Amy Lu's View

“What’s your favorite Shakespeare play?” –audience question asked via chat after our livestreaming performance of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged).”

“Um, whichever play is the shortest?”–me

I’m just not that into Shakespeare. I’ve been lucky enough to see many high quality and creative productions, and I’ve even been in some Shakespearean or Shakespeare-adjacent shows, but I just don’t get that excited by the Bard. (#ShortAttentionSpan)

But I DID get excited about being in Applause Community Theatre’s “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged).” I got excited and terrified and stressed and overwhelmed and joyful and sweaty and proud and thankful. 

This stew of emotions and sensations is pretty typical for me when I’m involved in a theatrical production, but the intensity may have been even higher because 1) this show involved Shakespeare and 2) it involved unknown tech (which I had nothing to do with and can take no credit for, but it was stressful not knowing if anyone would even be able to watch our show via Zoom. Thanks to Connor for making it happen!)

I was also terrified because this show was very physical and complicated, with lots of moving pieces and potential for things to go awry. Although I had generally short lines to deliver, they were interspersed throughout the show so I had lots of opportunities to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, AND to be at the wrong place with the wrong prop.

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“It’s not Shakespeare”–this is one of our typical Chamy acting mantras, meaning that if we screw up some lines it’s not like we’re blaspheming some of the most revered writings in the English language and/or no one is likely to know exactly what our lines are supposed to be. 

But this show WAS Shakespeare–or, at least required us to deliver some of Shakespeare’s actual words. And since I’m so ungrounded in Shakespeare I often wasn’t sure which lines of the play were actually from Shakespeare and which were just written to sound like Shakespeare. 

I DO know that the “What a piece of work is man” monologue that I got to say IS Shakespeare, from “Hamlet.” And it cracks me up because, to me, “What a piece of work is XXXX” is an insult, such as saying “What a piece of work is Amy” after I’ve done/said something particularly needy or vain. But in Hamlet’s monologue, he is genuinely saying “Wow, people are pretty freakin’ awesome”–and then goes on to say, “And I’m still depressed as f#$k.” It’s such a powerful monologue because Hamlet can intellectually see all this beauty and wonder in life but can’t actually feel it. 

Yeah, move over “No Fear Shakespeare”…I should launch “No S#%t Shakespeare.”

Yes, I could have done some research (or even a small amount of Googling) and learned about the source plays that our play was spoofing. And I did do some learning–in fact I just looked up one of my favorite lines in our play, “They [the audience] don’t know Shakespeare from Shinola.” Now, I was familiar with the original saying (“They don’t know s#$t from Shinola) but just learned that Shinola was shoe polish.

So I may not know much about Shakeaspeare (or shoe polish) but I do know that I am so lucky that I got to do live and mostly in-person theater again with awesome and supportive and talented and hardworking co-stars. And we’re so lucky that we had a small live audience/”extras” with us in the theater and that folks from near and far tuned in to watch us (even if they are so over Zoom). And we’re all so lucky for our brave and visionary and optimistic director, Gary, who made it all possible.

The more I think about it, I like the idea of people and plays and relationships as work–not just in the Hamlet sense that they’re amazing or the Amy sense that they’re annoying, but that we/they take effort and are constantly evolving.

I AM a piece of work, and so are you. I bet Shakespeare was, too.