The Complete Deaths: all of the Bard’s 74 scripted deaths in one new play.

Over the past four centuries, the brutality of Shakespeare’s plays has become the subject of endless academic study, but his contemporary critics didn’t approve of the on-stage gore. Michael Dobson,  director of the Shakespeare Institute, said that Elizabethan drama was known for being gruesome: “The English drama was notorious for on-stage deaths; they were thought crass.…

A student who had often been frustrated during my class used this poem in her final reflection.

  Similar:The daughter was invited back to perform at this year’s Shakespeare Monologue and Scene Co… The daughter was invited back to perfo…AwesomeMedea at Seton Hill University.CultureLining up for Honors Convocation 2016. #setonhillAcademiaIf I don’t stock the officers’ pub on my #steampunk #fantasy #CGI flagship, who will? (All…PersonalWhy do academics dress so badly? (Answer: they…

Recording Christmas Stories for WAOB Audio Theatre

For WAOB Audio Theater, my family spent an afternoon recording “The Little Match Girl,” “Papa Panov’s Special Day,” and a new story, “The Executioner.”  Already online — Ozma and the Little Wizard, and The Monkey’s Paw. Similar:Family catch and eat octopus with six tentacles during Greek vacationI keep a silly personal blog devoted to …Personal10…

CNN Holds Morning Meeting To Decide What Viewers Should Panic About For Rest Of Day

Kicking around ideas ranging from an uptick in child kidnappings to a new link between laptops and cancer, senior CNN staffers held their regular daily meeting this morning to decide which topic viewers should panic about for the rest of the day.  —The Onion Similar:Egypt sentences Al Jazeera journalists to years in prisonAn Egyptian court…

The Post drops the ‘mike’ — and the hyphen in ‘e-mail’

When I announced these style changes, another Twitter user wrote, “wait, it’s 2015 and there are still people who write e-mail?” Not everyone is on Twitter, of course. For every online Post reader snickering at mike, there might be a longtime print subscriber baffled by mic. Because it would be impractical to edit each article separately…

Shakespeare’s Choose-Your-Own Adventure

If meeting three strange ladies in the swamp Seems ample cause for murthering the king To take his crown, turn to page 86. If this seems kind of sketchy, turn to 12. Shakespeare’s Choose-Your-Own Adventure. Similar:In January 2000, I was blogging about dancing paperclips, the transience of literary judge… In January 2000, I was blogging…

“This paper is going to read like smooth jazz.”

  Similar:Oh the Overthinks You Can Overthink: Horton the Elephant, the Wickersham Brothers, and Mas…Yesterday, I performed in a school matin…AcademiaNYT: G.W. Bush is "super-overexposed" and "so far to our right" — so they omitted his pre…The quotes in my headline are accurate, …AmusingHow Poetry Helps You Improve Your WritingWhile I’d rather see a reminder…

After lights out, the girl is knitting.

Similar:I’m really enjoying the embossed labels. #Blender3D (Making props for my fantasy #steampun…AestheticsWhat would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood? @shu_hog… AmusingHalf of my students have never read Hamlet. (I told them not to get too attached to any of…We focused just on Act I today —…

Irrational Geographic : snopes.com

Boosting the signal. This is a real National Geographic cover, but this issue was likely planned and implemented months before Murdoch purchased the franchise. No, National Geographic hasn’t begun covering nonsense since their merger with Fox. Source: Irrational Geographic : snopes.com Similar:Breaking up with your favorite racist childhood classic booksA good article analyzes the strong…

Smith College Protesters Bar Journalists From Covering Sit-In Unless They Support the Cause

Reporters planning to cover the sit-in arrived at the Massachusetts college’s student center on Wednesday only to find that the protesters intended to keep them out. Alyssa Mata-Flores, a Smith senior and a sit-in organizer, elaborated on the decision to The Republican: “We are asking that any journalists or press that cover our story participate and articulate…

Why Is Othello Black?

To us today, the word “black” carries with it a specific cluster of associations informed by history, culture, stereotypes, and literature. Othello may have started in conversation with Shakespeare’s definition of blackness, but today, he speaks with ours. A much more interesting question, really, is: Why is Othello black? Why did Shakespeare write a domestic…