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!