers like Ivan the Terrible, but also the English just thought they all were super manly. Like the men were respected for being hard, rough, strong men.
Hm hm hm.

So the Labour's boys dress up as uber-men (with big fake Russian beards) to impress the ladies, and they get TRICKED.
The ladies switch identities and hide behind masks (clearly Nacho Libre Mexican wrestling masks because my play is set in an outdoor patio/beer garden space of a Mexican restaurant bar & grill) and they will just NOT let UP no matter HOW HARD the guys try to GET SOME.

Feel familiar, ladies? These gents take all the abuse, and they just won't take no for an answer.

Good thing hipsters Holofernes (what the fuck is that name?) and Sir Nathaniel arrive on the scene, and create this disastrously unintelligible "play" about the "Nine Worthies" (whatever they are, had to look them up quickly) and clowns get involved and it all just goes crazy.

Berowne, or Biron, the main frat dude we're supposed to like, gets mad at Armado, a Spaniard (guitarist in my production), and they're about to fight when the Princess gets a text that her dad's dead.
Party foul.
The mood does get sombre, the poetry gets richer, and the insanity is disbanded.
Everyone goes home, with promises (naive though they may feel) to stay faithful for a year.
Uh huh.
Right.

What are we left to feel? Berowne comments on how THIS ISN'T HOW SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDIES WORK, DUDES. Where's my wedding? Where's my sex? This isn't satisfying!

I feel like we sort of see, in the negative space where the play goes "wrong" for a comedy, how empty that conclusion would have been. None of these people are really in love. None of this is really about anything but one-upping each other. Is any of this really "labour?" Was anything really "lost?"

I've been writing about it for a while, so I'll stop. But more soon.