Weekly Wrap-Up #4 and #5.

A couple weeks' worth since I went on a jaunt to Minnesota last weekend. In the past two weeks, I:

* saw South Dakota Shakespeare Festival's production of The Winter's Tale, which was wonderful even in 100 degree (38 C) weather. Pictured above is the most excellent stage direction ever: [Exit, pursued by a bear].

* watched RSC/Tennant's Hamlet and started out kind of upset that it wasn't my favorite thing ever: it took a while to get on board with the direction they went with this production. (I expect it to be polished like a movie with good sound, good editing, etc, OR a filming of a stage production. In reality, it's halfway between the two which is kind of jarring.)

The acting is top notch, though, and by the time Hamlet kills Polonius I was all in. I know that scene is pretty far into the play, don't get me wrong, but I still think you should probably watch this. The soliloquies made me a feel a lot of things and raised goosebumps that I wouldn't have thought possible given that I have heard those speeches a thousand times.

* read Henry IV Parts 1 & 2 and wrote about both here.

* read Henry V in a tent in the woods. If you can believe it, I didn't get through much of it, but I do hope that I get to whip that out in the future. "Oh, Henry the Fifth? I read that in a tent in northern Minnesota on the eve of my 32nd birthday." Bam.

I'm sort of stuck in the middle of this, so it doesn't seem likely that I'll get to reading A Midsummer Night's Dream like I planned this summer. Might jump straight to the 1599 biography, which I bought this week... on solstice, so maybe that makes up for it.

* participated in an online watchalong of the 1999 A Midsummer Night's Dream. Hoping to get invited to a MND-themed party someday. Seriously, if you've never watched a movie with someone hundreds of miles away over Twitter (especially if that someone wasn't an iggle), you should get on it.

Also also also:

* Pre-orders are live for the computer game Elsinore, based on Hamlet. I'm not a gamer by nature, but I want to figure out how to be one to play this. Very female-driven, which is sometimes hard to find in the world of Shakespeare.

* Check out Hogarth Imprint's Shakespeare Project. Seriously. Margaret Atwood's The Tempest? Gillian Flynn's Hamlet? Dreams do come true.