Patrick Stewart: Poetry, Kissing, Crotch-Grabbing

January 11, 2013 3:45 PM

Patrick Stewart performed with NYC's Improvised Shakespeare Company. Famed thespian Stewart joined five lads from Chicago to perform improvised Shakespeare this past week. The Improvised Shakespeare Company reports that "Patrick Stewart is the coolest person [they] know."
posted by Joey Michaels (28 comments total)

Patrick Stewart is the coolest person anybody knows, duh.
posted by xingcat at 4:02 PM on January 11, 2013 [15 favorites]

My husband and I saw Shatner's one-man show this week. Patrick Stewart personally made Shatner okay with being known as Captain Kirk. He really is the coolest person anybody knows.

(Also Improvised Shakespeare sounds like a blast.)
posted by immlass at 4:10 PM on January 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

NYC's Improvised Shakespeare Company.

Look, New York, it's nice that they came out to perform for you, but you have to give them back.
posted by theodolite at 4:11 PM on January 11, 2013 [4 favorites]

Is this a kissing play?
posted by maudlin at 4:13 PM on January 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is just awesome!
posted by Malice at 4:16 PM on January 11, 2013

Does Metafilter have a mascot? Could we kidnap Patrick Stewart and have Cortex keep him in his basement? Does Cortex even have a basement? Could he build one to house Patrick Stewart? I will think on these things.

Also, seriously, follow @SirPatStew on Twitter, because AMAZING.
posted by kbanas at 4:26 PM on January 11, 2013 [4 favorites]

Does Metafilter have a mascot?

I can hear you you know.
posted by The Whelk at 4:31 PM on January 11, 2013 [10 favorites]

But it's too late, he's seen it all.
posted by thewalrus at 4:36 PM on January 11, 2013 [9 favorites]

Is there actual Video of SPS performing with the ISC?
posted by jeffamaphone at 4:52 PM on January 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Jeffamaphone, the article suggests they tried hard to make video not happen. Which is heartbreaking, because I imagine this will never happen again and I AM SO UPSET I WASN'T THERE.
posted by gusandrews at 4:58 PM on January 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

The idea that there are still things like this that just happen to be seen by a few lucky people, and then those people have the courtesy not to stick their stupid cameraphone in the air and just enjoy the show instead, gives me hope. Sometimes not being there when something cool happens and not being able to see someone's shaky-cam recording of it on YouTube makes me want to get off the couch and go see something cool myself.

So thanks, showgoers, for having a delicious little slice of cool all to yourselves.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:27 PM on January 11, 2013 [7 favorites]

Why are there so many super awesome people in the world while everybody I work with is a boring jerk?
posted by turgid dahlia 2 at 5:49 PM on January 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Could we kidnap Patrick Stewart and have Cortex keep him in his basement?

And we will call him Brocktoon.
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:50 PM on January 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Hey hey hey what is this "NYC"'s business about. I didn't know they were moving away for good. I would have gone to see them 10 more times.

Patrick Stewart was also in a comic opera in Chicago on January 5. Which, when I went to get this link and find out when it was going to be, I just realized I missed it somehow despite trying to follow every Chicago twitter feed there is. ugggghhh.
posted by bleep at 5:59 PM on January 11, 2013

Also, seriously, follow @SirPatStew on Twitter, because AMAZING.

Seconding this advice. And he generously sprinkles his timeline with photos accompanied by snappy captions.

He has the soul of an uber Mefite... we should send him a gift account.
posted by infini at 5:59 PM on January 11, 2013

OK in my newly discovered rage about missing that comic opera, I forget to really express how hilarious and talented the Improved Shakespeare guys are. Recommended, even without any amazing guest stars.
posted by bleep at 6:00 PM on January 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Kinda makes you wonder what would happen if Patrick Stewart and George Takei did a show together. Oh my, but I would fund that Kickstarter.
posted by smirkette at 6:15 PM on January 11, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'm sorry, did you just say Patrick Stewart is a lesbian?

Wait, let me turn the music down so I can hear you better.
posted by hippybear at 7:09 PM on January 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

I was smart enough to buy myself a ticket one of the times Patrick Stewart did his one-man version of A Christmas Carol on Broadway. For a very long time, it held the title of "the best Broadway production I ever saw" - the "set" was just three pieces of furniture, the "costume" looked like "whatever Patrick wore when he got up in the morning," and there were a couple light changes - and the rest of it was just Dickens and him. And it was bloody amazing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:31 PM on January 11, 2013 [4 favorites]

And reading this post from Wil Wheaton can still make me choke up.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:32 PM on January 11, 2013 [4 favorites]

Patrick Stewart personally made Shatner okay with being known as Captain Kirk.

If you don't mind me asking, how did he do that, immlass?
posted by mokin at 9:11 PM on January 11, 2013

By telling Shatner that he was ok with being known as Captain Picard.
posted by adamdschneider at 10:36 PM on January 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

I saw him and Ian McKellan in Waiting for Godot in London a few years ago. (Was that enough name-dropping?) It was perfection. Including the point where I caught one of them corpsing, it was perfection to see this play I loved so much brought to glowing life, made funny and hopeful and hopeless. And I'm so glad there's no recording, no DVD I can buy, and that this moment is preserved only in memory forever. Theatre is special, even a little bit sacred, like that, and I love it.
posted by kalimac at 4:08 AM on January 12, 2013 [1 favorite]

And then sometimes you click on a Metafilter link and discover that a guy you shared a house with in college shared the stage with Patrick Stewart at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Tim was the biggest Star Trek: The Next Generation fan I knew in college. (Considering how big a fan I was, this is really saying something.) I'm glad to see this because it means he got to fulfill a dream I know he had over twenty years ago!
posted by rednikki at 8:55 AM on January 12, 2013

And also, seconding EmpressCallipygos regarding Patrick Stewart's A Christmas Carol. I took my mom to it on Broadway on New Year's Eve in...1992? 1993? One of the two. I think it's still the best play I've ever seen.
posted by rednikki at 8:57 AM on January 12, 2013

Does Metafilter have a mascot? Could we kidnap Patrick Stewart and have Cortex keep him in his basement? Does Cortex even have a basement? Could he build one to house Patrick Stewart? I will think on these things.

Time for an intervention.
posted by Brocktoon at 10:45 AM on January 12, 2013

Back in the 80s Patrick Stewart did a guest stint with an all-black Shakespeare company in Atlanta, and he played Othello. They didn't change the text at all. Genius.
Also, he's a a feminist and anti-domestic violence activist, and he wrote a great forward for one of the Transmetropolitan books. So yeah, coolest guy ever.
posted by Nibbly Fang at 10:52 AM on January 12, 2013

Is this a kissing play?
Not only that, but you can see - everything.
posted by Smedleyman at 5:29 PM on January 12, 2013 [1 favorite]