Okay…I have to admit that this blog post is a pick-me-up for myself, so honestly…feel free to stop reading at any point!

Now that we’ve had some on-stage rehearsals, I can begin to see the “light at the end of the tunnel,” so to speak.  I am starting to get those cool visions of what the end-product might look like…what I’m pretty sure it’s going to look like…and my cast is getting excited to see the same vision.  Yesterday I was able to explain more about the framework story, and we could all see how the story being watched by Christopher Sly and the Noble is mirrored by Petruchio and Katharina watching the same story for part of a scene.  Of course, I got so excited that I was gesticulating wildly, doing my “Excited About Shakespeare” dance that the kids have come to recognize…as my Biondello pointed out, “And Mrs. Bogut is going insane…”

So, as I begin to feel that adrenaline - as I recognize that we’ve hit the point where the momentum is building toward a completed product - I began to remember what rehearsals last summer were like.  I remembered one rehearsal in particular, as we were nearing completion and opening night was only about a week away.  Because the days were getting shorter as we approached September, it felt like our rehearsals were running later and later.  I think we were all getting tired, and working at the park after dark was taking its toll.  Now, because our shows were starting at 6:00 and ending around 9:00, we had to get used to the sun going down and the effects of stage lighting, so it was necessary to be there after dark.  But one night in particular seemed especially trying.  I was having difficulty with my Beatrice, who had the habit of turning her head to speak to Benedick in Act IV, scene 1, rather than facing the audience as I had been directing her to do.  Part of the problem was that it was simply habit, but another difficulty was that Benedick was not coming far enough downstage (as he had been directed to do) for her to see him.  It is odd having a conversation with someone you can’t see, so I can understand why this was hard.  But I needed to see them do it correctly, so I made them go through it one more time.

I believe I started them at Benedick’s line, “Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?”, after Hero and the rest of the wedding party have left the stage.  Now, this is the part in the Branagh/Thompson film that always chokes me up…Beatrice’s frustration at not being able to do something about Claudio’s horrible treatment of her cousin, simply because she’s a woman…her agony over Hero’s ruined reputation (and life, back in those days)…but thus far in our rehearsals, I hadn’t hit that emotional point with what my actors were doing.  Not that they weren’t doing well - my goodness, I was amazed all the time over how well they were doing!  But there were always little bugs to work out along the way, so my attention was usually diverted by what I wanted to tell them to tweak later.  Not this time, though…This time, Benedick moved downstage where he needed to be, Beatrice looked at him and the audience (I never saw the back of her head!)…but even that wasn’t the clencher!  It was the fact that they both somehow connected…not only with one another, which was difficult at times (these two actors were buddies in real life, not romantically interested in one another, and it was a stretch to play these characters at this point in the play), but they connected with their characters and the scene and the emotions like I hadn’t seen yet.  Quite simply, the way they did that scene told me with certainty that our production would be amazing…not just some amateur theatrical attempt, but a real success.  I know that probably sounds far-fetched, but I just knew it in my gut.  I was so choked up, I couldn’t even give direction when they got done.  I had to just sit there with tears in my eyes and tell them how wonderful they were.

I’ve posted this clip from our second night’s performance…I hope you enjoy it as much as I still do, every time I watch it!

Before I begin my post, I’d like to thank Karen’s Whimsy (http://karenswhimsy.com/taming-of-the-shrew.shtm) for the great public domain pictures she has provided on her website. If you’re looking for pictures from Shakespeare’s plays, or just about anything else for that matter, check her website! It’s a treat to browse!

As my cast members were told this past week, we only have seven weeks left until opening night of Shrew. I think this may have come as a bit of a shock to all involved, including myself! Having spent 3-1/2 months last summer on Much Ado, only spending a grand total of about 10 weeks on Shrew seems a bit…INSANE!!  Particularly when I’ve been feeling as if things were progressing rather slowly, I think I may have hit “panic mode” a bit too soon - which, for me, translates into sleepless nights worrying that the actors won’t get their lines memorized in time!

Then we had our first “real-stage” rehearsal yesterday.  The weather finally turned nice enough for us to be outside on the stage that we will use for our performances, and I have to tell you that there is real truth in the idea of “getting Shakespeare off the page and onto the stage!”  The actors were more animated, more excited, and definitely ready to be out of my classroom at the school!

And how, pray tell, did this first stage-rehearsal go?  Well, it’s still rusty, of course.  The actors are still staring at the scripts, even when other actors are giving their lines, which is something I need to really start addressing.  It’s important that they be engaged in what other people are saying on stage from the very beginning of the rehearsal period - it helps them stay in character anytime they’re on the stage, and also helps them be in the habit of looking interested in what the other actors are talking about (which gets more and more difficult, the more they hear the play over and over and over again!)!  As our Katharina began her long monologue at the end of Act V, several of my actors sank to the ground, heaved exaggerated sighs, and proceeded to look as if they were going to take a nap during her speech!  Wrong!  I told all of them that they need to begin considering how important this speech is to all of the characters on stage…to Baptista, who is hearing that her daughter’s troubled ways are mended; to Bianca, who is being lectured and upstaged at her own wedding feast; even to the servants on stage who have suffered at the wrath and hands of Katharina in the past!  And especially Petruchio, who may be bold and blustering, but who (I believe) is secretly touched by his wife’s newfound dedication to him.  At any rate, all of my actors have to start considering this so that they don’t look like zombies while Katharina is giving that beast of a monologue!

If you would like to see how part of our rehearsal went, check out the short clip I posted on You Tube - I hope you enjoy it!

There are times, even in the most serious of life’s events, that one wishes desperately that one had a blooper reel. A running tape of all of the insane accidents, funny mistakes, and crazy antics of life…or, in the case of an acting troupe, a remembrance on film of just how bizarre and hilarious rehearsals can end up being!

How I wish I had a blooper reel from last summer! What would be on it, you ask, if I had had a camera magically rolling at every ridiculous moment? Hmmm…at one point, if you were watching said blooper reel from Much Ado rehearsals of 2007, you would see a group of excited teenage boys, pulling their shoes off as they ran across the park to a tree where a big wasps’ nest had just been spotted. Then you would see shoes flying through the air at the nest, angry wasps coming out of the nest, and the same teenage boys running around saying, “That was AWESOME!” (Miraculously, no one was injured in the filming of this…oh, yeah, there was no filming…drat!)

You would also hear line after line after line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail being quoted, usually after I made the mistake of saying how much I would like more shrubberies on the set (”a nice one…not too expensive!”).  And probably not funny to me at the time, but would be funny later on a blooper reel, was when I dumped out a prop pitcher, full of what I thought was water onto our stage…only to discover that someone had poured root beer into the pitcher so that the actors could have a little treat during rehearsal.  I’m sure the look on my face was classic…just ask the students that got chewed out for it!

What made me think of a blooper reel was yesterday’s rehearsal of a couple of scenes in Act IV of Shrew. We were working on scene 3, where Katharina is begging Grumio to give her just a little something to eat, and Grumio is teasing Katharina and doing exactly what Petruchio would want him to do. Our Grumio asked if he could sit on the dining table, like the actor in the BBC version that we’ve been watching does, and I said sure. Our Katharina asked if she could then push Grumio off the table, so of course, I said yes! So Grumio is up there, giving Katharina a bad time, and when she gives her line - “Go, get thee gone, thou false deluding slave…” - she shoves him off the table, he rolls and lands with a huge thud, and then Katharina can’t stop laughing…and neither could I!  Between Katharina, Baptista (who also couldn’t stop giggling) and the director, the rest of the rehearsal was pretty much just one big laugh-riot!

As I mentioned in my last post, I was beginning to wonder why these rehearsals were feeling so stale…so blah…and I was worrying that this wasn’t going to have the magic that last summer had. I asked a couple of my actors how I could improve the rehearsals, and they reminded me how much better it got once we started blocking and moving around on the stage, even if the lines weren’t down yet. I think they’re right - I think I spent too much time, trying to make us do book work at the table, when the magic that happens in a production happens on the stage. It’s the blooper-reel moments that bring these plays to life, and give the actors energy and enthusiasm to work with as they begin to understand their characters. Even though the book work has to be done for them to understand the text, it should be interspersed with moments on a stage, any stage (even if it’s just the parking lot outside of the school), moving around and getting to know themselves and the characters/actors they will be interacting with.

So, let the blooper-reel moments happen…get your actors off the page and onto a stage…try to keep them away from wasps’ nests, and do explain the importance of only having water on the stage (root beer + hot summer weather = more wasps building nests!!!!!)…Help them understand the text, but also help them understand how much fun this whole, crazy adventure in theatre can be!

We’ve gotten started! As soon as I got back from vacation, we dived right in and started our first week of rehearsals.  Although I was a bit jet-lagged from my trip, I think our first couple of rehearsals were successful, largely due to the energy and good humor of the great cast I get to work with!

As we read through the first two acts this week, I began reminding the kids how important it is to understand what they’re saying…that the only way to help their audience understand what’s happening in the story is by understanding the words and phrases in the lines they’re speaking.  A couple of smart-aleck teenagers said, “But isn’t that what acting is for?  We will act really well and pretend like we know what we’re saying, and then the audience will get it!”  Yeah, nice try, but we’re still getting out my copy of Shakespeare’s Words and working through some of these phrases from the 16th century!

Overall it was a good first week. My problem initially (besides the jet-lag) was that I can easily remember what the end of last summer was like - once we had blocking down and the rehearsals began to look more and more polished. I had forgotten what the early rehearsal process is like…clunky, repetitive, and even dull at times. At first I was a bit disconcerted by this - but then I began to remember what the first part of last summer was like, and what really got me excited all over again was remembering how much trouble some of my actors initially had last year with reading that “crazy Shakespearean English.” They really stumbled over words, and had a hard time remembering when to breathe, when to pause, and when NOT to stop at the end of a line (if there is no end punctuation, you keep going!). They were learning things about theatre and drama, as well as the English language, and it was quite a stretch for many of them.

What I realized as I saw our first week come together is that most of these students have become very proficient dramatists, and have become accustomed to the nuances and particulars of Shakespearean language.  I even stopped and asked them occasionally what some words or phrases mean, and almost always they were able to discuss it and figure it out (sometimes with help from Shakespeare’s Words, and other times with no help at all).

As I reviewed my directing books, I came across a passage in one of them that reminded me of how important it is to be an energetic, enthusiastic director. No matter how dull the process might be - how repetitive - how much you get tired of hearing people mispronounce “Padua” - it is still your job to be the cheerleader. Forget the jet-lag…forget anything else going on in your life…In order to make Shakespeare come alive for your kids, you have to show them that you’re having a good time. And once you build a summer of memories from your first production, believe me - You’ll have plenty of great memories to keep you going strong!

As our school year begins to wind down, I’ve started focusing more and more on our upcoming production of Shrew.  I’ve had two read-throughs - the first was of Acts I and II, and the second was of Acts III through V.  So far I’m pleased with the enthusiasm and commitment of the cast, and I’m really looking forward to starting our rehearsals on May 26th!

In planning for this production, I decided that I needed some help and advice from other parents/administrators.  So I asked some people with theater background to be my Theatre Advisory Board.  It was really helpful to have a meeting to discuss my ideas for increasing the number of performances from last year, which evenings they thought would work best for all involved, and what they thought of my idea of using two venues.

Last year we performed at a local park that has a big, open-air stage. I chose that because ever since I was in high school and got to enjoy the Idaho Shakespeare Festival in Boise where I grew up, I’ve just felt like Shakespeare-in-the-Park was the way to go! There’s just something so peaceful and wonderful about sitting in a park, enjoying a picnic dinner, and watching Shakespeare! I also got to see Shakespeare performed outdoors when I lived in Bozeman (Henry V!!! My favorite!), so when I began planning last year’s production, I knew I wanted it to be in the park.

This year I wanted to have it in the park, but I was also shown an amazing local space that we have available.  Our town’s old high school has been turned into a beautiful arts center for the community, the 1912 Center.  It has senior activities, luncheons, concerts, art displays, and it has a really cool performance space, complete with a balcony!  The natural lighting in this building is absolutely amazing, and the dear lady that directs the place is an avid theatre enthusiast with several years’ experience working in theatre!  So I was excited to try something new, but didn’t want to give up my Shakespeare-in-the Park.  Plus it is more expensive to rent the 1912 Center than it is the park, so I knew we couldn’t afford to have all of our performances at the 1912.

So I hatched the idea of having performances at both the park and the 1912 Center.  I mean, good grief, why not try it out and see how we like it?  Sure, we may not be able to rehearse as much at the 1912 Center, but I’m sure it will all work out.  Sure, I may want to do slightly different blocking, entrances, and exits in the 1912 Center (because there are so many more options than at the park’s stage), but I’m sure it will all work out.  What’s wrong with this picture???  Okay, this is why I have a theatre board!

I was gently reminded that the student actors rely heavily on the blocking of a play to help keep them “in the moment” of the play - to remain in character - to remember their lines, even!  By switching to a different venue, especially for just one performance, I might end up causing these kids a whole bucketful of stress - They would have to remember new entrances and exits; the blocking would be slightly different because the stage area is smaller at the 1912 Center; in short, I could have created a catastrophe for those kids at the final performance.

We’re sticking with the park this year, and we’re going to have three performances (one more than last year).  If we can build up our budget, I may try to have future performances at the 1912 Center, but I will definitely have ALL of the rehearsals and performances there!  Quite often, two heads are way better than one, and I’m fortunate to have three additional brains now, helping me figure this stuff out!

Aaahhh, teenagers!  How I love and adore working with the little pains in the…Okay, you all have to know by now that I’m kidding!  Yes, they do try my patience now and again, but I couldn’t ask for a better job!

What on earth prompted that?  Tonight is our first read-through of The Taming of the Shrew and I have to admit that I’m pretty excited about it!  I’ve been looking forward to starting this production ever since last year’s Much Ado finished up!  Again, though, I forget that not everyone is as insane as I am about all of this…even my actors who have other commitments and lives beyond the stage!  Several of our kids are involved in soccer right now; a few run track at the local high school; and many of our kids have afterschool/evening jobs.  I understand that they are busy little bees and that spring semester seems to be even busier than fall!  So there are some kids who will be late coming tonight - that’s okay, I understand.

One of my actors, though, came in and said he would be about an hour late.  I asked if he had to work because he does put in a lot of hours at the restaurant where he’s employed.  He sheepishly admitted that no, he was instead going to go target shooting with some friends.  Target shooting?  Shooting guns?  “Yeah, we get to fire automatic weapons today!”  Okay…you’re going to miss half the read-through because you get to go shoot guns at targets?!?  Hmmm…

After much discussion and explaining to him that that was not an acceptable excuse for missing half of a read-through, he agreed that he probably could have scheduled his “ostentatious display of force” for another time (great line from John Wayne, by the way!).  As he was so sheepish and willing to admit that this was a poor choice on his part, I said that he could be a little bit late, but not a full hour.  I believe he told me I was awesome, or something along those lines. :)

I love it when a teenager will admit that they made a choice that wasn’t one of their best and then will do what it takes to make things right.  I know these kids all have lives outside of school and outside of drama, but their willingness to be here warms my heart - especially when they would really rather be shooting guns at innocent paper targets!

So, now that a couple of days have passed since our first read-through, how did it go?  Very well!  A great deal of pizza was consumed; there was much laughing and giggling, which indicates that a good time was had by all; and we made it through the first two acts.  I was especially pleased that no one sounded completely “clueless” as they read their parts.  Everyone sounded as if they had at least done a cursory read-through on their own, which shows me that they are taking this seriously.  Their commitment to this project just makes me so proud, and I’m so excited to get to do this again!

After writing my last post, it occurred to me that I have a wealth of knowledge to share with people who are interested in staging Shakespeare…but 99% of it is on my bookshelves! I only learned as much as I did last year from the great books that I managed to find, usually from Amazon.com. So this post will simply be a list of the best books I found - ones that I would recommend you invest in for your drama department:

Teaching Shakespeare, Rex Gibson
**Shakespeare’s Words, David Crystal & Ben Crystal
Instant Shakespeare, Louis Fantasia
A Shakespearean Actor Prepares, Adrian Brine & Michael York
Teaching Shakespeare, Peter Reynolds
**The DK Essential Shakespeare Handbook, Leslie Dunton-Downer & Alan Riding
Secrets of Acting Shakespeare: The Original Approach, Patrick Tucker
Mastering Shakespeare: An Acting Class in Seven Scenes, Scott Kaiser
**The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amateur Theatricals, John Kenrick
Stage Costume: Step-By-Step, Mary T. Kidd
**Costume Construction, Katherine Evans-Strand
Discovering Shakespeare’s Meaning: An Introduction to the Study of Shakespeare, Leah Scragg
Playing Shakespeare: An Actor’s Guide, John Barton
**Will Power: How to Act Shakespeare in 21 Days, John Basil
Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice: The Actor’s Guide to Talking the Text, Kristin Linklater
**Play Director’s Survival Kit, James and Wanda Rodgers
**Clues to Acting Shakespeare, Wesley Van Tassel

If I could only choose certain ones from the list, I would definitely make sure I had the ones marked with **. These have been positively indispensable in figuring out how to direct Shakespeare, and a couple of them (especially those by Rodgers and Kenrick) are great resources for any drama department to have on hand.

An important aspect of putting together a quality theater production is the attitude and cooperation of the cast members. Think of it like a sports team. Winning a game will not only come about because each individual player is good at the sport, or spends countless hours practicing whatever skills they need to have in that particular sport. Team sports require that each member of the team contributes to the end goal and that they work as a…well, as a team! In my opinion, theater is no different - the cast has to work together as a team, almost as a family, but the problem is that sometimes egos and separate agendas, having nothing to do with the common good, can get in the way (in both sports and theater, I’m sure!).

It’s best to start rehearsals with some kind of an activity, rather than diving right into the work of the rehearsal. An example that I plan to try this year is a dodge ball type of activity, but rather than hitting one another with the balls, you instead bounce the ball to a fellow cast member, giving your character’s name at the same time. It would sound something like, “Petruchio!” “Grumio!” “A Pedant!” “Bianca!”, and my goal for them would be to go as quickly as possible through the entire group. Once each person has given his/her character name, I will switch it - now they have to give the character name of the person to whom they are bouncing the ball! Recognizing each person’s character name is going to be very important by the time we perform - They can’t think of each other as “John playing Hamlet,” but instead as “Hamlet!” (By the second or third week of rehearsals, I will even try to stop calling the actors by their real names - I start referring to them by their character names, and that’s about the time I start requiring them to call me “Mistress of All Things Shakespearean” or “Goddess Director” - JUST KIDDING!!!)

A really good warm-up exercise for projection is called “Kick the Box,” or as in the pictures above, “Smack the Ball!” The actor has to choose one of his/her lines from the play, and the key to this exercise is to really think about the last word of the line. As in the example above, where my daughter is serving the volleyball, she was given the line from Julius Caesar, “Cowards die many times before their deaths.” Now, if an actor gives that line and runs out of steam by the time they reach the end of the line, the audience will have missed the meaning of the line…”Cowards die many times…” Huh?? For the audience to understand Shakespeare, the actor has to project his way all the way through the end of the line, so the goal of this exercise is to have the actor kick a box, or serve a ball, or punch something exactly on the last syllable of the line (or the first syllable of the last word, if it’s a multisyllabic word). Doing this over and over again will help train the actor to save air for the end of his lines, and also remind the muscles of the body that emphasis has to continue throughout the entire line. By the way, this exercise came from a fabulous book called Clues to Acting Shakespeare by Wesley Van Tassel - I highly recommend buying yourself a copy if you plan to do any Shakespearean acting in your drama department!

Another great book to add to your collection is called King of Shadows by Susan Cooper. This is a youth fiction book about a young boy in an all-boy acting troupe, preparing to play A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Globe Theatre in London. It gives some neat insight to what a theatre troupe is really like, both in the present and in Shakespeare’s time, including some theatre games at the beginning of the story. A great read!

It just occurred to me that there are bound to be loads of theater games websites and ideas on the Internet, and lo and behold, after doing a search, here is a great link I just found - http://www.creativedrama.com/theatre.htm - filled with all kinds of games, from warm-up exercises to group cohesion builders to improvisation skills. Whatever games you choose - from ones you get out of a book, or from the Internet, or ones that you make up on your own - be sure that they are serving a purpose, and that ultimately, you are helping to build that sense of family that your cast needs to create a wonderful production! And please share any good ones that you know - I’d love to have more to add to my summer!

One thing I worried about last summer…what a silly way to start this blog - I worried about SO many things!  Okay, one of the many things that concerned me last summer was how to keep the kids interested in Shakespeare for three and a half months.  The boredom is bound to set in after such a long period of time, and I felt sometimes like I was the best actor up there, trying to keep the energy up and keep them entertained when, in actuality, I just wanted to go home and take a nap!

Something I learned about rehearsing with the kids last year is that it really isn’t possible to adequately cover an entire Shakespearean act at one rehearsal, even a 3-hour long rehearsal.  So it is pointless, and a waste of people’s time, to tell every single actor in Act II (even the actors that only have 1-2 lines) that they must be there for the entire rehearsal.  You end up having kids running around, climbing trees (if you’re at the park like we were), not wanting to sit and listen to the same scenes over and over again while they wait for their 10 minutes on the stage.  And who can blame them?  Good grief, I really did expect an awful lot of these kids last summer…I can’t believe that they want to do it again this year!

I’ve formulated my rehearsal schedule so that each rehearsal is broken down into scenes, rather than acts.  In addition, I listed the people who need to be at each rehearsal because they are in whatever scene we will be working on that day.  Then after covering all of the scenes in the act separately, I will have a rehearsal that does handle the entire act - but by this point, we’ve been through the preliminary work on the scene, including some initial blocking ideas, so that we can actually run the act, rather than plod our way through it (and not even get to the end of the act because I have to start and stop them so many times).  That was so frustrating for the kids who were in, say, scene 5 of Act II.  I would say, “Oh, yes, we’ll definitely get through all of Act II, so I need you to be there for that rehearsal.”  Then, after all of the work on the first three scenes was done, I’d realize that someone had sat there, waiting patiently (or not so patiently) to get to scene 5, only to discover that rehearsal was over and it was time to go home.  I think this summer will work better with regards to using the time we have more efficiently.

Running more efficient rehearsals is one way to keep things positive and fun…but what else can a director do to keep kids motivated?  Talk to the parents of your cast about bringing occasional treats to rehearsals.  Especially in the summer, as it started heating up in July and August, it was a welcome sight to see a parent arrive with a bag of popsicles!  Another thing I did was find out which cast members had summer birthdays - We always had a special treat on or near those birthdays because summer kids don’t get to celebrate their birthdays at school, so this was a nice change of pace for them!  And to encourage the kids to be on time to rehearsals, I had drawings.  Each time a cast member was on time for a rehearsal, they got to put their name in a bowl.  Then I would have occasional prize drawings for things like gift cards from McDonalds, Hastings, movie theaters, etc., or candy bars, or whatever fun things I could think of (or have donated by parents).

Anything you can do to let the actors know that their hard work is appreciated, and that Shakespeare/acting/theater is fun, will go a long way to keeping them motivated during your rehearsal time, thus making your rehearsals even more efficient in the long run!