RIP Tom Stoppard

I didn't major in theater at San Diego State University, but the school had an excellent heritage of developing our finest actors: Raquel Welch, Carl Weathers, Marion Ross...While working on my Speech Communication degree I attended some excellent productions, and my favorite was Tom Stoppard's Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth.

On the surface, these are two one-act plays. Dogg's Hamlet introduces a school with students and workers preparing for a performance of Hamlet by those who don't speak English. Instead they speak "Dogg," a language based on English but with utterly different definitions of the words. When speaking the lines of Shakespeare, the actors don't seem to understand what they're saying.

In the second play, Cahoot's Macbeth, a troupe of actors is looking to perform Macbeth in a living room production. They live in a totalitarian state, and their production is a critique of the government. When government agents arrive, the actors fear arrest if they present the play, so the play is performed in the language of "Dogg", confounding the agents, but delivering the message.

It was a very funny and profound show, and it was clear that Stoppard was looking to critique the Communist nations of the day. Can you imagine a state university these days opposing leftist governments?

In the year Stoppard wrote this show, he described himself in this way: "I'm conservative with a small 'c.' I am conservative in politics, literature, education, and theater." And in 2007, Stoppard called himself a "timid libertarian." And one might note conservative themes throughout his work.

I've enjoyed other plays by Stoppard, including one of his most famous, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, which follows the story of Hamlet from the perspective of two very minor players. One of my favorites among his plays is The Real Inspector Hound, a spoof of English Country House whodunits.

He also worked in film. My favorite of his is another attack on authoritarianism, Brazil. His co-writer and the director of the film, Terry Gilliam, did his best work in this absurdist, hysterical, and heartbreaking dystopian film. Stoppard also wrote the screenplay for two excellent Steven Spielberg films, Empire of the Sun and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He won an Oscar for the screenplay for Shakespeare in Love.

Tom Stoppard was born on July 3rd, 1937 in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, and died this week in Dorset, England. He used his art to advocate for freedom. The man and his work will be missed.