British Actors et al

Yesterday, I was working on a long, philosophical post about language, structure, abstraction and the particular, but I think I will spare what few, if any, readers I might have.

Last evening I watched a BBC production of Midsummer Night's Dream on DVD. The production values were low and the staging unimaginative yet sometimes strange. There was a lot of rolling around in a pond and mud that was unexpected, and puck was weirdly imagined. Yet, as the advertisement on the DVD says, "word for word as written by Shakespeare." It was a serviceable presentation of the play. Interestingly, I recognized a couple of the actors from their roles in other BBC productions in the late 70's and 80's including Doctor Who. That is not totally unexpected. British actors consist of a small pool of professionals who tend to appear over and over again in different contexts. It is still true. David Tenant, the current Doctor Who--the show has run for thirty five years or so from 1962 until sometime in the late 80's, then starting again in 2005--has just finished playing Hamlet along with, interestingly, Patrick Stewart from Star Trek the Next Generation.

Enough of my Geekdom though.

Today I am going to work on rewriting Chapter One.