The Tempest

Tonight I saw The Tempest at The Steppenwolf and, in general, I liked it.   Above all there are two things that really struck me about the performance:  one that I really loved and that opened my eyes, one that left me deeply disappointed.  Good news first.

Depth.  It's so simple we never even think about it, but another aspect of the genius of theater is depth -- simple, literal, spatial depth.  Film has no depth in this sense.  Light is insubstantial and it is laid against a screen -- necessarily thin.  Even shadow puppets (another medium of shadows, light, and screens) imply depth, but film is predicated on translucence, and the physical presence of film is only millimeters thick.  The stage and staging of The Tempest, under the direction of Tina Landau, however, insists on depth.  The stage is largely empty and from the house we can see all the way back to the cinderblock wall, every drop, every traveler, and ever set piece is partial -- pipes and short curtains, narrow screens -- so that we are provided units of measurement in space.  In a brilliant scene Ferdinand moves a pile of wooden girders from up right to down left where they remain in a pile for the rest of the show.  And by which we can record movement in the space.  Most moving, perhaps, was the amazing moment in the masque when several booms with large hanging flowers descend over the stage, fixing a beautiful grid upon the scene.

Additionally in group scenes, of which there are many, the Ms. Landau makes engaging use of lines and clumps.  In the scene, for instance, when the King and his cohort first find themselves on the island they form a kind of circle facing in all directions and examining their surroundings.  Then, when confronted by Prospero at the end, they are in almost a straight line as Prosero maneuvers around them.

The terrible moment in the play was the very last one, but it was so bad it's almost infuriating. Of course the reason it is so frustrating is because it came so close to being brilliant.  Here's the final speech of The Tempest, so I never forget it:

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

Amazing: the speech continues to perpetuate the story while not only acknowledging the audience but demanding their activity, and not the "audience participation" of becoming actors or storytellers, but truly participation as an audience -- applauding and completing the story by this collective imagination.  Frank Galati does this speech beautifully.  He begins by removing his coat and his hat, setting them off (on that pile of wood!).  He crosses casually centerstage and glances back at the costume pieces like he might have left Prospero there.  He looks right at us and the lights have changed a little, very clear and simple -- a man raised on a platform.  He says the final words, asking for the applause of the audience "Let your indulgence set me free." There is a miniscule pause (one second max) then a sound cue and a blackout.  

This is perverse and cowardly.  The stakes have been made very clear, if we do not applaud and even more importantly do not send him to Naples all is lost.  He has forsworn his magic: this is the only way.  What should happen, what I was certain would happen, is that he stands there waiting until we applaud.  The blackout and "swoosh" sound cue ends the play before it's over. The end of the play is everyone agreeing to send Prospero home, or -- and Shakespeare, must have understood somehow that this was a possibility -- we decide he should be confined on the island forever.  This production takes the audience out of creative act of the theater and it broke my heart.

My heart is strong enough to remember a good night at the theater, the visuals really are stunning and there are some good performances, if you get a rush ticket you should go, but you should try to applaud before they cut to black.

(Be forewarned: there are vests in this production of a Shakespeare play.  If you are sensitive to such things, you should stay at home.)

Pericles and Poetry

So I'm currently at work on a (vest-less!) production of Shakespeare's Pericles.  I've divided the production into four episodes and we're performing it serially on Wednesdays until the middle of August.  One of the challenges of the play is its shifting tone--at one moment it's undeniably comic, the next it's profoundly sad or even desperate--and informing this its multiplicity of styles.  The narrator of the play is Gower (a 14th century author) who speaks in highly wrought archaisms, his narrations are punctuated by little mimed scenes that move the action through time and space, the beginning of the play is heavy with rhymed couplets and relentlessly perfect iambs, and the latter half moves briskly through verse and prose sometimes seemingly too lightly for its subject matter.

Peter Brook, in his concise and delightful Evoking and Forgetting Shakespeare speaks of the need to avoid dwelling on authorial concerns in the creation of characters in a Shakespearian production.  He writes of the necessity of believing that one has the precise transcript of a real person's thoughts and words, to believe that this poetry is an accurate depiction of the speech of a remarkable person.  Many authors have a notable style, perhaps the most evident modern example is David Mamet, and necessarily these styles bring to mind certain characteristics. As Mamets men are swift-speaking and ferocious eking out telegraphic retorts, Shakespeare's expound and waver, and take the time to see through their immediate concerns to universal complexities and themes.  It is a grand depiction of humanity but suppose I must agree that  we must shoulder this kind of honesty when doing these plays.  To allow actors to concern themselves with authorial intention and error is to insure a two-dimensional, if functional, portrayal.  Thus the difficulty for us has been in consistently and creatively motivating these dramatic changes in tone as the continued unmediated expression of real persons' state.

My favorite aspect of the challenge of honestly inhabiting poetry is that what we might indicate simply on film as a single glance, a tightened lip, or a wry smile is spelled out broadly and without apology over the course of an entire soliloquy.  Although we are more accustomed to the opposite (searching the text for clues to elaborate backstories and motivations not actually present), it is sometimes helpful for an actor to think about that simple human moment that this wealth of poetry describes--how to distill it to a second--before we dwell in it for minutes  

A more modern example is Auden's famous "Funeral Blues" which I think is perfect in the same way, in that it explicates with powerful precision what I know I could only say in an swallowed sigh:

"Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

I have wondered if it's the more evident artificiality of the theater that lets us explore these emotions in a "non-naturalistic" way, but what Brook admonishes us to do is insist on the naturalism and exceptionalism of this manner of expression, to be in awe of the characters as characters, precisely not as the creations of a genius working in  art to express his themes.  It is a surprising challenge and I hope we can succeed at it.

Shakespeare and Vests

Spent all afternoon cleaning out the costume room and I reminded myself of my current soapbox.  In contemporary productions of Shakespeare--particularly but by no means exclusively amateur--it's very important everyone wears vests.  I'm sure you've noticed it, how dapper Richard III looks in his trenchcoat and vest, how jolly Falstaff is with his round paunch peeking over his little red vest.  Even fairies get to wear vests--best of all, without shirts!  Anyway, any submitted pictures of Shakespeare productions without vests will get posted here, and any production in Chicago I promise to go see.   (note: Togas don't count)