Robert Colpitts in “The Hell of It”

In the video below, you will find excerpts from the film I did in early 2011.

“The Hell of It” was created and directed by Héloïse Haddad.  Sarah Ries and Mike Beaury also appear in the video.

“Max” in The Hell of It

In early 2011, I played Max in a short film entitled “The Hell of It” conceived by Héloïse Haddad and Ejc Calvert and directed by Héloïse Haddad. You can view a trailer for the film here.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets PROJECT

SEE ALL THE SONNETS

One exciting day many years ago, I decided that I should read Shakespeare’s sonnets starting from the last one. Early on during this exploration I discovered something about his sonnets that I had previously not known–they were complex and ironic testaments of a personal journey in love. Most of my experience with Shakespeare’s sonnets had been with performing them in an acting class, each sonnet a superficial island unto itself.

Most people think Shakespeare’s sonnets are about love. They are when love is seen as a complex and untenable expression of what in our life lifts us despite ourselves; they aren’t if love is seen as puerile and superficial.

On the day that I thought about this project, I hurried to YouTube to see if anyone had already posted all of Shakespeare’s sonnets online. While a few have attempted it, none have completed it. In addition, I found that when people were presenting Shakespeare’s sonnets, they always expressed a insultingly straightforward expression of yummy yummy buttercup love.

You’ve been in love. It’s wonderful; it is ironic, complex, deep, exciting, passionate, and inexpressible–Shakespeare understood that too! I imagined a young (or old) person searching for Shakespeare’s sonnets on the internet, looking for a video, finding one that turns them off from Shakespeare and poetry forever, and leaves them, yet again, with a superficial understanding of one of the most beautiful and complex expressions of our humanity.

Thus my project began! I created the following video to start things off:

That is Shakespeare’s Sonnet #154, one of my most popular videos.

I imagine a room filled with 154 of these sonnet videos with hundreds of people watching them in any order that they want; all, or many, few, or none; just standing in the middle and spinning, or making a academic study over the course of three days! I imagine students in schools across the country trying to cheat in their English class, and discovering these strange and cryptic videos that defy their expectations. Most importantly, I imagine that people will say to themselves, “What are these sonnets? What would I do with them? What does it all mean?”

Why am I doing this? We have to deepen the conversation. We have to shock each other with our complexity. We have to defy the superficial, the repetitive, the inane. We have to purify our ingredients. In short, we have to change the conversation.

Here’s what I mean:

That is what I think about Sonnet 145.  What do you think should be done with it?

This project is going to take a while–perhaps the rest of my life.  Every once in a while, I will make a sonnet, so follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube!