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…