Shakespeare’s Birthday (Again!)

As The Shakespeare’s Globe team in London remind us: Happy (459th) Birthday Shakespeare! (https://www.shakespearesglobe.com). Links suggested by John Foreman. 

 At one level we are reminded of the Shakespeare industry. There are many many editions of Shakespeare’s plays and the accompanying academic industry. Conservative curriculum in England still mandates Shakespeare as essential to the schooling of young minds. 

Stepping beyond those caveats, the richness and imaginative power of Shakespeare continues to weave a powerful web generation after generation.

What are your favourite quotations from the Bard?

Why do we continue to see new productions of his plays in new mediums? 

(The latest Macbeth directed by Joel Coen for ApplyTV, for example. Or, Romeo and Juliet filmed in an empty theatre, over seventeen days, during a global pandemic in 2021 and recently on ABC TV ins Australia.)

What is the relevance of Shakespeare to Australian students in 2022?

In1961 Jan Kott published Shakespeare Our Contemporary “finding in his analogies between Shakespearean situations and those in modern life and drama the seeds of vital new stage-conceptions”.

That’s a long time ago in another century, but is Shakespeare still resonating with Generation X/Y/Z? And why?

How will you celebrate Shakespeare?

Drama Tuesday - Flowering in unlikely places

 There are many characters in my teaching career but one of them I remember with  mixed feelings was the Deputy  Principal of Western Australian Secondary Teachers College.

Somewhat typically of my generation we found his leadership was blustery and bureaucratic and not always warmly accepted. Intolerant lot we were, I know. But there is one story about him that continues to  endear him to me. 

https://visit.museum.wa.gov.au/greatsouthern/school-room

If still from the deserts the prophets come  (A.D. Hope Australia)

Early in his career - so the story goes - he was a teacher in what in Western Australia were called “one teacher schools”. That’s a school out in a rural community where all of the students are taught in one class. All ages from the youngest to the oldest (remembering of course that the age of leaving school was somewhat younger in those days). If you are familiar with the Anne of Green Gables stories, you may remember a similar school was featured.

As the single teacher of the school the person I’m talking about decided that he would mount a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. This involved all the students in the school. The littlest students, in homemade costumes stitched together from flour sacks by willing mums, were the guards on the battlements of Elsinore. The production was staged in the school room with rudimentary lighting and makeshift scenery put together in woodworking Friday afternoon classes the hammering alongside the line memorising. The roles were shared across all the students according to their capacities but everyone, including the teacher, had roles. 

Maybe rough and ready. Maybe not the Bell Shakespeare. But, according to legend, it had energy and verve. And heart. 

When you think about all the incidental applied learning and the bringing together of community involved, there’s a kind of rough magic to the teaching. 

Edward’s Boys ensemble in the 2013 production of Shakespeare’s Henry V, directed by Perry Mills. Photo by Gavin Birkett, courtesy of Edward’s Boys.

Let’s not over romanticise this. It’s the sort of thing that happened in the straightened years after the Second World War when there was a flood of returned soldiers and airmen adjusting to the recovery years. This story seems incongruous with the image I have of clashing impatiently with him in his role as Deputy. But we should give credit where credit’s due. 

On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth (Shakespeare, Henry V Prologue) 

Cambridge University Press

978-1-108-81023-4 — Performing Early Modern Drama Beyond Shakespeare Harry R. McCarthy in the Elements in Shakespeare Performance series

This story came to mind today as I read about a contemporary drama production project in the King Edward VI Grammar School (KES), reputed to have been attended by Shakespeare. Over time within the school there’s developed a theatre project known as Edward’s Boys dedicated to  ‘striving to explore the repertoire of the boys’ companies’ under the direction of the school’s deputy headmaster, Perry Mills. Edward’s Boys is an amateur troupe composed entirely of pupils (aged 11–18) from the school which has been in continuous operation since 2008. They have performed at the grammar school in Stratford on Avon, as well as on tour in venues as varied as Oxford college dining halls, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, St Paul’s Cathedral, a chapel in Montpellier, and a ducal  palace in Genoa. “These productions constitute the largest corpus of early modern boy theatre in performance available for examination by twenty-first-century scholars.”

The focus of this company is a range of early

modern dramatists such as Marston’s The

Dutch Courtesan and Antonio’s Revenge, extracts from Lyly’s Endymion and Mother Bombie, Middleton’s A Mad World, My Masters and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, and, Dekker and Webster’s Westward Ho!. They also have produced Shakespeare’s Henry V

As McCarthy observes,

“these unique productions had been distinctly shaped by the company’s institutional context and their development of a vigorous, contemporary performance style … in the hands of Edward’s Boys, early modern drama becomes a site of sport and play, of physical experimentation, and of exploring contemporary boyhood.”

There is something quaintly and quintessentially English about the notion of exploring the early repertoire built on a company of “scholar actors” in the spirit of the companies of boy actors in Shakespeare’s times.

It’s also inspiring. And thought provoking.

Drama Tuesday - The Chill Will Project

Drama Tuesday - The Tempest in contemporary times

A circular strand of white sand fills the stage when you enter the Octagon Theatre for the Black Swan State Theatre Company production of The Tempest (directed by Matt Edgerton). The familiar thrust stage has been expanded and reshaped. A crescent moon pit is slashed into the sand.

Cast members meet and greet the audience as they enter. They are skilfully collecting items from the audience to provide the props for the play – a jacket is borrowed to be Prospero’s magic cloak; a book for Prospero’s library; jewellery to be Miranda’s treasure (carefully buried in the sand; from the start the mood of audience participation is built.

The action starts with the audience invited to join the sea shanties being sung. An invitation taken up with gusto.

The strength of this production is in the ensemble.

The welcome to country is shared on the voices of the cast. A cohesive ensemble of actors and audience is reinforced as the audience are invited to join the cast in breathing deeply - a ritual three times – signalling the start of the play.  

From Teacher support notes

The action pitches immediately into the storm on board the ship cast into the storm by Prospero’s magic incantation. Immediately the strength of the ensemble work is evident with a skilfully evoked creation of the ship and the bodies in turmoil. Fluid, disciplined and powerful images created. Beautiful and strong. Set the action at a cracking pace. The whole production runs at just over 100 minutes without interval.

Into the exposition scenes – so much back story – handled with efficiency. Always a challenge but again the ensemble successfully created images using bodies to support. The level of ensemble was sustained throughout.

The other design element introduced from this point was the continual drizzling of sand from above the action, a fine thin drifting caught in the light beam – a metaphoric hour glass reminding us of the play’s themes.

The lighting of the production deserves special mention. It added significantly yet subtly to the unfolding action and shifting moods including the threatening and fantastical. It complemented the  neutral and sand coloured costuming adding to the sense of “found” objects. 

The music is created live (mostly) throughout the production incorporating the skills of the ensemble – the composer (Pavan Kumar Hari) playing a range of instruments - as well as a lithe Ariel – joined by Didge, tapping stick and haunting clarinet played by cast members. The vocal work was mostly strong and clear but there were some concerns. The strong vocal training shown by most of the cast needed to be evenly evident for all. Perhaps the super chilled theatre air conditioning was also playing havoc on some.

In tune with contemporary times, there was diversity in the casting. There are also gender/name changes. 

Seeing The Tempest again (it is such a familiar and memorable text for me) reminded me of some key points. Successful productions of The Tempest t hinge not so much on the plot – which is cartoon-esque. It relies on recognising the emotions at play. What drives Prospero must be a sense of anger and bitterness that shifts to forgiveness. The play must begin with his sense of outrage and pain driving him to fury the storm on his political opponents, to hold Ariel as captive, to imprison Miranda in ignorance, to punish and humiliate Callan so cruelly. His journey must show the recognition that anger is an insufficient emotional response. Forgiveness is necessary.

The handling of the always difficult opening of the fourth act – the Masque – is interesting and innovative. The cast sit and watch projected a series of vignettes from audience members in the foyer before the show (presumably they will be fresh each performance). There were loud guffaws from audience members as some are recognised, perhaps to the point that we lost what was being said. This inclusion of audience is not surprising – it is a hallmark of Black Swan under Artistic Director Clare Watson. It will be interesting to see how this innovation works for the rest of the season. There is an issue for me about this: the purpose of the Masque in the text is to signal the significant shift in Prospero’s attitude. He shows that he can find compassion for Miranda and Frederick and the cruelty of his punishing them. That, in turn, leads to his later forgiveness of those who plotted against him and landed him on this island. It extends to his freeing of Ariel.

For me The Tempest must hinge on the character journeys of each and we must sense the shifts in Prospero most of all. The triangular relationships between Miranda, Frederick and Caliban also need to be evident. Caliban is more than a threat to Miranda, he is a rival to Frederick. The insecurities of political life and intrigue – echoed in the comic characters – also need to be more than plot devices. The bed of vipers or politics need to be evil under the cloaks of civility. There needs to be productive tension and sense of threat underpinning the comedy of the drunkards plotting with Caliban. They could unhinge Prospero’s magic.

This is a production that drama teachers – and their students – should see. It is a wonderful example of ensemble. It presents interesting design, music and movement opportunities that should inspire. It is successful and enjoyable. It can bring our students into the under used Octagon theatre and remind them of the challenges of space and design. 

The other point of note, is that this production was staged by Black Swan following an invitation to audiences to nominate which Shakespearean play would conclude the season. It is a fitting and interesting choice in these times when there is so much clamour about “rigged elections”. 

The Teacher Support Notes for the production are again wonderful and useful.

---

https://www.uwa.edu.au/theatres/-/media/University-Theatres/Docs/Octagon-Theatre/Octagon-Theatre-information-pack.pdf 

Postscript

With a little flutter of the heart I recognise that it is 50 years since The Octagon was opened and around that amount of time since I was a student sitting in first year lectures in this space. The passing parade of lecturers –two sessions early and late – are somehow etched into the walls (though the seats have been renovated from the utilitarian hard padded benches. 

We watched in fascination as the floor of the stage creaked as Dorothy Hewett paced her lectures (while her partner Merv Lilly sat in the back row as a grim reminder to any would-be interjections). Dorothy always put on a good show – opening her Ibsen lecture with the actress Pat Skevington emerging from the wings with pistol.

The history of how a University on this side of the world in what is still sometimes called the most isolated capital city int he world, came to have a theatre designed by the famous Tyrone Guthrie is often told. There was a time when the University of Western Australia was ground breaking for drama and theatre education. It should not be forgotten that The New Fortune Theatre which sits inside the courtyard of the Arts Building is a full-scale replica of the Fortune Theatre from London. 

In all there are five full theatre venues on this campus: The Octagon, The New Fortune, The Dolphin, the Sunken Garden, Winthrop Hall (not forgetting The Somerville now used for Festival Films but originally for performances). What drama courses are taught at UWA in 2021? What has been lost in the world of the contemporary academy? Too much. 

The Octagon is still a warm and inviting performance space, vastly under-utilised for purpose.

Drama Tuesday - If We Were Villains

 The Never Ending Quest – Stories of Drama Education

Let’s be clear from the very start – If We Were Villains (Rio, 2017) is a murder mystery (I will try to avoid any spoilers!). My interest in  this story is the specialist Shakespearean theatre and acting school context: the people and the setting.

The action takes place in a small liberal arts/performing arts college in an undisclosed location in the Mid-West in driving distance from O’Hare in Chicago. The action focuses on the seven remaining fourth year students in the Shakespeare Acting cohort. 

The author has neatly skewered acting types (and stereotypes) – hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, supernumerary, observer (though along the way, the roles change). These are the seven who have survived the end-of-yearly purges. Richard, pure power, six foot three, carved from concrete, black eyes, thrilling bass voice, playing despots and warlords. Meredith, supple curves, skin like satin, designed for seduction. Wren, Richard’s cousin, ingenue, girl next door, waif thin, Filppa, tall, olive skinned, cool, chameleonic. James, quintessentially heroic, handsome like a Disney Prince. Oliver (who narrates the story) sees himself as average in every imaginable way.

The staff are also deftly drawn – Gwendolyn, the bangle leaden, redheaded stick figure hippie acting teacher; Frederick, the chalk dust laden theatre history and text don; and, Camillo, the physical action, combat and movement teacher. And the distantly inspirational Dean of the Academy: I encourage you to live boldly … make art, make mistakes, have no regrets; we expect you to dazzle us and we do not like to be disappointed. (p. 36). The hothouse climate of selective acting schools is strongly evoked.

This group of students are all that are those remaining in the  elite program. The dark hints of savagery in the process are present from the start. Final year students focus on The Tragedies – following on from Third Year focused on The  Comedies – a Midsummer Night’s Dream production with Oliver and James as Demetrius and Lysander clad only in striped boxers and undershirts.

Their unfolding school year is effectively sketched.

The acting classes for the year begin with a ritualistic personalised purging interrogation in acting class leading to revelation and self discovery at the hands of Gwendolyn. How many times do we read accounts of acting schools setting out to break down and then re-build individuals. In so many acting school approaches this sort of blood sport is mandatory. Cathartic and cleansing and cruel. Questionable.

The text study class is full of fusty philosophy and dusty epithets. The first combat class gives a sound description of the business of the illusions of stage fighting – setting up for later as the rules of the game are disrupted when things get out of hand. The ordinariness of observations such as “being Monday, we all lined up to be weighed”, touch on the unspoken assumed practices of this sort of training.

Productions provide major plot points in the mystery and there are also well-drawn examples of creative challenges for acting students. Twice in the plot development, students are set “secret assignments”. For Halloween, each of the main characters are given roles from the Scottish Play and the instruction to learn the lines and talk to no one else about their role. On the night, they are told to turn up to the lake side with their provided costume and, without any rehearsal, play their given roles. This impromptu and high risk task is an adrenaline rush, calling on skill and trust. Oliver is assigned to play Banquo. The tensions revealed in the exercise set in motion significant plot developments. 

The second example of this is when the students secret assignment involves Romeo and Juliet for the Christmas Masque Ball. Oliver here plays Benvolio, reinforcing his status as the sidekick mate, at the edge of the main action. Passions unfold and swirl around him yet provide him with insight into his growing power as an actor. 

Major plot developments are embedded in two productions: Julius Caesar and King Lear. 

Another major feature of the writing is the frequent resort to the characters quoting from the wide Shakespearean cannon at apposite moments in their lives. As tempting as it is to skim them, each quotation is apt and pertinent to the character development. And serve as reminders us of how annoyingly obsessive and insular the lives of actors in training can be. They converse in their own language (borrowed language!) to the exclusion of all others. The quotations are wide ranging – and are a good primer for “best bits of the Bard”.

There is a deep wisdom put into the mouths of the characters. 

Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?

I blame him for all of it.

It’s hard to put into words. We spent four years – and most of us years before that – immersed in Shakespeare. Submerged. Here we could indulge our collective obsession. We spoke at a second language, conversed in poetry and lost touch with reality a little.

Well that’s misleading. Shakespeare is real, but his characters live in a world of real extremes. They swing from ecstasy to anguish, love to hate, wonder to terror. It’s not melodrama, though, they’re not exaggerating. Every moment is crucial.

A good Shakespearean actor – a good actor of any stripe really – does not just say words he feels them. We filled all the passions of the characters we played as if they were our own. But the characters emotions don’t cancel out the actors – instead you feel both at once. Imagine having all your thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feel feelings of a whole other person. It can be hard, sometimes, just sort out which is which.

Our shear capacity for feeling got to be so unwieldy that we staggered untruths, like Atlas with the weight of the world.

The thing about Shakespeare is, he’s so eloquent … He speaks the unspeakable. He turns grief into triumph and rapture and rage into words, into something we can understand. He renders the whole mystery of humanity comprehensible.You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough. (p. 248)

It’s important not to read too much into all of this. As I said the start – never forget that this is a mystery novel. It is designed to thrill and charm us. Yet, there is also something to tell us about acting schools. The small interchanges are revealing. (Often the text is laid out like a play script)

Meredith: “Welcome to our art school. It’s like Gwendolyn always says, “when you enter the theatre there are three things you must leave at the door: dignity, modesty, and personal space.

Philippa: I thought it was dignity, modesty, and personal pride.

Oliver: She told me dignity, modesty, and self-doubt.

All three of us were silent from moment before Philippa said Well this explains a lot.

Do you suppose she had three different things for every student she talks to me? Oliver asked. (p. 261)

Through the whole novel there is a melancholic recognition of Hamlet’s words:

“There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow." 

Yes, I did enjoy the mystery. I also enjoyed the portrait of the acting school and the people who live there. 

Is this a fair portrayal? 

I open our discussion to stimulate the debate.

Currently, there is turmoil in many of the known institutions – acting schools amongst them. It is reasonable, in these times, to question the practices of some, maybe all, drama schools. What lies behind the seductive images of Lotus Eaters and sirens? Why are some drama schools churning and turning themselves inside out over casting, choices of texts and practice? It is important to remember that there is a climate of disruption in the wider academy that has found its way into acting schools. 

What could be the way forward for these troubled spaces?   

Oh, and,  who killed the actor? It’s a mystery. Or, tongue in cheek, to quote from Shakespeare in Love :

Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?

Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

Hugh Fennyman: How?

Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.

Bibliography

Madden, J. (Writer). (1998). Shakespeare in Love. In. United Kingdom: Universal Pictures, Miramax, and The Bedford Falls Company.

Rio, M. L. (2017). If We Were Villains. New York, NY: Flatiron Books.

Drama Tuesday - A Fools Project

Creating Performing Opportunities in Times of Lockdown

Lately I have been thinking about ways of generating drama projects for students in lockdown situations. My students need short scenes or plays that can be performed over digital platforms, if necessary, but which can also be rehearsed independently. There are many examples of compilation performances -  Two that I particularly like are based on Shakespeare also: Appel, L. and M. Flachmann (1982). Shakespeare's Lovers: A Text for Performance and Analysis. Carbondale and Edwardsville, University of Southern Illinois. Appel, L. and M. Flachmann (1986). Shakespeare's Women: A Playscript for Performance and Analysis. Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press.

I started by thinking about all of Shakespeare’s Fools. 

I conceptualised this project as a research and performance project. Students would need to research and write about the characters considered fools and their functions in the plays that included them. They would need to look at the research about the Shakespearean Fools. Then, they would identify a scene in which the Fool and others interact, make a suitable scene cutting, rehearse and perform it. Together as a whole class we would construct a devised project. This sounds like a sufficiently challenging and yet satisfying project. 

The Shakespearean fool is a recurring character type in his plays. These characters were most often common people who had the wit and skill to make fun of upper class people. Often seen as “comic relief” to the more serious aspects of a play, it is worth considering that the Fools in Shakespeare provide an emotional depth and contrast to the serious themes. By shifting from the distanced world of the drama to more domestic and familiar scenes, the complexity of the dramatic situation is heightened. 'That, of course, is the great secret of the successful fool – that he is no fool at all.’ (Asimov 1978)

Jan Kott, in Shakespeare Our Contemporary ,

“The Fool does not follow any ideology. He rejects all appearances, of law, justice, moral order. He sees brute force, cruelty and lust. He has no illusions and does not seek consolation in the existence of natural or supernatural order, which provides for the punishment of evil and the reward of good. Lear, insisting on his fictitious majesty, seems ridiculous to him. All the more ridiculous because he does not see how ridiculous he is. But the Fool does not desert his ridiculous, degraded king, and accompanies him on his way to madness. The Fool knows that the only true madness is to recognise this world as rational.”

From a BBC April Fool’s Day Report:

Shakespeare loved a fool and not just on 1 April. He used them in most of his well-known plays, but who would their equivalents be today?

It was never about bright clothes, eccentric hats and slippers with bells on them. Shakespeare’s fools were the stand-ups of their day and liked to expose the vain, mock the pompous and deliver a few home truths - however uncomfortable that might be for those on the receiving end.

"Shakespearean fools, like stand-ups today, had a licence to say almost anything," says Dr Oliver Double, who teaches drama at the University of Kent and specialises in comedy. "It was an exalted position."(Winterman 1 April 2012)

In his book The Guizer Alan Garner (1975)tells us,

If we take the elements from which our emotions are built and give them separate names, such as Mother, Her, Father, King, Child, Queen, the element that I think marks us most is that or Fool, It is where our humanity lies.

The Fool is full of contradictions, as we are. He is at once creator and destroyer, bringer or help and harm. Through his mistakes we learn how to do things properly. He is the shadow that shapes the light. 

Putting on the Motley. 

The costume and props of the Fool were – according to reports of the times – standardised. A patchwork and ragged coat, sometimes with bells hung on it. Breeches of different coloured legs and a mono like hood and cloak decorated with animal body parts such as donkey’s ears and rooster heads. The prop was a stick decorated with a doll head or a fool. A pouch filled with powders, sand, peas or air filled out the outfit. 

Some useful resources

The No Sweat Shakespeare Blog: The Ultimate Guide To Shakespeare’s Fools

https://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/blog/ultimate-guide-shakespeares-fools/

The British Library Shakespeare’s Fools

https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeares-fools

OUP Shakespeare’s clowns and fools [infographic]

 https://blog.oup.com/2016/09/shakespeare-clowns-fools-infographic/ 

But there are many more. 

Bibliography

Appel, L. and M. Flachmann (1982). Shakespeare's Lovers: A Text for Performance and Analysis. Carbondale and Edwardsville, Univsersity or Southern Illinois.

Appel, L. and M. Flachmann (1986). Shakespeare's Women: A Playscript for Performance and Analysis. Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press.

Asimov, I. (1978). Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare,Vols.1-2. New York, Gramercy Books.

Garner, A. (1975). The Guizer. London, Hamish Hamilton Ltd/William Collins Sons and Co Ltd.

Kott, J. (1964). Shakespeare: Our contemporary. Garden City, N.Y, Doubleday.

Winterman, D. (1 April 2012). "Shakespearean fools: Their modern equivalents."