In a 2009 Blackfriars Conference paper, scholar Brett Gamboa theorized that two rules governed doubling on the early modern stage: one, “the roles doubled cannot meet one another onstage,” and two, “the performance will indicate changes of person with changes of garments.” Though we are not able to prove whether or not the early modern stage ever dispensed with these rules, following them is certainly the traditional way doubling is handled in the theatre.
In recent years, members of the Shakespeare and Performance program have been exploring what Jeffrey Chips ('12) dubbed “extreme casting.” Though the students involved with these productions have struggled to define what exactly extreme casting means, Chips categorizes these productions as ones that dispense with “Gamboa’s indispensable rules.” In short, extreme casting productions are ones in which the number of characters so outweighs the number of actors that actors will necessarily have to embody multiple characters in a single scene.
As the director of Rogue Shakespeare’s Richard II, I wanted to explore how Richard II’s text could define and support extreme casting. I found one of my answers in the number of times an onstage character is identified verbally, by name or by title. If the few extant examples of early modern cue scripts are typical, actors learned their lines from a text without speech headings. When an early modern company met for whatever form of rehearsal they may have had, they would have discovered that the identification of character occurred within the spoken lines themselves. Today, in small-cast Shakespeare, I believe repeatedly hearing the names of the characters allows an audience to keep up in a style where character isn’t always immediately present through a separate and unique actor body.
In 2849 lines, Richard II contains 325 examples of verbal identification of onstage characters. That averages to one spoken identifier every 8.77 lines, and 8.33 spoken identifiers per character. Our cut of Richard II, at 2010 lines, is 30% shorter than the Folio text. While cutting, however, I endeavored to maintain as many of these spoken identifiers as possible, theorizing that they would act as signposts on to which the audience could hold. Any momentary confusion an audience member might have over who an character is would soon be solved by that character’s name or title or relationship being spoken. Our cut almost maintains the identifier per line ratio of the original, coming in at one identifier per 7.5 lines and 8.31 identifiers per character.
Of the 32 characters that appear in Rogue Shakespeare’s Richard II, seventeen of them are verbally identified during their first appearance. In rehearsal, we tested how to call attention to these first identifications, setting up the idea that actors are, in these moments, being cast in their roles. Though we are not using individual prop or costume signifiers for every character, for many of these initial names, the casting is accompanied by the speaking character, usually Richard, handing a prop or costume piece to the actor, who then “accepts” the role by accepting the signifier.
To call further attention to these namings, we experimented with choral speaking. I believe that multiple voices speaking the names in moments of casting would not only cause the audience to listen more closely to who these characters are, but would also live quite successfully in the non-naturalistic world of extreme casting. Like the play itself, we used this technique to ease the audience into the story, and did not continue it for the entire play, also finding there were simply less opportunities for it as the play continued.
Much of our community audience for Richard II was probably unfamiliar with the play’s plot. Additionally, they may have come in expecting to be confused by the story, given that Richard II falls under the dreaded category of “History Play.” My hope was that we would be able to take this particular feature of the early modern theatre (repeated onstage verbal identification), caused due to rehearsal and playhouse conditions, and transform it into a purposeful feature of a modern extreme casting production.
- See more at: http://actorscholar.com/content/naming-richard-ii#sthash.ObNzDMVd.dpuf
