A Comedy of Errors

Posted on October 1, 2013 by drosvally

In celebration of my triumph, my beaux took me to see a show this weekend. And not just any show. A SHAKESPEARE show. A show that we’ve both been dying to see for some time now and which displayed great promise in its advertised concept.

The new-to-Boston Anthem Theatre Company performed a four-man Comedy of Errors at the BCA Plaza blackbox. At ninety minutes with no intermission and some creative application of props/costumes, it was a high-octane performance with great entertainment value.

Unfortunately, the performance was (for me) overshadowed by an egregious lack of judgment on the part of the production company.

I’ve always thought that a program bio for a dead playwright was a bit odd. Granted, sometimes it contains useful information for an audience (especially if the show is meant to be an “introduction to [playwright]” for a crowd who wouldn’t normally see this type of theatre). It makes slightly more sense when there’s a dramaturge working on a production with expertise in the subject matter who can craft a bio with good/entertaining tidbits.

Anthem, however, made a cardinal mistake: they copy and pasted from the internet.

The bio in their playbill is attributed to http://www.biographyonline.net/poets/william_shakespeare.html and has all the usual axioms about Shakespeare. The piece which bothered me most was this paragraph:

“Shakespeare died in 1664; it is not clear how he died although his vicar suggested it was from heavy drinking.”

At first I couldn’t tell if this was a joke. The timbre of the show was irreverent; maybe this was some sort of wink to that. A little investigation brought me to realize what was going on here: the error is reprinted verbatim from its source. The issue wasn’t purposeful, it was simply a careless copy job.

First of all; Shakespeare died in 1616. He was born in 1564. The playbill misprint is likely

doesn’t it look like we’re private eyes in a noir movie?

a transcription error on the part of biographyonline.net which was propagated by simply cutting and pasting the bio without fact-checking it.

It’s almost the first thing I tell my students when they walk into my class: never copy and paste off the internet. And certainly don’t do so without a bit of investigation of your own. One google search would have divested the truth about Shakespeare’s death date to whomever curated this playbill.

The bit about heavy drinking was a fairy tale I hadn’t heard before. After some poking around, I see that (like so much else about Shakespeare’s life) it’s a reasonably common myth with an unclear origin; certainly not canonical fact, and not something that I would include in a reliable bio.

Why was I so enraged at this incident, you may ask? Because first of all it undermines the authority of the work. How am I supposed to trust that these people know anything about Shakespeare? How am I supposed to respect the hard work of the actors/company if I can see that their playbill is thrown together by someone who simply doesn’t know any better and hasn’t bothered to find out? What do they have to contribute to this conversation, or teach to an audience of Shakespeare-beginners, if they can’t get their basic facts straight?

The second reason that this made me angry was that it didn’t have to be a problem. If the company wanted a dramaturge (or even just someone to write a smart playbill note), all they had to do was send one e-mail to any theatre department in the Boston area. Said department, I can nearly guarantee, would have had a student willing to work on this project for free. Suddenly, the company is engaged in a mutually beneficial relationship with a scholar; the dramaturge gets a resume byline, and the company gets an accurate piece of micro-scholarship. Problem: more than solved. And no fuss/no muss.

Really, this hits at the heart of an issue near and dear to my heart. If scholarship can’t feed and serve practice, then what’s the point of scholarship? And if practice refuses to acknowledge scholarship, then how can it serve its purpose? Without a healthy dialogue between the two, we’re stuck in a combined death-spiral to mutual-but-separate oblivions.

It baffles me even more that companies who do classical work seem less likely to hire dramaturges than companies who do contemporary work. Wouldn’t you think that a company who specialized in Shakespeare would want someone around who knows the ins/outs/back ends/front ends/historical tidbits/correct pronunciation intimately? Or how about a company that generally does contemporary plays but is taking a dip into the Shakes-world; wouldn’t you think they would want someone to converse with about any questions they may have even more?

So long as we continue to put our hands over our ears and sing loudly to ourselves that our work is the only legitimate work, we will not grow as a community. Without understanding and helping each other, we risk stagnation as artists and scholars. So please, for the love of all things bardy, hire (or at least consult) a dramaturge. If you find a good one, I promise that your work (and theirs!) will benefit from it.

And Knowing is Half the Battle

Posted on July 27, 2013 by drosvally

Since I seem to be writing nothing but theatre reviews lately (…mostly because I’m seeing SO MUCH THEATRE!), I figure it may be time for a reprieve from the “mundane” (or at least routine) around here.

Here is an unexclusive, incomplete list of things that I learned this week.

Thing one: Cyrano De Bergerac is a tragedy… and actually really sad. This would be fine except I saved it to read for when I needed a pick-me-up… suffice to say it’s been a rough week for many reasons (only one of which being the sheer amount of maudlin tragedy I’ve had to choke down this week).

Thing two: Peanut butter, when put in a saucepan, burns really quickly. If you want to melt it to… say… pour over your ice cream, you need to do it low and slow.

Thing three: Early Russian theatre sometimes consisted of “serf theatre”.

Shot of my desk… and my book fort. Yup. It’s a book fort.

The Russian feudal system persevered long after it was abolished in other countries (my mostly uninformed hypothesis about this entails factors such as geographic distance from anywhere that may have been interested in creating a mercantile class, a sure-fire way to abolish feudalism, and the many puns one can create using the word “serf”). Russian landowners, for lack of better things to do, sometimes trained their serfs and created theatre companies with them to perform for said landowners’ amusement. This, for some reason, is both fascinating and wonderful to me. Probably because I’ve never been a Russian peasant.

Thing four: When held in contrast with other nineteenth century pieces and scholarship about said nineteenth century pieces, melodrama actually makes for surprisingly engaging reading. Go go Pixerécourt.

Thing five: I think if Victor Hugo had actually written the playscript to Les Miserables rather than just the novel that it was based on, it would have been markedly more wonderful, decidedly more Spanish, and never would have run on Broadway for a record 6,680 performances. See for evidence: Hernani.

Thing six: If you hope hard enough, despite all natural barriers to the contrary, you can make it be autumn in New England even in July.

Thing seven: You could very feasibly murder people utilizing nineteenth century stage technologies and hide their bodies in places that would never be found, even within the theatre itself. Unfortunately, once I had this thought, actually enacting such things was the only notion on my mind as I flipped through my well-illustrated guide to the nineteenth century French stage. As such, I’m earmarking this idea for a potential future novel; sounds like a great historical detective case to me.

This is a REALLY cute kitten taking a nap (about palm-sized for the record). He’s not mine, but I like him better that way. I don’t have to clean his poop.

Thing eight: I wasn’t just whistling Dixie when I told people that German would be a useful language to have in my back pocket in the field of theatre history. Just this week I’ve encountered several books and one play (the play, unfairly enough, was Russian in its original language) which entail lengthy/important passages in both French and German that the scholar/translator couldn’t be bothered to render into English. Academic superpowers activate!

Thing nine: For this reason, I will really be screwed when I enter into the land of Japanese theatre.

Thing ten: I’m really grateful to have friends who will push me to tell them about what I read on any given day. Also friends who will go with me to the theatre. Also friends who will pester me via text message until I leave my cave and socialize in the real world. Also friends who will let me call and cry/whine/complain about neoclassicism and why it’s an abomination against art… even if they don’t really understand what neoclassicism is. Also friends who speak Shakespeare to me as a means of comfort. Thank you, friends!

Thing eleven: Restoration comedies are WAY funnier performed than on the page.

Thing twelve: I should probably consider taking a break sometime soon lest I devolve into some sort of Gollum creature mindlessly repeating pertinent names, dates, and phrases that would only make sense in the context of theatre history.

Epic Theatre

Posted on July 23, 2013 by drosvally

My oh my the amount of theatre I saw this weekend! So much theatre that I might not get to write reviews of everything; but here’s another to add to the collection.

Saturday, I got out to see Apollinaire’s Caucasian Chalk Circle. For those who have never seen Apollinaire before, they’re a really great company (their Uncle Vanya this year past was truly wonderful and made me, a formerly dubious audience of Soviet theatre, a true Chekhov believer). As far as I can tell, they prefer to produce “strolling” productions (that is, shows which take place in literally different locations so that the audience has to move with the action in order to observe it). For Caucasian Chalk Circle, this particular aesthetic fed in exceedingly well with Brecht’s piece.

Bertold Brecht was a German playwright who changed the face of theatre as we know it. After writing some extremely influential pieces (including Mother Courage and her Children and Threepenny Opera), he fled Germany and the imminent Nazi occupation. After a veritable tour of Northern Europe, he came to land in the United States for a time. During this time, Brecht was unsure about his future, unsure whether he would ever seen Germany again, and unsure whether his plays would ever be performed once more in his native language. Still, he wrote plays in German. Caucasian Chalk Circle is one of those plays.

Brecht is perhaps most famous for his grand contribution to the development of

View of the Tobin from Mary O’Malley Park…. it’s a little industrial

the theatrical form known as “epic theatre”. Epic theatre is a modern style developed in reaction to naturalism and its most salient goal is for an audience to have constant awareness that it is witnessing a play in production rather than any slice of reality. To achieve this, epic theatre utilizes imbedded elements such as narrators, storytellers, and song; technical attributes such as screens, projections, and fully lit houses; and performance traditions such as actors playing multiple characters, and actors moving sets and changing costumes in full view of the audience. The effect of estranging an audience from the play’s action is something which Brecht calls “Verfremdungseffekt” and is often translated as “alienation”.

In light of this, Apollinaire’s show is precisely in keeping with the Brechtian tradition. Caucasian Chalk Circle is a free, open-air production which springs up in Mary O’Malley park as quickly and ephemerally as its pre-show music (…mostly this pre-show music seemed to be generated by the assembled flock of musicians being bored together and so we were treated to impromptu renditions of Johnny Cash standards on an accordion). As such, the audience can see every single string. The actors move the sets between locations and unabashedly set them up/take them down as necessary. The stagehands flit about in full view of the assembly as they assist with costumes and props. The storyteller asks audience members to follow her from location to location between acts. A chalkboard acts as a makeshift screen and announces the title of each act. I think it is safe to say that Apollinaire succinctly and gracefully captured the spirit of epic theatre.

The set for act two… and the river. The sunset I didn’t quite manage to capture but trust me, it’s also worth the trip.

The assembly was rock solid. There wasn’t a weak performance amongst the lot. Despite Brecht’s insistence that an audience not overly empathize with his characters, it was hard to maintain the appropriate Brechtian distance due to the power of Courtland Jones’ Grushna and the charmingness of Mauro Canepa’s Simon. I can only hope that their Spanish-cast counterparts (the show is performed in English/Spanish on alternating nights) bring as much punch to the story.

Apollinaire performs Chalk Circle sans its prologue. While this is a common practice, it is one which scholars have debated for years since the prologue frames the tale within an external story. The prologue sets the scene in post-WWII Soviet Union and depicts two communes arguing over a piece of land. In order to further enlighten the dispute, one commune decides to perform an old folk tale for the other. Arkadi Cheidze, the story-teller/singer, brings his band of minstrels to do so and the play commences.

Does it change the meaning of this piece to have that framework surrounding it? It would certainly have answered my big question as I walked away (“what are we to take from this play?”). I leave that for you to ponder and encourage you, with all the force of my internet-power, to go see this show. It’s a great night out, and it’s free, so you really have no excuse.

As a coda to this verse, let me take a moment to expound upon how much I love open-air theatre and most especially initiatives like this one. Free quality theatre in the park is truly a service to society. Looking around the audience, I was struck by how many people there looked like “normal people”; we were just an assembly of neighbors come to watch a play. Pretensions were out the window as we sat on picnic blankets and towels, huddled close around the storytellers. For me, theatre doesn’t get much more wholesome than this. Call me a romantic, but I’m a firm believer in this sort of initiative because of its equalizing power and would like to assert that it is pieces like this which will ensure future audiences for the general theatrical community.

Caucasian Chalk Circle plays through this week and closes on July 27^th. There is one more Spanish performance on Friday the 26^th. For more information, visit Apollinaire’s website.

Bacchanalia

Posted on July 20, 2013 by drosvally

This weekend is a weekend full of theatre and I can’t feel better about it!

We kicked things off last night with The Bacchae at club Oberon.

There are a few fundamental issues in presenting Greek theatre to a contemporary audience. I have been known to argue that Greek tragedy is actually unperformable in the United States today (for further thoughts on this or to participate in this argument, buy me a drink sometime). This production was one of those rare gems of exception – if you absolutely have to perform Greek tragedy, you should perform it like this.

The environment at Oberon (and the immersive dance-club stage space) sets the tone for interaction. There’s not anywhere to hide from Dionysus’ maenads and you are caught up in the ritual just as much as the one sacrificial audience plant whom Dionysus makes his own in the play’s beginning. Audience members are crowned with ivy and given drums to play as they enter the space and are subsequently invited to participate fully in the ritual they are about to witness.

Because of this, the long chorus speeches become exhilarating. The maenads bop and weave through the audience, menacing and caressing, inviting you to be a part of their world for a time. There is no passive listening (which is the death of long speeches). These interludes, alienating on a tradition stage, thus become a point of access for the audience.

Another thing that this production has working in its favor is the traditional Oberon performance length (ninety minutes). By trimming the wordy Greekness of this down to a palatable length, The Bacchae doesn’t have the opportunity to lose its audience. You’re either caught up in the flow of the action, or you’re drinking at the bar (sometimes both but there is no in between).

The one thing I would have liked to see tweaked slightly is the token use of

Poster for Arlington Shakespeare in the park; yes, apparently there is still a theatre company that uses posters

masks. In this production. As each character is introduced, he enters wearing a “Greek-style”* mask. The mask is removed before each character speaks, done away with, and never seen again. The trouble I have with this convention is its uselessness. If it was meant as a nod at Greek theatrical practice (we do know that in the Greek theatre all characters wore masks), that’s wonderful, but if you’re just going to wear it to do away with it you may as well not wear it and save your costumer the time and expense of acquiring it. I would have liked to see the masks return at the end and create a sort of “framing device” for the piece. Just as Dionysus is introduced wearing his full pan horns which are then dispatched with only to be seen at the play’s very end, the beautiful masks should have made a re-appearance.

As to the non-traditional staging elements demanded by the performance space at Oberon, historically they’re not actually all that non-traditional. We can’t say overmuch for certain about Greek theatre, but we do know that the Greek theatrical space consisted of a stage area (scholars debate about whether this was a raised platform or not) and an orchestra where the chorus performed (again, HUGE debates about the shape and size of the orchestra). The floor plan of Club Oberon is essentially this. There is a stage (which, at Oberon, is a raised platform) and a dance floor in front of it (for the purposes of our Greek analogy, this can serve as an orchestra). Of course, in Greece we have no record of the audience mingling with the chorus (as happens at Oberon), but since I can now check “be kissed by Dionysus” off my bucket list, I can definitely overlook this breach in historical protocol.

The Bacchae is, unfortunately, done. They closed last night (I know, I know, I need to get to things earlier in their run).

HOWEVER!

Here’s a list of things I’m going to be seeing in the near future that HAVEN’T closed. I can’t vouch for their quality yet, of course, but if you want to get some theatre in this summer you have plenty of options:

Caucasian Chalk Circle by Apollinaire Theatre Company – free, in the park. Hitting this tonight.

Richard II and Love’s Labour’s Lost at Shakespeare and Company – making my yearly pilgrimage to Lennox tomorrow which, incidentally, is the last performance of Richard though Love’s Labour’s runs a bit longer.

Much Ado About Nothing presented by Arts Art Hours in Lynne Woods — I have some friends in the cast and I love this show, so I really can’t see it being bad. It’s a strolling production. Outside. That at least should be interesting.

Romeo and Juliet by Arlington Center for the Arts — free, outside Shakespeare; can’t get more pleasant than that. Only one performance though so if you are interested, you should check it out.

Psycho Beach Party by Counter-productions theatre — it’s a contemporary piece but has a really interesting name… and I have a friend who keeps saying I should go. So I’m going.

Cinderella by Boston Opera Collaborative — they say that this piece is being performed “authentically” i.e. true to period style. We’ll see about that… either way, great for comps!

Why Torture is Wrong and the People who Love them by Titanic Theatre Project — sometimes you just need some Christopher Durang to bring levity to a situation.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of all theatre happening in Boston right now, just some things that are on my calendar. Stay cool!!

*I put this in quotation marks because there’s no real way for us to ascertain authentic Greek-style masks; none are extant and the flaws of relying on pottery paintings as historiographical evidence have often been expounded upon by scholars. As such, the masks were certainly what you as a modern playgoer with some idea of Greek theatrical practice, would expect to see… but I can’t really call them “authentic”.

The Love Boat Goes to Verona

Posted on July 10, 2013 by drosvally

This weekend, I had the pleasure of attending opening night of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s production of Two Gentlemen of Verona on Boston common.

After last year’s middling Coriolanus, I didn’t have high hopes for this (…that may also be the comps brain talking since I’m not sure I could work up the energy to have high hopes about anything right now). Especially after reading that the concept was “rat pack”. I just wasn’t sure things would work out; Two Gents is a notoriously difficult play to make read to a modern audience, Shakespeare on the Common is notoriously not the sum of its parts for whatever reason, and Boston weather patterns make outdoor evening theatre a gamble at best.

But somehow, despite all this, the cosmos aligned and it was truly a production worth seeing!

Jenna Augen’s Julia was absolutely adorable (even in the face of a tragic act-one kerfluffle in which Mimi Bilinski, her Lucetta, failed to come onstage at her cue and left poor Augen to live out the actor’s nightmare: scrambling to cover for a co-star while under the pressure of rhymed iambic pentameter). She had some sauce and spice and a decidedly different take on the Act V reversal (which I won’t ruin for you since I want to encourage you to go see the show).

our blanket: a still-life.

Rimo Airaldi’s Speed and Larry Coen’s Launce were a comic duo that actually made sense. They played the jokes to a T and, despite any misgivings I had about an older more august Speed, I was quickly charmed into their clutches.

Rick Park’s Duke of Milan is the best I’ve ever seen. His portrayal of an incensed father in III.i (the scene during which Valentine is outcast) was real enough that I truly believed he would kill Valentine (Andrew Burnap) if given half the chance. And this, my friends, caused dramaturgical magic. Because the threat of death was so real, Burnap was able to launch into the most transcendent rendition of the “what light is light” speech that I have ever heard. I, the notorious curmudgeon, was moved to tears and could only be revivified by the liberal application of the annual CSC signature Ben and Jerry’s sundae (this year’s creation: the Crabbe Bag…. Eat one. You won’t regret it.).

In terms of the concept, it worked a lot better than I expected it to. The outlaws in the woods became Wild West clowns/menaces and Act V devolved into a road-runner style farcical chase complete with door-swinging and dance-hiding. Because of this, the general tone of disingenuousness led to a ready acceptance of the notoriously hard to stage Act V reversal. Well done, CSC. Well done.

I have only two complaints. The first is that there was no fight director or violence coordinator billed in the program while I certainly saw some onstage violence. If you need to understand the importance of this, let me guide you self-promotionally to the following youtube interview with some people who know what they are talking about in this regard.

The second is that in order to serve the concept, the director chose to include a liberal amount of extra-textual music numbers. Julia burst out with “fever”, Launce sang “ain’t that a kick in the head?”, etc. These music numbers, though well executed, slowed the pace of the first act to a crawl. It would have served just as well to include half the number of musical interludes and I think it would have kept the audience more engaged not to be bursting into non-Shakespeare song every ten to fifteen minutes.

As I said, on the whole this was a very good rendition of a hard-to-perform piece. If nothing else, it’s a free evening of entertainment, the common is beautiful this time of year, and you can enjoy your own picnic libations with some good company while waiting for curtain.

Though if you, like me, get the sudden urge to fox trot when any of the rat pack tunes are played by a live jazz band, be prepared to bring some dancing shoes.

It was a Dark and Stormy Morning…

Posted on June 14, 2013 by drosvally

Scene: a rainy Friday morning in Massachusetts.

A residential neighborhood at around 9AM.

We see the front of a house. A stoop, actually. The house is large with a set of stairs leading up to its front door and two mailboxes.

DANIELLE a bleary-eyed PhD student zombie-walks to the front door, opens it, and takes a long unblinking look outside. She stands and stares at the rain for a moment before we hear a voice.

HOUSEMATE: Oh, good morning!

DANIELLE: it takes a moment to register Hi. It’s raining.

HOUSEMATE: Yes, it is. Umbrella? HOUSEMATE offers DANIELLE his umbrella.

DANIELLE: barely coherent I realized I needed milk before I could have coffee, but then I was wondering how hard it was raining, because if it’s raining too hard I have to go to the garage to get my umbrella from the car to take a walk around the corner to get milk… Maybe I’ll just do the walk without an umbrella.

HOUSEMATE: Take my umbrella, go get some caffeine in you. Almost forcibly hands her the umbrella.

DANIELLE: more than a little bewildered thank you!

….I was so out of it this morning that, not only did this happen, but I also committed a cardinal sin against fashion: I left my house in Tufts sweat pants, a Tufts sweat shirt, and imitation Ugg boots. I’m just glad I didn’t actually run into anyone between my house and the store because good god nobody should ever have to look at that.

Still in Medieval Europe, but leaving soon. Had to put down the books today when I realized that if I tried to push through the last 125 pages I was going to give myself another Friday stress migraine which might or might not last the entire weekend.

For no particular reason, here’s a picture I took of the octopus at the National Aquarium while on break from CDC 2013

On Sunday, I’m leaving town for a week to go visit family in Florida. I probably won’t be checking in because, well, if I’m going to take a vacation, I’m taking a bloody vacation.

Have a good week; may you never run out of milk before you’ve had coffee, but if you do may you have someone in your life who cares enough to loan you his umbrella so that you may acquire more before you inadvertently do harm to yourself attempting to make caffeine happen before your brain is fully uploaded.

Afterwards

Posted on April 16, 2013 by drosvally

It’s difficult to know what to say in the wake of tragedy. This kind of thing effects different people in different ways and, not being someone gifted/cursed with a great deal of empathy, it’s double difficult for me to come to any conclusion about something appropriate to relate.

The last lines of Shakespeare’s tragedies are generally attempts by his very human characters to break the impossible tension of the play’s events. Often these words are uttered over a stage strewn with corpses; the trail of ruin that true tragedy leaves in its wake.

Instead of trying to come up with something to say myself, I thought I’d take a moment to survey these lines for you in hopes that they will provide something more profound than any axiom I could utter.

Stay safe, everyone.

“My rage is gone;
And I am struck with sorrow. Take him up.
Help, three o’ the chiefest soldiers; I’ll be one.
Beat thou the drum, that it speak mournfully:
Trail your steel pikes. Though in this city he
Hath widow’d and unchilded many a one,
Which to this hour bewail the injury,
Yet he shall have a noble memory. Assist.” –Aufidius, Coriolanus, 5.6

Aufidius, seeing Coriolanus dead, feels sorrow for his nemesis. His tenderness towards Coriolanus and willingness to honor his mortal enemy in death shows a true humanity to Aufidius; the man, not the soldier, closes this show.

“Let four captains
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have proved most royally: and, for his passage,
The soldiers’ music and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him.
Take up the bodies: such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.” –Fortinbras, Hamlet, 5.2

This one has given me particular cause for ire over the years due to directors purposefully misinterpreting it to mean “take Horatio out back and shoot him”. I’ve already expounded upon why this is a bad idea so I don’t feel the need to hammer it home here.

“The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.” – Albany, King Lear, 5.3

Perhaps the most profound of the end-tags; I’ve always had a special fondness for this one since it can apply to not just a tragedy, but also to many other aspects of life when politics is involved. For example: it was an utterance first delivered me by a professor when we were in conference before a talkback with an important director whose work we had just seen.

“Gratiano, keep the house,
And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor,
For they succeed on you. To you, lord governor,
Remains the censure of this hellish villain;
The time, the place, the torture: O, enforce it!
Myself will straight aboard: and to the state
This heavy act with heavy heart relate.” – Lodovico, Othello, 5.2

Lodovico’s instinct to take charge of the situation and his burden to inform the people of what has transpired is a burden that many leaders will feel during such times of crisis. Having to stay strong for other people makes us strong within ourselves. Lodovico, rather than break down completely, takes it upon himself to be a pillar for the people.

“A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” – Prince, Romeo and Juliet, 5.3

Perhaps one of the most famous last lines, owing perhaps to the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Romeo and Juliet portion of Complete Works of Wllm Shkspr [abrgd]…. Or maybe that’s just how I remember it.

My most profound sympathies go out to the people effected by yesterday’s events. Stay strong, Boston.

An Open Letter to New England

Posted on March 8, 2013 by drosvally

Dear New England,

We seriously need to talk.

Now, I know you have your quirks and I have mine. And I will grant, I am not always the easiest person to live with. But this passive-aggressive behavior has got to stop.

You run so hot and cold these days, I just don’t know what to do to please you. One moment, I’m enjoying a run outside, the next moment I’m bundled in all manner of winter gear and trying to stay dry because you can’t decide whether you want to rain or snow. I will admit that there is a certain beauty to you once you’ve had done with your tantrums; when the snow rests peacefully on the trees and icicles hang sparkling from the eaves. I will also say that in your milder moments, there’s nowhere in the world I would rather be.

a pretty moment I caught on campus yesterday

The colors you wear in your fall wardrobe are unmatched, and your beautiful springtime airs are really all that a girl can ask for.

But then it becomes winter. And your mercurial side simply won’t allow for any reasonable moderate discourse. I’m always walking on thin (or sometimes thick) ice with you. I can’t make any firm plans because I don’t know how you’ll behave on a given day. You make it impossible to go out sometimes because you throw these tantrums that I’ve never seen anything like before in my life.

You know how much I hate shoveling. I’ve complained enough about it that I can’t imagine you would have missed this fact about me. And I will admit that everyone needs to make compromises; if I didn’t agree to some small amount of shoveling, I wouldn’t be able to see you in your autumn splendor. But this promise of something warmer and then yanking it away before my eyes has simply got to stop.

I thought I was done with winter. I thought I was done with the hoisting, the hefting, the cold sweats. I thought I was done with the aching back and the chapped face.

But you couldn’t even give me that.

And, as though to add insult to injury, you decide that on the day my brand new theatre company debuts its brand new production that you know I’ve been working hard on and losing sleep over, you’re going to upstage it by making your own scene. So you huff and you puff and you blow parking regulations down, and we have no recourse but to cancel. This night, this night I’ve been looking forward to, this night I’ve been working so hard for, is now taken away from me. Lost into the swirling white of your raging temper.

I really don’t know what else to say to you. I don’t think that there’s a way you can make this up to me. It’s time for some serious re-evaluation of our relationship, New England. Let me recommend that you start groveling. Right now. I’m sad and disappointed at the moment, but this will quickly dissolve into rage. And really, trust me, you won’t like me when I’m angry.

Regards,

Danielle

In case you couldn’t gather from this: due to a weather-induced parking ban in Winthrop, we’ve had to cancel Twelfth Night for this evening. We will be back tomorrow full-force and hungry, though, so don’t give up on us! Come and support our efforts as we bring you our experiment in communal theatre for the very first time!

Unstuck in Time

Posted on February 19, 2013 by drosvally

The days keep doing this thing where they blend together; one week rolls into another and I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished much of anything. This is particularly funny given how many things are on my desk right now. The main problem is I’m smack dab in the middle of a bunch of big projects and, for whatever reason, the projects I have basically completed feel very distant.

Measure for Measure closes this Saturday, but the bulk of my work on this show happened over the summer. I’m proud to have worked on it, but for whatever reason the show’s run doesn’t feel like anything real or tangible. Insert some comment about the fleeting nature of live theatre here.

Twelfth Night rehearsals continue and we’re starting to really have a show. We did some

at least campus is looking really pretty… if a little soggy due to the great thaw

costume/prop digging last night and have most of our cast clothed (of course, I’m one of the exceptions since my quick-changes partnered with the two drastically different roles I’m playing make me exceedingly difficult to costume… but! I have a vast wardrobe and a gay best friend to help; we’ll work it out). Again, this doesn’t feel really real yet… we’ll see what happens when we start inserting props and costumes into the rehearsal space.

I got a big proposal off my team’s desk for my ASTR sub-committee, but the project’s in a holding pattern until it is approved by the big cheese Executive boards. We are doing a wonderful job of hurrying up to wait. The brief thrill of excitement at having submitted the proposal was quickly quashed by the dawning realization that we had created a lot of work for ourselves, but couldn’t do any of it until we were given the official green light to continue. Work hanging over my head about which I can do nothing is perhaps the worst feeling in the world. Ah well; provided the project is thumbs-upped by all official parties, it should be a very useful thing for the Graduate Student community. Here’s hoping!

I’m working on a lecture for the class I’m TAing. Actually, I’m writing this entry as a method of procrastinating from compiling my research notes. I’m certain that this particular project will become more real-feeling as soon as it is anything more than a pile of disparate word documents. Maybe a PowerPoint will help. PowerPoints always make things more real.

Reading, reading, reading for my coursework. This is a tiresome and thankless job and there’s always more to do. Completing the week’s reading never feels like an accomplishment because there’s just going to be more dumped on your plate right after. Really, finishing your assigned reading for the week just means you should be working harder on your papers, presentations, abstracts, or side projects. Blargh.

board doodle from my ancient theory class. This is what we do in Grad School.

German progresses apace (though I took the weekend off to be with my family who came to town to visit me). As the date of my exam draws loomingly closer (it’s in April, it’s not really all that close), I worry more and more about my own ability to translate anything not written for an eight year old audience. I’m probably ready to step up my practice reading to something a little more convoluted than Grimm’s. The Grimm’s tales are great and they were wonderful to get my feet wet, but I’m reading them pretty solidly now (with the occasional pause for vocabulary check). The test is going to be administered on the level of academic-style writing; not exactly children’s fables. Ah well. Bring on the crazy grammar constructions and crammed-together German words.

Podcasting is a constant joy interspersed with panic at finding the time to do it. The posting has been on hiatus for a few weeks due to my Partner’s real-life exploding all over him. We should be back tomorrow with the wrap-up of Comedy of Errors and then onward next week to one of my favorite plays Love’s Labour’s Lost. In case you haven’t already, go check us out! We make great buddies for your commute!

So despite my busy busy schedule, nothing seems to be landing at the moment. My life may be fast-paced and exciting, but it’s all a bit hollow right now. I’m certain the feeling will pass; really what I want is a couple weeks off and somewhere sunny to go without worry about Renaissance playwrights. Is that an awful lot to ask?

Well, in any case, I did have fun with my family. Here’s some videographic proof.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W8QaCwi56c]

Community Theatre

Posted on February 5, 2013 by drosvally

This weekend, I saw some friends in a community theatre production (both friends’ names and the name of said production will be withheld to protect the innocent).

The show was okay, the venue was darling, my friends are pretty darn talented. As we watched community theatre in action, myself and my compatriots had a few observations about what makes good theatre into great theatre and what can be riveting about something happening onstage. Perhaps more importantly, we had some D.O.A. don’t do’s that I think the world at large could really benefit from understanding and taking into consideration.

The first thing to keep in mind (and this is particularly important when doing community or

Not all theatre can be this…

non-professional theatre) is that every individual should know his strengths and his weaknesses. If a show calls for something (say, a fight scene), that something should be executed to the best of the group’s ability. If there is someone in the group with an expertise (particularly an unexpected expertise), that individual owes it to the group to step up and say something. In return, the group owes it to the individual to respect his expertise. In other words: your fight will look awful if you don’t know how to fight. Or if you think you know how to fight. You have nothing to lose by discussing other ideas or approaches with those around you. No one will disrespect you if someone happens to come along and know a little thing that you don’t. What will make your show weaker is stubbornly clinging to the insistence that you know something. That will, definitively, poison what you have onstage. For this example, fighting safe is the top priority; but if you can fight well then for the non-denominational deity’s sake, fight well. I refuse to sit through another half-hearted, bumbling stage fight… especially when I know that someone in your cast has enough experience to actually make it look decent. Grow up, man up, and admit you don’t know everything.

Second: elegance is refusal. Your show will be cleaner, more professional, and more tolerable if your scene changes are less than ten seconds each. If you have a change that involves anything more involved, for the love of all things holy cut the scene change. Find some creative way to work around it. Chances are it’s costing you more money than it’s worth. Having your already antsy audience sit in darkness for an awkwardly long time is simply not worth the headache it will cause to your stage hands and the polite folks who are sitting through your production.

….Personally, I’m done being polite, but many people don’t have the same cavalier attitude about theatre as I do. I have paid good money to see your show, I expect to be entertained and/or moved, not sit and stew while you bumble around with something far too big and involved to be worth the time to move it. Cut. It.

…but it can be this.

Thing three: don’t expect me to be nice. I’m done being nice. I have to be nice all day all the time with my students, cohorts, and professors. I have to be nice via e-mail to my networking connections. I have to be nice to the random people I encounter at the library and/or coffee shop. As far as I can see it, I spend faaarrrrrr too much of my time being nice. Seeing theatre is something that I count as part of my job, but it’s also something that I do on my own personal time. As such, generally, I don’t feel the urge to censor myself when I’m giving feedback about a show that I was asked to go see. If you want me to see your show (and I understand if you don’t), I’m not going to smile and tell you how great you were if you didn’t earn it. I’m not going to laugh if it’s not funny. I’m not going to clap if it wasn’t worth the applause. I will give you an honest opinion; I will try to cushion the blow if I have something scathing to say and at least make it constructive criticism; I will (generally) refrain from bashing your show on the internet (…unless it really really deserved it… Harvard Revels, I’m looking at you). I will not go out of my way to be an evil jerk, but you get what you earn from me. Just because this is your hobby doesn’t mean I have to hang your macaroni pictures on my refrigerator and praise how them every time I want a beer.

Don’t worry, I expect the same of you when you come to see my show. If it’s not working, TELL ME. I don’t want to be out there doing something that I think is brilliant if it isn’t landing with an audience. I can’t see myself from the stage. You, the audience, are an important part of my experience as a theatre-maker. If you see something in performance that you think could make the performance stronger, of course I want to know about it.

In a creative process, giving and taking feedback is important. In a creative process that’s essentially art for art’s sake, it’s even more important. If the product is going to be a lump of raw talent held together by the spittle of one over-worked and over-egoed director, it simply won’t stick. It takes integrity to make a show into something worth seeing, and integrity comes from the strength of the whole. If you want to make art in your spare time (and it is a noble pursuit… and fulfilling when it works out), learn to be an active member of the community. If you can’t handle that, take up painting or sculpture. Theatre is a communal activity and only a strong community can make a strong show.

Daniprose

academic adventures, theatric theoretics, and sundry snobberies.

Category Archives: Boston