'Stage Blood' entertains with side-splitting humor

By: Heidi Staggs

Junior theater major Brianna Oldenburg said directing a play can be a scary experience.

Oldenburg is the director of the ISU production of "Stage Blood," an adapted version of William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" that makes fun of the stereotypical, everyday theater lifestyle. The production is a play within a play. The actors faced a similar plot that parallels Shakespeare's "Hamlet" with the actors' off-stage lives.

Junior theater major Constance Johnson, who portrayed Hamlet's mother Gertrude and the wife of a stage manager, found her husband murdered in the bathroom. After the murder, she openly agreed to marry her deceased husband's best friend. Oldenburg said she chose the play, originally written and produced by Charles Ludlam in 1970s, because she clicked with the elements she wanted to bring to the ISU Theater Department.

During the play, the audience burst into laughter following wordplay and crude humor.

The signs on the entrance doors forewarned the audience of the mature content and vulgarity.

Ludlam incorporated several jokes that play off Shakespearian-style.

The character who parallels Hamlet, played by senior psychology major Zach Merritt, used the most obvious joke in his character. "Your iambics are only surpassed by your pentameters," he said. Sena Jacobs, a sophomore communication major, thought the play was funny.

During the play the character who parallels Hamlet, strips down into only his bikini-style panties before being frightened by his father's ghost.

Jacobs said that was her favorite scene.

It's not always a smooth performance. During Wednesday's production, in the strip scene Merritt's costume was being stubborn and would not rip-off to the desired effect. The element of mishaps in the theater is admirable to Oldenburg in the sense of everyday life.

"It makes me feel great," Oldenburg said. "The play is about things going wrong in the theater, so it adds to the play." Ludlam founded the Ridiculous Theatrical Company and is renowned for his unique vision of theater. His style includes trickery, sexual ambiguity and drag performances. Ludlam is well known for the label his theater company inherited over the decades-the gay theater.

According to the production pamphlet, Ludlam is noted for mocking the label and comparing it to the term "Queer Theater." "What I do, some people call Queer Theater, is that gay theater is really a political movement to show that gay people can be admirable, responsible members of the community," he said, according to the pamphlet. "I don't do that."