The Curtainless Theatre

This piece is a continuation of a previous article; find the first half (Movies 1-5) here ! Adapting Shakespeare to the screen presents a myriad of problems and opportunities for the filmmaker. After all, centering a camera on a soliloquizing actor as they stare off into the nothingness of filmic space could, in fact, be perceived as stagey and artificial to a film-going audience of the early 21st century. None other than Laurence Olivier thought to have solved this problem with his version of “Hamlet” from 1948, by rendering Hamlet’s monologues as products of a voiced-over, interior, thought process. Audiences and critics seem to have responded, granting the film the Oscar for Best Picture, and Olivier himself the award for Best Actor. A filmmaker such a Roman Polanski can choose to focus on atmosphere and setting when adapting the Bard, as in his 1971 version of “Macbeth,” where the cold, rocky crags of Scotland help to inform the bloody-minded bleakness of events as they unfold, s...

Adapting Shakespeare to the screen presents a myriad of problems and opportunities for the filmmaker. After all, centering a camera on a soliloquizing actor as they stare off into the nothingness of filmic space could, in fact, be perceived as stagey and artificial to a film-going audience of the early 21st century. None other than Laurence Olivier thought to have solved this problem with his version of “Hamlet” from 1948, by rendering Hamlet’s monologues as products of a voiced-over, interior, thought process. Audiences and critics seem to have responded, granting the film the Oscar for Best Picture, and Olivier himself the award for Best Actor. A filmmaker such a Roman Polanski can choose to focus on atmosphere and setting when adapting the Bard, as in his 1971 version of “Macbeth,” where the cold, rocky crags of Scotland help to inform the bloody-minded bleakness of events as they unfold, some of which are spoken by a fantastically naked trio of witches. Baz Lauhrman’s version of “R...

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Karrington has been a resident of the Lansing area for 6 years and has become very active in the community that he now calls home. Through Black Lives Matter Lansing, Lansing Residents United, and his church home Lansing Area Church Of Christ he has maintained his commitment to being a positive force no matter where he is. As a Detroit native, the arts and community organizing have been a major part of his life that he will never turn away form. Sociology and anthropology are the passions that give him the strength to advocate for his community and other marginalized communities. As Langston Hughes said, " Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die life is like a broken-winged bird that can not fly. Hold fast to dreams for when dreams go life is a barren field frozen with snow." Black Lives Matter Lansing is a small chapter—but what we lack in size, we make up for in influence. Over the past two years, we have successfully centered the issues of Black folks in Metro Lansing...

Sir Philip Sidney  by Kris Vitols Literary influence can be a sticky wicket. Ideally, we would prefer it to be straight-forward and easy in its measure, traceable through testament and witness, preferably with a slew of documentation. Literary history abounds with writers demonstrating their indebtedness to their forebears: Dante Alighieri thought enough of the Roman poet Virgil to cast him as his guide through Hell and the outskirts of Purgatory, referring to him simply as “The Poet”; John Milton, in his justification of verse form at the beginning of “Paradise Lost,” brazenly dismissed centuries of rhymed meter-schemes, choosing to write in dactylic hexameter, the unrhymed verse form of Homer, feeling that his poem’s subject warranted such a move; when James Joyce’s phantasmagoria, “Ulysses,” was published in 1922, he supposedly quipped, “I’ve just written a book that will keep the critics busy for 300 years.” In just this way, writers over the centuries have cited their inf...

 The Rev. Phiwa Langeni is a trans-masculine genderqueer person who’s passionate about helping people understand that different doesn’t have to be dangerous. Phiwa is an ordained United Church of Christ minister and is the Founder/Director of Salus Center, Lansing’s only LGBTQ Resource and Community Center.  Salus is the Latin word meaning wholeness and well-being. That it’s a word not commonly used lends itself to the beauty of co-creating the evolving meanings of salus within the LGBTQ communities of the Greater Lansing Area. Keeping LGBTQIA2S+ folk at the core, Salus Center strives to cultivate radical communities of care. We aim to empower people to authentically live into their whole selves, no matter what intersecting identities they embody. To learn more about Salus Center, visit them on their website or on Facebook . To donate to this wonderful organization, click here !