A new production of the venerable tragedy Romeo and Juliet is going the all-male route. This has come up in past blogs and is hardly a new concept. The drill is that it is often tied to the idea of recreating the way it was performed in Shakespeare’s time. The complex truth is that the idea of men dressed as women is rarely as simple as it seems on paper. Despite even the best of intentions, there is always the potential for the entire effort to turn into To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.

According to this review, this production has avoided that trap. In a clever conceit, the opening narration is performed by the entire cast, including the men who play female characters. All of the men appear without wigs as if to acknowledge to the audience the artifice about to be employed. Yet, strikingly, the reviewer was more taken with Juliet than with Romeo. Indeed, the actor playing Juliet was praised for making the character girlish, vulnerable, and charming. Less enthusiastic was the response to Romeo, who in this production is played rather less sympathetically than usual. It’s ironic that the production so well executes the cross-gendered casting yet fails to realize the key trait to the title male character. If Romeo isn’t all that into Juliet (whether she’s played by a man or a woman), how much is an audience supposed to care about their thwarted love affair?

Titling an article “When Shakespeare Rambles” takes guts. After all Shakespeare aficionados and scholars devote hours of time and energy to Will’s words. In fact, many argue over which words he wrote, which versions of his plays are the “true” ones, and how much (if any) of his text should be cut in performance. Fortunately, the author of this item acknowledges early on that his title is mainly an attention-grabber.

The bulk of the piece deals with lines in Shakespeare that are longer than the standard iambic pentameter for which he is so well known. In some cases, the issue is solved by contractions: an apostrophe is placed where a portion of word would normally appear in order to make the meter work properly.

Yet, as this author points out, there are some non-contracted lines that run beyond the ten beats. For this writer, the issue is not a matter of the text’s integrity (i.e. whether or not Shakespeare wrote these aberrant lines is touched upon, but does not represent the primary focus). Instead, he approaches the problem from the actor’s point of view. Metered dialogue is always challenging for any performer, particularly when versified. Some actors try to work against the meter to make it sound natural, while others opt punch the poetry. For those who fall somewhere in between these two approaches, irregular lines are a problem. It interrupts the flow of the dialogue (even if purposefully) and leaves the actor with a choice: try to rush it to make it sound more metric, or let its irregularity stand for all to hear. So, Bard Blog readers, what do you think is the best solution?

A recent radio broadcast (the transcript of which is available online) highlighted the unique and impressive career of Jessica Tandy. Although she became famous for playing cute-feisty old ladies in her later years, Tandy’s stage career was far more extensive, including a full roster of Shakespearean performances opposite some of the great actors of the twentieth century.

Tandy, who passed away nearly fifteen years ago, won an Academy Award at the age of 80. She was often written about as the opposite of an overnight success. Her most substantial film roles came at the end of her life, despite her lengthy contribution to the stage world, particularly in performances opposite her actor-husband, Hume Cronyn. After playing the lead in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway in the late 1940’s, she was famously passed over for Vivien Leigh, who was a bigger name in the film industry.

Despite these setbacks (and an ongoing battle with stage fright), Tandy worked assiduously in the theatre. She performed in many Shakespearean plays, most notably as Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, a role she played while only in her early forties. Tandy’s maturity often resulted in her playing mothers and other characters older than her own age. In that light, perhaps it makes sense that she achieved her greatest fame and acclaim in her twilight years. On stage and in film, Miss Tandy possessed a grace and dignity that always seemed well beyond her years.

On the heels of comparing Shakespearean theatre to a kind of athletic event comes news of a summer program that takes the idea one step further. In this program, students participate in a kind of Shakespearean boot camp in which they get the chance to perform scenes and participate in other workshops, all leading up to the big finale, which this year is a production of Antony and Cleopatra. Before that culmination, the students work anywhere from fifteen to eighteen hours per day learning their craft and preparing for performances. This intense approach made me think whether some kind of suffering is required as a rite of passage in Shakespearean theatre.

Before anyone makes it to, say, The Globe, they typically build up their resumes in smaller venues, some of which require them to do more than act. In a sense, actors (Shakespearean or otherwise) must learn who they are, and hardcore training environments like this allow them to do so. Still, there is the sense that physical duress is part of the recipe. As a case in point, one student ended up on crutches after an armadillo-related accident. I am not making this up. Let’s go ahead and add “injury involving armadillo” to the list of phrases we (a) never thought we’d hear and (b) never would associate with Shakespeare.

Maybe the trial-by-fire theme isn’t solely applicable to Shakespeare or acting. Perhaps, as a whole, we respect people more if they achieve something under duress. Perhaps that’s why we hold instant celebrities in such contempt. After all, how many of those celebutantes have armadillo wounds?

It’s no secret that film and television actors often return to the stage in order to work on their craft or simply recapture the experience of working in front of a live audience. Shakespearean productions are particularly alluring because of the perceived credibility boost they give said actors. Gone is the stigma attached to doing stage work. The hierarchy used to be film, television, and then stage work. Now actors move easily among all three forms based on where the interesting projects lie.

The city of Boston has seen a flood of actors from the still-booming cable series pool arrive in Beantown to perform Shakespeare in Boston Common. A few years ago, Jeffrey Donovan of the hit series, Burn Notice, gave Hamlet a shot. This summer, audiences will be able to catch Frederick Weller of the new (and popular) show, In Plain Sight. While some actors might veer toward the tragedies because of the implied gravitas (like Donovan in Hamlet), Weller will be tackling one of the male leads in the comedy As You Like It.

Weller has the added benefit of being relatively new to mainstream audiences. While he has worked steadily in film, television, and on stage, he is the type of actor audiences are most likely to recognize by face rather than by name. The benefit of this is fans can assess his work in Shakespeare on its own merits, without any tabloid tales cluttering their viewpoints. All of that might change, however, if In Plain Sight continues on for numerous seasons.

I have always been a movie buff, from the time I was a little kid. I remember my mom taking me to see Disney’s Robin Hood at the theater (you know, the one where Robin Hood and Marian are foxes, and Prince John is a thumb-sucking lion…PJ? PJ! Oh, I like that…Hiss, put it on my luggage!). And I remember going to my first drive-in movie with my brother - Young Frankenstein.  Probably not the best movie for a 6-year-old to watch - I believe a lot of the humor was lost on me until later years!

But movies have always been important to me and played a big part in my life…especially historical epics!  Oh, my…that year that both Braveheart and Rob Roy came out?!?!  I thought I’d died and gone to historical cinema heaven! And, of course, being a huge Shakespeare/Elizabethan buff, I adore movies like Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love.

But what on earth does this have to do with Staging Shakespeare? Well, one thing that has been very helpful, not only to my cast but also to the students in my English classes, is to teach Shakespeare’s plays utilizing good film versions of the plays. Of course, when I teach Henry V to my 8th graders, we watch the Branagh film - read one act, watch the act; read the next act, watch that act, etc. When I teach Hamlet, we watch bits of both the Gibson and the Branagh films, and when I teach Macbeth, I’ve found that I prefer the BBC version of the play with Nicol Williamson (remember him as Merlin in Excalibur?) over the Ian McKellen/Judi Dench play, although I like to show scenes from both. (Speaking of Excalibur - Here’s some trivia for you - Cherie Lunghi, who played Guenevere, also did a fabulous Beatrice in the BBC’s Much Ado About Nothing! Kind of cool that two Excalibur cast members also did some mean Shakespeare!)

So back in May and June, when the weather here was icky and we couldn’t start rehearsing outside, our cast spent a great deal of time working on the text - reading parts aloud; figuring out what various words and phrases meant; determining what their characters might be thinking and feeling at any given moment. Once we were finished, we would watch whatever scenes we had worked on that day from the BBC version of Shrew, with John Cleese as Petruchio. Talk about a HOOT! John Cleese is just a great actor anyway, but seeing him come in for his wedding to Katharina, dressed in some hideous burlap-type vest, no shirt on underneath, but an enormous yellow sunflower stuck to the vest…and a hat with the longest feathers sticking out in front of it…I could go on…I won’t…except to mention that Grumio had some weird face painted on his bare belly, under a very similar ensemble as that of Petruchio’s! The kids loved it, and they saw some really outstanding acting in the process. We also watched the Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor film version, which is such an enjoyable movie, especially when you consider that Burton and Taylor were married at the time they made the movie…it definitely created quite the dynamic for their performances!

Using film versions of the plays seems almost like a no-brainer, really. In this day and age of audio and visual technology, why wouldn’t a teacher or director want to use film to help their students really get into Shakespeare? The only downside I can see is that you don’t ever want your actors to feel like they have to play a part exactly like some famous actor did it. I was hesitant about showing the Branagh Much Ado last year, simply because I didn’t want anyone to feel like there was only one way to play these characters. But I also showed them the BBC version (the one with Cherie Lunghi as Beatrice) in order to demonstrate that there are definitely different ways of approaching the characters, the scenery, the costumes, the everything of putting together a stage production…as long as you don’t deviate from Shakespeare’s text!

Just a suggestion, too, concerning those BBC plays - If you look for them on Amazon or other commercial websites, you’ll probably only find them available to purchase as sets - all of the comedies, all of the histories, or even all 37 plays in one huge bundle. If you are interested in buying them individually, go to the Folger Library website - www.folger.edu - and you can purchase them through their gift shop, one at a time. I’ve slowly been building my collection this way, purchasing the ones I need for school or for whatever plays I am considering directing in the future.

And finally…a little ritual that I started last summer as our production neared completion and we were almost to Opening Night. When I start to worry about the play coming together, actors learning their lines, costumes being finished, sets being painted, but I know I’ve done everything I can do and it’s up to the kids, I pop in my copy of Shakespeare in Love.  If I have time, I’ll watch the whole film, but sometimes I’m just too tired to stay up and watch it after my children are in bed, so instead, I will skip to the scene where Will’s Romeo and Juliet is about to start.  Henslowe’s tailor, playing the Chorus, is stuttering backstage, and Will looks like he would rather slit his wrists than let the play go on.  Then the Chorus gets pushed out onto the stage, and it almost appears that he won’t be able to get the words out…but suddenly, his voice is perfect, exclaiming, “Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our scene….” I absolutely love that entire part of the movie, where they show what it might have been like the very first time R&J was on the stage…except, of course, where a gorgeous Gwyneth Paltrow saves the day! And then, when the play is over, and the audience just sits there, like they didn’t know what hit them…until finally, thunderous applause and ovations! Ah, yes…it helps me sleep better that night!

Despite its title, if you are someone who dislikes Shakespeare (and, by the way, shame on you), you most likely still won’t enjoy the new production of Paul Rudnick’s I Hate Hamlet. In fact, you sort of have to love the play to appreciate its storyline. The set-up is simple, an actor who hates Hamlet (because it’s an impossible part to live up to) finds himself playing the role. To make matters worse, he’s not doing a very good job. Add to that some personal crises, and you have the smorgasbord of suffering we expect from comic protagonists. The solution comes when the actor is haunted by the ghost of John Barrymore. I’m sure you can probably guess how it ends.

The inclusion of Barrymore is a novel twist, because there are tons of twentieth-century actors who have put their imprint upon the role of the melancholy Dane. When you think about it, who hasn’t tried their hand at the part? Therein is the inside joke of I Hate Hamlet: in a way, its protagonist is right. The role, even more than the play itself, is like some hideous family heirloom: nobody wants it, but you can’t avoid it. More than that, there is the sense of proving yourself in the attempt, regardless of the outcome. It’s sort of a theatrical form of hazing: sometimes misguided, sometimes, dangerous, sometimes disastrous, but in the end it brings out a sense of pride in you for having done it.

As I believe I’ve said before, I don’t know what I would have done last summer if it hadn’t been for the plethora of outstanding books out there on directing plays, especially those that are specifically about directing Shakespearean plays.  Ultimately, I would have been up a creek without the proverbial paddle as I would not have had a clue where to start, how to continue, nor how to finish up a production.  One of the most important aspects of any play is blocking, and prior to reading said books, the term “blocking” only had something to do with felt-making or other textile arts, in the back of my very fuzzy memory banks!

The kind of blocking that a director has to be concerned about is the movement and positioning of actors on the stage that will facilitate the performance of the play (thanks, Wikipedia, for that definition!). Sometimes, as one is watching a play, it may seem that the actors are just moving where it feels natural, or where the mood strikes them at the time. Nope…Just about everything you see on stage has already been choreographed by the director and rehearsed that way by the actors. The goal is to have it look as natural as possible - as if they are just doing it on the spur of the moment.

One thing I learned in my Shakespeare-directing books is that you don’t necessarily want to create the blocking too early in the rehearsal process. Because of the importance of your cast understanding the language so they can communicate that understanding to the audience, you want to wait until they really know what they’re saying so that they can help figure out the blocking along the way…and they can understand why you might not want a certain character to be downstage during a key moment when that character would naturally be lurking somewhere else.  The beauty of directing and acting Shakespeare is that Will was an actor, before he ever wrote any plays, and so when he did take up the quill, he knew what to have the actors say in their lines in order to ”facilitate the performance of the play” - blocking!

One book in particular that I’ve been re-reading for ideas and suggestions is Mastering Shakespeare: An Acting Class in Seven Scenes, by Scott Kaiser.  In this book, Mr. Kaiser (or Mr. Kay) teaches seven different important aspects of acting Shakespeare to a fictional class of actors.  The book is written like a play, with dialogue between the students and the teacher.  This approach makes the book an interesting read, as well as incredibly helpful to anyone preparing to act or direct Shakespeare.  The one aspect that I’m particularly interested in right now is the idea of the speech measure, or the chunk of text that communicates a single idea to the audience.  It can be as brief as “O!” or as long as “How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath/To say to me that thou art out of breath”?  This particular concept is super important for actors to be aware of as they need to make sure each speech measure is clear to the audience before continuing on to the next…and successful blocking can help the actors do just that!

Last year, I felt like one of our best scenes in Much Ado was Act III, scene 2, specifically the part where Don John is telling Claudio that Hero has been unfaithful to him.  One of the reasons this was such an effective scene was the fact that we blocked Claudio actually punching Don John when he is told that Hero is “every man’s Hero.”  But even before that very cool bit of blocking (that my actors figured out on their own…awesome!), Don John managed to convey a great deal of information to the audience through his clear speech measures.  I had people come to me afterward and say, “I totally got what he was saying with, ‘I know not that, when he knows what I know.’”  It was because our Don John didn’t rush through his words, or the ideas being conveyed, just to get the dialogue finished.  And recent rehearsals have shown that this same actor (Gremio this time around) is doing this, seemingly naturally as I haven’t mentioned this idea since our initial read-throughs.

Funny how I just realized that I keep talking about text issues - speech measures, meaning - but the post is supposed to be about blocking.  I just can’t help but talk about the text - It’s so important for understanding Shakespeare that it has to go hand in hand with anything else you do!  Otherwise you can have a ton of great blocking…and an audience who doesn’t have a clue what’s going on!  Not good!!

For some very funny theater definitions - especially the ones for “blocking” and “blocking rehearsal” - check the link below - Enjoy!

http://www.communitytheater.org/humor/dictionary.htm

Not to make light of what Thomas Paine was writing about, but this quote is what first popped into my mind tonight as I contemplated what to write about the last two rehearsals.  What?!? All is not sweetness, light, and perfection in the world of theatre?!? How shocking, I know! Time for a bit of catharsis for myself, and hopefully, some good advice for would-be directors out there!

As our school’s principal is constantly reminding me, I’m working with teenagers (and a few 11 and 12-year-olds), not adults. Pre-teens and teens have their own views on life, responsibility, priorities…and as surprising as it may be, learning Shakespearean lines during their summer vacation just doesn’t strike the same chord with them as it might to me (bear in mind that I’m not even the one having to learn the lines!!!). There are times that I find myself truly expecting them to act like adults…maybe it’s the fact that most of them are rapidly growing taller than I ever will, and so I just assume that with height comes maturity. WRONG!  So if the shoes come off the feet and begin flying at wasps’ nests, or as in the case of today, I have to tell people to stop trying to impale their scripts with the swords (and quit touching props if they’re not your props…oh my goodness, when will that particular lesson ever be learned???), should I really be surprised or upset?  No, because they’re kids…teenagers…who have chosen to give up a good chunk of their summer vacation to do Shakespeare.  Yeah…weird!

Now, does that mean that I don’t have the right to expect them to behave, listen, and do their darndest to learn those lines?  Of course I do!  They all signed on to this project, of their own free will (even though my Gremio will claim that he only did this because I said I’d give him a donut if he would be in the play…yeah, well, he just needs to learn to not be sucked in by pastries!), and 90% of them were in last year’s play.  They knew what to expect and what I would expect. But if I can’t forgive them and love them through it all, then I have no business directing a play for kids…or, in my opinion, for anyone.

One of my students gave me an amazing book this past Christmas called King of Shadows. I won’t describe the plot in detail, as I don’t want to give any of it away (if you have any interest at all in Shakespeare or the theatre, I highly recommend it!), but it is about an American theatre troupe made up entirely of boys that goes to London to perform at the Globe. The story describes the troupe as a family, and it is emphasized to all of the players that they have to develop trust in one another as a family does.  Does that mean that a family is perfect, or that members of said family won’t screw up from time to time and need to be forgiven?  All of us know the answer to that question!  A family is going to mess up and hurt one another, but you work through it and go on and just try harder the next day.  That is what I want for my Highland Players…to know that, no matter what happens, they will be loved and appreciated.  I might want to throttle them in the process, and I might have to bark at them if they’re goofing off with the swords (leave the squirrels alone, Grumio!), but that won’t ever change how much I love them all.

So, potential directors reading this, what do I recommend on the days when it feels like nothing is going right, there are only 28 days until opening night (but who’s counting?), your actors were all supposed to have Acts I-III memorized and it is clear that they all don’t?  Be honest with them.  I had to make my actors reaffirm their choice to be in the play today - I told them to go meet in a group and decide if we were even going to continue with this project, because at that point, I was ready to go home and not come back.  I even had to tell my framework story actors that I could very easily take the framework completely out of the play if they didn’t step up and learn their lines and their cues - that I was not about to let the framework ruin the rest of the play. You may have to yell to get their attention, but be careful what words you choose - don’t say anything that could be truly damaging to individual people - try to remember what it’s like to be a teenager.

But once you’ve yelled, scolded, chided, and cried (which I almost did today), remember what they’ve done that is good. Once my players said they were sorry and still wanted to do the play, we started the rehearsal over again, from the very beginning of the play, rather than trying to do Act III again.  I wanted them to have a feeling of success after the scolding they received, and so I went back to what I figured would make them feel the most comfortable.  Was it perfect? Of course not, but I wasn’t expecting perfection. I could see substantial improvement in these scenes since the last time we worked on them (last week), and I was especially impressed with the level of understanding that was coming through their lines today - yesterday I told them that they needed to start making these lines conversational, rather than rote recitations, and by golly, that’s what they did.

Just remember that they really do listen to you…they really do care…or they wouldn’t be there. Sometimes it just takes some raw emotion on your part to make them demonstrate it in a tangible way.  They have to know that you care, not only about the play, but most importantly, about them.

In Maryland, interns are getting the chance to act in Shakespearean productions alongside seasoned professionals. Though they are not the only company to do this, they should be commended for embracing the company model so wholeheartedly. In Shakespeare’s time and beyond, actors learned their craft from working in companies with each other. In many cases, parts were handed down through generations from elder to younger actors. Often, actors owned certain parts or certain types of parts and played them throughout their careers (a trend that occurred both in Eastern and Western theatre).

Actors today often worry about being typecast because somewhere along the line, they got the idea into their little heads that they can (and should) play everything. Critics are forever lauding actors for their versatility, yet I’ve rarely encountered one who is truly versatile. Now, Robert DeNiro is a good actor, but he is not (despite what gazillions of reviews have stated) an actor who can play anything. Perhaps I’ve missed something , but is he ever anything but the brooding tough guy? He even played the Frankenstein Monster like it was outtakes from Raging Bull. The thing is, there is nothing wrong with being good at something instead of everything. In Shakespeare, if you play romantic leads as a young person, you’ll probably graduate to mature leads in your middle years. Instead of half-succeeding at playing different roles, actors would do better to enrich and find the subtle nuances in the parts for which they are ideally suited.