fandomhigh | Modern Shakespeare, Wednesday, Periods 1 & 2

"So, just about every year, the island picks a day and makes you sing," Karla said with the smug smile of someone who'd been through it a million times by now and had no fear of it left. "You will sing. Likely, you will sing in public and in front of your peers. If you're lucky, you'll get away with just singing about what you're doing, little musical additions to your conversation. If you're unlucky, you'll end up singing something personal and private in front of someone--confessing your innermost thoughts and emotions to the person you're talking to. For one day, you get to experience living in a musical--almost. One of the rules of being in a musical is that the characters don't know they are in a musical and so the random outbursts into song are either not noticed, even when they happen just a few feet away, or everyone participates and it's considered normal."

Could you see where this was going yet, class? At least, those of you from modern times? "Today, we're going to watch one of the most famous adaptations of Shakespeare's work, East Side Story, which is a modern, musical take on the play, Star-Crossed. In both plays, two teens from rival factions fall in love, but their friends and families are both feuding. That feud leads several deaths, including the death of a family member of the female lead's at the hands of the male lead." Karla continued explaining the plot of Star-Crossed, going over the relationships between the characters and how young the leads were written as and the power structures between the families.

"In East Side Story, some of that narrative is complicated," Karla continued. "Rather than being two opposing wealthy families and their retainers, the musical provides a racial and economic element, with one side being the established white gang and the other the newly-arrived immigrants from Puerto Rico. Either way, the causal hatred between the two groups leads ultimately to tragedy, turning what many consider to be Shakespeare's most romantic play into his most tragic."

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"Do you find this romantic? What's the lesson here? Is it to love fiercely and damn the consequences, or to be careful with your heart because loving unwisely and too well can lead to heartbreak? What are you taking away from this?"

"Does it have to be one or the other?" Tip asked, after thinking about it for several moments. "Can't you love carefully but fiercely at the same time?"

She was honestly asking. She already knew she had too much trouble trusting anyone to let people in easily. But that didn't mean she didn't hope to find great romance in her life, too.

Hopefully without everyone dying, though.

Karla thought about that for a moment. "Not in my experience, but that is just my experience," she said. "Love is like the Band-aid conundrum or the getting into cold water debate. All at once or a little bit at a time."

Realizing that might have come out wrong, she added, "I don't mean that you can't fall in love slowly or anything like that. But fierce and careful are kind of at odds with one another. Carefully suggests you're holding something back, while fiercely says all in"

"But you can make a choice carefully and then be totally into it once you've made it," Tip said. "It's just . . . being discerning."

"That's absolutely true," Karla agreed. "Or be drawn to one by nature and the other by circumstance. But, in the case of your argument, I wouldn't say you were loving someone carefully and fiercely at the same time, which is what I thought you meant. First one, then the other."

"Yeah. I guess."

That wasn't quite what Tip had meant, either, but she didn't press the point. She wasn't sure yet how to put what she was thinking into words.

Maybe she'd try on paper, tonight. That was what writers were supposed to do, right? Make sense out of the weird stuff in their heads by writing it down?

"I think really the lesson is to love more," Steven said. "Love your neighbor, and the old guy from the drugstore, and the people who are different than you. If you care about everyone, then you won't be bad to them on purpose."

Oh tiny marshamallow baby. Karla was just going to sit down on the ground next to you and silently offer an arm to go around you if you wanted.

"But that's really hard to do," Karla said to the living embodiment of love. "At least for some people. People are raised to hate, or they lash out when they're hurt or scared or angry. They do that to the people that they love, even. Do you really think everyone loving everyone else in the whole world is possible?"

She resolved to show a comedy next week, eesh.

"Well yeah, sometimes we hurt people without meaning to," Steven said. "But if we at least try to keep our hearts open to people, even people who are trying to hurt us, we can try and make it so less people get hurt."

He scooched in a bit and leaned into the offered arm.

"He sure did write a lot about situations that got super sad, didn't he?"

Lucille thought for a moment. "Love cannot be controlled."

"No, but actions can," Karla pointed out, happy to play devil's advocate. "Wouldn't you say love blinded all the characters here to their own faults and flaws as completely as ambition did for the Macfinlays?"

Modern Shakespeare, Wednesday, Periods 1 & 2

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