King-Sized To Do List

The preparation for The Kingship Cycle is occasionally overwhelming. This is the largest project that ADK Shakes has undertaken to date, so there's a lot to keep up with. I really enjoy writing posts about what is taking place behind the scenes on all our projects, so here's a look at the many things going on right now in order to prepare for next fall and spring's two-part Kingship Cycle.

Tudor Rose Window. Source.

• Character Maps

Also known as "French Scenes," these maps track each character's trajectory throughout the course of the play. This helps me build Character Tracks to assign to each individual actor, as I can see how the roles can conceivably double up. Luckily, since we have already produced 1, 2, 3 Henry VI and Richard III, we already have maps for these shows complete. I reorganized the doubles based on the concept for this project, but I didn't have to start from scratch. Henry V is also already complete, and we just finished Richard II yesterday.
To Do: 1 & 2 Henry IV

• Casting Matrix

You can view the Casting Matrix for the first part of The Kingship Cycle and get an idea for how complex this project is! I have only just begun the Matrix for Part Two, but I won't be able to complete it without the aforementioned Character Maps. What makes this project particularly difficult to map is that I want individual actors to follow a character through multiple plays. For example, Falstaff appears in 1 & 2 Henry IV, and therefore the same actor will play Falstaff in both plays. Exciting stuff! But it can be messy when building the Matrix. I learned last weekend that it's better to start from the end and work backwards. The Richmond / Edward double in Richard III is clear from the Map, so that meant Edward and Richmond double in 3 Henry VI. OK, no problem, but where I had Edward placed in 2 Henry VI (in which he speaks only 1 line) didn't work at all. I had to unravel and re-do the Matrix three plays back. Now I know! I will start from Henry V and work backward!
To Do: R2-HV Matrix

• Scripts

When Patrick and I prepare scripts for performance, we begin with the First Folio. I love the Applause texts of the individual plays. Neil Freeman's notes are terrific. He marks alterations between the various Folio and Quarto texts and describes in detail the changes that appear in each iteration. In our scripts, we preserve First Folio capitalizations and punctuation always, and spelling sometimes. Decisions on alterations to the line are discretionary, and sometimes I will make a note in our script so an actor can see the change and make the decision for themselves. Here's a peek into how different the versions can be. When we first started producing Shakespeare IN THE RAW, though, we had not yet developed this method. So our early scripts are ... well ... kind of a hot mess. I'm currently going through and re-setting the format, fixing typographical errors, and adding footnotes. I won't lie, it's kind of tedious. And there's a giant ticking clock ... the actors are going to need these scripts just as soon as possible. The actor who will be playing Richard III will have approximately 1900 lines to learn. To put that in perspective, an uncut Hamlet speaks 1476 lines. Yeah! What?!?
To Do: Formatting and editing for 1 Henry VI. Light editing for 3 Henry VI and Richard III.
Footnotes for 1, 2, 3 Henry VI, Richard III, Henry V
Everything (!) for Richard II, 1 & 2 Henry IV

• Auditions

Right! I have to cast these shows! Because the actors playing Richard III and Henry V in particular have such a massive line load, I need to cast and get these scripts out so they have time to actually learn all these lines and prepare these intricate characters. That means auditions have to happen soon! So -- any actors reading this blog, this is for you! -- I'm planning to hold auditions for Part 1 of The Kingship Cycle on Sunday, April 1 and for Part 2 of The Kingship Cycle on Monday, May 14. You can send me your interest at casting@adkshakes.org now, but I'll also be emailing a notice to our Actor Mailing List. (If you're not on that and you want to be, email info@adkshakes.org.)
To Do: Actor Info Sheets and Sides from all eight plays.

• Calendar

We have come up with a schedule for these rehearsals and performances. It's intense, and I love it! I'm planning a series of weekly workshops leading up to our intensive Shakespeare IN THE RAW style of rehearsal and performance. These workshops will include read-throughs, movement rehearsals, discussions on the genealogy, history, and socio-political issues in the plays. The rehearsals will be set up to put up two plays over the course of a weekend (as we have done in the past with the Bookend and Justice Projects) and then perform the same two plays the following weekend. Weeks 3 and 4 will be putting up and performing (twice each) the second two plays. And Week 5 (my favorite!) will be a marathon of all four plays. This week we have a meeting to ensure that we can hopefully get the specific dates we are looking at -- keep your fingers crossed!
To Do: Reserve all dates for workshops, rehearsals, and performances.

• Research

This is just an ongoing piece of the puzzle. I am fortunate to be doing a portion of this work as my directed research for the spring semester. It's fascinating reading, and it's great exercise for my brain. I can't wait to dig into more reading on the law and history of the period. I'm swimming around in the first tetralogy of plays right now and also looking forward to diving into the second tetralogy.

Even though this To Do List is big and long and complicated, it's a wonderful feeling to realize that there's nothing else I'd rather be doing.

When Mercy Seasons Justice

We are quickly getting under way for this winter's Justice Project. It has seemed far away for a long time, but it is rapidly approaching. Last week, we had our read-through of the plays The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure. Ladies and gentlemen, we have an absolutely terrific cast, and I cannot wait to introduce them to you.

Before I begin the series of introductory posts, however, I want to give you all the vitals for these productions. Trust me, you do not want to miss them. We will performing William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure uncut and in repertory for two weekends in February. You can find us in both Queens and Manhattan. We are also very excited to announce a seminar we are running in association with the Law School at St. John's University on Friday, February 17.

You will find in these productions our typical Shakespeare IN THE RAW excitement and method! That means we rehearse only about 12 hours for each show. Yep! The cast has met for our read-through, but we officially begin intensive rehearsal on the evening of Wednesday, February 8 and we open on Friday, February 10. Expect these performances to be immediate, adrenaline-filled, exciting, and RAW. (Of course!) We perform with no sets, minimal costuming and props, and no safety net. Our actors come in fully memorized and prepared to put on a full, professional production of these amazing masterworks.

Friday, February 10 :: Measure for Measure

Saturday, February 11 :: The Merchant of Venice

at

Saval Auditorium

2nd Floor, Manhattan Campus, SJU

101 Murray St, New York, NY 10007

Friday, February 17 :: Measure for Measure

Saturday, February 18 :: The Merchant of Venice

at

Moot Court, Belson Hall

2nd Floor, St John's Law School

8000 Utopia Parkway, Jamaica, NY 11439

All performances begin at 7:30 p.m.

Doors open 1/2 hour prior to curtain.

Seating is general admission.

THE CAST OF THE JUSTICE PROJECT

Lindsay Bartlette Allen

Michael Bernstein

Tara Bradway

Matthew Castleman

Andi Dema

Christian Adam Jacobs

Julia Jones

Melanie Arii Mah

Collin McConnell

Lindsay Tanner

Shayna Vercillo

Oh Rose of May

On the ADK Shakes Facebook page, I recently posed two questions to our friends. What are your top five favorite plays by Shakespeare? and What would your top five greatest Shakespeare roles be? Perhaps it is not too surprising that the winner of both of these polls was Hamlet. I won't lie; he was in both of my top fives, too.


I've been thinking about Hamlet a bunch lately, and I suspect I'll be thinking about it all today. I am writing a paper for my Epic & Allegory class on Stephen Dedalus's "Hamlet Theory." Today is going to be my big Ulysses day, but let's face it, I will be thinking more about Hamlet. I just like it better. But with Hamlet so much on the brain and it being the first of May (how did that happen?), I wanted to share one of my favorite moments in the play. And I want to share both the modern type setting and then the First Folio setting:

O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
O heavens! is't possible, a young maid's wits
Should be as mortal as an old man's life?
Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.

Oh heate drie vp my Braines, teares seuen times salt,

Burne out the Sence and Vertue of mine eye.

 By Heauen, thy madnesse shall be payed by waight, 

Till our Scale turnes the beame. Oh Rose of May, 

Deere Maid, kinde Sister, sweet Ophelia: 

Oh Heauens, is't possible, a yong Maids wits, 

Should be as mortall as an old mans life? 

Nature is fine in Loue, and where 'tis fine, 

It sends some precious instance of it selfe 

After the thing it loues. 

When we compile scripts for ADK Shakes production, we work primarily from the First Folio and not from modern editions. For one thing, I hate exclamation points. They bug me. When you use five of them in six lines, they seem to lose their punch. Exclamation points do appear in the First Folio, but not nearly so often as they do in modern texts. When I do see one, boy is it gutting. As an actor, I love using the punctuation as a guide, and the FF gives me more food for thought. We also preserve the capitalizations in our scripts. Sometimes the word "Love" is capitalized, sometimes not. I find it helpful to think about those choices and emphases. We do update the spelling (u vs. v, for example) to make it easier on our actors. And we will often make choices between Quarto and Folio settings where variations occur. Our scripts basically take an awfully long time to put together ... So: one more time with this passage. Here is what it would look like in an ADK Shakes format:

Oh heat dry up my Brains, tears seven times salt, 

Burn out the Sense and Virtue of mine eye. 

By Heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight, 

Till our Scale turns the beam. Oh Rose of May, 

Dear Maid, kind Sister, sweet Ophelia:  

Oh Heavens, is't possible, a young Maid's wits, 

Should be as mortal as an old man's life? 

Nature is fine in Love, and where 'tis fine, 

It sends some precious instance of it self 

After the thing it loves.

I want to end with a shameless plug for two of our wonderful company members, Aaron White and Christine Demuth. Last summer, Aaron headlined as Romeo with us and Christine played Lady Macbeth. I wish I had some video to post of these performances, but I do have these photos, which absolutely do not do them justice:

Aaron White as Romeo, Laura Montes as Juliet

Christine Demuth as Lady Macbeth 

I am not a gusher. I have the most exacting, obnoxiously high standards when it comes to theatre, so it's a big deal when I tell you: These two actors are phenomenal, and have performed some of the most moving, genuine, incredible moments of theatre I have seen. Ever. And I have seen a lot of theatre. If you are anywhere in the vicinity of Williamsburg, VA this summer, you will not want to miss Aaron White as Hamlet and Christine Demuth as Ophelia at the Virginia Shakespeare Festival. They will be incredible. If you're not in the vicinity of Williamsburg, I promise you they will be worth the trip.

Verse-Speaking for the Classical Actor

In the past few days since my last post, I have been eyes-deep in ADK Shakes work. While the immersion is absolutely wonderful, the downside is that I have (almost) completely neglected my reading for class! So after this post, I will be immersing myself in Arthurian Romances and Dante. Lots of immersion happening.

Here's a peek into the muddle that is my brain ... I have been painstakingly going through our Bookend scripts of Titus and Tempest, recording errors from our read-throughs of the 23rd. These are usually small errors in memorization -- transposing two words, perhaps missing or adding a word here and there. So I'm compiling them in order to email out a written record to each actor. Yesterday morning was also our first Board Meeting of 2011 and our big project is researching venues for touring our productions this summer -- pssst, upstate NYers -- leave a comment if there's a place you're dying to see ADK Shakes tour! In the vein of the summer, I am at a snail's pace with casting but it's like a constant hum in the back of my head :: visions of headshots, flashbacks of monologues, visualizing the coming productions. The buzz will hopefully come to rest by mid-March and everything will be settled. Until then ...

What has been occupying much of my brainpower the last few days is -- at bottom -- the language itself. How it gets performed. And how I want to hear it performed. I just did a quick Google search on the percentage of verse vs. prose in Shakespeare's plays and found this book by Ulrich Busse. It has a really cool table on page 66 which indicates that 76.95% of the complete works is written in verse. 76.95%!!!!!! This is exactly why we require actors to audition with a verse monologue! This, of course, leaves only 23.05% of the entire Shakespearean canon that is written in prose. And it really, really, really gets my goat when I hear an actor speaking the verse lines of Shakespeare like they are contemporary prose -- even more so when I know they have been directed to speak it that way. Speaking verse as though it is utterly pedestrian prose muddles the meaning. It disturbs the musicality and the rhythm, which ultimately undermines one's appreciation in listening to it. And to revisit my big research question of last semester -- in the end, I think it can also destroy the authenticity of a performance.

Romeo and Juliet, Summer 2010

When Patrick and I first set out on our journey of Shakespeare IN THE RAW, we were placing the highest emphasis on the text of the plays themselves. By extension -- emphasis on the verse! (If anyone has seen the third season of Slings & Arrows, Charles Kingman comes to mind here...) Patrick is a percussionist so the rhythm of the verse comes quite naturally to him. Not all of us are such natural musicians, of course, but I am inclined to think that musicians have a one-up on actors in this case. One example, and then I'll step down off my soap box (for now). This summer, we produced Romeo and Juliet and I gave a note to our Romeo (who, incidentally, is a wonderful musician). There's one line in the balcony scene that I consistently hear mis-read wherever I go, and I wanted to make sure he was going to hit the emphasis I wanted. The emphasis that *ahem* the verse gives us. 

With Love's light wings did I o'er perch these Walls, / For stony limits cannot hold Love out, / And what Love can do, that dares Love attempt: / Therefore thy kinsmen are no stop to me. (II.ii)

Specifically: "And what Love can do, that dares Love attempt" -- I consistently hear this line read with emphasis on the nouns and verbs, the so-called "important" words: "And what Love can do that dares Love attempt", right? No! The verse tells us otherwise! This is a complete thought, a stand-alone thought. "That" is not a linking word here -- it is the key to the meaning of the thought. "And what Love can do, that dares Love attempt." And if we ignore the verse, suddenly the thought does not make sense.

So. The point of this rant is to respect the verse. Use the verse. Iambs are our friends. Next time, maybe I will rant on the opening speech from Richard III. And to all my Bookend actors, in particular, and to our acting community in general, I hope you will take this very sincere message to heart. I love the poetry of Shakespeare's work. Let's not obscure it by trying to turn it in to prose. Let it sing. (And PS - as an added bonus, you'll also find the memorization so much easier!)

 

De-Facto Director no more.

This week I am deep in notes for the Bookend Project, a little more heavily in Titus at the moment. It is so strange for me to preparing a text completely in a director's mindset instead of an actor's. I've de-facto directed in the past, but even then I have always been in the show as an actor too. So it is really weird to be going through a script and not have to memorize any part of it. While I am unspeakably excited to see what my amazing cast is going to bring to these two productions, I am a little upset that I don't get to be on stage with them.

What a learning experience this is going to be! Our read-through of both plays will take place this coming Friday. I will be taking down errors in memorization, notes on choices in scansion, the time of scenes ... but for the first time in a RAW production, I do not have to worry if I have memorized all my lines well enough. This actually me feel completely unprepared for Friday! I don't have my lines memorized! Wait ... I don't have lines. I have to juggle both plays in their entirety and thirteen actors. I want to balance each actor's preparation and interpretations with my own.

The Bookend Project marks not only my first RAW as a non-actor, but our very first production as a company with a real, honest-to-goodness, not-de-facto director. I am so curious how this will change things for the acting company. Usually Patrick or I will de-facto-direct, meaning that each actor is for the most part free to interpret their characters as they see fit, determining entrances and exits and minimalist staging on their own. They will bring questions to us and we will stage the more complicated scenes, offering much less direction than a typical production. This is more in line with original practices where there was no person whose job title was "director." With only thirteen hours of rehearsal for each show, I am curious to see how having such a person will (hopefully) streamline rehearsal, focusing each actor and their interpretation of the work.

To those few veterans we have in the Bookend Company: I hope you will offer some constructive feedback next month on how the process is different from a typical RAW. To our new company  members: I hope you are excited for the thrill of the RAW and will offer some feedback as well on how our rehearsal process is different from other companies with which you have worked. To our audience: As strange as it will be for me, I am so excited to be sitting in your seat for the very first time. I am looking forward to the ride of my life.

I have you now!

After weeks of ruminating and several hours playing with colorful post-it notes, I have finally come up with doubles for The Bookend Project, which you may recall is a dual production of Titus Andronicus and The Tempest.  The Project is this year's contribution to our Shakespeare IN THE RAW project, but is also primarily work for my Introduction to the Profession course.

I had to turn in a short paper for class a few weeks ago, and I was just awash in a sea of possibilities. My initial inclination was to subvert expectations. I want interesting doubles! Unfortunately it seems like we are not encouraged to expect the unexpected.  It's weird or uncomfortable, or maybe it just won't succeed. And we're afraid of failure, aren't we? I'm less afraid of failing and more afraid of mediocrity.  I'd rather fail spectacularly than play it safe.  That's why I do Shakespeare IN THE RAW.

So in my short paper, I was trying to subvert the expected double of Lavinia and Miranda.  I feel like that is where most companies would go with this. Well, I think more of the actors I hire.  I think they can handle the challenge of playing outside the box.  I think the audience can handle it too.  Where I decided to go in my short paper was move based somewhat on instinct, but I did find basis for it in the text (though I won't overload you with that argument): Miranda and Saturninus.  How cool!  Now that I've teased you with that tidbit, that's not actually where I'll be doubling in this production.

Keeping in mind that this project is studying the arc of Shakespeare's revenge play, I wanted the doublings to reflect this binary of revenge/forgiveness. As I was moving the post-it notes around, it struck me that this has a lot to do with relationships. Of course. And not just relationships between characters (both within and across the two plays), but relationships between actors as well.  I am about ready to dig into these but I wanted to offer up a taste of what I'll be discussing in my long paper:

Prospero/Saturninus
Ariel/Tamora
Sebastian/Titus
Antonio/Marcus
and a discussion of why Aaron will not be doubled with a character from The Tempest

Shakespeare IN THE RAW - Richard III Trailer

While I search for a way to post this in a "gadget" that will stay put, here it is at least as a post.

All the footage/audio in this trailer is taken from our April 19, 2009 production of 3 Henry VI, performed at the Philadelphia Cathedral, Philadelphia, PA. It begins with a small clip of Queen Margaret (played by Christine Demuth) right after **spoiler alert** the murder of her son, Prince Edward, by Richard III and his two brothers, Edward and Clarence. Hopefully, I can find the time to edit that scene from our video archive and post it as well. I can unequivocally say that that scene was one of the finest, most moving, and most authentic (yes, that's right, I said it!) moments I have ever experienced in the theater. Ever. (And I cannot even begin to tell you what kind of harsh critic I am.)

Ms. Demuth's performance was absolutely extraordinary. She is in her mid-twenties and does not have children, but in this production, she plays a character who would be 41 years old, witnessing the murder of her 17-year-old son. The memory of this performance still (a year and a half later) moves me to tears. What makes such a performance authentic? It is a performance, after all.

In THE RAW performance, we have no "backstage" that is hidden from the view of the audience -- there is only on- or off-stage. We usually play in the round, and actors set prop and costume pieces off-stage behind the audience. So the audience is able to see actors changing costume pieces and transforming from one character to another (as we also nearly always play more than one character), waiting just off-stage "in the wings" for their entrance. We don't actually have wings. We don't hide the actors backstage. We're very "in your face" about the constructs of the play, and we very clearly ask the audience to play and imagine the world with us. I think acknowledging this imaginative element and actively playing together (actors and audience) makes the performance stronger, more effective, and a more authentic, moving experience on both sides of the stage.

Is this why it doesn't matter what age the performer is? Because we all agree to pretend that she is 41 and a mother. We agree to pretend that Prince Edward (who, by the way, was played by a woman) is her son. We agree to pretend that he is murdered. And by agreeing to do this and then actually doing it, we somehow make this experience authentic and meaningful. What matters is the work of the audience and the actors constructing and being invested in this world of pretend. We have made it mean something. We have made it authentic.

A New Semester Project!

I have completely overhauled my semester-long professional development and my key terms project from my Comp Theory class.  Previously, I was planning to create a course sequence for a Shakespeare class but I wasn't very interested in this idea.  Then I had considered a reading list doing double duty as Artistic Director list and as precursor to Comp list.


This has all gone out the window with the revision of my key terms project.  At first, I was going to tackle "rhetoric" - and specifically how Shakespeare uses rhetoric.  But this wasn't really fitting into the purpose of the project.  After class last week, I was so interested by our discussions of authenticity.  This is exactly the question I struggle with in producing THE RAW.  How do you create the most "authentic" theatrical experience possible?  Especially when theatre is inherently a fake, constructed space.  It's not real.  We know it's not real.  How, then, can you create something truthful or something authentic in this kind of space?


I must love this blog so much already, because I am thinking of creating another blog specifically exploring this question of authenticity.  Maybe it can be the same blog?  Why not?  I'm hopeful I can attract some guest authors who can post their own thoughts and experiences with this question.  I'd also like to post some video from our productions.  The plan is (at least for now) to have this blog reflect the work of the semester dealing with this question of "authenticity" and also to compile (for the key terms project) an annotated bibliography of sorts to handle the literature I am digging up on the subject.

Bookends

New thoughts today on The Tempest project for Intro to the Profession.  Since we are producing Titus Andronicus this spring for the RAW, I am really excited at the notion of working on a project for this course that also feeds the RAW Project.  Considering both these plays as variations of the revenge play and also considering their relative positions at the beginning and end of the canon, I think there's a really interesting conversation going on between these plays.  (And certainly with all the plays in between these plays, but that's going to be a bit much to consider for this particular project.)

I'm working on a prospectus for this Bookend Project.  (I'm liking this title.)

Other things of note will be the 2011 Season announcement to the board tomorrow.  I need to do a press release for that and also have some grants to work on, due quite soon.  To manage this with my schoolwork is more than a little daunting.

New beginnings

There's something about a brand new start that always inspires me to write or document what my journey is going to be. Starting my graduate studies is no different, I suppose. I've also been inspired by one of my courses, Composition Theory and the Teaching of Writing, to consider new media (ie, this blog) as a good outlet for such writing. Strange that I haven't thought of this before? Perhaps.
I'm hopeful this will end up being a useful tool for conversation with other students, colleagues, artists, professors, whomever. In these beginning stages, however, perhaps a short introduction will be best.
I am beginning my first semester as a DA (Doctor of Arts) Fellow in the English Department at St. John's University. After being in the "real world" for last five or six years, it's a difficult transition but a really exciting and challenging one. In the years since I graduated from Muhlenberg College, I've pursued a career in classical acting and helped to form the Adirondack Shakespeare Company, of which I'm the Artistic Director. It's my dream job and my pursuit of the elusive title of "Dr. Shakespeare" is to help me tackle all the aspects of this dream job.
Our company is in the beginning stages of a long term project called Shakespeare IN THE RAW in which we're tackling the canon of Shakespeare in (approximate) order. We do the plays uncut, with a small company of actors, few costume pieces, props, and shortened rehearsal time. The idea is to energize the performance and throw focus to the text of each play -- in THE RAW, there's not much else for an actor to rely on except the words they are speaking. I'm planning to continue this project as part of my graduate research.
I'm also interested in playing with gender and casting. We do a lot of cross-gender casting, where a female actor plays a male character -- but she plays this character as a man. And vice versa. We have not attempted this yet with the leading roles in the canon yet, and I'm curious to see what happens when we try this in Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, etc.
This semester, I don't know how much I'll be able to focus on these particular projects yet. I'll be studying The Tempest in my Introduction to the Profession course. I'd really like to find a project for this course to tie into our second season of shows: Henry V, Midsummer, and Merchant. Or into our next RAW, which will be Titus.
I am also taking a Composition Theory/Teaching of Writing course, in which I also have a semester-long project to consider. There's quite a bit of freedom with this project, so I'm throwing around ideas of working on a paper for a conference, or possibly working towards creating a syllabus for when I'll begin teaching a composition class next semester.
That seems enough of an introduction for now.