tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73414309793079590462024-02-08T09:23:21.000-05:00ASC Blackfriars Conference 2009This blog is devoted to covering the American Shakespeare Center's bi-annual 2009 Blackfriars conference, featuring a who's who in the world of Shakespeare studies.Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-10705283115494324912009-10-25T10:18:00.007-04:002009-10-27T18:21:24.062-04:00The Globe ConversationsA 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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Peter McCurdy </span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />McCurdy asks the bear for a hug, which is granted, and concludes by reminding us all that this is a work in progress.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tiffany Stern</span><br /><br />Stern provides a quote from the<span style="font-style: italic;"> Second Maiden's Tragedy</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Ovid's Elegies</span> 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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Macbeth</span>, 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."<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Stern offers these observations for consideration in the Globe discussions. Her new book, <span style="font-style: italic;">Documents of Performance in Early Modern England</span>, will be available November 30.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Tim Fitzpatrick</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">ad quadratum </span>Globe (the original Globe, based on descriptions) and use it as the underlying basis for what Hollar drew.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Frank Hildy</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">ad quadratum</span> or the <span style="font-style: italic;">ad triangulum</span> 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.<br /><br />Rather than using either <span style="font-style: italic;">ad triangulum</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">ad quadratum</span> 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />The issue of size is important because it will effect everthing from the actor's ability to project to the function of the heavens.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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!<br /><br />[exit, pursued by house manager.]Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-19269770224164957442009-10-25T08:41:00.002-04:002009-10-25T10:18:37.226-04:00Paper Session 11Good 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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sarah Outterson: Acting the Ghostly Body in The Duchess of Malfi and The Second Maiden's Tragedy</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Duchess of Malfi</span> seem to ask for the actors to play the roles of the figures, and thus bring their corporeal presence to non-living bodies.<br /><br />And then the bear removed Outterson's paper.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Michael Boecherer: Power in Performance: The Renaissance Stage Witch as Theatrical Agent</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">1H6</span>, 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />In <span style="font-style: italic;">Macbeth</span>, 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Charles Salembier: The Unique Character of the Fool: Exploring Personality and Motive</span><br /><br />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' <span style="font-style: italic;">In Praise of Folly</span>, 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.<br /><br />Salembier credits Armin's Touchstone as the first of Shakespeare's true fools (Kemp being more of a clown). In <span style="font-style: italic;">As You Like It</span>, 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.<br /><br />In <span style="font-style: italic;">All's Well,</span> 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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Timon of Athens</span>, 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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Maryam Zomorodian: Staging the Matter of "worm-eaten books": Heywood, History, and Performance</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Kathryn M. Moncrief: "Be stone no more": Performing/Reforming Femininity in The Winter's Tale</span><br /><br />Moncrief begins by thanking her actors and offering that, as it's near the end of the conference and she's presenting on <span style="font-style: italic;">Winter's Tale</span>, 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.<br /><br />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<span style="font-style: italic;"> Othello</span>, 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Jeanne McCarthy: "You shall ha' them set among ye": Performance at the Blackfriars</span><br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Poetaster</span>, where a player is called out by a captain, and the captain's boys demonstrates this self conscious theatricality.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Love's Labours Lost</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Cynthia's Revels</span>. 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.<br /><br />So that concludes our last paper session of the conference. Check back with us this afternoon for a report from the Globe sessions!Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-90508207319476430682009-10-24T23:37:00.002-04:002009-10-24T23:50:30.233-04:00Shakespeare on IceDecember 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?<br /><br />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?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Shakespeare on Ice</span> 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.<br /><br />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.Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-90138314681295264312009-10-24T20:24:00.002-04:002009-10-24T20:32:57.281-04:00Academic Integrity DisclaimerI 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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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<span style="font-style: italic;"> Shakespeare on Ice</span>.Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-7092663845177992012009-10-24T14:28:00.004-04:002009-10-24T19:19:21.457-04:00Roundtable: Early Modern Music on the Elizabethan StagePhew. 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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dennis Siler</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Here Siler "beared" himself away to yield the floor.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Laura Feitzinger Brown</span><br /><br />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<span style="font-style: italic;"> is</span> 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Brown points out, in her conclusion, that Prospero, in surrendering authority in her epilogue, becomes the listener.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Virginia R. Francisco</span><br /><br />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).<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lizz Ketterer</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Michelle Kristelis</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Shakespeare on Ice</span> 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!Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-31005673643882799132009-10-24T12:46:00.002-04:002009-10-24T14:28:27.700-04:00Paper Session 10Dr. 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).<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Don Weingust: Original Practices: The New England Shakespeare Festival</span><br /><br />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."<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Elizabeth Griffith: A Penny for a "Get-Penny": The Long, Stable Price of Entertainment at Shakespeare's Globe</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />"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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Hsiang-chun Chu: Manly Beasts in Julie Taymor's Titus</span><br /><br />Chu was supposed to present earlier in the conference, but a late train kept her form presenting. She asserts that <span style="font-style: italic;">Titus</span>' 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Miranda Wilson: "I am the Gaoler": Devilish Confusions, False Beards, and the Shifting Stage in John Suckling's The Goblins</span><br /><br />Wilson examines the ASC's performance of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Goblins</span> 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. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Goblins</span> 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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">The Goblins</span>, which her actors will present to us this afternoon that demonstrate rapid costume changes, beards put on and off.<br /><br />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 (<span style="font-style: italic;">I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change</span>, 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />And then enters the bear in the guise of one of the devils that had just been on stage in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Goblin</span>s, and Wilson retired the stage.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Annalisa Castaldo: "We'll yoke together, like a double shadow": bringing Together Editing Theory and Original Staging Practices</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">The Taming of the Shrew</span> 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.<br /><br />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. <span style="font-style: italic;">A Taming of a Shrew</span>, 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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Matthieu Chapman: The Appearance of the Negroid Races</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Merchant of Venice</span>, or the Black musicians in <span style="font-style: italic;">Loves Labor's Lost</span>. 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Danise A Walen: Erasing Juliet</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />However, when examining the Q1 of <span style="font-style: italic;">Romeo and Juliet</span> 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-70006203791039147642009-10-24T10:20:00.004-04:002009-10-24T12:00:35.034-04:00Keynote: Andrew Gurr: The Economics of the 1613 DecisionSomething 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 <span style="font-style: italic;">The Shakespearean Stage</span> 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.<br /><br />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<span style="font-style: italic;"> Henry V</span>. 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.<br /><br />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."<br /><br />"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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-43439478009610449542009-10-24T09:01:00.003-04:002009-10-24T10:14:40.243-04:00Paper Session 9Good 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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Christopher Hodgkins: "Infinite Varietie": Phillip Stubbes, Cleopatra, and Staging Shakespeare's Anti-Theatrical Muse</span><br /><br />"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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Clay Drinko: Shakespearean Flow: Psychological Possibilities of an Improvisational Performance Technique at the Globe</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dan Venning: "Insides Out": Grotesque Violence and the Shifting Popularity of Titus Andronicus</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Titus Andronicus</span> 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, <span style="font-style: italic;">Titus</span> 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.<br /><br />Venning argues that the violence of <span style="font-style: italic;">Titus</span> 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />And then the bear brought an early end to a very interesting paper.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mariko Ichikawa: Pindarus Alive</span><br /><br />Dr. Ichikawa explores the entrance and exit of Pindarus in <span style="font-style: italic;">Julius Caesar</span>. 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.<br /><br />Ichikawa notes that, in similar fashion, the Doctor in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Court Beggar</span> 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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Merry Wives</span> that accompanies Falstaff's "no mine host." would require Falstaff t move too quickly if "above" is interpreted as the gallery.<br /><br />Dr. Ichikawa's actors demonstrate how Pindarus' exit may have worked. It is sufficient for Pindarus to exit and then describe Tritinius' capture.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mark Muggli and Laura Mohs: The Thematic Resonance of Overlapping Exits and Entrances.</span><br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Much Ado</span>, but it's hard to see the thematic significances they're trying to show when each of the two presenters is playing multiple roles.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Holly Pickett: Death by Ritual: Incense in Women Beware Women</span><br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Women Beware Women</span>, the olfactory spectacle of the use of incense in the climax matches the accompanying visual spectacle.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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!Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-71274015780359389842009-10-23T16:45:00.001-04:002009-10-23T23:44:12.417-04:00Paper Session 8Peter Hyland (Huron University College), "Hot Properties: Chettle's Hoffman"<br /><br />"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.)<br />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.<br /><br />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"<br /><br />Confession: "Yes, it was all about the hats!" (Hamlet and Osric) Debt of gratitude to Gurr.<br />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.<br /><br />Ian Borden (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), "How Shakespeare Trained the West: Mail-Order Shakespeare As Cultural Object in Nineteenth-Century America"<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Alice Dailey & Shawn Kirschner (Villanova University), "Fifteen Women and Nick Sly the Astrophysicist: Staging Critical Engagements with Shrew"<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />Darlene Farabee (University of Delaware), "Experiencing Location in Macbeth"<br /><br />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",<br />"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.<br />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.<br /><br />Andrew Fleck (San Jose State University), "Teach You Our Princess English": Linguistic Conquest in the Early Quartos and Performances of Henry V"<br /><br />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.<br /><br />I struggled to keep up with the pace of this scholar.<br /><br />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.Zachary L. Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00514533874250346388noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-20326407031425464432009-10-23T15:54:00.001-04:002009-10-23T15:55:56.940-04:00Staging SessionStaging Session<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />I’m really enjoying watching this scene. Wish you were here!<br /><br />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!)<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />Over and out!Little Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17614021340469966631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-91397395849404916352009-10-23T15:44:00.000-04:002009-10-23T15:53:00.732-04:00Paper Session 7I 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.<br /><br />The first presenter is Ryan McCarthy, who is a former student in the Mlitt/MFA student.<br /><br /><strong>Ryan McCarthy, “Lying-in in Chaste Maid”</strong><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br /><strong>Katherine Pilhuj “Merciful Construction”: Architecture, the Body, and Gendered<br />Political Discourse in William Shakespeare’s The Famous History<br />of the Life of King Henry the Eight[h]”</strong><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />The thunder sheet! Perhaps we’ll see the bear today! Could I be so lucky? Oh please, oh please!<br /><br />Queen Katherine is depicted as being out among her subjects—a very public figure, unlike the closeted Henry. <br /><br />BEAR!!!!!! With a tie! Life is good.<br /><br /><strong>Herb Weil, “Peace! I will stop your mouth!”</strong><br />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.<br /><br />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? <br /><br />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.<br /><br /><strong>Bob Hornback “Falstaff and Will Kemp’s ‘Self-Resembled Show’”</strong><br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />Thunder sheet! Surely I won’t get to see the bear twice in one session? <br /><br />Better: I got to see Falstaff AS the bear! Additionally, Falstaff left the head on the podium, distressing our moderator. Best. Day. Ever.<br /><br /><strong>Alan Dessen “Exit Sick? Caius Ligarius and Caesarism"</strong><br />Dessen speaks quite softly, so I’m not certain what he’s saying. Tricky.<br /><br />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? <br /><br />Ligarius is acting as a representation of the illness of Rome, without being a literal representation, such as Health or Wealth.<br /><br /><strong>Jacqueline Vanhoutte “Age in Love: Lyly’s Endymion and Superannuated Male Sexuality at the Elizabethan Court”</strong><br />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.” <br /><br />…I think she’s going to be chased offstage by a bear. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />BEAR! In a skirt! <br /><br />Be back soon with the staging session!Little Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17614021340469966631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-66965458386263490912009-10-23T10:22:00.004-04:002009-10-23T23:19:31.324-04:00Keynote: Paul Woodruff: The Art of WatchingWelcome 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.<br /><br />Woodruff is the fellow whom translated the copy of the Sophocles and Euripides plays, wrote the award winning<span style="font-style: italic;"> Ithaca in Black and White</span>, and numerous other philosophical and scholarly texts.<br /><br />Dr. Woodruff imagines he is here because the title of his book,<span style="font-style: italic;"> The Necessity of Theatre</span>, 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.<br /><br />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."<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Offering the example of <span style="font-style: italic;">1H4</span>, Hal is history, Poins is fiction, and Falstaff is <span style="font-style: italic;">Miles Gloriosis</span> 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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Much Ado</span> 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.<br /><br />Offering the immediate;y assertive example of <span style="font-style: italic;">Pyramus and Thisbe</span> in <span style="font-style: italic;">Midsummer</span>. 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.<br /><br />Woodruff counters the suggestion that Claudius is the ideal audience watching The ousetrap in <span style="font-style: italic;">Hamlet</span> (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."<br /><br />Woodruff feels that 3.4 of <span style="font-style: italic;">King Lear</span> 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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!Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-57375863585838243192009-10-23T08:48:00.002-04:002009-10-23T10:22:38.465-04:00Paper Session 6A gracious good morning to all. Welcome to day three of the conference, which begins with Paper Session 6, moderated by JMU's Katie Robbins.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Walter Cannon: Staging the Early Modern Fly</span><br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Titus Andronicus</span> 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).<br /><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Clare Smout: "Two of Both Kinds Makes Up Four": Casting in the Tempest</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">William (Rusty) Jones: "Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits... sets all on hazard": Performance, Context, and Generic Indeterminacy of Troilus and Cressida</span><br /><br />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."<br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Troilus and Cressida</span> 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.<br /><br />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."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Regina Buccola: "Some Woman is the Father": Running Thomas Middleton's Gender-Bending Gamut in More Dissemblers Besides Women</span><br /><br />Buccola examines the cross-cross dressing of boy actors in <span style="font-style: italic;">More Dissemblers Besides Women</span>. 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." <br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">David Carnegie: Staging Rape and Marriage "per verba de praesenti" in Cardenio</span><br /><br />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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Double Falsehood</span> 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 <span style="font-style: italic;">Don Quixote</span>, 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Erin Baird: Taking Advantage of the Interlude Structure</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />Beumont, by contrast, uses his interludes as a way of encroaching on his central plots, such as in <span style="font-style: italic;">Knight of the Burning Pestle</span>. 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.<br /><br />Jonson's use of interludes are used pragmatically to provide comments on his own work and to show the passage of time. As in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Devil is an Ass</span>, 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.<br /><br />Shakespeare jumps at the opportunity to explore the dramatic possibilities of interludes in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Tempes</span>t 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.Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-36113312198274563972009-10-22T18:53:00.001-04:002009-10-22T18:54:10.356-04:00Paper Session 5We’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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />Stephen X. Mead, "Imagined Spaces on Shakespeare’s Stage"<br /><br />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? <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />No bear.<br /><br />Penelope Woods "Pastness Performance: The Reconstructed Globe Theatre and Its Audience<br /><br />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? <br /><br />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? <br /><br />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?<br /><br />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. <br /><br />She makes it within time limits, so again, no bear. (No fun).<br /><br />Ann Pliess-Morris, " ‘What’s Past Is Prologue": Negotiating Original Staging Practices with Contemporary Audiences<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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. <br /><br />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.<br /><br />Still no bear.<br /><br /> <br /><br />Sarah Werner, "The Pitfalls of Performance Space"<br /><br />First, I have suddenly become hyper-appreciative of short paper titles. The next time you title a paper, consider the bloggers.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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?<br /><br />Barely bear-less, but still within time.<br /><br />Jeremy Fiebig "All Stage World"<br /><br />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. <br /><br />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?<br /><br />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?<br /><br />Goodness, still no bear. <br /><br /><br />Katherine Mayberry "Actors and Auditors"<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br />Alas. Bare stage, but not bear stage. Maybe next time!Little Redhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17614021340469966631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-14942631952104300642009-10-22T17:03:00.006-04:002009-10-23T08:46:34.698-04:00Ben Jonson RoundtableSarah's computer suffered a malfunction before she had a chance to post, so that'll be coming along a little bit later. Fortunately mine is still going strong (knock on wood), and to get out of the Blackfriars stage for a bit, I'm going to the Ben Jonson Roundtable. These papers are presented in a slightly less formal setting, and you'll have to forgive me for not getting the names of the papers (they weren't printed in the program).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Arnold Preussner</span><br /><br />The brief appearance of Lovewit's neighbors drive the metatheatricality in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Alchemist</span>. The fact that Lovewit has neighbors is introduced in 1.1 by Dol trying to keep the noise down so it doesn't disturb the neighbors, and their reappearance in the fifth act guides the resolution of the play. The neighbors are certainly a transitional device, but their metatheatrical significance extends beyond the playhouse.<br /><br />On a macro-level the neighbors may refer to the literal neighbors of the Blackfriars. Petitions against the original Blackfriars included accusations that the neighborhood would be disturbed by the players. They thus become the textual representatives of those opposed to the theatre, and Jonson shows the neighbors as no better than those whom they declaim.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Casey Caldwell</span><br /><br />Casey examines a close reading of Jonson's "Inviting a Friend to Dinner" and compares it to 1.2 of <span style="font-style: italic;">1H4</span> to explore the way these operate against a political and financial background, the role that names play relevant to friendship, and the essential and yet asymmetrical role in which rivalry is relevant to the friendship.<br /><br />While Jonson ostensibly is inviting a specific friend, the indefinite article "a" in the title can suggest this invitation as being more generic. The name of the individual invited is not mentioned in the poem, but Jonson spends significant lines devoted to descriptions of the food. Caldwell reads in these lines an aggressive move in the poem, when Jonson asserts that the dinner will only be perfect if the invitation is properly accepted.<br /><br />Jonson, in not using any names, might suggest a more intimate friendship, but the subtle tests in the poem could also be demonstrative of a friendship strained. Hal, in using Falsaff's proper name and dodging answers to his questions, can likewise be indicating a distance between the two men.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Nolan Carey</span><br /><br />When a public figure is shadowed, this can be considered to be impersonation on the early modern stage. Jonson seems to have commonly used impersonations of London figures in his plays. Carey cites <span style="font-style: italic;">Poetaster</span>'s references to John Marston. Jonson was called before he privy council, or actually arrested for his use of impersonation on several occasions. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Isle of Dogs</span> and<span style="font-style: italic;"> Eastward, Ho!</span> scandals being two notable examples. This is particularly noteworthy because Jonson "was one death away" from becoming the Master of the Revels. His mode of impersonation evolved from gross satire and created the idea of the parallelograph: "where all the characters in the play represent" actual living persons.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Andrea Kelly</span><br /><br />"Ben Jonson did more in hi writing to do away with women than to have a way with women." Through Kelly's comparative readings on Jonson's writing, she hopes to explore his "view of women in their natural state." He excoriates women for exhibiting squeamishness at motherhood, and is uncomplimentary toward women who wear makeup.<br /><br />In childloss poetry, mothers are commonly blamed and demonized (by themselves and others), and reflects the "eternal consequence of gestation." In his own childloss poetry, Jonson does not treat his wife in this way. There was a social consciousness about childloss poetry, and there were three basic items in common. Parents resigned themselves to God's will, the child offered as lost property, and the sin of the parents being visited on the children. This manifests itself in the idea of the child being lent to the parents from God, and thus its loss is not to be mourned, the faith of the mother dies and produces the dead child, and juxtapositions of mother and father, the mother leading to death and the father leading to heaven. Jonson, on the other hand, presents himself and his wife as a parental unit, tears being the appropriate response, and places the blame of the death on himself.<br /><br />Jonson, in the bulk of his poetry, is mistrustful and disdainful of women who step beyond the bounds of his conception of feminine modesty, but within the view of their natural environment, and grief at the loss of a child is part of that, he finds no fault in them.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Brian Herek</span><br /><br />Herek makes the argument that John Donne was influenced by the theatre, and have been misinterpreted by scholars who overlook his Roman interests and sociopolitical events of the day. The first satire he writes is possibly a satire of one of (his friend) Jonson's plays. Donne has a very low esteem for actors and playwrights, as evidenced by his writing. "Given Donne's friendship with Jonson and familiarity with theatrical scandals, we can't deny his interest" in theatre and its practices. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Flea</span>, is perhaps better read as a satire of theatrical rather than religious practice.<br /><br />That about does it for the second day of the Blackfriars conference. I see ya'll tomorrow!Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-63255333629677896902009-10-22T14:27:00.003-04:002009-10-22T15:32:56.171-04:00Staging SessionSo we're back for another staging session. It looks like the ASC actors are going to be playing the bulk of the roles this time around, so we're in for a treat in any event. Rick Blunt, a member of ASC touring company, will be serving as moderator. Those of you who know Rick are all joining me in a little chuckle now.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Matthew Davies: The Implication of Introducing France and Burgundy with a "Flourish" in 1.1 of King Lear.</span><br /><br />Davies has passed around a page from <span style="font-style: italic;">King Lear</span> that shows a small discrepency between the quarto and folio versions. In the quarto version, there is no flourish, and buy the publication of the folio, a flourish had been added. Davies doesn't make the argument that one is better or worse, but rather that the presene of the flourish introduces textual variation. We begin with a read through of the quart scene (which has not been rehearsed). Davies then blocks his actors "for the sake of expediency."<br /><br />Without a flourish, Kent attempts to exit through the discovery space just as France, Burgundy, and Gloucester enter. This forces Kent back on stage for a moment, and then he needs to exit around the entering party. This has further implications for France and Burgundy's poise and motivations in addressing Lear in the scene.<br /><br />When playing the scene with the flourish, the flourish gives Kent his exit cue, which allows him to get out of the way. The flourish also formalizes the entrance of France and Burgundy, and the playing of it gives them a dramatic space in which to enter. They don't have to bring their energy so forcefully into the scene; the "dramatic casesura" allows the audience a moment to register the entrance of the new characters.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">James Loehlin: "All at once cry out and wring their hands" Q1 Romeo and Juliet</span><br /><br />The first time through this scene, we examine the folio version, and Loehlin gives his cast the direction to do "whatever they like." I haven't had a chance to see ASC actors in rehearsal yet, so this is fun. It's almost scary how good they are; you'd almost never know they hadn't rehearsed.<br /><br />We turn from this to the quarto version, which Loehlin points out contains more stage directions than the folio version. The quarto version has all the characters speaking the line simultaneously, which (as Loehlin said it would) gives the characters a choric quality. The hand wringing is a little bit difficult when the actors have the text in hand, but the "all at once cry out" certainly comes through. The scene feels more highly ritualized than it does in the folio.<br /><br />There are other differences between q1 and f as well, and so to complete the experiment, Loehlin has his cast perform f with the insertion of the "all at once cry out" direction. The actors, and certainly Keegan as Capulet, are certainly more individualized within the chorus, and the chorus feels much more like a cacaphony. As Loehlin points out, Paris' lamentation becomes privileged, and then Friar Laurence has to assert himself over the confusion and general caterwauling of the Capulet family when he calls for "peace."<br /><br />If this staging session is any indication, this laboratory format is going to be very popular at future conferences. Davies and Loehlin seem to have a more specific scope of what they want to explore than the presenters in the staging session yesterday, but they certainly also have the benefit of more experienced actors. The synergy of those elements is no doubt making this staging session such a wonderful exploratory opportunity.<br /><br />One of my classmates will be blogging the next paper session, but I'll be back for one of the break out sections later this evening. See you then!Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-90287398441212814672009-10-22T12:52:00.002-04:002009-10-22T14:17:10.001-04:00Paper Session 4That was a nice little lunch break, and now we reconvene for the fourth paper session of the conference, which will be moderated by Mary Baldwin (and St. Lawrence University, gotta get my shout out to the 315 in there) Emeritus Dr. Tom Berger.<br /><br />Ann Thompson: "Know you this ring?"<br /><br />A ring may take up little space on the finger, but they occupy great symbolic spaces. Thomson notes that Hamlet produces his father's signet ring to save his own life, the resolution of <span style="font-style: italic;">All's Well that Ends Well </span>being brought about by the presence of the ring, and others. She has provided a handout (which I'm not taking the time to read right now) with examples of the use of rings in various early modern play texts.<br /><br />Similarly to the presence created by skulls that Dr. Paster mentioned in her keynote, rings are a presence of an other. They establish identity and authority, and are symbols of promises.<br /><br />Stage rings, of course, need to be larger than rings most wear in life. Even on the Blackfriars stage, the rings that the presenters wear are barely visible. This is a noteworthy staging issue as the rings can be so important in the texts.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Jeanne Roberts: The Female Shakespeare</span><br /><br />If Cavendish is right, and Shakespeare does indeed become every character he writes, this same verisimilitude carries over to the women. The schism between critics who hold <span style="font-style: italic;">Merry Wives</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">of Windsor</span> in high regard and audiences (whom Roberts suggests may have been predominantly female) is thus due to differing perspectives: male critics see the "violence" visited on Falstaff; audiences see the intelligent and capable female characters.<br /><br />Roberts poses the question of an inversion of <span style="font-style: italic;">Merry Wives</span> into Merry <span style="font-style: italic;">Husbands</span>. Would male chicanery visited upon a female Falstaff be more pallatteable to male critics? I think (and Roberts seems to suggest) the answer is probably not. She turns to examples of Cavendish's work; Shakespeare can imagine women rejecting men and deceiving their husbands, but Cavendish seems to not be able to imagine an ending to marriage that leaves women in a position of strength. "Perhaps it takes a man" to envision women finding a "happy" place within marriage.<br /><br />Roberts concludes that Shakespeare had to have a hermaphroditic mind to envision female protagonists and villains who are recognizeable "as real to audiences of later times."<br /><br />And then came the bear, and Roberts was deprived of her paper.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Stephen Booth: "A" Should Follow, But "O" Does</span><br /><br />Shakespeare is as alike in microcosm as he is at large. "He delighted in making and breaking promises to the audience." The example of <span style="font-style: italic;">King Lear</span> and its ending that deviates from the well known story is immediately cited, along with <span style="font-style: italic;">Loves Labor's Lost</span>, which does not end in the expected outcome of the wooing: "Jack hath not Jill," and "a twelvemonth and a day is too long for a play." Viola's "do not embrace me" speech at the end of <span style="font-style: italic;">Twelfth Night</span> is offered as another example.<br /><br />A microcosmic example of this is offered in <span style="font-style: italic;">Much Ado</span> about nothing 1.3.27 "I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his _____. Booth claims that the missing word, in keeping with the metaphor (rose and hedge place canker in the sense of a blight of leaves) would be "garden." Of course the actual concluding word to this line is "grace."<br /><br />Dr. Booth presents other examples, but I couldn't capture them all here. Apparently terrified of the bear, he concluded before the two minute warning.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Evelyn Tribble: Writing for Boys</span><br /><br />Boys on the early modern stage apparently played boys into their late teens when they attended university. Tribble argues that, by the time boys played the "weighty female roles" they were highly skilled actors. She suggests three aspects of enskillment that would bring the boys to the point where they were able to play roles such as Cleopatra.<br /><br />The apprentice system was a far reaching system based on the London livery system. They could legally bind apprentices even if the training was unrelated to the particular guild. Early two stage models of skilled/unskilled apprentices are flawed: we cannot isolate a single element of the system and expect to understand it. "One can embed a novice who has social skills but not computational skills in a system," and they can learn the computational skills necessary by imitation without understanding exactly what they are doing. Thus an apprentice does not need to be "skilled" to perform important duties with skill. Contemporary apprentices learn more than just the technical skills required to perform a task, but also the social and philosophical skills necessary to perform the task. "Skill is primarily social," and is obtained in a system that "scaffolds" behavior to guide them to the steps that are just beyond their cognitive reach. Thus the apprentice receives aid in practicing the skills that are cognitively beyond their reach.<br /><br />Young apprentices (boys playing boys) are almost always accompanied by adults, and Tribble argues that certain textual cues ("Speak you," "come boy," "go boy") would assist the young apprentice in gaining the basic skills necessary for an actor at an early age before they would be asked to hold their own in a more independent female role. Placing boys in dumb shows teaches them the basics of situational awareness and learning to enter; accompanied with prompting cues that beg a question serves in the training of these boys.<br /><br />The role of Arthur in <span style="font-style: italic;">King John</span> was apparently re-written from the source for a younger boy, and Tribble sees certain scaffolding devices in play, but the bear has now deprived her of her paper, and so we'll have to email her (or read her book) to find out what those are.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">George Watson Williams: Reading Lady Macbeth's Line</span><br /><br />The line in question is Lady Macbeth's "I pray you speak not" addressed to Ross at the banquet following the disappearance of Banquo's ghost. Williams cites the ASC performance where the line was not addressed to Ross, but to Macbeth, which he found "unfamiliar and startling." A reading which only first manifested in the final dress rehearsal.<br /><br />Williams "cannot honestly say that punctation or lineation in the folio" supports a division of the line in this way. Williams cites Booth's suggestion that there was no evidence that Shakespeare intended that reading of the line, but also that there was no evidence that he didn't. Williams goes on to suggest that there are two readings of Lady Macbeth's swoon at the revelation of the murders. We are used to seeing the swoon as a device to draw attention from Macbeth (who is now being interrogated), but it might also be genuine (as it was in the recent University Wits production directed by Glen Schudel). There are intriguing parallels between the two.<br /><br />If the act 2 swoon is contrived, than perhaps in act 3 she takes a more active role in "taking control of the disaster that th banquet has become." By asserting her will directly over her husbands, she furthers the inversions of the world of the play.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">James Keegan: "Change Places": Playing King Lear with the Blackfriars Audience</span><br /><br />Keegan seeks to examine three key moments of audience contact that can be found in <span style="font-style: italic;">King Lear</span> using early modern staging practices versus a more traditional proscenium staging. Keegan first presents Lear as may be done in a proscenium environment. This may be the only time in the history of the Blackfriars that the lights have been turned off in the audience while someone is performing. We're making all kinds of history here today. The proscenium result is entirely predictable, and I suspect will serve as an excellent control for the original practices approach that will follow.<br /><br />Of course the ASC/OP approach is far more engaging to the audience. Keegan, as he performed the role, engages the audience directly. The performance is far more powerful the second time around, but not only because of the audience contact, but also because Keegan is trying harder. Well... this is theatre, not rocket science, after all.<br /><br />Keegan asserts the proscenium setting forces Lear to deliver the line to Gloucester. The "that" of the "I pardon that man's life" is thus also directed toward Gloucester. "Making an audience member guilty of adultery has comic possibilities," citing that men he selected were sometimes playfully hit by a spouse or significant other, were personally amused, or sometimes gave Keegan a look that "thought [he] had hit a nerve."<br /><br />Similarly, Keegan is in a proscenium environment forced to wipe his hand on Gloucester, but using the ASC staging practices, he is able to wipe his hand on an audience member. The ensuing line about mortality provides another comic moment, and playfully brings to mind the mortality of everyone in the audience.<br /><br />Herein the bear comes to escort Keegan off, and Keegan apologizes for never having heard the thunder. He was Lear, after all.<br /><br />Well that was a fantastic paper session. Given the caliber of the scholars we saw this time around, I think they can be forgiven for going a little bit over their time. I certainly found these papers to be some of the best I've heard so far (I'm saying that a lot today), but we have a lot of time left to go at the conference for others to top it. Next up is a staging session, and I'll be back around quarter after three with an update on that. Go take a moment to powder your noses until then.Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-44938415188406010352009-10-22T11:30:00.002-04:002009-10-22T11:35:41.737-04:00Keynote: Gail Kern Paster: Thinking with Skulls: Hamlet, Holbein, Vesalius, and FullerWow. Where'd all these people come from? We're all set for Dr. Paster's Keynote: “Thinking with Skulls: Hamlet, Holbein, Vesalius, and Fuller” and I think we've got our biggest crowd yet. Following some opening remarks by Dr. Cohen, in which he dubs the Folger the “US Department of Shakespeare,” and Dr. Paster as the US Secretary of Shakespeare.<br /><br />Paster credits Dr. Tribble, who we will be hearing from, a little bit later, for her contributions to her research.<br /><br />Paster suggests that the presence of the skull goes beyond the traditional symbols of death and absence. In cognitive terms, Yorik's skull is an extension of Hamlet's mind. The four skulls cited in the title suggest a transformation of the skull from a momento mori to an embodied mind. “The skull distracts us from its cognitive role” with its significance of mortality, but it remains “an artifact of the extended mind,” and is not merely “the empty container of what was or what is to come.”<br /><br />In Holbein's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Ambassadors</span>, the anamorphic skull is traditionally thought to undermine the French ambassadors and human knowledge. The skull is a “third ambassador” from the afterlife, but Paster suggests that the skull is more properly considered in cognitive terms. The signs of the personalities of the two ambassadors are represented by differing complexions within the colors that Holbein uses to portray the ambassdors themselves. The one is redder, becoming the warmer personality of the courtier, the other is darker, becoming the more melencholy disposition of the scholar. “The mind's inclination follows the body's temperature.”<br /><br />The contrasting complexions are most important in consideration of the bloodless skull, which is emergent in the time as its own “fleshless, bloodless individual.” The skulls of the ambassadors are not dry, white, and bloodless, they are to be understood to posess the colors of the characters that have them. The presence of the skull is only activated as a symbol of death by the active imagination of the viewer, motivated by the curiosity and will of the viewer to see the skull. “We remember death by moving closer to an emblem of memory itself.”<br /><br />“In volunteering to witness the skull, the viewer” volunteers to confront the death that awaits him all, by moving away from the skull to view the ambassadors, the viewer chooses to see death in a symbolic context. Paster poses the question if narratives that we construct are canceled by the skull, or whether the skull becomes “a sign of the mind pouring itself into symbolic containers and doing its own characteristic works of extension.”<br /><br />The tall skeleton of Vesalius' plate uses posture to stand in for meditation. Bone stabilizes bone, and the lacking flesh is not missed. The humours needed to create the melancholy of the skeleton are missing, but the effect is plainly visible. The messiness of fleshy emotion is note eradicated by death, and the skeleton, resting his skull on his hands, clearly communicates through touch, and perceives through his gaze. The skeleton, lacking flesh, meditates on a skull, lacking a body, and having removed pieces of the skull, makes it a fragment of a fragment. Vesalius shows us a “grim irony” of a “fragment of a fragment,” with “the skeleton as our mirror, and the skull as his.” Paster proposes we are invited to put our flesh onto the skeleton's bones rather than to see the skeleton as our bones stripped of flesh; it therefore becomes an externalization of the observer in celebration of the longevity of the human frame.<br /><br />A cognitive dynamic occurs between images of skin and skull, and in Vesalius between skeleton and skull. In <span style="font-style: italic;">Hamlet</span>, Hamlet imagines the flesh and bones that the skulls had once had. In the context of early-modern grave yards, a complete skeleton might have seemed even more fascinating than they do to us, but the skulls, which Hamlet is most interested in, are unmistakingly human. The grave digger, in his pride of being able to identify the skull, is able to establish a social relationship with it, but it is worth note that the grave digger's assertion remains unverified. The cognitive prop of Yorrick's skull turn into memories of a specific individual, memories more specific than those of Hamlet's own father (who, as a side note, lacks all flech), but these memories are only conjured by the assertion of a memory that may be faulty.<br /><br />In their remembrance of Yorrick, wether or not the skull is really his, the gravedigger and Hamlet engage in cognitive processes similar to the viewer of the Ambassador's, and to Vesalius' skull. “The skull is a reminder of the self mocking that is the exclusive province of the living brain.”<br /><br />From these more famous skull, Paster turns to Fuller's painting of Sir Williem Petty. The skull is one of two objects in the painting. Petty also holds a folio in his lap, “a more or less conventional accompanist to the skull,” but the folio is an anatomy text turned to a diagram of the skull, which subverts the usual presence of the book as a moral authority. Instead, ghostly subjectivity is replaced with scientific objectivity. The skull thus gives over its “imperfect actuality” to the diagramtic perfection of the ideal. The skull cedes to the book both its power to represent mortality and to represent itself.<br /><br />That was probably the most intense thing I've heard here so far. Still, I have a few questions. For Hamlet, the skull represents both. It is the embodiment of the dead Yorrick, but the also embodiment of an idealized memory. I was going to muse on the skull in the<span style="font-style: italic;"> Revenger's Tragedy</span>, but Gary Taylor asked the question much more intelligently than I am able. It would, of course, have been the same skull from the prop box. Following the reality of the fragment of Yorrick (preserved in the extended mind), the skull of Vindice's wife creates her physical pressence throughout. Maybe Vindice isn't so insane after all: he is perhaps so grief stricken than he simply does not want to let go of the fragment of the externalized self of his wife.<br /><br />Time for a little bit of a lunch break. We'll be back after the next paper session.Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-66952768181670296012009-10-22T08:59:00.002-04:002009-10-22T11:30:08.950-04:00Paper Session 3Welcome back to the Blackfriars conference, everyone. We start off bright and early with Paper Session 3. I don't think anyone is jumping for joy at the start time, but there's plenty of coffee in the lobby, and attendance doesn't seem to be taking too much of a hit. Maybe the promise of coffee helped with that. Margaret Jaster of Penn State will be moderating for us this morning.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fred Franko: Unseemly trickery in Measure for Measure and Plautus' Amphitro</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Measure for Measure</span>: comedy or tragedy? Discuss. Franko begins by offering just such a thing happened over drinks at the Stonewall Jackson following ASC's performance of <span style="font-style: italic;">Measure for Measure</span>, and this leads us to an exploration of Roman comedy (specifically Plautus). Franko proposes that, in <span style="font-style: italic;">Measure for Measure</span>, the Duke himself serves the role of the Plautine trickster. He can, for example, talk to others (and the audience) without anyone else hearing him. The problem is that the Duke is not a low-class character, and his resort to "trickery rather than majesty" is what is disturbing.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Amphitro</span> is similarly Plautus' problem play. Jupiter plays the role of the trickster, and this is the problem: the sennex is the trickster. In both cases, the audience doesn't take great delight in the established ultimate authority getting his way; especially through trickery. The structure of the comedy is that the ultimate authority can simply have what they want by command, and thus the Duke's Trickery in <span style="font-style: italic;">Measure for Measure</span> and Jupiter in <span style="font-style: italic;">Amphitro</span> are unseemly.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Brian Chalk: "Murdering Sleep": Macbeth, Dreams, and the Boundaries of Theatrical Reality</span><br /><br />From the moment the play begins, Shakespeare immerses the audience in a series of dream like images. No one who's seen a good production of it will have anything to disagree with here. Macbeth's encounter with the witches sets him on a path of interpreting life as an allegory, and blur the line between fictional and actual events. Chalk proposes that Thomas Nash's <span style="font-style: italic;">Terrors of the Night</span> is an uncredited source for the play.<br /><br />Macbeth, tempted to sleep, is afraid to do so. While Banquo "longs for the moral clarity that the day allows," Macbeth seems to be unable and unwilling to escape the ambiguities of night time terrors. The dagger, banquet, and sleep walking scenes are some of the most memorable scenes of the play, and these clearly blur the line between reality and nightmares. The dagger, ghost of Banquo, and blood on Lady Macbeth's hands are real only in the mind of the observer, but the ghost of Banquo is the only one the audience sees, and thus the audience is drawn into the world of Macbeth's dreams via the presence of the only other character who has seen the witches.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Macbeth</span> in this sense becomes a collective dream. Happily resolved for the audience, but not so for Macbeth.<br /><br />I designed lights for a production of <span style="font-style: italic;">Macbeth</span> for which the concept was "Macbeth's Nightmare" a couple years ago. I guess that concept wasn't as wonky as I thought.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Donald Hedrick: Actor Wagers and London' Inner Vegas</span><br /><br />Hedrick opens by producing a bottle of wine. A little bit too early for me, but this is a theatre, after all. Since Hedrick is discussing gambling as an entertainment option, it might be appropriate for the circumstances. Gallants were, in 1603, thought to risk their wealth by spending time with actors.<br /><br />He cites <span style="font-style: italic;">The Knight of the Burning Pestle</span> and the betting on the plot that happens in the George the Grocer plot as evidence that Elizabethan audiences would bet on the plots of the plays. "The practice was not universal, but not rare." Hedrick makes a point of clarifying that we do not know how the wagers were placed.<br /><br />Hedrick now offers us the experiment of two actors for whom we will place wagers on who will win the role of Hamlet. Paul and Jeremiah. They are introduced by a role they have performed here, and a moderator than gives them a line to begin performing. Betting begins. Paul is chosen to play Hamlet by a coin toss. This reminds me of an anecdote Professor Cohen related about a production of <span style="font-style: italic;">Richard II</span> where the titular character is chosen by a coin toss.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Matt Kozusko: Why is Hamlet Such a Shitty Poet</span><br /><br />Hamlet establishes himself as his world on language arts, but he is unable to write a love poem. This raises a question of which of the lines in the Moustrap Hamlet has written. Kozusko thinks he sees some shades of Hamlet's writing in the character of the Player Queen, who "protests too much."<br /><br />The difficulty in understanding <span style="font-style: italic;">Hamlet</span> is that the world is purposefully muddied. "The world is Catholic, it is Protestant, and it is Agnostic." No one ever seems to know who is in charge of the universe, and other certainties are similarly blurred. It is the audience that is left to make meaning of the world.<br /><br />Kozusko proposes that Hamlet is our best analog in the play, but only when he's not being himself.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Brett Gamboa: "Like doth quit Like": Barnadine, Ragozine and Shakespeare's Double-Dealing</span><br /><br />Does Ragozine have something to teach us about the way that roles may be doubled in <span style="font-style: italic;">Measure for Measure</span>? We don't have a doubling plot, but Gamboa feels that there are thematic indications within the play that would suggest doubling, and offers that there are only two rules that we must assume governed doubling on the early modern stage: 1) Roles doubled cannot meet one another on stage. 2) Changes of roles are indicated by changes of garments.<br /><br />Gamboa cites textual examples within the play indicative of doubling. Certain lines, he proposes, seem to serve no other purpose than to distinguish a given character from another, which raises the distinct possibility than the audience needs assistance in keeping track of which character is which. This is especially true of a play that relies on disguise and trickery.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Christine Schmidle: Adaptation or Translation? English Comedians and Der Bestrafte Brundermord</span><br /><br />Schmidle opens with an introduction in German which she has one of her actors translate. I don't know German, but I don't think "welcome" quite covered it. The pitfalls of translation thus illustrated, Schmidle offers that English actors had found touring on the continent, especially Germany, quite profitable.<br /><br />Apparently only three of Shakespeare's texts in German survive, <span style="font-style: italic;">Titus</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Romeo and Juliet</span>, and <span style="font-style: italic;">Hamlet</span> (<span style="font-style: italic;">Der Bestrafte Brundermord</span>, or "<span style="font-style: italic;">Fratricide Punished</span>"). It would, however, be a mistake to think of them as translations. They are more like adaptations, which feature simpler vocabulary, greater physicality, and removing speeches that describe events with portrayals of those events.<br /><br />Her actors then offer us a scene from <span style="font-style: italic;">Hamlet</span> in German, and then a scene from <span style="font-style: italic;">Fratricide Punished</span> (also in German), as further illustration of the need of adaptation. Important plot points are lost without the inclusion of the new scene, but even when the audience (meaning me) can't understand what is being said in the Fratricide Punished scene, it is easy enough to understand what happens.<br /><br />Schmidle will be staging a production of <span style="font-style: italic;">Der Bestrafte Brundermord</span> in January, so if you're in the area, stop by and give it a look. It will be interesting to see just how well her experiment plays out.<br /><br />So there's our first paper session for the day. Next up is a keynote by Gail Kern Paster of the Folger.Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-25648160397282706732009-10-21T16:58:00.003-04:002009-10-21T17:49:13.701-04:00Staging SessionPartly because the staging session covers some aspects in <span style="font-style: italic;">Titus Andronicus</span>, partly because it's the first staging session this conference has ever held, and partly because one of the presenters is from New York's Capital District (my old neighborhood), I'm going to this evening's staging session, moderated by Caroline Gaddy.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lindsey Snyder: Understanding Her Signs: Rhetorical Gesture in Titus Andronicus</span><br /><br />Snyder sets out to examine the use of public gesture in private spaces using her knowledge of American Sign Language to explore the phonemic qualities that are invested in the creation of signs and their use for the purpose of rhetorical gesture. This is not to be understood to be embedded stage directions, but rather the application of gesture in training performers.<br /><br />She begins her experiment with an exploration of bombastic gestures of the type that she (and we) would refer to as "bad acting." One of her actors demonstrates this pint to great effect. She goes from there to some basic principles of semiotics and the endowment of external objects with meaning. Gestures, she argues, are a way of endowing the self with linguistic meaning.<br /><br />A comparison between Titus' opening narrative and Lavinia's salutation of her father, as performed both by an actor and Snyder interpreting the scene into ASL, reveals that many similar gestures among the two. Titus and Lavinia are both public figures, even when sharing a private moment, and it is ultimately the familiarity that both have (of necessity) with public gesture that enables them to communicate after Lavinia's rape and mutilation.<br /><br />Snyder argues that, like Davies' example of caesuras, the gestures of the characters are embedded within the text, especially in the Roman plays.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Sandra Boynton and Shane Sczespankowski: "O true apothecary" or Thy Drugs Are truer the Second Time Around or Doesn't Anybody Listen.</span><br /><br />Boynton begins by detailing how she used to think that <span style="font-style: italic;">Romeo and Juliet</span> was "a stupid play about stupid kids who die in stupid ways." I am intrigued by what she has to say, and wish to know more, but she does a quick about face by talking about how she's learned to love the play. A description of Schenectady County Community College's partnership with the ASC and some of their practices ensues, as well as an explanation that it is Victorian and fourth-wall sensibilities that have done so much to mar Romeo and Juliet.<br /><br />The nutshell description of her description of SCCC production of <span style="font-style: italic;">Romeo and Juliet</span> seems to be that they tried to present the text using early modern staging techniques, and with respect to the material that Shakespeare wrote, and thereby helped bring the play beyond the theatrical conventions that Boynton feels have poisoned other productions. Not exactly a controversial suggestion in these parts, but being from upstate New York, I can fully appreciate why SCCC's approach feels like the forward division of an avant garde expedition into the provinces.<br /><br />Part of their staging experiment involves a significant amount of overlap between Romeo's lines and Friar Laurence's. It is an interesting experiment, but we lose a significant amount of the lines. I can understand the function of trying to increase the pace of the scene, but language descends into caterwauling. The issue of the cue is also difficult, as someone in the audience points out in Q&A, the line "O true apothecary, thy drugs are quick" is indicative of Romeo's awareness that the drugs are working.<br /><br />Some heated argument begins in the Q&A, and just as I think I'm about to see a good old fashioned PhD-fight, Gaddy does her moderator thing and calls the whole thing off, saying it sounds like a wonderful conversation to have over drinks.<br /><br />And after blogging this conference all day, dinner and drinks sound like an excellent plan to me, so I'm going to call it a day. Check back in tomorrow for more updates from the Blackfriars conference.<br /><br />Cheers!Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-70983260311308776582009-10-21T16:35:00.000-04:002009-10-21T16:40:28.507-04:00Paper Session 2On to the next paper session. Dr. Gretchen Shultz from Emory University will be moderating this session.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Genevieve Love: Shoemaker's Holiday Pedophobia</span><br /><br />Love finds a mystery in Ralph's missing leg. Nothing seems to take advantage of the missing limb in a textual. Dekker's play is uninterested in literary prosthesis, and thus calls attention to the absence of Ralph's missing leg. Ralph clearly possesses the means of creating his own prosthesis, and we are to understand his trade a shoemaker to be a compliment to his missing limb rather than a supplement.<br /><br />The "dissability is both important and unimportant." Ralph (and Dekker) use it as a crutch; when it is useful, character and playwright call attention to it, when it is not, the missing limb is ignored. Ralph's entrance in a morris dance calls attention to the theatrical convenience of the missing limb: no stage directions or other actions call attention to his lame or crutch dancing.<br /><br />"Thou shalt never see a shoemaker want bread though he has but three fingers on a hand." The shoemaker does not need his foot. The absence of a foot creates a distance between the shoemaker and his shoe. Even where characters do not pay attention to the missing leg, this distance puts it ever in the mind of the audience.<br /><br />The stage property itself inherits this absence. The shoe itself is incomplete without a foot to put it on. The empty space of Ralph's missing leg forces the shoemaker to create works reliant on an external other for completion. It "presses upon us the shoe that is missing a foot."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Andrea Stevens: Blackface, Women Actors, and Walter Montagu's Shepherds' Paradise</span><br /><br />Very notably, <span style="font-style: italic;">Shepherds' Paradise</span> defied all known conventions of the early modern stage. It employed female actors, took eight hours to perform, four months to rehearse, and was performed on a stage designed by Inigo Jones. Stevens suggests that, in the late-early 1600s, there was a vogue of female blackface productions, citing several plays, including one by the King's Men in 1637.<br /><br />The <span style="font-style: italic;">Shepherds' Paradise</span> uses blackness as a means of "temporary refuge." The convention of the female actors that start as white, turn black, and end as white may allow for a greater sense of liberty. I wonder: Would audiences have been more accepting of female actors in blackface? Was it a cause or a symptom of something else?<br /><br />Stevens sees a connection between male actor's distrust of women on stage as being a motivation for the trope of female blackface. The purification that follows represents a return to classic, safe, femininity.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">William Proctor Williams: "Behold the Child": Aaron's Baby in Text and Performance.</span><br /><br />Williams emphasises that Aaron's child, as the sole surviving member of the previous royal family, is more important than most productions will acknowledge. The importance of the child changes when Aaron barters for its safety with Lucius as a condition of providing information to to Titus' avenging son. Once Lucius swears the oath, the child becomes the ward of the future emperor of Rome, and thus a gauge of Lucius' honor.<br /><br />Williams continues to point out that the child is, in many modern productions, reduced to the object of late act conjuration. To avoid this, the child should have a greater stage presence than he is typically accorded. Given his argument of the child as an icon of Lucius' honor. Williams has cited a production where the show concludes with Lucius murdering the child, and thus giving the audience a clear sign that Rome is damned to barbarism.<br /><br />Given Love's talk on the missing limb in Shoemaker's holiday, I can't help but think of the effect of the missing baby in Shepherds' <span style="font-style: italic;">Buried Child</span>. Clearly Shakespeare is going for a very different effect. Aaron's baby is a presence, not an absence, and I cite Shepherds' play here to make the contrast clear. <br /><br />If you're in town and reading this, I heartily recommend stopping by the ASC performance of <span style="font-style: italic;">Titus</span> tonight to see how they handle the child.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Joe Folocco: An Ideological Defense of Early Modern Staging</span><br /><br />Folocco warms up with some ideological critiques of early modern staging practices. Does early modern staging support a colonialist philosophical and intellectual imperialist view of the world? Judging by the laughs he's getting, probably not.<br /><br />Early modern staging attempts to bypass modern cultural materialism by what seems to amount to a very close reading of the text. This style of production seems to honor the perceived intentions of the playwright through the literal words he has used.<br /><br />Folocco cites our own Ralph Alan Cohen in his estimation of early modern practices as a way of engaging the audience and making them "an active participant in performance." It seems pretty clear to me (and I dare say anyone else who has seen a show at ASC) that this performance technique is more engaging than "fourth wall" staging practices.<br /><br />Still, in this humble theatrician's experience, more and more theatres are exploring staging techniques that are more deliberately engaging (such as thrust staging, general, or more-general lighting). Early modern staging seems to have gained more traction out in the practical world than I think some of the early critiques of it Folocco cited would suggest.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lars Engle: Middleton Performing Morality</span><br /><br />As the title of his presentation suggests, Engle explores Middleton's moral structure. We assume that Middleton was influenced by Shakespeare, but Engle proposes that Middleton, or at least Middleton's moralization, had influenced Shakespeare. He cites the example of Middleton's <span style="font-style: italic;">Phoenix</span>, which he sees as having several clear influences on <span style="font-style: italic;">Measure for Measure</span>.<br /><br />His actors explore Middleton's dramatization of a virtuous woman set against the male bond of her husband and his friends. The Captain, under the weight of his own sense of personal and sexual inadequacy, can only violently repudiate his wife. The relationship between Phoenix, the Captain's wife, prefigures the relationship between Desdemona, Othello, and Iago. The process by which social institutions like marriage have a transforming effect on individuals "may have caught Shakespeare's attention."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Matthew Davies: The Caesura in Action</span><br /><br />I'm trying to make a joke out of pausing for a moment, but they're all falling a little flat right now, so just imagine your own. Davies introduces the difference between a caesura in speech and one in print, or rather the lack of actual difference between the two. He observes that epic caesuras seem to occur more often in the presence of feminine endings.<br /><br />He cites Cicely Berry in the feminine ending providing the line with a pause for thought at the end. Such an extra unstressed syllable may call into question the entire metrical order of the line. The caesura, in theory, is "born of its own anxiety." It is not a pause, it is either a "hiatus" or a "halt." It should not interrupt the current of the sense of the phrase.<br /><br />While the implications for this in a single line might be a little more obvious, Davies' actors go on to explore the effect of the caesura using one of John Barton's exercises in exploring <span style="font-style: italic;">Twelfth Night</span>. It is not only the placement of the caesura in a conversation that the actor must consider, but who has it. Davies argues that the caesura can function as a spotlight: the actor who takes it is the one who draws focus.<br /><br />Davies also calls attention to caesuras that are built into the text. First his actors demonstrate when a pause is necessary after Romeo's line "give me my sin again." Davies then proposes a very interesting rhetorical device tat Shakepeare uses in <span style="font-style: italic;">Julius Caesar</span>. Brutus has tried to sway the mob with prose and failed, and when he dies, he returns to a verse structure "affording him the dignity of dying on a rhyming couplet," and thus demonstrating a return to the order of the rest of the play. The caesura in this line, of course, comes when Brutus dies.<br /><br />Since we were missing a presenter for this session, we've adjourned a little bit early. At 5 well go to various breakout sessions, and since I can't be in three places at once, I'll be back a little bit later this evening with a report from one of those.Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-3753680900444407242009-10-21T14:45:00.000-04:002009-10-21T15:02:35.187-04:00Hats off to Andy (Gurr, that is)Well that was a nice little tribute to Dr. Gurr. I now have a much greater appreciation for Shakespearean head-wear. For those of you playing along at home, Andrew Gurr's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Shakespearean Stage</span> is one of the cornerstones of early modern dramaturgical research, so of course the ASC actors have chosen to celebrate Gurr's <span style="font-style: italic;">Shakespearean Hats</span> in their tribute to him this afternoon. An why not? As Dr. Menzer points out, the first edition of that work stands complete. Maybe that's why they're calling on Dr. Gurr to take the next logical step in completing this corpus of costuming and complete his long delayed work on Shakespeare's trousers.<br /><br />How long will we be denied an equally seminal work on early modern pants? Only time will tell, but judging by the standing ovation Dr. Gurr received, this crowd will find it worth the wait.<br /><br />So I guess I lied, but for reals this time, I'll be back around 5 with another update.Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-64573917125813126382009-10-21T12:41:00.000-04:002009-10-21T14:29:02.033-04:00Paper Session 1Welcome to paper session one. We'll be hearing from six scholars this afternoon in a session moderated by Hank Dobin, Dean of Washington and Lee University. Each of these presenters has only 10 minutes (if they're not using actors) or 13 (if they are) before having a bear unleashed on them.<br /><br />So, as before, I'm going to try to keep up as scholars present their works. Please bear with me, I'm not as fast a typer as I used to be. Bear. Get it? Eh? Eh? Nevermind...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lois Potter: Why Ancient Pistol (Mis)quoted The Battle of Alcazar</span><br /><br />Dr. Potter explores a scene from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Battle of Alcazar</span> in which Pistol offers meat to Calipolis. Calipolis, offered the raw meat of a lion, protests that she is too queasy to eat of it, although she is hungry. The stage direction is here unclear: does she eat or not.<br /><br />Dr. Potter refers to a scene in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Taming of A Shrew</span> where Kate is offered meat on a dagger. This is apparently commonly assumed to be a parody of <span style="font-style: italic;">Tamburlaine</span>, but Dr. Potter finds it more likely that it refers to The Battle of Alcazar.<br /><br />This raises the question of potential actions in Shakespeare's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Taming of The Shrew</span> where the stage direction reads "enter Petruchio with meat." Dr. Potter has her actors explore this stage direction with both raw meat on a dagger and prepared meat on a dish. The wildly differing implications for the actor are clear.<br /><br />Dr. Potter suggests that a question that might arise from this is whether both options might have been played. It is possible that the joke might have been carried over from <span style="font-style: italic;">A Shrew</span> into <span style="font-style: italic;">The Shrew</span> when the reference was still fresh, but as <span style="font-style: italic;">Battle of Alcazar</span> was forgotten, the intention was changed.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Leslie Thomson: Questions to be Asked in 1 Henry IV</span><br /><br />Shakespeare's playgoers knew the answers to the questions posed in <span style="font-style: italic;">1H4</span>, but asking the questions will allow the audience to suspend their knowledge of the answers. "The repeated use of questions helps to both keep us interested and chart [Hal's] progress" as Hal progresses from a wayward prince to the great English king.<br /><br />The contrast of the questions between <span style="font-style: italic;">1H4</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">2H4</span> is notable because of the different effects that each achieves. In <span style="font-style: italic;">1H4</span>, the questions of Hal's character are not yet resolved. The focus on the questions is mostly on Hal. The rebels have answers, but King Henry questions the actions of his own son in contrast to those of Hotspur. Falstaff and Hal also engage in Q&A.<br /><br />After 5.1, when Hal has demonstrated his intent to live up to his vow to be noble, Shakespeare presents Falstaff asking and answering his own questions about the nature of honor. By the time, the audience has already discerned Hal's true nature, and thus the rhetorical device will not be as necessary.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">James Loehlin: Cymbeline: Three Scenes of Spectacular Theatricality</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Cymbeline</span>'s use of overt theatricality is limited to three intensely spectacular moments. The emergence of Iacimo from the trunk, the resurrection of imogen, Posthumus' dream of his ancestors and the appearance of Jupiter. It is otherwise "economical" in its use of theatricality. Dr. Loehlin bases his presentation on the production of <span style="font-style: italic;">Cymbeline</span> that he recently directed at Winedale.<br /><br />Iachimo's appearence is not a surprise, and Imogen's vulnerability puts her in a dangerous position, but Iachimo's initial speech, wherein he declares he will leave her sleeping, allows the audience to be liberated from worrying for Imogen's safety. No matter what liberties Iachimo takes with her, the audience is assured that she is safe in the moment.<br /><br />When Imogen awakes next to a headless body in Posthumus' clothing was also greeted with laughter in the Winedale production. The staging has an element of the absurd because the audience knows that the headless body is not real, and the dramatic irony of the audience's knowledge that Posthumus is safe gives the scene a greater sense of humor. Dr. Loehlin found that audiences who saw the scene in general lighting tended to respond with laughter more than audiences who were not. The openness of the staging invites the audience to partake in the complete joke.<br /><br />The appearance of Jupiter on the second level of the Blackfriars stage also produces a markedly jocular response. Initially Winedale resisted the laughter of the scene, but went on to embrace it as part of the play. Many of the later comedies present a similar scenario: the audience is satisfied with their knowledge that things are not as bad as they seem. The dramatic irony of these scenes is enhanced by a miraculous spectacle that brings everything to its proper comic conclusions. Moments of recap of narrative serve a similar comic turn: the audience can take pleasure in being reminded of things they have forgot as the characters discover them.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Catherine Loomis: Must Give us Pause</span><br /><br />Shakespeare makes use of pauses throughout his works, and he does so to achieve similar effects. A pause will allow the audience a moment to consider the impact of what they have seen and try to calculate what must follows. Pauses also provide a space for characters within the play to question themselves, and this allows an actor to exploit those moments of dramatic tension.<br /><br />Despite the presence of other early modern stage directions that indicate specific types of pauses, Shakespeare rarely uses these. As we know, with thanks to Dr. Andrew Gurr, that Shakespeare's theatre was a collaborative one, this allows the actors greater participation in crafting the ending to the play. As Dr. Loomis' actors demonstrate, even when the resolution will not change, the presence of the pause calls this resolution into question, and gives it greater tension.<br /><br />Characters facing life altering decisions would take time to think, even in the world of a stage.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Jeremy Lopez: Webster's Queasy Dramaturgy</span><br /><br />Dr. Lopez begins with the assertion that "John Webster is good at making you queasy." (He gets no argument from me there). Webster puts his audiences in a position of being unable to acertain what his actors are doing, if they are in fact doing anything at all. I.e. were the wax figures in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Duchess of Malfi</span> wax figures or actors?<br /><br />Citing <span style="font-style: italic;">Westward, Ho!</span> his characters feign illness regularly. Mistress Tenterhook, by her words, suggests that she is certainly love sick. The signs of bodily ailment are not reliable indicators of actual illness, and the actor playing this character (as well as others) has considerable leeway in determining how physically ill the characters may actually be. The physical symptoms they exhibit can easily be signs of a psychological malady that they feel more keenly.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">R. Carter Hailey: Shakespeare "Here" and "Now": The Fierce Urgency of Performance</span><br /><br />Dr. Hailey here concerns himself with the theatrical "now" of performance. Shakespeare's knowledge of the immediacy of the theatrical experience is revealed by his use of meta-theatricality. The mechanicals of <span style="font-style: italic;">Midsummer</span> are genuinely terrified that their presentation of a lion will terrify the ladies in their audience, and while we can laugh at the unintended bombasticity of the notion, the theatrical illusion relies on this very sort of immediacy.<br /><br />Dr. Hailey seems to note be using any actors in a presentation that could really benefit from them. He provides examples from <span style="font-style: italic;">Macbeth, Henry V, Othello</span>, and others plays where actors are conscious of the immediacy of their circumstances, and invoke the literal "here and now" of the world of the play.<br /><br />It seems to me that by using characters that insist on the immediacy of moments within the play by the use of the words "here" and "now," Shakespeare invokes the theatrical illusion with similar effect to the questioning mechanism that Dr. Thomson addressed earlier. Ultimately the line between the world of the stage and the world of the audience is blurred. Oddly enough, this is completely contrary to the humor Dr. Loehlin found in <span style="font-style: italic;">Cymbeline</span> by use of dramatic irony.<br /><br />It looks like the bear went unfed this session, as our scholars have all been within time. I'll be standing by with my camera for the next session to capture his first official appearance. In any case, I'll be back with another update after the next paper session. See you around 5!<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span>Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-7056383435495403562009-10-21T09:36:00.001-04:002009-10-23T23:23:56.230-04:00Keynote: Gary Taylor: Lyrical MiddletonWelcome to the first day of the Blackfriars Conference. We open this morning with Gary Taylor's salutatory keynote "Lyrical Middleton."<br /><br />ASC co-founder and director of mission Ralph Alan Cohen first introduces the American Shakespeare Center staff, and director of the Mary Baldwin College M.Litt/MFA program director, Paul Menzer, who introduces Dr. Taylor.<br /><br />Dr. Taylor introduces his band, The Goddess Flora and The Four Seasons. The keynote is called "Lyrical Middleton," after all, so it seems to follow that he would need a band. No one wastes anytime in getting to the music. The Blackfriars Conference is only just getting underway, and it feels like an ASC show. That's a good sign. I'm going to try to keep up with Dr. Taylor's main points in summarizing his address.<br /><br />Dr. Taylor presents a textual history of Middleton with songs disconnected from their music. Indeed, the music for the first song ("the Song of Flowers") presented has been created by ASC company members. He highlights the difference between written poetry and song lyrics, and explores the evolution of poetry read as opposed to be heard. Blake's "Songs of Innocence," for example, were clearly designed to be seen and not heard.<br /><br />Middleton wrote more songs than Shakespeare, and his songs were more admired than Shakespeare's in the 17th century. Dr. Taylor poses three questions. How can we/why should we recover the musicality of lyrics for which music no longer survives? What do we mean by lyricist?<br /><br />If the modern classroom has evolved from the text based-visual tradition of the eighteenth century, modern multimedia classrooms have the chance to break from this tradition with the inclusion of audio and visual elements to instruction. He demonstrates this point by comparing Fred Astaires performance of "Puttin' on the Ritz" with Gene Wilder's in "Young Frankenstein," and the text printed on a screen.<br /><br />On the Blackfriars stage, as in a multimedia classroom, we have the opportunity to use these media to contrast performances for audiences and students in a way that makes signature differences in styles clear. Dr. Taylor's cast performs two dances from "Women Beware Women," and demonstrates his point with contrasting dances between Hypolito and Isabella, and the Ward and Isabella. Even if we don't have the Middleton's music, we can see the juxtaposition in character, and can infer a similar juxtaposition in musicality.<br /><br />Dr. Taylor offers the metaphor of song lyrics being islands within archipelagos of the text. They are connected and dependent upon the context of the text, but just like "Puttin' on the RItz," will sometimes stand apart from the text and find their own context. Likewise, early modern lyrics sometimes found themselves being used in multiple texts.<br /><br />Some points in brief:<br /><br />* Middleton's lyrics tend to be more focused on social contexts than Shakespeare.<br /><br />* Middleton's contemporaries had no compunctions about taking his lyrics out of their context, and so it is not anachronistic for us to do it either.<br /><br />* Lyricism is about intensity, and lyrical moments can make the audience forget the context of the play itself.<br /><br />* Middleton's dances also found their way into other texts.<br /><br />Dr. Taylor's use of Middleton's songs demonstrate what a skilled lyricist that Middleton can be. Is anyone out there interested in writing a thesis on Middleton as singer/songwriter? in Q&A Dr. Taylor argues this aspect is so overlooked because we have become so accustomed to reading Middleton's irony.<br /><br />So it looks like we've got this conference off to a great start. We'll be back with another update after the 1 PM session.Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7341430979307959046.post-33529017765227791382009-10-15T19:14:00.000-04:002009-10-21T09:36:24.066-04:00Welcome to the 2009 American Shakespeare Center's Blackfriars ConferenceThe American Shakespeare Center's 2009 bi-annual Blackfriars conference begins Wednesday, October 21st. Please see: http://www.americanshakespearecenter.com/v.php?pg=379 for session information, and check back here for live updates from the conference as it progresses.Tony Tambascohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11834541469560452051noreply@blogger.com0