my feed has been absolutely flooded with beautiful stories about gavin today. whether fellow actors or fans, these individual yet collective experiences are such a strong testament to who he was as a person and the impact he left on the theatre community. we’ve lost some broadway legends this year, but this one feels different.
rest in peace, gavin creel. thank you for everything.
just a few testimonies from today
there are so many more.
therapist: cunt dracula is not real and cannot fuck you.
cunt dracula:
Okay so a production of Hamlet that ends with “Goodnight, sweet prince,” etc. and then Horatio looks up and sees the audience for the first time and is both shocked and furious, because his world is falling apart and you sat there and watched.
This idea would go fantastically well with my director’s idea that Hamlet knows the whole time that he’s in a play. He had me (when I played Hamlet) interact with the audience, exchange looks with people in the front row, deliver my soliloquies to people in the first few rows casually like I was just talking to them, and I even had the idea to not freeze and just walk about the stage when other characters had their little ‘asides,’ which he allowed me to keep in.
Basically, if Hamlet continuously acknowledges the audience unnoticed by all the other characters (almost Fleabag-style) and then suddenly he’s gone, and obviously he knew he’d have to be gone at the end, and then poor Horatio is left all alone to finally realize there was someone else there the entire time, now that would make it all the more devastating.
There’s no difference between the Danish courtiers, who showed up because they wanted to see the Mad Prince get his butt kicked in a staged sword-fight, and us the audience (who… also showed up to watch Hamlet loose a sword fight.)
I want to see a production where Horatio just stares at us, and screams “Now cracks a noble heart!” with the subtext “You fucking fuckers. He was better than all of you, you watched him die, and you just stood there.
Then, he just silently cries over the body. For like FIVE MINUTES. And the courtiers peel away into the wings, one by one, until Horatio is alone on stage with a lot of dead bodies. It starts getting uncomfortable. You’re thinking… is the play over? Am I supposed to go? (hamlet is just about the *only* play where the final scene is cut about 50% time, so use that uncertainty, use that ambiguity.) Maybe some people do get up to go. There’s definitely muttering. And then there’s smashing sounds coming from the direction of the box office, and Horatio looks up, with an expression like something’s gone wrong.
But then he says, “Why do the drums come hither?” Fortinbras enters though the audience, and the play continues.
(I *also* think it would be really cool to cut for intermission right after Claudius freaks out and breaks up the play-within-a-play. Just imagine it: king yells “Lights! Lights! Lights!” And the houselights come up.)
All good. And also–
As Hamlet is dying in Horatio’s arms, he puts his hand on Horatio’s face and turns it toward us. And that’s when Horatio sees the theater.
cant talk rn obsessed over the design concept of this 2017 production of pinocchio as a stage play where pinocchio is the only character played by a human actor and the rest of the cast are portrayed as puppets ,,,
like. how insanely poetic is this . you are a boy and you are made of wood but you know so entirely that you are more than wood, you are as human as anyone made of flesh and bone and it's not your fault that you came into the world with sap running through your veins instead of blood. and your entire life you are searching the world for what it means to be human but the dramatic irony of it all is that none of them know how to be human either. you keep reaching out for humanity and they seem so big and powerful but they are just puppets of a greater design too performing for an audience you cannot see. and whether you know it or not you are more human than any of them even if they are convinced you are just wood and paint and magic. im on the floor .im losing my mind over here. gimme a second guys hold on. wait a minute guys wait a goddamn minute like. wahta a good fucking design concept. head in hands !
okay but what company is this. what is the name of this. is there a video of this you can't just leave us hanging without credit
As Phantom of the Opera leaves the Majestic Theater after all this time, I hope that the actor of the Phantom knows that they have the chance to pull the funniest move in all of theater history
A man painting on one of the Chinese opera faces (脸谱) for Cao Cao (155-220), a statesman and general.
i decided all plays are time loops btw. it’s true because they keep getting performed over and over and over and the ending never changes and they can never escape it. if you even care.
I feel like I need to tell everyone how brilliantly the Globe incorporated a deaf Gildenstern into the 2018 Hamlet and then force all of you to watch it
ok, so Gildenstern is played by a deaf actor, Nadia Nadarajah. he* signs all his lines, and either Rosencratz interprets for him, or the person he’s talking to says something that makes it obvious what he just said, depending. how each character reacts to Gildenstern is completely in-character and often hilarious
it’s all brilliant and adds another layer of humor and pathos and you should all watch it
*casting at the Globe right now is gender neutral so I’m just going to use the character’s pronouns
guys I know I’m wittering on about this but the thing I want to emphasize is that there is no tokenism here. they didn’t just shove a deaf actor into a speaking role so they could pat themselves on the back about how progressive they are. they went to the effort of fully integrating Nadarajah’s deafness into the story so that it not only fit organically within the narrative but actually enhanced it. watching Hamlet’s signing disintegrate as his trust in R&G disintegrates adds a depth to that storyline I’ve never seen before. Claudius has exactly the awkwardness of someone who thinks of himself as a good person and therefore thinks he’s being kind and generous with his accommodations for disability, but has never even once actually asked a disabled person what they need, which is so on-point for his character it hurts.
I know Michelle Terry gets a lot of hate mail for her policy of race-, gender-, and disability-blind casting, but fuck all those people. long may that policy continue.
the glenda jackson production of king lear on broadway did something similar with the Duke of Cornwall, and it was actually the best part of the play, imo. because when Cornwall was speaking to Lear or to the Court, he had a sign language interpreter to speak the actual literal words aloud, but when he was talking to and conspiring with Regan, his wife, they were just signing back and forth with no translation for the audience, and it emphasized the intimacy between the two even as they turn against literally everyone else in the play, which was fantastic.
and the best part of it was, by the second half of the play, you were so used to it, that you didn’t even blink anymore when watching him and listening to the spoken words come from the interpreter - you just watched the actor playing Cornwall and let the words come from the other guy, but the guy kind of fades into the background. it didn’t hurt that the actor for Cornwall was one of the tallest on stage, and had bright red hair - it was easy to watch him, instead of his interpreter.
which is why it was so shocking and so perfect when the interpreter is the one who kills him.
See, they folded the character of the servant who kills Cornwall into the person of this character who had been such a non-entity that you almost forgot he was on stage - until you realize, no, this is another person, and he’s been here, watching all this the whole time, and he finally gets to the breaking point where he can’t stand by and translate anymore, he has to do something to stop the cruelty he’s seeing, and it’s not just a random guy who comes in for the scene and sees them blinding Gloucester, it’s the man whose been by his side for the entire play, the man who was his voice who finally has a line of his own. who finally speaks on his own behalf to say “no.”
and then, of course, he gets killed, but Cornwall dies in the same scene so it’s not like they need to get a new translator or anything. but it was the most fucking brilliant choice i’ve ever seen re: casting in a Shakespearean production, and the rest of the play pales in my memory in comparison.
The last play I watched before the pandemic was a Beauty And The Beast adaptation and when Gaston proposed to Belle there was this little boy in the audience who yelled NOOO DON’T SAY YES, so when Belle naturally turned him down Gaston turned to the boy with his hands on his hips and said “well, now look what you’ve done”
I’ve got a similar story actually, back in the mid 2000s the Sydney Opera House was putting on Just Macbeth (a parody play by Andy Griffiths a popular author over here), anyway it was my first time in a proper theatre and me gran comped out for front row seats. Now it gets to the scene where Banquo confronts Macbeth and the actor of B asks the audience whether Macbeth is lying or not. Now everyone in the audience assures Banquo that Macbeth is innocent, everyone one but my brat of a self. Then with a glimmer in his eye the actor dropped to his knees and addressed me, asking me if what I said was true and what my name was all the while Macbeth was raging in the background. But what really made me a theatre fan for life was about an hour later, in this version of the text Macbeth (to show his madness) creates a puppy and kitten grinder which took the form of a shadow puppet presentation through some pretty impressive lighting work. So it’s showing the machine with shadows of kittens and puppies falling in when the actor of Macbeth points at me and exclaims. “And you! *Redacted* That’s you up there too you traitor!” Where there was the silhouette of a child going into the machine. Me and my gran were losing our heads with laughter and it remains one of my fondest memories of her.
weird unprompted opinion but i think out of all the storytelling mediums.....theatre best portrays loneliness
hamlet: [walks onto a movie screen] now i am alone
me: i guess
hamlet: [is left on an empty stage] now i am alone
me: fuck yeah you are
#it's about the sucking hungry silence of a hundred people holding their breath and very intently watching #the one single person on this bare piece of elevated floor that has been filled with so much #artistry and make-believe that it has become a true and real place #good theater sucks the air out of the room #an empty stage echoes (via @aethersea)
that broadway thing where the song ends and everyone freezes in their final pose (usually with their arms in the air) and you can see how heavily they’re breathing reblog if you agree
broadway set design
matilda // hamilton // she loves me // wicked // les miserables // phantom of the opera // newsies // fiddler on the roof // pippin
This is the wrong season to be talking about it, but literally no adaptation of Christmas Carol will ever top this one stage adaptation I saw in 2018, and it’s 100% because of the first scene of the play
Almost every Christmas Carol starts with the same scene: Christmas Eve, the day before Scrooge is visited by the three ghosts. This is the same scene that the rest of the audience - including myself - is expecting to see
The house lights go out. The stage is dark
A boy is singing: “God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay…”
The sound of wind whistles through the dark of the theater.
“Remember Christ our savior was born on Christmas day, to save us all from Satan’s power…”
The boy pauses. The wind picks up. Somewhere in the audience, a child sounds upset
“…When we had gone astray. Oh tidings…”
The boy’s voice fades away. The wind howls
A church bell rings
The stage lights come on. Fog is floating across the stage. A deacon, two gentlemen, and Scrooge stand in the fog like islands in a sea
Between them is a coffin
The wind howls. It makes the word, “Ebenezer,” in a voice that shakes the floor
The deacon says: “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God to take unto himself the soul of our departed Jacob Marley…”
“Ebenezer,” says the wind
Scrooge whips around at the sound. Fog coils around his feet
Nobody else on stage hears his name
“…We therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth-”
“Earth,” says the wind
“-ashes to ashes-”
“Ashes,” says the wind
“-and dust to dust”
“Dust” says the wind
“In the certain hope of eternal life through our Lord Christ; who shall change-”
“Change” says the wind
“-our vile body-”
“Change” says the wind
“-that it may be like unto His glorious body-”
“Change” says the wind
A church bell rings. Children are crying in the audience
One by one, the parishioners exit the stage. Scrooge is left alone with the coffin
He says a few words - laughs at his mishearing voices on the wind - and turns to leave
A church bell rings
Scrooge pauses - and turns to look at the coffin
Lights flash. The coffin lid slams open, and the ghost of Jacob Marley, horrible, pale, and screeching, leaps out of the coffin, hands reaching out to Scrooge and howling -
Lights flash and the stage goes dark. Children are screaming. Parents are screaming. I’m screaming
The rest of the production was gorgeous, but I still maintain that the first scene was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen attached to any adaptation of Christmas Carol
The ONLY version of Dickens i can get down with
performer: *makes a costume quick-change on stage*
me, every single time:
weird unprompted opinion but i think out of all the storytelling mediums.....theatre best portrays loneliness
hamlet: [walks onto a movie screen] now i am alone
me: i guess
hamlet: [is left on an empty stage] now i am alone
me: fuck yeah you are
