Lawrie's acting

[jumpingpowder.livejournal.com]

Sorry to interrupt the readthrough! I recently saw an all-female Shakespeare production and it struck me that all the parts Lawrie longs for are the male parts. The ones she will never get another chance at after the gender-freedom of a girls' school. In fact Tim (?)points this out re Caliban. - "'she won't [get another chance], you know. It's a man's part'. This was incontrovertible..." I bet Hotspur would have suited her, too. Poor Lawrie!

Comments

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

Only I suspect she'd prefer to play the King, which is a smaller role, but would allow her scope to convey a more complex range of emotions.

All the twins' thinking around gender is a little odd, of course, so I find it difficult to know whether Lawrie's preference for male parts really does say something about her gender identity or is simply her version of Nicola's decided preference for boys

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I think she'd make a very good King Henry too, but I don't know who'd do Hal then (Nicola? Though that would be weird: all Lawrie's make-up skills would be necessary, I think! Maybe Miranda for Hal and Nicola for Hotspur. I think Nick would approve of Hotspur.) I think Hal can be very complex if you get the balance between Machiavellian schemer and good-time boy right (it might be one Lawrie would completely flub out on, Ariel-style, too.)

[(Anonymous)]

How about Edmund in King Lear? With Nicola as Edgar. Bit unlikely for Kingscoteunl but I bet she'd have fun.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, tablet hijacked my post. Conventional spelling of Kingscote intended, and should have been signed Sorrel.

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

Actually you could do a really interesting production with identical Hal and Hotspur, identifiable by their different uniforms or something. It would bring out th esimilariities nd differences between the characters.

And you're right, Lear would work, too, for the same reason.

[sue marsden (from livejournal.com)]

It was Ginty, I think, in the dormitory afterwards (who said Caliban was a man's part)

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

None of the plays they do at Kingscote have any decent female roles in them. Female actresses to this day moan about the lack of really good roles for women. Even girls' schools don't go looking for plays with good female characters in!
I can imagine Lawrie being Lady Macbeth later on.

Yep

[mudkickerkicks.livejournal.com]

I was thinking the exact same thing yesterday, oddly enough. I'm reading and rereading some Shakespeare this winter (motive: Crommie's comment to Nicola re Dickens: 'Any educated person should have read at least some...') and have just finished reading then watching Macbeth (wish Kempe had done that in The Cricket Term, but prob just a tad dark). I'm not an actor, but would imagine if I were I'd be quite peeved not to be able to play Macbeth, Hamlet, Caliban, Mark Antony... (although in Hamlet Lawrie would probably want to play Claudius).

If Lawrie were a teenager in 2014, she'd probably be able to CrowdSource and set up her own female acting company with Tim as producer, doing Shakespeare and other classics with an all-female cast. Lady Macbeth, and Cleopatra, are excellent female parts, but even non-acting me at Lawrie's age in Cricket Term thought it was a swizz that most of the 'best' parts are male - if I were as passionate as Lawrie about acting, I'd be in quite the bate about it. (Although worse for Nicola I think re the Wrens and 'typing in uniform'.)

I've also just got Tim's quote about Macbeth's 'vaulting ambition' in the opening pages of Autumn Term...

Re: Yep

[scarletlobster.livejournal.com]

Lady Macbeth is quite a small part really, though. I think we remember 'great' Lady Macbeths simply because there are so few big Shakespearian roles for women. And I think Shakespeare would have been surprised by the way the role has been approached, since he wrote it for a teenage boy. Really I think being an actress was a pretty ghastly job until recently: there were far fewer roles for them than for the men, and even fewer really strong parts.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

What with the "miming convincingly", I can see Lawrie playing Gus/Augustus Coverly in Stoppard's Arcadia.

[occasionalhope.livejournal.com]

I bet when Lawrie is Upper Sixth )(or possibly Lower Sixth/Upper Fifth) Kempe will want her to do Viola with Nicola as Sebastian. What would Lawrie prefer to play in Twelfth Night, I wonder: Malvolio?

[intrepid--fox.livejournal.com]

Probably Malvolio, yes, But she might also be a very good Olivia. All that "older woman unknowingly in love with another woman" Is so often played for laughs and someone who s starting to think she prefers women would make it pleasingly ambiguous.

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

I would love to see it done with real identical twins. Perhaps in fanfic if not in real life?!