These are so few and far between now that they’re older, I must post them when they appear!

My daughter was convinced to stage manage her college theatre production because she would share the duty with a friend as co-managers. As the weeks of rehearsal went by, we didn’t hear much about the co. As they approach production this week, they’re in something called “cue to cue,” which is apparently a grueling amount of work.

“Weren’t you supposed to have a co-stage manager?” I asked.

“Funny story,” she said, “turns out she had an operation on her knee. So she, like, basically can’t move.”

Now, you might think you know me, and you might think my following line as a Dad indeed had to have been, “Tell her that’s not what break a leg means.”

But that’s not what I said! Mostly because I thought of it too late. What I said was this. I took the Facetime call from my wife’s hand, turned the screen to face my geeklet, and said, “Well, you tell her that in the 1935 Max Reinhardt film adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a 14yr old Mickey Rooney played Puck with a broken leg and had to be wheeled around the set!”

I got back a blank stare. “Why,” she said, “do you just know that off the top of your head?”

“I didn’t,” I say, “I just watched it this weekend.“

Ok I was excited at a chance to see some footage of David Tennant’s Macbeth (coming soon to a theatre probably not near you). If you’ve never seen Mr. Tennant play the villain, go check out his turn in Marvel’s Jessica Jones series. That recognizable accent that can so readily make ’em all swoon can easily switch to something more Satan than Seyton. Can’t wait to see what he does with the Scottish Play.

Ready?

I Hate It

I try very hard to find something to love in all Shakespeare performances, and I’ll probably watch this 12 times and find something. But on the first watch? I’m bothered by it, and I figured out why.

He’s looking at the camera, and I want him to stop.

It’s often asked about Shakespeare’s soliloquies. Who is the actor talking to? We know that the point is to share information with the audience, to get at the character’s inner thoughts in a way not otherwise available. But eye contact turns that from “we happened to overhear something we maybe shouldn’t be privvy to” into, “You’re in the story now, and I’m deliberately telling you this.” That makes you Macbeth’s confidante. And I think that takes away from his character. I want an insane Macbeth, someone paranoid with no idea who he can trust. I don’t want to be some trusted friend.

Maybe it will be different. Who knows, perhaps this is a little featurette they made just for this purpose, and it’s not actually in the play this way. That’d be annoying for different reasons, We all hate it when the trailer contains scenes or soundtrack that aren’t in the final product. Or maybe it’s there, but its limited, so Macbeth talks to us in the first half, working out the plan and telling us his fears because clearly he’s afraid to voice them to his wife, but then after the murders he just kind of forgets we’re there. That might be able to work.

When does it work?

Bardfilm and I were discussing this morning about when and how this technique can work. In live theatre, it’s possible for the actor to pick out a specific seat in the audience and direct a whole speech at them. This probably works for the rest of the audience, since they still get the same experience. But what of that person? I think I’d want that to stop immediately. I don’t want to be part of the show.

It came to mind that Hamlet might be fun to add this element. Hamlet’s famous opening line is one that only we hear, “A little more than kin and less than kind.” Imagine he said that looking directly at you. So now you’re basically Horatio, you’re the witness to what’s going on,. Now it’s different. I don’t want to be in on it with Macbeth. But I want to be there for Hamlet. Does that make sense? If Hamlet knows I’m here, Hamlet’s not alone.

What do you think, do you want to be pulled into the play like this?

I’ve been unemployed for several months, and I’m not enjoying it. As a “full stack” software engineer, and an old one at that, one of the biggest hurdles to getting through the job interview game is keeping specific technical skills up to date. I was at my last job for eight years, so there are many things I never got to touch. That’s working against me.

I want to change that. Technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum, however. Reading a book or taking a course is not enough to say, “Sure, I know that language,” any more than it would be true for Italian or Icelandic. You have to use what you’re learning, internalize (grok!) it, and be able to speak confidently that you know what you’re talking about.

With that in mind, I will use the site as a canvas for learning projects. While I could create a new site for this, I’ve already got the domain, the hosting, and the traffic here, so I might as well use it. It also goes toward that “not in a vacuum” thing. I can add features here that are useful and not just another to-do list manager.

Presenting My React + TailwindCSS Shakespeare Browser

Several months ago, with the help of generative AI, I put together some resource pages on the site offering basic summaries of the plays and individual characters. It was an exercise in SEO (search engine optimization). To put it bluntly, if I built it, would they come? Yes, those pages are hit thousands of times each month. But that project was also a cobble-together job, very static and hard to maintain. I always knew I wanted to rewrite it.

Now I have. The specific technology I wanted to practice is known as React and TailwindCSS, for the curious (with some Vite thrown in). Instead of having hundreds of static pages, only a few dynamically generated ones power all of the content. This allows me to create a better user experience that I can easily maintain. When I update the content, I need to push a single file. When I want to touch up the visual design, I can do it consistently across all the pages.

How You Can Help

• If you find any broken links, please let me know; since this is a small React app running side-by-side with WordPress, I had to do some fancy rewriting trickery behind the scenes, and it may not always be perfect.

• I admit that this was built using gen AI, and we know AI tends to hallucinate. I’ve been steadily going through the more egregious issues and fixing the content by hand, but there are hundreds of entries to look at, so the more eyeballs we can put on the problem, the better. These hallucinations sometimes include making up characters that may not even exist. Be warned.

• Quality Control Play titles should appear different than character names — Hamlet vs Hamlet, for example. HTML or other formatting that doesn’t look quite right. Fair warning I’m no visual designer, I just don’t have the eye for it. If you’ve got ideas for making it look more beautiful, too, starting with color, maybe? I’m happy to take them.

• New Features What can we add to this? It originally started as a full browser of the entire play text (which still exists in the static pages), but moving that whole thing to React is a much bigger job I’m continuing to work on behind the scenes. What else? How can we make these pages the most useful for all those Google users finding their way to them?
• Hire Me? This part’s obligatory — if you know any place hiring full-stack developers, particularly those experienced in Ruby on Rails (and now React and TailwindCSS!), please, by all means, send my name along. Beggars can’t be choosers in this market. I’ll take every lead that comes my way.

Thanks For Everything

Like so many of my projects, this is a work in progress, so please don’t be too hard on the effort. I’ve got so many irons in the fire these days that it’s hard to keep my attention focused long enough to stick to a single project as long as I want. I should probably also be doing things in Python, Go and Rails, too. I appreciate having this platform to work on what I can when I can and the continued help and support of all my readers. Thank you.