Who: Emily Conlon, Sevrin Willinder
What: Shakespeare Translate: The Complete Works
Where: Caveat, 21A Clinton St. between East Houston & Stanton Sts., 212-228-2100
When: Sunday, December 1, $10 livestream, $18 in advance, $23 at door, 2:30
Why: In Hamlet, the title character says about a troupe of traveling actors, “He that plays the king shall be welcome. His majesty shall have tribute of me. The adventurous knight shall use his foil and target, the lover shall not sigh gratis, the humorous man shall end his part in peace, the clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickle o’ th’ sere, and the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for ’t. What players are they?”
Shakespeare included clowns or fools in most of his works, including Costard in Love’s Labours Lost, Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, the two Dromios in The Comedy of Errors, Feste in Twelfth Night, Lavache in All’s Well That Ends Well, Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the fool in King Lear. On December 1 at Caveat, clowns Emily Conlon and Sevrin Willinder will present “Shakespeare Translate: The Complete Works,“ in which they will perform their favorite excerpts from every single play by the Bard, using original text that has been filtered through Google Translate fifteen times to give it a more contemporary feel; the show is directed by Melissa Ingle. Conlon describes herself as “a Brooklyn-based actor, singer, voice actor, and goofball,” while Willinder “is a ravishing young lad from Plympton, Massachusetts.” Advance tickets are $18, at the door $23; the performance, from Devon Loves ME! Productions, which was cofounded by Willinder, is also available via livestream for $10.
As Touchstone, the court jester, says in As You Like It, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” Find out more at Caveat (or online) on Sunday afternoon.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]