Paper Session 5

We’re back! I’ll be taking over for Tony for this session to give his little fingers a wee rest--but I'm wordy, so consider yourself warned. I just heard the faint sound of a bell ringing out in the lobby, and the presenters have gathered in their Conference Semi Circle on the Blackfriars stage. Actors line the stage on gallants’ stools, and attendees are slowly making their way to their seats. Oh, I hope I get to see a bear chase a scholar back to their seat. No, really.

Mary Coy is our moderator, a former student of the Mary Baldwin College MLitt/MFA program; she introduces the six presenters in this session. This is my first attempt at blogging a paper session, so please bear with me. Ha. We start with Stephen Read from St. Martin University.

Stephen X. Mead, "Imagined Spaces on Shakespeare’s Stage"

Amusingly, and endearingly, and unnecessarily, he is worried about his first sentence. The reconstructed Globe gives students the chance to witness a staging arrangement with audience members not "shelved" but surrounding the players. The audience, he says, "rose like a sheer cliff" in Elizabethan playhouses, and the stage is ground zero. How did the playwright use this environment to engage the audience with image-making?

He compares a scene from the Q2 Hamlet to its counterpart in the Folio. When the ghost of Hamlet’s father silently summons his son to follow in the Q2, the imagery of the cliff is distracting and counter productive, although it does allow the actor to transform the theatrical space into the image of Horatio’s steep cliff. John Harrell and Daniel Rigby perform as Hamlet and Horatio in the Q2, and then the Folio version of the same scene, with cuts made to the excessive references to space/geography.

The cliff scene reappears in King Lear, more effectively—the Elsinore and Dover speeches are so similar that Read hears an echo. In this play, the reality of a false cliff underlies the play’s larger concerns of that which is real: the authority of the king and the love of Cordelia. In both Hamlet and King Lear, the cliffs become places of transformation—Edward becomes a "fiend," and the ghost of Hamlet’s father a demon.

Harrell and Rigby perform the scene from Lear. In this more effective use of the theatrical space as imagery, Shakespeare first invites his audience to participate in image making then unmakes the image on the stage, with the stage. Theatre’s illusion doesn’t happen to the actors, but to the audience.

No bear.

Penelope Woods "Pastness Performance: The Reconstructed Globe Theatre and Its Audience

This presentation covered an incredibly difficult-to-explain topic, so please be understanding as I attempt to recreate it for you! Woods begins with an anecdote about a letter from a patron hanging next to the coffee maker in an office at the Globe, that described his experience visiting the Globe as "going back in time." This prompted the question, to what extent can we use audience testimony as evidence?

She brings up the idea of "pastness," a term used to describe historical re-creations as a kind of popular, nostalgic, and accessible commodity. What does this do to perception of such theatres? To what extent is re-creation discredited by recreation?

Re-creation has revealed the importance of audience—but even if early modern dress and movements are replicated by actors, and the theatres echo early modern architecture, what about audiences? There is no reconstructed audience. How feasible is it to develop a "past eye"? How do we understand what "going back in time feels like"? The material spaces are always the framing device for this experiment. What kinds of memories do we have of Elizabethan theatre spaces—do we have a cognitive understanding of these theatre through our research and knowledge of the original spaces?

She suggests that something so simple as inviting the audience to wear hats, as early modern audience members most likely did, might aid in creating habit memory reminiscent of early modern play-going. She invited us all to don imaginary hats, and doff them in appreciation at the end of her presentation.

She makes it within time limits, so again, no bear. (No fun).

Ann Pliess-Morris, " ‘What’s Past Is Prologue": Negotiating Original Staging Practices with Contemporary Audiences

This presentation focuses on the role of community in original staging practices, which Pleiss-Morris believes is the movement’s strength. These theatres are looking toward a new future for Shakespeare performance. There is a strong belief among practitioners that this kind of performance would open Shakespeare to a more "democratic" audience.

There is a desire in original staging practices to break through the elitism and isolation of proscenium. The anachronistic elements of current original staging practices theatres—electric lights, female cast members, etc—are made in an attempt to bridge the gap between an early modern theatrical experience and modern audience expectation. Negotiation between past and present is in constant movement in OP theatres. OP lies in a paradox—the movement embraces its place in between—in all its general sense. This can often lead to very exciting theatre.

Audiences do respond to this—the theatres are popular. Reviewers spend a lot of time reviewing audiences, who do not fare well. The audiences they find tiresome, and so would not like to be a part of them and therefore, part of original staging practices. They worry that actor/audience moments threaten the integrity of text. Productions become more like sporting events than theatre. Critics tend to reject performances as museum pieces.

In seeking to build community, the companies are changing their visions of what performances might have looked like. The theatrical future is being re-imagined. Pleiss-Morris reminds us that social networking is transforming us into people who like to publicly broadcast immediate response and criticism, which is a need satisfied by original staging practices.

Still no bear.

　

Sarah Werner, "The Pitfalls of Performance Space"

First, I have suddenly become hyper-appreciative of short paper titles. The next time you title a paper, consider the bloggers.

Werner begins by talking about a play we’ve already visited this session, King Lear. She remembers a performance in which the audience laughed, cheered, and applauded the line "Shut your mouth, dame," from the last scene of the play. The actor didn’t set the line up as a joke, nor had she ever seen it laughed at elsewhere. This might be partly because the words sound so modern—colloquial and accessible. It’s something angry person today might say; also, many songs claim Shut Your Mouth as the title. The shock of its familiarity causes a release of laughter. Also, possibly, the relief at seeing the villain brought down, and an end to the tension, and an endorsement of the judgment against Goneril.

What about the playhouse structure? What cues did the audience pick up from the playhouse and the program’s description that elicited this response? Was it seen as a Renaissance audience response? Is there something in audience participation that replicates a Renaissance experience to such an extent that it unlocks an enjoyment in moments that might be considered socially unacceptable in other venues? Do original staging practices theatres invite, encourage, inspire, or evoke anti-feminist sentiment; if so, what kind of responsibility does this place on practioners?

Barely bear-less, but still within time.

Jeremy Fiebig "All Stage World"

Audiences today are not as willing to interact with performers in the way that we understand early modern audiences to have been. They do not take full advantage of the permission to respond in original staging practices playhouses. Original staging practices theatres provide certain kinds of audience training: music, merchandise, food, and drink sales; pre show speeches, etc.

Fiebig directed Twelfth Night at Waldorf College, and prior to the show his actors handed out oranges and encouraged the audiences to drop their peels on the ground. The response was surprising: either they chose not to and became distractingly involved in not making a mess with their peels, or they became hyper-active, and threw peels at Malvolio. This involvement had the effect of making them implicit in the torture of Malvolio. The audience members were implicated as characters in the play—full members of the narrative community. The distraction of the audience gives the actors the chance to buy their audiences attention back with jokes, puns, etc. Is there a place for hyperactivity? In most original staging practices theatres, there is a line drawn between etiquette and interaction. However, have early modern distractions been simply replaced by modern ones—cell phones, candy wrappers, rude children?

Fiebig concludes by accusing us all of being "Victorian by nature," preferring order and etiquette over chaose. However, perhaps heightened response joined and could still join the heightened language of the play. So, what is the ideal: early modern production, or early modern response?

Goodness, still no bear.


Katherine Mayberry "Actors and Auditors"

Early modern playwrights wrote their plays with the actor/audience relationship in the forefront. Early modern playhouse architecture emphasizes the actor/audience relationship (the sharing of sightlines—or even physical space). Actors themselves can use delivery to create this contact in almost all moments within shows. Staging itself can create bonds. Sometimes actors can create contact without speaking, at all.

Daniel Rigby and John Harrell are back, and provide examples of staging. An actor appearing in the balcony above completes the circle of audience around the stage. Or, a character witnessing a scene in the balcony from the downstage area puts the character in the same position as the audience members themselves. Either upstage, downstage, or above, audience members either recognize or identify with the perspective of the character onstage. Mayberry provided a very useful handout with photo examples of the various positions onstage and then discusses the way in which these positions affect the audience members.

The Blackfriars stage lends itself particularly to the connection between audience and performance. In conclusion, the actor/audience alignment provided by this space challenges the audience and reminds them of their role in the performance.

Alas. Bare stage, but not bear stage. Maybe next time!