Tag Archives: bfc2011

Blackfriars Conference 2011 – Scott Kaiser Keynote

Hello, all! Cass here again to live-blog the Scott Kaiser Keynote Address from 10:30 to 11:15am on Friday, October 28.

Ralph introduces Kaiser by discussing his delight in discovering Kaiser’s book, Shakespeare’s Wordcraft. He says, though, that by removing the classical Greek and Roman terms for rhetorical devices in an attempt to make the topic more accessible, “you have underestimated the appeal to word-nerds”. He half-jokingly suggests, along with his grad students, that he consider reinstating those terms in the second addition. Ralph thanks Kaiser for joining us on behalf of “all the other word-nerds here”.

Acting Shakespeare’s Wordcraft
Scott Kaiser, Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Kaiser prefaces his speech by introducing his assistant actors, Dan Kennedy and Doreen Bechtol. He’ll be talking today about “how to act Shakespeare’s figures of rhetoric” by demonstrating how he works with them in rehearsal. Kaiser defends his choice by stating that the classical terms are almost always an impediment for actors — that his book “is primarily not a scholarly book, but a book for actors and actors-in-training.”

Of vital concern to the actor working with rhetoric is “to illuminate the figure to the audience through voice and body.” He begins with the “speech measure”, using a quote from Stanislavski to explain his meaning: to break down a speech by thought patterns in order to get to the meaning and to make the speech more graceful in form and content. A speech measure, then, is a moment for a choice, “a unit of sense that contains one inhalation, one operative word, one focal point, one image, one action, one moment of human behavior.” He then invites Dan and Doreen up to work through some examples.

Dan: “Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius.” Kaiser calls this one parcel of text, bookended with ‘Cassius’. Doreen: “I see you what you are; you are too proud.” Kaiser calls this two speech measures, pointing out Doreen’s inhalation between the two phrases. Dan: “Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not seems.” Kaiser delineates this as three speech measures, connected by the “seems” on either end, with “is” as a fulcrum in the middle. Doreen: “Come weep with me, past hope, past cure, past help.” This Kaiser identifies as four speech measures, but notes that this is not necessarily the only choice — but that it may “illuminate ‘past’ in a different way.” Dan: “Oh Helen! Goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!” Kaiser points out that this line mostly comes out as one exhalation, and asks Dan to try it again as five speech measures. Kaiser points out that this then differentiates each speech measure, automatically conferring greater emotional variety to the line.

Kaiser then moves on to finding the “operative word” — the one word in the measure that is key. It can be created through pitch, volume, or duration. Dan: “What lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?” Kaiser asks Dan to pick one word to make the operative; he chooses “trumpet”, using volume and pitch to key it. Kaiser has him try again, this time with “summon” — he helps Dan out by giving him the incipient action, having him imagine the actual trumpet before delivering the line. Kasier points out that he “stacked the deck” against Dan by giving him a line full of schwas — and that holding that vowel “would make it Transylvanian”.

Dan: “One woman is fair; yet I am well; another is wise; yet I am well; another virtuous; yet I am well.” Kaiser identifies this as three measures, and says he heard three operative words from Dan’s first reading: one, wise, and virtuous. He redirects Dan to make the new word in each phrase the operative: fair, wise, and virtuous. You then hear the operative word “build in a staircase”. Kaiser points out where Dan held his breath during the line, rather than inhaling as he could have to break it into 6 measures.

Doreen: “I’ll tell you who time ambles withal, who time trots withal, who time gallops withal, who he stands still withal.” Four measures, and Kaiser points out the different operative verbs. Doreen used what Kaiser calls “a Ted Wright ladder”, with a build of three and then a drop in pitch for the fourth. He has her do it again, this time bringing the “tell” down so that it doesn’t overwhelm the “amble”.

Kaiser then examines “focal points” — a visual target, “at which you can inhale, towards which you can OCSend your energies”. Doreen: “Husband, I cannot pray that thou mayest win. Uncle, I needs must pray that thou mayest lose. Father, I may not wish the fortunes thine. Granddam, I will not wish thy wishes thrive.” Kaiser asks Doreen to try it again without breaking into new measures at the commas. The result is “greater drive; it could not bear all those breaks.”

Dan: “Put out the light, and then put out the light.” The focal point changes between the candle and the sleeping Desdemona. Kaiser states, “It’s the movement of the focal point that makes the figure work.”

Doreen: “Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural, provokes this deluge, most unnatural.” Kaiser says she’s working with two focal points, which he calls “panning and scanning” mid-measure. He suggests that each measure should have a single focal point for greatest clarity on the stage. He wants the first part to focus on Richard, the second to focus on the body. “The reason I coach this way is because, if your eyes are darting back and forth,” the meaning can be lost, especially for audience members farther form the stage.

Dan: “Boldness be my friend! Arm me, audacity, from head to foot!” Kaiser says that Dan’s focal points slipped around. Kaiser points out the figure of personification, that Dan is literally talking to Boldness and Audacity, not to himself — he asks Dan to choose a focal point for each. Finding a specific point for each brings the emotion forward more clearly and makes the point easier to arrive at for the audience; Kaiser points out, “I didn’t tell him what to imagine. I just asked him to structure it in a way that would be clear to the audience.”

Kaiser then moves to the “image” — a complete mental creation, which invokes the imaginative aspect of all five senses. Doreen (as Constance in King John): “

Grief fills the room up of my absent child, / Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, / Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, / Remembers me of all his gracious parts, / Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; / Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?” Kaiser thinks it communicates more clearly the depth of her despair when she doesn’t shift her focal point; he asks her to try it again with one single focal point, letting the pressure build up there. Kaiser explains this as finding a single focal point and adding a new layer to it with each measure. “The inesntiy of that single focal point… is so strongly communicated by a single focal point that you understand what all the men are talking about when they call her crazy.”

Next: actions — played in pursuit of objectives against obstacles. Each measure should have one and only one. Dan: “Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter.” Kaiser asks Dan to encourage himself in the first measure, then admonish himself in the second. He further examines the shift, particularly with regard to where the inhalation is positioned and where it comes from — “from his imagination” rather than from the text.

Doreen: “Sweet, sweet, sweet Nurse, tell me, what says my love?” Kaiser says that Doreen has made this three measures, and suggests that the second measure tends to have the same emotion as the first. He asks her to find three wildly different things to play in the three measures (and comments that this tactic is typical of thirteen-year-old girls).

Kaiser then adds the idea of subtext to the lines, which he calls “the realization.” Dan: “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.” Kaiser has Dan break that into two measures, asking Dan to realize in the middle, at the comma, that he’s now going to die without having accomplished his goals. “The figure is illuminated by the realization at the comma in the middle of the line,” by the reversal of emotions that the active silence causes — “a moment of human behavior that is atextual.”

Doreen: “Seeming, seeming! I will proclaim thee, Angelo; look for’t.” Kaiser suggests that Doreen realize the depth of Angelo’s corruption at the comma between the two “seeming”s. Kaiser points out that the repetition requires a variation in delivery, discussing the reasons why people repeat themselves.

Finally, Kaiser comes to decisions, a different type of subtext. Dan: “She sees not Hermia. Hermia, sleep thou there, and never mayest thou come Lysander near.” Kaiser suggests the first focal point be on the audience, and that he then make the decision “to leave Hermia there, by herself, unguarded, in the dark.” Dan’s callous deliberation makes the decision hysterically funny, and Kaiser suggests that seeing the choice happen is what makes that humorous for the audience.

Doreen: “What if this potion do not work at all? Shall I be married then tomorrow morning? No, no, this shall forbid it.” Kaiser points out that Doreen has several focal points operating, talking to herself but also indicating the dagger that she will use to kill herself. He asks her to make a decision between the two “No”s. Kaiser notes that this speech complicates delivery, because it layers the decision on top of multiple actions, moving from measure to measure.

Kaiser wraps up by saying that effective theatre lives in these decisions, “not in when the giant neon apple flies down out of the ceiling.”

Blackfriars Conference 2011- Plenary Session VI

Hi, Deb Streusand here. This morning I’ll be liveblogging Plenary Session VI from 9 am to 10:15 am.

“Some by Stenography Drew the Plot”: An Experiment
William Proctor Williams, University of Akron

Williams begins by having A.J. Sclafani, Brian Falbo, Kim Maurice, and Michael Wagoner read two passages from Thomas Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody. This play was performed before August 1605, probably by Queen Anne’s Men. It was thereafter published in 5 editions in 8 years. Heywood’s later prologue, in the Eighth Quarto, recounts the play’s popularity and how some recorded it in by stenography, so that he now wishes to put it forth in correct form himself. The Eighth Quarto can therefore serve as a control text for comparison to the earlier Quartos, which reflect stenographic recording of performance. The actors read the corrected version of the same scenes they read earlier. Williams asks us to imagine that people are recording the two versions of the scene right now, to be published later.

[Edit: Apparently I misheard what Williams said about people recording the scene as it was performed during his presentation. In fact, two students from the Mary Baldwin MLitt/MFA program did record the scene at his request, and later in the day, Williams provided a handout with the original text, the transcription, and a collation of the differences.]

Did Hamlet Mean Country Matters?
Zachary Lesser, University of Pennsylvania

Lesser recounts several editors’ glosses on Hamlet’s joke about “country matters.” He asks whether, when Early Modern audiences heard these words, they actually perceived the pun we now hear in it. No major editor noted an obscene pun at this exact point in the text until Malone in 1790; previous editors had glossed the statement as a reference to the idea of country folk as crudely sexual. The exchange was cut from productions in the 18th and 19th century, but primarily because of the later punning on “nothing.” The Restoration Smock Alley Promptbook cut “nothing,” but not “country matters.” In the First Quarto, Hamlet says “contrary” rather than “country matters.” Lesser argues that scholars have wrenched their arguments to include the pun, but this distortion falsifies the history of the text and the experience of this moment. Looking at the texts in order of probable composition, Lesser argues that the Folio text expands this moment to clarify it, with Hamlet explaining the innocence of his question–“I mean, my head upon your lap.” In the First Quarto, Hamlet says “my head in your lap,” instead heightening the suggestion by specifying the body part. If there had been a sexual pun in “country matters,” such a process of clarification would not have been necessary. There is no indication of Shakespeare’s audience understanding those words to imply such a pun, and we should, therefore, “forget what our glosses have been assuring us.”

Speaking the Speeches: Speech Order and the Early Modern Performances of Hamlet
Matthew Vadnais, Ohio State University

Vadnais describes the division among scholars about whether the longer texts of Hamlet could have been staged at full length. He draws attention to the question of whether the Second Quarto and Folio text would have been too hard to play at full length, particularly because of the use of cue scripts and the necessary speed of performance. He demonstrates that many lines end in the same or almost the same cues. He proposes, however, that like their First Quarto counterpart, the other texts were created to make performance easy. A.J. Sclafani, Brian Falbo, and Michael Wagoner perform the Second Quarto version of the conversation between Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern about Gertrude using cue scripts without actual cues, demonstrating that the speech order that gave clues to when the actors should speak. Another way of making things easier is to create two-player scenes or scenes with only two speakers. Vadnais uses the metaphor of a “speech stem” for situations in which several characters respond to a primary character, who knows that every speech will contain his next cue. Shakespeare’s plays provided the company with assistance in knowing when to speak. All three texts of Hamlet equally anticipate how they would have been performed on the Early Modern stage.

“Nor wink, nor nod, nor kneel, nor make a sign…”
Lezlie Cross, University of Washington

Cross describes her conversations with Howie Seago, a deaf Shakespearean actor. She wants to reframe the term “Original Practices” to refer to a new practice, that is, Seago’s translation of Shakespeare’s plays into movements, a kinetic language. She cites Artaud referring to a language of movement that transcends the speech on stage. When playing the ghost in 2010 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Seago could obscure his statements to his son even from the audience, so that they heard was what Hamlet chose to share. Seago’s script notes where he will voice the lines, as in “I am thy father’s spirit,” using his own “imperfect” voice to show the ghost’s difficulty in being present in this world. The audience saw Hamlet take possession of the knowledge and of his revenge. Seago transformed “list, list, o list” into signs meaning “look at me, look at me, look at me.” Both Shakespeare’s language and Seago’s sign language have similar metaphorical underpinnings, in opposition to common language. For “the serpent that did sting thy father’s life now wears his crown,” Seago transformed his sign language into a kinetic signification of the image. His method begins with a “translated” English text and finds ways to communicate the ideas through signs, making modifications according to factors such as the length of time that it takes to sign a line. “Seago’s work in translating Shakespeare’s text goes beyond mere translation,” transforming the text from one medium to another. Cross refers to this phenomenon as “kinetic textuality,” a term typically applied to digital artistic creations. Seago’s translations are still more kinetic, being no longer simply textual, but having instead become “meaning in motion.”

Jonson’s Breaches and the Typography of Action
Claire Bourne, University of Pennsylvania

Bourne argues that theatrical innovation prompted a textual innovation that allowed printed plays to develop into their own dramatic experience. Textual evidence suggests that these texts attempted to use punctuation in a way that allowed the reader to experience the dramatic in the printed text. Jonson described such punctuation, as used in his humor plays, as “breaches,” that is, markers of gaps in the dialogue. Bourne proposes that Jonson’s breaches not only allowed replication of the action, but made it possible to read the printed text in a way that makes dramatic sense on the page. In order to put the different theatrical and textual signs into the same visual field for her audience, Bourne has Wagoner, Sclafani, Maurice, and Falbo perform a portion from Cynthia’s Revels that is especially characterized by experimentation with punctuation, with dashes signaling non-verbal interruptions. They next perform a scene from Every Man Out of His Humour that uses dashes to signify self-interruptions, in this case by puffing on a pipe. The breaches signal moments that are vital to personation. Jonson’s Folio collection of his plays retains these experiments in using typography to convey non-verbal elements of the scene. Maurice and Sclafani perform a scene from Epicoene, or the Silent Woman, in which a character replies to conversation in non-verbal signs because of another character’s requirement that he do so, performing marginal text that states that the breaches refer to signs that responded to the dialogue. Bourne suggests that the breaches did not replace the action of performance, but preserved it for the page. The punctuation grew to symbolize all kinds of action, functioning as a recognizable invitation to notice non-verbal elements of the play.

Keeping Shakespeare Real by Using iPhones: or, Original Practices Shakespeare (There’s an app for that)
Joseph F. Stephenson, Amy Simpson Grubbs, and Adam Hester, Abilene Christian University

Stephenson states that they will discuss the 2010 Abilene Shakespeare Festival’s production of Othello, which was not actually intended to be Original Practices, but grew into some original practices as it formed. Hester, as director, wanted to find a way to engage with Bard-shy audience members, and decided to use technology to reach “beyond the proscenium,” by creating a blog that they updated throughout the show, including scene synopses, definitions, or comments about the action on stage. Audience members were able to post and read comments themselves, and the blog was flooded with them. Performers were also able to receive audience’s responses, and were heard walking offstage saying “what does the blog say?” By creating this intimacy, they argue that they were able to approach the closeness to the audience that is crucial to original practice, as well as a sense of play, and lighting (that of mobile devices) that made the audience visible. Stephenson quotes two piece of evidence about early modern performance and discusses their ambiguities and the complicated audience responses. He then cites some quotes from audience members responding to their production, including discussion of the play’s ambiguities. The blog also provides a permanent archive of audience responses, which would be useful for future research into audience response to Othello.

Question Time:

A questioner asks Cross about how American Sign Language deals with puns such as “country matters.” She talks about how Seago would probably try various movements to see how they landed with the audience.

Another questioner suggests that Cross do some work with Tommaso Salvini, who spoke only Italian but performed with an English-speaking company. Cross replies that she has not yet worked on Salvini, but she is working on Helena Madjeska, a 19th-century Polish actress who worked with American actors, including Edwin Booth, speaking Polish in response to their English on stage.

Another questioner asks about when “cunt” appears in the OED in the form we know it. Lesser cites a 13th century reference. The questioner asks if there is a possibility that this meaning of the word was active in the scene. Lesser says that what interests him is our absolute assurance that that meaning is in play at the moment he discusses.

Another questioner comments about Vadnais’ presentation, talking about cultural cues and discussing scribal adjustments to a text and to cues specifically.

Another questioner asks Cross about the difference between ASL and the sign language used in Britain, and what impact that would have on kinetic representation. Cross clarifies that Seago does not really use ASL, but mostly discovers movements that work to communicate, creating a new language for each production, which is very much keyed into the character that he is creating.

Another questioner asks Stephenson and Hester about how they dealt with the possibility of distraction from the technology. Hester describes the placement of technology users behind those who were watching without using technology. A different questioner wonders about what might have been lost with the technology users during the show. Hester describes the audience eagerness to see the next blog, and actors walking back to check the blog, which he did not always find useful. Stephenson argues that visual focus on the technology actually brought back the Early Modern tradition of “hearing” a play.

Another questioner asks Stephenson and Hester about the possibility of acquiring greater connection to young students through the use of technology. Hester describes the demographics of technology use, stating that the blog users were mostly under 30. He discusses how the technological elements gained greater acceptance from all age groups over the course of the run.

Kate O’Connell of Mary Baldwin College moderates this session.

Blackfriars Conference 2011 – Paper Session V

Hi! I’m Julia, I’ll be liveblogging Paper Session V from 4:00 p.m. to 5:15 p.m.

Moderator: Miriam Gilbert, University of Iowa

Roman Actors:
Meta-Theatre as Moral Compass in Phillip Massinger’s The Roman Actor and Lope de Vega’s lo findigo verdadero
Iam Borden, Carson School of Theatre and Film, University of Nebraska

According to Borden, several English plays have counterparts in Lope de Vega’s canon. In some of these, the plot, devices, characters, settings, and even performance spaces are all but indistinguishable one from the other. In his comparison of Massinger’s play to de Vega’s, Borden showed that the breaking of the fourth wall served not only to elicit laughter by reminding the audience and actors that they share the same space, but it also served to demonstrate different approaches to the moral argument of each play. John Basiulis played Paris, Patrick Midgley played Caesar, Natasha Solomon played Inez, and they were joined by Daniel Burrows in playing actors commenting on theater and on each other.

Renaissance Clowns and Early Colonialism
Bob Hornback, Oglethorpe University

Hornback discussed a 1534 play by John Redford (the Play of Wit and Science) in which an character, Ignorance, appears in blackface and speaks in an Africanized pidgin English. Hornback demonstrated a scene in which Idleness, the vice character played by Natasha Solomon, taught Ignorance, played by Daniel Burrows, to speak his own name syllable by syllable. Hornback’s purpose was to show that comedic representations of the African character as “other” were already present on the English stage, as they had been in Spanish drama for at least a century before.

The Implications of the Failed Performance of Dekker’s The Whore of Babylon
Peter Hyland, Huron University College, University of Western Ontario

Hyland discussed The Whore of Babylon and what Dekker’s actions surrounding its failure show about Dekker himself. He pointed out that Dekker apologized for the play in several ways: the prologue that presumably pre-dated the printed version because it discussed the dumb show, the epistle at the beginning of the printed version, and a later protest that the play was actually intended as a dramatic poem. Indeed, Hyland agrees, the play seems to benefit from the format of print in that what is good about it can be perused by a reader rather than missed by an audience.

“A Cynic and a Hater of Humanity”:
Distinguishing Modes of Satire through Performance
Rusty Jones, Murray State University

Jones discussed different kinds of cynicism as evinced by characters such as Timon and Apemantus in Timon of Athens. He showed that Juvenalian satire is most like characters such as Apemantus, who hates no man but man’s impiety, and exposes vice rather than attacking individuals. Timon, on the other hand, does not truly seek to right society, but only rejects others when he himself is rejected. Brett Sullivan Santry performed as Jaques and Timon, and Bonnie Morrison played Duke Senior and Apomanthis.

Moral Agency in Hamlet
Lars Engle, University of Tulsa

Engle opened with Michael Bristol’s work on the evaluation of characters as people. He says that an emotional response to fiction can show the audience’s deeply held beliefs about right and wrong. Engle goes on to say that in moral accounts of themselves, people stress their own agency. He discussed such agency and Hamlet, who in dying leaves Denmark with Fortinbras, but his own story with Horatio. Throughout the play, Hamlet is trapped in an unsatisfactory existence, merely reacting to stimuli, but in Act 5 he develops greater agency compelled by his conception of nobleness in himself.

Bell Ringing in Shakespeare
George Walton Williams, Duke University

Williams, currently serving as one of four councilmen this year on the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers pointed out that Shakespeare was almost silent on bell ringers, which is surprising because he would have heard bells both at Stratford and London. Shakespeare’s only bell ringer is Bullcalf in Henry 4 part 2, who begs off when Falstaff tries to press him into service. He also mentions Ophelia’s description of Hamlet’s madness “Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh,” and he uses that quote and one from Fletcher’s The Pilgrim to educate a modern American (and non-bell-ringing) audience in some of the things that English bell ringers have known for centuries and would easily recognize in Early Modern plays.

Blackfriars Conference 2011 – Staging Session II

Deb Streusand is back! This afternoon I’ll be liveblogging Staging Session II from 2:30 pm to 3:45 pm. This session is taking place in the King Theatre at Stuart Hall School.

Instant!_Shakespeare: Make Students’ First Readings Staged Readings
Becki Jones, Thomas Dale High School

Jones conjures the picture of a student struggling through a dreary, solitary reading of his or her first Shakespeare play, and contrasts this with her own recommendation for a first class on a given play: a lively staged reading of one scene, plastic swords and all. She cites several experiences, including work at the Globe and seeing Patrick Tucker’s Original Shakespeare Company perform without rehearsal, that gave her faith in the ability of a staged reading to create engagement with the play regardless of the degree of preparation. She demonstrates preparing the students by telling them the story of the play up to the scene they will be reading. The students from Stuart Hall School do their reading of the final scene of Hamlet, working out the blocking as they go; the sword fight is the only portion that they have prepared, for safety reasons. Jones gives them limited instructions as the scene goes on, but only where it is necessary for the scene to operate properly. Making sure that Hamlet and Laertes do change foils, for example, aids students’ understanding of the scene without disrupting the flow. Jones describes the advantages she has perceived from doing staged readings before students begin reading on their own. She gives the audience practical advice on how to prepare for this type of staged reading, and provides a handout for this purpose. Sally Southall, a fellow teacher at Jones’ school, provides an account of how this process has worked for her. She reports that she has found it quite successful in engaging even students who have studied Shakespeare before and have not particularly liked it. Jones concludes, “Instant Shakespeare! Just add students! Try it today!”

Touring and Original Practices: The Grassroots Shakespeare Company
Alex Ungerman and Mark Oram, Utah Valley University

Ungerman and Oram describe their experience founding the Grassroots Shakespeare company. Oram discusses his visit to the OCS in 2008, and the powerful effect that elements such as universal lighting, minimal sets, and doubling had on his experience. He saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Revenger’s Tragedy in the Actors’ Renaissance Season; he praises the “beautiful chaos” of this experience. Inspired by the OCS, he returned home and started an Original Practices company. The principles of Grassroots Shakespeare include role doubling, cue scripts, not having a director or any designers, and using limited rehearsal time. Oram and Ungerman describe their learning process as they worked on creating and using cue scripts, having actors design their own costumes, and coordinating rehearsals as a group.

Oram describes the challenges of using original practices without having a resident company, and explains the casting process that they have devised to make this possible. In the initial audition, they bring in groups and have the members of the group give each other notes on their monologues, allowing them to assess the actors’ potential as ensemble members. Ungerman describes a callback exercise wherein groups create jigs to popular songs and perform them. After further monologues and feedback, the company selects itself by popular vote, so that the actors know they have been chosen by their peers, setting up an immediate sense of collaboration. The company casts the show itself in the same way, working with sides and feedback, and the process again culminates in a popular vote and, if necessary, discussion until consensus is reached.

The presenters next discuss how their rehearsal process works. Their primary principle is that all actors must come to the first rehearsal prepared with a “first draft” performance, with their lines memorized. (There are about two weeks between casting and the first rehearsal.) They must also be prepared to receive and implement peer feedback. All actors are required to watch their fellow actors and give them feedback, emphasizing positive reinforcement and language of collaboration. They find that this atmosphere creates a better show and a more positive experience for the actors. In rehearsal, actors first perform a scene once through uninterrupted. The entire company then works with that scene collaboratively, trying to establish an approach to the scene that feels good onstage and looks good from offstage. Once the scene is put together, they perform it again to commit it to memory.

The presenters describe their two basic rules for their actors. 1)You must try any suggestion once, even if it is totally absurd. 2)Actors have final authority over their own performance. They note that once the company comes together, it creates a synergy and trust that makes actors responsive to each other and determined to make things work.

They next discuss the logistics of company work. Since there are no designers, the actors choose their own costumes, bringing a first draft in and then getting feedback on it. Without a stage manager, actors rotate through being “captain” for each rehearsal and performance. Actors are also responsible for marketing and publicity. Oram reports that in a group of 15-20 actors, he finds that there is an expert on just about anything. By making collaboration a part of the design, they achieve great results.

The presenters tell us how created their own stage to bring with them on tour. They describe several influences on their staging practice for tours, including Shakespeare’s Globe on Tour and other modern companies, as well as Elizabethan images of touring stages. They created a design inspired by these influences, with primary elements including wooden planking, curtains for a discovery space, ladders to provide levels, stairs up to the stage, trestles as a base for the stage, and, the innovation of which they are proudest, placing their stage on top of barrels to create the feel of early modern performance at an alehouse or inn. Their practical considerations include negotiation of the relationship between an early modern aesthetic and modern construction materials, creating universal lighting even at night with 360-degree lamps, and easy assembly and disassembly of the stage.

Oram and Ungerman share some of their company’s successes with us. They describe productions of Much Ado about Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, illustrating the evolution of their staging practices. They share some of the ways they encourage audience engagement, and provide data about the growth of their audience. Oram tells us about Grassroots companies he started in Exeter and London, which are going strong without him due to the collaborative nature of this approach.

They conclude with the principles that are most important in their approach: autonomy for the actor, enlisting everyone in the collaborative process, and synergistic collaboration. They again acknowledge their debt of inspiration to the OCS.

We have some time for questions. A questioner asks Ungerman and Oram if there is anything they would have done differently. Ungerman describes starting over from scratch with each new company, and starting troupes in different locations, so that in effect, they get to revise their approach each time. Another questioner asks about the financial elements of the work. Oram describes their beginning as a sharers’ company, and how this approach did not work so well, which led them to become an unpaid company, with a Pay What You Will policy for most shows. Another questioner asks about how they build their audience. Oram explains their use of social media and email databases, and the enthusiasm their audience engagement creates, which encourages audience members to bring their friends next time. The final questioner asks about their growth plan. Ungerman reports that they will be doing workshops with Tiffany Stern in the spring and touring in the summer. Oram tells us that they are thinking about starting Grassroots companies in San Francisco and Salt Lake City.

Brett Sullivan Santry of Stuart Hall School and Mary Baldwin College moderates this session.

Blackfriars Conference 2011 – Staging Session I

Cass Morris back again, and I’ll be covering the first of our Staging Sessions. In these sessions, scholars and practitioners get to bring specific staging issues to our actors and work through them. We have two running concurrently today, one in the Blackfriars Playhouse, and one at the King Theatre at Stuart Hall School, just a few blocks down the road. From 2:30pm to 3:45pm, I’ll be covering the session at the Playhouse, moderated by Matt Davies of Mary Baldwin College.

Matt opens by remarking that he presented at one of these staging sessions back in 2009, and he jokes that while Sarah Enloe assured him that he knew what to do to introduce one, he thinks the best thing to do is just get to the staging as quickly as possible. He points out that both companies ran Kickstarter campaigns in order to reach the Blackfriars Conference this year. Both staging sessions will run in succession, and then Davies will moderate a group discussion. The presenters in this session are assisted by Greg Phelps, Daniel Burrows, and Dan Kennedy.

Lee Benjamin Huttner, New York University: “Mirrors in Richard II“

Huttner is a graduate student in both literature and drama at NYU and Tisch. He will be examining the “mirror-breaking” scene and the famous deposition scene, 4.1, of Richard II, and he believes that this scene may never have been performed on the early modern stage, due to censorship issues. He looks at mirrors as an organizing principle for Richard II, not just literally, but as “the fundamental disjuncture that occurs at an encounter of the self”.

Huttner begins the scene at Richard’s entrance. Greg as Richard II encourages the audience to respond when he calls out “God save the king!”, which he then immediately denies being, prefacing the tug-of-war that will occur over the crown with Henry Bolingbroke (Dan Kennedy) later in the scene.

“There are a number of choices to be made during the scene,” some of which Huttner admits he did not anticipate, “which is why we’re here.” He brings in the idea of role segregation — the idea of the self being separate from one’s role. Richard in this scene exists between the two roles of subject and king. Huttner argues that he is not distanced from both, but rather has to try to fulfill both simultaneously. Huttner explores some ideas of metatheatricality, looking at ways in which human life can be construed in terms of performance, scripting, and “backstage” actions. Nothing, he argues, distinguishes the ritual performativity of the stage from the ritual performativity of life. This concept brings the idea of mirrors back into play (via a short detour to Hamlet’s ideas of holding a mirror up to nature); Richard sees himself in the glass as others see him, seeing the self that he presents to others.

Huttner relates this disjuncture of self with the disjuncture of the crown (and thus of the role and assumed self) that we just saw in the deposition. He describes Richard and Henry as “a living chiasmus … simultaneously linked and thrust apart by the crown, by the ‘I’.” He interrogates the idea that Richard and Henry might have to both hold on to the crown for an extended length of time during the scene. The chiastic structure comes back into play with Richard’s response to Henry’s question, “Are you content to resign the crown”: “Aye, no; no, aye” (or possibly “I know no I”, bringing the signification of self back to the forefront). Taken out of his roles, Huttner argues, Richard “considers himself erased.” Huttner then discusses how Richard pre-emptively “ghosts” himself — and will, in fact, become a ghost that haunts the rest of the tetralogy, his legacy weighing heavily on Bolingbroke’s son Henry V.

The actors confer for a moment and stage the scene again, incorporating ideas from Huttner’s presentation. This time, Richard requests less of the audience initially, and his approach to Bolingbroke is somewhat softer (though also quite bitter). Both men cling tight to the crown throughout the verbal negotiation over it. Richard re-crowns himself (acting, as Huttner earlier pointed out, as both bishop and king in an instant) and then holds the crown out to Bolingbroke, though does not relinquish it throughout his long speech. Dan Kennedy’s Bolingbroke seems impatient, even exasperated, with Richard’s indulgence.

Beth Burns, Hidden Room Theatre: “Original Practices at Hidden Room”

Beth Burns introduces her support team from Hidden Room, noting that she met her dramaturg for The Taming of the Shrew at a previous conference. She positions herself clearly on the side of practitioners as opposed to strict academics, but states that she tries to make her practice as well-grounded in scholarship as she can. She thanks the scholarly crowd for “letting me steal your work, as I do do and will do today.”

Burns discusses her experiences with Original Practices and notes that, while different companies and scholars have different views on what that means, they all come down to: “let’s not fight the text; let’s go with it.” She’s curious about the idea of “male playing female, and what that does to the text,” particularly what it does to jokes — which she doesn’t like to cut just because the reference isn’t relevant. She wondered if the idea of men playing women would balance out the gender issues in Shrew. “What I found instead was, actually, a love story. A really sexy love story.” It also produced a theme of identity.

She noted two challenges: 1) to get the audience to believe the man playing a woman as a female character, and 2) to make the audience perceive the relationship displayed as a heterosexual one, not a homosexual one. Her actors from Hidden Room then present the introduction between Kate and Petruchio (2.1), in (as in her production), late-sixteenth-century costumes and (lead-free) makeup. The scene is fast-paced and full of action, with a Kate visibly enjoying the challenge of sparring with Petruchio, and a Petruchio utterly unwilling to part company with her. Kate also seems moved (though somewhat uncomfortable) by a Petruchio speaking to her sexually — as, this staging seems to suggest, no other man has ever done.

Burns notes that the scene is “a veritable cornucopia” of the techniques they use. She notes that, to make the steaminess palpable, they don’t just go for the obvious sexual jokes, but also those words that “sound sexual” by virtue of their sonic qualities or the face-shapes the sounds cause. They also explored “non-standard touch”, to break the expectation of the usual courtship interactions. She moves to the next scene, which she hopes will cause us to look at gender role and power.

In the “sun and moon” scene, 4.5, Kate’s concession to Petruchio’s declarations comes with more than a light touch of sarcasm — but she laughs when Petruchio address Vincentio (an impromptu substitution of Matt Davies) as a fair mistress. When Kate gets the joke and flirts with Vincentio, Petruchio intervenes a bit hastily, to cut off a kiss — which represents, as Burns points out, that she’s now playing on an even field with him. They move to the final scene: 5.1, on the street — the “kiss me, Kate” moment. Their frenetic energy slows to tender regard, but loses none of its passion.

Burns brings her actors out and first asks Ryan (Kate) about building the character. He talks about placing her “center” low, to ground her and also give her grace. Burns and Judd (Petruchio) talk about building the “uber-macho” Petruchio, who Judd describes as “the archetypal alpha male” who goes beyond the typical plateau of gentlemanly behavior.

Matt Davies opens up to questions from the audience for either presenter.

Q: Has Hidden Room yet done this with tragedies, and if so, how was it the same or different?
A: Short answer is no. Will be doing “Rose Rage” in July.

Q for Beth: How early in the process did you get into costume?
A: Ryan responds that the skirt and the shoes were really important — He gave himself permission to go there early on, not just for himself but also because he felt it helped his castmates see him as Kate, not as Ryan. Judd adds that it changes the way you carry yourself. Beth clarifies that they got Ryan into a skirt on Day One, and that their Bianca had to shave an enormous beard before they could start her love scenes. Matt comments that competing beards could create “a Velcro situation”.

Q for Beth: Would you consider casting a prepubescent boy whose voice has not yet cracked?
A: Beth says was not willing to go “that far down the rabbit hole”. Afraid that less-experienced actor might not get the quality needed, also that a prepubescent boy might get them in trouble with all the steamy bits. Matt adds his wondering if, looking at plays like Antony and Cleopatra, if the boys got given better female roles as they got older, and thus were no longer prepubescent or even pubescent.

Q for Greg: Struck by first version, when he came out to the audience, with the scene moving to such a solipsistic moment — interesting counterbalance to the mirrored exchange. Wondering if that was scripted as part of rehearsal?
A: All respond that: There was no rehearsal.
Q: Matt adds, does the direct address come into contrast with those introspective moments, asks Lee how he would deal with that in rehearsal.
A: In early modern environment, there’s no huge distinction between stage and audience. Richard speaks of notions of embarrassment and of deference — thinks deference particularly important, especially with regard to reflection of how audience defers to actors on stage. Thinks the interplay of ideas only works in an environment like this.

Q: Wonders what he thinks about how the direct address would have functioned with the Essex performance?
A: “Well, there’s a lot to say about that.” Discusses the possible explanations regarding the censorship.

Matt suggests that discussion of the Essex Rebellion continue at the bar.

Blackfriars Conference 2011 – Plenary Session IV

Hello from the beautiful Blackfriars Playhouse, nestled in a Staunton resplendent with Autumn colors. I am Christina Sayer Grey, Marketing Associate for the American Shakespeare Center, and I will be your live-blogging tour guide for Plenary Session IV from 1:00pm – 2:15pm on Thursday, October 27.

Moderator: Catherine Loomis, University of New Orleans

Staging Anatomy in The Athiest’s Tragedy
Caroline Lamb, The University of Western Ontario

The Athiest’s Tragedy features an unintentional self-execution – D’amville, the play’s athiest, grabs an executioner’s axe and accidentally applies it to his own head “In lifing up the axe has knocked his brains out.” D’amville then continues to talk for 17 lines after the stage direction. No staging directions nor any staging history from 1611 on.

Discuss two related questions. 1. Might we infer that early modern spectators may have seen D’amville’s brain onstage? 2. What effect would this staging have on audience’s understanding of D’amville’s body and brain onstage?

The playwright Tourneur’s preoccupation with “brains” throughout the play, using it many times during the play, turns that body part into a fetish object. The play eventually gives the audience what they want – a visible human brain in vivisection. Evidence implies that the scene could have potentially been shown in a realistic way onstage. Animal viscera and blood could be employed to give the illusion of human innards. Spectators would have anticipated and possibly expected a display similar to what they might have seen in an anatomy theater.

1994 production – director Anthony Clark. “The dying D’amville dissects himself, wrenching out a chunk of bleeding brain and displaying it to the audience.” Reveals to the audience that D’amville’s brains needed inspection, anatomizing.

Eviscerated grey matter can serve as a corporeal correlative to the personal information that D’amville is making public for the first time. His 17 lines are used to reveal his plot and labels himself a murderer. He “spills his guts,” if you will. Intellectual, moral belief, and identity are revealed in full physicality. D’amville’s brain is exposed and so are his psychological innards. Early Moderns thought of the brain as the physical repository of knowledge as well as the center of intellect.

D’amville’s blunder fulfills two conditions that anatomists wanted to realize in their practices – performed on a live subject and with minimal surgical interference. The play caters to a fantasy of vivisection – the viewing of the brain of a live human subject.

The Theatre and Its Cripple
Genevieve Love, Colorado College

How do disabilities function on the Early Modern stage? Reliance of the representation of loss.

‘Larum for London (1602) – a graphically violent play about the Siege of Antwerp. A series of violent episodes – onstage military killings, stabbing of a citizen, torture of an Englishman, a hanging, shooting of a woman, stoning to death, and the killing of young children (who beg for their lives for 60+ lines). Scene after scene of bloodshed.

At just over 1,100 lines, the play is quite short and a “grueling exhibition.” The play’s excesses are seen to mark its artistic shortcomings. The show, however, filled the need of the contemporary audience as topically apt, as Londoners feared a Spanish invasion.

Lame soldier, Stump, is a valorous soldier, but his prosthetic limb is described as “rotten.” Stump’s saving of a fat burgher links their two bodies as a corporeal representation of the relationship between too much and too little that runs throughout the play. The two-legged actor playing Stump has too much body (three legs total when Stump’s stump is added) and the actor playing the fat burgher has too little (augmented by padding).

Playing with Paper (A Love Letter to Tiffany Stern)
Carter Hailey, The College of William and Mary

Pre-performance, paper was required for all the documents of performance. During performance, plots, props, and other ephemera were required. Believe as You List, for example, calls for 9 paper properties. Paper properties on the EME stage as quasi-corporeal representatives for an absent character – “paper players.”

  • OCS actors Blythe Coons and Rene Thornton, Jr. perform a scene from The Merchant of Venice. “The paper as the body of my friend…”
  • Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy calls specifically red ink to represent Bel-Imperia having written her letter in blood.

Henry VI, part 1 – Hotspur reads a letter aloud and interjects non-letter lines into the reading. (OCS Actor Chris Johnston reads the example)

Tearing a scroll onstage – the power of destroying a missive. The letters that are torn are blanks. No tearing of “reading” scroll examples have been found by Hailey. An example of a pre-torn scroll where it is a “reading” scroll, but the elements on the “reading” half are cut-off at a specific point (scene performed by OCS Actors Jeremy West and Blythe Coons).

The unification of page and stage.

How Many Children Had Banquo?
Brett Gamboa, Dartmouth College

Doubling – absences of characters like Mercutio and Lear’s Fool during large chunks of their plays. Other characters, however, go missing without much attention (Lady Montague, for example). Lady Montague’s death doesn’t necessarily add to the weight of the tragedy. Romeo’s mother dies of theatrical necessity, she does not appear onstage because she is already there as another character. Her absence must be explained away by another character because she is expected to be there. Maria in Twelfth Night, the Queen in Cymbeline, and many other examples of the disappearing character exist. These examples all happen in their play’s “limiting scene” – the scene that has the most number of speaking character (i.e. minimum number of actors required for the play). Suggestive absences are common in Shakespeare, but they appear to be practical considerations.

Macbeth 4.1 calls for more than 12 actors. “A show of 8 kings and Banquo”(plus Macbeth and witches) – the play calls for 8, but that is not enough for the purpose of the scene. The 8th king carries a mirror to show the future kings to Macbeth – Kings that cannot be embodied onstage. Representing abundance with an abundance of actors and then represents more abundance without any actors at all with the mirror.

Or, is Banquo the 8th king, the one with the mirror. This solution makes the limiting number 12 instead of 13 – the number of actors for which the company had a patent at the time. Using the actors playing the Thanes in the lines of future kings rather than journeymen, since Malcolm makes them Earls in the play, is a nice link, as well.

Why are there no blowjob jokes in Shakespeare?
Matt Kozusko, Ursinus College

Pyramus and Thisbe (“plausible although a stretch, perhaps”) – Rene Thornton, Jr. plays the Wall, standing on a block; John Harrell plays Bottom/Pyramus; and Jeremy West as Flute/Thisbe. The Wall is genitally assaulted, causing the chink (the space between two fingers) to cover that area. Pyramus and Thisbe then kiss through the chink (Pyramus in front and Thisbe at the back). “I kissed the wall’s hole and not your lips at all” “my part discharge”

The Winter’s Tale – Hermione: “come on then, and give it to me in mine ear” as a mis-entrendre. The meanings have shifted over time and so we experience the phrase differently than E.M.E. audiences would have.

Sex acts are a dynamically social thing. There are no blowjob jokes in E.M. writings that we can identify because E.M. people either did not talk about these things publicly or not in ways that we can recognize. The promising candidates are not defensible because they require misreadings.

Distinctions, for example, between irrumare and fellare disappear when translated from Latin into another language and over the course of time.

Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale – Absalom’s kissing of Alison’s arse “savorly” – what is being talked about – cunnilingus or analingus? An involuntary oral sex act of some sort is indicated.

A discourse on the parts of the body, especially when it requires circumspection, are not fixable and are easily movable. Williams’s book “Dictionary of Sex Acts.”

Sound Trumpet
Alisha Huber, independent scholar

O.P.’s focus on sight – we think about going to see a play. The focus in O.P. is related mostly to sight. What about hearing? Shakespeare and his contemporaries frequently use auditory signals in their stage directions. More than 250 calls for trumpets in E.M. stage directions – information conveyed by military signals served both for verisimilitude and a narrative purpose.

Alarum, appeal, parley, advance, and retreat were the basic ones used for E.M. plays.

Julius Caesar – a scene where the characters respond to offstage trumpet signals. The signals are part of the conversation. (Blythe Coons and Rene Thornton, Jr. perform the scene)

Rare in Shakespeare’s plays for the stage directions to just generally call for “Sound Trumpets.” The plays call for specific, indicative, and informational musical signals. Characters explain military signals, in fact, less than characters explain the tolling of a clock. Audience members would very likely have recognized all the military signals and those that didn’t would have been quickly conditioned to recognize the consistent indications.

Unfortunately, because the signals were so familiar, players and real military members did not write them down. They were learned by rote by both groups. Therefore, no records remain of specific musical patterns.

Diverse country’s signals would have recognizable by different groups, but there were distinct differences. The French, perhaps, marched more slowly than the English, for example.

Tucket – a heraldric badge of sound – an aural logo for a character. The Imperial March accompanying the entrance of Darth Vader – the aural logo plays before his entrance every time. The tucket, once learned, prepares the audience for that character’s entrance.

All of these sound signals, when used consistently, conditions the audience to expect certain things along with certain sounds.

Q for Matt Kozusko: Henry V – Fluellen’s forcing Pistol to eat a leek. “Eat this leek or I’ve got another leek in my pocket…”
A: Chewing of a leek, not particularly erotic. The leek already stands for Welsh honor and many other things.

Q for Alisha Huber: Are you arguing that soundtracks can be used to create an auditory experience?
A: Soundtracks create an emotional response and music underscoring text makes the text hard to understand. The signalling intends to create an intellectual response.

Q for Alisha Huber: Does the sound make the meaning?
A: Overly specific examples, like Darth Vader, have a dangerous potential to distract or create a parody of itself.

Blackfriars Conference 2011 – George T. Wright Keynote Address

Greetings! I’m Charlene V. Smith and it’s 10:30 am on Day 2 of the 2011 Blackfriars Conference. George T. Wright from the University of Minnesota is giving the Keynote today, entitled “Climbing Shakespeare’s Ladder, and Other Sound Patterns.” Wright is well-known among the both the conference attendees and the graduate students at Mary Baldwin due to his seminal work Shakespeare’s Metrical Art.

After some announcements from Sarah Enloe, director of Education at the OCS, Dr. Ralph Alan Cohen takes the stage to introduce Wright. Wright is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Minnesota. Besides Shakespeare’s Metrical Art, Wright has also written Hearing the Measures: Shakespearean and Other Inflections and Poetical Craft and Authorial Design.  Dr. Ralph says that when the graduate Shakespeare program at MBC began, he really wanted to use Shakespeare’s Metrical Art as a classroom textbook. He was worried that some students, less familiar with Chaucer and poetry, might find it difficult. He says he made the mistake of using a different book, but for year two of the program Ralph “switched to the Wright/right book.”

Wright begins by noting his growing interest in ladders in Shakespeare’s text, and that years ago he noticed too many actors underplaying long verse speeches and rhetoric. They were being cheated of their force, brought down to the prose moments of the play.

Wright grew aware of growing interest amongst British actors and directors in speaking Shakespeare’s verse. Wright was interested in how verse was heard by the ear of the audience. These actors and directors were looking for guidance and rules for shared lines, pauses, enjambed versus end stopped lines, etc. Wright cares much more about the weight given to stressed and unstressed lines as they are critical to the emotional intensity of the text.

Wright notes that there are three kinds of people interested in the meter of the verse: Actors, editors, prosodists. The questions each group asks are how shall we speak the lines, how shall we print the lines, and how shall we hear the lines, respectively. Wrights says that editors and actors must print and speak the lines in a way that allows us to read and hear the lines as metrically coherent.

Wright has consulted many texts of Shakespeare’s verse and has not found much dealing with the ladder. As an example, he presents an early speech from Julius Caesar, a speech Wright says in a perfect example of a ladder.

And do you not put on your best attire?
And do you not cull out a holiday?
And do you not strew flowers in he way
That comes in triumph over Pompey’s blood?
Be gone!
Run to your houses, fall upon your knees
Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
That needs must light on this ingratitude.
(1.1.48-55)

The first four lines step up, and the last three lines step back down the ladder. A ladder is sequences of clauses that keep elaborating on a topic until it’s been exhausted and then the actor has to run back down.

After 1593, Shakespeare’s line really find their range. Wright says we have the plague to thank, as it caused Shakespeare to write the sonnets. With the sonnets, Shakespeare was training himself to compose verse speech in a larger four line unit. Though many sonnets are end stopped at the end of each line, usually do to the rhyme scheme. The end stopping of the lines halts the rising of the verse. There is an inherent rise and fall in the structure of the sonner. The quatrains build up and then down.

Shakespeare then used more ladders in his blank verse. Wright demonstrates Shakespeare’s powerful buildup via ladders with Richard II’s “For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground,” John of Gaunt’s This England, and Henry V’s famous St. Crispin Day speeches. Shakespeare had found a new way to be seriously expressive. Why say a thing once, when saying it differently and again and again will make it more memorable?

Wright notes that the performance of these ladders is not always the same, nor is it a continuous rise. The voice likes to back track a little, or down track a little, before it continues to the next level of the speeches. Wright speaks some of Macbeth’s speech, “Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, / Loyal and neutral, in a moment?” This speech goes up and down constantly, as if Macbeth doesn’t know where he wants to be.

Wright launches into Claudio’s speech from Measure for Measure, “Ay, but to die, and go we know not where,” a speech Wright calls, “one of the finest of all ladder speeches.” This speech goes up for many lines, and then steps down powerfully. The imagery is as over the top as the dramatic structure of the ladder, and Wright suggests that Shakespeare intended that.

Wright notes that every actor will not perform ladders the same way, but that the device should be recognized as respecting it creates a powerful effect. Shakespeare was an extraordinary writer but also an extraordinary listener.

Wright loves the increasing attention given in recent years to the performance of verse, but the more he reads about it the more questions he has. Metrical variations add texture to Shakespeare’s verse. Readers, editors, and voice professionals need to note these variations. Not just the normal variations such as trochees, but the rarer ones such as hexameter, broken-back lines, and epic caesuras, should be considered. Shakespeare uses these irregularities more than the other Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, and we should wonder why.

Wright then takes a few questions from the audience. One person asks about Wright’s suggestions that we have some reservations when we hear a ladder, and wonders if that is connected to a feeling that the ladder is calculated. Wright likes the idea and the suggestions it gives for performance. Another scholar asks about evangelism and whether Wright thinks Shakespeare could have picked up some of the ladder technique from church. Wright thinks it is completely possible and beautifully quotes a poem of John Donne. Mary Baldwin professor Matt Davies mentions that the sonnets were metrically regular, and that so were the examples, there weren’t a lot of inverted feet in them, which might cause a trip in the ladder.  He asks whether regularity is essential to building a ladder. Other audience members respond to this idea and OCS actor James Keegan says he notes that sort of thing a lot in Tamburlaine. Keegan then notes that he feels contemporary actors are afraid of pitch, of singing the pitch, and has anxiety about it. Wright agrees, and says that they are afraid of going of the top. But Wright says he’d like to hear actors going over the top a bit more and notes that you can find fine examples of this, nodding to Keegan’s fine performance as Prospero in The Tempest the night before.

Blackfriars Conference 2011- Plenary Session III

Hi, I’m Deb Streusand, and I’ll be liveblogging Plenary Session III from 9 am to 10:15 am.

“Lie there, Religion”: Implications of the Vestment Controversy on the Early Modern English Stage
Margaret Rose Jaster, Pennsylvania State University Harrisburg

Jaster argues that one of the lasting effects of the Vestment Controversy might have been satirical treatment of Roman Catholic clergy on stage. She suggests that vestments served as a metonymic device for all things Roman Catholic, and that the cultural event we refer to as the Vestment Controversy did affect the early English stage. Vestments were regarded as “indifferent,” that is, not necessary to the honor and glory of God. The reformers despised the vestments as symbolic of excess, and wanted to return to a more pristine spiritual institution, free of such trappings. On stage, whoever dons the Roman Catholic vestments appears as a Roman Catholic cleric to the audience, even in the case of characters who are in disguise. In the anonymous play Look About You, the scoundrel Skink disguises himself as a monk in order to con the other characters. In Measure for Measure, Duke Vincentio dons religious garb for his own ends, but, scandalously, he actually confesses Mariana in the process. If the portrayal of characters in clerical garb was always satirical, it is possible that the Roman Catholics in the audience might have been horrified or indignant. If both reformers and Catholics considered vestments indifferent, however, and the characters misusing the vestments were not Roman Catholic at all, as in the case of disguise, the contention that vestments were used this way is not so controversial.

“The mirror of all Christian kings”: Choral Medievalism in the Henry V Folio
Christina Gutierrez, The University of Texas at Austin

Gutierrez argues that Shakespeare can be regarded as one of the most recognizable writers of medieval history. As a historical account, Henry V‘s double vision of its central character destabilizes audience perception of this historical period. She reads the play in the light of current medieval historiography and analyzes contemporary stagings of the play. She cites Umberto Eco’s argument that the Middle Ages have never ended in the popular imagination, arguing that “Medievalism constructs the Middle Ages to suit post-medieval values, concerns, and effects.” The play can be used to stage tensions between the historical past and the present moment. She cites the Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh movie versions, drawing a contrast between their respective treatments of Henry and of the Middle Ages. This ambiguity about how we should view Henry and his historical period comes from the text itself, particularly in the differences between how the Chorus describes Henry and how he is portrayed in person. The Chorus exists to provide a contrast to the Henry that the audience sees. In the 1600 Quarto, the choral passages do not appear. Scholars debate the reason for this absence-had they not been written yet, or were they redacted for political reasons? The Quarto’s portrayal of Henry is unambiguously heroic. Shakespeare may have meant this to be an image of Elizabeth I. Gutierrez discusses the productions of Charles Kemble and William Macready, who respectively cut and restored the Chorus. She argues that Macready’s restoration of the Chorus allowed the play to live in the gaps of time between the historical period being portrayed, Shakespeare’s time, and the time of the production. More recent productions have set the play in various modern conflicts, whether to promote patriotism or portray the folly of war. The play’s double presentation of its central character represents the duality of our view of the Middle Ages, allowing directors to make a choice as to how they will stage Henry and the play’s approach to war.

Linden Kueck performs as the Chorus in Henry V for this presentation. A.J. Sclafani performs as Henry.

Making Malapropism: Reconsidering Mistress Quickly
Emily Sloan-Pace, University of California, Santa Cruz

Sloan-Pace points out that Mistress Quickly is often read solely for her malapropisms and is not considered relevant enough to the Falstaff plot or to the play’s historical project to be worthy of much more analysis. She argues that in this typically upper-class genre, Quickly offers an alternative voice, representing the middle class and a female with linguistic agency in a play dominated by the mOCSuline and martial. Quickly is distinct for her control over the economy of her alehouse and her body. In 2 Henry IV, she becomes a developed character outside of her relationship to Falstaff and the other tavern characters. The characters outside of the tavern allow her agency by providing her with positive acknowledgement. Aside from Falstaff, men seem to respect Quickly, but in his company she is subjected to a constant barrage of slurs. Editors have allowed this barrage to color their view of Mistress Quickly. Yet the Lord Chief Justice, for example, immediately accepts Quickly’s claims over those of Falstaff, implying that the men in power respect her. The Justice’s refusal to view her sexually leads Falstaff to admit his debt, giving Quickly the power and thereby placing her in the mOCSuline role in this sexual exchange. Reading this scene in a non-malapropistic way provides a new view of this character as a respected figure who can employ language to her own ends.

How to Shrew
Joe Ricke, Taylor University and Hungry Shakespeare

Ricke begins his presentation in the character of Stephanie Stern, Tiffany Stern’s fictional younger sister, illustrating the ways in which we view the concept of “shrewing.” In his own person, he argues that the short answer to “how to shrew” is not “you’re beaten to a bloody pulp,” but that you are loud and argumentative, being tried as a shrew after an accusation made by a specific man or men. In a shrew play, the shrew must defend herself against the audience and her male accuser. Although some critics argue that Shakespeare’s shrew must be viewed in the light of contemporary concerns about shrewish women, we should consider his approach to the shrew in terms of the tradition of staged shrews in other shrew plays rather than viewing it as an anomaly of cultural hysteria. In Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare uses one of the most popular contemporary ways of talking about the battle of the sexes. In these plays, shrews are on display as shrews because of the characters who accuse them. They then defend themselves in dialogue. The ubiquity of the shrew plays challenges any simplistic view of the Early Modern perspective on shrewish women because of the plays’ allowance for dialogue and self-defense. We must also take into account the shrew’s characterization of the men around her as lazy and not contributing to the household economy, which further complicates any argument that the plays unequivocally portray the shrews in a negative light. “Saintly shrews” in the mystery plays turn out to be on the side of righteousness. In Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare portrays his own saintly shrew in the person of Paulina, showing that shrews can do good work by protecting others and themselves.

Kim Maurice portrays Kate in this presentation. A.J. Sclafani performs Petruchio. Maurice portrays Paulina and Sclafani Leontes in Winter’s Tale. These two actors also play scenes from an earlier shrew play concerning Noah and from Peele’s The Old Wives’ Tale.

Competing Heights in As You Like It
Jemma Alix Levy, Muse of Fire Theater Company

Levy lays out the textual contradiction between the descriptions of Rosalind’s and Celia’s heights in two different scenes, and reminds us that in production Rosalind is usually portrayed as taller. Editors and directors seem to have reached the consensus to that Le Beau’s statement that Celia is taller is a mistake. Levy discusses the performance potential of leaving this contradiction intact. What if Le Beau is referring to their current physical positions, or following the Duke’s requirement that he see Celia as taller? Levy argues that the explanation with the greatest potential in performance is that the two women may be so close in height that each appears taller at different times. Staging their heights in this way draws attention to the competitive aspects of Rosalind and Celia’s relationship. Competition is a theme throughout the play, but the competition between Rosalind and Celia is limited to the time when they are both presenting as female. While at Frederick’s court, they continually one-up one another. Since Rosalind is the speaker who describes herself as taller, while Le Beau is speaking in public in the court, the shift in height may reflect a shift in perspective rather than a mistake. By insisting she is taller, Rosalind earns the right to become male while they are in disguise, preventing comparison to her cousin for that period, which allows her to become a unique individual, an initiator rather than an onlooker. In the forest, they compete only when alone or with Touchstone, as in their conversation about Orlando’s poems, but this scene is interrupted, suggesting that it is no longer important who would have won. The cousins have changed in the forest, and the play replaces the language of competition with the language of equality. Now that the women have truly separated from each other, they seem prepared to embrace their equality. Levy argues that staging this contrast, rather than regarding it as a mistake, illuminates the characters and their relationship.

Linden Kueck and Charlene Smith portrayed a taller Rosalind and a shorter Celia. Smith and Kim Maurice portrayed a Rosalind and Celia of indistinguishable heights.

The presentations finish promptly and we have time for questions.

A questioner describes Quickly and Mistress Overdone as shrews of a sort, and wonders whether Overdone has agency in a fashion similar to Quickly. Sloan-Pace suggests that Mistress Overdone is portrayed more exclusively as a madam, but that men may also show her respect in a manner similar to how the men outside the tavern world treat Quickly. Ricke discusses these women as shrews in terms of the ubiquity of shrew plays and their portrayal of female agency.

The next questioner asks whether women were becoming more of an economic force in England at this time. Ricke replies that there is a dialogue about women’s struggle to gain the upper hand, as portrayed in contemporary ballads. The female character is given the opportunity to voice opposition in the dramatic tradition.

The next questioner asks Jaster about the representations of authentic churchmen on stage, as opposed to characters in disguise. Jaster thinks that even when the characters are supposed to be clerics, the authors are still being satirical, as in the portrayal of Canterbury at the opening of Henry V. The cultural moment provided too good an opportunity for satire for the playwrights not to have taken advantage of it, she argues. In Look About You, Skink explicitly identifies his clerical disguise with religion itself, addressing the words “lie there, religion” to his clerical cloak.

The next questioner asks Sloan-Pace about the relationship between malapropisms and justice scenes, as in Much Ado About Nothing. Sloan-Pace points out that in these cases it is the character of lowest class who is able to discover the truth.

The final questioner discusses the first OED definition of shrew, which applies to men. Petruchio is said to be almost as shrewish as Kate is, so the issue of shrewishness and gender is much more complicated than the exclusive assignment of that identity to women. Ricke discusses the English dramatic tradition of shrewish characters and related name-calling, where “shrew” is often used to refer to men, especially in the earlier plays. This word, he asserts, tells us as much about the person who’s saying it as about the person described.

Holly Pickett of Washington and Lee University moderates this session.

Blackfriars Conference 2011 – Plenary Session II

Hi! I’m Julia, I’ll be liveblogging Plenary Session II from 3:15 to 4:45.

Moderator: Hank Dobin, Washington and Lee University

Time to Play
Steven Urkowitz, University of Southern Maine

Urkowitz discussed the duration of performances in Early Modern Theater. Some scholars have tried to argue that all performances adhered strictly to the “two hours traffic of our stage,” even though some early modern plays are a good deal longer than others. He mentioned that a performance of a play would include music before and dancing after, so that even if a performance was expected to be more or less the same duration, the other entertainments could be shortened or lenghthened to accomodate the difference. He also discussed script cutting as a possibility raised by scholars such as Andrew Gurr, but Urkowitz dismisses the arguments that script cutting was necessary.

The Bookend Project:
Transforming Shakespeare’s Revenge Play from Violence to Virtue in Titus Andronicus and The Tempest
Tara Bradway, St. John’s University

Bradway, artistic director of the Adirondack Shakespeare Company, discussed one interesting comparison she and her performers discovered when the same actress played Lavinia and Caliban. Early in Titus Andronicus, Lavinia fails to play within the form of the iambic pentameter line, but later in the play she breaks out of the pattern, uses initial trochees and lines witn 9 or 11 syllables, and in so doing struggles for greater agency within her own life. Caliban also uses an irregular verse pattern to assert his agency within is position of servitude. Both characters are also marked by sexual violence, and both become more eloquent through silence. Miriam Donald performed as Lavinia, Benjamin Curns as Caliban, and James Keegan as Prospero.

Laughter in Time and Space
Casey Caldwell, Mary Baldwin College

Caldwell brought together two ongoing scholarly discussions (the study of laughter in Shakespeare, and the study of sound in Shakespeare) to point out that neither discussion integrates laughter as a sound. He goes on to point out that the Blackfriars’ status as an Early Modern reconstruction gives us a tension when we come into it bringing our own time period, as there is a tension between our time and the time to which the Blackfriars belongs. Laughter is a way of imposing our own imminence onto our surroundings, but we are not laughing at the space. In the same way, a sleeping Bottom (performed by Benjamin Curns) awakes from his dream and chooses to remain imminent by re-formating his perception of his experience and using it to commission a work of art.

Remember the Porter:
Knock-Knock Jokes, Tragedy, and Other Unfunny Things
Chris Barrett, Harvard University

Barrett discussed the Porter’s scene as an extended knock-knock joke; the first, she says, in the English language. The porter, as the keeper of the threshold, has no trouble playing both the host and the interrupter in the joke. A knock-knock joke has a formula that suggests not only fear, but a disruption of the rules of hospitality: the guest is an uncouth interrupter and the joke is always on the host. Implied is a laughing forgiveness for the transgression — thus pity and fear are integral to the knock-knock joke and also, as it happens, to tragedy.

Performing Verse/Prose Transitions
James Loehlin, The University of Texas at Austin

Loehlin presented several instances of transitions between verse and prose in Shakespeare, using examples from Hamlet and As You Like It, performed by Shakespeare at Winedale actors Isto Barton, Sonia Desai, and Kelsi Tyler. He demonstrated that when a character switches from verse to prose, the other characters onstage have an opportunity to confirm or deny that transformation. He also discussed lines within prose scenes that sound and scan like verse, and concluded that characters can manipulate verse/prose transitions to rhetorical effect.

Blackfriars Conference 2011 – Plenary Session I

I’m Charlene V. Smith, and I’ll be liveblogging Plenary Session I from 1pm to 2:15pm.

Leslie Thomson, University of Toronto
The Tempest and the Stage-Sitters

Thomson starts by pointing out that the King’s Men had already started using the Blackfriars by the time that Shakespeare started writing The Tempest. Thus he would have known that the most expensive seats would have been those on stage. Thomson asks what effect the gallants onstage might have had, for example they created a type of stage dressing, and caused an alienating effect by reminding the audience that they were at a play.

The stage-sitters would have completed with the players for staging space and for audience attention, so Thomson explores whether the plays at the time included elements meant to counteract this or remind the sitters to behave? Thomson argues that The Tempest is constructed to quiet the stage sitters using elements such as soliloquies, discoveries, masques, and other staging devices.

The Tempest‘s 78 uses of “now”and  numerous mentions of the island create a single shared time and location. Events in the play such as the shipwreck, banquet, and the masque draw attention to drama onstage as opposed to the drama offstage. The text also suggests a number of sitting, reclining, or leaning positions. Groups of figures are also regularly observed by others. All these features help point the audience’s attention to the play itself. Thomson then suggests that Prospero acts as a stage-manager, speaking directly to the playgoers, and controlling moments of action during the play.

Thomson concludes with the thought that the presence of stage-sitters couldn’t be ignored during the early modern era and therefore shouldn’t be ignored now. By considering their effect on the performance, we can gather a more accurate and fuller picture of early modern theatre.

Mark Z. Muggli, Luther College
“After the first death, there is no other”: Except in the Case of Falstaff

Muggli mentions that much attention has been paid to Falstaff’s reported death in Henry V, and says he instead wants to focus attention on Falstaff’s first death in Henry IV, part one. Falstaff, to avoid fighting in the battle, “falls down as if he were dead.” The “as if” is ambiguous.

Should Falstaff rise up thirty lines later to the audience’s complete surprise? Or should he fall down with a wink to the audience so that we know he is faking during Hal and Hotspur’s fight?

Muggli says that a Falstaff who informs the audience that he is faking is an impressive trickster, but he is only a trickster. A Falstaff that convinces the audience that he is dead is a Falstaff who has the power to resurrect himself.

Muggli mentions a production he saw recently where an overweight Falstaff apparently suffered a heart attack and falls down. To Muggli, it was convincingly real. While speaking to colleagues about this production, one disagreed, telling Muggli that “it was obvious that Falstaff was faking.” Muggli suggest the cultural legacy of Falstaff means that audiences, even nonspecialists, are aware that he does not die in the first play he appears, and so his resurrection can never truly come as a surprise.

Walter Cannon, Central College
Complex Hearing

Cannon describes complex hearing as a moment when a character hears something that he or she cannot respond to directly, either due to disguise, eavesdropping, decorum, tact, or prevailing social norms.
Cannon says the character’s reticence and a restraint can be used as a guide to emotional and psychological complexity.

To demonstrate his point, Cannon looks at two speeches of Edgar’s in King Lear. The first in 3.6 is a soliloquy in which Edgar speaks out-loud to himself. The second is the speech he delivers in 5.3 to Albany and Edmund. These speeches deal with Edgar’s disguise of Poor Tom.

Cannon points out that disguises are often used to gain or regain power, but Poor Tom gives Edgar knowledge, but not power. It is a disguise that puts an emotional burden on Edgar that he reveals after his fight with Edmund.

Cannon stages the speech in 5.3 in order to demonstrate that the onstage hearers guide audience response. Edgar faces entirely upstage, where Albany and Edmund are located. Edmund and Albany’s faces were therefore much more visible to the majority of the audience.

Bill Gelber, Texas Tech University
A “Ha” in Shakespeare: the Soliloquy as Excuse and Challenge to the Audience

Gelber begins by mentioning the large debate surrounding soliloquies: should they be internal and introspective or external and taken to the audience? To explore the answer, Gelber looks at Shakespeare’s use of a single word, “Ha.” “Ha” can be a shorter version of the word “have,” when elision is necessary, or it can be repeating to simulate a character’s laughter: “ha, ha, ha,” or it can be a word of chiding, especially when located after a question.

Gelber is interested in this final use, especially when it occurs in a soliloquy. Shakespeare uses it sparingly, and Gelber with the help of the actors explores two examples.

The first is from Measure for Measure, 2.2. Angelo asks, “Who sins most? Ha?” In this moment he is looking to the audience for an answer. Gelber argues that the “ha” here is an interjectional interrogatory used to explain Angelo’s previous aside in the scene with Isabella, an aside that is an abrupt and surprising admission of temptation. In this soliloquy, Angelo is making his case before a jury of playgoers.

Gelber then briefly looks at a couple examples where “ha” us used in dialogue, where it is used to provoke other characters to respond. Gelber says “ha” is used in much the same way in a soliloquy, only the other character is the audience.

Hamlet says “ha” in his “Am I a coward?” soliloquy. Gelber argues that the “ha?” seeks an actual response, otherwise why would Hamlet bother? This soliloquy assumes response. Gelber mentions the famous production of Hamlet starring David Warner where one night when Warner asked, “Am I a coward?,” a man called out, “Yes!” When Mark Rylance played Hamlet he performed this soliloquy at the edge of the stage, as close to the audience as possible in order to provoke a response.

Evelyn Tribble, University of Otago
Inset Skill Displays

Tribble’s paper is on early modern actors and their skill set. She bemoans that this aspect is not paid much attention in current studies. For example, the art of gesture is often dismissed as static and old-fashioned. Tribble feels that we should look at these skills positively and as part of an ecology of skill.

Tribble notes that the abundant stage directions in early modern play texts call for a wide range of physical and verbal abilities, including speaking, fencing, wrestling, vaulting, dancing, tumbling, and singing. Londoners could experience many of these skills in arenas other than the theatre, meaning that they were educated and informed.

Fencing displays were part of theatrical tradition and also civic life. and therefore viewers of drama were likely to have a high knowledge of the sport. Many plays also call for highly technical forms of dance. Dance had a wide cultural currency. Spectators attended performances at London’s dancing schools.

Tribble encourages us to consider how an early modern performer’s skills existed in a whole culture that cannot be discovered by looking at the printed page alone.

Katherine Mayberry, Grand Valley State University & Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company
Judging Spectators: The Manipulation of Audience Critical Response

Mayberry took the stage to discuss the use of prologues and epilogues in early modern drama. These speeches address the theatre audience as an audience; they define the audience role and give specific instructions. These prologues and epilogues frequently refer to the audience’s power to judge the performance, but manage to shifts the responsibility for the play’s success or failure onto the audience.

Playwrights use several tactics in their prologues and epilogues, including scripting and cueing applause, preemptively apologizing, anticipating criticism and dismissing them, and stating that the play will appel to discerning auditors.

Shakespeare cues the audience’s applause in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, and As You Like It. Puck says, “Give me your hands if we be friends.” This is a conditional phrase. The audience must either applaud or cease to be the players’ friends. Rosalind’s epilogue scripts the audience response: “bid me farewell,” and cues the audience: “when I curtsy.”

In the opening Chorus of Henry V, Shakespeare uses the tactics of preemptively apologizing, and anticipating criticism and dismissing it, specifically demands for onstage realism. The Chorus also enlists the audience in the creation of performance, thus suggesting if the play’s not successful the audience has failed.

Mayberry moves onto examples where the playwright is more insulting to the audience. Ben Jonson’s prologues were often antagonistic. He disparages the judgement of those who criticize the play.
Jonson doesn’t solicit the audience’s help, but places blame for negative response on the audience’s poor taste.

John Ford’s The Broken Heart offers auditors membership in an elite club of those with “noble judgement” and “clear eyes.” giving an incentive to like the play. Thomas Middleton’s No Wit/No Help Like a Woman concedes failure before the play begins: “How is it possible to suffice so many ears? So many eyes?”

Mayberry concludes that early modern authors recognized the audience’s power over playwright and performer and sought to control it. They sought to wrest that power back by orchestrating audience response.

The speakers in this session were aided by OCS actors John Harrell, Allison Glenzer, and Gregory Jon Phelps.