Two Star Trek Themed Stage Shows Performing This Week + Paramount Filming Klingon Hamlet For DVD

If you want to bring some honor to your holiday season and you live near the Twin Cities, then this coming week you can check out "A Christmas Carol", in the original Klingon. And the same troupe will be filming a special feature in Klingon for an upcoming Star Trek DVD. Also for fans in New York, the Start Trekkin improv group are performing two shows this upcoming week.

 

A Klingon Christmas Carol in St. Paul
On December 13th, for the second year in a row, the St. Paul, MN theater group Commedia Beauregard is performing "A Klingon Christmas Carol." The official press release states. The theater company usually do performances translated into English, and this is the first work translated from English (although some would say that this is being done in the original Klingon). The translation was done by the company along with the help of members of the local Klingon fan club, the IKV Rakehall.

The adaption of the Dickens’s classic takes into account Klingon culture. Commedia Beauregard Artistic Director Christopher O. Kidder explains in the press release:

Klingons wouldn’t care if Scrooge wasn’t charitable and nice. The spirits that visit Scrooge are all trying to help him become an honorable and courageous
warrior.”

The performance takes place at the Wellstone Center in St. Paul on Saturday December 13th at 7:00 PM. Tickets and more information at the official site.


SQuja, the Klingon Scrooge, played by Michael Ooms (Pioneer Press)

Klingon troupe to do Shakespeare for new DVD extras
As reported previously by TrekMovie and Digital Bits (but still not officially confirmed), Paramount is currently working on new versions of the TOS era movies for Blu-ray special edition releases in 2008 and these new versions will include new special features. Today The Pioneer Press in MN is reporting that Paramount is headed to the Twin Cities to film Commedia Beauregard perform two scenes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in Klingon for the new Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country special edition. This is obviously due to the famous dinner scene when Chancellor Gorkon proclaims "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon." According to Kidder the two scenes will be the "taH pagh, taHbe’ (to be or not to be) speech, along with ‘the gravedigger scene (which includes the ‘Alas, poor Yorick’ speech’). On the second scene Kidders adds "they wanted that, because they wanted to use a Klingon skull."

No official word on when the new DVD sets will be released (or even official acknowledgement that they exist), but it is likely to be timed closely to the release of the new Star Trek movie.


Chang likes his Hamlet in the ‘original’ Klingon

Trek Improv Group shows in New York
The Start Trekkin Improv Group in New York have three shows this month. The first was last night, but they have two more Star Trek comedy shows lined up for this week. They will be performing on December 11th (at 7:30 PM) and December 12th (at 9:30 PM) at Chashama (675 3rd Ave). The official site describes the show thusly (and so very humbly):

Start Trekkin is in fact the greatest comedy experience
you will ever have. Each episode is a fully improvised
explosion of the Universe created by Star Trek. A new
crew and a new ship explore the universe every time,
taking on the single most exciting problems sentient life
has ever encountered. This is a full hour-length
narrative created before your very eyes and based on
your suggestions.


Start Trekkin’ improv group

More info about Star Trekkin at the official site.

Here is a fun video interview with the group, explaining the show.


 

 

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Okay, this is awesome! Day one purchase for me.

If Scotty kills porthos, I’m throwin’ punches.

ya I’m sure promoting this geekdom will help attracting the mainstream to the movie in May.

Not more special editions! I cant take any more! Perhaps this time, they will make them better with deleted scenes on them! And perhaps not with an upsidedown Enterprise-B picture on the front!

#4, Wes. I remember those. That was a complete embarrassment.

Wow, the third-go-round for Star Trek VI on DVD. No thanks.

I will pass on this one, unless it’s part of a TOS era BLU RAY set of the movies.

I will only buy these on Blu-Ray if all of the previous special features (both good and bad) are ported over. But at least this confirms that ST: TMP isn’t the only film getting new extras. I wonder what the other films might have.

Klingon skull. Pretty funny. Although the audiences would be booing and throwing daggers at Hamlet for not immediately exacting revenge.

STOP ACTING CRAZY AND HILL HIM NOW YOU P’TACH!!

I’m pretty sure it was Gorkon who said the line about experiencing Shakespeare in the original Klingon, not Chang.

give the twat a Vulcan kick to the balls

Yep, Gorkon said it, then Chang uttered “To be or not to be” to the laughter of his fellow Klingon in the picture posted above.

I used to sell Klingon skulls that I made out of plaster.

Now, where is that mold?

Re: Photo of SQuja. Since when did Klingons start using blond highlights?

What there’s gonna be a new DVD for Undiscovered Country, and I imagine the other films? Hopefully you mean a Blu-ray release. And in the case of that film, and TMP and Wrath of Khan, let there be the different multiple cuts on it.

I believe there is a Klingon Language Academy here in Minnesota; I’m sure the play will utilize it’s resources.

As for ST IV Special Edition: Just let us see the theatrical version of the film this time!!! C’mon, Paramount, get it right this time!

Shouldn’t that be “Klingon Khristmas Karol?”

#2

Scotty can’t kill Porthos. Porthos is long dead by the 23rd century! ;D

The Minnesota-based group called itself the Interstellar Language School. Its founder was one of the people who made the Klingon language camp in Red Lake Falls happen. So far as I can tell, it’s long defunct. You might be thinking of the Klingon Language Institute, which is directed by the other person involved in the camp. The KLI is currently based in the Philadelphia area, and is still active, holding an annual conference each summer. It’s the KLI which produced the version of Hamlet that Paramount wants the Commedia Beauregard group to perform (as well as a Klingon edition of Much Ado About Nothing, with more of Shakespeare’s works in the pipeline).

The Klingon Hamlet: http://www.amazon.com/Klingon-Hamlet-Lawrence-Schoen/dp/0671035789/
The Klingon Language Institute: http://www.kli.org/
A documentary about the KLI: http://www.earthlings-movie.com/

Re: Photo of SQuja. Since when did Klingons start getting perms?

For those of us without blu-ray and who can’t make it to Minnesota, here’s my short film I debuted a week ago on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiRMGYQfXrs
Like so many of us, I was inspired by that scene from Star Trek VI, and even furthermore by KLI’s translation of Hamlet. I wanted to film this a year ago, but had major delays. This end product was rushed, btu i am proud of it nonetheless. Qapla’!