Monthly Archives: May 2012

Dramaturgy

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Alright, now that I’ve been distracted by zombie Hamlet, I suppose I should actually check in about this giant project I keep alluding to.

Tufts Drama does three department shows a year; one in the Fall, one in the Spring, and one bridging the gap between the two semesters.  This year for show number two (the gap-bridging show), we are doing Measure for Measure and I have been appointed the project’s dramaturge.

Besides being one of the best words in the English language, “dramaturge” is actually a really fun and exciting position to hold.  The dramaturge is the person on the creative team who does all the research for a given show.  That research can be pretty expansive and weird at times; how do you pronounce this word?  Is this prop period?  What did they mean when they said this?  Where would this character have gone to school?  Would that character have read this book?  In addition, as resident scholar, the dramaturge is often asked to help edit a playscript of a show to create a performance edition.

As resident Shakespearean, I was called upon to lend my brainpower to the project and, as you can imagine, I’m having a blast.  Over the summer, we’re creating our actor’s edition which, while this may sound like a tedious and boring task, is one of the funnest incarnations of work I’ve ever had the pleasure to deal with.

My director has requested that the final show run no longer than two hours.  As Measure for Measure is a show of 2,938 lines which runs approximately three and a half hours in performance when uncut, this is no small task (especially to a text purist like me).

To make these trims (and to make the show read to a contemporary audience when the actors are going to be undergraduates with no specialized training or expansive experience), our process so far has been as such: we meet for three hours once or twice a week and read the entire script aloud to each other.  As we go through, we have found ways to either cut, trim, or keep lines.

 So, basically, for three to six hours a week plus the time I spend adjusting the actual text afterwards, I go into work, read Shakespeare aloud to my director, explicate the passages with her, bat around ideas about how to make this work onstage, find ways to explain what some of the more archaic words and concepts are, and try to figure out if these words/concepts will read to a modern audience and, if not, how can we alter or cut them to do so?

Yea, it’s pretty much my dream job.

The cutting battle is slightly blood because I, as I mentioned, am a text purist.  My director is not.  She is very open to hearing my ideas and defenses about why something should remain, but it does mean that I have to go into a session prepared with sword and shield to defend the text.  This, honestly, is my favorite part and really why I got into the field I am in.  In order to make something stay, my director must understand why it’s important.

My director is a very experienced very talented woman, but not someone who has had extensive experience directing Shakespeare and not someone who has had my experience training with and utilizing the text.  We come at things from very different angles and this makes for a more-than-interesting battleground over the text itself.  She works in the extremely practical (or, as she puts it, “popular”) mindset.  I work in the more traditional (but not stodgy!) mindset.  Together, we represent two sides of a divide which has plagued my field for generations.

Shakespeare Studies as a field is divided into two battlegrounds: the English department and the Theatre department.  As a subset of the theatre department, you also have the scholarly thespians, and the practical thespians.  All of these factions bring different mindsets to bear upon the text.  The English people are all about the book and text analysis, sometimes edging over into history (not of performance techniques or even performance in general, but rather of the events surrounding both the writing of the play and the play’s events).  The scholarly thespians deal with history of performance as well as contemporary performance, edging into how this is of use to actors.  The practical thespians are all about performance.

So we’re not of COMPLETELY different camps (at least I’m not in the English department), but we are definitely on two sides of the scholarly/practical divide.  Coming together to create this project is really what I wanted when I decided to get my PhD.  I love Shakespeare.  Period.  I love everything about his plays, how they’re performed, and how audiences react to them.  Having the opportunity to craft both a set of amateur actors’ experience with Shakespeare as well as an audience’s experience with Shakespeare is the ultimate gratification for me.

 

This process is also teaching me a lot about theatricality and the meeting of the great divide within my field (something which, honestly, I thought I had a better handle on having been an actor in a past life).  Where does literary studies meet performance studies and how far can one straddle the boundary without falling into it?  Also; how can we communicate meaningfully across this boundary without smothering the other side’s instincts and without disrespecting the other side’s experience?

As a field, I think these are giant questions which we are going to be working on for many years to come.  I certainly don’t have readily available answers.  It is all too easy for both sides of this divide to go into expert mode and disregard the other side entirely and, because of the odd power structure of a theatrical production, this can result in a lot of hurt feelings and bruised egos.  Any of us can choose to cover our ears and sing loudly “I’M RIGHT!”.  But what do we learn from that?  And, more importantly, what do our students learn from that?

Is This the Beginning of Zombie Shakespeare?

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I just got done with a dramaturgy session with my director for Measure for Measure (the show I’m dramaturging this year at Tufts and keep promising to fill you in on).  During the drive home, I was all prepared to write a nice long post about the process, how things are going, what a dramaturge actually does, etc.

…but then one of my friends posted this trailer on my facebook wall which clearly made it all but impossible to do anything but comment upon it.

I’m so egregiously excited that I’m having trouble formulating words.  Zombies?  Hamlet?  Spoof movies?  These are a few of my favorite things.  Add chocolate peanut butter, yarn, and shopping and you’d have a giant ball of Dani-crack.

I will begin with the following confession: I have seen nothing more about this film than this trailer.  I’ve done a small amount of research just to try and ground myself in some film-facts and figure out when it will be released to the general public (no answer as of now, by the way, much to my chagrin and dissatisfaction).

But based on what I’ve seen, I couldn’t be more excited if I tried.  A movie that deals with Shakespeare reverently but playfully?  A movie that makes fun of itself while simultaneously touting some good old fashioned Shakespearean values?  A movie that has the potential to be one of the most hilarious Shakes-scene of our times?

The film’s basic premise is that a group of indie film-makers want to make a version of Hamlet but lack the budget for a Kenneth Brannaugh-esque period piece.  Jokingly, they say the only thing they could make on their given budget is a B zombie film… so they solve their problem with a creative re-mix of both.  Midway through, their backer is found dead and so they become enrapt in a plot to cover up her death to ensure a green light for their film.  I’m sure that this causes plenty of outside complications as well, but I’m less concerned about those at the moment.

With the prospect of a zombie Hamlet, My mind immediately jumped to the possibility of the Norwegians being zombies led by a sort of lich-lord Fortinbras.  Denmark could almost literally become a prison due to high security measures set in place in order to prevent further zombie invasions and, upon the collapse of the court at the end, the zombie masses enter to find the corpses of the Denmarkian royalty.

The inclusion of zombies also problematizes death within the play.  What kind of outbreak are we dealing with?  Runners or Shamblers?  Nanovirus or witch doctors?  If nanovirus, then Claudius could well be made into an arch-villain having infected King Hamlet with the virus and making him patient zero of the outbreak.  Hamlet’s ghost could instead be a return of the shambling King as a sort of covert super-zombie come to wreck revenge upon the individual responsible for the attack.  If Witch Doctor induced, there could still be a measure of this creation-against-creator as King Hamlet would be unable to lift a hand against his Lord and Master now-King Cladius and thus must have his son act as agent.  Alternately, in a world where zombies are created by magic, ghosts become equally plausible.  King Hamlet could be a sort of revenant, requiring a flesh body to perform deeds upon the living and thus spurring his son to the task.

 This also complicates Hamlet’s killing of Polonius, as when he hears a rustling in the curtains of his mother’s bedchamber he could potentially believe it to be an undead foe and, thereby, shoot said foe in the head before it leapt out to attack.  Polonius becomes an unfortunate victim of the country’s political strife as opposed to the sacrificial lamb of Hamlet’s madness.

Ophelia’s death is similarly complicated, and the possibilities innate in a zombie-infested Denmark make richer her last scene in which she appears onstage having run mad.  Perhaps she has been bitten by her risen-from-the-dead father and her not-quite-a-zombie-yet fever is the cause of her madness.  Alternately, anyone can go crazy in the world of the zombie holocaust.  The uncaniness of the walking dead and the permeation of casual death into society will just do that to a person.

Also; what does this mean for Act V?  Does the royal court lay dead at the feet of the zombie invaders only to rise themselves as mindless brain-nommers?  Is Horatio the only human left alive in a world now peopled by the walking dead?

Since the film isn’t actually a zombie version of Hamlet but rather about the making of a zombie Hamlet, I don’t truly expect my questions to be answered.  I do, however, very much look forward to seeing it and firmly believe that I will have found a new go-to “bad day” movie.

…and if anyone has the money and inclination to actually direct a production of Hamlet set

“…Is this the end of Zombie Shakespeare?”

during the zombie holocaust, please oh please oh please hire me.  I’ll do anything to be involved in that production.  I’ll even put myself on your line and audition to be a piece of meat… I mean… actor.  But mostly, I want to find a reason to have to research what kind of duel you would possibly be able to stage while the zombie hoards were shambling at your door.  Pistols won’t cut it due to the multiple touches, but I could definitely see claymores or battleaxes coming in handy and thereby the Princes being versed in their usage… or maybe bludgeoning weapons are the way to go since cricket bats are definitely a staple of the zombie genre.  That, however, would complicate the poison premise, but we could maybe make it work somehow…

Deutsch

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So one of my summer quests is to learn to read in German.

One of the requirements for most PhDs in the Humanities (I know for certain English and Theatre Studies, other areas I’m not so clear on) is a reading knowledge of two languages other than English (alternately, a deep comprehension/fluency of one other language).  This requirement is often best taken care of in the early stages of your coursework so that it doesn’t hang you up when you go to do big things like comps and orals.

For me, I came into the program with a fairly solid reading knowledge of French.  German, while it seems esoteric, is a good choice for someone in Theatre Studies as the field was basically conceived in Germany, though like most things conceived in Germany fell apart during that big black hole in history that began in Germany.  Nowadays, the Free University of Berlin is a fairly happening place (especially for Shakespeareans and especially over the summer).

To assist in my quest, the school has hired one of my colleagues in the English department to teach a reading-in-German tutorial for anyone in the humanities required to pass such an exam as mine.

Learning to read in a language is a skill set entirely different from learning a language.  We did not spend the first day talking about our names, how we were, and where we lived.  Because we have a very limited time frame and are expected to retain a whole lot of information, this course is essentially a strategy guide for quick and dirty German.  Here’s how you recognize a noun, here’s a verb, here are common irregular verbs, now go learn all the vocabulary you can stuff in that little brain and come back later.  It’s a lot more technical; let’s break down this sentence (almost diagramming the sentence) and figure out which words we absolutely need to look up.  How many trips to the dictionary can we avoid?  How much can we clarify what you’re actually looking up and what you will find when you do?

This is made slightly easier by the fact that German, like English, is a Germanic language (and, to be even more technical, a West Germanic language).  It’s closer to English than a Romance language and thereby has a great many cognates which can help the English-speaking German-beginner.

It’s also made slightly easier by the fact that in my undergrad I decided to take a smattering of all kinds of languages.  Flash back to the first semester Freshman year, my brief flirtation with Latin.  I had a slightly longer affair with Italian, and the longest-lasting

This picture might best encapsulate my time in Dublin* *this is not entirely true… but that is a whole nother book of stories…

was with Irish (two and a half years of Irish Gaelic and a summer living in Dublin later and, while my Irish has decayed over the years from lack of use, I may still know more than native Irish people who don’t live in Gaeltachts).  Latin taught me grammar.  If you want to learn English grammar, go learn Latin.  I also taught me the meanings of cases and declensions, a building block for many of the other languages I’m working with.  Irish taught me how to deal with an inflected language (that is, a language in which word order doesn’t really matter).  This is the same in Latin, but since I lived with Irish longer I was better able to grasp the concept.  German word order is often strange and unusual because the rules governing sentence structure are not the same as they are in English.  Italian taught me to order in restaurants and buy a verb dictionary.  Seriously.  More irregular verbs than any language a sane person would actually want to learn.

So, while German is foreign, it’s not completely foreign.

It’s also delightful to be learning something new and different.  I’ve spent so long with a certain kind of schooling (namely: go home, read this book, do some research, come back and talk about it, write a paper) that having a new way to exercise my mind is almost salivatingly good.  Last night, the teacher handed out worksheets!  I haven’t had a worksheet to do since the 90s! (…almost as long, by the way, as I haven’t done higher-level mathematics…. I think I may see a corollary here…)

So, yes, they basically throw you in the deep end clinging desperately to your dictionary like a lifeline.  And there’s a lot of vocabulary to memorize.  Like… all the vocabulary.  The more vocab you know, the fewer trips to the dictionary you need, and thereby the faster you are at translating.

But it’s fresh, it’s interesting, and it’s extremely different from the kind of learning I do during the year.  While I can’t really call it a vacation, I can call it a drastic deviation from my regularly scheduled programming.

A good old-fashioned purging

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Over the weekend I cleaned off my desk.

We’re not talking about a superficial re-piling like I’ve been doing over the course of the semester; we’re talking full-fledged move everything, wipe down under it, file all papers, put things in their proper places sort of clean.  The kind of clean that leaves one with that warm, squeaky, shiny feeling.  The kind of clean that lets you know that one series of projects has been completed and another is due to start.  The kind of clean that’s well and truly food for the academic soul.

There was a great amount of catharsis which went with this cleaning.  Certainly on a superficial level my papers had been piling up since September and really needed to be moved off of my little rack thing and into some more permanent storage solution.  But along with those papers went the deeper feeling of satisfaction.  Yes, I made it.  And more than that, I can wrap up all the loose ends and have a desk that’s fresh and ready for something new.

I sorted, I vacuumed, I recycled.  I tidied, I stacked, I neatened.  And, by the end of it, I was feeling less cluttered in the mind and more ready to take on what was next (a polish of the paper I gave at CDC for submission to their publication Text & Presentation and an abstract for submission to ASTR’s Shakespeare in Performance workgroup).

I also realized that I have a whole lot of desk toys and maybe I should consider cutting

the pertinent portion of my desk

back on the random things that I put in my work area to remind myself of sundry other things.  But every time I consider curbing my collection of desk doo-mah-hickeys, I inevitably get wrapped in the sentimentality which caused me to hang onto them in the first place.  How could I move my favorite childhood toy horse, or my jumbo-the-stress-elephant?  How could I banish my littlest pet shop creatures which saw me through my six-month-stint in a cube farm?  How could I even think of moving desk-thulu, or shakes-cat, or jojo the fluffy tribble?  And don’t even mention the possibility of culling my rubber ducks.  Every single one on my desk was given to me by a close friend, and thereby has deep emotional significance.

The bottom line is, my desk is my home base.  This is where I come to work, this is where I (basically) live.  The state of my desk is indicative of my mental state; is it tidy?  Is it a wreck?  Are there fifteen million things on it?  How are those things stacked; neatly or haphazardly?  Are there documents waiting for me in my printer tray?  When I feel like my desk is out of control, I feel like my life is out of control.  My desk is the first and last line of defense against mental breaks and it’s something very real, very tangible, and very large.  I visit it every day.  It’s my altar of academia.  It’s my corner of the Ivory Tower.  Perhaps most importantly, it’s an extension into the physical realm of everything that goes on in my head.  The things upon it, whether they be permanent desk ornaments or temporary passing-through papers, are the things within my mind.  My desk is a physical manifestation of the crazy, wild, tempestuous happenings of the inner monologue and must be treated as such.

…and god help you if you touch my rubber duckies.

Zowie, Powie, Holy Cow

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This week, instead of engaging in post-semester flop, I’ve actually had a fairly busy schedule.  Two adventures in particular stand out as being blogworthy…

On Wednesday as a sort of post-mortem field trip, my eighteenth century professor organized an outing to the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale to see their current exhibit “The God of Our Idolatry”: Garrick and Shakespeare.  The Lewis Walpole Library is a collection of materials pertaining to British Eighteenth Century Studies.  It began as the private collection of Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis (a loyal and noble son of Yale), whose fascination was drawn by eighteenth-century eccentric genius Horace Walpole (sidebar: Walpole wrote what many deem to be the first Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto in 1764 and also built himself a gothic castle just south of London which he called “Strawberry Hill”.  He decked it out with turrets, towers, false walls, staircases leading nowhere, and a dwarf butler.  Strawberry Hill is open to the public today, though probably sans dwarf butler).  The Library boasts over 32,000 manuscripts, some of which are theatre-related (playtexts, broadsides, drawings/pictures of actors in character and out, etc.).

The library is on beautiful, lush grounds.  Two buildings (the archive itself and the resident scholars’ house (the “root house”)) actually date from the eighteenth century.  A croquet set was arrayed on the lawn upon our arrival.

We were welcomed into the root house to have lunch (it’s furnished in old-school New England style and simply charming) before being ushered into the New Library.

That’s approximately when I decided that I would like to drop everything and live there.

The New Library is an oaken room furnished with bookcases in every corner, leather

I WANT TO LIVE HERE!

wingback chairs, and a baby grand piano.  It’s lit by a chandelier hanging from the cavernous ceiling, and a large arched window at the far corner.  I felt like I had walked into the library from Beauty and the Beast.  I would have been content to just sit in this room all day (perhaps with a book of my own and a snifter of brandy) and pontificate on life’s finer qualities.

But the fun didn’t stop there.  The exhibit was exciting and interesting, of course.  I had just finished writing a paper on Garrick, Shakespeare, and Hamlet, how could I not have fun in a roomful of Garrick paraphernalia?  And let me tell you, the more I learn about Garrick, the more I love that man.  He was simply so delightfully impressed with himself (and, by the way, because of this, the rest of London was as well).

But that wasn’t all!  Then they took us into the reading room where (as usually happens when a group of visiting scholars is being shown an archive) they had pulled materials related to our research interests.

And there, sitting on the table, just waiting for me, were two volumes of the Johnson/Steevens edition (London: 1773).

It doesn’t matter how frequently I handle archival materials, getting to touch documents and books which are hundreds of years old always always gets a rise out of me.  I sat down and lovingly paged through the volumes (they had pulled the index and volume two).  I used the book snake copiously (because book snakes are STILL awesome!).  I reveled in the book cushions.  I tried not to drool on it.

JOHNSON/STEEVENS EDITION!

Oh yea, there were other really interesting things on the table (photograph files, original editions of The Constant Lovers and other plays, eighteenth century satire pictures, etc.), but JOHNSON/STEEVENS EDITION!

So, yes, it was absolutely worth the two-hour-each-way drive to get there.  The exhibit, by the by, is free and open to the public during their normal gallery hours (Wednesday 2-4:30), or may be viewed by appointment if you’re really interested.  Really nifty stuff, but likely not worth the hassle to get there unless you’re a super dork like me.

Adventure two: took the best friend to see Little Shop of Horrors for his first time last night (can you imagine, he hadn’t heard the music, seen the movie, or seen the play!  There are still people in this world like that!).  We caught a production by New Repertory Theatre at the Arsenal Center for the Arts.

I’m having trouble finding shots from the Broadway Revival, but here’s a shot of a regional show which used the original puppet plant from the ’82 off-broadway production to give you a sense of the scope of the thing, and how all-encompassing it should be.

On the whole, the production was fairly solid and traditional.  Unfortunately, I have an extremely soft spot for this show and did manage to catch the 2003 Broadway production which was spectacular so it’s really hard for Little Shop to impress me.  This was a pretty good training-wheels show, and if I hadn’t seen the Broadway production I probably would have been more impressed.

The Charles Mosesian Theater is a big awkward space.  It’s a raked-house proscenium style stage with an audience pit that fans out to the side, creating really awkward sight lines at the extreme angles (which, unfortunately, we were seated in).  In addition, the space is large enough to be good for most musicals, but I truly feel that Little Shop requires a fairly small space.  In order to instill the real terror that the show demands, you want an intimate house that feels like the action can truly leap off the stage and attack you.  To pull off the show’s ending, you need to be able to engulf the theatre in energy and that is extremely difficult to do in a house that’s over one hundred seats.

This production, unfortunately, did not deliver that.  It felt like I was watching a film and didn’t really reach out and grab me.

The performances were solid, but didn’t go above and beyond.  Particularly disappointing was Blake Pfeil’s Seymour who, while he was able to conjure sufficiently weasley and lovable, copped out of every major song-capping note he was given.  Rather than belting that last, glorious, musical-theatre note, he instead chose to speak the last line of his songs.  This may be partially due to the show’s direction which also erred on the safe side of traditional.

On the whole, if this production had just been pushed to the next level, it would have been fantastic.  Even barring the awkward sight lines.

Theatre isn’t safe.  Acting is perhaps the most horrible profession someone can go into.  An actor is paid to tear open the inner recesses of himself and explore his deepest, darkest parts publicly, before an audience, eight times a week.  Little Shop is a campy, comedic romp in the macabre and a study about greed, desire, and the extremities of humanity.  If you play it safe, it becomes a hackneyed walk in Poe’s garden with some songs that everyone already knows.

Little Shop of Horrors plays through May 20th at Arsenal Center for the Arts.  For more info and tickets, check it out here.

Year One: In the Books

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As if 08:30 hours this Sunday morning past, I have done the inevitable, the wonderful, what I thought for some time was the highly improbable; I have finished year one.

Yes, ladies and gents, with one click of a button, that final final was sliding on home to the comfy cozy inbox of my professor and thus closing the book on half of my coursework (…though actually more than half because this year consisted of six classes and next year will consist of four, but let’s not quibble over the small bits, shall we?)

I would like to say that I sent the e-mail then promptly took my pants off, got cozy on the couch, and didn’t move for several days, but in reality I sent the e-mail, ran around my house for a while, drove for two hours, and worked a sixteen-hour day followed by a night of sleeping like the dead then went to a dramaturgy session where I spent two and a half hours sifting through Measure for Measure line by line and explicating every fine detail for my director… when I came home from that THEN I took my pants off, got cozy on the couch, and didn’t move for several hours.  Unfortunately, today can’t be as carefree as yesterday as I still have two professional deadlines nipping at my heels in addition to several personal projects which require my attention…

But I did buy myself ice cream last night.  And I do feel a certain sense of levity.  And I do feel utterly and completely accomplished.  Summer just tastes different – like watermelon and strawberries.  And, having finished my last final, I can safely say that it tastes like summer.

But before I get too far ahead of myself, let me take a moment to revel in what I actually just did.  Over the course of the past year I have: survived the initial shock of PhD work, thrived in the Tufts environment, learned more than I can possibly describe (and learned about a whole host of other things that I now need to learn), kept up with a rigorous course load, not driven myself crazy, met the demands and expectations of my wonderfully demanding professors, kept myself on track professionally and hit all the professional development goals I had realistically set for myself, maintained contact with the outside world (some sections of it more than others and at some moments more contact than others), not made an abject fool of myself in class (and if I did, I don’t know about it because ignorance on this front is bliss), come to grips with my job as a professional academic, stepped out into the wider world of academia at two large conferences with my shiny Tufts byline…

And blogged faithfully twice a week to prove it all!

I cannot even describe how grateful I am to everyone this year for the support, the love, and the cheering section.  I’ve said it before, but I don’t think I could have known what I was getting into even if someone had attempted to tell me.  This year has been rough.  You, dear readers, have definitely made things more bearable and for that I am so thankful.  

Some Statistics for this Semester…

Total library books taken out this semester: 77
Total minutes of in-class presentation given: 85
Total turned-in pages at end of semester: 70
Total pages of drafts written: 337
Total performances attended: 13

So, Dani, you just finished the first year of your PhD, what are you going to do now?  Well, I do have one class over the summer.  I’m taking a German for Reading course in hopes that it will help me pass an exam to fulfill my second language requirement.  I’ve never studied German before and it’s been a while since I’ve done any kind of learning other than “read and discuss”, so this should be very interesting.

In addition, I have a few papers I’ll be taking some time to polish and submit.  It’s time to publish lest I perish, and being a model ABD ain’t just a pipe-dream for a kid with a hope and a dollar.  I will also be making as big a dent on the comps list as I can in my copious amounts of free time.

To further impinge upon that free time, I’m serving as Dramaturge for Tufts’ 2012 production of Measure for Measure.  We don’t start rehearsing until deep fall, but the summer is when we’re getting our acting edition together.  This means that I’ll be spending my days working with the director to get the script into the shape we want it (much more exciting and difficult than it sounds – don’t worry, I’m sure that this will be blog fodder all summer long).

This year, I have been pushed to the outer walls of my limits.  I have accomplished things which I, at points, didn’t think possible.  And, I’ve done it with panache and style!  Here’s the good news for all you faithful readers (and perhaps the bad news for me): the worst is not over by a long shot.  I’ve been fastidiously advised by my senior peers as I was crossing the finish line this semester that coursework is the easiest part of this entire process.

Well, darn it.  I guess I should spend another year in easy land and truly brace for what’s to come.  Because if this is easy, then I’m not sure how I’m going to handle the hard stuff…

But for now, I am hopeful.  It’s a beautiful day, I have a paper to revise, and my red pen is itching for some action.  After that I’m going to lounge on my couch for a while before a rock-climbing date with my favorite traveling companion.

Today: the rock gym.  Tomorrow: the world.

And for now: I will take a much deserved bow.

Definitely a Hurricane

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So last night, in an effort to run away and join the Shakespeare circus for an evening instead of agonizing over the proper usage of periods in Chicago-style citation (seriously, Tufts, you are BLOWING THE MIND of this MLA-girl… guess I should get used to it since this is the rest of my life… sigh), I took my gay best friend to see Bad Habit Productions’ Much Ado About Nothing …with a twist.

The show’s a straight-up Much Ado performed with only five (count them! Five!) actors.

One of the things that I love about theatre companies who don’t normally do Shakespeare doing Shakespeare is that they tend to bring a sense of fun to it.  There was a spirit of play that permeated this show which really kept the energy moving and the audience willing to smile along with it.  The actors (for the most part) were multi-talented and at least half of them played several instruments and sang at some point in the production (one of the many script concessions was the addition of contemporary pop music which I did love).  One actress in particular, Sierra Kagen, truly blew me away.  She played a heart-felt Leonato, a sniveling Conrade, and an outright uproarious Margaret.  The only problem I had with her was that when she was onstage I had trouble looking at anyone else because the things she was doing were just so darn engaging.

Evan Sanderson really got to strut his stuff as Dogbery, which is great because his primary role (Claudio) can be a real bore to play.  I mean really, who wants to spend an entire show as a wide-eyed, fresh-faced male lead intent on nothing but winning the hand of the pretty girl?  Sanderson’s sense of comic timing and his subtle touches (best use of a lisp I’ve heard onstage in a long time) made the eccentric watchman truly light up the space.  Bravo, Sanderson.  Well done.

Unfortunately, the company’s weakest actress (Sasha Castroverde) played Beatrice and that (to be completely honest) really made me angry.  So, I have this thing.  Call it a retired actor thing.  If I see someone in a role which I know I can perform better (especially if it’s a role that I want to perform), I get very angry and distracted and there’s little I can do to keep myself from leaping out of my chair and delivering the lines for the actor onstage.  Someday, this instinct is going to get me into a whole lot of trouble.  I recommend the commencement of bail-money fund-raising immediately.  Last night, there was little I could do to take myself away from the fact that Castroverde simply did not have the fire in her belly for this role.  This was made doubly unfortunate because her Benedick (David Lutheran) was exceedingly talented.  Also… Castroverde seriously needs to work on her posture.

One downright brilliant concession made by the company was the fact that, while all the other roles were consistently played by one actor, the part of Hero was shared between all five.  Gender-bending and wonderful, every member of the cast took a turn at throwing on an ugly brown wig and a hideous blue dress to play the boring damsel.  This concession really took a snoozer of a part and made it into something interesting (and packed a punch when such lines as “your Hero, every man’s Hero!” and “one Hero died… but I do live”, and “Another Hero!” were uttered… though I do wish the director had made a nod at his genius concession with these lines.. they just beg for it!).

The script itself was fairly heavily cut, but anyone who isn’t a super-dork like me won’t really notice.  Some cuts were necessary due to the character set to speak the line simply not being onstage because the actor was playing someone else at the time.  Others were doubtlessly made to accommodate the many added musical numbers.  Either way, the cuts were fairly seamless and there wasn’t anything eliminated that I actually missed.

Perhaps the weak point in the production (and this, unfortunately, is a consistent weak point in Shakespeare productions done by non-Shakespeare companies) was the text coaching.  Word to the wise: text coaching can make a good production great and an awful production tolerable.  If you ever wind up directing, producing, or working on a production of Shakespeare, make certain that there’s a text coach on hand who knows her stuff (…hire me?  Please?).  While this production did make me smile and chuckle, it could have done with some more punch in the text department.  That would have truly taken it to the next level.

The production only has four shows left (it closes this Sunday), and you should definitely make an effort to go see it.  It’s well worth the cost of admission to see the four dynamos and one middler try and pull off the wedding scene (which, by the way, they do surprisingly well).  Tickets are available via Bad Habit’s website or, for the thrifty theatre-goer, Goldstar.

Still Finding the Energy

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I’m nearly there.  So close.  Last one goes down on Sunday, and that (my friends) will be the “thud” heard round the world (…or at least the “ding” heard round the world since it’s being submitted via e-mail).  After that, I wish I could say I get a real break, but instead I’ve got two weeks to polish a paper for a publication deadline (say that ten times fast) and churn out an abstract for ASTR (which I am determined to make this year because it’s in Nashville and thereby will give me an excuse to wear my fantastic cowboy boots to my panel).  I also only have a week and a half between last final submission and German classes starting up so… yea.  Breaks are for the weak.

In an effort to maintain my sanity, today I’m making you Another Random Finals List because I really don’t have the brain space to leak anything else out.

1)    I’m a grown woman and My Little Ponies (Friendship is Magic) still makes me smile.  I

Pony with a library!!!

have no shame about this.  You should try watching it; especially if you’re an over-worked academic who would love to find more time to be with her friends because (I kid you not) the lead pony is ALSO an over-worked academic whose friends insist on her making time for them.  Yes, I am Twilight Sparkle.  Deal with it, academy.

2)    The Muppets also make me smile.  As an archetype of everything I love about theatre, watching the Muppets is a sure-fire way to make me remember why I chose this profession.

3)    So is watching “The Shakespeare Code”.

4)    I’m not sure how to feel about the fact that I now have a designated study/paper-writing blanket.  It is both warm and fuzzy.  And I haven’t managed to get red ink on it yet (though I await the day… it already has a war-wound from a crafting project gone awry).  This blanket may be the most comforting thing I own and I’m truly hoping that A) I don’t begin to associate it with the emotional trauma of finals time and B) I don’t turn into Linus because that would just be sad.

5)    Saw a pretty decent production of The Importance of Being Earnest this past weekend by Theatre to Go.  For community theatre, it was solid.  Those long Victorian scenes can be really difficult to make read to a modern audience (lots of antiquated wit flying about), but I thought it was fairly well done.  I took my favorite companion (who had never before seen nor read any of Wilde’s work) and he had a good time, which is probably a better gauge of the production than my snobbery.  I do wish there had been some dramaturgical gloss in the program, however, since so much of this wit is out-dated double-entendre (…dramaturgical gloss for those not in the know: “Earnest” is, debatably, a nineteenth-century euphemism for “homosexual” and if you’re not also reading that in the term “bunburying” you’re additionally missing the joke… I could go into a long explanation about the close proximity of the play’s London premiere to Wilde’s trial, but I’ll save that for a time when my brain functions a bit better).  Also, I am of the personal opinion that Lady

Brian Bedford as Lady B in the 2009 Broadway Revival

Bracknell is a role best played by a man of at least six feet in stature and barrel-chested.  TTG’s actress (Kate Beattie) definitely had the fire, and did a great job, but there’s nothing like cross-dressing to really get wild with your Wilde.

6)    Speaking of theatre, I will be hitting 28 Seeds again on Friday.  The show closes this weekend, so if you haven’t seen it yet, get your butt over to BCA and fix that!  Well worth the cost of admission.  I’m also hitting Bad Habit Productions’ Much Ado About Nothing tomorrow which should, at the very least, prove interesting.  The entire show is done with five actors.  This will either be a hurricane, or a train wreck.  Stay tuned.

7)    …I feel like that phrase (“hurricane or a train wreck”) could pretty much describe my life in general.  With great risk comes great reward… or great laughing at yourself when you fall on your face.

8)    I’m going to the gym now.  Exercise gives you endorphins.  Endorphins make you happy.  Happy people don’t just shoot their husbands.

One Draft at a Time

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Did you hear that?

That, my friends, was the sound of this over-worked, over-stressed, over-tired, and way under-paid (and often under-appreciated) girl making her writing goals for the week.

Yes, in the face almost-astronomic odds, I managed to produce the nine drafts which I expected from myself in four days (that’s 2.25 drafts a day, folks).  If I manage to produce two drafts over the weekend (so work slightly slower than the break-neck pace I set for myself at the onset), I will be in tip-top shape at the beginning of next week and, by the end of the week, ready to turn everything in on time and close the book on this semester.

Phew.

Perhaps more importantly than the statistics, I’ve managed to write myself over the great mid-draft slump.

You see, I’m a very very slow writer.  I take many many drafts to produce something turn-in-able.  I’ve totally been over this before.  At some point between preliminary vomit draft and pristine turn-it-in paper, I hit what I like to call the “mid-draft slump”.  It’s that point in the paper-writing process where you look at the mess you’ve made, you look at the work you’ve done, and it hits you: this is completely inane.  You haven’t produced anything of value; you’ve barely produced anything.  In fact, all this research you just did is pretty much garbage because it hasn’t led you anywhere.  You’re not saying anything original; you’re not saying anything at all.

It’s a horrible place, an awful place, a place of desperation and darkness.  It’s a place where you simply can’t see your way out, and you just want to bury your face in all of this pulp you’ve produced and cry your little heart dry as your tears intermingle with the ink on the page and create great literary rorschachs.  It’s a place that just makes you want to give up; hang up your red pen and go be illiterate for the rest of your life.

And the only way to get through this place is to write more.  If you find yourself here, it means that you’re still hammering.  It’s inevitable; there’s got to be a place between A and Z.  The process of paper writing is the process of idea formation, and idea formation starts with research.  Getting from a ton of research to your own thought is a process; an action; it’s not a single moment.  You are never going to produce perfection in one draft.  Not no way, not no how.

What makes me nervous is that this go-round, the mid-draft slump was extremely quick.  Nerve-wrackingly quick.  I mean, in the past I’ve been stuck in the mid-draft slump for three or four drafts sometimes.  This time, it took a single draft to work my way somewhere with the bright light of hope shining down upon me.  I guess that this should make me happy (the mid-draft slump isn’t, after all, a very nice place to be), but really it just makes me anxious.  Have I picked something entirely too obvious to argue?  Am I just putting forth an assertion of the facts without adding anything new to the conversation?  Am I repeating myself?  Are these drafts just sixty pages of Graduate-level macaroni pictures?

Maybe for the sake of my own mental health, I have chosen to view this as a good thing.  I’ve come too far this semester to look back now, and I won’t let the accomplishment of my goals (even in record time) make me too apprehensive to savor that fruit.

So take that, mid-draft slump!  Return to the darkness and stay there until the end of next semester!  I have, once again, conquered you with the strength of my mind, the might of my pen, and the force of my sheer stubbornness!

Yea, I simply walked into Mordor.  And I walked out too.  Didn’t need a flying eagle rescue

Thank you, Google Maps.

or anything.

….I’m going to go collapse on my couch and return to my re-read of The Hunger Games now.  That won’t take any brain power and it’ll still make me feel intellectually superior to those who watch TV in their spare time.  I’ll return to being smart tomorrow.  Tonight is all about resting the gray matter.

Finals Land

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Good friends and readers,

Hello from finals land.

This is a place slightly different from “finals panic” (which I was experiencing a few weeks ago).  This is a place where everything is mapped out, everything is drafted out, and all I have to do is continue working at a good clip to slide into the finish.

My last final is due May 13th.  And man, I cannot wait to plonk that baby down and close the book on what has been a phenomenal, engrossing, enormous, scary year.

The thing about finals land is that it is extremely draining.  The writing process, for me, is a slow one and one that requires meticulous drafting and re-drafting.  As I have previously mentioned, it takes between 6 and 8 drafts for me to produce something that I feel comfortable turning in.  I like to work on one draft a day but, as I am currently simultaneously grappling with three large papers, that means I’m required to produce approximately 21 drafts to feel good about my product.  I have 13 days to do it.  This means that I’m going to have to average 1.6 drafts a day (provided I take zero days off between now and due dates).  Which, realistically, means that I’m going to have to be churning out two drafts a day to give myself room for a breath sometime this weekend.

What this really and truly means is that my brain feels like a wrung-out sponge.  I feel like I’ve given everything I have to this semester and I simply have nothing left to give.

Unfortunately, I’ve not got the option to stop now.  There’s this last little bit of mountain to climb to get to the top of what’s been an arduous (but entirely rewarding) year.

There’s this saying in clown training; “find the energy”.  There are two zones in clowning; “the red” which is where you are when you are in-nose and thereby in-character, and “the black” which is somewhere below that, not quite fully to the point of true clown yet.  You get tired really quickly in clowning, it takes a lot to keep yourself going.  When you’re training to do it, you are constantly told to “find the energy”.  ImageDo whatever you need to do to keep yourself in the red.  Dance, throw stuff, run around, keep going, dip into the deep part of yourself where you store the bits that you don’t generally access and use those to fuel whatever it is you are doing until it’s done.

And really, these days, that’s all I’ve got.  I’ve got to find the energy to keep going, no matter where that energy comes from (at the moment, it’s coming from some lovely earl gray I’ve been drinking like it’s my job, though I may switch to something a little less caffeinated soon… also, girl scout cookies never hurt…).

In a few short weeks, I will be able to collapse and have a break (and trust me, in the two weeks between finals and my summer German class I intend to take full advantage of break time… if my past experience with graduate school has been at all indicative of my future experience with graduate school, I will be laid out on the couch unable to move for a solid three days before I regain the capacity to speak much less function in the real world).  In a few short weeks, I can pick up a book that I want to read and read it for no other reason than “I want to”.  In a few short weeks, I can hit all those extra random deadlines that have been lurking on the side of my whiteboard all but ignored because I simply did not have the time to devote attention to them.

…at least nature cooperated today.  It was a gray, dreary day here in Boston – the kind of day that really does make me want to curl up on my office futon with a blankie, a French press full of tea, and my writing to red-pen.  So that’s exactly what I did.

And I hit my writing goals.  Here’s hoping that mother nature continues to cooperate and doesn’t insist on too many beautiful days between now and the 13th.