Shakespeare said, as you cast about the dark recesses of your mind the answer is found there. Combine a word from each column.
Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 =========== ============ =========== artless base-court apple-john bawdy bat-fowling baggage beslubbering beef-witted barnacle bootless beetle-headed bladder churlish boil-brained boar-pig cockered clapper-clawed bugbear clouted clay-brained bum-bailey craven common-kissing canker-blossom currish crook-pated clack-dish dankish dismal-dreaming clotpole dissembling dizzy-eyed coxcomb droning doghearted codpiece errant dread-bolted death-token fawning earth-vexing dewberry fobbing elf-skinned flap-dragon froward fat-kidneyed flax-wench frothy fen-sucked flirt-gill gleeking flap-mouthed foot-licker goatish fly-bitten fustilarian gorbellied folly-fallen giglet impertinent fool-born gudgeon infectious full-gorged haggard jarring guts-griping harpy loggerheaded half-faced hedge-pig lumpish hasty-witted horn-beast mammering hedge-born hugger-mugger mangled hell-hated joithead mewling idle-headed lewdster paunchy ill-breeding lout pribbling ill-nurtured maggot-pie puking knotty-pated malt-worm puny milk-livered mammet qualling motley-minded measle rank onion-eyed minnow reeky plume-plucked miscreant roguish pottle-deep moldwarp ruttish pox-marked mumble-news saucy reeling-ripe nut-hook spleeny rough-hewn pigeon-egg spongy rude-growing pignut surly rump-fed puttock tottering shard-borne pumpion unmuzzled sheep-biting ratsbane vain spur-galled scut venomed swag-bellied skainsmate villainous tardy-gaited strumpet warped tickle-brained varlet wayward toad-spotted vassal weedy unchin-snouted whey-face yeasty weather-bitten wagtail
Shakespeare's tragedies had been performed in Viet Nam but not the comedies. The 2 countries made each other cry long enough. It's time to make each other laugh. Midsummer Night's Dream opened in Hanoi, traveled to Saigon and Haiphong and finished back in Hanoi. Dates in Da Nang and Hue were eliminated because of flooding and because of concern, perhaps misguided, that the play would not be a hit in the provinces.
PRODUCERS He's a Viet Nam War vet, she's an anti-war activist. In 1998 with aid from the Ford Foundation they brought a famous Vietnamese play Truong Ba's Soul in the Butcher's Skin to America with a Vietnamese cast and director. They took The Glass Menagerie to Viet Nam in Vietnamese. Midsummer, staged at the same time, was a true co-production, an intermingling of cultures. 4 American actors joined the mainly Vietnamese cast. Despite Vietnamese misgivings early on their national music and dance became part of the show. Supertitles above the stage translated as local actors spoke Vietnamese and an occasional English sentence and the Americans spoke English and an occasional Vietnamese sentence. When American actors spoke Vietnamese, crowds went wild.
Haiphong audiences were as close to those in Shakespearean England as one could find. In this working-class port city people talked about the play while they watched it, moved about, ate, laughed uproariously (they got the jokes) and leaned over balconies as Elizabethans did. Americans and Brits mostly saw or read the play before attending. Vietnamese heard each line for the first time. Every word and plot device was fresh. Two themes, arranged marriages and the spirit world's effects on mortals, are more relevant to Viet Nam than to the West.
Tom Weidlinger, a documentary filmmaker from Berkeley, shot 115 hours of video for an eventual 56 minutes on PBS, tentative title A Dream in Hanoi. He and his camera observed that not everything went smoothly. President Clinton was in town and was expected to attend but the State Department preferred a folkloric evening. No Clinton meant no Hanoi Opera House (Viet Nam's Carnegie Hall) Tickets could not be sold until censors approved. They insisted on attending opening night, not a rehearsal. More fun for them, more prestige. The first show was jammed with officials and theater people. Vietnamese theater is supposed to be self-supporting. When tickets were sold, theater personnel had to be convinced that regular box-office hours are necessary, as are advertising and promotion.
Artistic collaboration also did not come easy. Kissing is normal in Shakespeare but inappropriate in public in Viet Nam. Would Ngan Hoa (Hermia) kiss Doug Miller (Lysander) with any enthusiasm? She did in rehearsals and on opening night, then became less demonstrative. Feedback? In rehearsal Kristen Brown, half of the play's other romantic couple, with Do Ky (Demetrius) played Helena as strong. Otherwise Brown would have betrayed her values. Do Ky and the Vietnamese co-director said audiences would find this assertiveness unpleasant. After much discussion Helena no longer stamped her feet.
Co-director Nause says American actors and I wanted the project to work and were willing to give 110%. Vietnamese made time for 2 1/2-hour family lunches and days off; those were sacred. It was frustrating but I grew to respect it. We had to learn to be flexible. We couldn't make everything happen just because we wanted to. Vietnamese actors were brilliant but they did little things you wouldn't see Americans do - smoking backstage, answering cell phones during rehearsals. They don't have voice mail or our sense of punctuality. We look at our watches. I remember Vietnamese actors saying, We like working with American actors, but they work too hard. They need to have fun.