Today I discovered that a small theater group out of San Diego named Talent to aMuse produced a play in October 2007 called Caliban’s Island that merged The Tempest with the cast of Gilligan’s Island. I kid thee not. An online news source covers it here.

As bizarre as this may seem, I admit that I’ve often thought about what it would be like to create Shakespeare “what if” crossover plays (I do this while the rest of you are reading up on the 2008 presidential elections… you time-wasters). For instance, just yesterday I imagined how it would play out if Macbeth usurped the throne of Denmark and was revenged upon by Hamlet. The two stories could fit surprisingly well in many ways. You could weave other characters from the two plays into the story as well (for instance, you could have the Weird Sisters channel Hamlet’s father’s spirit instead of him appearing directly to Hamlet). Like my blog title, I’m sure that kind of idea is far from original. In fact, I’m sure of it.