Ed Notes Online: A Shakespeare Binge: 4 Plays Written in 1599 in 5 Hours Plus Dinnner at Irondale

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

A Shakespeare Binge: 4 Plays Written in 1599 in 5 Hours Plus Dinnner at Irondale

Last Wednesday night I spent from 7 PM- midnight at the Irondale Ensemble in Fort Greene in Brooklyn at one of the most unusual performance spaces - Lafayette ave Presbyterian church - watching 4 Shakespeare plays, each boiled down to about an hour or more, with a box dinner and a few intermissions. I think one of the most impressive acting feats I've seen since all the actors were in all 4 plays. I didn't get back to the apartment until almost 1AM and had to get up the next morning for the UFT vote count - I ended up sleeping only 3 hours.

I found out about this performance in the NY Times: Review: '1599,' a Mini-Marathon Devoted to Shakespeare's Work tha
based on the book "1599" by James Shapiro:

'A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare': Straight Out of Stratford

I was excited because I had spent months last summer/fall reading the often dense book. I knew about it from hearing James Shapiro talk about his new book - "1605" on Leonard Lopate and wanted to read the earlier book first.

Shakespeare wrote 4 plays in one year - Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet (finished in 1600). I learned so much from the book - how current events in England had a major influence on what Shakespeare was writing. How roles were created for specific actors. And so much more. So to find out that Irondale, which I had never heard of had taken on this immense task.

The performance space was vast - no theater but chairs placed in on open space in various locations based on which play. Henry V was downstairs in he midst of chairs arranged in a horseshoe shape. Then we were moved upstairs to the balcony for Julius Caesar where we sat on chairs, couches, boxes, the floor as the actors mingled among us, sometimes asking people to move so they can sit down.

Then we went back downstairs to pick up our dinners which we ate during As You Like It.

Then a short break while they set up for Hamlet in a different area of the space. It was already close to 11PM and this was a long one - and I began to fade in the middle before recovering for the gore in the last 20 minutes.

The shows have ended but at the end they made an appeal for contributions and said they might revive the show if there is interest.

I was so impressed I am contributing to Irondale right now.

Below are some links to the book and the Irondale performance.

1599: a year in the life of William Shakespeare: JAMES SHAPIRO ...

www.amazon.com › ... › Biographies & Memoirs › Arts & Literature

Observer review: 1599 by James Shapiro | Books | The Guardian

www.theguardian.com › Arts › Books › Biography

The Guardian

Jun 4, 2005 - James Shapiro gets under Shakespeare's skin in his forensic biographical survey, 1599, says Robert McCrum. ... In 1599, perhaps the decisive year in Shakespeare's life, art and politics collided to an extraordinary degree. ... In the course of the year, Shakespeare completed Henry V, wrote ...

A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro ...

www.goodreads.com › European Literature › British Literature

Goodreads

Rating: 4.1 - ‎2,033 votes

Start by marking “A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599” as Want to Read: ... Be the first to ask a question about A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. ... I first discovered James Shapiro by accident when stumbling across a documentary called "Shakespeare, The King's ...

Michael Dobson reviews '1599' by James Shapiro · LRB 20 October ...

www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n20/michael.../a-furtive-nights-work

London Review of Books

Review by Michael Dobson

Oct 20, 2005 - A Furtive Night's Work. Michael Dobson. 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro Faber, 429 pp, £16.99, June 2005, ...

'A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare': Straight Out of Stratford

www.nytimes.com/.../shakespeare-a-year-in-the-life-of-william-s...

The New York Times

Oct 23, 2005 - 1599. By James Shapiro. Illustrated. 394 pp. HarperCollins Publishers. $27.95. TIME was when we knew little about the life of Shakespeare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Eu5o8jHT5Q

May 11, 2011 - Uploaded by cunytv75

James Shapiro of Columbia University discusses his book "A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 ...

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"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/cory-booker-clear-and-present-threat-public-education

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

This chapter looks interesting:

Class struggles: The UFT story, part 3

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Of course for another view, check out the review at New Politics of the Kahlenberg Bio on Shanker by Vera Pavone and me: Albert Shanker: Ruthless Neocon

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:
http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/
I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You can sign up for this free series at :
http://act.bcfed.ca/online-campaigning-for-union-activists/

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

Ex-HSA Teacher has left a new comment on your post "Fear and Loathing at Evil's Harlem Success Empire ...":

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy Tyson
Professor of African American Studies and History
Duke University

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.
- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Full article with charts here.

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

More at Substance

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.
Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/12/on-growing-use-of-corporate-test.html

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

The US Is Facing a Weimar Moment

Published on Sunday, March 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

SEE MY VIDEO ON HARLEM SUCCESS RALLY 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEp7rg_L5JI

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Ed Notes Extended

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

A Shakespeare Binge: 4 Plays Written in 1599 in 5 Hours Plus Dinnner at Irondale

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