Titus Androgynous, Day 1

We arrived at the church at 5:30pm. The night started off with food and mingling. Hi, I'm so and so, what's your name? Who are you playing? were the commonly heard questions, along with, Have you done one of these before? This Bare Bard has quite a few of us who are taking part for the first time, including the actresses playing Marcus, Bassanius, and Saturninus.

As we were eating the conversation naturally turned to Shakespeare geekery. The question of families appearing onstage together was discussed -- what plays have a child and both parents? Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth (Macduffs) were the ones that easily came to mind. Someone asked about Merry Wives, and that was confirmed. Then Comedy of Errors (one of the few where it turns out well for mother, father, and child), Pericles, and The Winter's Tale. Loving the histories as I do, I was able to point out Margaret, H6, and Prince Ned in 3H6, the French King, Queen, and Alice in H5, and the Duke of Aumerle and his parents in R2. Any others that we missed?

Before long it was time to stop being nerdy and time to start... being nerdy. We began the evening with group warmups. Chairman Mao's warm up, which I hadn't done in years, some Linklater, and some tongue twisters. We passed a sound and motion around a circle, and played a name game while tossing balls. This last exercise was difficult because most of us had all just met. If you had the ball, you had to make eye contact with someone, say their name, and then toss them the ball. We added movement and something tells me the act of recall along with panic, eye contact, and having to change spots on stage, felt something like what this performance tomorrow will feel like.

Then we did a status exercise. Talking about status has always been one of my favorite tools, as I feel it's extremely enlightening. The most difficult part was remembering who everyone was playing. Then as we were told we had to line up according to status, the questions came -- is this the top of the show? Is Tamora a Roman Queen, or a Roman prisoner? Actual status, vs. personal perceived status? We discovered, of course, that this is a play where the status of the characters in Rome change quite a bit. Aaron the Moor was also an interesting piece of the puzzle. In general, everyone speaks badly of him. But Tamora is sleeping with him, and her sons sometimes show a grudging respect. Part of the status exercise is about it being displayed by how others treat you and how you treat others. Others treat Aaron as low, but Aaron does not act subservient to them.

The night finished with a couple brave actors taking the stage to test out making direct audience contact in speeches and playing with rhetoric. The speeches were quite unpolished, but there was something electric about them all the same. It was very exciting to watch. Bassanius wanted to do his speech were he tells Saturninus to pardon Titus. Instead of just ending there, the actress playing Titus stood up and said her line in response, coming out of the audience. Then the actor playing Tamora stood up and moved from the audience space to the acting space. It all seemed so spontaneous, because it was. And there was a magic in that. A magic I'm looking forward to seeing more of tomorrow night.

And now it's time to sleep, for we start back tomorrow at 9:30am.