Book Doc

…to build a better book.
December 19, 2011

Shakespeare, wouldn’t ya know.

Independent publishing is keeping your eyes and ears open, and sometimes, just sometimes, making a connection between the two. My eyes used to glaze over when I ran across any reference to Shakespeare, a well-worn path too many have trod down; what possible new thing could come out of that bag? My ears were filled with a project of visiting retirement communities to talk to the staff personnel about how to understand and respectfully deal with LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi, and transgender) residents or patients. Does that sound like King Lear? What connection could there possibly be, and why should I care?

A little thought-spider spun a single thread across with a mention somewhere, and I can’t even remember where, that seven of Shakespeare’s plays had crossdressed characters in them. As it happens, I had already published one of them without thinking twice about it. Now I thought twice.

That was me in the play — well, not really, but as a transgender myself, and facing those staff people to tell them what T means, I realized that I now had an ally. Much of my small press publishing has been in “dusting off the classics,” as I once described it. Here was a chance to fill in some of transgender history. As I learned during my transition, it’s not abnormal or unusual in a historic sense, because there have always been transgenders, or gender-crossers, from the shamans on down to RuPaul and Chaz Bono.

So I’ve spent the past few months engrossed in this new project, producing moderately modernized reading versions of the plays.

At the same time, I’ve been converted into trying POD, print-on-demand, which costs a lot less than paying printers a thousand or more for a few hundred copies of a book. So now, in permanent semi-retirement, I can indulge my book-designing skills all over again with minimal expense, and, in this case, do social justice at the same time.

As it happens, California this year passed the FAIR act, which requires schools to include minorities in history texts, including LGBTs, so that we actually show up as part of the culture. These Shakespeare plays, in my mind at least, may help stem the epidemic of bullying of gays or transgenders in middle school, high school, or college, when general audiences see what Shakespeare saw, cross-dressing as part of what people did given certain circumstances. In his day, women might dress as men for protection when traveling, or in Portia’s case, to play a lawyer against the Jew in The Merchant of Venice. Of the seven plays, only one uses crossdressing as a comic element, and that is with Falstaff, himself a comic figure.

Along the way, I found another exceptional fact: over two dozen actresses have played the role of Hamlet on stage, including Sarah Bernhardt. This is not written as a transgender role, and I still haven’t figured out why this has happened, but I did decide to include Hamlet in with the other seven plays.

In case you’re wondering what obscure plays these might be, I’ll list them.

As You Like It

Twelfth Night

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

The Taming of the Shrew

The Merchant of Venice

Cymbeline

The Merry Wives of Windsor

and Hamlet — all available from CreateSpace, or my site.

Most of these are school favorites, feel-good shows. I’m preparing a list of California drama coaches — any help on leads would be appreciated.

I couldn’t stop myself; you can find the Seven Plays by William Shakespeare with Transgender Characters, plus Hamlet, as well as Hamlet: Director’s Playbook (designed with plenty of space for notes, and tables for auditions, budget, the playbill, costumes, set designs, etc.). And possibly more to follow.

So this has turned out to be a project for which I am uniquely qualified: I know how to do books, I’m not afraid to edit “sacred texts,” I am ready to venture into new ways of publishing, I found a project that furthers my personal interests, to my knowledge, no one else is doing it, there’s a legal requirement I can help fill, a social ill that I can help overcome. What more could an independent publisher ask for?

Another project, that’s what I can ask for. May you find the right fit at the right time with the right budget for the right people.

 

239 Comments to “Shakespeare, wouldn’t ya know.”

Leave a Comment