A Scotsman of my acquaintance pointed out we recited his 154 sonnets on his 451st birthday i.e. 154-451 or 451-154. How cool is that? Shakespeare as cool. That would be scanned.
Take this marathon idea. A week beforehand, we planned to simply do a birthday SHAOKE session with Devon Glover aka the Sonnetman from NYC, who happened to be in NL thanks to the US embassy.
Social media allowed me to bother my contacts. Twitter and email functioned too slightly differently. And telephone was the last resort medium. Using these all we gathered individuals who read a sonnet aloud WHILST recording themselves. What could go wrong?
Naturally the idea started as 154 individuals. Shrank to 77 reading 2 sonnets each. And ended up as less than 77 with some reading 3 sonnets, others 2, and the odd one.
The location and start time fixed as 8pm assemble at Amsteldijk 67, former city archive building alongside the Amstel river.
We rehearsed from 9pm until 9:40pm. The structure of the marathon would be 3 one minute blocks. The first sonnets 1-54, the 2nd 55-104 the 3rd and last 105-154.
Then we took it into the hallway and did this:
#154Sonnets3mins from william sutton on Vimeo.
This film contains some of the films from 11 phones, or digital cameras of people within the storm. We have audio of the whole thing. We have footage and photos of the rehearsal madness. And some recordings from the SHAOKE sonnet show we performed around 10:30pm. My boy Liam recited his favourite sonnet 55. Devon G rapped us a sonnet or two too.
Credit is due to All my friends and new acquaintances who attended this chaos. The amount of people made collating names to their numbered sonnets nigh impossible. These are the happy few, the 67 I know took part and are credited in the film:
The Band of Brothers (and Sisters):
Elske van Holk
Eleftheria Vakaki
Tariq Kaseem
Johan Statius Muller
Devon Glover
Alexander Paton
Christopher Vipond Davis
Sam Morris
Henrietta Bryant
Kristjan Knigge
Malcolm Hugo Glenn
Matthew Carney
Steve Fly Agaric
Emely Sligting
Debbie Mulholland
Orlando Manuel do Brito
Finbar Wilbrink
Joris Lehr
Sytse Faber
Marco Grandia
Emma Dingwall
Loveday Smith
Asta Schmitz
Dawn Mastin
Sandy Topzand
Hannah van Veeren
Tamara Brinkman
Desiree Scholten
Joy Ehrlich
Darragh Conway
Chaja van emde Boas
Oscar Buckens
Pip Farquharson
Annika Groeneveld
Helen Mason
Kayo Korabiowski-Dean
Georgina Dean
Christine Blakeley
Jannette Warburton
Colin Blakeley
Sassy Smit
Alex Eva Eldering
William Sutton
Liam Sutton
Toto Stekelenburg
Steve Fly Pratt
Jacqueline Nolan
Helen Mason
Michel
Alex McKenzie
Daniel Rovai
Janne Svensson
Francesca
Toby Ehrlich
Oscar Smith
Hugo Metsers
Bev Jackson
Gerson Oeratmangoen
Jesse Cohen
Dick
Lotte
Reina
Willem
Finbarr Wilbrink
Joan Prince
Cormac Ruari
Bev Jackson
Simon Murphy
Nick
Michael Toner
Eliya Hahn
[…] By William […]