1994 - as a fifth grader I try to decipher my sister's freshman English copy of Romeo and Juliet. I didn't make it past the first page, but damn it, I wanted to get those jokes.
1996 - Romeo + Juliet comes out and is every middle school girl's everything, including me. This film introduced me to Radiohead, Harold Perrineau, and the glory of Hawaiian print shirts. This movie made me feel cool and smart and I don't mind that you know that about me.
1999 - Screw R+J, 10 Things I Hate About You comes out and becomes every teenage girl's everything, including me. This movie pushed me into a world of feminist literature (I read the Bell Jar and the Feminine Mystique) and I felt even a little smarter.
I take Acting I in high school and am properly introduced to Hamlet via Mel Gibson's classroom learning materials, before we all knew how bonkers he was. At some point, I successfully read Romeo and Juliet in my own freshman English class and fall in love with the music of the film more than anything.
2002 - I play Beatrice in and costume the cast of Much Ado About Nothing, my senior play. It was a post-nuclear apocalypse romp with ratty, Waterworld-esque military garb and some pretty intense face paint. I look like this:
I don't look like that now. Man, I need to work out more.
(I also fell in love with my future husband during this play, but he didn't ask me to prom, so screw that guy.)
College - who even remembers? (I read most of the histories for a Shakespeare class.)
2016 - I visit the First Folio in the likeliest of places: Vermillion, South Dakota. I look like this now, more or less:
Yes, I took a folio selfie.
In April, Google Doodle was Shakespeare's death-plus-400 years (deathiversary?) and I remembered, oh yeah. I love this guy.
In May, I saw the Royal Shakespeare Company's Shakespeare Live broadcast in a local-ish movie theater, bought a copy of the Complete Works and started this.
So, you're all caught up.
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