Challenging expectations, or actor insecurity.

Titus Andronicus opens tonight. Working up Marcus has been a great experience. I've enjoyed working with the cast and crew. For me, most of what I enjoy about doing theatre is working with the text, about finding secrets. Those moments of discovery, when you feel you find a deeper level of meaning - that's what I love. And I've found that over the course of this process, I've changed how I initially felt about almost every single line Marcus has. At this point, I see almost nothing Marcus says the same way I saw it the first few times I read the play. It's been very rewarding.

However, I'm also somewhat nervous about that fact. I've already posted about the difficulties with the speech I have when Marcus finds Lavinia. The natural instinct is to comfort her, but the words of the speech are in no way comforting to Lavinia. On the contrary, Marcus seems to be focused on himself, on accepting and coming to terms with the violence that has been done on his niece. I put a good deal of thought into how this speech worked, and ultimately decided that it should generally be played *away* from Lavinia, instead of to her, because it's so internal. As much as I'd love to run to Lavinia and make everything okay, that's not the speech that was written for me. The speech I have is about my character's anguish, even though it's in the face of much greater pain. I'd also note that playing the speech this way allows for a contrast with Titus' reaction when he first sees Lavinia. Playing the speech to her, comforting her physically - I think they are safe choices, uninteresting, and contradict the text. But I think those choices are exactly what people will expect. I imagine people will ask me why I didn't do those things, or go home wondering.

I'm looking forward to getting this run started so I'll have a little more time to write about this topic. The question, as I see it, is how much should an actor let the expectations of the audience (and the critics) inform how he or she portrays the character? Do you give the people what they want, or do you stick to the meaning you've wrestled out of the text? For better or for worse, I'm going to be faithful to my understanding of the text - I think my choices are supported by the text, they are emotionally true to me, and they are consistent. And yet, I fear that people won't appreciate or understand the choice. I suppose if that happens, the fault will be mine, for somehow not selling it enough.

More on this to come.

Why scan Shakespeare's verse?

Not too long ago, I posted a page from my work with the text preparing to play Marcus Andronicus. Someone I respect very much asked me if doing this sort of work didn’t take away from the flow and/or the meaning. I replied off the cuff that, on the contrary, I think this kind of work adds to the meaning. It was not a very useful response. I thought I’d expand on my ideas on this a little more, in what is almost certain to be a rambling post.

First of all, I think of a script as similar to a sheet of music. But we’re used to modern scripts that generally only have the notes – no time. A sheet of music that just says “g, g, g, e, f, f, f, d,” only gives you part of the information you need to play the music. Obviously, there are many, many ways that those notes could be played. But when you start with an eighth rest, play three eighth notes and then a half note, you get the opening motif of Beethoven’s Fifth.

Modern writers are sometimes conscious of time and sometimes not. Some of them write in pauses, ellipses, etc. But in Shakespeare’s time, verse was a very common form, and one in which plays were very commonly performed. It was something the actors and audiences were used to. And for that reason, something the playwrights generally used as a tool. That’s one of the reasons why if an actor wants to wring the most possible out of the text of an early modern play, the actor has to pay close attention to the verse.

Take this line from Hamlet, for example:

Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me.

The first thing we do is see if we can read the line in ten syllables, with stress on the even numbered syllables.

a DIEU, a DIEU! ham LET, re MEM ber ME.

Nope, that doesn’t make sense. It has to be

a DIEU, a DIEU! HAM let, re MEM ber ME.

Now, I certainly don’t think there are no errors in the text of Shakespeare’s plays. Note how Orsino is called both Duke and Count in Twelfth Night. That seems like an error that just never got fixed. But placing that stress on the first syllable of Hamlet in that position seems to be done for a reason. That line could easily have been written in regular verse.

Adieu, adieu! And Hamlet, don’t forget.

It seems obvious to me that there’s meant to be a lot of emphasis on Hamlet’s name in this line. The ghost is disappearing, but wants to stress the importance of the message before he goes. A final plea. It’s an exclamation point. Many actors would probably treat that last sentence that way regardless of the verse, but in many cases, the verse will reveal emphasis that you might not otherwise think of. Emphasis that was specifically written in by the playwright. To disregard it is to ignore an important piece of the text.

Prompt script

Some of my fellow actors seemed surprised last night when they saw what I had done to my script. I guess it may be a little unusual, but I think it's a good exercise. First off, I create a prompt script, meaning a script than contains only my lines and cues. It's easier to carry around and easier to find things in. It also has the psychological effect of making it seem to me that I have less to memorize. If I have lines in verse, I create a table with ten columns and scan each line into the chart. I use this script to memorize the lines. This way, I learn them phonetically. If I scan the line and realize a syllable needs to be elided, every time I look at the prompt script, that syllable isn't there. Typing the entire part over again also helps with memorization.

I'm posting a page of my prompt script as an example, subject to the proviso that I'm not asserting this is the only way the lines on this page can be scanned. There are often many ways a line can be scanned. One of the things I enjoyed most about George Wright's Shakespeare's Metrical Art was a passage in which Wright noted the various ways scholars had scanned certain lines of verse. If people who know a LOT more than I do disagree, it's liberating. It becomes another creative process instead of something to dread.

Names

I heard something in rehearsal last night that made me think of this. 

In his book Shakespeare’s Advice to the Players, Sir Peter Hall states that because the sanctity of the line is paramount, an “actor must therefore try to make every line scan.” In other words, if there’s a way to reduce a line to ten syllables, following the pattern of unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed, we should try to do so. Of course, even in an early play like Titus Andronicus, not every line scans. Working my lines for Marcus, I’ve found at least a couple of feminine endings (this refers to a line that contains 11 syllabes, the last of which is unstressed), and one line with only nine syllables. Sometimes, to make the line fit, we have to expand a word, as when we pronounce the –ed at the end of a word like banished, or drop a syllable we might otherwise pronounce elide (called an elision – the dropped syllable is “elided”). A trap for modern actors is the idea that words are pronounced the same every time we say them. This is particularly a problem with names.

Here’s an example. In Act III, scene ii of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon gives instructions to Puck. During the speech, he pronounces Demetrius two different ways in as many lines.


Then stir Demetrius up with bitter wrong;
And sometime rail thou like Demetrius;


In the first of these two lines, the “i” in Demetrius is elided, so that the name has three syllables: then STIR de ME trus UP with BIT ter WRONGS. In the second line, all four syllables are pronounced: and SOME time RAIL thou LIKE de ME tri US.

Not even names are immune to this. But hey, what's in a name, right?

Marcus Andronicus

Next in the queue: Marcus Andronicus.

Titus Andronicus is known as Shakespeare's bloodiest play, although the body count in other plays is higher. Titus seems to be Shakespeare's attempt to outdo the writers of a then-popular genre, the revenge tragedy, which probably started with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy. The play has a bad reputation. Some critics refuse to admit the possibility that Shakespeare even wrote it. According to a Wikipedia article, Harold Bloom, in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, calls the play an atrocity, and flatly says that he can concede NO INTRINSIC VALUE to the play. So, it's not a stretch to say that this play contains some challenges.

The greatest challenge for me, not surprisingly, is a speech that is almost always mentioned in any discussion of the play. I'm referring to the speech Marcus has in Act II, scene 4, when he first finds Lavinia. Marcus has a lot of poetic blah-blah upon finding his mutilated niece. Whether this is supposed to serve a choric effect, show that Marcus is in shock, or to magnify or diminish the horror of what has happened - I have no idea yet. All of those theories have been posited. I am looking forward to working on it, though, to see what I can come up with.

Here's the speech:

Who is this? my niece, that flies away so fast!
Cousin, a word; where is your husband?
If I do dream, would all my wealth would wake me!
If I do wake, some planet strike me down,
That I may slumber in eternal sleep!
Speak, gentle niece, what stern ungentle hands
Have lopp'd and hew'd and made thy body bare
Of her two branches, those sweet ornaments,
Whose circling shadows kings have sought to sleep in,
And might not gain so great a happiness
As have thy love? Why dost not speak to me?
Alas, a crimson river of warm blood,
Like to a bubbling fountain stirr'd with wind,
Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips,
Coming and going with thy honey breath.
But, sure, some Tereus hath deflowered thee,
And, lest thou shouldst detect him, cut thy tongue.
Ah, now thou turn'st away thy face for shame!
And, notwithstanding all this loss of blood,
As from a conduit with three issuing spouts,
Yet do thy cheeks look red as Titan's face
Blushing to be encountered with a cloud.
Shall I speak for thee? shall I say 'tis so?
O, that I knew thy heart; and knew the beast,
That I might rail at him, to ease my mind!
Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp'd,
Doth burn the heart to cinders where it is.
Fair Philomela, she but lost her tongue,
And in a tedious sampler sew'd her mind:
But, lovely niece, that mean is cut from thee;
A craftier Tereus, cousin, hast thou met,
And he hath cut those pretty fingers off,
That could have better sew'd than Philomel.
O, had the monster seen those lily hands
Tremble, like aspen-leaves, upon a lute,
And make the silken strings delight to kiss them,
He would not then have touch'd them for his life!
Or, had he heard the heavenly harmony
Which that sweet tongue hath made,
He would have dropp'd his knife, and fell asleep
As Cerberus at the Thracian poet's feet.
Come, let us go, and make thy father blind;
For such a sight will blind a father's eye:
One hour's storm will drown the fragrant meads;
What will whole months of tears thy father's eyes?
Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee
O, could our mourning ease thy misery!

It seems completely against human nature to blather on like this after finding a loved one in such a state. I haven't found the flow of this yet. I guess the first thing I need to do with this speech is to see if it breaks into chunks, each containing its own intention, and then see if I can find a path between those ideas. Off to the drawing board...

One more thing

I meant to mention this in my last post, but forgot to include it.

I've made a choice in playing Prospero that I think bears mentioning. In the scenes with Ferdinand and Miranda, I've chosen to play Prospero with a bit of a comical edge. I had difficulty figuring out how to deliver all of the lines in Act I, scene ii, in which P expresses that it's working, and that he'll free Ariel for this - there are several of them, and some of them are fairly close together. This suggests a high degree of excitement - almost giddiness. Once I made the choice to play those lines in that way, it didn't make sense to show actual anger toward Ferdinand when threatening him. So, I decided to make it clear to the audience that I'm acting tough for Ferdinand's benefit - the text supports this, obviously. Setting this dynamic up allows for some semi-comic moments later in the show with Ferdinand, and also shows contrast to the interaction with Caliban and the brace of lords.

I think it may be an unusual choice, and i was concerned about how it would play at first, but the audiences so far have seemed to like it, and I think it's supported by the text.

The race.

When I started doing this, I hoped I'd have time for more posts - more reflection and what not - but the Tempest rehearsal process was really a race for me. It was a great experience, it just went so quickly. I think I had 3 or 4 rehearsals, then 3 of 4 run-throughs, and then we opened. During which, I had to learn a *lot* of lines. Racing to get all of this up on its feet has kept me from posting here as much as I'd have liked, or even from doing the amount of thinking about the character I'd have liked to do. It'd be great if I could spend all my time doing this, but, I've got to work too. What can I say? Wizard needs food badly.

I struggled for a while, and in retrospect, I think that struggle was mostly against my own preconceptions. I kept looking for a "hook." I had this idea that at some point, I'd find something in the text that made the character suddenly come into focus. I've had that experience with other characters I've played, and it's an amazing feeling. But now I have the sense that Prospero is so complex that I could play him for months and still feel I was only scratching the surface.

One thing that presented a problem was Prospero's relationship with Caliban. My early thoughts were, why would Prospero keep a creature around who tried to rape his daughter? The idea that they need someone to fetch in wood and make fires is somewhat ridiculous. A man who can command graves to wake their sleepers, who can bedim the noontide sun and call forth the mutinous winds, can probably handle such mundane business with negligible effort. No, there's something more there. And I no longer think it's simply a need to dominate. When Prospero and  Miranda arrived on the island, Caliban was a thing most brutish, and apparently lacked speech. The exchange Prospero has with Caliban in Act I, scene ii suggests Prospero took on a paternal role toward Caliban. Caliban says when Prospero and Miranda first arrived, they made much of him, gave him water with berries in't, taught him how to name the bigger light and how the less that burned by day and night. This is actually a very tender and honest speech, I think. I imagine Prospero sitting with Caliban, staring up into the night sky, showing him the constellations... This makes Caliban's betrayal of Prospero possibly more painful than the betrayal by Antonio.

I've also wondered as I worked with this play whether or not Prospero planned the events of the twelve years leading up to and including the play (excluding the plot by Caliban, which I don't think Prospero foresaw, being focused on other matters). I still don't really know how I feel about this. Dramatically, I think it's important for the audience to feel that Prospero has a change of heart when he says, "the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance," in Act V. But the comments about the future in the final scene are frequent enough that I wonder. Alonso's wish that Miranda and Ferdinand were "living both in Naples, the king and queen there," and Gonzalo's wondering whether "Milan was thrust from Milan so that his issue should become kings of Naples" make me wonder if Prospero planned or at least shaped all of the events that led to the action of the play. He was, after all, able to make Miranda "more profit than other princes can," and shelter her from other people so that she could be truly amazed upon seeing Ferdinand. It's also worth noting, I think, that Ariel was instructed to place Ferdinand on the island alone. Why? If revenge was the goal, why separate him from the rest of the nobles? Prospero is most concerned when Ariel tells him Ferdinand jumped overboard - as soon as Ariel tells him that happened, the rhythm of the scene changes from long speeches to a short, choppy exchange, with Prospero asking whether it was near the shore, and then following up with, "but are they, Ariel, safe?" Ferdinand is obviously key to Prospero's plan. The plan, then seems to be much more than simple revenge - Ferdinand is a key element. Of course, for every textual argument to support the theory that the entire thing was planned, there's probably another counter-argument that can be made from the text. It's still something I'm exploring, but I find it very interesting.