Madcap Melange

For this production of The Good Person of Szechuan, I am envisioning a madcap melange of ensemble excellence. The production will use a troupe of 14 actors, at least 2 puppet manipulators, masks and quick costume changes.

We are deliberately mixing and matching from many different styles, time periods and cultures.

It's a crazy mix.

Zany.

Hopefully hilarious.

research

I'm doing research for my upcoming directing gigs. I'm directing Good Person of Szechuan with a teen troupe.

Brecht's play is like a parable. We are playing with the idea of China or Szechuan. So my research has included images from Chinese fairy tales as well as images of costume and fashion of China in the late 1930s to early 1940s.

Brecht's play uses the grit of the down and out and the fantastic elements of visits from traveling gods and personal transformation. So my research has included posters selling cigarettes and hats in the 1930s, and images of Chinese gods in ceremonial robes.

We are playing with the unexpected and the making-strange and the theatrical. So my research has included the Marx brothers, traditional marriage in China and the Maoist marriage laws.

We are playing with marrying popular tunes with Brecht's song lyrics, as well as creating atmosphere with Chinese traditional music. So we are researching 1920s and 1930s ukulele tunes and contemporary hallelujahs and folk songs and drinking songs and Chinese music.

We are using masks and puppets so I have found images to share of masks in history and in actor training, and puppets being made and puppets being used.

I always learn even more than I imagined when I research a play.

The journey begins

Tomorrow is the day for the auditions/orientation for Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechuan presented by Full Impact Theater. I have "come out of retirement" to direct this show, long one of my favorites.

Tomorrow is the "beginning" although as the director, I've already been doing a lot of work. I've been researching the play, the era and place, and my particular tweaks on them. I have met with my production assistants. I've visited the two different stages on which this production will be performing.

So, maybe I began when I agreed to direct this play, some months ago.

Or maybe I began back in the 1990s, when I mused aloud how much I'd like to direct this play. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my troupe plotted behind my back to see if they could get together a group of alumni from my youth troupe to surprise me with a production-- but alas, too many had graduated and moved to diverse and distant destinations.

Or maybe I began in 1976, when I attended a summer intensive program at American University in D.C. In  one of our classes, we workshopped this play and I fell in love with its possibilities.

Bringing this play to life, beginning this particular production, who knows when it started?

Tomorrow, though, is a new step.

art vs. commerce

I need to come back to this. If you have thoughts, by all means share them.

I'm back!

I'm back! In more ways than one.

I'm back to this blog. I have quite a list of topics for this year. My friend LB is interested in doing Shakespeare in the park. I've done several different summers in different parks producing Shakespeare, so I told my friend I'd address this topic. I like talking Shakespeare. I do. I really do.

I'm back directing. I just directed a wonderful staged reading of Beth Kander's award winning play Scrambled in Flint. I am lined up to direct another of Beth's plays, Unshelved, in another state with my son's theater company (more details and links once this is official). So I am back to working theater with my kids!

AND I'm about to start directing The Good Person of Szechuan for Full Impact Theater, the teen theater company formerly known as Michigan Youth Theater-

in other words, I'm back with the company I founded more than a dozen years ago.

Stay tuned!

Shakespeare: my core teachings

Here is the core of my teaching about Shakespeare:

1.       Shakespeare is a genius

2.       Shakespeare’s genius is theatrical

3.       Shakespeare is a dirty old man

 

I approach the teaching differently depending on whether it is a performance class or dramatic lit/history class.  Still, the core remains:

1.       Shakespeare is a genius. Shakespeare’s canon, and the King James Bible (to which Shakespeare is said to have contributed), created the English language. Harold Bloom argues that Shakespeare in fact invented what it means to be a conscious, thinking individual. Trust the genius. Believe in it. Have fun with it. And never forget:

2.       Shakespeare’s genius is theatrical. Shakespeare has nearly been destroyed by dry dissection by dons in Oxford and dunces posing as teachers of English lit. Shakespeare is theatrical genius, and that means action. That means getting up and doing it. That means hearing it spoken aloud with passion. Never forget that Shakespeare was not an artist; he was a businessman and a craftsman. His plays made lots of money, because they worked as great theater, entertainment, better than cockfights or bear baiting.

3.       Shakespeare is a dirty old man. Remember, it smells but it sells, and Shakespeare was about putting butts in the seats. If you think it’s a dirty joke, it is. If you think it might be a dirty joke, it is. If you can’t imagine how that could be a dirty joke- it probably still is.

Those are the three main points. In teaching, I give examples and anecdotes, usually going from #3 on to #1, and developing according to whether the focus is theater studies/dramatic lit/history, or if the focus is performance.

Any time I get confused- it occasionally happens- I go back to point #1. Shakespeare is a genius! Let's figure this out!

I am not averse to cutting Shakespeare, however one must cut with care. That will be the topic of a future post.

For performance, I go strongly with Patrick Tucker, with whom I studied while I was in London (lucky me!). His approach is in his book: Secrets of Acting Shakespeare: The Original Approach.  His premise includes points #1-#3 above, and the fact that in Shakespeare’s time, there was no rehearsal. Pretty much none. Tucker deduced that Shakespeare had to pack all the direction, actor’s notes, and stage directions, right into the text itself. He uses the First Folio as the closest we have to Shakespeare’s work, using the clues of the “random” capitalization, using rhythms of verse, assonance, alliteration, contrast, comparison, and so on.

For dramatic lit, I still get up and read it, do it. The opening scene of Romeo and Juliet is awesome for action, dirty jokes, and sudden violence.  One point I try so hard to make when teaching Shakespeare: try to think of it as the first time. What if you didn’t know the story? R & J starts out like a comedy!

For theater history, there are tons of things that are fun: QEI, the Virgin Queen; Puritans trying to shut down the theater; the secularization of theater; popular entertainment. Still, to me, Shakespeare is the pre-eminent genius, not only of the Elizabethan age, but of every age; sui generis, his own thing.

favorite theater memories

Theater is an art that transforms. It transforms those who participate as artists, and it transforms those who participate as audience.

I'm going to capture some of my favorite theater memories. Here is one.

It was 1999. With my troupe of young actors, I'd been seeking a performance space for our production of As You Like It. Our troupe was made up of young people from many different school districts- some from public schools, some from private schools, some homeschooled- we didn't have a home base.

We finally reached an agreement with an urban school. An inner city school. Not a school any of our troupe members attended. We could use their theater for free in exchange for performances during the day for their high school students.

Fair enough.

Our As You Like It was set in the swing era. We had taken Shakespeare's words and set them to the music of the era, to tunes like "Jeepers Creepers" and "Minnie the Moocher" and a number of Gershwin tunes. We'd set all of the songs in the text, and several other sections, to these tunes. We ended with a big swing dance.

Our troupe had actors of all ages- the oldest actor was 18 and the youngest actors were 3 or 4 years old. Using my customary creativity, I had given the youngest, cutest actors the roles of sheep. Each time the shepherd Corin would enter, first you would hear the strains of Rossini's William Tell's Overture Call to the Cows and then in would trip (sometimes, literally, trip) three or four (sometimes one of the sheep was too afraid to come out) little kids in sheep costume, followed by the actors of the scene. The sheep would bounce about and then exit.

Okay, now it's show time.

As director/stage manager, I am out in the audience as the high school students file in. Dripping chains and leather and torn denim. Pierced. Tatooed. Shaved heads and wildly styled and dyed heads.

Oh dear.

How is a swing-era Shakespearean pastoral comedy going to work with this group???

The opening scenes of the gentle comedy face a stony silence from the tough- or posing as tough, which could be worse- teens of the audience.

The first songs are tolerated. We think. The vast tough audience has us worried.

Then, at last, in come the sheep.

And almost as one, this tough group of a couple thousand inner city teens, coo "Awwwwww....." at the sight of the unbelievably cute sheep.

And the audience starts to laugh at the jokes.

And applaud the songs.

In fact, when the rendition of "In the springtime, the only pretty ring time" is performed to the tune of "Minnie the Moocher" a la Cab Calloway, it brings the house down. The audience demands an encore.

And the two thousand some students who were grudgingly willing to endure Shakespeare to get out of math class roar and stomp their approval of the ending swing dance and curtain call.

Hey, and a  ho, and a nonny nonny no!