“Gently to Hear,” Switching to Audio

Cross-posted from Brave Spirits Theatre's blog

What does it mean to take a piece of art you’ve been envisioning for years in one specific format and put it into a completely different format? I am a theatre practitioner and I spent almost ten years thinking about and planning a fully staged repertory of Shakespeare’s eight history plays. And though I know these plays intimately, I have always thought about them as works of theatre. It is quite an adjustment to try and re-imagine them within the context of audio performance, which is a new medium to work in not just for myself as a director, but for many members of the ensemble as actors.

Our primary goal in this new project is to produce not just audio dramas of Shakespeare’s eight histories, but audio dramas of BST’s version of Shakespeare’s eight histories. Though there is certainly a place for straightforward renderings of these plays, it was of utmost importance to me that our recordings have a point of view — that we found a way to retain the critique of (white, male) power that our stage productions were specifically exploring. Much of BST’s artistic identity (and artistic importance) is in the embodied feminist critiques we stage — so how do we maintain that point of view sans bodies and sans moments around and outside of text? In audio drama, there is no eye contact, no shared looks, no gestures.

These productions were always meant to be suspicious of monarchical power masquerading as merit and of our desire to see figures like Henry V as praiseworthy heroes. The audio dramas give us new ways to explore this point of view, through the intersection of history and art — narration gives us the opportunity to provide additional details and context. Historically, when Henry IV defeated the Percy family, the dead bodies of Hotspur, Worcester, and Vernon were placed on public display as a warning to others who would rebel. When Henry V captured the city of Harfleur, he had all the municipal records and title deeds burned; the French inhabitants of the town were dispossessed and owning and inheriting land was restricted to the English. We are still grappling with the history of violence contained in imperialism and colonialism, violence that continues to this day.

As a Shakespearean artist, my relationship with/to text is constantly evolving and it’s shifted once again in the course of preparing for this project. I’ve reached a new level of comfort in editing the text for clarity. When words are the only vehicle for conveying story, archaic phrasing and language feels even more obtrusive. I have to admit that now I understand the Play On Shakespeare project in a way I didn’t before. I’ve made more language edits in these plays than in any other text I’ve ever directed — swapping words to remove anti-black language, to reduce the masculine neutral, and to increase clarity. And the longer I work with Shakespeare, the more I’m convinced that nothing I do will damage what is wonderful about his plays, but I can increase understanding, enjoyment, and engagement of them for modern audiences.

The process has turned into one large experiment. We are testing out options and seeing what works. We are learning to let go of these plays as pieces of theatre and let them be something new and different. Since the method of engagement will be different, so is our method of producing and interpreting them. We’re all eager to see what form the final product takes and then to share that with our audience.

– Charlene V. Smith, Artistic Director

Feminism in the Field of Verse and Violence

Cross-posted from Brave Spirits Theatre's blog

CW: sexual assault

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a feminist. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved William Shakespeare. As an artist and a woman, I often find myself thinking about the ways in which these two things can be in direct contrast. The drama of the early modern English stage is one that frequently stages verbal, physical, and sexual assault against women. As a company, Brave Spirits Theatre is interested in exploring the violent nature of these plays – it’s in our tagline: verse and violence. And yet our modern entertainment is full of examples of violence against women being glorified, sensationalized, or use as a shortcut for character development. I’m tired of watching movies and tv shows that use assault carelessly. So I’m often left asking myself: How do I (and how does Brave Spirits) present these plays that we are dedicated to in a responsible manner? What are we asking our audience to witness, and to what purpose?

I’ve been thinking about these issues in a renewed way, for three main reasons: 1, I’m directing The Changeling, which contains multiple instances of non-consensual touch; 2, the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court has opened deep wounds for many, not only because of the alarming rate at which women are assaulted in America, but also the way survivors are treated in the aftermath; and 3, I recently spent the weekend in Milwaukee at the Statera conference, an organization dedicated to the uplifting of women in the arts. During one of the sessions at the conference, we talked about what female and feminist directors can do when they are hired to directed outdated and misogynistic pieces, especially when they are considered classics of the American theatre.

It’s certainly a big question, and there are not necessarily any easy answers, but the overarching take away I had is: it matters who is in the room; it matters who has a say in how how these stories are interpreted.

The story of The Changeling has been overwhelmingly controlled by men (and of course the play was written by two male playwrights from a highly patriarchal period). As I’ve researched the play, I’ve found myself frustrated with the way many male directors and editors have characterized the events and the tone of the play. Analyses of the play often treat Beatrice Joanna and De Flores as perversely meant for each other – as though Beatrice’s ugly internal desires matches De Flores’ ugly exterior. As one male director noted, “The Changeling is like Romeo and Juliet on the dark side.” I find this description, which has much more frequently been applied to ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, to be a complete misunderstanding of The Changeling: this play is not about love, even in a twisted form. Many productions use the word “sexy” to sell this play, which is probably used to frequently as a catch-all selling point for all Jacobean drama. The Changeling may be about sex, but that is not the same thing as being sexy.

To place Beatrice Joanna and De Flores in a love relationship is to ignore the ways in which Beatrice’s entrapment in a patriarchal society limits her choices. To consider Beatrice as evil as anyone else in this play is to ignore the fact that she pursues killing Alonzo as an alternative to Alsemero challenging him to a duel; that Alsemero suggests murder first. It is to ignore the emotional manipulation that De Flores constantly practices on Beatrice, his purposeful and consistent attempts to demean her and have her internalize that low opinion.

In the major climax of the play, De Flores requires Beatrice’s virginity in payment for the murder of Alonzo. It is, unequivocally, an act of rape. But I’ve seen productions, artists, and academics twist themselves around in order to insist that what happens in that scene is consensual. I was horrified to read in the Shakespeare Handbooks edition of The Changeling, by Jay O’Berski, the comment, “It’s clear that he loves her and respects her enough not to drag her off for instant gratification” (pg. 48). This is a horribly offensive misunderstanding of the way sexual assault works. O’Berkski continues, “She may struggle violently with him if this is interpreted as a rape but her silence may signal a complicity that screaming for help would surely absolve” (pg. 50). This is rape culture – What were you wearing? Why didn’t you yell for help? Why didn’t you fight back? Why didn’t you tell someone? To claim that the scene would need a “violent struggle” in order for the action to “count” as rape is deeply problematic. From what I’ve seen, male interpreters of this text do not stage, or perhaps even realize, the emotional and mental manipulation that often accompanies acts of sexual violence. They do not think about what the act of coercion looks like. They do not consider the non-physical forms of abuse. And they do not consider the lasting effects such trauma has on a person.

To seek to rehabilitate De Flores, to present him as misunderstood, is to refuse to confront the cruelty men, socialized by entitlement and patriarchy, are capable of doing. To make this play a love story is to prioritize his experience over hers. What does it mean to stage early modern plays with such violence and how do we do it responsibly? It’s a question I’ll continue asking myself, but I know it matters who gets to tell the story. It means believing the experience of the female characters.

– Charlene V. Smith, Artistic Director

In Defense of Villainy

Cross posted from Brave Spirits Theatre


Constantin Stanisklavski’s system of acting and Sigmund Freud’s theories on psychology have had a transformative effect on performances in modern theatre and film. One tenet that has been born out of them is the oft-repeated idea that actors need to be their character’s best advocate. I’ve heard another version of this philosophy – that actors must like their character. But what does it even mean to like your character? Actors interpret this idea in a myriad of ways.

Though there is helpful wisdom at the heart of this idea, I’ve seen actors who cling to it get into trouble when the play requires their character to be the bad guy. I was once in a play where a young character was killed, and though the circumstances were ambiguous, the text made it clear who had committed the murder. Since the murder didn’t occur on stage, the actor playing the murderer argued for a more positive situation. His character couldn’t have possibly killed the child out of malicious intent — “It must have been an accident.” This actor refused to play the bad guy.

I once saw a production of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s The Changeling in which the actor playing De Flores gave the most earnest performance I’d ever seen in the role, with a strong sense of De Flores being wronged by the world, and merely misunderstood. But De Flores is a villain. He mentally and physically violates a woman and he kills and mutilates a man. He is an extremely smart character who successfully, and constantly, manipulates those around him. To play De Flores as heartfelt and earnest is to unbalance the entire play. It also robs the audience of the perverse joy we feel in these plays when the villain succeeds.

Having to like your character makes sense through our current lens of psychological realism. Human beings are complicated and don’t fall into easy boxes of “good” and “bad.” Within the classical theatre, however, characters often do fall into those boxes. And while psychological realism can absolutely be applied to great success in the plays of the English early modern stage, actors have to be aware of the traditions out of which their characters comes.


BST’s 'Tis Pity in rehearsal; photo by Claire Kimball

The plays of the English early modern theatre were born out of the medieval morality plays and must be understood in the way they deviate and borrow from that earlier theatrical era. Medieval morality plays traded in stock characters with a set of personified virtues and vices seeking to win control over an Everyman character. These characters represent abstract qualities rather than distinct individuals.This convention made its way into early Elizabethan plays, such as The Three Ladies of London, where the names of the title characters are Lucre (greed), Love, and Conscience.

The most famous of the medieval stock characters is, of course, Vice. Morality plays used vice figures in different ways over the period. Some plays had multiple vice characters, with specific names, such as Lust-Liking or The Seven Deadly Sins. Other plays had one overarching vice character, sometimes simply called Vice. The Vice character often spoke directly to the audience in soliloquies. Many vice characters were also entertaining or comic, so audiences would enjoy watching the character scheme and manipulate. You can see the direct descendant of Vice, and the apotheosis of the character type, in Shakespeare’s Richard III.

I spent a lot of time thinking about villainy as I was preparing to direct John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore. In fact, my first rehearsal comments to the cast and production team centered around the notion of villainy. In this Carolinian tragedy, though Vasques is arguably the main villain of the piece, the play is filled with them. In contrast with the modern performance advice to like your character, I asked all the actors to embrace villainy.

In John Ford’s gruesome tragedy, siblings Giovanni and Annabella commit what is seen as a universal horror: incest. Even Vasques, Soranzo’s amoral servant, is taken aback when she learns the news: “Her own brother? O horrible!” Though almost all the characters are aghast at the news of Giovanni and Annabella’s sexual relationship, none of them are without blame. Vasques arranges torture and murder; Soranzo seduces and abandons a lover; Hippolita commits adultery and hopes for her husband’s death; Grimaldi and Hippolita each seek to poison Soranzo; and Richardetto’s selfish actions lead to the death of an innocent victim.

Ford fills his play with unrepentant characters, leaving the audience to question who is the true villain of the piece. The Cardinal wraps up the play pointing the finger squarely at Annabella: “Of one so young, so rich in nature’s store, / Who could not say, ‘’Tis pity she’s a whore?’” But Annabella’s sexual activities were consensual and faithful. The Cardinal moralizes, but we’ve already seen him mishandle justice on behalf of a relative and seize the property and goods of Giovanni and Annabella’s family in order to enrichen the church. Like the rest of the characters, the Cardinal has a compromised ability to judge right from wrong.

’Tis Pity She’s a Whore builds on the form of the Jacobean revenge tragedy and includes not one but five revenge plots. As such the body count at the end of the play is high, and the gruesome tragedy of the play becomes all the more delicious and effective for the audience when the actors are willing to be bad.

– Charlene V. Smith, BST Producing Artistic Director

Cleopatra and the Male Gaze

Cross-posted from Brave Spirits Theatre's blog

Woolly Mammoth’s recent production of Collective Rage: A Play in Five Boops made waves in the DC theatre community. In the play, as described by the company, “five different women named Betty collide at the intersection of anger, sex, and the ‘thea-tah.’ Award-winning playwright Jen Silverman’s absurdist romantic comedy is at once hysterical, inspired, and boldly uncompromising. When you’re done laughing, you’ll be ready to deliver a knockout blow to a thousand different well-worn tropes about female identity…and dare them all to say ‘Boop.’” This world premiere production was lauded by female critics in the blogosphere. But Peter Marks, arguably the most important DC theatre critic in terms of readership and effect on ticket sales, hated the piece, calling it on Twitter one of the worst plays he had seen in DC.

In a daring response, Woolly Mammoth sent out a marketing email highlighting the discrepancy, saying, “There are seven critics who consider Jen Silverman’s world premiere a form-breaking, revolutionary inquiry into gender identity and expression … On the other hand, there’s one critic who used his review to scold the play for using “dirty” words.” Marks heavily criticized the production, calling the conceit “at all times juvenile, and the sophomoric portraits of the five women … astonishingly patronizing.”

It can be dangerous for a theatre or an artist to take issue with a negative review; after all, critics are just doing their job, even when they don’t like a production. But Woolly Mammoth’s reputation and standing within the theatrical community allows them to take such risks. Indeed, it was this marketing ploy and the social media response to Marks’ review that led me to buy a ticket. I quite enjoyed the production and, judging from the laughter and applause, so did the many women around me in the audience.

Studies show that women make up over 70% of ticket buyers and 60% of audiences. We are the majority of the audience, and yet plays written specifically for a female audience are rare. They are so rare that watching a play about women and for women can feel like a revelation. Collective Rage was a play for women, and it seems remarkable that Marks completely neglected to consider that. The characters were all women; they talked about female body parts; the play dissected female stereotypes; the women existed beyond their relationships to men. As one commentator on the Post review astutely put it, “I find it fascinating that Mr. Marks couldn’t see this play for what it is: an indictment of the strictures society puts on women and how women adopt and sometimes embrace those strictures often to the detriment of their own happiness.”

I found myself thinking about these issues in reference to Brave Spirits’ recent production of Antony and Cleopatra. We received a somewhat mixed review in the Post from Marks’ colleague, Nelson Pressley. But it’s not his criticisms of the production that gives me pause; it’s the coded language used in the review and what that language says about gendered expectations in art. Pressley referred to our Cleopatra, played by Jessica Lefkow, as “unconventional” and the production in general as “non-sexy.” In contrast, female audience members characterized the production as “STEAMY,” “dangerous, creative, sexy, intimate,” and “bewitching.”

The point of this blog post is not, however, to take issue with any opinions expressed by Mr. Marks or Mr. Pressley, but to use these examples as a jumping off point into why more female representation and more female voices are needed, at every level of artistic engagement. That also involves parsing the word “unconventional” and digging into what that word suggests and what it reveals about our industry and our expectations of what female characters behave and look like.

As men are systemically hired as directors at a higher rate than women, Antony and Cleopatra is almost always directed by a man. The Shakespeare in Production edition of this play lists seventy productions in a select chronology from 1759 to 1995; only five of those productions had female directors. As a result, Cleopatra is almost always presented through the male gaze. The “male gaze” is a phrase coined by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey in 1975 and is used for analyzing the way stories and art depict women as solely objects for male pleasure.

Cleopatra’s sexuality is often staged as her primary feature, and her primary weapon, though the text does not necessarily support this interpretation. (For more information, see our production dramaturg’s blog post “Search for ‘Drunken Antony’ and the ‘Cleopatra…i’th’ Posture of a Whore” ). Indeed, the text often de-emphasizes Cleopatra’s status as a sex symbol. This comes through the mouth of Enobabus, the play’s truth-teller. When Agrippa crudely remarks, “She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed. / He ploughed her, and she cropped,” Enobarbus responds, “ I saw her once / Hop forty paces through the public street / And, having lost her breath, she spoke and panted, / That she did make defect perfection, / And, breathless, pour breath out.” Obviously these lines are open to actor interpretation, but arguably Enobabus is providing an alternative view of Cleopatra, a corrective to what Agrippa has heard about her. Enobarbus also tells us that Antony, upon meeting Cleopatra, “goes to the feast, / And, for his ordinary, pays his heart / for what his eyes eat only.” In other words, Antony falls in love with Cleopatra prior to any sexual or physical contact. Enobarbus tells us that Cleopatra’s appeal is about more than sex.

But no matter what the text may say, we bring with us ingrained expectations. I was reminded of this when a cast member posted on facebook a picture I had seen before, of a young Helen Mirren as Cleopatra in the 1966 production at the Old Vic.



I think this picture shows Cleopatra as many of us picture her in our head – in low cut, form-fitting costume that reveals a lot of skin. Now, Brave Spirits doesn’t shy away from sex and skin (in fact, in our production three men appeared in the early Egypt scenes bare-chested). I’m also more than willing to admit that Helen Mirren looks incredible. But neither of those changes the fact that this picture epitomizes our industry’s habit of staging Cleopatra for the pleasure of men: her body is on display. This fact did not go unnoted by the (male) critics of the day. Milton Shuman went on about it in a horribly inappropriate manner: “As Cleopatra, Miss Helen Mirren was well equipped physically for the part with a voluptuous, sensuous figure that swayed with such conviction that rehearsals must have made considerable disciplinary demands upon the rest of the company. I can well imagine them being tempted to break out into storms of appreciative whistles.” Not only the character of Cleopatra, but also the actress herself is here reduced to a physical object for the appreciation of others.

Photo by Claire Kimball.

In Brave Spirits Theatre’s production of Antony and Cleopatra, Jessica Lekfow’s performance and Melissa Huggins’ costume design were not about showing her skin. During rehearsal, we never specifically had a conversation about the “male gaze,” but our choices were all in line with each other. After the production closed I spoke with both Jessica and Melissa about these thoughts, and though we hadn’t used the phrase during rehearsal, they both knew exactly what I was talking about. Melissa said that while she hadn’t been specifically thinking about the male gaze, her design for Cleopatra’s costume had been inspired by Coco Chanel, who was a woman designing clothes for women. In fact, Chanel spoke out about the “illogical” design of New Look fashion created by men. Chanel’s aesthetic was known for its practicality and movement: her clothes allowed women to work, ride bicycles, and engage in physical activity. With the rise of Chanel’s fashion, the corseted female silhouette finally became passé.



In our production of Antony and Cleopatra, three women working together (as director, actor, and designer) to create this character gave audiences a new perspective on Cleopatra and presented new possibilities for who this dramatic character might be. Because a conventional Cleopatra is one whose appearance and behavior has been determined by men, our presentation of Cleopatra should be unconventional. The conventional Cleopatra is one of sexual objectification, but Cleopatra, and women everywhere, are more than their sexualities. Both Cleopatra and female audience members can find power in places other than our skin. This is why one of the keystones to Brave Spirits’ work is providing more opportunities to female artists, both onstage and off. We aim to increase women’s representation in the stories we tell and in the gatekeepers who control the ways those stories get told.

— Charlene V. Smith, Artistic Director

Re-gendering Shakespeare’s Verse

Cross posted from Brave Spirits Theatre's blog

Brave Spirits begins every rehearsal period with an exploration of the play’s text and verse. Because of the primacy we give to language and meter, re-gendering a character, or an entire play, is much more complicated than simply switching pronouns. Kevin Finkelstein, the director, and I worked through the script before the cast ever saw it, having many discussions about what words meant and how to make changes while maintaining the verse form. Several changes we were able to make before rehearsals began, such as the easy flips between him and her and he and she. Many gendered moments in the script we marked to go over with the cast and dramaturg during tablework.

Beyond simply re-gendering the characters, we also wanted to re-gender the world. By this we mean that we wanted to remove from the script all generic language that was actually coded as male. In both our world and the world of Henry IV, male pronouns and words are treated as the default. Male is the norm. Our world is one in which we constantly hear male versions of words, even though 51% of the population is female. We wanted our audience to be aware of the shifts in language and to notice that we were presenting a world to them where female was treated as default.

We talked about not just the genders of the characters, but the gendered language that refers to concepts like peace, war, the devil, and the sun. We had a lengthy discussion with the cast about religion and the gender of God. In the bible, God is referred to as both a mother and a father, even though God has come to be referred to in male pronouns exclusively. Our dramaturg notes that Rabbinic tradition is very clear that God has no gender because God is perfect, it is just that Hebrew, as an imperfect language, has no gender neutral pronoun so they defaulted to male ones.The Judeo-Christian basis of the script is inescapable, so we still had to create a world in which religion exists, but through our discussions we decided to think of it as a world in which the birth of Jesus by the Virgin Mary became the dominant event of the religion. As such we kept oaths that referred to “God” or “Jesu” or “by’r lady,” but substituted in any of those in when the script said “By the Lord.”

We also considered the way in which insults were often gendered. Most common is the word “knave.” Though knave originally specifically referred to a male person, we felt our audience today would not read gender into the word and thus we could leave it. Another insult used frequently is that of “whoreson.” Whoreson, or son of a whore, very clearly insults someone by insulting their mother. Our dramaturg, Mara Sherman, discovered the word “byblow” as a replacement. Byblow, much like whoreson or bastard, references an illegitimate child. We liked the word because it removed the female gender, and maybe for some audience members flips the gender insult to the male side, as byblow perhaps conjures up the idea of ejaculate going somewhere it’s not supposed to.

During this entire process, maintaining the verse form was of utmost importance. Of course, in prose sections the number of syllables doesn’t matter in the same way, but we also wanted to make changes consistent across the script regardless of whether the dialogue was in verse or in prose. We got lucky in a couple ways. First of all, Queen is an easy switch for King. Secondly, all the other honorifics became easy to deal with when we realized that almost every instance of a title being used included “of.” So instead of struggling to figure out how to swap in Countess for Earl and Duchess for Duke, we were able to swap in “the Countess Douglass” for “the Earl of Douglass” and maintain the verse form. We had to get creative in a few places, such as changing “uncle” for “good aunt” or “cousin” and “nephew” for “young niece.” We left prince alone because there wasn’t a clean way to insert princess, and the words can conjure up very different images since the second one is often used in a derogatory sense.

And our final bit of creativity involved fudging things a little. Man/woman and gentleman/gentlewoman was the biggest issue when it came to maintaining the verse form. We decided to make these switches but ask the actors to play elision — to treat woman/women as one syllable, i.e., wom’n. We thought we could get away with this for a couple reasons. First, the pronunciation difference in woman and women is mostly in the first syllable, even though it is the second syllable that is spelled differently. Secondly, there is a precedent for eliding words into one syllable that have a -en ending. This often involves removing the middle consonant instead of the vowel. So e’en for even or ta’en for taken. There are examples in early modern playscripts, however, of the e being removed instead, such as sev’n written for seven or heav’n for heaven.

Finally, here are some of my favorite switches that we did. Many of these the cast help create.

HOTSPUR: ‘Zounds, an I were now by this rascal, I could brain him with his lady’s fan.
HOTSPUR: ‘Zounds, an I were now by this rascal, I could brain her with her husband’s slipper.

FALSTAFF: but if I be not Jack Falstaff, then am I a Jack.
FALSTAFF: but if I be not Jill Falstaff, then am I false.

DOLL TEARSHEET: thou art as valorous as Hector of Troy, worth five of Agamemnon…
DICK TEARSHEET: thou art as honorable as Antigone, worth five of Helen…

And since the director wanted to create a world in which matriarchy had always been the dominate mode, we even re-gendered Caesar, so that Falstaff “may justly say, with the hook-nosed woman of Rome, ‘I came, saw, and overcame.’”

Early Modern Theatrical Violence and The Bloody Banquet

 Cross-posted from Brave Spirits Theatre

by Charlene V. Smith
Artistic Director

I’ve long been fascinated by violence on the early modern stage, not just its prevalence, but its variety too. The Dictionary of Stage Directions, a resource recounting stage directions found in English plays from 1580-1642, notes over 380 fights, 180 kills, around 60 beatings, and about the same number of instances of pistols or dags (Dramaturg Claire Kimball discussed firearms in The Bloody Banquet previously). Around 30 plays are listed with a stage direction of stabbing. Several plays also including dragging characters in or out by their hair. It should also be noted that these example all come from extant plays; we’ve lost numerous scripts from the early modern theatre that would no doubt increase these numbers.

The first time I read The Bloody Banquet was while researching whether Titus Andronicus was truly a violent play in comparison to the work of the era, or whether such gruesome works were typical. In terms of body count, Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare’s bloodiest play; thirteen characters are killed. In many revenge plays, the body count tends to be around 6-8. Titus Andronicus’s acts of violence range from the common, such as stabbing, to the uncommon, such as cannibalism, but none of them is unique.

The early modern theatre contains other, more creative, acts of violence. Braining, for instance, occurs in four plays. In Tamburlaine Part One, Bajazeth “brains himself against the cage” and his wife then “runs against the Cage and brains herself.” In Seven Champions a figure “beats out his own brains.” Most cruelly, in Alphonsus of Germany “he dashes out the Child’s brains.” A personal favorite of mine is the curious ending of The Atheist’s Tragedy, in which D’Amville is preparing to execute Charlemont and Castabella but “as he raises up the ax, strikes out his own brains.”

In The Devil’s Charter, one of the dumb shows has Gismond enter “wounds gaping … holding a dagger fixed in his bleeding bosom.” In Selimus, the title character removes the eyes of Aga, orders his hands cut off, and then “Opens his bosome and puts them in.” When Aga returns blind and mutilated to his king Bajazet, he says “Witnesse the present that he sends to thee, / Open my bosome, there you shall it see.” The stage direction tells us “Mustaffa opens his bosome and takes out his hands.”

One of the most horrifying moments in Titus Andronicus is watching Tamora being fed her own sons baked into a pie. In Antonio’s Revenge by John Marston, Antonio points to a table of sweetmeats, saying:

Fall to, good Duke. O these are worthless cates.
You have no stomach to them. Look, look here:
Here lies a dish to feast thy father’s gorge.
Here’s flesh and blood which I am sure thou lovest.

Antonio then uncovers a dish containing the limbs of Julio, the Duke’s son.

The Bloody Banquet’s scene of cannibalism presents a twist on the theme of parents eating their children unknowingly. Instead the Young Queen must knowingly consume the flesh of her lover as punishment for her adultery. Armatrites, her tyrannical husband, says, “Thou shalt not die as long as this is meat, / Thou killed a buck with thou thyself shall eat.” The Queen confused asks, “Dear sir?” and the Tyrant repeats, “Here’e deer struck dead with thy own hand / Tis venison for thy own tooth.” Tymethes is drawn and quartered, and his body is hung up and displayed. When the usurped King of Lydia returns to the castle he remarks, “What horrid and inhuman spectacle is younger that presents itself to sight?” Fidelio responds “It seems three quarters of a man hung up.” The Bloody Banquet not only stages the act of cannibalism, but the text also suggests the body parts are placed within view of the characters and thus the audience as well.

Jessica Aimone and Darius McCall as the Queen and King of Lydia
photo by Claire Kimball

Perhaps the most horrifying characteristic of the human race is our propensity towards violence. One of the reasons I direct and produce early modern drama is because it confronts this ugliness head on, all the while doing so in a spectacularly theatrical way. When I first read the ending of The Bloody Banquet five years ago I knew it was a play I had to stage. I’m thrilled that our run at the 2015 Capital Fringe Festival was so popular that we are able to remount the production this weekend, August 20 – 22. Until Brave Spirits, the play hadn’t been professionally produced since the Restoration and we couldn’t be more pleased that we get to offer audiences four more chances to see this neglected work. I hope I’ll see you this weekend and at future productions–perhaps of some of the gruesome works mentioned above. 

Director's Notes: The Two Noble Kinsmen

Cross posted from Brave Spirits Theatre's blog.

The world of The Two Noble Kinsmen is one in which women are left without much choice. In the main plot line, two cousins and best friends, Arcite and Palamon, become enemies when they both fall in love with Emilia, Theseus’s sister-in-law. To stop them from fighting, Theseus tells Emilia to pick one to marry. When she refuses, he decrees that whichever of the two can win a contest of strength shall have Emilia as his prize. The fact that Emilia loves neither man doesn’t matter.

Emilia has not been treated kindly by male critics. In 1908, Tucker Brooke agreed with F.J. Furnivall’s unfavorable comparison of her to “a silly lady’s maid or shop girl, not knowing her own mind, up and down like a bucket in a well.” But I think any woman reading the play today recognizes that the problem isn’t that Emilia doesn’t know her own mind, it’s that Theseus doesn’t consider her mind important in solving the issue.

Such a situation is one that women today know all too well. Recently a video about catcalling, produced by Hollaback!, has gone viral, bringing attention to the harassment women face on a daily basis. Everyone I know who posted the video on Facebook had a man write comment after comment explaining to them why women shouldn’t be offended, why women shouldn’t be afraid, why women were overreacting. Multiple women chimed in to explain why such behavior was offensive and how it made them feel unsafe. Despite this, these particular men point-blank refused to reconsider their actions. One man said, “I will continue to say hello to pretty ladies that walk by me on the street.” Another remarked, “I will keep asking you to smile because your sadness will inevitably lead to someone else’s.” Our own minds didn’t matter.

At the end of The Two Noble Kinsmen, Theseus explains the action of the play by stating “Never Fortune / Did play a subtler game.” For him, the gods have fairly and justly brought about the troubling results of the plot. In this play, as in life, we may find Theseus’s summation unsatisfying.

Renaissance Slot: Dr. Faustus

Cross posted from Rogue Shakespeare's blog.

Monday, January 13th was the first day of our rehearsal process for our Renaissance show, Dr. Faustus. In an effort to mine what we can learn from early modern theatrical practices, we have a shortened rehearsal period, work from cue scripts, and have no director. I’m playing Dr. Faustus, which means I’ve had a daunting amount of lines to learn in preparation.

On our first day of rehearsal I felt the pressure and realized that I needed to be very careful about how I tax myself over the next two weeks. My cue script, which is double-spaced, is forty pages long. Jessica Schiermeister, our dramaturg, mentioned that the next largest cue script is Mephistophilis (Dane Leasure) at sixteen pages. It’s the kind of information that you don’t really want to know. Faustus is an incredibly daunting role.

But as I’m writing this blog post on Wednesday morning, that stress has dissipated. I feel great. Rather than being scary, the process for this production quickly became exciting. Every time I walk into our rehearsal space a new prop, costume, or puppet has seemingly appeared overnight. It’s so exciting to watch the creativity, ingenuity, and daring that the Rogues are putting into this production. And that, it turns out, is actually what the Renaissance production is about.

Dr. Faustus seemed to some of us a strange choice for this slot, given the time constraints. I specifically cautioned against it because of it not being an ensemble show in terms of line spread (ha ha joke’s on me). Other company members (and faculty) were nervous about the stage directions and the amount of spectacle the play requires. It turns out we were all wrong: Dr. Faustus is the perfect show for this company to do in the Renaissance slot. I think we perhaps we wrongly assume that the learning experience of a Renaissance-slot production comes from the shortened rehearsal period and the lack of a director. But I’ve discovered that those are actually least interesting parts of this experience. This slot is instead about having to come up with all the solutions ourselves. It’s about wondering whether we can pull something off and then just deciding to do it. We have attacked the challenges with gusto and are having a ball exploring new ideas for staging in the Blackfriars playhouse. In our reach-for-the-moon, color-outside-the-lines attitude, we have, I think, truly found the spirit of an early modern playing company. Our company’s greatest strength is our big ideas, and Dr. Faustus as a Renaissance-style production is perfectly suited to highlighting that strength.

The theatre-makers of the early modern stage were technically proficient and explorative. They made theatre in a time where audiences demanded an incredible rate of new plays. It seems only natural to assume that this inventiveness would have been applied to theatrical technology and staging. Indeed, I think scholars and practitioners are mischaracterizing the early modern theatre whenever it is described as minimalistic. I have no doubt that were Shakespeare’s company to be magiced to modern day London, and given the choice to perform in the Olivier or the Cottesloe, they would want the drum revolve.

Dr. Faustus is working out as a Renaissance production because of the way the play allows the work to be divided up among the company. Though I have the lion’s share of lines, but because of everyone else’s support and hard work, I don’t have to worry about anything else. It’s actually a great relief to realize that even with a forty-page cue script, a production does not rely on you. I have kind friends who have mentioned that they would love to see me play Faustus. But I’ve got to say, don’t come to this play for me. Come for the other eleven members of the company and our three “hired men” (MLitters Scott Campbell, Emma Patrick, and Ian Charles). Those fourteen people are making some incredible theatre, and I just get to enjoy the ride.

- See more at: http://actorscholar.com/content/renaissance-slot-dr-faustus#sthash.cKOKBK1N.dpuf

Naming in Richard II

Cross posted from Rogue Shakespeare's blog.

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

BLACKFRIARS CONFERENCE 2013 — THE END OF SHAKESPEARE’S VERSE?, PART 2

Cross-posted from the American Shakespeare Center's blog

Hi, I’m Charlene V. Smith and I’ll be taking over the live blogging from Molly for part 2 of The End of Shakespeare’s Verse?, from 10am-11am, specifically Giles Block’s section of the presentation.

While listening to the Patrick Spottiswoode’s introduction, it struck me that the word ‘end’ has several meanings within the question Giles Block and Abigail Rokison are asking. What is the end of Shakespeare’s verse, i.e., what is the purpose of Shakespeare’s verse? Where is the end of Shakespeare’s verse, i.e. what does lineation tell us about theatrical delivery? Is Shakespeare’s verse ending, i.e., are we losing Shakespeare’s verse in modern performance, or even, perhaps, should we lose Shakespeare’s verse in modern performance?

Block opens by admitting that it is difficult to describe to people what he does. Mark Rylance calls him, “the ear on the play.” Block will work with American Shakespeare Center actors René Thornton, Jr., Allison Glenzer, John Harrell, and Benjamin Curns to reveal what he does in the rehearsal room.

Block asks, what do we do with enjambments, when a thought runs over from one line of iambic pentameter into the next? He says there are three ways, using some example text from The Merchant of Venice.

1. with the punctuation: When I told you My state was nothing, I should then have told you That I was worse than nothing. Block notes that this is not how Shakespeare wrote the line.

2. a thought and a breath goes together, delivering the line in a single breath, without any pauses. Block notes that this doesn’t sound like spontaneous speech, like us coming up with words as we speak.

3. Block suggests following the form. We acknowledge there is a single thought, but it is expressed in three parts

When I told you

My state was nothing, I should then have told you

That I was worse than nothing.

He believes this replicates the way we speak and achieves clarity of expression, and also opens a window onto how the speaker is feeling. He argues that the more a speaker is feeling something, the more the speeches get enjambed.

In Macbeth, the enjambments aren’t necessarily associated with moments of high joy or sorrow, but just the way people are speaking all the time. As an example, John Harrell performs a Malcolm speech from 4.3 of Macbeth: “It is myself I mean.” Block points out that most of the lines do not have a punctuation mark at the end. This speech is about comparison. Macbeth and Malcolm. Black and pure as snow. Block asks Harrell to deliver again, following the verse structure more. Block feels that the line ending is never arbitrary, and can help bring greater emphasis to the first stress of the next line. Block asks for the speech a third time, using the “my” in the final line a bit more (“With my confineless harms.”). Block notes that he never wants to know what an actor is doing at the end of the line – he doesn’t call it a pause. Block notes that enjambment are a hallmark of an active mind when engaged in speaking.

The next example is “Cure her of that,” performed by Thornton, Jr. Block says that this speech has a different sound; the speaker’s mind is not busy formulating persuasive arguments. Instead we hear deep longing and Macbeth’s need to disburden himself of this knowledge. Blocks asks Thornton, Jr. to think about the sounds of the speech. We go from ‘m’ sounds to ‘r’ sounds to ‘s’ sounds: minister, mind, memory; raze, troubles, brain; some, sweet, cleanse, stuffed, bosom, stuff. Block says the m’s sound like longing, s’s sound like secrets, whispering. Using Block’s adjustments, Thornton, Jr. gives a moving reading of those lines.

Block says the problem with Macbeth is that we know it too well. We all could be saying these words along with the actors. Block says this is too bad; if only we could forget it, because he feels there is something about this play that makes it stand out. The original audience would have been less familiar with this story, unlike other Shakespeare plays many of which had a preceding theatrical version (Other early modern plays exist about Richard III, Henry V, King Lear, and Hamlet, for example). The play is actually quite weird and enigmatic. It takes until the seventh scene of the play before we hear the first major speech which says the things that haven’t been said up unto this point. Block characterizes this speech as exposition happening deep within the play.

Next Block works with Allison Glenzer on Lady Macbeth’s speech at the end of this same scene. In this speech we learn the back story. Macbeth has sworn to kill the king, which we don’t see during the play. They’ve talked about this and made a pact before the play begins. Blocks says this information helps everything fall into place. Lady Macbeth’s behavior makes sense. The vagueness of their previous conversations makes sense. Block says Macbeth is already guilty when the witches talk to him. The baby that is mentioned is the topic they never talk of, because it is too painful. Block asks Glenzer to make “time” and “place” sound different and to use the “know” more. He asks her to find little phrases which he characterizes as “pop-up thoughts.” He points out “whilst it was smiling in my face” as an example of this. Glenzer’s powerful performance is met by ‘ooo’s by the audience. Block gives Glenzer a couple more notes, and she performs the speech again. The dynamic result seems to leave the audience breathless.

Next Block returns to the top of this scene, to the “If it were done” speech. He has given the actors the speech broken up into thought units, which they read unit by unit. Block is interested by soliloquies and to whom they are spoken. Yes, they are spoken to the audience, but to which part? Block has a feeling that the early part of this speech isn’t for the groundlings. Block argues that Macbeth is saying the first lines to his non-present wife. Perhaps practicing for the conversation they planned to have later: “we will speak further.” The actors demonstrate, with Glenzer representing the absent Lady Macbeth. Harrell says this exercise has made him see this first line in a new light: “If it were done, WHEN ’tis done,” i.e. “if the leaves get raked… WHEN the leaves get raked.”

This is no time in Macbeth, that is what makes the story work, and that is why there is no early exposition: there is no time for it. Block suggests the speech shifts on “This even-handed Justice.” Now it is less about talking to Lady Macbeth; perhaps Macbeth is speaking to the gods, looking for answers. The actors continue working the speech in this manner. Curns makes a fascinating choice to take back to Lady Macbeth the line about being Duncan’s host. For the next step, Block asks where we should place Lady Macbeth since we can’t actually have her on stage. Block points out that there’s something about how the imagery moves upwards: heaven, angels, etc. He points that out and also asks the actors to use the intimacy of this space in their delivery.

In the final moments, Block looks at Macbeth’s speech “Within this hour.” In his example text, Block has marked all the pop-up ideas with parentheses. Curns reads the speech, leaving those marked thoughts out. The sense and story is still clear. Block notes that Macbeth has all these add-ons and it is in the add-ons where the character resides. Curns does the speech again, this time with the add-ons. Block lists two ways to do an add-on: either drop them down, or make them more important than the surrounding text.

BLACKFRIARS CONFERENCE 2013 — FOLGER DIGITAL TEXTS

Cross-posted from the American Shakespeare Center's blog

I’m Charlene V. Smith and I’m live blogging Saturday’s Lunch and Learn Session featuring a website demonstration by Michael Poston and Rebecca Niles of the Folger Digital Texts.

Niles opens the presentation by describing the basics of the Folger Digital Texts. FDT are XML-encoded versions of the Folger Shakespeare Library Editions. They are a free and reliable resource, professionally edited by Paul Werstine and Barbara Mowat. The XML infrastructure means that every word, space, and punctuation mark has its own identifier within the code. Currently this project has published online the play-texts of fifteen plays. They can be read online or copied and pasted for offline use. All of the source code is also available for download.

From the website you can download the code as well as documentation about how the code works. An audience members asks what the benefit of downloading the code would be, instead of the regular text. Niles explains that the code has information embedded which you can alter if you need to. For example, you could run a code that pulls out all of Romeo’s speeches.

While in the play menu section of the website, you can search through the text, make comparisons, or read an individual play. When you call up a play, the left side of the screen displays a table of contents, allowing for quick moving around. You can also skip to a particular act, scene, and line number. These texts are also coded with Through Line Numbering. Every navigation choice you make reloads a new URL. This feature is a powerful help, as you can save a URL to a particular line or speech. For example, here is Juliet’s most famous line. Niles notes, in response to audience questions, that they would like to move towards a more sophisticated search function. Because they were adding one text at a time, and thus there wasn’t much information to search through at first, such a search function wasn’t a high priority initially.

Poston next takes over the presentation to talk about the future of FDT and the implications of this coding project. Poston tells us about the F21 project, a project designed to enhance the EEBO coding of early modern drama in order to make hundreds of new plays readily available. He displays an example of Massacre at Paris. For this play, like many others, we don’t have a clean, edited text to start with, unlike the plays by Shakespeare. Poston has also been working on an API for FDT, which allows you to interact with the text on a single word basis, calling up information on whether there are alternate readings, where the word is located in a text, and who speaks the word. The API also can identify what characters are on stage during a particular line, and what characters are included in a particular stage direction. This information can be placed into chart form. This feature is currently a work in progress. The audience is excited by the possibilities for doubling charts this feature could have.

They are also developing textual notes which would display the Folger’s punctuation versus Folio punctuation, and other such textual variants. Poston tells the audience that they are still working on how to make this information accessible, while remaining a readable text. They also intend to create an annotation environment which can link information, sound, video, and pictures to specific words or moments in the text.

Poston and Niles discuss the issues and questions they’ve struggled with while developing FDT. Print allows you to be ambiguous in a way that coding does not. In coding the character is either onstage or he is offstage. Poston points out a moment in Shrew in which servants enter – Which servants? How many? Which servant is the one that Petruchio hits? Which servant is the first one to exit? Which servant is Nathaniel and which is Peter? How do you code ambiguity? Poston has come up with a decimal system that allows you to put in what you know, but leave in other possibilities. Messengers.x.1 could be the same as Messengers.x.2, but doesn’t have to be. Macbeth has 3 murders, but also moments where a murderer is non-specified. These would be coded as Murderers.1, Murderers.2, Murderers.3, and then Murderers.x, which could be either 1, 2, or 3.

This coding also allows for the creation of parts (cue scripts) that includes the pertinent stage directions. These are still a work in progress and unpolished. So though some of them are published to the internet, they are not yet readily available from the main webpage. They are also developing WIT scripts (for witness) that would display the scenes in which a certain character is p0resent.

The challenge they are facing is adding functionality to the website without being theatrically or textually prescriptive. 

BLACKFRIARS CONFERENCE 2013 — COLLOQUY SESSION XV: CRITICAL THEORY

 Cross-posted from the American Shakespeare Center's blog

Hello, Charlene V. Smith here again, live blogging Colloquy Session XV on Critical Theory. This session is co-chaired by Janna Segal and Donald Hedrick and the other participants are Matt Kozusko, Matt Davies, James Keegan, and Paul Menzer.

Segal opens the panel by introducing the panelists and noting that the specific topic of this panel is theoretical approaches to character and characterization in the Shakespearean canon.

James Keegan – “An Epilogue to Henry IV, Part 2: The Liminal Moment and the Actor-Character”

Keegan admits to theory fear upfront owing mostly to his experience as an actor. For this panel, Keegan continues his thoughts about the epilogue of 2 Henry IV, some of which many of us heard yesterday in a paper session. He describes the epilogue as a liminal moment between actor and character, but also liminal in space between the historical moment of the play and the moment of performance. Keegan grounds his discussion in the work of Gregory Currie who writes that film exerts “fictive dominance.” Keegan argues that a theatrical space like the Blackfriars allows for a fictive fluidity which is fuller and more gratifying for an audience than a situation in which the fiction is dominant. In the epilogue, character and actor exist at the same time to equal degrees.

Matt Kozusko

Kozusko notes that the word ‘character’ does more work than we typically think. The word is defined in multiple ways. Pointing to the paper session we just saw, Kozusko argues that Iago’s character is defined by responding to the audience, and in that way, he’s not actually changing. Kozusko argues that when we define Shakespeare’s characters, we are influenced by factors beyond Shakespeare himself. These characters are inflected with extra-Shakespearean influences and expectations that in turn become a part of the characters and how we read them. Keegan wonders about aware audiences versus unaware audiences, using the example of Falstaff’s fake death. Audiences in-the-know will read this moment with the knowledge that Falstaff is pretending to be dead. New audiences, however, react very differently, and may be honestly surprised when Falstaff stands back up.

Matt Davies – “Drawing Shakespearean characters in black and/or white: conflicting methodologies in the contemporary rehearsal room”

Davies finds that actors and directors are finding themselves adjudicating between competing conceptions of character in the rehearsal room. First, is character in its original, lexical meaning: the typeface on a page. Second, is the psychological realists who build inner life from the subtext. Davies notes that many practitioners are now trying to balance those two systems, particularly when performing Shakespeare. Drawing from his experience co-directing (with Doreen Bechtol) Pericles for the MLitt Shakespeare and Performance program, Davies looks at how we can use text and subtext in a way that will co-habit the early modern and the modern conceptions of character. He posits that maybe we should operate both systems concurrently in the rehearsal room, rather than blending them. Davies found noticeable differences in the ways students responded to the rehearsal process. Scott Campbell, who played Pericles, constructed his character from the line out, basing his work on rhetorical structuring. Amy Grubbs, who played Marina, began with a powerful super-objective which influenced the rest of her work. Davies notes that these two approaches actually fit the characters themselves, arguing that Marina has a much richer inner life than Pericles.

Janna Segal – “Whom love hath turned almost the wrong side out”: Exploring the Transversality of the Tragic Lovers in Othello

Segal’s paper looks at the relationship between Emilia, Desdemona, and Othello to demonstrate a theoretical model developed by Bryan Reynolds and others. Segal argues that the behaviors of these characters would have caused ruptures in the contemporary audience’s ideology. Shakespeare’s representation of amorous desire interrogated dominant conceptualizations of gender and sexuality. In another example, Segal argues that Jacquenetta and Don Armado are the most subversive characters of Love’s Labour’s Lost because they are the most hopeful, despite being types that aren’t supposed to end up together. Segal points out that the usefulness of this theory is that it gives characters more agency than they are usually thought of to have, an idea which actors can directly apply to the rehearsal room.

Paul Menzer – The 4th Unity

Menzer opens by defining theory as a way of organizing and answering questions. Theory is not something to be afraid of, but something of which to be aware. Over the past couple of years, Menzer has been interested in AC Bradley who haunts all questions of Shakespearean character. Bradley’s work is the most discredited scholarly work of the 20th century, but at the same time has a major influence within the rehearsal room. Menzer’s working thesis is that character is a system of organization. Character is the 4th unity (next to time, place, and action); it binds together the many elements of performance, such as costumes, properties, architecture, etc. Characters are effects created by a range of distributed meanings, rather than an agent that causes things to happen. Individual character is a mystification of theatrical effect and collaboration. It takes a lot of people to make a person on the stage.

Don Hedrick – “Fun: the Shakespearean Actor-Character and Entertainment Value”

Hendrick’s paper responds in a way to Menzer’s paper, asking what happens when that organizing principle refuses to organize? Following our focus on Falstaff, Hendrick points to his moment of playing dead as anti-theatrical: we don’t pay to watch someone sleep on stage. Hendrick is interested in the entertainment value of character and how they create multiple pleasures for the audience. How do they make the most return in the least amount of time, a successful element of wooing scenes of Lady Anne in Richard III and Katherine in Henry V? 

BLACKFRIARS CONFERENCE 2013 — PAPER SESSION VII

Cross-posted from the American Shakespeare Center's blog

Hello, I’m Charlene V. Smith and I’ll be live blogging Paper Session VII, running from 1:00pm to 2:15pm on Friday, October 25. The moderator for this panel is Peggy O’Brien from the Folger Shakespeare Library. The panelists are joined by American Shakespeare actors Tracie Thomason, Dylan Paul, John Harrell, Benjamin Curns, and Allison Glenzer, and Whitney Egbert from the Shakespeare Forum.

Roslyn Knutson, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Everything is interesting about the lost play, ‘Gowrie’

Knutson’s first point is simple: lost plays should be a serious part of the conversation in early modern scholarship. Her paper today is specifically on ‘Gowrie‘. John Chamberlain describes ‘Gowrie’ as a tragedy, twice represented by the King’s Players, and refers to displeasure over the play due to it’s presentation of a living prince on the stage. Our knowledge of the plot of this lost play comes from the pamphlet Gowrie’s Conspiracy which describes an assassination plot on 5th August 1600 involving James VI of Scotland. During ‘Gowrie’s’ composition, London playhouses were closed due to the plague. The King’s Players may have considered the Globe, due to open in the fall, and the court as possible playing spaces for this piece. But Knutson wonders why would the newly minted King’s Men chose this risky play in 1604? The likeliest motive is a simple one: they thought the King would be flattered.

Sybille Bruun, The Shakespeare Forum, You That Way, We This Way – Letters and Possibilities in Love’s Labour’s Lost

Bruun, who directed Love’s Labour’s Lost recently in New York, investigates how a textual ambiguity has shaped the character of Costard. Bruun directed this play recently in New York. In rehearsals, the actor playing Costard asked her questions about why he does what he does. In act four, Costard delivers two letters, one from Berowne to Rosalind, and one from Don Armado to Jaquenetta. He misdelivers these letters. Why? If he can’t read, he may misdeliver the letters accidentally. He may also be able to judge the superscripts and choses to misdeliver them. Bruun also points out that Armado’s letter may have been folded differently, allowing Costard to tell the difference. One again, he could purposely give the wrong letter. Bruun, with the help of actors Curns, Glenzer, and Egbert, shows that the Princess could hand the letter to Rosalind or back to Costard after discover that the letter isn’t for Rosalind. If Costard doesn’t get the letter back, he purposely choses to give the remaining, wrong letter to Jaquenetta. This choice gives Costard agency and perhaps even some maliciousness, traits we don’t typically associate with this character. This question hinges on the Princess’ line, “Put up this; twill be thine another day.” Bruun notes that editorial tradition closes down the possibilities of this moment by noting that the Princess is giving the letter to Rosalind. While talking to actors and directors who had worked on this play in the past, Bruun discovered that it hadn’t occurred to them that there was another choice to back beyond what the edited text told them was happening in this moment. Bruun says we need a greater awareness of how the communities of academia and theatre interact with each other, and to realize that we don’t need to pigeonhole ourselves or others.

Andrew Blasenak, Emory and Henry College, “I would you were as I would have you be”: Negotiation of Character with/for/by an Interactive Audience

While in the modern theatre, audiences assume characters are set from performance to performance, at early modern re-creation theatres, audience interaction has the possibility of changing performance and character. Blasenak argues that character arises from the interaction of actor and audience and the reaction of the audience to the actor. In interviews with Blasenak, actors didn’t speak of finding character in rehearsal, but on finding “what works.” “What works” is hard to define; it is a sense of something clicking, of causing an audience’s heightened attention. The uncertainty of audience response makes acting in this style like windsurfing, according to one Globe actor. Jim Warren of the American Shakespeare Center calls this form of theatre, “improvising with a script.” Blasenak discusses some examples of audience informing character. The actor who played Edmund in a recent RSC tour of King Lear told Blasenak that he would adjust his cockiness and smoothness based on audience response. Benjamin Curns of the American Shakespeare notes that sometimes his speeches as Henry VIII were met with boos, feeding his character’s need to get the audience on his side. Blasenak next demonstrates, with the help of Curns, with Iago’s “What’s he that says I play the villain?” The first time through, we as the audience are directed to cheer and applaud Iago. The second time, we are asked to give resistance. Curns takes the audience’s attitude and changes the character and speech in response.

Hsiang-Chun Chu, National Changhua University of Education, From Cunning Fox to Libidinous Swine: Imposture and Sexual Sadism in the Wooing Scenes of Volpone

This paper discusses the wooing episodes between Volpone and Celia. Volpone is mostly confined to his bed as an old and sick man. In contrast, Volpone acquires much more energy and agency when he is cast as a lover. Volpone disguises himself as a mountebank in order to see Celia, allowing him to demonstrate his persuasive language skills in a way he is not able to when playing the sick man. In the second part of her paper, Chu looks at the sexual transaction between Volpone, Celia, and Corvino. Corvino is a possessive husband, yet Volpone convinces him to give Celia as a gift in order to secure a place in Volpone’s will. No matter how much identification an audience may have felt with Volpone, this sympathy evaporates as Volpone shifts into a lecherous swine in his attempt to win Celia.

Kate Moncrief, Washington College, “And are by child with me”: The Performance of Pregnancy in Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well 

In Alls Wells that Ends Well, Helena’s body is used as evidence that she has completed the tasks Bertram set before her, particularly that she is pregnant. Moncrief points out that Helena re-interprets Bertram’s challenges. He asks her to show a child; she instead is with child. The play’s timeline is not clear – how much time has passed since the bed trick? The play offers no physical description of Helena at this moment, leaving practitioners to decide just how pregnant Helena is. Moncrief next explores, with the help of actors Thomason, Paul, and Harrell, how this pregnancy can be performed: gestures, prosthetics, etc. In version 1 Thomason does not wear a pregnancy bump, forcing Bertram and the audience to rely on her word that she is pregnant. Paul hits the if in his line, “If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly,” expressing his doubt. The actors perform the scene again, with Paul believing the pregnancy and kissing Helena. Next, Thomason puts on the pregnancy bump and the actors play the scene twice again, one with Paul expressing doubt as Bertram and once with him truly believing her. Moncrief polls the audience, who seem to prefer the version without the pregnancy bump.

Nick Hutchison and Donald Jellerson, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art/Globe Theatre, Feste and the Performance of Character

In 2011, Hutchison directed Twelfth Night in Memphis, with Jellerson playing Feste. In this paper, with the help of Allison Glenzer, they share the discoveries they found while rehearsing. They found two questions they explored: why doesn’t Feste care for Cesario, and what is the something he care for (“Not so, sir, I do care for something; but in my conscience, sir, I do not care for you”)? Hutchison admits that after decades of dismissing character criticism, asking what a character wants can seem misguided or passé. Hutchison and Jellerson wish to demonstrate how expanding our understanding of character can involve both practitioners and literary critics. Hutchinson and Jellerson quote from a book defining character that Shakespeare might have read as a student, revealing how Shakespeare may have been trained to think of character and what conclusions we can draw from this knowledge. The book asks writers to imagine their characters in three parts: a past, present, and future, which gives them, according to Hutchison, the illusion of enduring consciousness and psychological depth for which we value Shakespeare. Hutchison suggests that possibly Feste figures out that Cesario is a woman, and is concerned that Olivia will get hurt. This choice can be reflected in the final scene based on when Feste is quoting Malvolio and when he is speaking directly to Olivia, as the punctuation is different in different versions of the text.

BLACKFRIARS CONFERENCE 2013 — KEYNOTE RUSS MCDONALD

Cross-posted from the American Shakespeare Center's blog

Hello, I’m Charlene V. Smith and I’ll be live blogging Russ McDonald’s keynote: Shakespeare and the History of the Bookish.

McDonald opens by admitting a kind of fatigue evident in his title, using the work “bookish,” and confesses that today he is taking on the role of “Mr. Fussy” and complaining about both bibliography and performance, at the risk of offending everyone in this room.

1. Doubting the Text

Recent books and articles have over-filled the hole found in Shakespeare studies twenty years ago: the book trade and the culture of early modern print. In this section of his paper, McDonald questions the supremacy this topic currently has in Shakespeare studies. McDonald wishes to cast a skeptical eye on some of this scholarship and some of its “dubious orthodoxy.” Though scholars have paid much attention to the book, they have paid little attention to the text. McDonald confesses to being irritated for two decades by the well-known and frequently cited essay, The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text by de Grazia and Stallybrass. The arguments in this essay have achieved and maintain importance in our field, shattering textual certainties. In their essay, de Grazia and Stallybrass argue that “word,” “work,” “character,” and “author” are vexed terms. McDonald points out that these words are changeable and complex, but not incomprehensible. He warns that we must not allow the history of the book to erase the text itself.

2. Cutting the Text

McDonald next objects to the despotism of modern directors; in particular, the way they cut the text. Recent productions of  A Midsummer Night’s Dream  have lacked wonder and a sense of transfiguration, partially caused by the excising of some of McDonald’s favorite speeches. Next McDonald points to the lack of Queen Margaret in Mark Rylance’s current production of Richard III, running in New York. In 2012, the BBC announced the production of The Hollow Crown. While initially excited by the idea and the line up of actors and directors, McDonald views the resulting TV movies as acts of vandalism. McDonald feels the cutting was too ideological, such as the lack of references in Richard II to the king’s guilt in in the Duke of Gloucester’s murder. McDonald feels the most damaged play in this series was Henry IV, part 2. This long and leisurely work of 3300 lines was reduced to 1 hour and 52 minutes. A colleague of McDonald’s pointed out, “It’s a pity the BBC didn’t make this series for the people who would watch it, instead making it for those who won’t watch it anyway.”

3. Reading the Text

McDonald asserts the importance of reading the text in order to experience scenes which you wouldn’t see on the stage. Directors frequently cut scenes that do not advance the plot. If they seem to have no function, McDonald points out, they must have a function. Shakespeare had a reason for including these scenes, which often add to the texture of the play. McDonald then discusses 4.3 of Coriolanus, a frequently cut scene between a Roman and a Volsce, two characters we haven’t seen before and won’t see again. McDonald argues that the scene is thematically rich, especially in fire and heat imagery. McDonald also looks at 3.1 of The Winter’s Tale, a scene, again, with two characters we haven’t seen before: Cleomenes and Dion. According to McDonald, this scene sets up the possibility of magic and establishes the oracle of Apollo as something special. The two characters feel diminished, “I was nothing,” in the wake of their experience, an idea that stands in direct contrast to Leontes’ hubris. These lost scenes give depth, layers, and texture to a play.

Coda

McDonald ends by arguing for disciplinary balance: an awareness of what others in the field are doing. He promotes the value of pluralism: page and stage, book and text. McDonald praises George Walton Williams, the honoree of this conference, for always maintaining this balance in his teaching.

BLACKFRIARS CONFERENCE 2013 — COLLOQUY SESSION I: STAGING CHOICES

 Cross-posted from the American Shakespeare Center's blog

Greetings: Charlene V. Smith here, live blogging from the Tyson Center, Colloquy Session I: Staging Choices, which runs from 2:30pm to 3:45pm. Jemma Levy is the chair for this session and the presenters are Matthew Carter, Annette Drew-Bear, Andrew Harvey, Donald Hedrick, Claire Huber, Claire Kimball, and Angelina LaBarre.

This colloquy is about staging choices; Levy points out that the papers are eclectic, dealing with choices from a number of different angles.

Carter’s paper is about the use of weapons as indicators of characters in Romeo and Juliet, specifically looking at outsiderness and ethnicity. His argument is that since modern audience will no longer recognize the ethnicity attached to stage combat and weaponry, we need to identify these differences in other ways, possibly through costume. Levy asks how using costume to indicate ethnicity is different from what already happens through costume design. Carter suggests that costume designers may need to look more into combat and weapon based visual signifiers. Spanish style fighting was cut-centric instead of stab-centric, for example. Another example: Capulet calls for his long sword, implying an older style of fighting, which an early modern audience would have recognized as inappropriate for the fight. The participants discuss what information an audience may or may not recognize through modern or early modern weapons. Carter says he is convinced that a modern audience is more finely tuned to costume design than weaponry technology.

LaBarre’s paper explores the question of stage management in the early modern theatre through her experience as a member of MBC’s MFA in Shakespeare and Performance 2012-2013 company, Roving Shakespeare. She investigates different terms that were present during the early modern era that may have been equivalent to a modern day stage manager and the responsibilities of these positions. For example, medieval prompters would be placed in the center-front of the stage and would prompt not only lines, but also movements with the use of a guiding stick. Later the stage manager domain shifts to backstage due to greater spectacle and increased technology. Levy points out even today a stage manager’s duties can vary greatly from production to production and director to director, musing that the shifts in terms and definitions historically continue for that position to this day. Hedrick asks about how the hierarchy of these positions have shifted over time. LaBarre points out that the high status of the book keeper in the early modern theatre stems partially from the fact that the book keeper had access to the play’s full text.

Drew-Bear wrote on the staging of evil in Lust’s Dominion (possibly written by Thomas Dekker). Drew-Bear refers to the character of the machiavellian Moor (Eleazar) as a playwright, and LaBarre, connecting to her paper, suggests that he might actually be more of a book keeper. Drew-Bear’s paper explores the metatheatricality of Eleazar and his text. Lust’s Dominion has a play-within in which Eleazar sets up the staging and tells the actors what to do in a pseudo-rehearsal. Drew-Bear points out that Eleazar is quite self-conscious in his use of theatrical terms. Levy asks whether there is an implication that Eleazar is performing the role of villain, as opposed to actually being a villain. Drew-Bear thinks it is more accurate that Eleazar is revealing in the role of villain as opposed to suggesting that he is, at heart, someone else.

Kimball’s paper argues that we should re-embrace The Bloody Banquet as a prime example of Jacobean revenge drama and identifies elements in the play that would be appealing to a modern audience. Kimball is fascinated by the fact that this play contains so many theatrical elements and yet modern companies are unfamiliar or uninterested in this play. She loves both the gore and violence, but also the number of staging repetitions that are set up in the play. For example, the play contains a pre-banquet in addition to the titular banquet. Kimball says part of the viability of the play can be found in the title. An audience is expecting to see a bloody banquet, an expectation which is frustrated by the inclusion of a first banquet that isn’t the bloody one. Carter asks how Kimball would recommend situating this play to make it marketable. Kimball suggests linking it with other violent or Jacobean pieces such as Titus Andronicus or The Duchess of Malfi. (As possibly the only person in this room other than Kimball to have read this play, I heartily support her recommendation to stage it!)

Harvey’s paper is on Julius Caesar, arguing that Brutus exemplifies Aristotle’s definition of the Noble Man and is the moral center of the play. With that line of thought, Caesar’s ghost cannot be a manifestation of Brutus’ guilty conscience. Levy asks what journey this leaves the actor playing Brutus and Harvey says he sees the character as static and as one that doesn’t have a journey. As a staging choice, Harvey suggests having Caesar’s ghost come from the trap, indicating to an audience that he is a malevolent spirit.

Hedrick’s paper looks at Henry V’s wooing scene with Katherine as part of a larger work on the arousal of monarchs in history plays. Hendrick questions how arousal might be played. He provides a scale of options: 1. Do nothing physically, using only the language of love. 2. A la Laurence Olivier, saddle up close to your acting partner. 3. Monty Python approach, with a wink wink, nudge nudge to the audience or let the other actors react to or point out the arousal. 4. the Lysistrata method. Hendrick points out that James was against the use of codpieces in costumes. He asks how we point out the possible subversiveness / comic effect of an aroused monarch for a modern audience? LaBarre suggests that both comedy and violence lives in all these choices. Levy asks at what point would an audience member be removed from the play and miss moments as they process a large prosthetic or a naked appendage. Carter points out that the Princess in Henry V is body-centric while learning English, which might suggest something about how she would react to a possible erection.

Male Warriors with Female Bodies

Cross posted from Rogue Shakespeare's blog. Co-written with Kelly Elliott and Cyndi Kimmel.

Besides being men, these characters are also members of a military unit, which additionally affects both physicality and psychology. Not only are there a lot of stereotypes in our culture regarding the ways in which men in the military behave, the military experience is one so far removed from our own, it is rather easy to fall into these stereotypes as a shortcut for understanding. We each had to conduct our own research into what it meant for each of our characters to be a fighter. Our director shared a TED talk with us from filmmaker Deborah Scranton, where she discusses her documentary The War Tapes. While the clips revealed the visuals the soldiers encounter in a war zone, the commentary drove home the complicated controversy soldiers often find themselves navigating. Where does one find morality in war? Is the good soldiers can do overshadowed by the more appealing sensationalism of horrid conditions, such as those practiced at Abu Ghraib? Can any amount of good make up for or balance issues of murder, torture, and sexual assault? Malcolm tests Macduff’s loyalty and morality by claiming that he will be a worse tyrant than Macbeth. Macduff has to decide how far he is willing to go to stop Macbeth. When stopping evil, how much evil is permissible in return?

Continue reading at: http://actorscholar.com/content/male-warriors-female-bodies#sthash.YV70ajDA.dpuf

A Company of Rogues

Cross posted from Rogue Shakespeare's blog. Co-written with Melissa Huggins.

One of the most important decisions we had to make during our May term classes was what to name our MFA company. This single decision was the one that took the longest. How do we sum up who we are and the kind of theatre we are making in a short, easy-to-remember name? This discussion went on for days (even weeks) until finally being decided in an exciting pressure-cooker burst of energy. At a single moment, we all seemed to feel we had talked enough and we were just going to call it and be done: Rogue Shakespeare.

Up until that point, we had been through a whole host of possibilities. Though I think most of us are pretty happy with our final choice, many of us still look back fondly on some of the previous possibilities.

Continue reading at: http://actorscholar.com/content/company-rogues#sthash.7fviu22m.dpuf

Internship at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Cross-posted from Rogue Shakespeare's Blog:

I have just returned from spending two weeks in beautiful Ashland, Oregon, where I interned in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s literary office. I was surrounded by mountains, delicious chocolate, and not a spot of rain. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is an incredible place to visit and to intern. The company has grown from a temporary summer Shakespeare festival, performing for an audience of 500, to the largest professional regional repertory theatres in the United States. Today OSF performs 11 plays on three stages over a eight-month season. In 2012, their total attendance was nearly 400,000. While I was there, nine shows were running, and a tenth held its first preview. I saw Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cymbeline, The Taming of the Shrew, and King Lear. I saw modern classics: My Fair Lady and A Streetcar Named Desire. And I saw new works: The Heart of Robin Hood, The Unfortunates, The Liquid Plain, and The Tenth Muse, these latter three works receiving their world premiers at OSF. 

While I was in Ashland, I visited with Scott Kaiser, Director of Company Development. Scott is the author of two wonderful books, Mastering Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s Wordcraft. I was fortunate to first meet him in 2011 at the Blackfriars Conference in Staunton. Scott was in the artistic staff that had just finished up casting the 2014-2015 season. I asked him how the company handled casting people in multiple roles over three stages, and he said while it used to involve paper, pencils, and a lot of erasing, over the years OSF has internally developed their own computer software that makes the process easier. The dates for all eleven productions are fed into the software, and then they can tell the computer that they’ve cast a certain person in one show and the computer can then tell them the other plays for which that person would be available. It’s still an extremely complicated process, because not only to they have to cast all the roles, but they also have to cast understudies. And with such a long season, these understudies are likely to perform. I saw at least seven understudies in the two weeks I as there, and all performed well. 

During my stay, the literary office, under the direction of Lue Douthit, was already preparing for next year’s season, which starts rehearsals in January. Dramaturgs were preparing scripts for directors to be able to start developing their cuts and visions, and scheduling initial meetings with directors and designers. Using Adobe InDesign, I helped put together what OSF calls a “side-by-side” for The Two Gentlemen of Verona. This script displayed the texts of the 1623 Folio alongside a modern edited edition, and the performance scripts from the last two productions at OSF. 

Having studied the script, and also having worked on this play previously in my career, I was able to sit down with Lue one day to assist in the examination of what she called “play math.” We looked at the structure of Two Gents, asking questions like: Where do the scenes take place? Is there a pattern to interior and exterior or public versus private? What are the patterns? The first half of the play bounces between Verona and Milan. But in the second half, Verona disappears as a location, and instead the action moves between Milan and the forest. Lue told me she has a theory that somewhere between 58-63% of the way through a Shakespeare play is where the major action occurs, and around where the intermission should take place. By counting up the lines we discovered that what happens at this point in Two Gents is the banishment of Valentine from Milan. The pattern of the play is clear: Valentine and Proteus are separated. Proteus follows. Proteus is thus separated from Julia. Julia follows. Valentine and Proteus are reunited, only to be separated again by Valentine’s banishment. That also separates Valentine and Silvia. Silvia follows. Proteus follows. Julia follows. Everyone is reunited in the forest. 

Structurally, the play sets up Proteus and Valentine as the primary relationship. They are the first two characters we meet, and the first thing that happens is we see them physically separated. Once they are physically reunited, they are then emotionally separated due to Proteus’ betrayal. Therefore theirs is there final reconciliation towards which the play is leading. The previous two productions at OSF had fascinatingly changed the order of events in the final scene so that the final moments the audience sees, and the final reconciliation, is that between Proteus and Julia. All choices are legitimate, but this one clearly changes the structural DNA of the play, for good or bad. Perhaps these directors were attempting to make the end more palatable or more romantic, and as a result the final line of these productions went to Julia. Again, a fascinating shift, considering the play as it stands makes silent women of both Silvia and Julia in its final scene. 

The result of working on these projects is that I now have some new tools for analyzing Shakespeare's texts. I look forward to applying these ideas and questions to the five plays Rogue Shakespeare is producing this year. Thanks for having me OSF, I had a wonderful time!

See more at: http://actorscholar.com/content/internship-oregon-shakespeare-festival#sthash.knEe8i1y.dpuf