Who's got the power?

Yu Jin Ko is a Shakespeare scholar at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and our guest conversationalist for the Talk Back after the production of "Measure for Measure" 7 p.m. Saturday Aug. 21 at the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle in Maine. He will be joined onstage by director Jeffrey Frace and Opera House artistic director Judith Jerome to talk about the play, the production and Shakespeare's life and times. Recently, I asked Yu Jin (whose name is pronounced Yoo Gin) to answer three questions. The first is below; the second is here and the third is here. You can buy tickets to join us Saturday, Aug. 21 (TONIGHT!) after the show. Bring your own questions!

AA: Who is the most powerful person in this play?

YJK: You have so many centers of power and the source of power is so different for each in this play. Harold Bloom [the literary scholar] suggests that the most captivating character in the play is Barnadine, the prisoner who refuses death because he has been out drinking the night before. He presents a kind of irrepressible vitality that escapes the whole moral system of the entire play. He embodies that superfluidity of artistic energy that Shakespeare always displays in his plays. In some sense, he is the most powerful character. But more conventionally, you’d have to choose among Angelo, the Duke and Isabella. For me, it’s Isabella. She might come across to some as prissy and puritanical. But beyond all of that, the value she puts on her chastity, which she values above her brother’s life, is a value that is integral to her sense of self and takes her out of circulation – erotic and commercial – defining Vienna, a very corrupt and sordid society into which the Taliban in the form of Angelo has moved. Curiously, Isabella is the most powerful character because she tries the hardest and with the most force to define herself away from the categories of selfhood available to her.

Melody Bates/Mariana: "I hope folks will understand I am true of heart"

Abby Bray, a student at Stonington/Deer Isle High School, recently interviewed actor Melody Bates, who plays Mariana (a rejected lover) and other roles in "Measure for Measure" running Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House. "Interviewing some of the cast of 'Measure for Measure' was the first time I'd done a formal interview," says Abby. "After some trial and error, it proved both fun and educational. I learned about the characters on a more personal level, and I also learned what attracts people to Stonington." Melody is a veteran performer at the Opera House where she played Hippolyta/Titania in last year's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." In this interview, Abby asked Melody -- as Mariana -- why we should care about her character. She also asked about working in Stonington compared to working in other locations. Give it a click. Then buy tickets! And check back on the Shake Stonington blog for more of Abby's interviews with actors. Coming soon!

Major and Minor Roles

I love it that Tesky includes Lucio in his list of the great male roles. Pierre Diennet, a wonderful clown, plays our Lucio, and I watch him finesse his performance with every rehearsal. 'Modernizing' the role is exactly right, though I wouldn't have said it before reading Tesky's comment. In the community read in Brooklin on Monday I tried putting Lucio in my own mouth--and clumsy it was indeed, very unlike what I see Diennet carrying off.

The Duke is the mystery at the center of the play. Why does he skip town, leaving Angelo in charge? I'm with Tesky in seeing him more as a beneficent force, though in the community read Ellen called him a wimp. It was during his reign that the world of Shakespeare's Vienna fell into such supposed moral ruin. Director Frace and this cast portray him rather as ill, failing and searching, testing, perhaps for a possible successor.

But I am very interested in hearing more about how Tesky sees Measure for Measure as a "demonstration of Shakespeare's progressive sense of structure of comedy and tragedy."

And while in a very minor role, I nevertheless live each rehearsal to see Barnadine emerge onstage.

I'm just back in my office from watching the end of a run of Act I. We're in the middle of tech. It's a blustery day outside, chilly; tourists on the street are in jackets today--but inside the theater the fans onstage turn slowly. The Duke, in dilemma, dribbles cool water down his neck, and the lights are kept dim against the heat. The women wear nothing but their slips. Just saying. O delicious southern Bard.

Why You Should Go to "Measure for Measure": A Top Ten List

The Stonington Opera House production of Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" opens on Thursday August 19. If somehow you're still looking for reasons WHY you should attend, look no further. Below are 10 inarguable reasons to go to the show. What's your top reason for wanting to see Shakespeare? And what's your excuse for not going, huh?


Top Ten Reasons You Should Go to "Measure for Measure"


1. You're setting a record. You've seen all 10 years of Shakespeare productions at the Stonington Opera House, and you couldn't bear to miss year 11.

2. Savannah, Georgia is your favorite American city, and you can't afford to go there this year. Director Jeffrey Frace has transformed Shakespeare's Vienna, where the play is set, to 1950s Savannah. Very steamy.


3. You're a cook, and you think "Measure for Measure" might be the next "Top Chef" contender. Turns out, the title of Shakespeare's play is taken from the Bible. It's about measuring mercy, not flour.


4. You heard the play is about "Mercy." "Measure for Measure" IS about mercy but not the TV series "Mercy." Spoiler alert: Taylor Schilling is NOT in the Opera House cast.

5. You're into original music. Lawd alive, are you in the right place! Shakespeare was a music-loving fool, and Phillip Owen's original music has a southern draw and deep heartbeat. He grew up in Texas. (But we won't hold that against him.)

6. You like your Shakespeare wacky. If that's the case, you're in the right place. The Duke is played by a woman. The bawd Mistress Overdone is double cast as the Chief Nun at a cloister. And one of the scenes is almost as creepy as the Swedish film version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Laskigt!


7. You like cowboy hats and boots. And a rifle. Yep, you read it right. The costume designer has had some fun with this one.


8. Somebody told you Shakespeare was boring and hard to understand (even though it's English). It's poetry, dude. You have to listen. But the Stonington actors understand Performance 101: If you don't speak the language understandably, you get a lot of empty seats. You'll get it. We promise.


9. You want to understand our world today. Shakespeare may have written "Measure for Measure" in 1604, but 406 years later, the lessons about leadership, justice, mercy, love and class rage are still relevant. You got it: If it ain't relevant Shakespeare, we're not doing it!


10. One word: HARMONICAS!!!!

Do You Relate to Shakespeare?

Guest blogger Abigail Bray lives in Blue Hill (Maine) and is a student at Deer Isle-Stonington High School. She enjoys writing and will be contributing posts occasionally during the run of "Measure for Measure" Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House. She also works at Fisherman's Friend Restaurant, a tasty place to eat dinner before or after the show!




As a sophomore in high school, I found reading “Measure for Measure” for the first time a bit of a struggle. Some of the situations were almost easy to relate to while others were a bit harder. I think we all can agree that there is at least one person in our lives who is strict and stubborn, and who decides to fix whatever situation he or she thinks needs fixing, like Angelo did while the Duke was “out of town.” And at one point or another, we all have to choose between helping someone close to us, or staying true to what we believe in, as Isabella was forced to chose between her virginity and her brother’s life.



Other parts of the play are less easy to relate to. Because things have changed drastically since the 16th century, it is now more common for women to have children out of wedlock. Another situation I cannot relate to is Claudio changing his mind and asking his sister, whom he knows to be very virtuous and chaste, to give up her virginity to save him. It is one thing for Isabella to decide; it’s another to put her in the kind of situation where she feels obligated.



Although “Measure for Measure” isn’t one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, I feel that it helps us compare and contrast the difference in politics and morals of the 16th century with today’s.

Who cares about Shakespeare?

One of the most frequent comments I hear about Shakespeare is: "Why read his plays?" What does a playwright working 400 years ago have to say to us in the 21st century? The language is difficult, the stories are antiquated, the characters are remote from our tech-driven lives and, frankly, who cares?

I love these questions! And "Measure for Measure," which will be performed Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House, is the perfect play for coming up with answers and addressing these worries and dismissals of the Bard.

Here's the set-up for the story: The Duke of Vienna, seeing that the laws of the land have grown to lax, hands over state duties to his Deputy and goes under cover to watch as his stricter proxy strictly enforces the law. The first person arrested is Claudio, a young gentleman whose fiancee is pregnant. Oops, no pregnancy out of wedlock tolerated! Go straight to jail, Claudio, and prepare to die! But wait: Can Claudio's virgin sister Isabella, who is about to enter a cloister, save her brother's life through pleading with the Deputy? Better yet, will she agree to have sex with the Deputy in exchange for leniency for her brother? And what about the closure of the whore houses in the suburbs? Good for the moral realm, but, ouch, bad for the economy.

O, Vienna, what a tangled web is weaved round your leaders, families and community!

So you think none of this is relevant today? Let's tease out a few themes:

• Fall guys who take the rap for leaders.
• Women who are forced to negotiate life and death issues with sex trade.
• An economy in which the "little guy" (in this case, hookers) gets hurt because of anxieties about the laws, especially concerning the economy. (Hmmm...the word "Arizona" comes to mind.)
• And what about the morality of religion: Is a woman's virtue and fundamentalism more important than a man's life?

It's enough to make angels weep.

But instead of weeping, why not join us tonight for a community reading of "Measure for Measure" -- 7 p.m. Tuesday Aug. 10 -- at the Brooksville Free Public Library. We sit around a table and read the play with the help of volunteer citizen actors like you. Come read about "then" and think about "now." Most important, let's see if we can answer the big question: Who cares about Shakespeare?