Tag Archives: shakespeare

Hey, Ho, the Wind and the Rain

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The storm rages outside and I have yet to give my dramatic rendition of Lear’s Storm speech so… watch this and forgive me… (I couldn’t do it the justice that Sir Ian does it anyway).

I did, however, get to bring my own storm to light yesterday. In an effort to send the cast of Measure for Measure off to the ball in style, myself and the assistant director ran a three-hour text workshop designed to give the actors some tools in their arsenal with which to tackle Shakespeare’s text.

The cast is rather large since the director really wants to capture the feel of a bustling metropolis. This is both extremely exciting and slightly daunting; with that many bodies the text workshop was going to be whatever the cast made of it. That much energy buzzing around could bolster itself or tear itself down depending upon the level of focus in the room. Luckily, the actors were receptive, came willing to learn, and (most importantly) willing to play.

We began with some standard warm-ups (stretching, vocalization, etc.) and proceeded

Sometimes actor training looks like this; Royal Shakespeare Company; Summer 2006

into an exercise designed to help them simultaneously embody the text and give/take energy. They each picked a line at random out of an envelop of pre-prepared lines, and we divided them into two circles of eleven. From there, we had them pass a ball around their circle while saying their line. We got to play with tempo, volume, targeting, and work on the beginnings of ensemble-building. I find that this exercise presents a graphic stimulus for energy exchange and demonstrates to a group of actors what it means to match energy and help your scene partner onstage. If you throw the ball too hard, your partner has trouble catching it. Too soft, and it will fall short. You need to be ready to grab and go, and listening to what’s going on so that you know when you need to go.

This point made, we moved on to a head/guts/groin exercise where the students practiced delivering their lines with different intentions to different targets on a partner. The three primary targets are the head (an appeal to the intellect), the guts (an appeal to the emotions), and groin (an appeal to the primal animal portion of ourselves). We had them do this at varying distances; from close enough to touch to across a broad expanse of the room. This exercise teaches focus and helps a young actor get used to the notion that no line should ever be delivered to dead air or left wandering into the vast nothingness of the theatre. Every single bit of text needs a very specific target and intention; whether that target is onstage or off.

Next, we talked about some mechanical things. Scansion, meter, rhyme, verse structure, poetry v. prose, etc. This was perhaps the most difficult portion to teach as it requires the most lecturing and, in a room where the energy is already buzzing from being up and about for so long, it’s hard to focus down on something so academic (even for a brief time). The actors were champs though and really bit into this section, asked some good questions, and worked with me to ensure that they understood what I was preaching.

Lastly, we turned to some speeches we had asked them to pre-prepare (not memorize, just be familiar with and have on hand). Here, they were able to take what we had discussed and discovered and apply it in a setting where they could take risks, ask questions, and try things without being set in any one choice since the speeches were sample text and not necessarily text which belonged to their characters. Everyone got a chance to play and seeing what they turned up (and what they understood from each other) helped to drive home the work we had done over the course of the evening.

The most important thing to do during workshops like this is to keep the energy moving. The workshop leader always needs to have a finger on the pulse of the room; understand when your students are tired and know how to give them a break without letting the bottom drop out of your thought progression. Know where you need to go slowly so that the students have time to think and process. If you can possibly integrate some kind of exercise to drive a point home, do that.

There are three basic types of learning: audio, visual, and kinesthetic. Most people learn via a combination of the three. If you can find a way to appeal to all these learning types simultaneously, your point has a higher likelihood of sticking. In addition, while a picture may be worth a thousand words, an experience is worth ten thousand. Let the students feel what it’s like to succeed using your methods. With this experience banked, they are much more likely to a) want to do what you’ve asked them to do, b) learn more methods from you since the first one worked so well, and c) listen to what you have to say in general. There’s nothing like proving you’re right to make a group of people believe in your wisdom.

One of the things I’ve always admired about good acting teachers (and directors, for that matter) is that they almost seem omniscient. There’s a way about a good acting teacher that pierces deep down to your very soul and uncovers insecurities that you could never before put into words. They have, somehow, the ability to weed out the things that make you weak as an actor (and human being) so that your true strength shines through.

Sometimes actor training looks like this; Shakespeare & Company; Summer 2007.

It’s also what I’ve always found so intimidating about teaching acting. While I know a lot and have a lot of experience (and, by the way, an abundance of modesty), I’m hardly omniscient. I’ve had many great acting teachers and coaches find a way into the deepest recesses of my soul and it’s changed me not just as an actor, but a human being. How can I possibly hope to assert myself amongst the ranks of people who have near-godlike powers of observation at their disposal?

As I found out yesterday, the years have given me the wisdom to teach, and the confidence to command a room. I felt really good walking out of workshop, and I think it was extremely useful to the cast to have that experience. I am looking forward to working on Measure and definitely looking forward to what this cast churns out. They’ve got some acting chops, let’s see if they can bring this work to bear on some pretty difficult and problematic text.

Hamlet-spotting

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One of the perks of my profession is that I get to sit in on a vast array of different classes.  Some of these are my own classes designed to be taught to myself and my colleagues, some are classes which I am assisting in some capacity and thereby are designed to be taught to those slightly lower on the intellectual hierarchy.

And because I do get to sit in on this wide array of classes, when I notice a pattern it’s generally something fairly universally applicable (as universally applicable as anything truly can be).

So, for the past few weeks, a pattern has come to my attention and it’s really beginning to sit funny under my skin.  In all of my classes, at least once but generally multiple times a class session, Hamlet has been brought up not just as the iconographic English-language play, but the iconographic play of the entire modern Western theatre canon.

By “sit funny” I don’t mean “sit wrongly” or “feel badly”, I just mean that it’s come up so very frequently that I can’t help but be astounded by it.  Obviously my man Will is a deeply influential force in my life, but the fact that he’s mentioned so often in these classes implies something that I’ve always assumed, but have only rarely paused to examine deeply.

iconic shot of Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet

In the paper I am currently working on for ASTR, I argue that the creation of Hamlet as an icon is deeply wrapped in the creation of David Garrick’s career.  David Garrick was eighteenth century London’s (arguably) most famous actor, and if not actor then certainly most famous Shakespearean.  Garrick had a penchant for Hamlet (and, for that matter, Hamlet) and had many professional interactions with the role and the text that worked to cement both in the eighteenth century consciousness (I’m being purposefully vague here, while I’m happy to bat around general concepts, I’m not comfortable publishing my research notes on the internet).  In my opinion, this is truly the beginning of the ruff-wearing, skull-holding, brooding prince as an icon of the theatre.

The continuance of this icon and its permeation into the college classroom tells me several things:

1) It is a fairly wide-reaching trope.  The fact that a professor, striving to explain a concept to a roomful of undergrads, can reach for Hamlet as a cardinal example and expect the entire room to understand what he is saying, uncovers certain societal expectations of the people sitting in that classroom.  Both undergraduate classes which I’m sitting in on are taught via the theatre department, but only one of them is an “upper-level” course (i.e.: has prerequisites).  Thereby, while these students are expected to have a passing interest in theatre, they are not all expected to have proficiency with theatre.  Thereby, the expectation that the modern, educated young person will understand Hamlet as an icon is an expectation that can be carried into the real world.  Educated people know Hamlet, even if they aren’t educated in the theatre per say.

2) It is an accepted trope.  Not once have any of the students disputed the idea that Hamlet is a go-to for archetypical modern Western theatre.  In fact, utilizing Shakespeare (and, particularly, Hamlet) as an authority is a tradition almost as old as Shakespeare himself (another topic I’m grappling with in my paper, but this is going to become its own project imminently).

3) It is a wide-ranging trope.  Again, I live in the Theatre Department, so that certainly limits my sample size.  Outside of that limit, I feel as though I’ve heard the trope repeated enough that I can say with some surety that it’s not just theatre people who do this.  How often have we seen the aforementioned image in advertising, cartoons, popular culture?  The ruff and skull image seem to be shorthand for “theatre” just as “Band-Aid” is shorthand for “sticky bandage with sterile pad for small wound”.

ll of this leads me to the conclusion that the Hamlet connection is a true societal meme;

Hanging with Hamlet in Stratford-upon-Avon

passed down from one generation to another in a self-perpetuating state of self-referentiality.  I plan to keep an eye on the Hamlet meme in hopes that it will spark something deeper, but for the moment my brain space has only enough room for pattern recognition.

So keep an eye out.  I’m thinking of making Hamlet-spotting a sport.

(Rosalind update: As You is looking great!  We go into tech Sunday and open for an invited dress next Thursday before real opening night Friday.  EXCITED!)

The Rosalind Diaries; Entry Three; Meeting Orlando

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As I said before, As you Like it is a play which hinges on a few key relationships: that between Rosalind and Celia, that between the Dukes, that between Touchstone and Celia, that between Silvius and Phebe, that between Oliver and Orlando, that between Celia and Oliver, and that between Rosalind and Orlando.  Hit one of these wrong and the play falls flat.

Up until Sunday, I hadn’t met my Orlando.  He is a very busy guy (currently working on Fall Festival of Shakespeare with Shakespeare and Company – a company which, as you may recall, I have done a great deal of work with in the past).  Because our directors are brilliant and forward thinking, the first scene they set us to rehearse together was I.ii; the wrestling scene; the scene where the lovers first lay eyes on each other.  Because they also began rehearsal with that scene, I didn’t even get to introduce myself to Conor, we just dove right in.

Which was, perhaps, one of the most interesting moments of my acting career.  When I saw him for the first time, I actually saw him for the first time.  There was little acting involved in the surprise and inquisition in my voice; and that is something that I can definitely use as we progress into rehearsal.

Rosalind and Orlando have an odd relationship.  They meet once in the court.  Rosalind knows that her banished father loved Orlando’s dead father.  She also knows that both fathers have fallen into disregard with the current Duke.  Orlando doesn’t know much about Rosalind other than hey, girl who gave me a chain and who has really pretty eyes!

There’s two parts to their scene in the court – before the wrestling, and after.  Before the

Katherine Hepburn as Rosalind and William Prince as Orlando in a 1950 New York Theatre Guild production at the Cort Theatre

wrestling, Orlando speaks fairly fluently and is able to explain his motives in big, long, speeches to Rosalind and Celia.  After the wrestling, Orlando finds himself tongue-tied and unable to speak to Rosalind (though able to express these thoughts to the audience in an eloquent soliloquy).

So what explains that discrepancy?  What happens to make Orlando unable to talk to this girl he just met and was able to converse with a few moments ago?  Is it because he can’t really see her whole face?  Is it because he’s in “the zone” for the wrestling?  Is it because they haven’t actually locked eyes yet?

An interesting acting problem, and one that we’re exploring in rehearsal.  To see our solution; stay tuned (and, of course, come see the show)!

Another innate complication in the relationship between Orly and Ros is that, after this one meeting, they both fall head over heels in love.  Orlando is so in love that he decides to paper the forest of Arden with his (bad) poetry in honor of Rosalind.  Rosalind is so in love that she decides to trick Orlando into wooing her, while she is disguised as a boy, to “cure” his lovesick.  Rosalind, disguised as Ganymede, believes that Orlando has bought the disguise.  Never once does Orlando make direct reference to the fact that he may have caught Rosalind in her ruse.

But unless you play Orlando completely stupid (and some people do), you have to concede that he would recognize at least a touch of the woman he loves in the shepherd boy whom he meets in the woods.  Especially because the shepherd boy is role-playing with him as Rosalind.

So where is that moment?  When does Orlando begin to recognize Rosalind in Ganymede?  How certain is he of his discovery?  And why does he continue to play along?

More matter for a May morning.

Line-learning continues to progress apace, though prose is proving to be my worst enemy.  Rosalind’s rhetoric bounces widely as she speaks.  She’s extremely witty and always in control of a conversation.  Because of this, her lines seem to come from out of the blue and she frequently has to go back to explain what she meant.  In addition, she has a particular propensity for lists.  Lists are perhaps one of the most difficult things to memorize in the canon as they may or may not link together in any logical order.

Rosalind uses lists a lot.  So far, I’ve learned four long lists and at least two shorter ones… and I’m only about 2/3 done with my learning process.  I hope to be off book in the next two weeks (at least, preliminarily off book).

I’ve also come across one of the most difficult speeches that I’ve ever had to learn.  In V.ii as Rosalind attempts to explain to Orlando how she (Ganymede) may produce herself (Rosalind) for him to marry the next day, she begins with a ridiculously convoluted set of prose.  Check this out:

ROSALIND:

I will weary you then no longer with idle talking.
Know of me then, for now I speak to some purpose,
that I know you are a gentleman of good conceit: I
speak not this that you should bear a good opinion
of my knowledge, insomuch I say I know you are;
neither do I labour for a greater esteem than may in
some little measure draw a belief from you, to do
yourself good and not to grace me. Believe then, if
you please, that I can do strange things: I have,
since I was three year old, conversed with a
magician, most profound in his art and yet not
damnable. If you do love Rosalind so near the heart
as your gesture cries it out, when your brother
marries Aliena, shall you marry her: I know into
what straits of fortune she is driven; and it is
not impossible to me, if it appear not inconvenient
to you, to set her before your eyes tomorrow human
as she is and without any danger.

The Mock Marriage of Orlando and Rosalind, Walter Deverell, 1853

Pretty thick, right?  As I was learning it, I kept tripping myself up at the beginning.  I still have trouble remembering it up until “Believe of me, then…” because that’s where the speech truly gets rolling.  What this says to me is that Rosalind is trying to buy time.  She’s not speaking pointedly, in fact she’s meandering.  She repeats herself several times over, she uses needlessly thick language to say what she’s trying to say, and she has to preamble the real meat of what comes out of her mouth.  She’s thinking.  But since this is Shakespeare, she has to keep talking while doing it.

I’m off to rehearsal again tonight.  We will be working more on the relationship between Rosalind and Orlando and giving the final scene our first shot.  It will also be my first time onstage with Silvius and Phebe, and I can’t be more excited to forge forth.

To liberty, not to banishment!

The Price is Right

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The tail end of my week has featured night after night of wonderful free entertainment.  Since it’s nearing midnight and I still have a paper to proofread, I’ll make this short and sweet.

Night One: Wednesday

 Well, of course I had to see the opening night of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s Coriolanus.  Every year on Boston common, CSC presents a different Shakespeare.  This is the first year I’ve made it out.

Since the moment I heard that CSC had picked Coriolanus, I was intrigued to see the production.  It’s not a show performed very frequently, and there’s a reason for that.  It’s extremely difficult to execute in a way which keeps its audience, it’s a Roman show and thereby has confusing and alien politics, and it demands a great deal of dexterity from its almost-completely male cast.

There’s a great deal of violence in the show (it is, after all, about war), which also makes it difficult to execute for small companies lacking in funds to hire a fight director.  I am sorry to say that the first thing I noticed about this production was its violence (and not in a good way).  The fights looked under-rehearsed and sloppy, though this is a problem which may solve itself over the course of the run.  Stage fights require a great deal of precision in order to communicate their stories to an audience, otherwise you just wind up with awkward hugging and two guys waving “deadly” weapons at each other.  Unfortunately, in

a great shot of the CSC stage they set up every year (not from this year, but still!)

the heat of (especially a first) performance, a great deal of the work which goes into attaining this precision can be lost in a wash of adrenaline.  I truly hope that these bits get tightened up during the run, because they would greatly improve the quality of the piece.

Karen MacDonald absolutely took the stage as Volumnia (and by that I mean the entire production was hers and hers alone… perhaps giving some concession to Jacqui Parker’s Sicinius Velutus).  My goodness, that woman had us in the palm of her hand.  Powerful, overbearing, creepy, and utterly in control.  Brava, Ms. MacDonald.  Brava.

On the whole, the experience is definitely one worth having.  Especially on a lovely summer night.  Especially with good friends.  Especially with a giant spread of yummy food on your picnic blanket.  Most especially because it’s not very frequently that you see this show performed; go add it to your Shakespeare checklist while you can.

Night Two: Thursday

So here’s a question for you: have you ever been to the Opera?

Before this year, I would have been among the masses who answered “no”.

Here’s a fun facts about Opera: Opera is the only performing art with an audience whose average age in actually dropped (Opera is hip!).

Opera also ain’t what you think it is.  Oh, sure, there are the nine-hour-singing-in-German snoozers (…uh… works of artistic genius?), but really who wants to perform them much less go to see them?  The vast majority of the Opera that I’ve seen (not that I’m a connoisseur yet… still building my Opera street cred) has been hip, upbeat, and fun.

Comic Operas are some of the most fun you can have during a night in the theatre.

A production of Orpheus circa 1860 – Jupiter transforms himself into a fly to seduce Eurydice

Tonight, I attended a performance of Orpheus in the Underworld by the Boston Opera Collaborative.  A comic Opera by Offenbach, Orpheus tells the classic Greek story we all know and love… but with a twist.  It’s a comedic farce of the story complete with satyrs, sex, and rock ‘n roll (…well… at least a violin solo).

Here’s a great thing about Orpheus: you already know some of the music.  “The Infernal Galop” (II.2) is a tune familiar to any and all who have ever engaged with an iota of pop culture (hint: you probably know it as “the Can-Can”).

Here’s the great thing about the Boston Opera Collaborative: their shows are free.  BOC was founded in 2005 in an effort to create a post-graduate outlet for students of operatic arts.  As a result, the shows you will see there won’t be the meticulously polished performances you get at the Met, but they will be lively, entertaining, and completely gratis.

I can’t be more pleased with this initiative.  What a great way to introduce audiences to an art form, and simultaneously build resumes for intermediate performers.  Orpheus performs this weekend at the Strand theatre.  It’s free.  You have no excuse not to go.  Especially if you’ve never been to the Opera before.  Ticket info can be found here.

Ready for my Close-up

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Here’s a set of questions that I get asked on a fairly regular basis (…come to think of it, almost as frequently as people ask me if Shakespeare actually wrote the canon…); “Are you ever going to act again?  What made you leave acting?”

First things first, I don’t think you ever really leave acting.  Theatre people are theatre people, and whether in a theatre or without it it’s still in your blood.  Just because I haven’t performed on a stage since before my Master’s doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped being an actor (though, granted, I do fondly refer to this period of my life as “my retirement”).  Acting is a skill that affects everything else you do; public speaking, relating to other people, understanding yourself (both physically and emotionally), understanding others, and generally relating to the universe.  Because I’m an actor, I know how to deliver a talk and keep an audience engaged.  Because I’m an actor, I know how to stretch just about every muscle in my body and also know a few exercises to do if anything is particularly tense.  Because I’m an actor, I know how to speak clearly and precisely.

Acting is rough.  An actor is the lowest rung on the theatrical totem pole; at the whim of all

Complete Works of Shakespeare [abrdgd]; Me (left) playing Titus Andronicus a la Martha Stewart and Best Gay Friend (right) playing my lovely assistnat Lavinia

other creative minds which hold any sway to a project.  In a healthy creative environment, an actor is an integral piece to a beautiful theatrical tapestry.  More often than not, however, the actor winds up being no more than a pawn in the great chess set of the theatre.  The actor can often turn into a walking, talking statue of the director’s vision with no input on the project, no agency, and no outlet.

To expound upon the actor’s woes, actually finding work again puts the actor at the mercy of the great machine.  Theatre is creative, right?  A process put together on dreams, inspiration, and ideas?  According to the bulk of the commercial industry, this is far from the case.  Auditioning is an endless loop of shoving oneself into industry-created boxes for the sake of easy maneuverability.  The actor asks himself “What’s my type?” more often than “Can I play this part?” and far too often the individual who best fits an aesthetic will be cast over the individual who has more training or talent.  Think I’m wrong?  Take a long hard look at the film industry (different in many many ways from theatre, but a good archetype for the sake of this discussion).

Top this off with the fact that an actor’s job is to explore the deepest, darkest, scariest aspects of himself eight times a week in front of a large audience of strangers and I’m certain you will find that acting is no longer as glamorous as perhaps you had first suspected.

So why did I leave acting?

In the later part of my acting career, I became extremely focused.  I wanted to do Shakespeare, and I wanted to do Shakespeare specifically… but I wanted to do it right.  Having had little previous experience acting the Bard (a thing, I had been told, extremely difficult to do), I wanted to ensure that I wasn’t just going to get up and “thee” and “thou” an audience to death.  So I found myself some training.

 

And that training left me knowing more, but not knowing enough yet.

So I found some more training.

You can see where this is heading.

By the time I felt like I had any expertise with the verse, I was over-trained for the industry.  I knew a lot of things, and I had even dabbled in the academic side of Shakespeare a bit in my undergrad.  On the whole, I found I tended to know more about the shows and specific acting techniques than the directors and theatre professionals whom I was working with.

Most directors are not good directors.  If I had known and worked with more good directors, maybe I wouldn’t have turned out the way I did.  As it was, I wound up working with a lot of self-involved artistes who didn’t foster creativity, but rather were working towards some grand vision of their own.  These directors didn’t want to be told that they were wrong.  Nor did they want to be told that someone knew more than they did.  Even if an individual has the tact to tackle these issues in a sensitive way (which, by the way, I didn’t), they’re still not things that a director wants to face down in the rehearsal room.

Most directors don’t like smart actors.  Smart actors ask more questions than are useful.  Educated actors are even worse because there’s the off chance that they could ask questions to which one has no answers.  I was both.

You can imagine the frustration that circulates around a situation like this.  I got tired of the tension that it caused and, when I sat down to truly consider my options, I had to find the real bottom of the problem.  I knew that these directors, while perhaps not indicative of the species as a whole, were at least enough of a sample-set to tell me that this was the kind of individual I would generally find myself working with.  I also knew that, while I had some talent, I lacked the experience to be the best of the best.  In order to get that experience, I was in for many many more years of biting my tongue at rehearsal, working three jobs without health insurance, and living paycheck to paycheck.

 

This was a mortal kombat style fight show; we all had characters and specific weapons. I was playing a smallsword-wielding vampire; in this shot fighting the Irish two-daggers guy.

Being an actor is rough, and it was too rough for me.  I packed my bags and bid a fond farewell to the stage (even though I loved it) because I simply couldn’t do it anymore.

It’s been many years since and theatre (as you can tell) is still a huge part of my life.  Last week, while going about my daily Shakespeare rounds, an opportunity crossed my desk that I had trouble ignoring.

A local community theatre is doing a production of As you Like it and they were holding auditions.  Rosalind is a dream role for me, and one that the professional theatre would tell me is beyond my physical type (the androgynous roles usually get cast androgynously… tall; slender; could pass for a boy; you know, everything I’m not).  I decided that perhaps it would be worth breaking my retirement to live the dream and, since it was community theatre, I had a fair shot at it.  So I grabbed my best gay friend (who, by the by, is a Shakespearean actor/scholar in his own right) and we went and knocked ‘em dead.

….or at least we think we did.  Casting calls happen today and tomorrow, so this fact has yet to be determined.  For my part, I’m just happy to have had a chance to shake off a bit of the dust, really think about the production process again, and reminisce about all the things I hated about being an actor.

Definitely As you Like it

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Sunday night, I caught the closing performance of Rhode Island Shakespeare Theatre’s As You Like It in Roger William’s Memorial Park out in Providence.  I think I’ve waxed poetic enough about Artistic Director/head honcho Bob Colonna’s Shakespeare chaps, so I don’t really need to drive the point home.  Suffice to say that the production was definitely another feather in Colonna’s cap and I was particularly tickled to see it, as As You is one of my personal favorites.

Colonna plays fast and loose with the text, but his panache in doing so leaves even a text

Ryan Hanley as a weasely Oliver and Patrick Cullen as a fiery Orlando

purist like me satisfied.  The benefit to this method of engagement is that Colonna’s shows always offer up something new.  I know that when I see TRIST perform, I’m always going to be challenged in my understanding of the text and delivered a show that adds something real, tangible, and different to the performance history of any given play.

In this case, Colonna eliminated Adam entirely (a move which, admittedly, when he first told me about it gave me some serious doubts).  Substantiating the exposition that Adam adds with some cameos by other court characters, it actually wound up working pretty well.

The thing about As You is that it’s a play about the woods.  As such, the sooner we can be dispensed with the unavoidable business in the court, the sooner the real play can start.  My favorite companion attended with me and mentioned that he felt Rosalind was much stronger in the second act than the first (Colonna stuck his intermission between III iii and III iv just after Rosalind trots off with Orlando and Celia having promised to cure Orlando of his love by pretending to be Rosalind).  Well, that’s because Rosalind doesn’t really get to do anything in the court.

Rosalind’s most salient attribute is her ability as a puppetmaster.  She gets what she wants by adeptly manipulating those around her.  She is, however, confined in this ability until the forest frees her from her petticoats and she is able to take on man’s attire.

Unfortunately, Shakespeare’s first act, filled to the brim with pageantry and courtly

extravagance, tends to just drag in modern performance.  It’s full of important exposition and a great fight scene, but it doesn’t have much by way of entertainment value for the real crux of the show.  Two thirds of the characters we see at court are never seen again, and two thirds of the characters whom we spend the rest of the play with are nowhere to be found at court.  For that, this first act has to be there; without it we have no idea where we are coming from (and, for that matter, going back to at the play’s end), but really the best policy for dealing with it is to cut where you can and run through it at a break-neck pace.

Well, that’s what Colonna did.  By dispatching Adam, he managed to shave some good time off of the top load of the show and get us quicker to where we really needed to be.

Another portion of this play that doesn’t read in contemporary performance without a WHOLE LOT of careful finagling is IV ii; the deer scene.  Yes, yes, important in scholarship.  Yes, yes, forest of Arden Shakespeare’s childhood maybe he poached deer as a kid and this is some Freudian jaunt into biographical studies.  Yes, yes, Jaques’ connection to the forest blah blah.  For that, I’ve never seen a production that really pulled this scene off and made it seem anything other than an odd sidebar to what’s already a long, broad, rambling show.  Colonna side-stepped the issue entirely by cutting the scene and replacing it with a clever bit for Amiens/Jaques involving Amiens’ song and Jaques being a pompous jerk.  Colonna’s bit, while not something that I would have thought permissible with any show that I was specifically working on, read beautifully and elegantly covered the hole left by the missing scene.  Bravo, revisionism! (…don’t tell my M4M director that I said that….)

Lydea Irwin as a tired Celia carried by the rambunctious Mark Carter as Touchstone and Kristina Drager as Rosalind

The other thing that I truly have to applaud Colonna for is maintaining a sense of connection with the audience.  TRIST has a history with the fourth wall; a very sordid past in which the relationship has been broken enough times to warrant its own daytime drama.  The bottom line is this: I love outdoor Shakespeare.  I truly do.  I love theatre in urban spaces.  But if you’re going to perform outside, you need to be prepared for all sorts of interruptions; from pedestrians, to the sounds of passing trains.  And these interruptions are universal; the actors will hear them, the audience will hear them, and there’s little to nothing that can be done about them.

So instead of pretending that that motorcycle isn’t drowning out your text and just trying to schlog through anyway, why not acknowledge the motorcycle, pause for a moment, then move on?  You’re going to lose your audience’s attention anyway (that can be assured by the astoundingly loud vrooms that that little engine puts off as it stops at the stop-light that’s two hundred yards away from your playing space).  Why struggle to preserve the integrity of a fourth wall whose integrity is already compromised?

Colonna gets that and the small moments of improvisations spurred by outside forces (a harried Jaques had a brief moment of mimed drag racing, and Orlando and Ganymede a half-muttered conversation about trains) brought the audience closer to the text rather than alienating us from it.  Rather than rejecting the world around it, this show embraced the outside forces at play, welcoming them into its world and utilizing them to become closer to the audience who was also experiencing them.

I wish I could give you ticket info, but as the show closed Sunday that’s all she wrote.  Colonna and the gang will be back in the fall with a production of Richard III that is sure to please (at least, that’s what he promises me, and he has so-far never let me down).

Dramaturgy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yea, it’s pretty much my dream job.

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

My Undying Love

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Ah February; the semester’s well underway, I can see myself through to spring break, but it’s not quite finals season yet so the inevitable end-o-semester panic hasn’t set in.

Every February you go about your business, your everyday life, your chores and things, blissfully unaware that anything out of the ordinary is about to happen to you.  And somehow, it does.  It creeps in – slowly at first so that you don’t even notice it.  It begins to take over certain aisles in the grocery store, the bookstore, the coffee shop.  It begins to sneak into your everyday life waiting, just waiting, for the opportune moment to strike.

And then, just when you’re least expecting it, BLAM in your face like a ton of bricks.  Facebook blows up, it’s all anyone can tweet about, and there’s just no escaping it every year.

Every.  Single.  Year.

I hate Valentine’s Day.

Ever since I was a wee Danielle I’ve hated Valentine’s Day.  At first it’s no big thing, right?  An excuse to decorate a cardboard box and pick out those paper valentines to give to your classmates.  An excuse to eat chocolate and those awful chalky conversation hearts.

But then, gradually, as you grow into the awareness that not everyone gives everyone a valentine and why are the popular girls so special because they have boyfriends and I’m still sitting at the geek table and oh god why don’t I have a boyfriend and wait, every guy I know is gay, I couldn’t have a boyfriend even if I tried and why does it happen to me every single February that I conveniently manage to be between any semblance of a relationship and what am I doing wrong with my life?

Some years I manage to forget it’s coming and every year I convince myself that I’ve steeled myself against it.  A stupid holiday really.  An excuse to sell and buy stuff.  Why would you need a specific day to tell anyone that you love them, shouldn’t you love them every day?

I’ve heard enough arguments against Valentine’s day (and I’m sure you’ve heard them too) that I’m not going to re-capitulate them.  Suffice to say that, as a perpetually single person, they all ring like empty platitudes in the grand canyons of emo that is single-girl-self-pity.  Inevitably, no matter what I do, I wind up sniveling into a bottle of wine at the end of the night telling myself that it’s okay because I love me and that’s all that matters really.

It has not escaped my attention that there is no small amount of irony that a self-professed lover of all things about The Greatest Lover of the English Language hates a day which should be filled to the brim with Shakes-scene.

So for that, and for everyone out there who is single today, and for everyone out there who is likely going to spend the night with a chick flick and a box of chocolates they bought themselves, and for everyone out there who is feeling a little down because the people around them who are all “oh, it’s no big deal” even though they are still taking someone out to dinner tonight and thereby have no clue how big a deal it is, I’ll say this: this year, Shakespeare loves you.

No, really, he loves you.  Truly, madly, often ironically, the Bard is here to profess his deep and undying love for you.  Excuse me as I get out my literary ouija board…

“Doubt that the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.”
-Hamlet, Hamlet, 1.2

“One half of me is yours, the other half yours
Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours.”

            -Portia, Merchant of Venice, 3.2

“O, could this kiss be printed in thy hand,
That thou mightst think upon these by the seal,
Through whom a thousand sighs are breathed for thee!”

            -Queen Margaret, Henry VI ii, 3.2

“Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service.”

            -Ferdinand, The Tempest, 3.1

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.”
-Helena, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1.1

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.”

            -Juliet, Romeo and Juliet, 2.2

Also, as a present from me, I give you one of my favorite comedic pieces.  I even dressed up for the occasion (got out of my PJs for you today, folks!).  This is Berowne, Love’s Labour’s Lost, 1.1.  (…Apologies for the less-than-optimal video quality.  All I’ve got is my little mac.  Enjoy!)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sMqNIDEZFg]

Have a happy Single Awareness Day!

Something Rotten in the State of Denmark

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As a birthday present, my favorite partner in crime treated me to Hamlet at the Gamm theatre in Pawtucket, RI.

I was excited to see the show because what’s a bardy birthday with some bard?  Also, I’m always on the lookout for companies who produce Shakespeare (preferably semi-regularly, which Gamm does).  Much of my audience Shakes-perience comes from years and years of being a patron of Shakespeare & Company, so it’s really good to broaden my portfolio and have a look at other companies, other styles, and other talents.

I try not to go into Shakespeare with any hopes whatsoever.  I really do try and enter with a clean mind, ready to enjoy the show and without some highfalutin’ notion of should and shouldn’t.  Obviously there’s an awareness of the textual and historical difficulties innate in any production, but I try not to let that hijack my experience of the performance.

Unfortunately, Gamm’s production was somewhat disappointing.

The first act was bland.  They tackled the problems innate in Hamlet with strength, but not any sense of creativity.  The staging was predictable, the performances on the whole nothing spectacular.  There were a few exceptions: Tony Estrella, Gamm’s current Artistic

Hamlet (center) greets Roz and Guil (Left and Right respectively)

Director and the title role of the show, speaks the text like he was born to it.  He was a little old for Hamlet, but that didn’t bother me overmuch once the play got rolling.  Steve Kidd’s Claudius may seem boring in the first act, but just give him some time to warm up.  Once he hits his soliloquy in the second act, he’ll prove that he’s no dumb king; he’s just trying to hold it together so hard that his movements are as constrained as a geisha’s.  Ben Gracia and Joe Short as Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are a breathe of fresh air, and I’ve never seen the “play this pipe” speech done with more clarity.  Tom Gleadow as the gravedigger should be knighted for bringing some joy to the stage, though his ghost leaves something to be desired (not due to his own performance, but rather due to a lack of directorial imagination – there was nothing done to distinguish the ghost as otherworldly or inhuman and thereby the scenes fell flat for me).

The entire player troop was also delightful – just hammy enough without completely stealing the show.

And the fight direction was absolutely stellar.  All of the violence onstage was well paced, well choreographed, and well rehearsed.  Mister Normand Beauregard, the Gamm’s resident fight director, has my personal stamp of approval.

With the good comes the bad, and unfortunately there was a great deal of bad.  Jeanine Kane’s Gertrude was cardboard, Marc Dante Mancini’s Horatio almost incomprehensible, and Gillian Williams packs too much of a punch to play Ophelia.  Due to the choice in aging Hamlet, Ophelia was also aged and, while Williams is certain to please in roles more suited to her strength, she didn’t make a believable waif.

Here’s the thing about Ophelia: Ophelia is a wisp of a girl stuck in a man’s world.  She’s not a woman, she’s not someone who knows how to function on her own, and every man in her life has used and abused her.  Her father, her brother, Hamlet himself… all of these men treat Ophelia like a pawn in their greater game.  Ophelia runs mad because these men are all taken away from her.  Without them, she simply cannot function in the high-pressure environment of the court.  If you have an Ophelia who is able to stand on her own, there’s no reason why she would run mad when her father dies and Hamlet is sent away.  She’d just pick herself up by the bootstraps and move on (and that, my friends, is the difference between Ophelia and Rosalind).  So Williams, while talented, really shouldn’t be playing this role.  And casting her robbed the play of credence.

Hamlet with Polonius

There’s been a trend lately of modernizing Hamlet, but the problem with doing that is such: there’s only so modern Hamlet can be.  Hamlet requires a world with aristocracy, a world where swords are still used (you cannot do anything else with that duel, it HAS to be a swordfight), and a world where women are afforded a societal position lower than men.  Most directors solve this by staging Hamlet in a World War II era, about the most modern Hamlet will go.  As such, this production’s choice to do just that wasn’t at all bold or new.  In fact, it’s becoming something quite hackneyed.

The production made one other bold choice which, again, wasn’t new or different… simply upsetting.

So Hamlet is a story about the foibles of leadership and how horrible power can be.  There is, however, hope in this: Horatio, the one who watches, the one who is there through everything, is able to carry on the story.  He tells the tale of the Danish court to Fortinbras after the Norwegians claim the Danish throne.  There is some assurance that these awful events, once come to pass, will never happen in the same way again.

That is, unless you disregard the textual clues, completely dump upon the greater meaning of Hamlet, and use the last moment onstage to shoot Horatio.

Okay, directors, listen up.  Rule number one about Hamlet: you don’t shoot Horatio.  Period.  Doing so completely alters the meaning of Shakespeare’s text, completely jars the audience into a hopeless slump, and otherwise privileges your “GREAT CONCEPT” over the bard’s work.  Yes, I understand that you’re trying to do something “new and innovative” with a text that is done to death in the popular culture, but shooting Horatio is not new nor is it innovative.  Oskar Eustis did it in Shakespeare in the Park’s 2008 Hamlet and I didn’t like it then either.  “Bid the soldiers shoot” is Fortinbras’ instruction to begin the gun salute funeral festivities, not license to impose your ending on a literary classic.

I could drone on about why this choice is wrong, but unless you’re looking for a dramaturge for your modern-dress production of Hamlet you’re probably not interested in reading it.  If you ARE looking for a dramaturge for your modern-dress production of Hamlet, shoot me an e-mail and I’m your girl.  If you’re planning a modern-dress production of Hamlet, for god’s sake find yourself a dramaturge so that you don’t make this mistake (…looking at the production credits, they did have a dramaturge for this production… I can’t imagine what she was thinking to allow this to happen.  Fie and shame upon her!).

What did Horatio ever do to you?

Hamlet’s run has been extended through December 18th.  For more information, head on over to their website.

A Very Bardy Birthday

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On Sunday, I turn 25.

This means a lot of things… the first of which being good god I worked so hard this week so that I can spend a weekend only thinking about my papers in passing.  With the realization that due to my life choices I will, without fail, be stressed out on my birthday every single year, I also made the decision that I will strive to give myself at least a day off to celebrate on the anniversary of my introduction to the world.  I only narrowly managed to succeed this year but thank whatever agnostic deity is listening it’s all settled.

A quarter century is an interesting time.  I can’t really term it a “long” time, but it sure seems like long enough when I think about the amount of stuff I’ve achieved (and the thought that most of these things had to wait at least fifteen years before I could properly achieve anything).

 I have to admit, my actor’s brain is slightly freaking out.  For an actor, getting older is a curse as much as a blessing.  Every year one grows this much closer to completely re-defining one’s career.  As you age, your type changes with you and (since type is so important to contemporary casting practices) this in turn shifts your capabilities.  Unless you are in an extremely unique situation, as much as we like to think that theatre is an art about creativity, more often than not it’s an industry of placing butts in seats.  What that means for an actor is catering to one’s physical traits with one’s acting style.

I, for instance, had a very difficult time getting work.  I was always told to wait twenty years because then I would grow into my type.

… they also told me to lose thirty pounds and move to Europe where I would surely be seen as a castable type…. There’s a reason I’m no longer primarily an actor.

My finals are tucked cozily into a nook of my desk where they will remain until Monday.  I’m putting them out of my mind. So here’s the crisis I’m going through now.

…what about the parts I’ll never get to play?

Women, especially, are subject to the tyrannical rule of casting-by-type and age has a great deal to do with the politics of casting actresses.  When I was training at the American Globe Theatre, my mentor there (Mister John Basil) gave us a chart breaking down these types.  For women, the chart looked something like this…

Ingénue – 14-20 (Juliet, Miranda, Lavinia)

Mistress – 20’s (Rosalind, Viola, Isabella)

Leading Lady – 30’s (Portia, Lady Percy, Lady Macbeth)

Dame – 40’s and up (Paulina, Volumnia)

Again, this is my approximation of John’s chart and his point wasn’t to say that these characters MUST be played by actresses in this age range, but if you were playing these characters you had better look like you are in this age range.

The other week, I was talking about monologues with an old friend of mine.  He mentioned that he was reviving some of him stuff because he had felt the need to work on it again.  I sighed wistfully and said, “I really should… I should have one from each of the major play types at least… there aren’t many good ones in the histories though.”  To this, of course, he replied with Lady Percy (who has some KICK ASS monologues, by the by) and I replied, “I’m too young.”

He looked me up and down and said, “…you may not be.”

I thought about that for a moment.  The prospect was slightly thrilling and terrifying at the same time.  After all, the last time I had worked on monologues I was firmly within the “mistress” range edging into too young for those… the last time I worked on monologues I was playing Phoebe and Julia, La Pucelle and Marianna, young women.  Lady Percy?  A widow (albeit before her time)?  My nineteen-year-old self couldn’t do it…. But my twenty-four-soon-to-be-twenty-five-year-old self?  Can I really play Lady Percy?

And then the sorrow set in.  Will I really never play Juliet?  Will I be doomed to never play the balcony scene, except when I recite it to myself in the shower sometimes?  Am I going to pass the benchmark for ideal age for my favorite Shakespearean heroine (Rosalind, in case you were wondering) before I ever get to play her?

Now admittedly, in order for one to have a stage career one must be auditioning (something which I have not done in many a year) so perhaps it’s unfair of me to be upset about these things.  It’s like wishing to win the lottery when you never buy a ticket.  And I did leave the realm of professional theatre for reasons (very good ones), so my melancholy has a certain amount of rose-colored glasses-wearing to it.

That said, I can’t help but be slightly misty-eyed at the thought that I’ll never speak the words, “O God, I have an ill-divining soul…” or “you kiss by th’book” in front of an adoring crowd of sighing theatre-goers.

…but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it ruin my weekend.