Going Back to Canon

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is, in a way, fan fiction writ large.  I'm sure I'm not original in thinking so.  But the thing is, I've never been a hard-core Austen devotee, so over the past two years (yes, I found the series pretty late in the game) The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has been my Pride and Prejudice.  Yeah, I'd seen the Colin Firth mini-series a couple of times and swooned over the clothes and the men, and I read the book once during undergrad, but what really made it breathe for me was this YouTube series.  It's no secret that I totally fell in love with the characters, and especially Lydia.  I loved gossiping with my friend Megan over Jane and Bing, and I actually took time out of a graduate school admitted students day to go watch when Lizzie posted the video of her and Darcy's first kiss.  Unfortunately, no one else there that day could understand my excitement.  This past summer I listened to the audiobook of The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet and I'm so looking forward to Lydia's book.

So fast forward to today, when I realize that I need to read Pride and Prejudice this weekend for the class I'm auditing.  I considered skipping it, since I mean, I just listened to The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet a couple months ago and how different will it really be?  Plus, I've listened to/read a lot of Austen and other 18th-century novels recently, so I have the style of it down in my head.  I can pretty much imagine how Austen wrote it.  But I went ahead and downloaded it in audiobook format (because I'm positive that I'll "read" more of it while cooking dinner and during my morning commute than I will if I try to carve out dedicated time for it-- I need that time for thesis-writing right now).  And while yes, it's just what I expected on most levels-- even in the first hour, I'm shocked to remember that Kitty Bennet is not an actual cat, and the I'm beginning to recollect the level of loathing that I formerly felt towards Lydia.  I mean, yes, logically I knew these things, but when you become so invested in a story, it can be hard to remember how it feels when those "facts" revert to something else.  This will be an interesting couple of days.  And I think it will probably spark a lot re-watching on YouTube.

Remnants of Break

Today is the first day of classes!... technically.  To accommodate multiple Monday holidays during the semester, the first day of classes-- though always on a Wednesday-- follows a Monday schedule.  So, since I have no Monday classes, I do not have class today.  Nor tomorrow, because my first class was cancelled, due to a conference this weekend.  So, I am lucky, and have a few extra days to savor the sweetness of Winter Break (I have gotten a couple of reading assignments to start on, though).

I feel very grateful for these few extra days because I'm getting a cold.  We've had a terrible cold snap here, with wind chill feeling like -15 degrees F a few nights ago, reaching a high of 20 degrees (felt like 8) yesterday.  Brrrr... And, perhaps because of the dry air, or the stress that accompanies the beginning of a new semester, I awoke yesterday with a sore throat.  Last night it turned into a runny nose, and this morning it's a bonafide cold.  Thank goodness for tea.  Also, thank goodness for gumbo, cafe au lait, and beignets.  I tried to make lunch for myself yesterday but failed pretty miserably, so I headed up the hill (despite the cold) and feasted on some creole favorites.  Yum!  I really felt perfectly happy while eating that meal.  And, while we're on grateful, can I just say how much I love long-johns, scarves, fuzzy quilted hats, fingerless gloves with mitten covers, knee-high stockings, and boots?  They've been keeping me warm whenever I've needed to go out the past few days.

And why have I been going out?  Well, The Tempest rehearsals have started!  I am very, very excited about this one!  On Monday we had a read-through with the full cast, then yesterday was the cast's "dramaturgy" day.  We had them in three separate time slots of an hour each, so I gave a condensed version of my Shakespeare lecture three separate times, and I had a blast!  I love talking Shakespeare.  Each hour, I spent about thirty minutes of a brief history early modern theater/Billy Shakes, then the directors and I worked on scansion with the groupings and answered questions.  The evening flew!  So much fun.  I wish this were my real, paying, every-day job.  Who doesn't love to teach the wonders of Shakespeare?

Being transported and rapt in secret studies

Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, I officially donned by dramaturg hat!  I formatted and edited The Tempest for our GGSS production.  The directors sent me an HTML edition with their initial cuts.  I then went through and, cross-referencing the 2008 Norton Shakespeare edition, formatted to show shared lines, corrected spelling from the HTML edition, made additional cuts, and-- at times-- chose places to share lines differently from the choices made by the editors of the Norton Shakespeare.  I would have liked to use a facsimile First Folio, but at the time I didn't have one on hand...

I also had variable punctuation between the two versions-- and boy, does punctuation matter.  Figuring out how to punctuate was a beast, because it can make such a difference in how an actor interprets a line.  Additionally, since we have several women cast as male characters, and the directors want those characters to be women, I changed pronouns, "sirs," "fathers," "brothers," "lords," and "masters" to the feminine (while trying to maintain the meter).

Altogether, formatting and editing the script for performance took nearly ten hours, but I had so much fun working with the play that I didn't even notice the time passing.  I actually wished I had more time to work with it-- but alas, it needed to get sent to the directors for approval ASAP, and I had obligations for class to worry about over the break.  And, now that classes are over... I still have two major papers to write.  But all I want to do is research for the actor packets and compile the glossary!!!  ...I think I should take this as a sign that I need to find a way to throw myself back into researching and making early modern drama-- or making some kind of theater-- full force.

I Can't, I Have Rehearsal

I guess you can tell from my radio silence for most of this month that I've been incredibly busy.  October ended up being far busier and more stressful than anticipated.  To be honest, I haven't really had a chance to catch my breath since my last blog post, and today, though I'm writing, isn't really an exception.  But I finished my last paper for a little while, so.

Things I've Done:
Attended the Blackfriars Conference
Presented at the Blackfriars Conference
Watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!"
Found a great crepe place to get lunch on my way to campus
Written a literacy narrative
Workshopped literacy narratives
Done all of my reading for my seminars
Written a short close reading exercise
Completed a massive midterm project
Completed the second paper for Brit Lit... even if it's not great...

And now I belong to Cabaret until November 10th.

News and a Wedding

So much going on I don't know where to start!  First, ANNOUNCEMENT TIME!  That other thing I was waiting to tell you once it was all official?  Here it is.  This fall I'm going to Georgetown University to work on an M.A. in English!  I'm really happy with this decision.  I can't wait to jump back into the field, more so than before, and to really buckle down into textual studies.  Georgetown is affiliated with the Folger, too, so I'm hoping to get to really examine some of these materials up close and personal.

This past weekend I attended a beautiful wedding.  My friends Mike and Morgan tied the knot!  They had a gorgeous ceremony and reception at a 19th-century manor house.  The weather was blessedly cool, though a bit rainy, so the instead of being married in the rose garden they were married on the porch overlooking the rose garden.  Morgan rode to the wedding in a horse-drawn carriage, they had prepared readings on love from Shakespeare and Rumi, they had a unity spice ceremony that I just loved, and their officiant-- a friend from college-- gave a stunning blessing to the marriage.  Then the reception!  Zan and most of my other friends in attendance were in the wedding party so they spent most of the cocktail hour having pictures taken, while my friend Carrie and I partook of Mike and Morgan's signature drink.  For dinner we were seated at the "Romeo and Juliet" table, and afterwards we danced!  I'm sure I looked silly because I'm such a terrible dancer (my friends all make fun of my lack of rhythm) but I had so much fun.  I ended up having a much larger group of friends there than I had anticipated, and I met some new friends/people I had heard of but never met, which made for some great dance-times.  Then Mike and Morgan were sent off in style with sparklers!  I also just realized I have no pictures... hmm...

Then, today was my first day at my new job!  I'm not interpreting just yet, but today I had my costume fitting!  I can't wait to get back into my shifts, petticoats, and jumps (sort of like stays).  Plus, I think my shoes this summer are going to legitimately be very comfortable.  I'm excited.  The bulk of the day was spent reading up on materials about the kitchens and food in 18th-century Virginia, with a few sporadic duties included, such as cleaning buckets and setting up/putting away the display foods.  I'm so excited for this summer.  I think this will be a lot of fun.  I plan to have a very large dinner party once I've mastered some of these 18th century dishes.

Things certainly are exciting around here all of a sudden!  I have this stirring feeling that things are looking up.  I feel like I've turned a corner, both in terms of future plans and also my general life outlook.  I think/hope/wish that maybe 2013 will turn into a wonderful year, after all. 

Languages and Textuality

In my perhaps-bi-annual attempt to do something linguistically productive with my life, I have purchased a few brush-up French books, including an "Easy Reader" and a verb review, along with an Introduction to Sanskrit book. Why? Because... maybe it will come in handy. I mean, who DOESN'T want to know how to speak Sanskrit? Also, I'm into studying British imperialism. Just saying.

So cool fact: Sanskrit is written in a script/alphabet called devanagari, which literally translates to "city of immortals." This is really, really cool I think. The oral language-- Sanskrit-- means "perfecting" or "putting together," but in writing it becomes immortal. Ties in nicely with what I'm studying in my Shakespeare/Materialism/Textuality course right now: 1623 Hamlet, folios v. quartos, and setting down things in "tables" to remember them-- literally, "tables" were portable blank books with erasable pages. So it really calls attention to textuality and materiality, writing down vs. human memory, and the always interrelated functions of remembering and forgetting.

Also, I got a bottled sweet tea the other day before going to my textuality seminar (because man, I miss southern sweet tea like my mom makes and how sweet tea always meant reading outside on porches come spring, and I needed to remember my roots). But the cool thing about this bottled sweet tea was that the little label on it had a story about sweet tea that started "Remember simpler times? When a text was something you carried in a book bag?"

Too. Perfect.