In honor of completing my coursework, I’m taking the week off. That means no work. None. Including blogging. The closest thing I’m getting to work this week is seeing some theatre.
…and watching Smash. Hush.
Time Out
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Category Archives: Theatre
Happy Birthday, Will!
Tuesday was Shakespeare’s “birthday”.
I put “birthday” in quotation marks because, much like most things Shakespeare, we don’t know precisely when the man was born. Early modern birthing and burial practices being what they were, we can hazard a guess. Since April 23 is as good a day as any, it pleases us to tell ourselves that this is the day upon which our Will was born and, as such, we should celebrate him on that day.
To celebrate, I was invited to speak on a panel by New Hampshire’s Seven Stages Shakespeare company. The panel was held in the most adorable little bookshop in Portsmouth (Riverrun books) and consisted of a wide array of experts: Hope Jordan, the first official slam poet master in New Hampshire; John-Michael Albert, Portsmouth’s outgoing poet laureate; myself; and a much more senior Shakespeare scholar, Dr. David Richman. Our conversation was focused on The Phoenix and the Turtle, the role of poetry throughout time and poetry in general, but what it really made me do was remember my roots as a Shakespearean.
I’m certain that by now anyone who follows this has 100% assurance of my devotion to Shakespeare as a lifestyle. This life choice is a debt that I owe to my amazingly brilliant Grandmother who decided that no grandchild of hers would be bad-mouthing the bard and made it her business to forcibly subject me to well-performed pieces until I learned to love them. Since then, I’ve used her method several times on others whom I’ve wanted to instill a similar Shakes-beat into and I’ve actually found that this is the best way to convert the unfaithful. There is, without a doubt, something about Shakespeare that touches us as human beings and, while reading it can be dull and unfulfilling, seeing it performed by anyone who has an ounce of sense and talent is something the human heart can’t forget. We’re beings of music and stardust, metaphor and poetry. We’re beings of emotion: love and anger, jealousy and hate, yearning and hope. It’s all in there; every last bit. Anything you could want or hope to feel as a human is something you will find in the canon, it’s simply a question of knowing where to look.
It would be strange of me to try and explain how Shakespeare has affected my life since I live every moment with the man. Would I have a life without Shakespeare? Well, sure, but it would be a completely different life. He’s managed to creep inside my soul and speak from the darkest places there. But here’s the thing: the more I learn about Will, the more I realize this fascination isn’t one I feel alone. Throughout history many great men and women have felt the same; I’m in the company of Goethe, Jonson, Müller. I’m in conversations with John Quincy Adams, Isaac Asimov, and Neil Gaiman. I’m haunted by Voltaire, Sarah Bernhardt, and John Keats. Shakespeare studies is inclusive; it touches just about every other major course of literary study to some extent, and it’s written all over the history of the theatre. Because of Shakespeare, I have something to talk about with most people in my extended field (both the arts and humanities).
Shakespeare’s the great communicator and the great equalizer. When I need to say something but can’t quite find the right words, I often turn to him for help. When I am feeling something overwhelming, I often remember how his characters dealt with similar feelings (…though generally refrain from enacting their often bloody and complicated solutions; I have enough trouble in my life without running mad, baking people into pies, or crafting over-engineered schemes to manipulate the people around me and then wondering why they don’t work/how they could have possibly worked so well). Shakespeare’s there at my best and my worst and, these days, is often the catalyst for such moments. I rely on him to be a constant source of inspiration; a heartbeat to my work. He’s with me at every conference and he’s coached me through the end of every semester. When I feel like giving up, he alternates glowering at me and encouraging me. He keeps me motivated and excited. He calls me back when I’ve wandered too far astray, and he tells me to play the field when I’m being too clingy.
Shakespeare, right now, is my life. And I am so grateful to have the opportunities which allow this.
Here’s a few snippets of the panel. Watch, enjoy, and bid a big happy birthday to my man Will. Also, if you were interested in how some other internet denizens have chosen to celebrate Shakespeare-day, you should check out the e-card that the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust put together with folks around the world (myself included) available here.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_9SeokUWNU]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JOw1Rd4sW0]
An Open Letter to New England
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
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.
Back in the Saddle
Today, after much grumbling, grousing, self-bribery, and stalling, I finally climbed back in the research saddle.
Okay, “finally” may be a bit overblown (I’ve only been gone for a week), but I could feel the projects piling up and the stress of amorphous far-off deadlines was really starting to get to me. I knew that it was (honestly) past time to get back to my journey on the road of completing coursework, but I just couldn’t seem to find the motivation. Twelfth Night and some particularly stressful situations in my personal life have been taking a lot out of me and it’s not even the end of the day these days before I’m tired. I’ve been waking up from full nine-hour nights of sleep tired. I’ve been going about my days just trying to eke enough time out of my schedule to get the things I absolutely need to do done. Far-off projects got back-burnered in favor of imminently approaching deadlines.
Well, the nearby beasts slain, it was definitely time to start on those quickly approaching things.
As usual, I started with a list. Nothing helps me more than my giant whiteboard. I know
The whiteboard after today’s re-eval.
I’ve expounded upon its merits before. It’s extremely useful to me to know exactly what I have on my plate and exactly when all that is due. Making lists helps me to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. Often, I make several lists: things that are long-run stuff, things that I need to do on a given day, things I need to do in a given week, things I need to do before I can take the day/weekend off, etc. I find that the very action of writing this down helps to calm me when I begin to feel overwhelmed. The above-the-desk hovering keeps me focused, on task, and reminded of where I’m going at all times.
Once I had that, it became easier to prioritize tasks. I have a general map in my head of these projects and what it’s going to take to blow them out of the water. I don’t tend to micro-manage myself (at least on paper) if I can possibly avoid it (some days I can’t). I know what each of these things are going to demand of me, and I know how to break those down into smaller bite-sized chunks.
Having a mega-list means that, so long as I go down the list each day and ensure that I’ve done something towards accomplishing each bigger task, I can finish the day and be done with it. There will always be more work to do; I will never be absolutely finished. I sleep easier at night (and, perhaps more importantly, find it easier to take some much-needed time to unwind at the end of the day) when I know I’m on track for my big projects. I find it easier to relax when I know I’ve done a certain quota of work.
It’s great for self-motivating. I write my deadlines in a scary color (often red) so that I know they’re hard deadlines and that I HAVE to meet them. I thank every teacher who ever red-penned work of mine for instilling the “red is important” feeling in me; I use it to my great advantage these days.
I did my daily grind work (caught up on my reading, took a gym trip, checked in on all my syllabi to make sure I wasn’t missing anything), and then I took the afternoon to start rolling. I’m a born researcher; I’m good at it, I like doing it, and it is the kind of task that self-fulfills and self-motivates. Doing research just makes me want to do more research. There will always be more questions, more things to find out. All I had to do was push the snowball over the hill and stand back.
So I did. I made a list of books I need to grab from the library. I looked up some articles. I reviewed my notes on the topic I’ll be teaching to the undergrads in a little under a month and reconnected with the material. I put some thought into my conference presentation. I returned to my German translation.
A Broad, her Bud, and the Bard; leggo me, PiC, and Will who now sit on my desk (…picture included because I’ve spent too much time at my desk today)
Sometimes, ritual is important. In academia, it’s very easy to float through life not really having any sense of what day of the week it is or any rhythm to your work because your schedule changes so dramatically so quickly. These tasks that I had been putting off were things that provide normalcy and stability to my wild, gypsy life. Doing them re-centered me and re-focused me.
And I feel a lot better now. A lot more in control of my semester, a lot more on top of my work, and a lot more ready to face the coming months.
I’m not going to say “bring it, coursework”. I’m not going to say “I own you, academy”. Hell, I’m not even going to say “YEA! I AM AWESOME!” until I’ve had another couple days like this, but things have definitely taken a turn for the better. Here’s hoping that I can stay in the saddle and wrangle this bronco on home. You know. Before the summer hits and I have to hide away underground and study non-stop for my comps.
Scene-Swapping
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).
Unstuck in Time
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]
Measure still for Measure
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.
Malaise
At the moment, my life is pretty much the picture of what I would generally describe as being “my ideal life”.
I’m involved in two productions: Twelfth Night (my group’s pilot experiment in communal theatre) is in rehearsal and I’m getting to do some awesome, wacky, fun things with some really neat, smart, talented individuals while simultaneously dreaming about a bright future on the Boston theatre scene; and Measure for Measure (my debut as a dramaturge which, for those who are keeping track, I’ve been working on actively since last June) is in its last week of rehearsal before it opens next Thursday. I’m TAing one class
Rehearsal the other day; we have a show! From a script that I made! From Shakespeare!
(Modern and Postmodern theatre) with a professor from whom I’m endlessly learning things and with whom it’s a pleasure to work. I’m in a class that’s got me constantly thinking, constantly on my toes, and constantly studying for comps. I’m keeping up on my awesome side-projects (Offensive Shadows has just started recording our episodes on Love’s Labour’s Lost which is a joy to discuss as it’s one of my favorite plays). I’m living, eating, breathing, bleeding, and sweating theatre.
I guess call me a classic case of “grass is always greener” syndrome, but I’m so tired right now that I’m having trouble enjoying any of it. I haven’t had a decent break in who knows how long and every time I do manage to eke out a few hours away from my desk that time seems to fill with unexpected trips to the theatre (which, don’t get me wrong, I love but aren’t much of a break for me). What’s really got me shaken is the fact that’s is very early in the semester to be feeling this way; all of my big projects are on the distant horizon (with the exception of one lecture that I’m working on prepping; the first of two for my TAship this semester). If I’m working like this before my projects hit the hot zone, where am I going to find time for my projects when I actually need to work on them?
I’m not the only one feeling like this either. From speaking with some of my cohort, it seems that a general malaise has overcome Dance and Drama at Tufts. I guess I could blame it on February; the long (but surprisingly so-far easy) Boston winter; or maybe the Genocide course that most of my colleagues are taking (nothing will make you feel awful about life quite like being bombarded with consistent reading about genocide).
out my window. Nemo does not look awful. Yet.
To hammer home the point that all I do is work and there is life outside my apartment, I am currently hunkered down in my office while outside begins the great blizzard Nemo which some stations are predicting will be one of the worst in Boston’s history. Most normal people I know have been given today off or have a half-day and this extends into tomorrow thus effectively creating a three-day-weekend for the gainfully employed. I, however, took this opportunity to stock up on library books and non-technology research (in case we lose power) and plan to spend the next few days holed up on my sofa working. With any luck, I may be able to plow through a bunch of my to-dos while the rest of the Northeast goes sledding.
…The one concession I will make to snow is the potential creation of a snow-tomaton in my near future. Because making a snowman out of the accumulation from my driveway is way easier and more enjoyable than shoveling it out.
Here’s hoping accomplishment can bust through my malaise. If not, I at least hope you have a good weekend. Stay warm and dry!
Community Theatre
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.
