The Summer of Love

Posted on July 30, 2013 by drosvally

Thanks to Joss Wheedon, it’s been a Much Ado summer. Without any intention of collecting an exclusive list of Much Ados in the New England area, I’ve personally seen four productions so far (two full productions, the film, and one staged reading). Since I don’t have any more on the docket (unless something unexpected pops up, which it might), I thought I might take a moment to make some general observations about the play from my privileged Much Ado-steeped dramaturgical brain while the shows were fresh in my mind. I suppose this could also serve as a basic primer for theatre makers looking to create a production of Much Ado and not looking to hire a dramaturge (big mistake, but the benefits of having someone around to serve that role are fodder for another post).

1) The most hard and fast rule about producing Much Ado About Nothing is that your Beatrice and Benedick ABSOLUTELY have to work. They essentially carry the production and without them, you’re sunk. I’ve seen some tolerably good performances this summer, but none that were well matched (one show had a strong Beatrice and a weak Benedick, another show vice versa, etc.). These actors need to be charming and deep. The audience needs to love them despite their quirks. They need to be experts with the language. They need to have chemistry with each other. Lining up these factors is nearly as difficult as convincing the stars to align (especially in the world of amateur theatre where your talent pool is your talent pool and there’s not much you can do about it), but vital to the health of your production. Trust me, this will make or break your show.

2) The part of Hero is perhaps the most difficult part in the show to play (Claudio and Dogberry make close seconds). Honestly, one of the strongest performances of Hero I’ve ever seen was performed by a dressmaker’s dummy passed around to various cast members when Hero herself needed to be. There’s a danger of making Hero too ingénue. She absolutely has to be sweet and pretty and obedient, but she has some fire in her that, if allowed to come out, will add dimension to your production. Think about the gulling of Beatrice; Hero is both smart and saucy (she demonstrates this as well in the ball scene when she sasses the masked Prince). A further point of caution: if her part is cut too severely, she comes off as nothing but an airy fairy sugar-spun object. Careful with this one.

3) Dogberry is extremely difficult to make read to a modern audience. If he’s played too smart, he doesn’t make sense. If he’s played with too much status, he doesn’t make sense. If he’s played by someone who does not have an absolutely command of the language, he doesn’t make sense. Dogberry and the watch need to come off as well-meaning, sweet, regular guys whose logic sometimes doesn’t match our earth logic. The most important thing to remember is that Dogberry is striving, with every fiber of his being, to have status he just doesn’t know how to make it work. He’s trying, by virtue of “being is becoming”, to make himself into a real leader and a true soldier… he just can’t quite get there.

4) The third-act wedding scene needs to be a punch in the gut bordering

some really cool shots of books I took this summer because I don’t have anything else to put here

on melodrama. This scene changes the entire tide of the production. Suddenly we go from a rollicking comedy to something which (if ended prematurely) could more resemble a classic tragedy. You really need to set this change of pace up for an audience and draw them into the mood. Claudio really needs to manhandle Hero. Hero really needs to have a reason to faint and look dead. Beatrice really needs to have a reason to be weeping into the next scene. These are strong, dynamic characters capable of extreme emotional manipulation and extreme emotional reaction; if this is not expressed, your production suddenly no longer has purpose. The entire second half doesn’t have a reason to exist, and (most importantly), my favorite scene in the canon falls flat. If there’s no real given reason for Beatrice’s famous utterance, the audience just won’t buy it.

5) Speaking of duels, if you choose to modernize your production make sure the gender and status dynamics still make sense. See my previous post on this point.

6) Another note about status: the Prince needs to have an easy sort of control over every situation he’s placed in. Though a guest in Leonato’s house (and in act four certainly emotionally indebted to Leonato), he is still the Prince. Despite anything which may be happening (including, as he believes, the death of Leonato’s daughter which is at least in part his fault), he must maintain that status. This is particularly important because modern American audiences do not understand status. If you work hard through the course of your production to create status, any chink will make the entire illusion crumble. Don’t give the audience a reason not to buy into your world.

7) For god’s sake can someone please come up with a creative solution to Don John? I have yet to see anyone in the role who doesn’t make me think of Keanu (though granted, Sean Maher’s performance came close to banishing this image – he was pretty sexy). Textually, he’s a problem. He’s obviously brooding and quiet, angry with his brother and ready to revel in any misfortune that he can cause because of this. But is there any way to make this into a villain that we love to hate? I’m so sick of stoic-faced Princes who turn into whining, petulant grumps in the presence of their henchmen only to plot a revenge which they obviously take no joy in. Someone, please, fix this and invite me to your show so I can stop wondering if anyone will get the Prince a surfboard.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of things I see, just bits which tackle some of the play’s bigger issues. If you’re planning a production and are looking for a dramaturge, I highly encourage you to contact me. I always love to participate in crafting good Shakespeare and this play has a special place in my heart.

And now, back to the comps grind.

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.

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.

Much Ado about Joss

Posted on July 6, 2013 by drosvally

So I finally got around to seeing Joss’ Much Ado last night.

I had some deep hesitations about it after having seen some clips of Joss talking about the script. I am a HUGE devotee to Wheedon’s work and I adore most of his actors, but wasn’t sure that A) he had an understanding of the text deep enough to serve this project (this concern was primarily founded on his remark about the only way to explain the characters’ actions through the tale is via rampant drinking); B) Much Ado could really be slotted in to the short time-span famously available to this project; and C) Amy Acker had the chops to play Beatrice.

On the whole, I was right.

The film began slow and dark and there’s no reason Much Ado should be that

A shot I got of a friend’s Italian mask. It just seemed to fit here.

way – the show, like all Shakespeare (especially the comedies) is fast-paced and driving. Especially when cuts are made (and Joss made some cuts, most of them graceful but a few of them clunky), things should progress at a good clip with a lot of energy. The actors didn’t seem to find that energy or comfort level with their characters until the gulling scenes deep in Act II/at the beginning of Act III. For that, the gulling of Benedick is one of the best I’ve ever seen onstage or screen and that really served as a springboard off which the movie flew. The second half was markedly better and the actors seemed much more at ease with the text, the project, and each other.

Amy Acker was a lackluster Beatrice who seemed more fragile than feisty and more brooding than “born to speak all mirth”. Alexis Denisof as Benedick had his moments of brilliance, which generally served to eclipse the moments during which he was far too low-energy and ominous. Sean Maher was a brilliant Don John (it’s not his fault that I can’t hear anyone say the words “I thank you… I am of few words, but I thank you” without thinking it in Keanu’s voice).

Nathan Fillion’s Dogberry was problematic. Things seemed to fall in for him during Act V, but until then his performance lacked a certain crucial justification. Dogberry is a difficult character to play; much like Elbow from Measure for Measure this character type (the “learned” constable who’s actually a common man clown but tries so hard to be of good breeding that his speech comes out word salad) is one that doesn’t resonate horribly well with modern audiences. There needs to be a reason for Dogberry’s confusion. He’s not stupid, his logic just doesn’t match our earth logic. The most successful Dogberry I’ve ever seen played the character as someone who had maybe been hit on the head one too many times or dropped in several instances as an infant. This issue, may I point out, is one that a good dramaturge can really help with. This kind of textual diagnosis takes experience to suss out and someone who is already intimate with the text can save you weeks of rehearsal discovery time by giving you the parameters Shakespeare himself set. Especially in an environment like the one which produced Wheedon’s film, the dramaturge can be an invaluable resource to the project.

Unfortunately, I’m beginning to think that Hero is an unplayable character. This is nothing against the Heroes I’ve seen recently (most of which have had some talent and understanding of the text), but the best Hero I ever saw was actually played by a dress-maker’s dummy. No joke. She’s so silent most of the time and, essentially, an object to the men around her. Playing the part with enough pizazz to make her likeable (especially when most of her already few lines are cut, as in Wheedon’s film) requires some spark that I just haven’t seen yet. Unfortunately, the audience liking Hero is central to us buying in to the main plot arc. For the most part, we like Hero because Beatrice likes Hero rather than Hero being a likeable character. Which is not to say we dislike Hero, just that she’s more sweet and plain than a nilla wafer.

So I didn’t dislike Joss’ film, it just won’t go into my books as the PARAMOUR OF MUCH ADOs. On the whole, I see it as a fine case study in reasons to hire a dramaturge and what happens when a project is rushed. I think Wheedon fans will enjoy it, and Shakespeareans will find it a good excuse to sit in an air-conditioned theatre on a disgusting summer day.

Breaching the Breech

Posted on June 7, 2013 by drosvally

Earlier this week, I was able to attend a reading of Much Ado About Nothing presented by the Hub theatre company at Boston’s own Trident booksellers.

I’ve come to be wary of staged readings of Shakespeare. By and large, I think that this forum works better for the tragedies (the comedies often rely upon too much physical humor/movement to make land in a staged reading, and the histories are already confusing enough without mixing in the complications of double-casting and no costumes). For that, this was an enjoyable and low-key evening of theatre.

One thing that really got me thinking was the casting of a lady Leonato. I’ve seen this trend developing lately (Actor’s Shakespeare Project cast a lady Duke of Milan in their Two Gents earlier this year). We’ve seen in recent years (and I will blame this majorly on Julie Taymor) many female Prosperos, but to see this trend of making Shakespeare’s august noble characters in positions of power who are volleying politics by marrying off their daughters turned into women begs some complications that have to be re-examined.

Let me start off by saying that this has nothing to do with the quality of the acting. So far, every august Lady I’ve seen in these roles has been fantastic. But there are a few innate gender issues that you simply can’t escape when you have a woman playing a man’s role in this way.

I will limit my discussion here to Leonato because expanding it would get us into too-long-to-blog territory.

Even when we modernize Much Ado, was have to deal with a few dramaturgical truths. Any “modernized” production of Shakespeare still needs to face the text because, well, you can’t ignore it. If you ignore the text, why are you doing Shakespeare?

Dramaturgical truth the first: We’re in a world that has defined gender relationships. This is made true by Beatrice’s show-stopping speech in Act Four. She laments that she is powerless in her situation due to her gender. As such, even if we drag the show into

In case you’re not sick of these shots yet; Rosalind and Touchstone from As You Like It… TALK about gender issues

“modern” or semi-modern times, we must still be in a universe with distinct gender boundaries.

Dramaturgical truth the second: We’re in a world where marrying someone is a play for political power. We know this because of Leonato coaching Hero before the dance (“Daughter, remember what I told you: if the prince do solicit you in that kind, you know your answer”). For that matter, we’re in a world with a very defined social hierarchy dealing with characters who have title and standing (A Prince, the Count Claudio, etc.). Leonato is a part of this world; as a wealthy landowner he can host the Prince and his entourage and even seems to have some standing amongst them. However, he is not blind to the opportunities which may present themselves while the Prince is a guest in his household. Marrying his daughter to the Prince would do wonders for Leonato’s social standing and, while he’s not a cut-throat social climber like (for instance) Lord Capulet, he does have an awareness of society around him.

Dramaturgical truth the third: Gender relations and transgresses upon them make up a large portion of this play’s plot. While we are dealing with wedding and wooing, the play’s major conflict also consists of Hero’s supposed trespass against her duties as a good daughter. It is a very different scene when she and Beatrice are the only women onstage attacked and defended by the men around them than it is if Leonato becomes Leonata. In the first case, we clearly see the gender divide that Beatrice laments in the scene to follow. In the second, we wonder why it is that Beatrice can’t fight the gender roles just as Leonata did and assert her own authority. In this way, giving Leonato a sex change very clearly negates Shakespeare’s text. It gives us a world that no longer makes sense, a world that fights the text itself. Unless a director can find some way to extratextually justify Beatrice’s speech, an audience is left wondering what the big deal is. And, honestly, any play which needs to make extratextual additions or clarifications is edging into shooting Horatio territory.

Dramaturgical truth the fourth: By making Leonato a woman, we are left with a few historical heritage questions. Though it’s true that a woman who had become a widower would have been allowed to keep her husband’s estate and have some power over running it, pretty much any man who came along could have found some way to run rampant over her power there and disenfranchise her. In Much Ado, we have several examples of power hungry men who have everything to gain from Leonata’s estate (the most ready example is Don John the Bastard who could just as easily have ruined everyone’s plans by semi-force-wedding Leonata as he did with his elaborate bed-trick scheme… also: the wedding would have been more permanent). By making Leonato a woman, it leaves unnecessary loose ends. Does Leonata end up with Don Pedro at the end (it’s the easiest solution to Benedick’s closing suggestion of “get thee a wife”)? This director made that particular choice, but that particular choice has its own complications. What does that mean to the government of Messina? What does that mean to Leonato’s estate? Has Claudio then, thereby, inadvertently become much more than he deserves by wedding Hero? Does this mean that Don John is going to now target Leonato’s line in the obviously ensuing war since Leonato, Hero, and Claudio now stand between himself and his brother’s kingdom?

I think, at this juncture, I’ve sufficiently proven my point. Cross-gendered casting is not something to be taken lightly (even if you have an awesome cast!). In the event that you would like to proceed with something like this, make sure you also have an awesome dramaturge to help you think through these issues before you give some poor theatre scholar a headache. If you don’t have an awesome dramaturge, I happen to know one (hint: it’s me).

This is only the first in a series of readings that Hub is putting on this summer at Trident. They’re calling the series Beer+bard and despite my over-thinky nit-picks, I do highly recommend that you check them out. The next is going to be Henry IV i on June 17th at 7PM; come hungry for food and Shakespeare!

Finals und kein Ende

Posted on April 22, 2013 by drosvally

This morning: I had a conversation with Hamlet on twitter about Goethe while reading snippets from Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre about a character performing Hamlet.

This sprang from my new favorite quote from Goethe “Away with your fat Hamlets!”

…what I was really doing was preparing a handout for an in-class presentation/facilitation/thingie I have to give on Thursday (one of the two big semester projects still on my docket).

Over the course of preparing this handout, I also discovered that the snippets of Macbeth I had chosen as an object lesson in early German Shakespeare translations for my class were perhaps not entirely what I had previously thought. When one of my sources discussed the Schlegel translation of Macbeth pretty heavily, I assumed this may be a good example of how the Germans during this time period weren’t quite getting the language as we English-speakers expect to receive it. I pulled a snippet from Macbeth’s “whence is this knocking?” speech from the 1764 Wieland translation, then same from what I thought was part of the 1801 Schlegel translation (highly regarded as the best rendition of Shakespeare into German from the time). I re-translated them to English as best I can (because, despite any pretentions to the contrary, graduate students don’t actually know everything), and set them prominently on my handout.

…only to find out that the textual history of the Schlegel is WAY more complicated than I

Finals has done this to me. That’s Will riding a horse my grandfather carved while waiting to be sent home during WWII

had thought (hey, at least I discovered this BEFORE my presentation on Thursday). Not to bore you with details, but it’s actually a rather cool thing since Schlegel winds up collaborating with Tieck but despite this his translation of the complete works remains unfinished until Tieck’s daughter takes it up. So apparently what I have is a kind of proto-feminist text that my inner English geek could analyze up the wazoo but, since I’m in a theatre department, should probably refrain from doing so.

Anyway, once this is done then I have a paper to write (that I’m nowhere near as prepared for as usual but thankfully have more time than I thought I would have so… it may just balance in the end). Then, on May eighth, I turn in that last stack of pages, breathe a sigh of relief, and take a few days to a week off before I start studying for my comps like a mad person.

And at some point in the near future, it’s going to hit me that to complete this semester’s projects I had to do research in a language that I didn’t know a single word of before last June and, moreover, I’ve been routinely walking around with a bagful of books in three different languages (none of the pig Latin)… Not to brag, but you’ve got to admit that that’s pretty cool.

On that note, I think I’ll put down the Goethe and turn to Molière for a bit. Because apparently I like pain.

Gird yourselves. Finals are here.

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!

Welcome to Hell

Posted on March 4, 2013 by drosvally

Tech week seems to have one of two effects on me:

The desire to run aimlessly around the house waving my arms over my head in sheer terror because everything is wrong and nothing will ever be right again and good god why do I do this to myself?

Or the desire to drop everything and do nothing but be at the theatre all day because things are going so well and the show is going to be so awesome and I can’t wait for it to go up so I can show people how awesome it is.

Sometimes these things interchange and I bounce from one extreme to the other.

Either way, tech week is not good for my work habits, it’s not good for my diet, it’s not good for my gym habits, and on the whole it’s not really healthy for me as a human being.

Luckily, the process of making theatre is healthy for human beings. And specifically the

Unrelated: found this at the library today. Proof that even I can make it in academia.

process of making Shakespeare really helps to feed what I do when I’m not physically in the theatre. As I’ve mentioned, this process has been bumpy; but we’re making something new. Forging a new model is always more complicated than falling into the ruts of an old one. The growing pains of what we’re doing can be forgiven because I really do think that the end product is going to be worth it.

Twelfth Night is different from anything else I’ve worked on. I’ve talked about the community-oriented formation of this project, but it’s also not an ends to itself. It’s a process. In building the only true repertory company in New England, we’re hoping to keep our shows in rep for many years to come. This performance isn’t a once and done kind of thing; it’s a springboard. It’s the start of something that we’re making together and, as such, it’s much less stressful than a typical show in some ways. I don’t feel the pressure to get it right once and for all because I know I’m going to be living with the show for a while. On the flip side, I don’t feel like the problems that this show has are things that we can just gloss over. If there’s an issue, we really need to solve it because it’s just going to hang Damocles-style over our heads ad infinitum.

We don’t have much to “tech” in the show because we have no scenery, no lighting cues, and no sound cues. The things we do need to run are the insane number of quick-changes (I pretty much spend the entire play getting into or out of some outfit or another), the shuttling of props/costumes from an exit to an entrance on time, the manipulation of bodies in the space backstage, and general timing/human things. Again, in one sense it’s a lot easier. It’s all us. If there’s a problem, it’s on us to solve and not a light board or a switch. In another sense, it’s harder to solve these kinds of issues. There’s only so fast anyone can move; quick-changes have an upper limit of time compression.

I suppose the ultimate conclusion is that nothing is perfect, the grass is always always greener, and hell week is hell (despite being fun when things are going well).

…it should be noted that the bizarre array of props that I need to pile and bring to rehearsal for this show is interesting enough to list: 1 ukulele, 2 fencing foils, 2 long red ribbons, double stick tape, 1 pair yellow stockings, 1 hair clip (easily put on/taken off), pouches and pouches of fake money, 1 black beret (I play one character that kind of looks like Che Guevara), 1 pair mary-jane chunky heels, nylons, a ring, several jewels given as gifts, maracas, a tambourine, spoons, 1 black Spanish fan, sewing kit, breathe mints (just general good courtesy when you’re up in each others’ faces), letters, sealing wax… there are a lot of hand props in this show. Lots of gifts. May be the subject for a paper at some point when it’s not hell week.

Welcome to hell. Come see my show on Friday.

Scene-Swapping

Posted on February 26, 2013 by drosvally

For reasons that may or may not have anything to do with a certain production of Twelfth Night which I’m currently working on (you should come see it, by the way), I’ve been putting a lot of thought into the re-ordering of scenes in contemporary performance of Shakespeare’s work.

Specifically in the performance of Twelfth Night, the first and second scenes of the first act are often inverted in performance. For whatever reason (and these reasons differ with theatre companies/directors), theatre-makers feel that it’s sometimes appropriate to re-organize these two scenes.

The opening scene of Twelfth Night as it appears in modern editions depicts the Count

Rehearsal: a still life

Orsino at his court in Illyria lounging melancholic across the stage as he orders music played for him and pines for the love of the Countess Olivia (the first lines of this scene is the resounding “If music be the food of love, play on…”). The second scene shows us Viola crawling onto shore after her shipwreck and asking “What country, friends, is this?”.

The opening lines of Shakespeare plays always tell you something about the play. In the case of Twelfth Night, the show is steeped in music. Twelfth Night is a show which examines the effects of music on human beings and Orsino’s court is a place where music is constantly straining in and out in the background, filling the edges of the senses. Orsino calls music “the food of love” and does, in fact, seem to feed off of it for the entirety of the show. When the music stops, Orsino is awakened to the harsh realities of life outside his court. His veil of melancholy and self-delusion is lifted, and he finally sees things for what they are.

Orsino speaks the opening and closing lines of the show (…with the exception of Feste’s song which I would argue does not fall into the category of “speech” so we cannot classify it as the “last lines”). It’s not often that Shakespeare bookends his shows this way and thus we should take special note of the move in Twelfth Night. Orsino at the beginning is very different from Orsino at the end; everything and nothing has changed. This is highlighted by his words and the impetus to speak them and through this the audience is forcibly confronted by the journey which Orsino has taken through the course of the show.

By having the first scene occur in a world and a story already in progress, Shakespeare establishes and highlights that world. We are shown Illyria and how wacky it can be before the play’s outsider (Viola) enters that world. It establishes something before fully explaining it; allows the audience to encounter an oddity before the oddity is laid before them in its full detail and glory. In a way, it shocks an audience into paying attention. It’s a lot easier for a modern audience to glaze over the lengthy descriptions which populate I.ii than it is for them to ignore the pining Count in I.i.

More rehearsing

Perhaps most importantly, bending a script to one’s will is the cheater’s way out of solving an acting problem. If you, as a director/company don’t think that you can deal with the script Shakespeare wrote, then don’t perform Shakespeare. When an actor encounters a problem, he doesn’t simply change the line to fix that problem; he gets creative. Shakespeare’s text should be treated with the same integrity. Now granted, I do think that there is a certain amount of cutting that goes into any healthy modern production of Shakespeare’s text. I’m also not completely averse to changing small words for the sake of clarity (just make sure you check it with your dramaturg first). I have even enjoyed productions that played fast a loose with the text; but this sort of thing takes a great deal of care and experience. As a general rule, don’t re-arrange Shakespeare. Just don’t do it. It’s sloppy, tasteless, and gives purists like me a headache.

In the interest of full disclosure, the group decided to swap I.i and I.ii in our production (on a day when I wasn’t there to dissent). I have made the full extent of my discontent with the decision known and have no plans to censor my opinion about this issue. Despite this lapse in judgment, the production is a solid one with a lot of fun and energy and I highly recommend you come see it (if for no other reason than now you can snob out the egregious violation of textual integrity innate in the aesthetic choice of scene-swapping).

Measure still for Measure

Posted on February 16, 2013 by drosvally

For those who have been following the saga, Measure for Measure opened on Thursday. At this point, it’s nearly halfway through a two-week run. I was there to see the show opening night and, let me tell you, that was an interesting feeling.

I’ve been living with this project since last April when I sent an introductory e-mail to the director. Over the course of June/July, we spent a great amount of time cutting the script and crafting an acting edition (the first time I’ve ever had the chance to do this). Her goal was for the show to run two hours.

It ran two hours on the dot with a fifteen-minute intermission.

Getting prepped for final dress; you can see that I was eagerly telling such to my twitter feed

Since June/July, my level of involvement has ebbed and flowed. I team-taught a text workshop to the cast (along with my colleague who was ADing the show) to get them acquainted with the language. I called it the “quick and dirty method to opening up Shakespeare for actors who have never studied him before”. Who says brevity is the soul of wit?

For the most part, it worked. The product was definitely not conservatory-level, and there are notes I still would have given, but art is art and art is never finished nor is it ever completely satisfying to the true artist. On the whole, it was a show which I enjoyed (and that’s saying something; anyone who follows this blog can attest to how harsh a critic I can be), a show which I was proud to present to my cohorts, and a show which I had the opportunity to see grow from a seed of an idea to a fully-mounted production. That is a process which is always satisfying.

Over the course of working on Measure, I would occasionally get e-mails asking not-so-random (but sometimes seemingly so) questions. Do Catholic churches ring out the time? How long does it take to become a nun? What does this word/sentence/phrase mean? Some of these questions are things I could have predicted (seriously, “Prenzie”?), some of them I never would have imagined. But that’s part of what was so exciting about this; in working closely with the text and the director, I had the opportunity to come to new understandings about a show I (honestly) hadn’t put overmuch thought into before.

One of the tasks which I enjoyed the most was crafting a timeline of the action. When does this scene happen? How much time passes between Act I and Act V? (…the answer, for those who are curious, is somewhere between six days and three weeks depending on how much time passes between when Angelo takes office and when Claudio is arrested. After I.ii, the rest of the play’s events occur over the course of five distinct days). It was gratifying to be able to sift and sort the text and make some sense of it in a useful, tangible way. This, ideally, is what my job would always be like; someone has a question which needs answering, they ask that question of me, I go through what I know best and find an answer. Alas, if only everything were so simple!

My partner in crime, who was able to attend opening with me, told me he saw my fingerprints on the show. That, if nothing else, is perhaps the most gratifying part of my job. I also received a lovely e-mail from our department chair complimenting my work on the essays in the show’s program (double wonderful since those essays gave me such a headache when I was working on them).

Opening night. Yes, I know, the set looks basically the same from final dress. Sorry for the redundancy!

So, I declare my first official project as a dramaturg to be a success. I thoroughly enjoyed the process (even if sometimes it kept me up at night… literally. I was up until 2AM the night before opening sending out notes to actors) and will gladly do it again.

…maybe after a little break though. Twelfth Night is relatively time consuming and I do need to catch up on the desk-piles again. I really wish my papers would start writing themselves.

Daniprose

academic adventures, theatric theoretics, and sundry snobberies.

Category Archives: Plays