LOVE'S FINE WIT (with ME) April 23 AT THE CORNELIA STREET CAFE

LOVE'S FINE WIT

A reading (with music) of Shakespearean sonnets

As the dialog of an intense love triangle
And a concert of Elizabethan music and song

*Katie Fabel, Jessica Crandall, Heli Sirvio, Catherine Zubkow, Eric Roffman

William Anderson (guitar & theorbo), Helen Ellis (viola da gamba)

CORNELIA STREET CAFE

29 Cornelia Street

Sat, April 23 at 6:00

www.corneliastreetcafe.com

Advance reservations at 212 989-9319 are strongly recommended!

Help us celebrate Shakespeare�s Birthday with LOVE�S FINE WIT, a reading (with music) of Shakespeare�s most popular, most powerful, and most complex sonnets � rearranged as the dialog of an intense love triangle, with lust, betrayal, loneliness, and the triumph of true love. And a concert of Elizabethan songs and music!

EVENT LISTING
http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com/Performances.asp?sdate=4/23/2011&from_cal=0


*(Performers subject to their continuing availability.)

So... I arranged for a concert with some terrific singers and musicians, and I rearranged Shakespeare's sonnets for a reading. It tells the story of an intense love triangle. The sonnets, heard in this context of a dramatic story, as the dialog of the characters, reveal hidden and unexpected meanings and gain new power. Shakespeare was both a poet and a dramatist. Rather than taking the sonnets as his sort-of-maybe biographical musings, we are taking each sonnet out of its context, away from the usual ordering, and taking each sonnet for itself, then giving it a new context in its role in this dramatic story. Shakespeare in his plays was famous for giving each character his own voice. The sonnets seem to speak out in a whole range of different voices and moods. By taking the sonnets as dialog, as the voice of different characters, and not just WS's own voice, these different voices and moods have a new opportunity to be heard.

Several years ago I did a quite different arrangement of the sonnets:

LOVE IS MY SIN
http://tattoowesley.blogspot.com/2010/03/love-is-my-sin.html


In fact, one (almost defining) feature of the sonnets is that they are ambiguous. The same line can often be taken in two quite different ways, with quite different meanings, depending on how one interprets the syntax. (For example, take another look at the famous last line of sonnet 116!) This ambiguity helps make it possible for a sonnet to gain additional meaning and clarity by giving it a context in which it inherits the specific circumstances laid out by the previous speeches.

In filmmaking and film editing this is a familiar process. A shot of a man looking into the distance becomes a quite different shot, with different emotional content, depending on whether it is preceded by, say, a scene with a cute dog, a beautiful woman, a violent murder, an empty field of wild flowers, or a war.

LOVE'S FINE WIT, the particular rearrangement for this event, I think, tells a very interesting and moving story.

The Shakespearean songs, by the way are integrated into the story. They come from Ross Duffin's wonderful book, Shakespeare's Songbook (which also includes a DVD of many Shakespearean songs), and he himself was both encouraging and helpful in several e-mails.


The date, April 23, is special. Counting back from the date of his baptism, April 23 is usually considered Shakespeare's birthday. So we created this show as part of a three day celebration of Shakespeare's birthday at the Cornelia Street Cafe.

HOPE YOU'LL COME. Be sure to make reservations early!

Advance reservations at 212 989-9319 are strongly recommended!

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ENTERTAINING SCIENCE - NOV 2009

At 6:00 on the first Sunday of each month, Nobel Laureate (Chemistry) Roald Hoffman convenes an entertaining session of Science Entertainment at the Cornelia Street Cafe.

Here's the info for Nov 2009. Early reservations are recommended. (It usually sells out.) Some people on the wait list are likely to get in also (but mostly end up sitting in the back).

The food and drinks you can have (upstairs before or after, downstairs during the show) are quite good at the Cafe/Restaurant.

6:00PM Nov 1, 2009
ENTERTAINING SCIENCE
Roald Hoffmann

SHAPES AND ENERGIES: LOVE AND HATE AMONG THE ATOMS

"Molecules have shapes, and their geometries determine ultimately their every chemical, physical and biological property. Tiny electrons, scooting around the much bulkier atoms, and governed by the lovely logic of quantum mechanics, actually tell those big guys how to arrange themselves.

An expert on la liaison chimique, Odile Eisenstein of the University of Montpellier, France, takes us by the hand into the world of molecular shapes, from the simple tetrahedron of methane to the less intuitive world of molecules containing metal atoms.

Gerard Parkin, who is rumored to make a living studying such molecules, will do some non-electronic magic.

And making shapes, exploring different forms of holding energy together, sometimes in "nonintuitive" ways, will also be expressed in the music of Todd Capp and his quartet. "

Cover $10

ENTERTAINING SCIENCE

Entertaining Science, the blend of science and entertainment created by Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann, continues at the Cornelia Street Cafe on the first Sunday of each month.

On Sunday Jan 5 at 6:00 PM, this month's show is:

SeaChange:Reversing the Tide, a dramatic lecture devised, written and presented by scientist Roger Payne and his wife, actress Lisa Harrow. SeaChange weaves the knowledge of science and the wisdom of poetry (Shakespeare, Shelley, Robert Frost, Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder, Mary Oliver and others) into a compelling presentation arguing that the human species is not the overseer of life but an integral part of life�s complex web, and that our survival requires that we attend not just to our own well-being, but also to the well-being of that entire web of life.

The Cornelia Street Cafe
29 Cornelia Street (NYC)
212-989-9319

Cover charge & drink minimum.
Reservations usually necessary.
Come early for a good seat.