Saturday, October 24, 2009

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.

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