A little bit of history: the American Shakespeare Center is in the planning phase for its own reconstruction of the 1614 Globe. About a year ago, there was talk about the theatre opening in 2012, but there are still many questions to consider before the groundbreaking. We'll be discussing some issues related to the construction of Globe 2.
Peter McCurdy
The goal in the construction of the Globe is to find new ways of bringing Shakespeare's plays alive by placing them within their architectural context. The transformative power of a reconstruction of the space is remarkable; I remember being awash in wonderment the first time I stepped into the Blackfriars.
McCurdy's experience in London wth historical reconstructions has led to more informed archeological and architectural work. The level of detail present in modern hitoric reconstructions is vastly superior to what it would have been 30 years ago, and the partnership between scholars and builders has yielded as much in the world of historic reconstruction as the partnership between scholars and actors has at the ASC.
With the foundations of The Rose, and pieces of The Theatre having been excavated, we are in a better position to know how these playhouses were laid out. We no longer need to rely exclusively on historical descriptions of Elizabethan theatres.
There is increasing evidence that the prevalence in the 16th century was toward three story buildings. there is something that links these buildings to the size and areas of the theatres, and McCurdy feels this is another area worth exploring.
Despite references to oak, McCurdy feels that there was probably a prevelence of soft woods. The fact that the first Globe burned down within two hours seems to indicate soft woods used in construction, and we have documentary evidence of other theatres being constructed of soft wood. McCurdy points out that we have little evidence of specifics, as there is not much documentary evidence of carpentry practices from this time. The first book written on carpentry technique was publish in America in the 19th century, and it is quite plausible that the guilds had worked to protect that information. Shakespeare was close with his builder, but there may have been things he still didn't know about the construction of his theatre.
McCurdy asks the bear for a hug, which is granted, and concludes by reminding us all that this is a work in progress.
Tiffany Stern
Stern provides a quote from the Second Maiden's Tragedy and Ovid's Elegies that suggests that it was possible for an audience to sit at the gobe and watch the shoe without themselves being observed. Other descriptions from the time suggest that box seats concealed by grates, or lattice work, provide discreet places from which an audience might watch a play.
Other textual evidence, in the form of lines and stage directions, anticipates a bell in the theatre. Stern notes that, whenever you have a bell striking to indicate time, the play has a character counting the strokes of the bell. The stage direction for clock striking are, in fact, the bell ringing. Stern believes that the textual motivation for this is is that, while the clock is always a bell, the bell is not always a clock. In Macbeth, for example, there is an alarm bell, and likewise in The Changeling a bell is struck for a fire alarm. It must be a "prominent bell that is different from a hand bell. It seems to be a structural bell hanging up within the fabric of the theatre."
Dekker and Jonson make references to visible tapestries in public theatres in the form of an arras, and there also seem to be indications that these curtains had depictions of people on them. Stern feels that these must have been changeable. They could have been used to "swell the number of people on the stage." References to this practice are seen as late as 1749.
Stern offers these observations for consideration in the Globe discussions. Her new book, Documents of Performance in Early Modern England, will be available November 30.
Tim Fitzpatrick
Fitzpatrick will be examining te second Globe from the perspective of Hollar's sketches to the underlying structure. I miss looking at CAD drawings, so this is fun for me. He suggests that the interior of the Globe, rather than be circular, would have been a 16 sided polygon that would have appeared circular from enough of a distance. That makes a lot of sense.
He also examines the authority of the 1630 sketch, which was originally done in light pencil marks, and then over-inked. Because most scholars examine photographs of the drawings, they miss these pencil marks, and the multiple pencil lines reveal that the drawing is, in fact, a concept sketch rather than a detailed draft. The close up of the Globe is so small that you need a magnifying glass to see it.
This presentation is very graphical, and so again, it's going to be hard for me to describe what I'm seeing in any meaningful way. I'll try getting the over-arching points that don't rely on specific visual details doe you.
So the basic principle in this conception of the construction is to take Hollar seriously; he was trying his best to represent what he saw. Second to use the premise of the ad quadratum Globe (the original Globe, based on descriptions) and use it as the underlying basis for what Hollar drew.
One issue that has been resolved is the stair tower is, from Hollar's perspective, skewed slightly owing to his perspective. There is no reason to think that there is anything irregular about the structure itself.
Between Hollar's sketch and the CAD drawing, there are three discrepencies. The first is that the stage cover is uneven. There are also two un-inked pencil lines in Hollar's sketch, and three pencilled-base lines.
The approximation of three windows per bay makes sense when you take into account that the stair tower, which is in the front of the building from Hollar's perspective, would have obscured two of those windows.
Perhaps most shocking is that there was no discovery is that there is no discovery space. Fitzpatrick allows that there may have been a curtain hung as a discovery space, but there was no discovery space built into the stage.
This is some very intriguing stuff. I wish I could show you the drawings. Fitzpatrick has come to some very fascinating conclusions based on this evidence.
Frank Hildy
Hildy offers that considerations for any Globe reconstruction must be which Globe to reconstruct. Most reconstructions use the 1599 Globe, and 20 additional years of scholarship have led to new revelations and questions about the accuracy of the London recreation. Of course, that was the point of building it in the first place: to test the best theories available at the time as to the nature of the reconstruction. Rebuilding the 1614 Globe, as the ASC has choen to do, offers the benefit of Hollar's 1647 drawing. The only other construction of the 1614 Globe is in Tokyo.
Modern research seems to indicate that the London Globe was too big. Archaeological evidence does not support a Gobe that has 20 sides and is 100' in diameter. A maximum proposal based on this evidence is 18 sides and 90', and a minimum gives it 16 sides and ~84'. But the excavation of the Rose in 1989 indicated it was 74' across and 14 sided, which is an impossible number of sides using either the ad quadratum or the ad triangulum systems of calculation. A portion of the foundation of the Globe was excavated a few months later, but not enough to say with any certainty how many sides it had.
Rather than using either ad triangulum or ad quadratum methods, Hildy examines building techniques using a transit (theodolite) based on architectural manuals of the time. By standing in the center of the space and sighting a 20 degree angle, and then using a rope to trace an arch in between, you will span the distance of two bays. Again, there are some excellent drawings that describe all this better than I am able to here.
16th century architects had access to a device called a Surveyor's Protactor, which allowed them to calculate the angle necessary for creating a space of any polygonal shape desired.
The issue of size is important because it will effect everthing from the actor's ability to project to the function of the heavens.
By the way, happy St. Crispin's day. I can't think of a more appropriate day to bring this wonderful conference to a close. If you're in town, please stop by for The Merry Wives of Windsor this afternoon, and The City Musick later this evening.
Before I leave you, I want to thank my fellow bloggers (and fellow M.Litt/MFA students) Sarah Klingbell and Zachary Lyon Brown, and the American Shakespeare Center for letting us sit in and keep you all posted on what's been happening here this past week. We'll work on getting some more materials from the conference online within the next few days where possible, so with a little bit of luck (and permission of the hosts and presenters) we'll be able to follow up with a few of the visuals that I've been talking about.
Thank you all for joining our blog of the 5th bi-annual Blackfriars conference. It's been a blast. If you happen to visit Staunton to see a show, give a shout, we'd love to hear from you. Otherwise, we'll see you again in 2011!
[exit, pursued by house manager.]
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Paper Session 11
Good morning, folks, and welcome back for the final day of the Blackfriars conference. It's a bright and crisp Sunday morning, and while a number of scholars have already departed us, we still have one more paper session, and a series of conversations about ASC's Globe theatre to go. Ralph Alan Cohen is introducing this sessions moderator, Terry Southerington, so it looks like our last paper session is about to get started.
Sarah Outterson: Acting the Ghostly Body in The Duchess of Malfi and The Second Maiden's Tragedy
At the same time that the corporeality of ghostly characters is in question, both within the context of stage and within the context of religion, ghosts, wax figures, and corpses present a particular kind of role of the audience's imagination in creating a play." In both plays, a body without spirit and a spirit disembodied are present, and the presence of the ghostly figures calls attention to the physical body of the actor playing it.
Outterson examines records of Jesuit Priests impersonating spirits to fright young women in converting to Catholocism, and pamphlets that expose their approaches in theatrical terms that parallel the appearance of ghosts on the early modern stage.
Stage directions present in the texts indicate the beauty of the maiden carrying on within her spirit, and the presence of the corpse and the ghost on stage simultaneously would seem to ask the audience to believe the character is divided into two bodies. The bodily presence of the actor most logically playing the spiritual body of the ghost. Similarly, the wax figures of the children in Duchess of Malfi seem to ask for the actors to play the roles of the figures, and thus bring their corporeal presence to non-living bodies.
And then the bear removed Outterson's paper.
Michael Boecherer: Power in Performance: The Renaissance Stage Witch as Theatrical Agent
The stage presence of witches on the Elizabethan stage is much weaker than in the Jacobean stage. In Elizabethan play, witches have less stage time, rarely perform magical effects, and their subservience to the devil is often emphasized. In the later Jacobean stage, witches are seen to cast spells, fly, and perform other supernatural aspects.
By casting the witch as a figure who had sold her soul to obtain her power, Elizabethans conceived her as being on the lowest levels of demonological hierarchy. Boecherer finds this odd, given that witches, with their power to call down curses and cast other spells, are effectively stripped of their power and made into simple pawns of a greater evil force. In 1H6, for example, Joan calls on spirits to assist her, and they simply ignore her calls. The conjured spirits are independent agents that are not beholden to the will of the conjurer.
Jacobean conceptions of witchcraft derive from continental conceptions that give witches the ability to fly, command spirits, and work together to greater effect. They first achieve their power in Jonson's masques, which took advantage of Inigo Jones' stage machinery, ceiling traps, and accompanied them with music and dance.
In Macbeth, the witches are a complex mix. They answer the call of their familiar demons, fly off stage through the fog and filthy air, and boast of their ability to call down curses. Still, their power clearly has limitations. When providing Macbeth with prophecies in act 4, the answer comes from their demonic masters and not from the witches themselves, and Banquo recognizes them as servants of a greater darkness. Thus, as the witches are weaker forces, Macbeth should be capable of resisting them. They are neither goddesses nor fates, they are simply an influence.
In Q&A an audience member brought up the point that, in the Jacobean era, there was a decreasing confidence in the authority's ability to detect witchcraft. Freed from constraints of verisimilitude offered by official testimonials of what defined a witch and what a witch was capable of, that might have led to an increase desire for theatricality in the presentation of witches.
Charles Salembier: The Unique Character of the Fool: Exploring Personality and Motive
Shakespeare is the only English Renaissance poet to employ the fool as a narrative device that has the ability to talk truth to power without fear of punishment. In Erasmus' In Praise of Folly, he employs the fool as a way to strip through vainglorious disguises and cure mankind's foolish behavior. Shakespeare, who cwould have been aware of Erasmus' text, employs his fools to a similar purpose.
Salembier credits Armin's Touchstone as the first of Shakespeare's true fools (Kemp being more of a clown). In As You Like It, the Touchstone cynically (and disgustingly) comments on his own follies in love as a way of mirroring the love of the higher status characters, and thus providing a foil for them. Rosalind's analysis of the follies of love serves all of the lovers in the play, including Touchstone and Audrey.
In All's Well, Shakespeare seems to be losing faith in the fools ability to curb mankind's folly. it is the story itself that underscores the foolishness of love and marriage, and the primary characters perform the corrective trickery necessary to bring about the comic resolution. Likewise in Timon of Athens, the fool's role is performed by a character other than the fool; the philosopher is identified as another source of mankind's folly, and from there, fools disappear from Shakepseare's stage.
Maryam Zomorodian: Staging the Matter of "worm-eaten books": Heywood, History, and Performance
During the Elizebethan and Stewart periods, recreations of the past led to a dramatic seeing of the past. England did not have a history of historical painting, but the historical play served this role. History lessons also appear within the context of Heywood's plays, where the historical record of an individual can be seen in their works left behind on earth. In 1592, Thomas Nash wrote in praise of historical drama such as this, suggesting that the private study of history offered a limited experience, but dramatic reconstruction of history in a public context allows the audience to share a communal sense of history. Embodied performance is distinct from the archive, and distributes history in a non-textual way through illiterate audiences.
Kathryn M. Moncrief: "Be stone no more": Performing/Reforming Femininity in The Winter's Tale
Moncrief begins by thanking her actors and offering that, as it's near the end of the conference and she's presenting on Winter's Tale, she'll be disappointed if she doesn't see the bear. Looking at 1.2 and 5.3, Moncrief seeks to show that 5.3 is a reworking of 1.2. Suggestions that women are to "perform subjection" is telling as it indicates that an outward sign of quiet and subservience is considered a virtue of early modern women, but that this should only be a performance. Hermiones unregulated speech, in conjunction with her heavily pregnant body, Leontes' behavior isn't surprising in the context of early modern fears of female speech and sexuality.
Her actors demonstrate Hermione's use of witty banter and rhetorical skill to succeed where her husband has failed. Leontes views his pregnant wife speaking with his friend, and views this in context of her own courtship. His belief that she's spoken with an unknown man is the evidence he needs to believe she is unchaste. Like in Othello, unrestrained speech replaces evidence of infidelity. Both Hermione and Desdemona are innocent, but fail to protect themselves, and thus demonstrate the dangers of misconstruing unregulated feminine speech.
There's a lot more to this paper than I'll be able to capture here, as Moncrief has so seemlessly integrated the performance of her actors with the presentation of her speech. Sorry, I just can't capture the visuals that well, and the text is grounded in those. This is definitely an exemplar of the combination of stagecraft and scholarship.
In 5.2, we see Paulina assuming the masculine role, and Leontes is decidedly silent in the presentation of Hermione as statuary. Feminine silence is refigured: Hermione has unfettered accesss to view the scene, and elects to remain silence to continue to observe Leontes. If she remains silent, it is a choice to reject Leontes, and if she chooses to speak, it is a choice to accept him. Either way, the feminine voice is given to Hermione as an instrument of her power.
Hermione, in a recapitulation of courtship, offers her hand to Leontes, and takes on the traditionally masculine role, and with a little prompting, the bear emerged to escort Moncrief offstage as she concluded her paper.
Jeanne McCarthy: "You shall ha' them set among ye": Performance at the Blackfriars
It is not merely the fact of the unsuitability of a boy actor for the role into which he is cast that makes the role interesting, it is the way in which the boy actor self consciously draws attention to this fact. A similar trope can be seen in the performance of clowns. McCarthy actors explores the audition scene from Jonson's Poetaster, where a player is called out by a captain, and the captain's boys demonstrates this self conscious theatricality.
The conceit of having boys perform parts in at least one recognizable adult company role can be seen as a desire to imitate the professional success of the adult companies. The audition scene plays with power dynamics similar to the playfulness of Love's Labours Lost or Cynthia's Revels. We cannot assume that mimicry in the era of the boy companies was unidirectional, and Jonson seems to have enjoyed writing in the mode of the boy companies for adults.
So that concludes our last paper session of the conference. Check back with us this afternoon for a report from the Globe sessions!
Sarah Outterson: Acting the Ghostly Body in The Duchess of Malfi and The Second Maiden's Tragedy
At the same time that the corporeality of ghostly characters is in question, both within the context of stage and within the context of religion, ghosts, wax figures, and corpses present a particular kind of role of the audience's imagination in creating a play." In both plays, a body without spirit and a spirit disembodied are present, and the presence of the ghostly figures calls attention to the physical body of the actor playing it.
Outterson examines records of Jesuit Priests impersonating spirits to fright young women in converting to Catholocism, and pamphlets that expose their approaches in theatrical terms that parallel the appearance of ghosts on the early modern stage.
Stage directions present in the texts indicate the beauty of the maiden carrying on within her spirit, and the presence of the corpse and the ghost on stage simultaneously would seem to ask the audience to believe the character is divided into two bodies. The bodily presence of the actor most logically playing the spiritual body of the ghost. Similarly, the wax figures of the children in Duchess of Malfi seem to ask for the actors to play the roles of the figures, and thus bring their corporeal presence to non-living bodies.
And then the bear removed Outterson's paper.
Michael Boecherer: Power in Performance: The Renaissance Stage Witch as Theatrical Agent
The stage presence of witches on the Elizabethan stage is much weaker than in the Jacobean stage. In Elizabethan play, witches have less stage time, rarely perform magical effects, and their subservience to the devil is often emphasized. In the later Jacobean stage, witches are seen to cast spells, fly, and perform other supernatural aspects.
By casting the witch as a figure who had sold her soul to obtain her power, Elizabethans conceived her as being on the lowest levels of demonological hierarchy. Boecherer finds this odd, given that witches, with their power to call down curses and cast other spells, are effectively stripped of their power and made into simple pawns of a greater evil force. In 1H6, for example, Joan calls on spirits to assist her, and they simply ignore her calls. The conjured spirits are independent agents that are not beholden to the will of the conjurer.
Jacobean conceptions of witchcraft derive from continental conceptions that give witches the ability to fly, command spirits, and work together to greater effect. They first achieve their power in Jonson's masques, which took advantage of Inigo Jones' stage machinery, ceiling traps, and accompanied them with music and dance.
In Macbeth, the witches are a complex mix. They answer the call of their familiar demons, fly off stage through the fog and filthy air, and boast of their ability to call down curses. Still, their power clearly has limitations. When providing Macbeth with prophecies in act 4, the answer comes from their demonic masters and not from the witches themselves, and Banquo recognizes them as servants of a greater darkness. Thus, as the witches are weaker forces, Macbeth should be capable of resisting them. They are neither goddesses nor fates, they are simply an influence.
In Q&A an audience member brought up the point that, in the Jacobean era, there was a decreasing confidence in the authority's ability to detect witchcraft. Freed from constraints of verisimilitude offered by official testimonials of what defined a witch and what a witch was capable of, that might have led to an increase desire for theatricality in the presentation of witches.
Charles Salembier: The Unique Character of the Fool: Exploring Personality and Motive
Shakespeare is the only English Renaissance poet to employ the fool as a narrative device that has the ability to talk truth to power without fear of punishment. In Erasmus' In Praise of Folly, he employs the fool as a way to strip through vainglorious disguises and cure mankind's foolish behavior. Shakespeare, who cwould have been aware of Erasmus' text, employs his fools to a similar purpose.
Salembier credits Armin's Touchstone as the first of Shakespeare's true fools (Kemp being more of a clown). In As You Like It, the Touchstone cynically (and disgustingly) comments on his own follies in love as a way of mirroring the love of the higher status characters, and thus providing a foil for them. Rosalind's analysis of the follies of love serves all of the lovers in the play, including Touchstone and Audrey.
In All's Well, Shakespeare seems to be losing faith in the fools ability to curb mankind's folly. it is the story itself that underscores the foolishness of love and marriage, and the primary characters perform the corrective trickery necessary to bring about the comic resolution. Likewise in Timon of Athens, the fool's role is performed by a character other than the fool; the philosopher is identified as another source of mankind's folly, and from there, fools disappear from Shakepseare's stage.
Maryam Zomorodian: Staging the Matter of "worm-eaten books": Heywood, History, and Performance
During the Elizebethan and Stewart periods, recreations of the past led to a dramatic seeing of the past. England did not have a history of historical painting, but the historical play served this role. History lessons also appear within the context of Heywood's plays, where the historical record of an individual can be seen in their works left behind on earth. In 1592, Thomas Nash wrote in praise of historical drama such as this, suggesting that the private study of history offered a limited experience, but dramatic reconstruction of history in a public context allows the audience to share a communal sense of history. Embodied performance is distinct from the archive, and distributes history in a non-textual way through illiterate audiences.
Kathryn M. Moncrief: "Be stone no more": Performing/Reforming Femininity in The Winter's Tale
Moncrief begins by thanking her actors and offering that, as it's near the end of the conference and she's presenting on Winter's Tale, she'll be disappointed if she doesn't see the bear. Looking at 1.2 and 5.3, Moncrief seeks to show that 5.3 is a reworking of 1.2. Suggestions that women are to "perform subjection" is telling as it indicates that an outward sign of quiet and subservience is considered a virtue of early modern women, but that this should only be a performance. Hermiones unregulated speech, in conjunction with her heavily pregnant body, Leontes' behavior isn't surprising in the context of early modern fears of female speech and sexuality.
Her actors demonstrate Hermione's use of witty banter and rhetorical skill to succeed where her husband has failed. Leontes views his pregnant wife speaking with his friend, and views this in context of her own courtship. His belief that she's spoken with an unknown man is the evidence he needs to believe she is unchaste. Like in Othello, unrestrained speech replaces evidence of infidelity. Both Hermione and Desdemona are innocent, but fail to protect themselves, and thus demonstrate the dangers of misconstruing unregulated feminine speech.
There's a lot more to this paper than I'll be able to capture here, as Moncrief has so seemlessly integrated the performance of her actors with the presentation of her speech. Sorry, I just can't capture the visuals that well, and the text is grounded in those. This is definitely an exemplar of the combination of stagecraft and scholarship.
In 5.2, we see Paulina assuming the masculine role, and Leontes is decidedly silent in the presentation of Hermione as statuary. Feminine silence is refigured: Hermione has unfettered accesss to view the scene, and elects to remain silence to continue to observe Leontes. If she remains silent, it is a choice to reject Leontes, and if she chooses to speak, it is a choice to accept him. Either way, the feminine voice is given to Hermione as an instrument of her power.
Hermione, in a recapitulation of courtship, offers her hand to Leontes, and takes on the traditionally masculine role, and with a little prompting, the bear emerged to escort Moncrief offstage as she concluded her paper.
Jeanne McCarthy: "You shall ha' them set among ye": Performance at the Blackfriars
It is not merely the fact of the unsuitability of a boy actor for the role into which he is cast that makes the role interesting, it is the way in which the boy actor self consciously draws attention to this fact. A similar trope can be seen in the performance of clowns. McCarthy actors explores the audition scene from Jonson's Poetaster, where a player is called out by a captain, and the captain's boys demonstrates this self conscious theatricality.
The conceit of having boys perform parts in at least one recognizable adult company role can be seen as a desire to imitate the professional success of the adult companies. The audition scene plays with power dynamics similar to the playfulness of Love's Labours Lost or Cynthia's Revels. We cannot assume that mimicry in the era of the boy companies was unidirectional, and Jonson seems to have enjoyed writing in the mode of the boy companies for adults.
So that concludes our last paper session of the conference. Check back with us this afternoon for a report from the Globe sessions!
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Shakespeare on Ice
December 1603 was the first Christmas season at court for King James VI, and his players were naturally expected to perform. Dr. Paul Menzer gives us a backstage view of the King's Men as they try to devise a new entertainment for the new king, and all the while freeze in the tiring house of the Globe. Who really wants to play in an outdoor theatre in winter, anyway? For that matter, who wants to come to a play in an outdoor theatre?
A perchance fortunate turn of events comes when King James needs to relocate the performance to the Blackfriars, which the King's Men had been forbidden to play in. If they impress the new king, they might even be allowed to play there in the winter, which would mean that Mr. Shaxper and his fellow company members would no longer be on ice. But how to impress the new king? A masque? Women on stage? Italian stage machinery and special effects? Rehearsal?!? [gasp] but what if the octopoly finds out?
Shakespeare on Ice is a play full of inside jokes performed for the ultimate audience of insiders. I/we loved every minute of it, but if you're not a Shakespeare nerd, the jokes will fall flat. The only tenable solution for you is to cuddle up with as much Shakespearean history as you can, and cross your fingers that someday, somewhere, enough Shakespeare nerds will gather together in another theatre to warrant a performance of a play that satirizes just about every early modern theatre academy trope that a room full of PhDs could conceive of.
Herein I would generally provide a cast list, but I didn't manage to grab a program, so I'll leave that to someone who's a little more in the know than I (yes, I know most of you, but most is not all), and retire for the night. Join us again tomorrow for the final day of the Blackfriars conference, one more paper session, and discussions about the construction of the ASC's new Globe.
A perchance fortunate turn of events comes when King James needs to relocate the performance to the Blackfriars, which the King's Men had been forbidden to play in. If they impress the new king, they might even be allowed to play there in the winter, which would mean that Mr. Shaxper and his fellow company members would no longer be on ice. But how to impress the new king? A masque? Women on stage? Italian stage machinery and special effects? Rehearsal?!? [gasp] but what if the octopoly finds out?
Shakespeare on Ice is a play full of inside jokes performed for the ultimate audience of insiders. I/we loved every minute of it, but if you're not a Shakespeare nerd, the jokes will fall flat. The only tenable solution for you is to cuddle up with as much Shakespearean history as you can, and cross your fingers that someday, somewhere, enough Shakespeare nerds will gather together in another theatre to warrant a performance of a play that satirizes just about every early modern theatre academy trope that a room full of PhDs could conceive of.
Herein I would generally provide a cast list, but I didn't manage to grab a program, so I'll leave that to someone who's a little more in the know than I (yes, I know most of you, but most is not all), and retire for the night. Join us again tomorrow for the final day of the Blackfriars conference, one more paper session, and discussions about the construction of the ASC's new Globe.
Academic Integrity Disclaimer
I thought I would take a moment to restate something I said earlier today in a more coherent way. This blog is a work of journalism, not of scholarship. While we're all trying to report as accurately as possible the works of the scholars presenting at the conference, their main points, supporting arguments, and ensuing discussion, we're bound to make a few mistakes along the way.
The format for paper sessions requires that all scholars limit their presentations to ten minutes, so they often have a lot of ground to cover in not a lot of time, and it can be hard to keep up. Sometimes we make the conscious decision to not include some of their points so we can more fully elaborate on others, other times it can be hard to follow an argument, and still others it can be just hard to hear.
So while we all hope you're finding this blog to be witty and informative, before you start basing any of your own research, papers, or presentations on anything you see here, it might not be a bad idea to contact the scholar whose work you wish to reference. I'm sure they would generally be pleased as punch to send you a copy of their paper and answer any questions you might have.
There; now I feel all absolved for any mistakes you might make by taking anything you read here with anything more than a grain of salt. I'll see you all after Shakespeare on Ice.
The format for paper sessions requires that all scholars limit their presentations to ten minutes, so they often have a lot of ground to cover in not a lot of time, and it can be hard to keep up. Sometimes we make the conscious decision to not include some of their points so we can more fully elaborate on others, other times it can be hard to follow an argument, and still others it can be just hard to hear.
So while we all hope you're finding this blog to be witty and informative, before you start basing any of your own research, papers, or presentations on anything you see here, it might not be a bad idea to contact the scholar whose work you wish to reference. I'm sure they would generally be pleased as punch to send you a copy of their paper and answer any questions you might have.
There; now I feel all absolved for any mistakes you might make by taking anything you read here with anything more than a grain of salt. I'll see you all after Shakespeare on Ice.
Roundtable: Early Modern Music on the Elizabethan Stage
Phew. Okay, I made it. Running three blocks on crutches is not my favorite thing to do ever, but I made it. I'm no musician, but I am a sound designer by trade, and I know what I like, and music is always an indispensable element to my conceptions of a theatrical production, so I'm glad to be able to make it to this roundtable. Facilitating this discussion is Dennis Siler from the U of Arkansas at Fort Smith.
Dennis Siler
Fretted musical instruments on the early modern stage is the topic for Siler's discussion. He begins by tracking some of the evolutions between the medieval lute and the Renaissance lute. The medieval lute has a primary and secondary sound hole, and five pairs of strings. For almost five centuries, it did not change. The Renaissance lute is less circular in nature, and loses it's second sound hole, and has more courses of strings (typically 7, but sometimes more). The availability of Yew wood that followed the adoption of the musket (which replaced the longbow) led to an increase in quantity of lutes and thus an increase of their popularity.
The lute has enough punch to rise above the ambient noise of a crowd, which would have been necessary for the intervals on the Elizabethan stage. The Renaissance lute, in particular, is louder and has a greater range than the medieval lute. A golden age of lutes that runs from 1580 to 1620 parallels the golden age of the early modern stage. The strings were made of sheep gut, and so they're not as loud as modern brass or steel strings.
Tuning on the Elizabethan lute seems like it would have been pretty expensive. The rule was to tune the A string until it was just before the point of breaking, and then to tune to the other strings to that. Ouch. The medieval lute is played parallel to the strings, whereas the Renaissance lute is played more like a classical guitar.
Here Siler "beared" himself away to yield the floor.
Laura Feitzinger Brown
Brown focuses on hearing and listening, most particularly in the Tempest, which relies heavily on music and sound to create the world of the play (the isle is full of noises). Brown examines the play in its traditional context of the play as an expression of universal harmony, the new historicist/post colonial approach that examines Prospero as an oppressive ruler, and how through a musical approach you can bring the threads together.
The initial place we see Prospero being "heavy handed and not listening well" is when he overbears Miranda's objections to his summoning of the storm. Her actors show an "early version" of Prospero that is not especially attentive to Miranda, and then Brown offers that we can see other examples of listening being relegated to the role of the inferior. The place of the superior is to speak. Brown also points out that there is a greater spiritual significance at the time placed on hearing rather than seeing, a evidenced by extant sermons: thus the fact that Alonso hears his sins and listens takes on a contemporary spiritual significance.
Brown points out, in her conclusion, that Prospero, in surrendering authority in her epilogue, becomes the listener.
Virginia R. Francisco
Francisco examines performance accompanied by music, opening with a portrait of Henry Unton, who "was an extremely important person," "who was probably a secret agent," and "connected to everybody important," although he did not seem to occupy a high position himself. Francisco is most interested in the right hand side of the portrait, which depicts a masque that was probably for his wedding. You can see Unton and his guests seated at a banquet table, and before them are masquers dancing around the musicians, who are seated in a circle around a table and facing one another. Interestingly, this portrait includes a very early image of a violin in use. Child masquers bear five-minute candle staffs for the masquers and musicians to see by. The use of the lute implies that singing was going to be an important part of the performance because the lute will scarcely be heard in the context of the metal stringed instruments (the violin, the guitar, etc).
For masques away from the court, musicians were often borrowed by the presenter from other houeholds. We have no reason to believe that Unton had any household musicians, although his household inventory demonstrates that he owned a set of viols and lutes. Family connections were important because they would have provided him with a venue for providing musicians as needed. From Leicester, Walsingham, the Dudleys, or even from the local weights. Social dancing, where ladies would have danced with masked members of the audience. The unmasking that followed would have resulted in surprise, whether feigned or not, on behalf of those who had danced with high ranking nobility or royalty.
Lizz Ketterer
Ketterer examines women as a pursued object in musical performance, as opposed to the receiver. This ties music to contemporary courtship ritual, and Ketterer asserts that most scholars who have examined the courtship rituals of the time ignore the impact of music. Courtship gifts are intimate, and take place in intimate places, and one of the ways that a company can use music is "to enact a shift in space" from a public to a private.
Primarily female characters are not musical agents: they neither perform no call for music, but there are some instances when they do. Female characters who do perform musically tend to challenge the bounds of female behavior, and explore the potentially "subversive nature of the female voice." "The connection between speaking and wantonness" in behavioral manuals reinforce the idea of the silent woman, which the role of women as musical agents directly opposes.
Michelle Kristelis
Kristelis' paper deals with music on a more metaphoric level than the other presenters have. Shaw's approach to the music of the work led him to explore Shakespeare's work in the same context of an opera, and approached the texts as if the musical flow was paramount to the proper presentation of the text. Shaw attended an 1895 reading of Pole's reading society, and was impressed by what he had seen. Frustrated with his contemporary actors for their lack of skill in musical analysis, he instructed his actors in musical elevation and terminology to help them hear the music in the line. He was known to lock his actors in rooms and refused to let them out until they had learned the proper inflections of the lines.
While it might seem strange to drill an actor in proper intonation of a line, this is a common practice in the musical world, and Pole saw no difference between the two. He felt that Elizabethan performance could not achieve the true fluidity of Elizabethan dramatic speech until the actors had achieved the musicality of the line, by wrote if necessary. Unlike the "stagey and overdone conventions of the 18th and 19th centuries," Pole's productions were comparatively sparse and text driven, and resulted in an original performance style that captured the minds of Shaw and other audiences of the time.
Well that'll do it for this roundtable, and for the this day of the conference. Things are winding down, but we still have another paper session and discussion about ASC's Globe tomorrow, and of course, the premiere of Shakespeare on Ice later tonight. I'll be back in the wee hours with some impressions from that, but as I have to take some folks to the air port in the morning, I'm going to go home and take a nap, so I'll see ya'll after the show!
Dennis Siler
Fretted musical instruments on the early modern stage is the topic for Siler's discussion. He begins by tracking some of the evolutions between the medieval lute and the Renaissance lute. The medieval lute has a primary and secondary sound hole, and five pairs of strings. For almost five centuries, it did not change. The Renaissance lute is less circular in nature, and loses it's second sound hole, and has more courses of strings (typically 7, but sometimes more). The availability of Yew wood that followed the adoption of the musket (which replaced the longbow) led to an increase in quantity of lutes and thus an increase of their popularity.
The lute has enough punch to rise above the ambient noise of a crowd, which would have been necessary for the intervals on the Elizabethan stage. The Renaissance lute, in particular, is louder and has a greater range than the medieval lute. A golden age of lutes that runs from 1580 to 1620 parallels the golden age of the early modern stage. The strings were made of sheep gut, and so they're not as loud as modern brass or steel strings.
Tuning on the Elizabethan lute seems like it would have been pretty expensive. The rule was to tune the A string until it was just before the point of breaking, and then to tune to the other strings to that. Ouch. The medieval lute is played parallel to the strings, whereas the Renaissance lute is played more like a classical guitar.
Here Siler "beared" himself away to yield the floor.
Laura Feitzinger Brown
Brown focuses on hearing and listening, most particularly in the Tempest, which relies heavily on music and sound to create the world of the play (the isle is full of noises). Brown examines the play in its traditional context of the play as an expression of universal harmony, the new historicist/post colonial approach that examines Prospero as an oppressive ruler, and how through a musical approach you can bring the threads together.
The initial place we see Prospero being "heavy handed and not listening well" is when he overbears Miranda's objections to his summoning of the storm. Her actors show an "early version" of Prospero that is not especially attentive to Miranda, and then Brown offers that we can see other examples of listening being relegated to the role of the inferior. The place of the superior is to speak. Brown also points out that there is a greater spiritual significance at the time placed on hearing rather than seeing, a evidenced by extant sermons: thus the fact that Alonso hears his sins and listens takes on a contemporary spiritual significance.
Brown points out, in her conclusion, that Prospero, in surrendering authority in her epilogue, becomes the listener.
Virginia R. Francisco
Francisco examines performance accompanied by music, opening with a portrait of Henry Unton, who "was an extremely important person," "who was probably a secret agent," and "connected to everybody important," although he did not seem to occupy a high position himself. Francisco is most interested in the right hand side of the portrait, which depicts a masque that was probably for his wedding. You can see Unton and his guests seated at a banquet table, and before them are masquers dancing around the musicians, who are seated in a circle around a table and facing one another. Interestingly, this portrait includes a very early image of a violin in use. Child masquers bear five-minute candle staffs for the masquers and musicians to see by. The use of the lute implies that singing was going to be an important part of the performance because the lute will scarcely be heard in the context of the metal stringed instruments (the violin, the guitar, etc).
For masques away from the court, musicians were often borrowed by the presenter from other houeholds. We have no reason to believe that Unton had any household musicians, although his household inventory demonstrates that he owned a set of viols and lutes. Family connections were important because they would have provided him with a venue for providing musicians as needed. From Leicester, Walsingham, the Dudleys, or even from the local weights. Social dancing, where ladies would have danced with masked members of the audience. The unmasking that followed would have resulted in surprise, whether feigned or not, on behalf of those who had danced with high ranking nobility or royalty.
Lizz Ketterer
Ketterer examines women as a pursued object in musical performance, as opposed to the receiver. This ties music to contemporary courtship ritual, and Ketterer asserts that most scholars who have examined the courtship rituals of the time ignore the impact of music. Courtship gifts are intimate, and take place in intimate places, and one of the ways that a company can use music is "to enact a shift in space" from a public to a private.
Primarily female characters are not musical agents: they neither perform no call for music, but there are some instances when they do. Female characters who do perform musically tend to challenge the bounds of female behavior, and explore the potentially "subversive nature of the female voice." "The connection between speaking and wantonness" in behavioral manuals reinforce the idea of the silent woman, which the role of women as musical agents directly opposes.
Michelle Kristelis
Kristelis' paper deals with music on a more metaphoric level than the other presenters have. Shaw's approach to the music of the work led him to explore Shakespeare's work in the same context of an opera, and approached the texts as if the musical flow was paramount to the proper presentation of the text. Shaw attended an 1895 reading of Pole's reading society, and was impressed by what he had seen. Frustrated with his contemporary actors for their lack of skill in musical analysis, he instructed his actors in musical elevation and terminology to help them hear the music in the line. He was known to lock his actors in rooms and refused to let them out until they had learned the proper inflections of the lines.
While it might seem strange to drill an actor in proper intonation of a line, this is a common practice in the musical world, and Pole saw no difference between the two. He felt that Elizabethan performance could not achieve the true fluidity of Elizabethan dramatic speech until the actors had achieved the musicality of the line, by wrote if necessary. Unlike the "stagey and overdone conventions of the 18th and 19th centuries," Pole's productions were comparatively sparse and text driven, and resulted in an original performance style that captured the minds of Shaw and other audiences of the time.
Well that'll do it for this roundtable, and for the this day of the conference. Things are winding down, but we still have another paper session and discussion about ASC's Globe tomorrow, and of course, the premiere of Shakespeare on Ice later tonight. I'll be back in the wee hours with some impressions from that, but as I have to take some folks to the air port in the morning, I'm going to go home and take a nap, so I'll see ya'll after the show!
Paper Session 10
Dr. Roslyn Knutson just walked into the theatre and, observing the projection screen set up on stage remarked: "Oooh, a powerpoint! Hot diggity!" Welcome back to the Blackfriars conference! I'm joined in the ad hoc tech booth by the self proclaimed "sexy beast" Dan Trombley for paper session 10, which will be the last of today's paper sessions owing to the early performance of The Rehearsal (and the later performance of Shakespeare on Ice).
This will actually be the next to last paper session of the conference, and the titles of some of these presenters are extremely intriguing. Moderating this session will be Amy Cohen, of Randolph College, and if the surname sounds familiar, she is, in fact, the daughter of our Ralph Alan Cohen. Well, they just rang the bell, and Ralph Alan Cohen is welcoming us back, so I guess that means we'll be under way.
Don Weingust: Original Practices: The New England Shakespeare Festival
Weingust reminds us that, if the world of theatre is small, the world of original practices Shakespeare theatre is so small it might be described as incestuous. While the "Shenendoah School" that we practice here at the ASC is one school (characterized by rapid delivery of lines, reconstruction of Renaissance architecture, universal lighting), there are others that are worthy of consideration. Of note are the reconstructed Globe, and Patrick Tucker's Original Shakespeare Company (OSC), and the New England Shakespeare Festival, "perhaps the purest Tucker school in America."
The economic realities of the theatre world has led to some of the original practice techniques these theatres use. The Actors Renaissance Season was, for example began by ASC as a cost-saving measure. Likewise NESF's use of a rehearsal-less process allows them to hire a higher caliber of actor. While they do not undertake full rehearsals of the entire play, they do rehearse fights, dances, etc. Also, they only work from sides or cue scripts. Actor only learn which role they are playing on the day of the show, and as a result, the actors are not required to memorize their parts.
NESF casts almost all of their actors out of New York, where actors are given work shops in original practices methods and textual performance methods. Prompters at NESF are more proactive than at the ASC. They act more like referees than prompters at ASC, and will penalize actors who mis-speak their lines by forcing them to come up with an impromptu song, etc. The actors engage textually focused, non-conceptually driven performances that directly engage audiences in a way similar to the ASC's fast-paced approach.
Weingust argues that NESF has gone farther than any other company today in doing away with the traditional rehearsal process. They have devised highly entertaining and energetic ways of enforcing a close textual performance.
Elizabeth Griffith: A Penny for a "Get-Penny": The Long, Stable Price of Entertainment at Shakespeare's Globe
Over the course of the 48 years of the Globe's life, the cost of admission was maintained at a single penny for basic admission. Despite the cost of inflation and the number of the theatre companies that failed before the general closing of the theatres in 1642, the Globe was able to maintain a very inexpensive baic entry fair throughout its life. Griffith will explore how they were able to do so.
Between 1580 to 1640, prices increased 150% and wages only increased by 50%. While the increase of prices was more responsive to increased demand in goods and good harvests, wages remained tied to a "wage stickiness" that characterizes early modern economies. The enlightened style of management that Burbage initiated was, according to Gurr, the only democratic innovation in an otherwise totalitarian environment.
Price stickiness prevented the raising of the price. one penny may have represented a tradition that the audience expected. they were only one generation a way from the barter economy. In contrast prices at the Blackfriars weere higher and more frequently adjusted, which is reflective of the greater disposable income and removal from the barter economy of their prices.
Second hypothesis: The Globe acted in advertising for the Blackfriars. Plays produced at the Globe were attended by thousands per week, and may have created interest among London's elite in seeing the play in the more elegant playhouse. The Globe could thus be thought of as Advertisement for the Blackfriars.
The Cpany may have had cost advantages that enabled them to keep their costs low. By having a large umber of sharers, they had less fees for hired men. Also, they did not have to pay rent as they were their own landlords. Companies that were members of liveries had advantages over ones that weren't because they could bind apprentices. I see apprentice labor used (and sometimes exploited) all the time in modern theatre, so this makes sense.
The company was longstanding and stable, and that gave it a level of efficiency over newer companies. As inflation deflated the value of the Penny, the King's Men could make it go further.
There may have been other revenues connected to the playhouse. food and drink for example, which we know were served in performances, were another source of income. Tapster's are referenced many times wihtin Shakespeare's canon, as Griffith's actors demonstrate. This may have been a built in product placement for what amounts to a concession stand in the playhouse.
"Finally, some players might have liked playing at the Globe, griffith poits that Blackfrairs audiences were less attentive. Then the bear escorts her off. Oh well, I would have loved to heard more.
Hsiang-chun Chu: Manly Beasts in Julie Taymor's Titus
Chu was supposed to present earlier in the conference, but a late train kept her form presenting. She asserts that Titus' vengeful acts causes the audience to question the morality of the characters. "A desire for revenge gives the characters a license to kill," and excuses them from considering the humanity of the object of their hate. The uniqueness of the film is in Taymor's use of man-like beasts to visualize the underlying baseness of humanity within the context of the play.
Chu first focuses on the rape of Lavinia. It is unstageable and unrepresentable on the stage. Taymor shoots this scene in a high angle shot, framing Lavinia as the object of a bear-baiting, "raped, maimed, and muted by Demetrius and Chiron who continue to circle their victim. Visually, Taylor makes her part of the tree she is chained to, and thus robs her of human likeness. Symbolic images of the rape that appear as flashback later in the play cast Lavinia as a doe and Demetrius and Chiron as two Tigers waiting to pounce on her.
Similarly, Titus hangs Demetrius and Chiron as if they are two pigs being slaughtered in the kitchen scene before they are baked into the meat pie. Taymor presents the scene as a mock trial and as a slaughterhouse all in one. The scene is disturbing in imagery and effect; Demetrius and Chiron have been removed from human moral consideration, and now are regarded with the same moral weight as animals.
And just as Chu is describing the grisly details of the bloodbath at the end of the play, the bear comes on and begs her for scraps.
Miranda Wilson: "I am the Gaoler": Devilish Confusions, False Beards, and the Shifting Stage in John Suckling's The Goblins
Wilson examines the ASC's performance of The Goblins because of the "teasing dramatic uncertainties." Sucklings plays are rarely performed, and thus have suffered. They do not have the same impact that they will whn staged. When performed, they have a "comic viability" and effective theatricality. The Goblins was performed on the original Blackfriars stage, and was seen by both Charles II and Samuel Pepys, so it was well received in the early modern stage.
Suckling challenges theatrical conventions "with relish," and disorients his audiences with "dizzy movement on stage," "unrelenting illusions," and a rapid prace that will undermine audiences conceptions of how a play ought to proceed. Wilson has prepared six scenes from the second act of The Goblins, which her actors will present to us this afternoon that demonstrate rapid costume changes, beards put on and off.
ASC actors perform these scenes, and Wilson is certainly right. The scene and changes are every bit as fast paced and fragmentary as I've seen in modern musical theatre pieces (I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, for example), and as much confusion as a restoration comedy. Of a sudden, there are twice as many actors as there were on stage a moment before.
Suckling attached himself to the Blackfriars on many levels, and the play seems to have been written to take advantage of the space. Wilson's actors have demonstrated how they may have done so. It is fairly easy to see why it doesn't have nearly the same impact on the page as it does on the stage.
And then enters the bear in the guise of one of the devils that had just been on stage in The Goblins, and Wilson retired the stage.
Annalisa Castaldo: "We'll yoke together, like a double shadow": bringing Together Editing Theory and Original Staging Practices
Modern scholars have a tendency to stress the works of Shakespeare as performance texts, and remind the readers that a reading of them will need to take performance conditions into account. Modern editors, however, fail to take into account the original staging practices, and base their assumptions on what actors using modern practices will learn from the text.
Different staging conditions will lead to different discoveries, and editors fail to take this into account along side their comparisons to folio and quarto texts. Thus several questions of performance are either misrepresented or unresolved within the text. She offers te example of The Taming of the Shrew and the presence of Christopher Sly. Editors only discuss original staging practices to dismiss them, and ground their arguments in textual faults created by publishers to arrive at widely differering conclusions.
Literary concerns do not consider the realities of staging the play in the early 1590s, and thus a key element of the framed story is ignored. OP allows us to consider what would have physically and literally possible within the context of what would have traditionally been done. Given that Shakespeare *textually* expects 15 actors to be on stage together, it seems extremely unlikely that, even in an early stage in his career, he would have been so oblivious to staging practices to ask for two more actors on stage to play Sly and his "wife," especially considering that no other scene of the play requires more than 9 actors. A Taming of a Shrew, on the other hand, re-orchestrates the final scene so that fewer actors are present simultaneously, and quick changes are not necessary in order for the actors in the Sly plot to remain present.
Matthieu Chapman: The Appearance of the Negroid Races
It is commonly thought that Black roles in early modern times were played by white actors in blackface, but Chapman finds evidence for Blacks performing on the early modern stage. Black musicians were known to play at court in the late 1500s, and while there are no official proclamations prohibiting Black actors appearing in the playhouses, modern scholars tend to dismiss the posibility.
Part of the problem in tracking the presence of Black performers in early modern London is the variety of terms that were common for describing them ("moors," "blackamoors," etc). The casting records of early modern London do not prohibit Black actors on the stage; many of the roles are for Black characters, and while the roles for hired men do not specify names of actors, there is only evidence for two white men playing Black actors, and scholars have inexplicably applied this number to all Black roles.
While there may be few named Back characters in the Shakespeare canon, this does not take into account hired men roles, such as Morocoo's attendants in Merchant of Venice, or the Black musicians in Loves Labor's Lost. These examples, coupled with many other Black characters that do not sing or speak, offered the opportunity for these role to be filled by untrained actors that did not necessarily have the ability to speak English to the stage. Chapman finds no reason to assume that these roles were not filled by Black actors, especially when they could have been obtained cheaply as slaves or servants.
Indeed, economics were a constant concern for theatre companies, and "using blackfaced white actors to fill any of these roles does not make economic sense." It would cost a company 50% more to use white actors in blackface than it would to use Black actors for those roles. A larger potential cost to the playing companies comes from the blackface makeup's propensity for smearing and staining their most expensive assets: their costumes.
Danise A Walen: Erasing Juliet
Scholars have argued that Shakepeare's plays have been cut from production, and put forth that plays were expanded for publication, or that published versions represented an expanded or idealized form of the play script, which would be invariably cut for performance. Plays tended to average about 2500 lines, which are performable within the two hour approximation that Shakespeare offers in Romeo and Juliet, but Shakespeare's texts were considerably longer.
However, when examining the Q1 of Romeo and Juliet as a cut script for touring in the provinces, Walen finds several disturbing implications for the role of Juliet. She seems to be more emotionally competent than Romeo, takes risks more daring than Romeo, and yet loses nearly 40% of her lines in Q1 (compared to Q2). her deathbed soliloquy is slashed from 44 lines down to 18, for example. The ASC's Victoria Renzel demonstrates the differences between these two monologues for us. The effect is, indeed, both striking and disturbing.
As Walen points out, Juliet loses her emotional and sexual energy, and the character is reduced to a plot device lacking dramatic interest. This is clearly more in keeping with later Victorian sensibilities that carried int the 19th century. Many of these cuts have a tendency to continue to be made for a variety of reasons, which include directors lacking confidence in their actresses, wanting to shift more weight and importance to Romeo, and perhaps a discomfort with Shakespeare's honest portrayal of a young woman in love.
Wow. That was another very meaty session, and if I was able to type any faster, I would have peppered you with even more points that these presenter have offered. I'm going to try to get over to Masonic Red for a session in Shakespeares music now, so with any luck I'll be back later with a follow up on that.
This will actually be the next to last paper session of the conference, and the titles of some of these presenters are extremely intriguing. Moderating this session will be Amy Cohen, of Randolph College, and if the surname sounds familiar, she is, in fact, the daughter of our Ralph Alan Cohen. Well, they just rang the bell, and Ralph Alan Cohen is welcoming us back, so I guess that means we'll be under way.
Don Weingust: Original Practices: The New England Shakespeare Festival
Weingust reminds us that, if the world of theatre is small, the world of original practices Shakespeare theatre is so small it might be described as incestuous. While the "Shenendoah School" that we practice here at the ASC is one school (characterized by rapid delivery of lines, reconstruction of Renaissance architecture, universal lighting), there are others that are worthy of consideration. Of note are the reconstructed Globe, and Patrick Tucker's Original Shakespeare Company (OSC), and the New England Shakespeare Festival, "perhaps the purest Tucker school in America."
The economic realities of the theatre world has led to some of the original practice techniques these theatres use. The Actors Renaissance Season was, for example began by ASC as a cost-saving measure. Likewise NESF's use of a rehearsal-less process allows them to hire a higher caliber of actor. While they do not undertake full rehearsals of the entire play, they do rehearse fights, dances, etc. Also, they only work from sides or cue scripts. Actor only learn which role they are playing on the day of the show, and as a result, the actors are not required to memorize their parts.
NESF casts almost all of their actors out of New York, where actors are given work shops in original practices methods and textual performance methods. Prompters at NESF are more proactive than at the ASC. They act more like referees than prompters at ASC, and will penalize actors who mis-speak their lines by forcing them to come up with an impromptu song, etc. The actors engage textually focused, non-conceptually driven performances that directly engage audiences in a way similar to the ASC's fast-paced approach.
Weingust argues that NESF has gone farther than any other company today in doing away with the traditional rehearsal process. They have devised highly entertaining and energetic ways of enforcing a close textual performance.
Elizabeth Griffith: A Penny for a "Get-Penny": The Long, Stable Price of Entertainment at Shakespeare's Globe
Over the course of the 48 years of the Globe's life, the cost of admission was maintained at a single penny for basic admission. Despite the cost of inflation and the number of the theatre companies that failed before the general closing of the theatres in 1642, the Globe was able to maintain a very inexpensive baic entry fair throughout its life. Griffith will explore how they were able to do so.
Between 1580 to 1640, prices increased 150% and wages only increased by 50%. While the increase of prices was more responsive to increased demand in goods and good harvests, wages remained tied to a "wage stickiness" that characterizes early modern economies. The enlightened style of management that Burbage initiated was, according to Gurr, the only democratic innovation in an otherwise totalitarian environment.
Price stickiness prevented the raising of the price. one penny may have represented a tradition that the audience expected. they were only one generation a way from the barter economy. In contrast prices at the Blackfriars weere higher and more frequently adjusted, which is reflective of the greater disposable income and removal from the barter economy of their prices.
Second hypothesis: The Globe acted in advertising for the Blackfriars. Plays produced at the Globe were attended by thousands per week, and may have created interest among London's elite in seeing the play in the more elegant playhouse. The Globe could thus be thought of as Advertisement for the Blackfriars.
The Cpany may have had cost advantages that enabled them to keep their costs low. By having a large umber of sharers, they had less fees for hired men. Also, they did not have to pay rent as they were their own landlords. Companies that were members of liveries had advantages over ones that weren't because they could bind apprentices. I see apprentice labor used (and sometimes exploited) all the time in modern theatre, so this makes sense.
The company was longstanding and stable, and that gave it a level of efficiency over newer companies. As inflation deflated the value of the Penny, the King's Men could make it go further.
There may have been other revenues connected to the playhouse. food and drink for example, which we know were served in performances, were another source of income. Tapster's are referenced many times wihtin Shakespeare's canon, as Griffith's actors demonstrate. This may have been a built in product placement for what amounts to a concession stand in the playhouse.
"Finally, some players might have liked playing at the Globe, griffith poits that Blackfrairs audiences were less attentive. Then the bear escorts her off. Oh well, I would have loved to heard more.
Hsiang-chun Chu: Manly Beasts in Julie Taymor's Titus
Chu was supposed to present earlier in the conference, but a late train kept her form presenting. She asserts that Titus' vengeful acts causes the audience to question the morality of the characters. "A desire for revenge gives the characters a license to kill," and excuses them from considering the humanity of the object of their hate. The uniqueness of the film is in Taymor's use of man-like beasts to visualize the underlying baseness of humanity within the context of the play.
Chu first focuses on the rape of Lavinia. It is unstageable and unrepresentable on the stage. Taymor shoots this scene in a high angle shot, framing Lavinia as the object of a bear-baiting, "raped, maimed, and muted by Demetrius and Chiron who continue to circle their victim. Visually, Taylor makes her part of the tree she is chained to, and thus robs her of human likeness. Symbolic images of the rape that appear as flashback later in the play cast Lavinia as a doe and Demetrius and Chiron as two Tigers waiting to pounce on her.
Similarly, Titus hangs Demetrius and Chiron as if they are two pigs being slaughtered in the kitchen scene before they are baked into the meat pie. Taymor presents the scene as a mock trial and as a slaughterhouse all in one. The scene is disturbing in imagery and effect; Demetrius and Chiron have been removed from human moral consideration, and now are regarded with the same moral weight as animals.
And just as Chu is describing the grisly details of the bloodbath at the end of the play, the bear comes on and begs her for scraps.
Miranda Wilson: "I am the Gaoler": Devilish Confusions, False Beards, and the Shifting Stage in John Suckling's The Goblins
Wilson examines the ASC's performance of The Goblins because of the "teasing dramatic uncertainties." Sucklings plays are rarely performed, and thus have suffered. They do not have the same impact that they will whn staged. When performed, they have a "comic viability" and effective theatricality. The Goblins was performed on the original Blackfriars stage, and was seen by both Charles II and Samuel Pepys, so it was well received in the early modern stage.
Suckling challenges theatrical conventions "with relish," and disorients his audiences with "dizzy movement on stage," "unrelenting illusions," and a rapid prace that will undermine audiences conceptions of how a play ought to proceed. Wilson has prepared six scenes from the second act of The Goblins, which her actors will present to us this afternoon that demonstrate rapid costume changes, beards put on and off.
ASC actors perform these scenes, and Wilson is certainly right. The scene and changes are every bit as fast paced and fragmentary as I've seen in modern musical theatre pieces (I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, for example), and as much confusion as a restoration comedy. Of a sudden, there are twice as many actors as there were on stage a moment before.
Suckling attached himself to the Blackfriars on many levels, and the play seems to have been written to take advantage of the space. Wilson's actors have demonstrated how they may have done so. It is fairly easy to see why it doesn't have nearly the same impact on the page as it does on the stage.
And then enters the bear in the guise of one of the devils that had just been on stage in The Goblins, and Wilson retired the stage.
Annalisa Castaldo: "We'll yoke together, like a double shadow": bringing Together Editing Theory and Original Staging Practices
Modern scholars have a tendency to stress the works of Shakespeare as performance texts, and remind the readers that a reading of them will need to take performance conditions into account. Modern editors, however, fail to take into account the original staging practices, and base their assumptions on what actors using modern practices will learn from the text.
Different staging conditions will lead to different discoveries, and editors fail to take this into account along side their comparisons to folio and quarto texts. Thus several questions of performance are either misrepresented or unresolved within the text. She offers te example of The Taming of the Shrew and the presence of Christopher Sly. Editors only discuss original staging practices to dismiss them, and ground their arguments in textual faults created by publishers to arrive at widely differering conclusions.
Literary concerns do not consider the realities of staging the play in the early 1590s, and thus a key element of the framed story is ignored. OP allows us to consider what would have physically and literally possible within the context of what would have traditionally been done. Given that Shakespeare *textually* expects 15 actors to be on stage together, it seems extremely unlikely that, even in an early stage in his career, he would have been so oblivious to staging practices to ask for two more actors on stage to play Sly and his "wife," especially considering that no other scene of the play requires more than 9 actors. A Taming of a Shrew, on the other hand, re-orchestrates the final scene so that fewer actors are present simultaneously, and quick changes are not necessary in order for the actors in the Sly plot to remain present.
Matthieu Chapman: The Appearance of the Negroid Races
It is commonly thought that Black roles in early modern times were played by white actors in blackface, but Chapman finds evidence for Blacks performing on the early modern stage. Black musicians were known to play at court in the late 1500s, and while there are no official proclamations prohibiting Black actors appearing in the playhouses, modern scholars tend to dismiss the posibility.
Part of the problem in tracking the presence of Black performers in early modern London is the variety of terms that were common for describing them ("moors," "blackamoors," etc). The casting records of early modern London do not prohibit Black actors on the stage; many of the roles are for Black characters, and while the roles for hired men do not specify names of actors, there is only evidence for two white men playing Black actors, and scholars have inexplicably applied this number to all Black roles.
While there may be few named Back characters in the Shakespeare canon, this does not take into account hired men roles, such as Morocoo's attendants in Merchant of Venice, or the Black musicians in Loves Labor's Lost. These examples, coupled with many other Black characters that do not sing or speak, offered the opportunity for these role to be filled by untrained actors that did not necessarily have the ability to speak English to the stage. Chapman finds no reason to assume that these roles were not filled by Black actors, especially when they could have been obtained cheaply as slaves or servants.
Indeed, economics were a constant concern for theatre companies, and "using blackfaced white actors to fill any of these roles does not make economic sense." It would cost a company 50% more to use white actors in blackface than it would to use Black actors for those roles. A larger potential cost to the playing companies comes from the blackface makeup's propensity for smearing and staining their most expensive assets: their costumes.
Danise A Walen: Erasing Juliet
Scholars have argued that Shakepeare's plays have been cut from production, and put forth that plays were expanded for publication, or that published versions represented an expanded or idealized form of the play script, which would be invariably cut for performance. Plays tended to average about 2500 lines, which are performable within the two hour approximation that Shakespeare offers in Romeo and Juliet, but Shakespeare's texts were considerably longer.
However, when examining the Q1 of Romeo and Juliet as a cut script for touring in the provinces, Walen finds several disturbing implications for the role of Juliet. She seems to be more emotionally competent than Romeo, takes risks more daring than Romeo, and yet loses nearly 40% of her lines in Q1 (compared to Q2). her deathbed soliloquy is slashed from 44 lines down to 18, for example. The ASC's Victoria Renzel demonstrates the differences between these two monologues for us. The effect is, indeed, both striking and disturbing.
As Walen points out, Juliet loses her emotional and sexual energy, and the character is reduced to a plot device lacking dramatic interest. This is clearly more in keeping with later Victorian sensibilities that carried int the 19th century. Many of these cuts have a tendency to continue to be made for a variety of reasons, which include directors lacking confidence in their actresses, wanting to shift more weight and importance to Romeo, and perhaps a discomfort with Shakespeare's honest portrayal of a young woman in love.
Wow. That was another very meaty session, and if I was able to type any faster, I would have peppered you with even more points that these presenter have offered. I'm going to try to get over to Masonic Red for a session in Shakespeares music now, so with any luck I'll be back later with a follow up on that.
Keynote: Andrew Gurr: The Economics of the 1613 Decision
Something that Professor Cohen had impressed on us all going into this conference was that the Blackfriars itself wouldn't be here without Andy Gurr. Agree or disagree with his concept of a duopoly between The Chamberlain's Men and the Admiral's Men, I don't think there's anyone here that would argue that The Shakespearean Stage has been the cornerstone of Elizabethan scholarship for at least the last 40 years. Dr. Gurr's keynote this morning is, without a doubt, the highlight of this conference.
Ralph Alan Cohen introduces Gurr by pointing out that tomorrow is St. Crispin's Day, and that he was tempted to ask Dr. Gurr to read the speech from Henry V. Gurr, Cohen is confident, would have invariably said yes. It was Gurr's propensity for saying yes that was responsible for the reconstruction of The Globe, and and for the ASC Blackfriar's Theatre that we are all sitting in now.
After thanking Cohen and Mary Baldwin College for inviting him to the conference, Gurr begins by clarifying that he will not be talking about Sheakespeare's Trousers this morning (drat!), but rather the economics behind the decision to build the second Globe in 1613 (the second Globe would not be completed until 1614). For those who don't know, the original Globe theatre was built with a thatched roof to save money, and during a performance of Henrey VIII, the thatches caught fire, and the buildin burned down. The Globe was rebuilt at great cost, leading many to accuse the King's Men of making a poor economic decision out of a sense of sentimentality. The King' Men had a second, more profitable indoor playhouse, after all (the Blackfriars), and thus the decision to rebuild the Globe "was unnecessary."
"We know that at least two of the housekeepers declined to pay their share," so the decision to rebuild the Globe was not universal among the sharers. Shakespeare himself decided to opt out of taking part in the reconstruction of the Globe. Gurr puts forward that this was an emberassing time for Shakespeare as he had just bought a share in the Blackfriars gatehouse. We know from Shakespeare's will that he bequeathed no shares in either the Globe or the Blackfriars playhouses, and thus we can assume that he divested himself of his shares in the theatres. Gurr states that it is a reasonable assumption that it must have been when the sharers were being asked to put forward significant sums of money for the reconstruction of the Globe that Shakespeare walked away from the investment.
Why then, did the majority of the company members rebuild the Globe? Gurr points out that, by 1609, there had been a ban on all city inns, including the Bell and the Crosskeys (the former houses of the Queen's Men), for playing purposes, and thus the King's Men (and other playing companies) had to play a winter season in an outdoor theatre. Clearly this was an unfavorable circumstance, and had led to the securing of the Blackfriars.
Edward Alleyn's endowment of Dulwich College cost in the neighborhood of 10,000 pounds, "which was a phenomnal sum of money in Jacobean terms." Burbage, on the other hand, was used to thinking in much smaller economic terms, and yet he saw it necessary to raise the 1000 pounds necessary for the construction of the 1614 Globe.
Being a housekeeper was not the same as being a sharer in the company, and Gurr cites evidence of buildings adjacent to the original Globe that burned down in the fire that also had an economic value to the house sharers. Burbage, Hemmings, and Condel were all accommodating men, and formed a "leading group of the fellowship" to rebuild the Globe. Shakespeare was the only original housekeeper that opted not to rebuild the Globe, and Gurr attempts to explain his decision, "apart from his chronic penny pinching," in the context of Shakespeare's first joining of the Chamberlain's Men.
Gurr challenges the notion that Shakespeare primarily wanted to see his play published, and cites evidence of the variety of cuts and emendations made to the texts in print. "Retirement, dare I say" was a motivation for choosing not to reinvest in the new Globe. Gurr marks this as the moment where he marked his retirement from the London theatre scene, and notes that he probably viewed the Blackfriars Gatehouse as the only properly he needed in London. He paid 180 pounds out of pocket for it, and when a few weeks later Hemmings, Condel, Lowen, and Burbage came to him for money to rebuild the Globe, it must have seemed a painful request given the recent expenditure that he had recently incurred.
Hemmings, Condell, Burbage, and Lowen invested in the second Globe for reasons of continuity of their company, which Gurr says is more like a fellowship. There was something unique about this group of individuals, and they no doubt found something in working with each other that they were fairly certain they would not find with another company. "Hemmings, Burbage, and Condell were brought up in the populist tradition" as well, and saw an appeal to performing in a playhouse that was designed for a more inclusive audience. Leaving one playhouse empty for half of the year was an extravagance, and not explainable by economics alone.
There are signs of sentimentality in the choice to rebuild the Globe using the same materials as it was originally built with. When the Fortune burned down in 1621, it was rebuilt with brick, and building codes were beginning to form at the time that asked for more durable material construction. While they did replace the thatched roof of the first Globe with tiles the second time around (which was only natural as that was directly responsible for the fire), Gurr concludes that the decision to build the theatre in almost exactly the same fashion and in the same place as the first is further evidence of the sentimantality that must have been at play in the reconstruction.
The Blackfriars space is much smaller than the Globe, and thus there was a practical consideration for the reconstruction of the Globe. Gurr points out that the ASC Blackfriars is actually larger than Shakespeare because the stools on stage would have to be roughly 3' further on stage to account for the rapiers that every fashionable lord would have worn. There were also economic reasons for the Globe. In a summer season that Gurr cites, the Globe had an intake of 78 pounds, and the Blackfriars had an intake of 48 for its comparable winter season. Of course, the seats in the Blackfriars were more expensive, and had they played at the Blackfriars in the summer, their intake their would have been much higher; thus the economic reasons cannot alone justify the expense of building a second Globe.
We must conceive of the decision of the housekeepers to rebuild the Globe as a primarily sentimental one. "To rebuild the Globe was affirmation of an old tradition," "and perhaps we ourselves now should think about whether we want to ally ourselves with that sense of traditionalism" in getting the Globe in London to build its own Blackfriars Playhouse and getting the ASC to build its own Globe, concludes Gurr.
I, for one, didn't get into this business for the money, and have always felt that you don't invest in art for a monetary return. It's hard for me to close my eyes to the worst economy we've seen in 80 years, but if the Globe was "so old fashioned by 1613," and it didn't make good monetary sense to rebuild it, but the King's Men, 400 years ago, saw value in the continuity of rebuilding their original theatre, maybe we should have a little bit more confidence in our own cultural, and yes, emotional investment.
To conclude, Professor Cohen reminds us that there will be a series of conversations tomorrow morning which will investigate the ASC's process of constructing their own Globe Playhouse.
So there we have Andy Gurr's keynote, which was admittedly familiar to me from his writing, but it was exciting to hear it from the legend himself. We'll break for lunch now and be back after 2:15 with a report from paper session 10.
Ralph Alan Cohen introduces Gurr by pointing out that tomorrow is St. Crispin's Day, and that he was tempted to ask Dr. Gurr to read the speech from Henry V. Gurr, Cohen is confident, would have invariably said yes. It was Gurr's propensity for saying yes that was responsible for the reconstruction of The Globe, and and for the ASC Blackfriar's Theatre that we are all sitting in now.
After thanking Cohen and Mary Baldwin College for inviting him to the conference, Gurr begins by clarifying that he will not be talking about Sheakespeare's Trousers this morning (drat!), but rather the economics behind the decision to build the second Globe in 1613 (the second Globe would not be completed until 1614). For those who don't know, the original Globe theatre was built with a thatched roof to save money, and during a performance of Henrey VIII, the thatches caught fire, and the buildin burned down. The Globe was rebuilt at great cost, leading many to accuse the King's Men of making a poor economic decision out of a sense of sentimentality. The King' Men had a second, more profitable indoor playhouse, after all (the Blackfriars), and thus the decision to rebuild the Globe "was unnecessary."
"We know that at least two of the housekeepers declined to pay their share," so the decision to rebuild the Globe was not universal among the sharers. Shakespeare himself decided to opt out of taking part in the reconstruction of the Globe. Gurr puts forward that this was an emberassing time for Shakespeare as he had just bought a share in the Blackfriars gatehouse. We know from Shakespeare's will that he bequeathed no shares in either the Globe or the Blackfriars playhouses, and thus we can assume that he divested himself of his shares in the theatres. Gurr states that it is a reasonable assumption that it must have been when the sharers were being asked to put forward significant sums of money for the reconstruction of the Globe that Shakespeare walked away from the investment.
Why then, did the majority of the company members rebuild the Globe? Gurr points out that, by 1609, there had been a ban on all city inns, including the Bell and the Crosskeys (the former houses of the Queen's Men), for playing purposes, and thus the King's Men (and other playing companies) had to play a winter season in an outdoor theatre. Clearly this was an unfavorable circumstance, and had led to the securing of the Blackfriars.
Edward Alleyn's endowment of Dulwich College cost in the neighborhood of 10,000 pounds, "which was a phenomnal sum of money in Jacobean terms." Burbage, on the other hand, was used to thinking in much smaller economic terms, and yet he saw it necessary to raise the 1000 pounds necessary for the construction of the 1614 Globe.
Being a housekeeper was not the same as being a sharer in the company, and Gurr cites evidence of buildings adjacent to the original Globe that burned down in the fire that also had an economic value to the house sharers. Burbage, Hemmings, and Condel were all accommodating men, and formed a "leading group of the fellowship" to rebuild the Globe. Shakespeare was the only original housekeeper that opted not to rebuild the Globe, and Gurr attempts to explain his decision, "apart from his chronic penny pinching," in the context of Shakespeare's first joining of the Chamberlain's Men.
Gurr challenges the notion that Shakespeare primarily wanted to see his play published, and cites evidence of the variety of cuts and emendations made to the texts in print. "Retirement, dare I say" was a motivation for choosing not to reinvest in the new Globe. Gurr marks this as the moment where he marked his retirement from the London theatre scene, and notes that he probably viewed the Blackfriars Gatehouse as the only properly he needed in London. He paid 180 pounds out of pocket for it, and when a few weeks later Hemmings, Condel, Lowen, and Burbage came to him for money to rebuild the Globe, it must have seemed a painful request given the recent expenditure that he had recently incurred.
Hemmings, Condell, Burbage, and Lowen invested in the second Globe for reasons of continuity of their company, which Gurr says is more like a fellowship. There was something unique about this group of individuals, and they no doubt found something in working with each other that they were fairly certain they would not find with another company. "Hemmings, Burbage, and Condell were brought up in the populist tradition" as well, and saw an appeal to performing in a playhouse that was designed for a more inclusive audience. Leaving one playhouse empty for half of the year was an extravagance, and not explainable by economics alone.
There are signs of sentimentality in the choice to rebuild the Globe using the same materials as it was originally built with. When the Fortune burned down in 1621, it was rebuilt with brick, and building codes were beginning to form at the time that asked for more durable material construction. While they did replace the thatched roof of the first Globe with tiles the second time around (which was only natural as that was directly responsible for the fire), Gurr concludes that the decision to build the theatre in almost exactly the same fashion and in the same place as the first is further evidence of the sentimantality that must have been at play in the reconstruction.
The Blackfriars space is much smaller than the Globe, and thus there was a practical consideration for the reconstruction of the Globe. Gurr points out that the ASC Blackfriars is actually larger than Shakespeare because the stools on stage would have to be roughly 3' further on stage to account for the rapiers that every fashionable lord would have worn. There were also economic reasons for the Globe. In a summer season that Gurr cites, the Globe had an intake of 78 pounds, and the Blackfriars had an intake of 48 for its comparable winter season. Of course, the seats in the Blackfriars were more expensive, and had they played at the Blackfriars in the summer, their intake their would have been much higher; thus the economic reasons cannot alone justify the expense of building a second Globe.
We must conceive of the decision of the housekeepers to rebuild the Globe as a primarily sentimental one. "To rebuild the Globe was affirmation of an old tradition," "and perhaps we ourselves now should think about whether we want to ally ourselves with that sense of traditionalism" in getting the Globe in London to build its own Blackfriars Playhouse and getting the ASC to build its own Globe, concludes Gurr.
I, for one, didn't get into this business for the money, and have always felt that you don't invest in art for a monetary return. It's hard for me to close my eyes to the worst economy we've seen in 80 years, but if the Globe was "so old fashioned by 1613," and it didn't make good monetary sense to rebuild it, but the King's Men, 400 years ago, saw value in the continuity of rebuilding their original theatre, maybe we should have a little bit more confidence in our own cultural, and yes, emotional investment.
To conclude, Professor Cohen reminds us that there will be a series of conversations tomorrow morning which will investigate the ASC's process of constructing their own Globe Playhouse.
So there we have Andy Gurr's keynote, which was admittedly familiar to me from his writing, but it was exciting to hear it from the legend himself. We'll break for lunch now and be back after 2:15 with a report from paper session 10.
Paper Session 9
Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Blackfriars conference! Today is very exciting for all of us because it features a keynote session with Andrew Gurr, and the debut of Shakespeare on Ice, but that's later today. We start off at nine with our ninth paper session, moderated by Dean Nancy Kripple of Mary Baldwin College.
Christopher Hodgkins: "Infinite Varietie": Phillip Stubbes, Cleopatra, and Staging Shakespeare's Anti-Theatrical Muse
"Shakespeare" and "anti-theatricality" don't regularly occur in the same sentence. Shakespeare describes Cleopatra's beauty as infinite, yet also has characters refer to her as a "royal wench." Shakespeare exploits the "endless variability" of the stage to create his plays, but this endless variability can also be one of theatre's shortcomings to some. English writers have historically considered infinite variety as a sign of vanity or weakness, and it is possible that Shakespeare was aware of Stubbs' use of the word. Enobarbus usage of "infinite variety" suggests a transformation of the phrase.
Hodgkins argues that Shakespeare deliberately staged the anti-theatrical, in this sense meaning the treatises against theatre, as a way of exploring it within the world of his plays. This seems to have been a common theme on the early modern stage, as character curse the world of the stage and leave it behind.
Clay Drinko: Shakespearean Flow: Psychological Possibilities of an Improvisational Performance Technique at the Globe
Sam Wanamaker's reconstruction of The Globe features casts that use modern acting techniques, and their performances would benefit from adopting an approach closer to original practices. Drinko suggests that improvisational acting techniques could help actors recreate the immediacy of performance on the early modern stage. Improvisational theatre with audiences gives actors immediate feedback on the performance. It seems as if Drinko is suggesting a blend of improvisational exercise and rehearsal, perhaps in the presence of the audience, to enhance the overall immediacy of the performance. This is training for the non-conscious mind to deal with the realities of performance in OP methods.
Dan Venning: "Insides Out": Grotesque Violence and the Shifting Popularity of Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus explores the realities of death, "no one dies of a broken heart." Venning argues that it's unpopularity is because of "the Senecan bloody spectacle" in which peoples insides are literally removed. He cites Peter Brooks production, which used symbolic violence, and was better received than other performances of it had been. Traditional proponents of Western Literature dismiss Titus as a "stupid," and worse, but in its own time, Titus was popular with both common playhouses and with the nobility. It was one of the few plays to be published multiple times in quarto before the folio versions.
Venning argues that the violence of Titus was part of the reason for its popularity. Heads of traitors and bodies rotting in gibbets were some of the first things that one would see when entereing London. Public executions and bear baitings were popular forms of entertainment in which the insides of live bodies were often exposed.
Brooks production, by contrast, used symbolic artifacts suggestive of violence. No stage blood was used, the killings of Chiron and Demetrius were performed off stage, and red streamers were used to represent blood flowing from Lavinia's severed hands. The performance was extremely well received, and within a few years Titus was again regarded as a serious tragedy. However, in more recent performances, production values have used extreme violence.
And then the bear brought an early end to a very interesting paper.
Mariko Ichikawa: Pindarus Alive
Dr. Ichikawa explores the entrance and exit of Pindarus in Julius Caesar. Noting that Pindarus has no explicit stage directions in the Folio, Ichikawa suggests that Pindarus might not have proceeded as far as to the balcony. She notes that to do so, Pindarus must have either moved very quickly, or Cassius must have moved very slowly.
Ichikawa notes that, in similar fashion, the Doctor in The Court Beggar likely did not appear in the balcony, but peaked from behind the upstage discovery space, and that the "he speakes above" direction in the Q2 Merry Wives that accompanies Falstaff's "no mine host." would require Falstaff t move too quickly if "above" is interpreted as the gallery.
Dr. Ichikawa's actors demonstrate how Pindarus' exit may have worked. It is sufficient for Pindarus to exit and then describe Tritinius' capture.
Mark Muggli and Laura Mohs: The Thematic Resonance of Overlapping Exits and Entrances.
Muggli and Mohs propose that, in Shakespeare's theatre, entrances and exits would be overlapped, and cite Ichikawa, Desson, and Gurr's work. This is pretty standard practice here at the ASC. Again we see a paper presentation that would have really benefited from the use of actors. Muggli and Mohs explore a couple entrances/exits in Much Ado, but it's hard to see the thematic significances they're trying to show when each of the two presenters is playing multiple roles.
Holly Pickett: Death by Ritual: Incense in Women Beware Women
Pickett explores the smells created within the playhouse as an olfactory design element. Within the context of the lust, incense, and revenge of Middleton's Women Beware Women, the olfactory spectacle of the use of incense in the climax matches the accompanying visual spectacle.
Pickett explores the liturgical influence of incense as well, and points out that incense itself was explicitly prohibited in the English Church, but an injunction had been set against any images within the church that had been sensed. Sensing was considered to be part of the Catholic polemic, and some reformers thought of the use of incense as a remnant of pagan idolatry.
There is a question as to whether the incense could even have been smelled by the audience. Pickett poses the question of whether the sace might have been to big for the scent to reach to the balcony, but likewise poses the possibility that improperly sensing the space might have left audiences coughing too hard to enjoy the show.
Pickett here employs actors in a cut script, and a liturgical senser to explore the effect on the audience present here today. In my travels I've found that smell-o-vision theatre tends to be distracting and rarely perceived in the context of the stage action, but Im always game for an experiment. Pickett offers us a chance to sneak out, and then the scene begins. Incense is lit on the stage, and the dramatic effect is achieved. I'm sitting almost as far away from the stage on the main floor as you can get, and I couldn't smell it.
Yet Pickett raises an interesting point: since we see the deadly effect of the incense within the world of the play, should the audience feel any reservation about smelling the incense?
It's been a couple minutes now, and we can finally smell the incense in the back. It seems to me that the result is thus disconnected from the context. I think the real problem with establishing the context of scent in the theatre is that it travels a lot more slowly than light or sound. Then again, I've never been a huge fan of the idea anyway.
So that'll bring the first paper session of the day to a close, and I'm jonesing for a cup of coffee before Andy Gurr's keynote. I'll be back after 11 with a report on that. Cheers!
Christopher Hodgkins: "Infinite Varietie": Phillip Stubbes, Cleopatra, and Staging Shakespeare's Anti-Theatrical Muse
"Shakespeare" and "anti-theatricality" don't regularly occur in the same sentence. Shakespeare describes Cleopatra's beauty as infinite, yet also has characters refer to her as a "royal wench." Shakespeare exploits the "endless variability" of the stage to create his plays, but this endless variability can also be one of theatre's shortcomings to some. English writers have historically considered infinite variety as a sign of vanity or weakness, and it is possible that Shakespeare was aware of Stubbs' use of the word. Enobarbus usage of "infinite variety" suggests a transformation of the phrase.
Hodgkins argues that Shakespeare deliberately staged the anti-theatrical, in this sense meaning the treatises against theatre, as a way of exploring it within the world of his plays. This seems to have been a common theme on the early modern stage, as character curse the world of the stage and leave it behind.
Clay Drinko: Shakespearean Flow: Psychological Possibilities of an Improvisational Performance Technique at the Globe
Sam Wanamaker's reconstruction of The Globe features casts that use modern acting techniques, and their performances would benefit from adopting an approach closer to original practices. Drinko suggests that improvisational acting techniques could help actors recreate the immediacy of performance on the early modern stage. Improvisational theatre with audiences gives actors immediate feedback on the performance. It seems as if Drinko is suggesting a blend of improvisational exercise and rehearsal, perhaps in the presence of the audience, to enhance the overall immediacy of the performance. This is training for the non-conscious mind to deal with the realities of performance in OP methods.
Dan Venning: "Insides Out": Grotesque Violence and the Shifting Popularity of Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus explores the realities of death, "no one dies of a broken heart." Venning argues that it's unpopularity is because of "the Senecan bloody spectacle" in which peoples insides are literally removed. He cites Peter Brooks production, which used symbolic violence, and was better received than other performances of it had been. Traditional proponents of Western Literature dismiss Titus as a "stupid," and worse, but in its own time, Titus was popular with both common playhouses and with the nobility. It was one of the few plays to be published multiple times in quarto before the folio versions.
Venning argues that the violence of Titus was part of the reason for its popularity. Heads of traitors and bodies rotting in gibbets were some of the first things that one would see when entereing London. Public executions and bear baitings were popular forms of entertainment in which the insides of live bodies were often exposed.
Brooks production, by contrast, used symbolic artifacts suggestive of violence. No stage blood was used, the killings of Chiron and Demetrius were performed off stage, and red streamers were used to represent blood flowing from Lavinia's severed hands. The performance was extremely well received, and within a few years Titus was again regarded as a serious tragedy. However, in more recent performances, production values have used extreme violence.
And then the bear brought an early end to a very interesting paper.
Mariko Ichikawa: Pindarus Alive
Dr. Ichikawa explores the entrance and exit of Pindarus in Julius Caesar. Noting that Pindarus has no explicit stage directions in the Folio, Ichikawa suggests that Pindarus might not have proceeded as far as to the balcony. She notes that to do so, Pindarus must have either moved very quickly, or Cassius must have moved very slowly.
Ichikawa notes that, in similar fashion, the Doctor in The Court Beggar likely did not appear in the balcony, but peaked from behind the upstage discovery space, and that the "he speakes above" direction in the Q2 Merry Wives that accompanies Falstaff's "no mine host." would require Falstaff t move too quickly if "above" is interpreted as the gallery.
Dr. Ichikawa's actors demonstrate how Pindarus' exit may have worked. It is sufficient for Pindarus to exit and then describe Tritinius' capture.
Mark Muggli and Laura Mohs: The Thematic Resonance of Overlapping Exits and Entrances.
Muggli and Mohs propose that, in Shakespeare's theatre, entrances and exits would be overlapped, and cite Ichikawa, Desson, and Gurr's work. This is pretty standard practice here at the ASC. Again we see a paper presentation that would have really benefited from the use of actors. Muggli and Mohs explore a couple entrances/exits in Much Ado, but it's hard to see the thematic significances they're trying to show when each of the two presenters is playing multiple roles.
Holly Pickett: Death by Ritual: Incense in Women Beware Women
Pickett explores the smells created within the playhouse as an olfactory design element. Within the context of the lust, incense, and revenge of Middleton's Women Beware Women, the olfactory spectacle of the use of incense in the climax matches the accompanying visual spectacle.
Pickett explores the liturgical influence of incense as well, and points out that incense itself was explicitly prohibited in the English Church, but an injunction had been set against any images within the church that had been sensed. Sensing was considered to be part of the Catholic polemic, and some reformers thought of the use of incense as a remnant of pagan idolatry.
There is a question as to whether the incense could even have been smelled by the audience. Pickett poses the question of whether the sace might have been to big for the scent to reach to the balcony, but likewise poses the possibility that improperly sensing the space might have left audiences coughing too hard to enjoy the show.
Pickett here employs actors in a cut script, and a liturgical senser to explore the effect on the audience present here today. In my travels I've found that smell-o-vision theatre tends to be distracting and rarely perceived in the context of the stage action, but Im always game for an experiment. Pickett offers us a chance to sneak out, and then the scene begins. Incense is lit on the stage, and the dramatic effect is achieved. I'm sitting almost as far away from the stage on the main floor as you can get, and I couldn't smell it.
Yet Pickett raises an interesting point: since we see the deadly effect of the incense within the world of the play, should the audience feel any reservation about smelling the incense?
It's been a couple minutes now, and we can finally smell the incense in the back. It seems to me that the result is thus disconnected from the context. I think the real problem with establishing the context of scent in the theatre is that it travels a lot more slowly than light or sound. Then again, I've never been a huge fan of the idea anyway.
So that'll bring the first paper session of the day to a close, and I'm jonesing for a cup of coffee before Andy Gurr's keynote. I'll be back after 11 with a report on that. Cheers!
Friday, October 23, 2009
Paper Session 8
Peter Hyland (Huron University College), "Hot Properties: Chettle's Hoffman"
"A footnote to Gail Paster's paper, or a fungus growing thereon." He was surprised by Jude Law's demand that a real skull was necessary for Hamlet, reminding him of the real skull (Tchaikovsky?) donated to the RSC, which actors had refused to use. Records indicated that Hamlet was the first play of the era to use a skull, so such a prop was likely not in the properties of any of the established Elizabethan communities. The ontological relationship between stage properties and "real" properties. A table made in a stage workshop is not so different from a table made in a factory for simple furniture use. Whereas a real skull has a peculiar dramatic resonance not possessed by a mocked-up prop. The skull as connection between past and future. The constitutions of playgoers in the early-modern area were, if not iron-clad, certainly not so squeamish as our more modern sensibilities (they did watch bear-baitings, etc.)
A skeleton is revealed in the first ten lines of Hoffman wearing a burning crown. The two properties are paired in the production. The voice of Hoffman as similar/identical to the structure of the play. Chettle as inspired by (not parodic of) Hamlet. Would Henslowe have gone to trouble of contracting the manufacture of a skeleton when real specimens were available? Doubtful, besides , the thing itself would have an unmistakable authenticity. Hoffman's persuasive depiction of death ironically assured its long life. The play performed a version of reality beyond what is possible today, but demands attention from scholars nonetheless.
Melissa D. Aaron (California State Polytechnic University, Pomona), "Weddings, Funerals, and Garters: The 1612-13 Revival of 1 Henry IV, Merry Wives of Windsor, and Much Ado About Nothing"
Confession: "Yes, it was all about the hats!" (Hamlet and Osric) Debt of gratitude to Gurr.
Economic reading as "core sample". Things we should know when we are doing Shakespeare now: money, props, costumes, physical appurtenances and expenditures. (Money embarrasses scholars more than sex.) King's men formed syndicate to control Blackfriars in 1608. Play closures in the first two decades of 1600s took a toll on producers' wallets. Palatine's wedding to Princess Elizabeth was lavish affair (9,000 pounds). Court work becomes a larger slice of sharer income after the 1590s. 20 plays at court may have brought in 150 pounds, in comparison with the 140 pound total revenue of previous entire seasons. Much Ado, 1 Henry IV, Merry Wives were performed before royalty. Henry and Wives make sense politically and practically. But why Much Ado? Recycling of costumes. Pistol and Benedick may have worn the same clothes. Reusing masque-ing props, out-fits, possibly even the rack of horns (mentioned by Benedick). The company may have deemed the plays compatible commercially. Take away lesson: stockpile costumes and props, use plays that may complement one another, and appeal to a wide audience.
Ian Borden (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), "How Shakespeare Trained the West: Mail-Order Shakespeare As Cultural Object in Nineteenth-Century America"
Show and Tell (period documents of Mail-Order Shakespeare stuff from the 19th century) Shakespeare as paramount cultural object available. Mail as only means of cultural transmission. Commodities as means of social movement: chiefly books. Erudition as social status. Prominent display of books. Family surrounded by mud and livestock, photographed with their piano. African-American man and woman staged behind three books on a table. Grand Island, Ne, stopover for touring Shakespeare groups (though the population of the town was a mere 3,000 at the time). Women's clubs aided rise of Shakespeare. Weekly forums (in winter) for reading/discussion of literature, plays, etc. Arrival of books as impetus for informal social gathering. Reading aloud as formative experience for children's education, not only grammatically, but ethically (?). Patriotically American to read Shakespeare. Our appropriation of him: we appreciate him more than the Brits. Editions compiled by "competent, distinguished" scholars and editors. Elegance of form, purity of text, valuable editorial matter. Elimination of material deemed extraneous for popular consumption. Clearly, the text has been adjusted and perhaps corrupted for everyday American appreciation. Montgomery Ward devoted an entire column to Shakespeare, who outstrips even American authors in cultural and printed prominence. An intrinsic part of cultural grown of America.
Alice Dailey & Shawn Kirschner (Villanova University), "Fifteen Women and Nick Sly the Astrophysicist: Staging Critical Engagements with Shrew"
Handout of flyer from the Taming of the Shrew. What happens if Shakespeare is approached from a heretical direction. Take close critical work, transfer it to the stage. Instead of using mechanisms of performance to interpret textual matter; begin from a critically informed position, and take the theory into practice (Davies). Acts of interpretation as dramatic content. Survery of secondary literature. Staging the play requires drawing conclusions about misogyny, skewed by the population of the class (15 women & Nick, the astrophysicist). Use of one male actor is critical by virtue of his demarcation as Other. Should he be Kate? Petrucchio? Does "the love relationship triumph" at the end of the play? Or is Kate's life finished, with the abdication of voice necessitated by her marriage? Performance at Actors' Renaissance season. Relationship between body, text and voice.
Production notes: Working script based on the students' edited projects. Retaining moments which speak most directly to core, vexed issues. Generally standard approach to blocking, etc., but because the text was edited with attention to critical analysis there was inherent bias, or predisposition. What to do with Sly? Keep him as on-stage voyeur. Nick Sly becomes the meta-theatrical, on-stage director of the production in question (the induction was eliminated). The only man in the class became an advocate for a traditional interpretation of the show. The female actors, in the production, became gradually discontent and rebellious. The tension between the historicized feminism and the contemporary "popular" interpretation is foregrounded and draws attention to the self-conscious direction of the show. ASC actors perform a somewhat Pirandello-esque scene as an exemplar of the technique. First time through, Kate is sympathetic, innocent; second time she is demonized, a "harpy". Disciplinary reinforcement of masculinist reading was required by the one male participant. Culminates in a staged debate re: Kate's final monologue, expressing the performers ambivalence about the text. Did Shakespeare mean to be sexist? What is Kate's agency? What is the relationship between our interpretations and our stagings?
Darlene Farabee (University of Delaware), "Experiencing Location in Macbeth"
Lady Macbeth's response to Duncan's murder: "Here, in our house?" Why can't she say something more clever? Control of stage space may show how narrative movement drives movement on stage. Captain (I.ii.) describing Macbeth as creating a passage, violently. Macbeth and Banquo enter a space already inhabited by the witches. Location is established aurally. Pageantry and aural clues set stage, literally. Conflation of time and space increase gradually over the course of the play. "If it 'twere done...here, but here upon this bank and shoal of time",
"he's here in double trust". "Here" as marker of time, then later as marker of place. Macbeth's inability to locate the "air-drawn" dagger permits him to find his path with the physical dagger he carries. "Thou marshal'st me..." Inability to locate source of knocking as indication of Macbeth's difficulty locating himself in space and time. He is literally disoriented. He becomes completely unable to differentiate location in space and time once his wife is dead. "She should have died hereafter..." Eventually, he is "tied to a stake", fixed to a location.
Demonstration by ASC actors. Offstage actions must take place elsewhere to dislocate the audience from the positive movement of the narrative, producing the same disorientation experienced by the title character.
Andrew Fleck (San Jose State University), "Teach You Our Princess English": Linguistic Conquest in the Early Quartos and Performances of Henry V"
Nostalgia for polyglot Elizabeth. Performance of Katherine's language lesson is more effective as the audience is drilled in some of the vocabulary that she is learning.
I struggled to keep up with the pace of this scholar.
Long prose paragraphs responded to by single lines. Eventually, the language barrier is overwhelming. Hal attempts French. This levels the playing field a bit. Otherwise "he speaks, and she looks on." (She gets 20 of 150 lines.) This is not the case in the quarto. She seems to know more English, and gets a greater proportion of the lines. She can translate Hal's faulty French into faulty English. Why the discrepancy between the texts? Why is she more competent in the Folio? Perhaps because Elizabeth, although in the twilight of her reign, managed to hold her own with a Polish ambassador around this time (not sure when...sorry). Her facility with language was inspiring and confirmed her queenliness to her subjects, thereby increasing her legend. Kate becomes more like Elizabeth in the quarto, teaching Hal French even as he teaches her English.
"A footnote to Gail Paster's paper, or a fungus growing thereon." He was surprised by Jude Law's demand that a real skull was necessary for Hamlet, reminding him of the real skull (Tchaikovsky?) donated to the RSC, which actors had refused to use. Records indicated that Hamlet was the first play of the era to use a skull, so such a prop was likely not in the properties of any of the established Elizabethan communities. The ontological relationship between stage properties and "real" properties. A table made in a stage workshop is not so different from a table made in a factory for simple furniture use. Whereas a real skull has a peculiar dramatic resonance not possessed by a mocked-up prop. The skull as connection between past and future. The constitutions of playgoers in the early-modern area were, if not iron-clad, certainly not so squeamish as our more modern sensibilities (they did watch bear-baitings, etc.)
A skeleton is revealed in the first ten lines of Hoffman wearing a burning crown. The two properties are paired in the production. The voice of Hoffman as similar/identical to the structure of the play. Chettle as inspired by (not parodic of) Hamlet. Would Henslowe have gone to trouble of contracting the manufacture of a skeleton when real specimens were available? Doubtful, besides , the thing itself would have an unmistakable authenticity. Hoffman's persuasive depiction of death ironically assured its long life. The play performed a version of reality beyond what is possible today, but demands attention from scholars nonetheless.
Melissa D. Aaron (California State Polytechnic University, Pomona), "Weddings, Funerals, and Garters: The 1612-13 Revival of 1 Henry IV, Merry Wives of Windsor, and Much Ado About Nothing"
Confession: "Yes, it was all about the hats!" (Hamlet and Osric) Debt of gratitude to Gurr.
Economic reading as "core sample". Things we should know when we are doing Shakespeare now: money, props, costumes, physical appurtenances and expenditures. (Money embarrasses scholars more than sex.) King's men formed syndicate to control Blackfriars in 1608. Play closures in the first two decades of 1600s took a toll on producers' wallets. Palatine's wedding to Princess Elizabeth was lavish affair (9,000 pounds). Court work becomes a larger slice of sharer income after the 1590s. 20 plays at court may have brought in 150 pounds, in comparison with the 140 pound total revenue of previous entire seasons. Much Ado, 1 Henry IV, Merry Wives were performed before royalty. Henry and Wives make sense politically and practically. But why Much Ado? Recycling of costumes. Pistol and Benedick may have worn the same clothes. Reusing masque-ing props, out-fits, possibly even the rack of horns (mentioned by Benedick). The company may have deemed the plays compatible commercially. Take away lesson: stockpile costumes and props, use plays that may complement one another, and appeal to a wide audience.
Ian Borden (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), "How Shakespeare Trained the West: Mail-Order Shakespeare As Cultural Object in Nineteenth-Century America"
Show and Tell (period documents of Mail-Order Shakespeare stuff from the 19th century) Shakespeare as paramount cultural object available. Mail as only means of cultural transmission. Commodities as means of social movement: chiefly books. Erudition as social status. Prominent display of books. Family surrounded by mud and livestock, photographed with their piano. African-American man and woman staged behind three books on a table. Grand Island, Ne, stopover for touring Shakespeare groups (though the population of the town was a mere 3,000 at the time). Women's clubs aided rise of Shakespeare. Weekly forums (in winter) for reading/discussion of literature, plays, etc. Arrival of books as impetus for informal social gathering. Reading aloud as formative experience for children's education, not only grammatically, but ethically (?). Patriotically American to read Shakespeare. Our appropriation of him: we appreciate him more than the Brits. Editions compiled by "competent, distinguished" scholars and editors. Elegance of form, purity of text, valuable editorial matter. Elimination of material deemed extraneous for popular consumption. Clearly, the text has been adjusted and perhaps corrupted for everyday American appreciation. Montgomery Ward devoted an entire column to Shakespeare, who outstrips even American authors in cultural and printed prominence. An intrinsic part of cultural grown of America.
Alice Dailey & Shawn Kirschner (Villanova University), "Fifteen Women and Nick Sly the Astrophysicist: Staging Critical Engagements with Shrew"
Handout of flyer from the Taming of the Shrew. What happens if Shakespeare is approached from a heretical direction. Take close critical work, transfer it to the stage. Instead of using mechanisms of performance to interpret textual matter; begin from a critically informed position, and take the theory into practice (Davies). Acts of interpretation as dramatic content. Survery of secondary literature. Staging the play requires drawing conclusions about misogyny, skewed by the population of the class (15 women & Nick, the astrophysicist). Use of one male actor is critical by virtue of his demarcation as Other. Should he be Kate? Petrucchio? Does "the love relationship triumph" at the end of the play? Or is Kate's life finished, with the abdication of voice necessitated by her marriage? Performance at Actors' Renaissance season. Relationship between body, text and voice.
Production notes: Working script based on the students' edited projects. Retaining moments which speak most directly to core, vexed issues. Generally standard approach to blocking, etc., but because the text was edited with attention to critical analysis there was inherent bias, or predisposition. What to do with Sly? Keep him as on-stage voyeur. Nick Sly becomes the meta-theatrical, on-stage director of the production in question (the induction was eliminated). The only man in the class became an advocate for a traditional interpretation of the show. The female actors, in the production, became gradually discontent and rebellious. The tension between the historicized feminism and the contemporary "popular" interpretation is foregrounded and draws attention to the self-conscious direction of the show. ASC actors perform a somewhat Pirandello-esque scene as an exemplar of the technique. First time through, Kate is sympathetic, innocent; second time she is demonized, a "harpy". Disciplinary reinforcement of masculinist reading was required by the one male participant. Culminates in a staged debate re: Kate's final monologue, expressing the performers ambivalence about the text. Did Shakespeare mean to be sexist? What is Kate's agency? What is the relationship between our interpretations and our stagings?
Darlene Farabee (University of Delaware), "Experiencing Location in Macbeth"
Lady Macbeth's response to Duncan's murder: "Here, in our house?" Why can't she say something more clever? Control of stage space may show how narrative movement drives movement on stage. Captain (I.ii.) describing Macbeth as creating a passage, violently. Macbeth and Banquo enter a space already inhabited by the witches. Location is established aurally. Pageantry and aural clues set stage, literally. Conflation of time and space increase gradually over the course of the play. "If it 'twere done...here, but here upon this bank and shoal of time",
"he's here in double trust". "Here" as marker of time, then later as marker of place. Macbeth's inability to locate the "air-drawn" dagger permits him to find his path with the physical dagger he carries. "Thou marshal'st me..." Inability to locate source of knocking as indication of Macbeth's difficulty locating himself in space and time. He is literally disoriented. He becomes completely unable to differentiate location in space and time once his wife is dead. "She should have died hereafter..." Eventually, he is "tied to a stake", fixed to a location.
Demonstration by ASC actors. Offstage actions must take place elsewhere to dislocate the audience from the positive movement of the narrative, producing the same disorientation experienced by the title character.
Andrew Fleck (San Jose State University), "Teach You Our Princess English": Linguistic Conquest in the Early Quartos and Performances of Henry V"
Nostalgia for polyglot Elizabeth. Performance of Katherine's language lesson is more effective as the audience is drilled in some of the vocabulary that she is learning.
I struggled to keep up with the pace of this scholar.
Long prose paragraphs responded to by single lines. Eventually, the language barrier is overwhelming. Hal attempts French. This levels the playing field a bit. Otherwise "he speaks, and she looks on." (She gets 20 of 150 lines.) This is not the case in the quarto. She seems to know more English, and gets a greater proportion of the lines. She can translate Hal's faulty French into faulty English. Why the discrepancy between the texts? Why is she more competent in the Folio? Perhaps because Elizabeth, although in the twilight of her reign, managed to hold her own with a Polish ambassador around this time (not sure when...sorry). Her facility with language was inspiring and confirmed her queenliness to her subjects, thereby increasing her legend. Kate becomes more like Elizabeth in the quarto, teaching Hal French even as he teaches her English.
Staging Session
Staging Session
I’m back for my first staging session of the conference, and I believe it’s going to involve Stephen Urkowitz, which means I’m a very happy camper at the moment.
First, and no less exciting, we have Annalisa Castaldo with her presentation, which is titled “Innogen in Much Ado About Nothing.” She wants to consider how mistakes in text might be representative of the evolution of playtexts. She is using as an example the ghost character of Innogen who appears in the first couple of acts of Much Ado. Castaldo lists the plays missing mothers of daughters, the exception being Merry Wives and Romeo and Juliet (she intentionally excludes Comedy of Errors and A Winter’s Tale). She whimsically shows us what it might look like if Hero’s mother appears in the failed wedding scene, a silent witness.
I’m really enjoying watching this scene. Wish you were here!
Having Innogen there made Beatrice less of an important figure in the consoling of Beatrice. Also, the reassignation of lines could easily give Innogen some speaking parts. (Is “reassignation” a word? Who cares!)
Stephen Urkowitz brings his actors onto the stage, and begins to talk about the textual differences between Romeo and Juliet, Q1 and Q2. Everyone has handouts, which are impossible to approximate on this blog, but contain the texts of the play side by side, with handwritten notations where there are textual variations.
The actors perform the scene, 4.2-4.4, first from Q1 and then from Q2. There is an added impulse on the part of Juliet to call the Nurse back, which Urkowitz believes is a purposeful revision on Shakespeare’s part. For more of “this kind of stuff” you can look up Urkowitz’ work on the World Bibliography of Shakespeare online.
Over and out!
I’m back for my first staging session of the conference, and I believe it’s going to involve Stephen Urkowitz, which means I’m a very happy camper at the moment.
First, and no less exciting, we have Annalisa Castaldo with her presentation, which is titled “Innogen in Much Ado About Nothing.” She wants to consider how mistakes in text might be representative of the evolution of playtexts. She is using as an example the ghost character of Innogen who appears in the first couple of acts of Much Ado. Castaldo lists the plays missing mothers of daughters, the exception being Merry Wives and Romeo and Juliet (she intentionally excludes Comedy of Errors and A Winter’s Tale). She whimsically shows us what it might look like if Hero’s mother appears in the failed wedding scene, a silent witness.
I’m really enjoying watching this scene. Wish you were here!
Having Innogen there made Beatrice less of an important figure in the consoling of Beatrice. Also, the reassignation of lines could easily give Innogen some speaking parts. (Is “reassignation” a word? Who cares!)
Stephen Urkowitz brings his actors onto the stage, and begins to talk about the textual differences between Romeo and Juliet, Q1 and Q2. Everyone has handouts, which are impossible to approximate on this blog, but contain the texts of the play side by side, with handwritten notations where there are textual variations.
The actors perform the scene, 4.2-4.4, first from Q1 and then from Q2. There is an added impulse on the part of Juliet to call the Nurse back, which Urkowitz believes is a purposeful revision on Shakespeare’s part. For more of “this kind of stuff” you can look up Urkowitz’ work on the World Bibliography of Shakespeare online.
Over and out!
Paper Session 7
I hear the bell ringing again out in the lobby and Dr. Ralph Cohen has stepped up to the podium, so it looks like paper session 7 is about to begin! Sarah Enloe and Dr. Cohen are discussing all the errors on some Blackfriars conference t-shirts. Our moderator is Dr. Mary Hill Cole from Mary Baldwin College.
The first presenter is Ryan McCarthy, who is a former student in the Mlitt/MFA student.
Ryan McCarthy, “Lying-in in Chaste Maid”
This paper is a response to a footnote in Chaste Maid in Cheapside referencing common scenes of lying-ins. He is going to tell us how this play differs from other (more hateful) representations of the post-birth female ritual. McCarthy discusses the tradition of lying-in, and the rituals that it involves: primarily, keeping the mother and new baby in a dark, closed, warm chamber. He points out how different an exposed, sunlit, public theatre is from such a chamber; also, how similar a candle-lit, small, private theatre mimics it.
One of the more common themes concerning the lying-in is the large gathering of women without male supervision—the ability of women to control a space is a cause for concern in plays. Often the women discuss and teach how to control husbands. Female control of space means female control of men.
In Middleton’s play, men are a continuous presence in the lying-in stage—when onstage, the men speak more than the women. Allwit, in fact, spends most of his time delivering asides. The presence of men displaces it from other satires of lying-in, as it mocks men as well as women.
Katherine Pilhuj “Merciful Construction”: Architecture, the Body, and Gendered
Political Discourse in William Shakespeare’s The Famous History
of the Life of King Henry the Eight[h]”
Pilhuj is talking about Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, which is really kind of awesome, since we mostly like to forget it exists. She argues that Shakespeare’s Henry lives within small rooms, not on battlefields or banquets. The men that are physically close to Henry are those who have the most political power, and when out of the physical presence of the king, characters fall into disgrace and are often imprisoned and/or executed. Proximity and control of access are also places for danger and treason.
Privacy for a king was the exclusion of those not needing to be present. Not being present is equal to not being considered necessary. Wolsey is depicted before his fall as being always close to Henry, supporting him with his shoulder, etc. Shakespeare uses more than just visual representation of this—other characters also use metaphoric descriptions of physical closeness on the part of Wolsey and Cranmer.
The thunder sheet! Perhaps we’ll see the bear today! Could I be so lucky? Oh please, oh please!
Queen Katherine is depicted as being out among her subjects—a very public figure, unlike the closeted Henry.
BEAR!!!!!! With a tie! Life is good.
Herb Weil, “Peace! I will stop your mouth!”
First, you should know that I typed that title as “Peach! I will stop your mouth!” which I think is probably a very different presentation, that I would very much like to see.
Victoria Reinsel, Chris Seiler, and James Keegan perform the final scene in Much Ado About Nothing. In the quarto and folio text, Leonato speaks the line “Peace! I will stop your mouth!” and not Benedick at all, to whom the line is generally assigned in performances and in new editions. How would such a moment be performed? Is it a funny moment? Frightening?
In 2006 the Arden “three” re-assigned the line to Leonato. Weil and his actors demonstrate different interpretations of this line, delivered by different characters with different tactics. The decision of who delivers this one line, and how, can decide how the audience perceives the lovers’ marriage, and the end of this story.
Bob Hornback “Falstaff and Will Kemp’s ‘Self-Resembled Show’”
Hornback is referencing a contemporary review—or at least response—to Shakespeare’s 1&2 H4. His argument is that Kemp played Falstaff—in fact, that there are close similarities between the character and performer. He gives a short history of Kemp’s life which I will not repeat here, as I’m sure most facts are easily available to the curious. The questionable relationship between Falstaff and Protestantism was mirrored in Kemp’s life, and audiences might well have recognized it.
Keegan, dressed as Falstaff, delivers the epilogue from 2 Henry 4, and Hornback invites us to listen for hints of the actor within the character’s lines. The epilogue is wittiest when self-referential.
Thunder sheet! Surely I won’t get to see the bear twice in one session?
Better: I got to see Falstaff AS the bear! Additionally, Falstaff left the head on the podium, distressing our moderator. Best. Day. Ever.
Alan Dessen “Exit Sick? Caius Ligarius and Caesarism"
Dessen speaks quite softly, so I’m not certain what he’s saying. Tricky.
I think he’s discussing visual signifiers of sick but mobile figures, such as nightgowns, crutches, and kerchiefs. Shakespeare’s imagery in the exchange between Ligarius and Brutus includes the physical motion of throwing away the kerchief (and/or crutch). However, is the man actually cured or is he simply blindly accepting authority, a representation of Rome’s sickness (Caesarism)? Are we to imagine this sick man invigorated, marching off to war? Or, does this man limp offstage needing assistance from Brutus? What happens to the kerchief and crutch?
Ligarius is acting as a representation of the illness of Rome, without being a literal representation, such as Health or Wealth.
Jacqueline Vanhoutte “Age in Love: Lyly’s Endymion and Superannuated Male Sexuality at the Elizabethan Court”
She begins by discussing the discomfort of Elizabethans with age and the aging process. Men were expected to observe social restrictions on sexuality in age—the older the man, the less acceptable were passions. The problem is that Elizabeth was also aging: so as she aged, so did her close attendants. Leicester was perceived as an “unnaturally oversexed” older man, who relied on Italian potions to…ahem…perform. His name became the source of a pun, from “Leicester” to “Lecher.”
…I think she’s going to be chased offstage by a bear.
I do believe the words “feminine suppository” just came out of Vanhoutte’s mouth, in reference to Leicester. Wow, people really did not like this man. Sir Topas in Endymion is the representation of the older lecherous man from anti-Leicester literature, who believes that that which suits young men suits him as well.
BEAR! In a skirt!
Be back soon with the staging session!
The first presenter is Ryan McCarthy, who is a former student in the Mlitt/MFA student.
Ryan McCarthy, “Lying-in in Chaste Maid”
This paper is a response to a footnote in Chaste Maid in Cheapside referencing common scenes of lying-ins. He is going to tell us how this play differs from other (more hateful) representations of the post-birth female ritual. McCarthy discusses the tradition of lying-in, and the rituals that it involves: primarily, keeping the mother and new baby in a dark, closed, warm chamber. He points out how different an exposed, sunlit, public theatre is from such a chamber; also, how similar a candle-lit, small, private theatre mimics it.
One of the more common themes concerning the lying-in is the large gathering of women without male supervision—the ability of women to control a space is a cause for concern in plays. Often the women discuss and teach how to control husbands. Female control of space means female control of men.
In Middleton’s play, men are a continuous presence in the lying-in stage—when onstage, the men speak more than the women. Allwit, in fact, spends most of his time delivering asides. The presence of men displaces it from other satires of lying-in, as it mocks men as well as women.
Katherine Pilhuj “Merciful Construction”: Architecture, the Body, and Gendered
Political Discourse in William Shakespeare’s The Famous History
of the Life of King Henry the Eight[h]”
Pilhuj is talking about Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, which is really kind of awesome, since we mostly like to forget it exists. She argues that Shakespeare’s Henry lives within small rooms, not on battlefields or banquets. The men that are physically close to Henry are those who have the most political power, and when out of the physical presence of the king, characters fall into disgrace and are often imprisoned and/or executed. Proximity and control of access are also places for danger and treason.
Privacy for a king was the exclusion of those not needing to be present. Not being present is equal to not being considered necessary. Wolsey is depicted before his fall as being always close to Henry, supporting him with his shoulder, etc. Shakespeare uses more than just visual representation of this—other characters also use metaphoric descriptions of physical closeness on the part of Wolsey and Cranmer.
The thunder sheet! Perhaps we’ll see the bear today! Could I be so lucky? Oh please, oh please!
Queen Katherine is depicted as being out among her subjects—a very public figure, unlike the closeted Henry.
BEAR!!!!!! With a tie! Life is good.
Herb Weil, “Peace! I will stop your mouth!”
First, you should know that I typed that title as “Peach! I will stop your mouth!” which I think is probably a very different presentation, that I would very much like to see.
Victoria Reinsel, Chris Seiler, and James Keegan perform the final scene in Much Ado About Nothing. In the quarto and folio text, Leonato speaks the line “Peace! I will stop your mouth!” and not Benedick at all, to whom the line is generally assigned in performances and in new editions. How would such a moment be performed? Is it a funny moment? Frightening?
In 2006 the Arden “three” re-assigned the line to Leonato. Weil and his actors demonstrate different interpretations of this line, delivered by different characters with different tactics. The decision of who delivers this one line, and how, can decide how the audience perceives the lovers’ marriage, and the end of this story.
Bob Hornback “Falstaff and Will Kemp’s ‘Self-Resembled Show’”
Hornback is referencing a contemporary review—or at least response—to Shakespeare’s 1&2 H4. His argument is that Kemp played Falstaff—in fact, that there are close similarities between the character and performer. He gives a short history of Kemp’s life which I will not repeat here, as I’m sure most facts are easily available to the curious. The questionable relationship between Falstaff and Protestantism was mirrored in Kemp’s life, and audiences might well have recognized it.
Keegan, dressed as Falstaff, delivers the epilogue from 2 Henry 4, and Hornback invites us to listen for hints of the actor within the character’s lines. The epilogue is wittiest when self-referential.
Thunder sheet! Surely I won’t get to see the bear twice in one session?
Better: I got to see Falstaff AS the bear! Additionally, Falstaff left the head on the podium, distressing our moderator. Best. Day. Ever.
Alan Dessen “Exit Sick? Caius Ligarius and Caesarism"
Dessen speaks quite softly, so I’m not certain what he’s saying. Tricky.
I think he’s discussing visual signifiers of sick but mobile figures, such as nightgowns, crutches, and kerchiefs. Shakespeare’s imagery in the exchange between Ligarius and Brutus includes the physical motion of throwing away the kerchief (and/or crutch). However, is the man actually cured or is he simply blindly accepting authority, a representation of Rome’s sickness (Caesarism)? Are we to imagine this sick man invigorated, marching off to war? Or, does this man limp offstage needing assistance from Brutus? What happens to the kerchief and crutch?
Ligarius is acting as a representation of the illness of Rome, without being a literal representation, such as Health or Wealth.
Jacqueline Vanhoutte “Age in Love: Lyly’s Endymion and Superannuated Male Sexuality at the Elizabethan Court”
She begins by discussing the discomfort of Elizabethans with age and the aging process. Men were expected to observe social restrictions on sexuality in age—the older the man, the less acceptable were passions. The problem is that Elizabeth was also aging: so as she aged, so did her close attendants. Leicester was perceived as an “unnaturally oversexed” older man, who relied on Italian potions to…ahem…perform. His name became the source of a pun, from “Leicester” to “Lecher.”
…I think she’s going to be chased offstage by a bear.
I do believe the words “feminine suppository” just came out of Vanhoutte’s mouth, in reference to Leicester. Wow, people really did not like this man. Sir Topas in Endymion is the representation of the older lecherous man from anti-Leicester literature, who believes that that which suits young men suits him as well.
BEAR! In a skirt!
Be back soon with the staging session!
Keynote: Paul Woodruff: The Art of Watching
Welcome to our third keynote of the conference, where we'll be learning all about The Art of Watching, who is introduced by James Loehlin. I've been especially looking forward to this keynote, as I've had a chance to meet Dr. Woodruff when driving him here from Washington DC a few days ago.
Woodruff is the fellow whom translated the copy of the Sophocles and Euripides plays, wrote the award winning Ithaca in Black and White, and numerous other philosophical and scholarly texts.
Dr. Woodruff imagines he is here because the title of his book, The Necessity of Theatre, is attractive to theatre people. "If you're not practicing the art of watching and being watched, you're not living a fully human life." Modern technology can threaten the art of the theatrical practitioner, and while we in the theatre business have survived the threat of film for a century now, new technologies are more interactive, and Woodruff goes on to explain that Sophocles, Broadway, and Shakespeare are all essentially unnecessary, thousands of people go without them every day, but no one goes without theatre.
Theatre, he argues, happens in football stadiums, politics, and whenever children try to convince their parents to do something. Yes, theatre is even practiced on the Blackfriars. Woodruff understands theatre "as two arts that are joined at the hip." The art of being watched, "of making human action worth watching for a measured time in a measured place." That measured is important: "you wouldn't watch if you didn't know there was an end to it." Woodruff asserts that what is done in Blackfriars has more in common with what happens in Fenway Park (here applause from a Red Sox fan) than what happens in a movie theatre. In both the stadium and the theatre, "something real happens."
While there is mimesis in every aspect of human life, "theatre is not mimetic." Theatre offers a present reality that is not dependent on an essential fiction. There are further two things that mimesis is not: mimesis is neither make believe nor is it fiction. Woodruff offers the classical example of medicine: medicine is mimetic because we heal naturally, and the art of medicine attempts to mimic the healing that naturally occurs. Theatre is real, and when it is good it creates real emotions.
Offering the example of 1H4, Hal is history, Poins is fiction, and Falstaff is Miles Gloriosis blown up to human proportions. Mimesis occurs when genuine emotion occurs and is shared among the community observing them. "One of the reasons that football is the dominant entertainment of our time is that it is built around communities." Woodruff also offers the practice of lynching as likewise mimetic: it builds community and imitates (though does not achieve) the practice of justice.
Actors or performers are unable to create theatre by themselves. The art of watching is an essential companion to the art of performing. The "Kill Claudio" line in Much Ado is offered. The line usually gets a laugh, but at last night's performance it did not (now I wish I had gone). Woodruff posits because that audience (comprised of many attendees) is a better audience in that they have a deeper understanding of what is required for Beatrice to say the line and for Benedick to hear it. Shakespeare is attentive to this affect because he offers us examples of "good" watching and "bad" watching.
Offering the immediate;y assertive example of Pyramus and Thisbe in Midsummer. Theseus offers that imagination is necessary to the watching of the play, but then the audience does not help the mechanicals because they refuse to engage their imagination with the show.
Woodruff counters the suggestion that Claudius is the ideal audience watching The ousetrap in Hamlet (posited by some of his colleagues because he internalizes the art so much). You don't want the audience leaping out of their seat, calling for lights, and leaving to pray. "You want your audience to watch, not like Claudius, and to watch with empathy." Woodruff cites Brecht's failure to create a theatre free of empathy here, but also that Brecht is onto something: "it is possible for the emotions to wash away" all critical thought and prevent the audience from watching the play in the way we desire. "There is a very important cognitive element in good watching, and therefore a very important cognitive element to empathy that is, I think, essential to good watching."
Woodruff feels that 3.4 of King Lear is one of the most extrordinary moments in Shakespeare's canon. "Lear sees that Tom is naked and destitute, and applies his own case to it." He pays attention to Tom, and thus is different from Claudius, and sees what is actually in front of him. As Dr. Woodruff performs this line, he casts off his tie and jacket, and confesses that he thought of asking an actor to play the part, "but then I wouldn't get to do that." Here Lear sees that the royalty that he has clothed himself in is meaningless, and this allows him to say "I am a very foolish old man" to Cordelia.
Watching someone else can lead to a deeper understanding of oneself, "and a wisdom of our own humanity. Not a philosophers wisdom; something far better: a playwright's wisdom." "A philosopher can't help with a toothache, after all," but Woodruff suggests that a play might. At least for the measured time in which the audience watches.
Yet another solid keynote session at the Blackfriars conference. I think I'm learning at least as much this week as I have thus far this semester. I need to drive Dr. Woodruff to the airport this afternoon, so one of my classmates will be picking up for me this afternoon. Thanks for sticking with me this morning, and I'll see you all back here tomorrow!
Woodruff is the fellow whom translated the copy of the Sophocles and Euripides plays, wrote the award winning Ithaca in Black and White, and numerous other philosophical and scholarly texts.
Dr. Woodruff imagines he is here because the title of his book, The Necessity of Theatre, is attractive to theatre people. "If you're not practicing the art of watching and being watched, you're not living a fully human life." Modern technology can threaten the art of the theatrical practitioner, and while we in the theatre business have survived the threat of film for a century now, new technologies are more interactive, and Woodruff goes on to explain that Sophocles, Broadway, and Shakespeare are all essentially unnecessary, thousands of people go without them every day, but no one goes without theatre.
Theatre, he argues, happens in football stadiums, politics, and whenever children try to convince their parents to do something. Yes, theatre is even practiced on the Blackfriars. Woodruff understands theatre "as two arts that are joined at the hip." The art of being watched, "of making human action worth watching for a measured time in a measured place." That measured is important: "you wouldn't watch if you didn't know there was an end to it." Woodruff asserts that what is done in Blackfriars has more in common with what happens in Fenway Park (here applause from a Red Sox fan) than what happens in a movie theatre. In both the stadium and the theatre, "something real happens."
While there is mimesis in every aspect of human life, "theatre is not mimetic." Theatre offers a present reality that is not dependent on an essential fiction. There are further two things that mimesis is not: mimesis is neither make believe nor is it fiction. Woodruff offers the classical example of medicine: medicine is mimetic because we heal naturally, and the art of medicine attempts to mimic the healing that naturally occurs. Theatre is real, and when it is good it creates real emotions.
Offering the example of 1H4, Hal is history, Poins is fiction, and Falstaff is Miles Gloriosis blown up to human proportions. Mimesis occurs when genuine emotion occurs and is shared among the community observing them. "One of the reasons that football is the dominant entertainment of our time is that it is built around communities." Woodruff also offers the practice of lynching as likewise mimetic: it builds community and imitates (though does not achieve) the practice of justice.
Actors or performers are unable to create theatre by themselves. The art of watching is an essential companion to the art of performing. The "Kill Claudio" line in Much Ado is offered. The line usually gets a laugh, but at last night's performance it did not (now I wish I had gone). Woodruff posits because that audience (comprised of many attendees) is a better audience in that they have a deeper understanding of what is required for Beatrice to say the line and for Benedick to hear it. Shakespeare is attentive to this affect because he offers us examples of "good" watching and "bad" watching.
Offering the immediate;y assertive example of Pyramus and Thisbe in Midsummer. Theseus offers that imagination is necessary to the watching of the play, but then the audience does not help the mechanicals because they refuse to engage their imagination with the show.
Woodruff counters the suggestion that Claudius is the ideal audience watching The ousetrap in Hamlet (posited by some of his colleagues because he internalizes the art so much). You don't want the audience leaping out of their seat, calling for lights, and leaving to pray. "You want your audience to watch, not like Claudius, and to watch with empathy." Woodruff cites Brecht's failure to create a theatre free of empathy here, but also that Brecht is onto something: "it is possible for the emotions to wash away" all critical thought and prevent the audience from watching the play in the way we desire. "There is a very important cognitive element in good watching, and therefore a very important cognitive element to empathy that is, I think, essential to good watching."
Woodruff feels that 3.4 of King Lear is one of the most extrordinary moments in Shakespeare's canon. "Lear sees that Tom is naked and destitute, and applies his own case to it." He pays attention to Tom, and thus is different from Claudius, and sees what is actually in front of him. As Dr. Woodruff performs this line, he casts off his tie and jacket, and confesses that he thought of asking an actor to play the part, "but then I wouldn't get to do that." Here Lear sees that the royalty that he has clothed himself in is meaningless, and this allows him to say "I am a very foolish old man" to Cordelia.
Watching someone else can lead to a deeper understanding of oneself, "and a wisdom of our own humanity. Not a philosophers wisdom; something far better: a playwright's wisdom." "A philosopher can't help with a toothache, after all," but Woodruff suggests that a play might. At least for the measured time in which the audience watches.
Yet another solid keynote session at the Blackfriars conference. I think I'm learning at least as much this week as I have thus far this semester. I need to drive Dr. Woodruff to the airport this afternoon, so one of my classmates will be picking up for me this afternoon. Thanks for sticking with me this morning, and I'll see you all back here tomorrow!
Paper Session 6
A gracious good morning to all. Welcome to day three of the conference, which begins with Paper Session 6, moderated by JMU's Katie Robbins.
Walter Cannon: Staging the Early Modern Fly
Flies and fly killing can rise to "the level of the archetypal" in the early modern stage. There are 36 references to flies in Shakespeare's plays, but only in Titus Andronicus is a fly made part of the central action of the scene. The scene does not appear in the quartos of Titus, leading some to dismiss the scene as a clumsy after thought, and the impact of the scene vary depending on the placement of the interval (either before or after).
Cannon jokingly points out that a trained fly would not be practical in this circumstance, but posits that sound effects may have been used. Also that there are multiple ways of killing the fly. A basic question, is it stabbed or crushed with he flat of the blade? Also, emendations of the line to "but how if that fly had a father, brother" change the address of the line that follows the killing to Marcus, and makes it less metrically awkward. This is seems to be the key of Cannon's experiment. Should the line be played for humor or for the seriousness of Titus' madness?
I'm not sure if the staging proves anything either way. This house seems to find both readings of the scene to be humorous. Maybe there's just something too pathetic about the great general reveling in his killing of a fly; perhaps the only reaction we can have is to laugh. Responses to questions seem to think the address of "father, brother" is more threatening toward Marcus, but the bear appears and cuts off questions, so just like CNN, we're going to have to leave it there.
Clare Smout: "Two of Both Kinds Makes Up Four": Casting in the Tempest
Caliban, Ferdinand, Ariel, and Miranda make up a key foursome that stand in contrast. Caiban and Ariel make up a New World or a spiritual realm, and Ferdinand and Miranda make up a European or human one. Ferdinand remains ignorant of Caliban, and Ariel has no interaction with Miranda. There is an implication of crossover between Ferdinand and Caliban with the log carrying.
Modern casting and scholarship has tended to give the role of Caliban to a more mature actor, but there is a clear implication that Caliban is roughly 24 years old, early modern casting practices seem to indicate that a young-adult male would have played the role. References to him as a "slave" and "demi-devil" are occupational, and not moral judgements, an Smout states that Prospero seems to have been grooming Caliban as a male successor on the island.
Ariel, likewise, seems to have been intended to cast the role as a boy actor, and modern productions tend to cut the references to Ariel in female clothes. An increasing tendency to have Ariel played by a scantily clad male actor creates Miranda as the only female on the island, but references to Ariel as "dainty," "delicate," and "chick" indicate Shakespeare had more feminine qualities in mind for his airy spirit.
Rather than viewing Ariel and Caliban as Propsero's Ego and Id, it might be more helpful to view them as the other half of Miranda and Ferdinand.
William (Rusty) Jones: "Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits... sets all on hazard": Performance, Context, and Generic Indeterminacy of Troilus and Cressida
Generic experimentation was apparently as hazardous in 1609 as it is today. Jones cites contemporary accounts by John Fletcher referring to audiences inability to grasp the meaning of plays, and the suggestion of the inclusion of a prologue toward the end of helping the audience understand what they are about to see. A prologue can help abate interpretive confusion; they are authorized to create meaning and bridge the gap "between the world within the playhouse walls, and those without them."
Context also determines the requirements of the prologue. A play performed at court might require a different prologue from one performed in a public space. The prologue to a potentially "dangerous" play might likewise require a more apologetic and appeasing prologue. The prologue of Troilus and Cressida poses interesting ambiguities. Its first ten lines read as a historical epic, but too much historical epic grandeur could move the prologue into a mock-epic tone. Yet a subtler approach to the prologue can ground the action of the play in a more allegorical context, which might be particularly appropriate as cassical Troy was, in early modern times, considered to be a parallel for "New Troy," or "London." Jones' actors demonstrate this difference.
Another signifying aspect, costuming, will affect the prologue as well. The prologue appears armed, which Jones suggests is in parody of Jonson's armed prologues. Jones suggests that a prologue that removes its armor might more self-consciously do so, and encourage audiences to "treat the play's world view on its own terms."
Regina Buccola: "Some Woman is the Father": Running Thomas Middleton's Gender-Bending Gamut in More Dissemblers Besides Women
Buccola examines the cross-cross dressing of boy actors in More Dissemblers Besides Women. Within the trio of cross dressed performances, the plays title (and the line from which it draws) becomes a reference to the boy actors dressed as women. Her male actors playing female parts get immediate laughs, but certainly give new meaning to lines such as "whatever thou art" and "I have love that covers all thy faults."
From where I sit, you can put a male actor in a dress, but they still look and act like a man. I'm willing to make the leap and say that, with more training, as we must assume that boy actors in the early modern era would have been, the representation would be more effective. However, the page's birthing during the dance lesson suggests that there is an element of the absurd to the construction; Buccola points out that, just as the characters should accept the character as a boy throughout the entire play until this moment, so it is also absurd that the audience should accept the character as a woman now. Perhaps seeing through the disguise is supposed to be part of the fun.
David Carnegie: Staging Rape and Marriage "per verba de praesenti" in Cardenio
Carnegie will examine the informal contracts of marriage, and the way in which rape is signaled on the early modern stage. Ferdinando's serenade in Double Falsehood is followed by his questioning of whether or not he has raped Violante. Violante enters in the following scene seemingly composed and lacking all outward stage signs of having been raped. In Don Quixote, Ferdinand promises marriage before an icon of the Virgin Mary, and despite the church's attempt to "crack down" on such informal pledges of love, they were still considered to be binding in the eyes of God.
There is a parallel between these two. In early modern terms, rape is impossible because a marriage has taken place in both cases: The woman has been wooed, and has consented to the wooing. In both cases, Violante is distressed when Ferdinando begins to try to back out of the marriage. Carnegie posits the question about what would have happened in his production if Violante had entered as if raped, but he is cut off by the bear.
Erin Baird: Taking Advantage of the Interlude Structure
Baird explores the dramatic impact of interludes on the early modern stage. She offers four case studies. Marston, introduces stage directions at the end of each act indicative of musical selections that correspond to the mood of the action surrounding the interlude. The music of the interludes becomes a direct means of forwarding his plots.
Beumont, by contrast, uses his interludes as a way of encroaching on his central plots, such as in Knight of the Burning Pestle. The interjections of the grocers defy the convention, and blur the lines of actor and audience as George, Nel, and Raffe direct the action of the play.
Jonson's use of interludes are used pragmatically to provide comments on his own work and to show the passage of time. As in The Devil is an Ass, the interlude provides commentary on the work in progress, and both recap and assess the work of the previous acts. They even go so far as trying to predict what is to come. Jonson's interludes therefore serve otherwise inattentive audience members; they keep them up to speed on what has happened, and try to engage them in the outcome of the plot.
Shakespeare jumps at the opportunity to explore the dramatic possibilities of interludes in The Tempest by having Prospero and Ariel re-enter immediately between Act 4 and Act 5. Her actors explore a more modern staging that elides the interlude into the text, and an early modern approach that includes a brief interlude between acts, which presents a more "dynamic start to the plays final act." The audience can see the passage of time, and sees the action of the final act as having been prepared for the conclusion of the play.
Walter Cannon: Staging the Early Modern Fly
Flies and fly killing can rise to "the level of the archetypal" in the early modern stage. There are 36 references to flies in Shakespeare's plays, but only in Titus Andronicus is a fly made part of the central action of the scene. The scene does not appear in the quartos of Titus, leading some to dismiss the scene as a clumsy after thought, and the impact of the scene vary depending on the placement of the interval (either before or after).
Cannon jokingly points out that a trained fly would not be practical in this circumstance, but posits that sound effects may have been used. Also that there are multiple ways of killing the fly. A basic question, is it stabbed or crushed with he flat of the blade? Also, emendations of the line to "but how if that fly had a father, brother" change the address of the line that follows the killing to Marcus, and makes it less metrically awkward. This is seems to be the key of Cannon's experiment. Should the line be played for humor or for the seriousness of Titus' madness?
I'm not sure if the staging proves anything either way. This house seems to find both readings of the scene to be humorous. Maybe there's just something too pathetic about the great general reveling in his killing of a fly; perhaps the only reaction we can have is to laugh. Responses to questions seem to think the address of "father, brother" is more threatening toward Marcus, but the bear appears and cuts off questions, so just like CNN, we're going to have to leave it there.
Clare Smout: "Two of Both Kinds Makes Up Four": Casting in the Tempest
Caliban, Ferdinand, Ariel, and Miranda make up a key foursome that stand in contrast. Caiban and Ariel make up a New World or a spiritual realm, and Ferdinand and Miranda make up a European or human one. Ferdinand remains ignorant of Caliban, and Ariel has no interaction with Miranda. There is an implication of crossover between Ferdinand and Caliban with the log carrying.
Modern casting and scholarship has tended to give the role of Caliban to a more mature actor, but there is a clear implication that Caliban is roughly 24 years old, early modern casting practices seem to indicate that a young-adult male would have played the role. References to him as a "slave" and "demi-devil" are occupational, and not moral judgements, an Smout states that Prospero seems to have been grooming Caliban as a male successor on the island.
Ariel, likewise, seems to have been intended to cast the role as a boy actor, and modern productions tend to cut the references to Ariel in female clothes. An increasing tendency to have Ariel played by a scantily clad male actor creates Miranda as the only female on the island, but references to Ariel as "dainty," "delicate," and "chick" indicate Shakespeare had more feminine qualities in mind for his airy spirit.
Rather than viewing Ariel and Caliban as Propsero's Ego and Id, it might be more helpful to view them as the other half of Miranda and Ferdinand.
William (Rusty) Jones: "Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits... sets all on hazard": Performance, Context, and Generic Indeterminacy of Troilus and Cressida
Generic experimentation was apparently as hazardous in 1609 as it is today. Jones cites contemporary accounts by John Fletcher referring to audiences inability to grasp the meaning of plays, and the suggestion of the inclusion of a prologue toward the end of helping the audience understand what they are about to see. A prologue can help abate interpretive confusion; they are authorized to create meaning and bridge the gap "between the world within the playhouse walls, and those without them."
Context also determines the requirements of the prologue. A play performed at court might require a different prologue from one performed in a public space. The prologue to a potentially "dangerous" play might likewise require a more apologetic and appeasing prologue. The prologue of Troilus and Cressida poses interesting ambiguities. Its first ten lines read as a historical epic, but too much historical epic grandeur could move the prologue into a mock-epic tone. Yet a subtler approach to the prologue can ground the action of the play in a more allegorical context, which might be particularly appropriate as cassical Troy was, in early modern times, considered to be a parallel for "New Troy," or "London." Jones' actors demonstrate this difference.
Another signifying aspect, costuming, will affect the prologue as well. The prologue appears armed, which Jones suggests is in parody of Jonson's armed prologues. Jones suggests that a prologue that removes its armor might more self-consciously do so, and encourage audiences to "treat the play's world view on its own terms."
Regina Buccola: "Some Woman is the Father": Running Thomas Middleton's Gender-Bending Gamut in More Dissemblers Besides Women
Buccola examines the cross-cross dressing of boy actors in More Dissemblers Besides Women. Within the trio of cross dressed performances, the plays title (and the line from which it draws) becomes a reference to the boy actors dressed as women. Her male actors playing female parts get immediate laughs, but certainly give new meaning to lines such as "whatever thou art" and "I have love that covers all thy faults."
From where I sit, you can put a male actor in a dress, but they still look and act like a man. I'm willing to make the leap and say that, with more training, as we must assume that boy actors in the early modern era would have been, the representation would be more effective. However, the page's birthing during the dance lesson suggests that there is an element of the absurd to the construction; Buccola points out that, just as the characters should accept the character as a boy throughout the entire play until this moment, so it is also absurd that the audience should accept the character as a woman now. Perhaps seeing through the disguise is supposed to be part of the fun.
David Carnegie: Staging Rape and Marriage "per verba de praesenti" in Cardenio
Carnegie will examine the informal contracts of marriage, and the way in which rape is signaled on the early modern stage. Ferdinando's serenade in Double Falsehood is followed by his questioning of whether or not he has raped Violante. Violante enters in the following scene seemingly composed and lacking all outward stage signs of having been raped. In Don Quixote, Ferdinand promises marriage before an icon of the Virgin Mary, and despite the church's attempt to "crack down" on such informal pledges of love, they were still considered to be binding in the eyes of God.
There is a parallel between these two. In early modern terms, rape is impossible because a marriage has taken place in both cases: The woman has been wooed, and has consented to the wooing. In both cases, Violante is distressed when Ferdinando begins to try to back out of the marriage. Carnegie posits the question about what would have happened in his production if Violante had entered as if raped, but he is cut off by the bear.
Erin Baird: Taking Advantage of the Interlude Structure
Baird explores the dramatic impact of interludes on the early modern stage. She offers four case studies. Marston, introduces stage directions at the end of each act indicative of musical selections that correspond to the mood of the action surrounding the interlude. The music of the interludes becomes a direct means of forwarding his plots.
Beumont, by contrast, uses his interludes as a way of encroaching on his central plots, such as in Knight of the Burning Pestle. The interjections of the grocers defy the convention, and blur the lines of actor and audience as George, Nel, and Raffe direct the action of the play.
Jonson's use of interludes are used pragmatically to provide comments on his own work and to show the passage of time. As in The Devil is an Ass, the interlude provides commentary on the work in progress, and both recap and assess the work of the previous acts. They even go so far as trying to predict what is to come. Jonson's interludes therefore serve otherwise inattentive audience members; they keep them up to speed on what has happened, and try to engage them in the outcome of the plot.
Shakespeare jumps at the opportunity to explore the dramatic possibilities of interludes in The Tempest by having Prospero and Ariel re-enter immediately between Act 4 and Act 5. Her actors explore a more modern staging that elides the interlude into the text, and an early modern approach that includes a brief interlude between acts, which presents a more "dynamic start to the plays final act." The audience can see the passage of time, and sees the action of the final act as having been prepared for the conclusion of the play.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Paper Session 5
We’re back! I’ll be taking over for Tony for this session to give his little fingers a wee rest--but I'm wordy, so consider yourself warned. I just heard the faint sound of a bell ringing out in the lobby, and the presenters have gathered in their Conference Semi Circle on the Blackfriars stage. Actors line the stage on gallants’ stools, and attendees are slowly making their way to their seats. Oh, I hope I get to see a bear chase a scholar back to their seat. No, really.
Mary Coy is our moderator, a former student of the Mary Baldwin College MLitt/MFA program; she introduces the six presenters in this session. This is my first attempt at blogging a paper session, so please bear with me. Ha. We start with Stephen Read from St. Martin University.
Stephen X. Mead, "Imagined Spaces on Shakespeare’s Stage"
Amusingly, and endearingly, and unnecessarily, he is worried about his first sentence. The reconstructed Globe gives students the chance to witness a staging arrangement with audience members not "shelved" but surrounding the players. The audience, he says, "rose like a sheer cliff" in Elizabethan playhouses, and the stage is ground zero. How did the playwright use this environment to engage the audience with image-making?
He compares a scene from the Q2 Hamlet to its counterpart in the Folio. When the ghost of Hamlet’s father silently summons his son to follow in the Q2, the imagery of the cliff is distracting and counter productive, although it does allow the actor to transform the theatrical space into the image of Horatio’s steep cliff. John Harrell and Daniel Rigby perform as Hamlet and Horatio in the Q2, and then the Folio version of the same scene, with cuts made to the excessive references to space/geography.
The cliff scene reappears in King Lear, more effectively—the Elsinore and Dover speeches are so similar that Read hears an echo. In this play, the reality of a false cliff underlies the play’s larger concerns of that which is real: the authority of the king and the love of Cordelia. In both Hamlet and King Lear, the cliffs become places of transformation—Edward becomes a "fiend," and the ghost of Hamlet’s father a demon.
Harrell and Rigby perform the scene from Lear. In this more effective use of the theatrical space as imagery, Shakespeare first invites his audience to participate in image making then unmakes the image on the stage, with the stage. Theatre’s illusion doesn’t happen to the actors, but to the audience.
No bear.
Penelope Woods "Pastness Performance: The Reconstructed Globe Theatre and Its Audience
This presentation covered an incredibly difficult-to-explain topic, so please be understanding as I attempt to recreate it for you! Woods begins with an anecdote about a letter from a patron hanging next to the coffee maker in an office at the Globe, that described his experience visiting the Globe as "going back in time." This prompted the question, to what extent can we use audience testimony as evidence?
She brings up the idea of "pastness," a term used to describe historical re-creations as a kind of popular, nostalgic, and accessible commodity. What does this do to perception of such theatres? To what extent is re-creation discredited by recreation?
Re-creation has revealed the importance of audience—but even if early modern dress and movements are replicated by actors, and the theatres echo early modern architecture, what about audiences? There is no reconstructed audience. How feasible is it to develop a "past eye"? How do we understand what "going back in time feels like"? The material spaces are always the framing device for this experiment. What kinds of memories do we have of Elizabethan theatre spaces—do we have a cognitive understanding of these theatre through our research and knowledge of the original spaces?
She suggests that something so simple as inviting the audience to wear hats, as early modern audience members most likely did, might aid in creating habit memory reminiscent of early modern play-going. She invited us all to don imaginary hats, and doff them in appreciation at the end of her presentation.
She makes it within time limits, so again, no bear. (No fun).
Ann Pliess-Morris, " ‘What’s Past Is Prologue": Negotiating Original Staging Practices with Contemporary Audiences
This presentation focuses on the role of community in original staging practices, which Pleiss-Morris believes is the movement’s strength. These theatres are looking toward a new future for Shakespeare performance. There is a strong belief among practitioners that this kind of performance would open Shakespeare to a more "democratic" audience.
There is a desire in original staging practices to break through the elitism and isolation of proscenium. The anachronistic elements of current original staging practices theatres—electric lights, female cast members, etc—are made in an attempt to bridge the gap between an early modern theatrical experience and modern audience expectation. Negotiation between past and present is in constant movement in OP theatres. OP lies in a paradox—the movement embraces its place in between—in all its general sense. This can often lead to very exciting theatre.
Audiences do respond to this—the theatres are popular. Reviewers spend a lot of time reviewing audiences, who do not fare well. The audiences they find tiresome, and so would not like to be a part of them and therefore, part of original staging practices. They worry that actor/audience moments threaten the integrity of text. Productions become more like sporting events than theatre. Critics tend to reject performances as museum pieces.
In seeking to build community, the companies are changing their visions of what performances might have looked like. The theatrical future is being re-imagined. Pleiss-Morris reminds us that social networking is transforming us into people who like to publicly broadcast immediate response and criticism, which is a need satisfied by original staging practices.
Still no bear.
Sarah Werner, "The Pitfalls of Performance Space"
First, I have suddenly become hyper-appreciative of short paper titles. The next time you title a paper, consider the bloggers.
Werner begins by talking about a play we’ve already visited this session, King Lear. She remembers a performance in which the audience laughed, cheered, and applauded the line "Shut your mouth, dame," from the last scene of the play. The actor didn’t set the line up as a joke, nor had she ever seen it laughed at elsewhere. This might be partly because the words sound so modern—colloquial and accessible. It’s something angry person today might say; also, many songs claim Shut Your Mouth as the title. The shock of its familiarity causes a release of laughter. Also, possibly, the relief at seeing the villain brought down, and an end to the tension, and an endorsement of the judgment against Goneril.
What about the playhouse structure? What cues did the audience pick up from the playhouse and the program’s description that elicited this response? Was it seen as a Renaissance audience response? Is there something in audience participation that replicates a Renaissance experience to such an extent that it unlocks an enjoyment in moments that might be considered socially unacceptable in other venues? Do original staging practices theatres invite, encourage, inspire, or evoke anti-feminist sentiment; if so, what kind of responsibility does this place on practioners?
Barely bear-less, but still within time.
Jeremy Fiebig "All Stage World"
Audiences today are not as willing to interact with performers in the way that we understand early modern audiences to have been. They do not take full advantage of the permission to respond in original staging practices playhouses. Original staging practices theatres provide certain kinds of audience training: music, merchandise, food, and drink sales; pre show speeches, etc.
Fiebig directed Twelfth Night at Waldorf College, and prior to the show his actors handed out oranges and encouraged the audiences to drop their peels on the ground. The response was surprising: either they chose not to and became distractingly involved in not making a mess with their peels, or they became hyper-active, and threw peels at Malvolio. This involvement had the effect of making them implicit in the torture of Malvolio. The audience members were implicated as characters in the play—full members of the narrative community. The distraction of the audience gives the actors the chance to buy their audiences attention back with jokes, puns, etc. Is there a place for hyperactivity? In most original staging practices theatres, there is a line drawn between etiquette and interaction. However, have early modern distractions been simply replaced by modern ones—cell phones, candy wrappers, rude children?
Fiebig concludes by accusing us all of being "Victorian by nature," preferring order and etiquette over chaose. However, perhaps heightened response joined and could still join the heightened language of the play. So, what is the ideal: early modern production, or early modern response?
Goodness, still no bear.
Katherine Mayberry "Actors and Auditors"
Early modern playwrights wrote their plays with the actor/audience relationship in the forefront. Early modern playhouse architecture emphasizes the actor/audience relationship (the sharing of sightlines—or even physical space). Actors themselves can use delivery to create this contact in almost all moments within shows. Staging itself can create bonds. Sometimes actors can create contact without speaking, at all.
Daniel Rigby and John Harrell are back, and provide examples of staging. An actor appearing in the balcony above completes the circle of audience around the stage. Or, a character witnessing a scene in the balcony from the downstage area puts the character in the same position as the audience members themselves. Either upstage, downstage, or above, audience members either recognize or identify with the perspective of the character onstage. Mayberry provided a very useful handout with photo examples of the various positions onstage and then discusses the way in which these positions affect the audience members.
The Blackfriars stage lends itself particularly to the connection between audience and performance. In conclusion, the actor/audience alignment provided by this space challenges the audience and reminds them of their role in the performance.
Alas. Bare stage, but not bear stage. Maybe next time!
Mary Coy is our moderator, a former student of the Mary Baldwin College MLitt/MFA program; she introduces the six presenters in this session. This is my first attempt at blogging a paper session, so please bear with me. Ha. We start with Stephen Read from St. Martin University.
Stephen X. Mead, "Imagined Spaces on Shakespeare’s Stage"
Amusingly, and endearingly, and unnecessarily, he is worried about his first sentence. The reconstructed Globe gives students the chance to witness a staging arrangement with audience members not "shelved" but surrounding the players. The audience, he says, "rose like a sheer cliff" in Elizabethan playhouses, and the stage is ground zero. How did the playwright use this environment to engage the audience with image-making?
He compares a scene from the Q2 Hamlet to its counterpart in the Folio. When the ghost of Hamlet’s father silently summons his son to follow in the Q2, the imagery of the cliff is distracting and counter productive, although it does allow the actor to transform the theatrical space into the image of Horatio’s steep cliff. John Harrell and Daniel Rigby perform as Hamlet and Horatio in the Q2, and then the Folio version of the same scene, with cuts made to the excessive references to space/geography.
The cliff scene reappears in King Lear, more effectively—the Elsinore and Dover speeches are so similar that Read hears an echo. In this play, the reality of a false cliff underlies the play’s larger concerns of that which is real: the authority of the king and the love of Cordelia. In both Hamlet and King Lear, the cliffs become places of transformation—Edward becomes a "fiend," and the ghost of Hamlet’s father a demon.
Harrell and Rigby perform the scene from Lear. In this more effective use of the theatrical space as imagery, Shakespeare first invites his audience to participate in image making then unmakes the image on the stage, with the stage. Theatre’s illusion doesn’t happen to the actors, but to the audience.
No bear.
Penelope Woods "Pastness Performance: The Reconstructed Globe Theatre and Its Audience
This presentation covered an incredibly difficult-to-explain topic, so please be understanding as I attempt to recreate it for you! Woods begins with an anecdote about a letter from a patron hanging next to the coffee maker in an office at the Globe, that described his experience visiting the Globe as "going back in time." This prompted the question, to what extent can we use audience testimony as evidence?
She brings up the idea of "pastness," a term used to describe historical re-creations as a kind of popular, nostalgic, and accessible commodity. What does this do to perception of such theatres? To what extent is re-creation discredited by recreation?
Re-creation has revealed the importance of audience—but even if early modern dress and movements are replicated by actors, and the theatres echo early modern architecture, what about audiences? There is no reconstructed audience. How feasible is it to develop a "past eye"? How do we understand what "going back in time feels like"? The material spaces are always the framing device for this experiment. What kinds of memories do we have of Elizabethan theatre spaces—do we have a cognitive understanding of these theatre through our research and knowledge of the original spaces?
She suggests that something so simple as inviting the audience to wear hats, as early modern audience members most likely did, might aid in creating habit memory reminiscent of early modern play-going. She invited us all to don imaginary hats, and doff them in appreciation at the end of her presentation.
She makes it within time limits, so again, no bear. (No fun).
Ann Pliess-Morris, " ‘What’s Past Is Prologue": Negotiating Original Staging Practices with Contemporary Audiences
This presentation focuses on the role of community in original staging practices, which Pleiss-Morris believes is the movement’s strength. These theatres are looking toward a new future for Shakespeare performance. There is a strong belief among practitioners that this kind of performance would open Shakespeare to a more "democratic" audience.
There is a desire in original staging practices to break through the elitism and isolation of proscenium. The anachronistic elements of current original staging practices theatres—electric lights, female cast members, etc—are made in an attempt to bridge the gap between an early modern theatrical experience and modern audience expectation. Negotiation between past and present is in constant movement in OP theatres. OP lies in a paradox—the movement embraces its place in between—in all its general sense. This can often lead to very exciting theatre.
Audiences do respond to this—the theatres are popular. Reviewers spend a lot of time reviewing audiences, who do not fare well. The audiences they find tiresome, and so would not like to be a part of them and therefore, part of original staging practices. They worry that actor/audience moments threaten the integrity of text. Productions become more like sporting events than theatre. Critics tend to reject performances as museum pieces.
In seeking to build community, the companies are changing their visions of what performances might have looked like. The theatrical future is being re-imagined. Pleiss-Morris reminds us that social networking is transforming us into people who like to publicly broadcast immediate response and criticism, which is a need satisfied by original staging practices.
Still no bear.
Sarah Werner, "The Pitfalls of Performance Space"
First, I have suddenly become hyper-appreciative of short paper titles. The next time you title a paper, consider the bloggers.
Werner begins by talking about a play we’ve already visited this session, King Lear. She remembers a performance in which the audience laughed, cheered, and applauded the line "Shut your mouth, dame," from the last scene of the play. The actor didn’t set the line up as a joke, nor had she ever seen it laughed at elsewhere. This might be partly because the words sound so modern—colloquial and accessible. It’s something angry person today might say; also, many songs claim Shut Your Mouth as the title. The shock of its familiarity causes a release of laughter. Also, possibly, the relief at seeing the villain brought down, and an end to the tension, and an endorsement of the judgment against Goneril.
What about the playhouse structure? What cues did the audience pick up from the playhouse and the program’s description that elicited this response? Was it seen as a Renaissance audience response? Is there something in audience participation that replicates a Renaissance experience to such an extent that it unlocks an enjoyment in moments that might be considered socially unacceptable in other venues? Do original staging practices theatres invite, encourage, inspire, or evoke anti-feminist sentiment; if so, what kind of responsibility does this place on practioners?
Barely bear-less, but still within time.
Jeremy Fiebig "All Stage World"
Audiences today are not as willing to interact with performers in the way that we understand early modern audiences to have been. They do not take full advantage of the permission to respond in original staging practices playhouses. Original staging practices theatres provide certain kinds of audience training: music, merchandise, food, and drink sales; pre show speeches, etc.
Fiebig directed Twelfth Night at Waldorf College, and prior to the show his actors handed out oranges and encouraged the audiences to drop their peels on the ground. The response was surprising: either they chose not to and became distractingly involved in not making a mess with their peels, or they became hyper-active, and threw peels at Malvolio. This involvement had the effect of making them implicit in the torture of Malvolio. The audience members were implicated as characters in the play—full members of the narrative community. The distraction of the audience gives the actors the chance to buy their audiences attention back with jokes, puns, etc. Is there a place for hyperactivity? In most original staging practices theatres, there is a line drawn between etiquette and interaction. However, have early modern distractions been simply replaced by modern ones—cell phones, candy wrappers, rude children?
Fiebig concludes by accusing us all of being "Victorian by nature," preferring order and etiquette over chaose. However, perhaps heightened response joined and could still join the heightened language of the play. So, what is the ideal: early modern production, or early modern response?
Goodness, still no bear.
Katherine Mayberry "Actors and Auditors"
Early modern playwrights wrote their plays with the actor/audience relationship in the forefront. Early modern playhouse architecture emphasizes the actor/audience relationship (the sharing of sightlines—or even physical space). Actors themselves can use delivery to create this contact in almost all moments within shows. Staging itself can create bonds. Sometimes actors can create contact without speaking, at all.
Daniel Rigby and John Harrell are back, and provide examples of staging. An actor appearing in the balcony above completes the circle of audience around the stage. Or, a character witnessing a scene in the balcony from the downstage area puts the character in the same position as the audience members themselves. Either upstage, downstage, or above, audience members either recognize or identify with the perspective of the character onstage. Mayberry provided a very useful handout with photo examples of the various positions onstage and then discusses the way in which these positions affect the audience members.
The Blackfriars stage lends itself particularly to the connection between audience and performance. In conclusion, the actor/audience alignment provided by this space challenges the audience and reminds them of their role in the performance.
Alas. Bare stage, but not bear stage. Maybe next time!
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