O for a muse of fire...

I am quite possibly the world’s worst blogger. Like many aspiring chroniclers on the Intarwub, I get a few honeymoons posts under my belt, and mere days later, my blog is deader than the Three Little Pigs at a Nugent family reunion. When I do end up posting, I usually manage to offend and/or insult anyone who’s had contact with me in the last 6 months. Not to mention the fact that I firmly believe that most people, however interesting their job at the Gap is or how cute their cats may be, are not the Samuel Pepys or Anais Nin they believe themselves to be (Anais is a rabid Abercrombie and Fitch shopper, anyhow).

All these things taken as fact, I am an actor, and interesting things do happen to me constantly (at least, I find them interesting) and there’s this thing that actor or directors sometimes do: they keep a rehearsal or production journal, a chronicle of the ins and outs of getting a show on stage. Vanity project, you say? Maybe, but for aspiring performers or fellow practitioners of the arts or even the curious uninitiated it can be a fascinating look into how a show comes together.

This year will be my seventh at Shakespeare and Company and the company's 32nd season. This year we are presenting The Taming of the Shrew, Henry V and The Doctor in Spite of Himself. Hey! Kenneth Branagh once portrayed Henry V (on stage and film)! Kenneth Branagh also played Hamlet in a film version of the play and kept a film diary that was later published by W.W. Norton and Co. which he undoubtedly made a pile of cash from. Kenneth Branagh is a raging douche-bag! If he can do it, I can do it (the journal, not the doucheyness).

So here it is; nightly will I record for posterity the trials, travails, tragedies and triumphs of Shakespeare and Co. bringing Henry (and also Taming and Doctor) to the stage in a Fox News "Fair and Balanced" manner (maybe not the last part).

"B-but, why?! What don't you like about Sir Ken Branagh?" I can hear you saying because I've hacked your webcam. He's an accomplished performer and director; I'm sure he's an exceptional husband and father. I've never seen him onstage, but his films leave me somewhat cold. My girlfriend calls his performances "somewhat masturbatory", but I frankly don't appreciate most of the Shakespeare he's brought to the screen, and he's kinda the "Shakespeare Guy" in Hollywood. I feel his performances are either too indulgent (see: Hamlet [4 hour version]) or plain annoying (see: Much Ado About Nothing: The Case of the Super Whiny Benedick). I actually appreciate more the non-classical work he did in films like The Gingerbread Man (RIP Altman) and Dead Again (baaaaad movie, good performance). I just don't think he's the right guy to bring Shakespeare to the masses and he's CERTAINLY not the Second Coming of Olivier. More like the Second Coming of Derek Jacobi. It's up to you to find that appealing.

"Buy why?! Why," you say (and you sure talk to your computer a lot), "do you have pictures of him all over your site?" to which I grimly reply, "Forget it, Jake. It's Ironytown..."