The first couple days of Fringe I am not involved. I am rehearsing like a madwoman. It is a lot of work to memorize one hour worth of text. Luckily the majority of the Shakespeare is in my head already. What’s not is soon learned, thanks to the rhythms of his text. I get it, but not word perfect. This is a disappointment to me, the perfectionist. I find that little words slip. The yous and thous sometimes get mixed up. And in this line is it will or shall? Hath/Doth/Does? Surprisingly, I find it’s harder to be perfect when you are memorizing multiple characters. Somehow it’s a little easier to keep track a single character’s reasons from flipping from thou to you, than it is to keep track of five characters. But I work really hard on it. When characters say similar things, it’s easier for them to get jumbled when you are speaking both versions. And with an hour-long show, there is a lot of text floating around in my head.
The words I am writing myself are easy to learn. Mostly because I don’t have to get those perfect. The quotes from people in the past are difficult, particularly the non-contemporaries. The writing from the Victorians in particular, is complex, with ornate structure, and multiple phrases, making for some rather long sentences.
Victoria and I communicated with our savvy tech, Sean Eustis, over email in the week leading up to the Festival. We told him want we think we needed, and he let us know that he could do exactly that. He even had access to a projector, and all the necessary equipment.
Those final days before opening were nerve-wracking. Would I remember the lines? Would anyone see it? Would it even work? Would I still have a voice after giving a walking tour on Friday and another on Saturday? But soon Sunday was here.
Sunday, July 10
Our tech is at 10:30am. The space – The Bedroom. We meet our venue manager, Terry, who seems great, and his equally great partner in crime, Robert, who is managing The Redrum, the other space in that building. These guys with aplomb put up with my sarcastic “charm” for two weeks. We get started a little late due to parking issues. Thankfully the rest of the festival parking and transportation remains on our sides.
Our set is small. It has a dagger and a coil of rope, both conveniently borrowed from our previous production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. There is the ever-important vial, which I’ve had in possession for months, due to needing it for publicity photos. The largest piece is the bench, which comes from Victoria’s furniture collection. I worry about possible damage, but it returns to her house unscathed two weeks later.
As is always the case with tech, one never gets done as much as one wants. It’s all pretty much spent setting up the technical elements. Which I suppose is really the point. But we actors always want to run the show!
Where do we put the projector? Here I walk in the way of it, there audience members’ heads pop up as shadows. We have to adjust the text size of the words it is projecting. Then we have to figure out the lights and the cues. The Bedroom has an inordinate amount of lighting instruments for a space that small, but I’ve been warned not to complain about it, as lots of lights are better than no lights at all, which is the state where the Festival started.
We go through the lighting changes. We have the Shakespeare scenes – some in day, some in night. Day Wash. Night Wash. We have what we affectionately call “Scholar Wash” for all the parts in between. Before we know it, it is 1pm, and our tech time is over. One hour to show.
Quick! Eat! Bathroom! Stretch! What are my lines again??????
2pm comes, and I must walk out onstage, begin “I have a faint cold fear that thrills through my veins” and take the ride.
I survive. I don’t lose my place. I have a couple moments where the corner of your brain separated from your acting says, “Wait. Is that what happens next? Did I skip something?” But I turn out to always be in the right place. I have a couple people I know in the audience, but also people who I don’t know, including some big Fringers. My former roommate Karen Beriss is in the audience with her mom. My friend Kerry drives from Towson to try and make the show. She doesn’t make it in before the doors close, but thankfully decides to wait until around so that we can still hang out. I more than survive the play. Some people stand to applaud.
My heart is beating and I am covered in sweat. Victoria, Kerry, and I head over to the tent to chat (and drink!). While I’m there three patrons who were at the performance approach me and say how much they liked it. One is David Kessler, the man who will be the 2011 Fringe Fanatic. I had met David at previous theatre events, and he saw me perform in last year’s Fringe Festival. I run into him throughout the next two weeks, and enjoy finding out what he has seen and what he has loved. His favorite seems to be iKill, a work getting a lot of buzz, but one I am unable to see.
These positive audience responses mean that What, Lamb! What, Ladybird! works as a piece of theatre! Whew! But now I have a week before my next performance, and adrenaline to spare.
Being a full time artist, and knowing that I will lose money on this production, I cannot buy tickets to see all my friends’ shows. Of the 124, I believe I know people involved with at least 30 of them, possibly more. I discover that you can sign up to volunteer with the Fringe Festival. Every shift you work yields you a free ticket. Score! I initially start with four shifts, but quickly add more.
Monday, July 11
Working. Resting. The first review arrives. It’s a bad one, though not the kind you can be upset about, or take personally. The writer likes my acting, but misses the entire point of the piece. She seems to come in with a preconceived notion of who Juliet is (she dismisses her as a “lustful teenager”), and is unable to let it go. When a review is more about how silly Juliet is, and less about what you are actually doing in your piece, what can you really do? Though I do wonder, if she missed it so entirely, maybe it means the piece isn’t working theatrically. But everyone else who saw that first performance got it. And then I remember hearing a local actor say he didn’t like Venus in Fur because he doesn’t enjoy plays about theatre people. I am reassured by the fact that what is obvious is some is not so obvious to others. (If you don't know the play, Venus in Fur takes place at an audition, but this is only the most surface level. It really has absolutely nothing to do with theatre people.) I think secretly I am more bothered by her negative characterization of Juliet, than by her not liking the play. In my head I write essays rebutting how she sees Juliet, supported with evidence by the text. But of course, I’ve actually already written that essay. And I’m performing it. So there it is.
Tuesday, July 12
I come to the Fringe straight from some teaching work. I need to pick up some food before my first volunteer shift! I fondly recall the apple and cheddar panini that I ate several times last year. But what’s this? It’s not on the board! I asked at the bar, they tell me they can make that, no problem.
I am working box office for Losing My Religion, a solo performance, being performed in my venue. I spend more time talking to / annoying Terry and Robert. I get to meet the performer, Seth Lepore. He’s charming, personable, cute… and married. ;-) I run into him throughout the festival. I see him in the tent chatting people up. He has a list of popular shows and when they let out so that he can hand out postcards. I watch him and learn about going up to strangers and selling your show. I don’t make it to his, but he’ll next be performing at the Minnesota Fringe Festival.
After the volunteer shift, I’m hanging out in the tent to see Karen Beriss et. al. perform in the free Clown Cabaret show.
I notice the apple and cheddar panini is now on the board! It remains there for the rest of the festival! My work here is done.
After a delightful Clown Cabaret, I talk to Karen about the show. Whether the projections and the scholars names work, and the switching between parts. She says it all does, and it doesn’t bother her not having more information about the people I’m quoting. Her main note: Lose the noisy plastic water bottle. She gives me a plastic goblet to drink from for the remainder of Fringe.
Wednesday, July 13
I have another volunteer shift. But at this point I really can’t remember what show it is for… From the schedule I can deduce that it was probably for The Morphine Diaries, which is also at Terry and Robert’s venues. Those guys have a collection of colored sharpies and a bucket of rocks, and we pass the time making art.
I hang around the tent awaiting the 9:45pm showing of Cabaret XXX. I know 75% of them: Karen Lange, Allyson Harkey, and Toni Rae Brotons. I think I met all these ladies on twitter first, before in real life. Their show rocks. They basically are playing scorned lovers singing angry songs about their exes. And all four performers have great voices. And they are backed up by a wonderful band. They give out tattoos and condoms and t-shirts. I take a lesson from Seth and talk to the people sitting near me. I tell them about my show. They tease me when I take a condom, in mock shock, “Why, Juliet!” The man at the table gives me his as well, saying he can’t use it because it’s probably too small. The two women with him look mortified, but also amused.
Friday, July 15
I slip back to the Fringe Festival for more Clown Cabaret. My friend Lindsay joins me, and we get to catch up a bit. We head to Busboys & Poets with the clowns for dinner. Then I remember my other Fringe staple, the Apple and Gorgonzola sandwich. Yum. With sweet potato fries!
Saturday, July 16
A very full day. I am volunteering from about 10:45 to 3:30. I do three box office shifts, but I’m not sure I can even guess what shows they were for. I think A Year of Living Dangerously, again with Terry and Robert. Then I think King Lear in the apothecary. There I run into Bill, a local theatre performer who saw my opening performance. He tells me it was the best college lecture he had ever scene. It’s a compliment, and I know what he means. Then I think it’s Patrick & Me at the air-conditioned Goethe Institute! The venue manager there, Kate, is a lot of fun to talk to, with a healthy appreciation of Shakespeare.
I take off from volunteering and decide to go see A Piece of Pi at the Apothecary. It is fantastic. Three male clowns who have very much honed their types and their relationship to each other, perform a series of physical comedy clown skits. They take juggling tricks and other known scenarios and twist them with clowning. One of them is “weak” and skinny. One is “the strongest man in the world!” One is quieter, and maybe not the brightest. They are wonderful.
I get on the bus and hurry over to Spooky Universe on 16th to see Emily Morrison’s But Love is My Middle Name. It’s a lovely piece as she takes us through her stories of love and not love, singing the songs that defined her life. I hope she can make it to my piece, as I see connections between them. (She does, and sees them too). Fun Fact: Emily and I once auditioned for a production of Romeo and Juliet together, and neither was cast.
When it ends, I have to rush back to the tent. The bus isn’t coming on time, so I walk. It takes me exactly the 25 minutes I have before Hotel Fuck. I’m familiar with most of this cast. The delightful Frank Britton everyone knows. I know James and Gabe, and I know who Jay and Christopher are. I’m not sure I can describe the piece, other than to say that the title accurately prepares you for the experience. I feel like part of Fringe is seeing at least one crazy, wacky piece, perhaps with nudity, and this year, Hotel Fuck is that piece for me.
I carry my script with me everywhere, and whenever there is down time, I read over my lines.
That’s the first week! More soon!
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
What, Lamb! What, Ladybird!
This has been an incredible summer. I have not been able to blog as much as I wanted. Okay, I haven’t been able to blog at all. I’m disappointed because I wanted to better document starting my own theatre company and launching with The Two Gentlemen of Verona. I’ll come back to that in a later post, because now I want to talk about the Capital Fringe Festival while the experience is still fresh in my mind.
Throughout last fall, Romeo and Juliet is on my mind. While living in DC, I’ve auditioned for the role of Juliet three times, and not gotten cast. The funding for a production with a director that wants me to play the role does not come through. This is irking me. I’m starting to feel the time run out. I remember reading David Tennant say that he thought once he hit 30, his chance for Romeo would be over. He got his in. At 27, I see that 30 approaching. Though there is no obvious rule about it, it seems to make sense. To play Romeo, and Juliet, one has to be old enough to handle the text, to feel what they are going through, but young enough to carry off teenage impetuousness and innocence.
I spend a lot of time talking about it with others. My roommate Karen says we should mount our own production. We talk about what we could do with it. Small cast? All women? Maybe just three of us, or four of us. It sounds like a good idea, but then we realize that Joe Calarco has already written that play.
The Capital Fringe Festival keeps coming up in the process of my discussions with her and others. The perfect opportunity to mount some sort of production. But what sort of production should it be? It needs a reason for existing other than the fact that I want to play Juliet. I begin to play with the text. How do I make a piece about Juliet, from her perspective?
I talk to other friends about it, and somewhere the notion of a one-woman show comes up. How to do it? How to make it about Juliet? I think about Kate Norris’s one woman Hamlet: Now I Am Alone. Is this piece like that, but with Romeo and Juliet? Am I just doing a short version of the play where I play all the parts? Do I just do Juliet’s scenes? I read the play again, but I skip all the time she’s not on stage. I’m surprised by the fact that the entire plot remains intact. I hit upon an idea where her scenes are the main through line and when Juliet hears about something happening, parts of that scene come in. But this seems less like a one person thing, and more that it needs multiple actors. And the piece needs one concept, not two.
I keep playing, I keep talking to people, I get frustrated messing with the text. I worship Shakespeare, so I don’t want to do all this crazy stuff with his text. I just want to do his play! I’m close to giving up on the idea entirely. On New Year’s Day I have coffee with a friend, Jessica. I had come home from a party that morning and found my first wrinkle. I have a slight freak out, not about getting old, but about not being able to play Juliet. I haven’t worked since September. I need to create a project. But creating work on your own is hard. I’m frustrated from not acting. I have some things going on in my personal life. I have graduate school auditions to prepare for. I’ve just taken the GRE. Lots of stress. And I need theatre. I talk to my friend, a fellow actor and director, and she tells me to do it. Do a one-woman show in Fringe about Juliet. Just do it. The only caveat from her is not to name it something stupid. “Like what?” I ask. “Like ‘Kickin’ it Solo with Juliet!’” she answers.
I am still conflicted. The application is due January 7th. I write it, but I’m not sure. But I can’t stand not acting. I have to do something. I realize I’m also scared by the prospect of a solo piece. Well then, I think, you have to do it. I make myself mail in application.
I get into the festival, but I still don’t know exactly what I’m doing. What will this piece be? Who the hell will I get to direct it? Can I do this on my own?
I don’t have to. On January 11th, my life changes. I meet Victoria Reinsel at a callback for The Comedy of Errors at the Virginia Shakespeare Festival. I am given the side of Adriana. She, Luciana. I know it makes sense that I am reading Adriana. Sass and strength I can pull off. But really the harder part is Luciana. We read the scene in the side hallway before auditioning. “Oh.” I think. “This woman knows what she is doing.” We audition. At some point during the scene I slap her ass as a sign of sisterly affection. I apologize afterwards, after all it’s a little personal for someone you just met. She laughs and says, “No, that was great!” Now when we meet people, she tells them we met when I slapped her ass in an audition.
It’s the best audition with a stranger I have ever had. We exchange cards and 2 days later we meet for coffee. We talk for hours. We agree on seemingly everything when it comes to Shakespeare. She’s worked for the American Shakespeare Center, and attended the MFA program at Mary Baldwin, one of the graduate schools I am applying to (and where I will eventually decide to go).
In short, we keep getting together, keep talking theatre and life for hours, and at the end of February launch our own theatre company, Brave Spirits Theatre. We perform first in June with a six-actor production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona (but that’s a blog for another time).
In any case, I now have someone I can create theatre with, and I have a company to produce my Fringe play. Naturally, of course, producing, directing, and acting in Two Gents means my Fringe project doesn’t get as far as quickly as I would like. I watch July approach and am still unsure of the final form of my play.
Victoria and I sit down and I read through Juliet’s scenes. I already know that I want to start with her last soliloquy: “I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins / That almost freezes up the heat of life.” The question is, is it necessary to have Juliet’s death? Looking at the text, that scene belongs so much to Romeo. Juliet is awake for about five lines before she stabs herself. Plus, everyone knows what happens at the end. Is it needed to show it? Could I just end with the first few lines of the soliloquy that I perform at the beginning?
Victoria agrees with me that starting with the soliloquy is a great idea. And also that the death scene isn’t needed. But she also agrees with the little voice inside of me saying that simply doing Juliet’s scenes isn’t enough. She suggests maybe we connect the scenes with Juliet’s thoughts about what’s going on. That I write some connective materials. Something that we don’t hear from Shakespeare. Even if it is a simple as, “I never meant to hurt my family.”
This idea terrifies me. First of all, I am not a playwright. Second, to write something that has to stand up next to Shakespeare’s text seems an impossible task. I am incredibly nervous. Victoria tells me to journal as Juliet and see what comes out.
I’m scared, but I make myself do it. I surprise myself by coming up with some really interesting things. One section of it makes it into the final piece, the paragraph where Juliet (or I) comments on our first time giving sex with Romeo, prior to the Lark/Nightingale scene.
But as I’m journaling as Juliet, I also write down my own thoughts about things that happen in the play, about Juliet the character and how I relate to her. I write things that I have never admitted to anyone. When I hand the papers over to Victoria, I think I tell her that the second set is an “invented narrator,” not quite willing to admit some of my hidden feelings.
When we meet again, Victoria tells me that she really likes the stuff that I wrote as me and that we should explore that more.
So at this point I have a few things that I’ve written that I like, that I think have dramatic possibilities. And I know I want to focus on Juliet’s scenes. And I know I want to start with the potion soliloquy. But there is still some sort of connective thread that is missing. The only answer, when you have an approach like mine, is to spend a day at the Library of Congress.
I do so, planning to read and read and read about the play until some brilliant idea strikes me. Amazingly, this is exactly what happens. I sit down, with the statue of Shakespeare looming over my head, and search for Juliet in the catalog. I discover the following Subject listing: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 --Characters --Women. I order everything in it that might talk about Juliet. When the librarian brings me books, she asks, “Are you going to be able to get through all this?” I am, because I don’t know what I’m looking for, and some of the books will quickly and clearly become not it.
I am already familiar with the series Players of Shakespeare, which has many interviews with well-known actors (mostly from the Royal Shakespeare Company) in which the actors talk about a specific role they play. I order all 6 volumes in order to find out whether anyone has spoken about Juliet.
While I’m waiting for those, I am flipping through other books and I discover the lynchpin. Helena Faucit’s On some of Shakespeare’s female characters. This book contains a series of letters written to a friend where Faucit waxes poetic about the roles she has played and what they have meant to her. Juliet is clearly the most dear to her, for she wrote twice as much on her as on any other character. It surprises me to find a Victorian actress so enthralled with Juliet. And Faucit was not the only one of the period to write about the character. I have found my starting place.
One reviewer of the final piece noted that as a modern woman, it was “wrong-headed” to look to the Victorians, as their conception of womanhood was so different than ours. Victorians, at least as we view them, have a very unprogressive, restrictive view of womanhood, based in the idea of femininity, charm, and obedience. (Though what history records versus what people thought in their hearts could be two very different things, and I often feel that we today are not really so different as those in the past, but again, that’s another topic.)
BUT – this is what makes it all the more remarkable that they would attach themselves to Juliet. If what we think of as the Victorian ideal was completely true, these women should have eviscerated Juliet. She talks back to and disobeys her parents. She has sexual feelings. She commits suicide. She speaks up and says what is on her mind, rather than merely doing what she is told. And these Victorian actresses worshipped her. I find that fascinating! (As a note, Shakespeare’s source is written much more as a cautionary tale – we are supposed to see in R and J’s death a punishment, or at least result of, their immodest behavior. Shakespeare’s text, however, does not judge these young lovers.)
I find quotes from actors and scholars, past and present. The piece quickly takes shape. I am quickly able to create a through-line. And it’s precisely what I find engaging. After all, actors have so frequently been ignored when it came to Shakespeare scholarship, something that has thankfully been changing in recent years. Of course, this is yet another reason why it is amazing to discover these documents actresses have left behind.
I’m still struggling with the form. I dream frequently about this play, which makes me all the more anxious. But one day in a fit of panic, when my brain will not shut off, I see in my head how the play should end. Helena Faucit’s writing allows me to start with the soliloquy, as I wanted to. And I realize the emotional place the play has to go to in order to end with it as well. But this time it’s not Juliet speak those lines, it’s me.
The question remains how to present these quotes? My brain tells me that I should project the names when I am quoting someone, thereby making it clear when I am speaking as myself, and when as someone else. How Moises Kaufman should the script be? Should I say the persons name before each quote? I think the projections are enough. How much like Gross Indecency should this be? Do I need to inhabit a character for each of these writers? Do I need to use accents???
We decide no. To just keep it simple.
I am a bundle of nerves when I hand the script to Victoria. I pace about the room as she reads over it. She comes to the final page. She looks up to me, nods, and says, "I like it."
The script is finished, at least for this incarnation. Three things are interwoven. Shakespeare’s text. Quotes from scholars and actors. My own opinions and memories. I have never seen a play like this. I have no idea whether it will work. I tell people it is halfway between a play and a paper. Will the play part work to support my thesis? Will the paper part be dramatically viable? We shall find out at the Capital Fringe Festival.
to be continued…
Throughout last fall, Romeo and Juliet is on my mind. While living in DC, I’ve auditioned for the role of Juliet three times, and not gotten cast. The funding for a production with a director that wants me to play the role does not come through. This is irking me. I’m starting to feel the time run out. I remember reading David Tennant say that he thought once he hit 30, his chance for Romeo would be over. He got his in. At 27, I see that 30 approaching. Though there is no obvious rule about it, it seems to make sense. To play Romeo, and Juliet, one has to be old enough to handle the text, to feel what they are going through, but young enough to carry off teenage impetuousness and innocence.
I spend a lot of time talking about it with others. My roommate Karen says we should mount our own production. We talk about what we could do with it. Small cast? All women? Maybe just three of us, or four of us. It sounds like a good idea, but then we realize that Joe Calarco has already written that play.
The Capital Fringe Festival keeps coming up in the process of my discussions with her and others. The perfect opportunity to mount some sort of production. But what sort of production should it be? It needs a reason for existing other than the fact that I want to play Juliet. I begin to play with the text. How do I make a piece about Juliet, from her perspective?
I talk to other friends about it, and somewhere the notion of a one-woman show comes up. How to do it? How to make it about Juliet? I think about Kate Norris’s one woman Hamlet: Now I Am Alone. Is this piece like that, but with Romeo and Juliet? Am I just doing a short version of the play where I play all the parts? Do I just do Juliet’s scenes? I read the play again, but I skip all the time she’s not on stage. I’m surprised by the fact that the entire plot remains intact. I hit upon an idea where her scenes are the main through line and when Juliet hears about something happening, parts of that scene come in. But this seems less like a one person thing, and more that it needs multiple actors. And the piece needs one concept, not two.
I keep playing, I keep talking to people, I get frustrated messing with the text. I worship Shakespeare, so I don’t want to do all this crazy stuff with his text. I just want to do his play! I’m close to giving up on the idea entirely. On New Year’s Day I have coffee with a friend, Jessica. I had come home from a party that morning and found my first wrinkle. I have a slight freak out, not about getting old, but about not being able to play Juliet. I haven’t worked since September. I need to create a project. But creating work on your own is hard. I’m frustrated from not acting. I have some things going on in my personal life. I have graduate school auditions to prepare for. I’ve just taken the GRE. Lots of stress. And I need theatre. I talk to my friend, a fellow actor and director, and she tells me to do it. Do a one-woman show in Fringe about Juliet. Just do it. The only caveat from her is not to name it something stupid. “Like what?” I ask. “Like ‘Kickin’ it Solo with Juliet!’” she answers.
I am still conflicted. The application is due January 7th. I write it, but I’m not sure. But I can’t stand not acting. I have to do something. I realize I’m also scared by the prospect of a solo piece. Well then, I think, you have to do it. I make myself mail in application.
I get into the festival, but I still don’t know exactly what I’m doing. What will this piece be? Who the hell will I get to direct it? Can I do this on my own?
I don’t have to. On January 11th, my life changes. I meet Victoria Reinsel at a callback for The Comedy of Errors at the Virginia Shakespeare Festival. I am given the side of Adriana. She, Luciana. I know it makes sense that I am reading Adriana. Sass and strength I can pull off. But really the harder part is Luciana. We read the scene in the side hallway before auditioning. “Oh.” I think. “This woman knows what she is doing.” We audition. At some point during the scene I slap her ass as a sign of sisterly affection. I apologize afterwards, after all it’s a little personal for someone you just met. She laughs and says, “No, that was great!” Now when we meet people, she tells them we met when I slapped her ass in an audition.
It’s the best audition with a stranger I have ever had. We exchange cards and 2 days later we meet for coffee. We talk for hours. We agree on seemingly everything when it comes to Shakespeare. She’s worked for the American Shakespeare Center, and attended the MFA program at Mary Baldwin, one of the graduate schools I am applying to (and where I will eventually decide to go).
In short, we keep getting together, keep talking theatre and life for hours, and at the end of February launch our own theatre company, Brave Spirits Theatre. We perform first in June with a six-actor production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona (but that’s a blog for another time).
In any case, I now have someone I can create theatre with, and I have a company to produce my Fringe play. Naturally, of course, producing, directing, and acting in Two Gents means my Fringe project doesn’t get as far as quickly as I would like. I watch July approach and am still unsure of the final form of my play.
Victoria and I sit down and I read through Juliet’s scenes. I already know that I want to start with her last soliloquy: “I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins / That almost freezes up the heat of life.” The question is, is it necessary to have Juliet’s death? Looking at the text, that scene belongs so much to Romeo. Juliet is awake for about five lines before she stabs herself. Plus, everyone knows what happens at the end. Is it needed to show it? Could I just end with the first few lines of the soliloquy that I perform at the beginning?
Victoria agrees with me that starting with the soliloquy is a great idea. And also that the death scene isn’t needed. But she also agrees with the little voice inside of me saying that simply doing Juliet’s scenes isn’t enough. She suggests maybe we connect the scenes with Juliet’s thoughts about what’s going on. That I write some connective materials. Something that we don’t hear from Shakespeare. Even if it is a simple as, “I never meant to hurt my family.”
This idea terrifies me. First of all, I am not a playwright. Second, to write something that has to stand up next to Shakespeare’s text seems an impossible task. I am incredibly nervous. Victoria tells me to journal as Juliet and see what comes out.
I’m scared, but I make myself do it. I surprise myself by coming up with some really interesting things. One section of it makes it into the final piece, the paragraph where Juliet (or I) comments on our first time giving sex with Romeo, prior to the Lark/Nightingale scene.
But as I’m journaling as Juliet, I also write down my own thoughts about things that happen in the play, about Juliet the character and how I relate to her. I write things that I have never admitted to anyone. When I hand the papers over to Victoria, I think I tell her that the second set is an “invented narrator,” not quite willing to admit some of my hidden feelings.
When we meet again, Victoria tells me that she really likes the stuff that I wrote as me and that we should explore that more.
So at this point I have a few things that I’ve written that I like, that I think have dramatic possibilities. And I know I want to focus on Juliet’s scenes. And I know I want to start with the potion soliloquy. But there is still some sort of connective thread that is missing. The only answer, when you have an approach like mine, is to spend a day at the Library of Congress.
I do so, planning to read and read and read about the play until some brilliant idea strikes me. Amazingly, this is exactly what happens. I sit down, with the statue of Shakespeare looming over my head, and search for Juliet in the catalog. I discover the following Subject listing: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 --Characters --Women. I order everything in it that might talk about Juliet. When the librarian brings me books, she asks, “Are you going to be able to get through all this?” I am, because I don’t know what I’m looking for, and some of the books will quickly and clearly become not it.
I am already familiar with the series Players of Shakespeare, which has many interviews with well-known actors (mostly from the Royal Shakespeare Company) in which the actors talk about a specific role they play. I order all 6 volumes in order to find out whether anyone has spoken about Juliet.
While I’m waiting for those, I am flipping through other books and I discover the lynchpin. Helena Faucit’s On some of Shakespeare’s female characters. This book contains a series of letters written to a friend where Faucit waxes poetic about the roles she has played and what they have meant to her. Juliet is clearly the most dear to her, for she wrote twice as much on her as on any other character. It surprises me to find a Victorian actress so enthralled with Juliet. And Faucit was not the only one of the period to write about the character. I have found my starting place.
One reviewer of the final piece noted that as a modern woman, it was “wrong-headed” to look to the Victorians, as their conception of womanhood was so different than ours. Victorians, at least as we view them, have a very unprogressive, restrictive view of womanhood, based in the idea of femininity, charm, and obedience. (Though what history records versus what people thought in their hearts could be two very different things, and I often feel that we today are not really so different as those in the past, but again, that’s another topic.)
BUT – this is what makes it all the more remarkable that they would attach themselves to Juliet. If what we think of as the Victorian ideal was completely true, these women should have eviscerated Juliet. She talks back to and disobeys her parents. She has sexual feelings. She commits suicide. She speaks up and says what is on her mind, rather than merely doing what she is told. And these Victorian actresses worshipped her. I find that fascinating! (As a note, Shakespeare’s source is written much more as a cautionary tale – we are supposed to see in R and J’s death a punishment, or at least result of, their immodest behavior. Shakespeare’s text, however, does not judge these young lovers.)
I find quotes from actors and scholars, past and present. The piece quickly takes shape. I am quickly able to create a through-line. And it’s precisely what I find engaging. After all, actors have so frequently been ignored when it came to Shakespeare scholarship, something that has thankfully been changing in recent years. Of course, this is yet another reason why it is amazing to discover these documents actresses have left behind.
I’m still struggling with the form. I dream frequently about this play, which makes me all the more anxious. But one day in a fit of panic, when my brain will not shut off, I see in my head how the play should end. Helena Faucit’s writing allows me to start with the soliloquy, as I wanted to. And I realize the emotional place the play has to go to in order to end with it as well. But this time it’s not Juliet speak those lines, it’s me.
The question remains how to present these quotes? My brain tells me that I should project the names when I am quoting someone, thereby making it clear when I am speaking as myself, and when as someone else. How Moises Kaufman should the script be? Should I say the persons name before each quote? I think the projections are enough. How much like Gross Indecency should this be? Do I need to inhabit a character for each of these writers? Do I need to use accents???
We decide no. To just keep it simple.
I am a bundle of nerves when I hand the script to Victoria. I pace about the room as she reads over it. She comes to the final page. She looks up to me, nods, and says, "I like it."
The script is finished, at least for this incarnation. Three things are interwoven. Shakespeare’s text. Quotes from scholars and actors. My own opinions and memories. I have never seen a play like this. I have no idea whether it will work. I tell people it is halfway between a play and a paper. Will the play part work to support my thesis? Will the paper part be dramatically viable? We shall find out at the Capital Fringe Festival.
to be continued…
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