I gave up on it half way through ep2 because the focus on the acting troupe. I don’t even care if there’s more to it, any amount of that is a dealbreaker. The meta of actors playing actors is already overplayed and tiring to me, throw Shakespeare into the mix and I’m all Seinfeld throwing up hands I’m out.gif
I’m pretty bummed that Hulu didn’t renew Reboot, which is a show about actors and writers. 
If you’re a fan of the office like I am, and didn’t know that Creed tour dates were a thing, they are:
We finished Station Eleven; my wife and I both loved it. I can’t overstate that the acting stuff is really not a huge part of it, and where it is it’s not terribly overwrought (okay they do Hamlet but it’s fine), and there’s several episodes that have zero to do with acting at all. And once you get past that it’s a really lovely show.
It made my wife interested in Shakespeare so tonight we watched The Tragedy of Macbeth, a movie on Apple TV by one of the Coens, starring Denzel as Macbeth. I came away with two main conclusions:
- the man can steal a scene
- Shakespeare is fucking rough. Who is the audience for faithful adaptations of this stuff? Theater nerds and English majors? I dunno who else could possibly enjoy listening to this style of dialogue.
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Rough how? The language? When education wasn’t a liberal plot to turn real conservatives into cucks everyone used to read enough Shakespeare in school to be able to understand the language. Good actors go a long way to making it more understandable, and for every production that is faithful there are 2 that are modern and play with the locations and time period of the story. Imagine being in the same room with Denzel during those speeches, live performances make Shakespeare’s plays very powerful, if much more inconsistent, germy, and CGI-less than movies. I spent 6 years running shows at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the 90’s and back then I think we were selling 300k tickets a year with a ~10-12million dollar budget, so there are lots of fans out there.
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Yeah, the language. I guess I went to school after that changed 
It was probably longer ago than that, I was a theater nerd in high school and don’t remember reading much of it. There are about a million books these days to help with the language if you want to give it another shot.
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I didn’t think you were that much younger than me, and I did, at the very least Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and Othello. I think a comedy as well? It gets a lot easier with practice. It’s also just a wealth of cultural touchstones that are baked into a lot more plays and movies than you might realize, not to mention culture in general. Hamlet in particular is packed with sayings we just take for granted now.
imo you really have to have read the play at least once or you’re gonna get lost jumping in to watching the play not knowing anything about it.
The Kurosawa version is a strong recommend.
I recall we read (and performed) A Midsummer Night’s Dream, mayyybe we also read R&J, and I think that was it from my poor memory.
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I can’t find a clip, but the Tribe Called Quest scene in Station Eleven absolutely blew my mind, no joke.
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I think I’m in the same age range and we read R&J, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Caesar HS. I think we might have read Richard III as well.
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This sounds like it would be amazing:
Harriet Tubman is the obvious choice for a Civil War spy thriller movie. Or maybe you could do a whole cinematic universe with her and John Brown and Frederick Douglass.
Just imagine Scott Adams getting rustled.
This might not be exactly what you’re imagining, but:
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my wife started watching the MURDAUGH MURDERS docuseries on netflix last night, I’m just sitting there on the couch like 3 martinis deep jacking off on my phone and only halfway paying attention and like I could tell this family was fucked up just from looking at them but there’s like five generations of rich white dudes getting away with whatever they want, it’s surprising it took this many generations before something like this happened
best thing about this show is that it’s mostly driven by those faux-interviews (that’s just some rando person reading a script) and lady they “interview” the most is connected to the case (she’s labeled “(whatever town) native” on screen) because her niece was acquaintances with one of the people on the boat. And she’s super obviously one of those nosey small town get-in-everyones-business types, oh yeah I really give a shit about this old lady’s opinion.
Spoiler
I was surprised to learn they released this documentary with the court cases still pending. Seems like this is going to make a circus of the actual trial and will actually increase the likelihood of him getting off.