Austin Fusion Magazine reviews our production of Antony and Cleopatra.

POOR SHADOWS OF ELYSIUM PRESENTS ‘ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA’

Also contains a few great images of the show taken by Clayton Hodges.

Antony and Cleopatra, at the Curtain Theatre, to be directed by Joe Falocco

When I need a break from my thesis, I can work on my lines for Antony and Cleopatra. Joe Falocco is on my thesis committee, and has given me some invaluable advice already. I'm really looking forward to working with him on this production.

Antony and Cleopatra announcement

Bridget and I will play the title characters. Here we are as Feste and Olivia in Twelfth Night.

Gallathea

Although Gallathea is interesting on its own, I’m personally really interested in the history of the work. I see it as a link between one of the most popular plays of the Italian Renaissance and some of the most popular plays of the English Renaissance.

(Rachel Steed-Redig as Phillida, and Kristin Hall as Gallathea. Photo by Bridget Farias.)

Torquato Tasso is best known for his poetry and his insanity. He died only a few days before he was to be crowned “king of the poets” by the Pope. His poetry is largely forgotten in the English-speaking world, but his legacy still lives in our collective consciousness. In 1573, Tasso’s play, Aminta, was performed before the Duke of Ferrara. This pastoral play is extremely difficult to stage effectively, because much of the dialogue describes action that occurred offstage. The play features nymphs and satyrs, Cupid and Venus. If I were to try to describe what the play is about in one sentence, it would be something along the lines of, “What is the true nature of love?”

In 1588, John Lyly’s play, Gallathea, was performed before Queen Elizabeth I by the Children of Paul’s. Gallathea features nymphs, Cupid, and Venus, and asks the same question. The action of the two plays are different, and Gallathea is much more English in its approach, since it features a comic subplot, but the theme, setting, and characters of the two plays are very similar.

I decided to direct Gallathea for Poor Shadows primarily because it was the opposite of our last production, Richard II, in many ways (it’s a comedy, in verse, with many substantial female roles). But possibly the most rewarding thing for me about digging into this text has been discovering the echoes of this play in later works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Scholars have compared parts of the play to The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and As You Like It. Parts of this play also call to my mind Romeo and Juliet (the fathers remind me of Capulet and Montague), Love’s Labour’s Lost (lovers hiding and listening to another confess their love in a soliloquy), and Twelfth Night (Toby and Andrew discussing which signs of the zodiac rule which parts of the body). And obviously, the Alchemist and his boy, and their lists of spirits and bodies, call to mind Jonson’s play on the subject.

At first blush, Gallathea is very light and not very deep, but there’s one aspect of the play that I think defies that impression. (SPOILER ALERT) To escape the curse of Neptune, two young virgins are disguised by their fathers as boys. The two girls meet in the woods and, each thinking the other to be a boy, fall in love. In the final scene, when they discover they’re both girls, the reaction of the bystanders is predictable. But the reactions of the two girls are surprising. Diana tells them they must “leave these fond affections,” and Gallathea replies, “I will never love any but Phillida.” Phillida agrees. “Nor I any but Gallathea.” Their love is based on something deeper than gender. Although the social order might not approve (Venus says she’ll change one of them into a boy), neither of the girls cares, as long as they can be together. It’s the viewpoint of the two girls that I find so interesting in this play, and I’ve tried to enhance the focus on that element in our show.

The Early Modern English drama is my area of interest, so, of course, I find this play really interesting for many reasons. But I think our show will still be very entertaining for regular, non-nerdy people, too.

That

I had a few moments to kill before Cymbeline rehearsal yesterday, so, on a whim I looked up the word "that" online. I often feel the word is more important in Shakespeare than it gets credit for - which is to say, I think actors don't stress it when they should.

If wikipedia is to be believed, the word "that" has seven grammatical functions in English:

• as a complementizer/subordinating conjunction. ("He asked that she go.")
• to introduce a restrictive relative clause ("The test that she took was hard.") In this role that may be analyzed either as a relative pronoun or as a conjunction as in the first case; see English relative clauses: Status of that.
• as a demonstrative pronoun ("That was hard.") (plural: those)
• as a demonstrative adjective ("That test was hard.") (plural: those)
• as an adverb ("The test wasn't that bad.")

In the first two uses the word is usually pronounced weakly, as /ðət/, whereas in the other uses it is pronounced /ðæt/.

 Because of Shakespeare's love of long poetic comparisons, he often used the word "that" as a demonstrative pronoun. I guess modern American readers see the word and aren't clear that it isn't used in one of the first two ways. The general rule, then, I suppose, is that to convey the meaning, when the word "that" is used as a demonstrative pronoun, it should almost always be stressed, regardless of where it appears in a line of verse.

Repunctuating the text

Grad school and working on two shows has really cut back on my time to post lately. But something new happened the other day. I'm directing a production of Cymbeline that opens in a week. A few weeks back, we were working on 5.3, and I had what I thought was a very interesting observation about the text. This time, instead of running to Facebook to post it as a status, or writing a blog post about it, I thought,"I'd better do some digging around first and see if anyone has written a paper on this topic."

But, a thought on repuncuating the text. People have very different opinions about how to treat punctuation in Shakespeare. Some advocate taking out everything but end stops.Some people will stick to what's in the Folio. Some will use whatever the editors of the text have given them, and some ignore all of those options and do whatever they want. One notable example is Derek Jacobi's Benedick. The online version of the text punctuates the line this way:

 Love me! why, it must be requited.

For starters, it seems that often exclamation points and question marks can be swapped out. A footnote in the Arden Macbeth makes this point about "We fail? But screw your courage..." Apparently, when Jacobi played Benedick, he delivered the line this way:

Love me? WHY? It must be requited!

This is a really interesting take on the line. But, after playing the role myself, I don't really think it makes sense. Benedick is at times very awkward, but only when he think he might be embarrassed. I don't feel he has such a low opinion of himself that he can't imagine why someone would love him. Quite the contrary. Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, Jacobi's Oxfordianism makes me want to disagree with everything he says or does.

Anyway, one of these punctuation interpretations occurred to me while I was working on Macbeth. A lot of people have struggled with:

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly

It occurred to me that it could also be done this way:

If it were done, WHEN tis done

A mental correction - did I say "if?" What I should have said was "WHEN." My Macbeth didn't ultimately decide to go with this reading, and I'm not sure I like it better, but it is another possibility that I'm going to keep in mind if I ever have a chance to play the role.

Edit: A few hours later, it occurs to me, the obvious solution is probably the best:

if IT were DONE, when TIS done, THEN twere WELL
it WERE done QUICK ly

Simple, regular verse. How did I get so turned around?

Reviews. Cymbeline. Directing.

When I'm criticized in a review, I take it very seriously, as I'm sure most performers do. Much like life in general, in performance, many of us compare our outtakes to everyone else's highlight reel - our worst against their best. There's an insecurity, even when we've spent an enormous amount of time and effort developing general skills and doing specific work on the particular piece at issue. Also, I always suspect everyone will read a review and take every word in it as gospel. I'm not sure why, since I don't do that. So, all of that being said, it's a great feeling to get a good review. But it's a strange, bittersweet feeling when you do a show and the review is very positive about your performance but not a good review of the show overall. My attitude on good reviews is not to give them much weight at all. I generally try to ignore them, because I want to minimize the gutting feeling of getting a bad one. Obviously, this came up because of a recent review: MUCH-ADO-ABOUT-NOTHING-Features-Strong-Leads-but-a-Few-Flaws

Speaking of challenges, I'm preparing to direct Cymbeline. I like to read as much as I can about a play while I'm working on it. Criticism, historical context, whatever seems relevant to the play at issue. With a play like Cymbeline, there isn't a lot out there. One thing that I find really intriguing is the significance of the location of Milford-Haven. It's significant for one reason that I think probably would have been known to Shakespeare - it's where Henry Tudor landed when he returned from the continent to challenge Richard III for the crown. The play seems very much *about* Britain - the word Britain appears numerous times in the text. I'm pretty sure this is no coincidence, but I just haven't quite connected all the dots yet.

But on to the challenges. Aside from the obvious (Jupiter appears, riding an eagle), I think I may struggle with getting enough men to even do the show. The theatre is in a small town outside of Austin. The team down there is really good, the space is really good. The distance will probably scare some people off, though. Which gives me another challenge - how to combine roles, gender swap characters in a non-confusing way, double parts, or cut the play to minimize the number of actors necessary.

Something I've been wanting to write about for a while is a reminder to myself before the Cymbeline auditions. Kind of a little manifesto for casting. My job as director is to put the best show on stage that I can. In order to do that, I need to get as much of a sense of what actors are capable of as possible. That means that I need to make them comfortable in the audition room. I need to give them a sense of what I'm looking for in various parts, rather than just expecting them to read my mind. I need to give them direction in the audition, to see how well they can adjust and change. And I also need to keep my mind open to different interpretations of characters. All of this, of course, is balanced against a REALLY short time with each person. But my job is to do those things as much as possible in the short time I get with each person. if I don't, I do a disservice to the show and to every person in it.

Poor Shadows of Elysium: 2014 "Season"

We don't really have "seasons" per se, because we're all pretty busy with many projects, so we do shows as a company on more of an ad hoc basis. With that said, We're thrilled to announce that we'll be presenting William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra at the Trinity Street Playhouse in April of 2014.

We're still working out a few details so we can't announce the venue yet, but sometime in late January or early February, I'm planning to direct John Lyly's Gallathea. I'm pretty excited about this show. It meets all of the requirements I was looking for in our next show: an early modern play, not by Shakespeare, that features several women in prominent roles. Since Lyly wrote for companies composed of boys, instead of adults, I guess he could have many more convincing ladies on stage than the adult troupes could. The play is in prose (for which Lyly was famous), which is another difference from the all-verse Richard II. The play also shows an early modern perspective on gender that I think modern audiences may find surprising.

By the way, I'm also playing Benedick in Much Ado, which opens in a few weeks. After that, I'll direct Cymbeline at the EmilyAnn. Then, I'll direct another show with an October/November run time. I can't say what it is yet - the company hasn't announced their season. I'll post it when I can.