The Shape of Things to Come

17 Thursday Jul 2014

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sonnets, The Paper Stage, William Shakespeare

Nina is the director in one of the companies I write for – not the one with the Centipede. She called me the other day, and summoned me, because we had things to discuss. Several things.

So I reported to a sort of green-room meeting, and found Nina positively sizzling with ideas – hers and mine.

First of all, could I please prepare an abridged version of my Sonnets play for a staged reading, a sort of hors-d’oeuvre before they stage the whole thing in earnest next year?

And (before I could catch my breath) speaking of Shakespeare, why don’t I open their cycle of Shakespearean readings with… well, not exactly a conference, but a conversation about Shakespeare and Marlowe, with two to four voices to read pieces of my choice, and myself as a narrator?

Oh, and about an Italian Paper Stage – what a marvelous idea! And yes, we are most definitely doing it. Could I please manage the blogging side? And prepare something-something for their website too?

“Only if you feel like it, of course..”

As if I would turn down any of it. As if she thought I would…

It’s quite some work – with a strictish deadline, because roles and readings will have to be handed out before the company disbands for vacations at the beginning of august, and the rest must be ready for the press-conference in which the company will present the season, at the beginning of September. So last night I sat up until four to work on what Nina and I have named the Small Sonnets, to begin with, and I expect a repeat tonight, and then there will be the matter of choosing the readings, and the blog, oh the blog – and let’s not forget two conferences, and the summer course I’m teaching in August…

This is going to be a busy summer.

Backstage With John Lithgow

05 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Theatre

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ArtsBeat, Free Shakespeare in the Park, John Lithgow, King Lear

Don’t you love backstage glimpses? Don’t you love rehearsals? Don’t you love to find out how the magic works?

I do – very much, so I was delighted when I found this delightful series of posts actor John Lithgow is writing for The New York Times’ ArtsBeat blog. Lithgow is currently rehearsing the title role in King Lear for Free Shakespeare in the Park, and finds the time to write Learning Lear, a diary of the rehearsals that is both thoughtful and chatty, with lots of interesting insight on the daily works of a theatre company.

Learning Lear is an ongoing series, and you can find the first handful of entries here. With more to come, of course…

Nearly Averted Centipedicide

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Theatre

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Tags

Clara the Furious, rehearsals, the Centipede, theatre

You may, or may not, have wondered how it ended with the Centipede…

I’haven’t murdered him – but it was a close thing. I know I ended the other post on a hopeful note, saying that we’d stopped hating each other, that things were beginning to work, that perhaps, perhaps…

Actually, no.

He ruined my Nicholas Nickleby moment…

Things seemed to be getting better for a while, and the Director was rather happy with me, and we all felt a little relieved. And perhaps the mistake was in letting the Centipede know, because I can only imagine that, once we stopped scowling at the very mention of the boy’s name, he must have thought he’d done enough. So the brainless creature started missing rehearsals and training sessions – when it was too late to replace him.

He even appeared unforgivably late for dress rehearsal, and then disappeared again before we could start his final drilling – because he had another engagement. He even had the gall to tell the Director that hey, it was just seven lines, for crying out loud…

Which is when we should have sent him to Jericho, shared out his lines, and good riddance. But we didn’t – and paid for it. In the end, he missed two cues out of seven (bless the quick-thinking souls who filled in), messed up his own and everyone else’s blocking like mad, stepped into a dance sequence he didn’t belong to and butchered it…

I was manning the lights board during all that – and pittikins, it was a blood-curdling experience just to watch. I can’t imagine what it must have been onstage and backstage. Or rather, I can – because I heard it all at the after-show dinner. The Centipede wasn’t there – or anywhere around us, since, which goes to show he is possessed of some survival instinct, if nothing else.

I’ve come across him twice in town, after the debacle, and found him very careful in avoiding me…

What’s the bottom line of this story? Very likely that there is only so much you can expect even from the magic of theatre. Miracles don’t happen – unless everyone involved works very hard to make them happen. And it was clearly not the case with this Centipede.

I don’t know what the Centipede’s theatrical future will be – either with “my” company or elsewhere. As far as I’m concerned, he can stay in the ditch and flail all he likes: it’s nice not to have committed a murder, after all, but I am most certainly never wasting another minute or drop of energy on him.

Digital Shakespeares

28 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Theatre

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Digital Shakespeares, Erin Sullivan

Digital Shakespeares is a blog created by literary critic and cultural historian Erin Sullivan. In it she thinks aloud “about Shakespeare and digital culture – sometimes the two at once, and sometimes each on their own”.

I happened there through this very interesting post about how the growing diffusion of digital celebrations is affecting the nature of festivities – with a special eye for this year’s Shakespearean celebrations.

Very interesting stuff, sharp questions and food for thought,with a Shakespearean bent – but ultimately broader than that.

Shakespeare goes viral on his 450th (philly.com)
Celebrating the digital, pt 2 – new directions (digitalshakespeares.wordpress.com)
Shakespeareans in Paris: Notes on the Digital (digitalshakespeares.wordpress.com)

The Paper Stage

21 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Theatre

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Tags

asidenotes, Canterbury, christopher marlowe, play-reading groups, The Jew of Malta, The Paper Stage

I guess much depends on exactly which sort of magic you seek when it comes to theatre – because there are so many.

But if you love the words, and all the imagining the words can spark off, then a play-reading group might be your thing. It might be mine: much as I have been increasingly busying myself with such production aspects as stage direction and lighting, I’m a playwright first. And, words being my stuff, I would love to be part of a project like The Paper Stage: people gathering at the Gulbenkian Cafè, in Canterbury, to read Elizabethan plays aloud.

No experience needed, and, from what I gather, no rehearsals: one just lets the group know, turns up, and… reads. And the play takes on a life of its own, judging by last month’s Romeo and Juliet. Oh, to be in England, now that such a brilliant idea is here…

As researcher and blogger Eoin Price says in his asidenotes, this means a chance to hear – if not to see – performed plays that are seldom staged, and to explore the varied richness of Elizabethan theatre in much more depth than it is usual.

Wish I could be in Canterbury next Monday, for the second Paper Stage event, a reading of Marlowe’s Jew of Malta. And because obviously I can’t, I’m already wondering: can I think up a Paper Stage-like group around here?

Forerunners of Elizabethan Tragedy: Thomas Kyd (reginajeffers.wordpress.com)
Marlowe at Canterbury (asidenotes.wordpress.com)
Elizabethan Rose theatre set to bloom again (guardian.co.uk)

Picture Shakespeare

14 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Theatre

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Internet Archive, John Thurston, Mainz University, shakespeare

Look what I found: a collection of art inspired by Shakespeare, with a definite emphasis on XIXth Century paintings. You can browse by play or by artists.

And this slightly odd book of two hundred and thirty vignette engravings – all of them Shakespearean illustrations from designs of John Thurston. And there is also this 1909 Gallery of Shakespeare Illustrations from Celebrated Works of Art. Both books to browse online or to download from Internet Archive.

The University of Wisconsin’s Illustrated Shakespeare Collection takes some little effort to browse, but is well worth it.

Also, there should be the Oppel-Hammerschmidt Shakespeare Illustration Archive at the University of Mainz, but all links to it seem to be broken… Still, because the description sounds so promising, I post the link all the same, and if you discover something I missed, please let me know in the comments.

And finally, for variety’s sake, a Pinterest board, and another, and a third,

New portraits of Bard of Avon found (thehindu.com)

A Ghost Post

17 Saturday May 2014

Posted by la Clarina in History, Theatre

≈ 1 Comment

I haven’t disappeared, you know?

I’m just in the midst of the worst internet crash of my life, and there’s no knowing when I’ll be online again…

So, I’m borrowing a friend’s wireless to post this thing: a Horrible Histories snippet of Shakespeare discussing playwriting with Richard III’s ghost… Love poor Richard’s grousings…

Except, of course, bad history can make for better theatre – which is very, very unfair, but not entirely unexpected.

Still, it’s all ather fitting, don’t you think? A ghost post from (momentarily) ghost blogger…

But I’ll reappear… -ear… -ear… -ear…

I think.

Quality, Value, & Transient Microcosms

03 Saturday May 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Theatre

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This a masks rticle from Lyn Gardner’s Theatre Blog at The Guardian Online is mostly a collection of great links: bloggers blogging about theatre.

You get an interesting discussion about the difference between quality and value, its hows and whys. And then there is a lovely exploration of a theatre production as both a microcosm and a transient snapshot of the transience of life.

All of it clever, thought-provoking, and absolutely worth reading.

Centipede Training

01 Thursday May 2014

Posted by la Clarina in Theatre

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teaching, theatre

When it comes to theatre, a crisis is usually a combination of disasters – but this time it boils down to a mauled rehearsal schedule, and having to replace an actor who up and quit on us without notice.

And when I say “us”, I actually mean the company. I have written them a couple of things, and then sort of taged along as a part-time director’s assistant, and unofficial lighting designer…

On the whole, not an especially good reason for the director to saddle me with the replacement – but she is busy with the now very tight rehearsals, and I did take drama classes back in the day. I can’t even deny it: she knows, she was my teacher…

So she took this twenty-something boy, very recent acquisition, very untried, largely untrained, and…

“He has seven lines and a half. Drill him. I don’t care how you do it – just… drill him.”

Yes, I know. She does talk like that – especially in critical moments… She’s a director. She has enough sense of drama for a large regiment.

Anyway, these past days, before and during rehearsals, I’ve been running the boy through a crash version of what I can remember from my own training. It turns out there’s a reason why he had no lines at all before necessity struck. He comes from another, quite amateurish troupe where, apparently, nobody ever bothered to teach him anything. Nevertheless he thinks himself both experienced and good enough – or did, before we started in earnest. Now he is like the Centipede in the poem: flailing in the ditch, and more than a little frantic with the need to readjust everything.

And… well.

I’ll confess we started on the wrongest foot, because I don’t like his attitude, and he probably thinks I’m awfully stuck-up. Also, at first, my motivation was purely selfish – the seven lines and a half belonging to one of those conveniently gender-less roles, and I being the next in line to inherit, should the boy fail. And I don’t play anymore, thank you very much.

Moreover, I’m not what you’d call a patient woman, and I’m sure he was less than overjoyed at getting stuck with me, so it may be that we started out a tad roughly.

And then, it began to work.

A little.

He stopped sulking, he centipeded – and that flailing, frantic state was something I recognized from my own early attempts at the game. Something I could relate to. And something clicked into place, and at least now he understands what one tries to do with one’s voice, and he’s stopped slipping out of character as soon as he’s uttered the last syllable of each speech – which may not seem much, but is a definite improvement…

Now, let’s be clear: I’m not turning him into Laurence Olivier, I’m not a good teacher (much less a drama teacher), he’s not a good pupil, I doubt I’ll ever grow to like him – but I think we stopped hating each other, and it seems to have dawned on him that he might actually learn something, and I want to hammer the seven lines and a half into him, not just so I don’t have to play them myself, but to see him succeed and do it.

I have hopes it might be enough – for now.

Costume Resources for Students and Teachers (costumediscounters.com)

Happy Birthday, Shakespeare

24 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by la Clarina in History, Lostintranslation, Stories, Theatre

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#happybirthdayshakespeare, William Shakespeare

So, this post is my answer to the Happy Birthday Shakespeare project, in which bloggers are invited to celebrate Will’s 450th birthday by posting about how his works impacted on their lives.

First things first, let me link to this thing I posted back in January, about my first Shakespeare ever. It is relevant to what I want to say. It tells how my very first Macbeth was an initiation. It was more than a little of a shock, too, and it marked eras in my perception of theatre: Before Macbeth, and After Macbeth.

And yet, it didn’t make me like it all of a sudden. It did not turn me into a rabid Shakespearian overnight. It didn’t even make me love English. That would be years later, and through another writer – who, ironically enough, hadn’t even been a native speaker. But it doesn’t matter now – or it only does in that my first impact with Shakespeare was through translations.

And my second, and third, and fourth…

It would be years before my English allowed me to appreciate Will’s works in the original, so I had to make do with translations, most of which were… well.

Let me state here that, much as I love to translate, my faith in literary translation is scant. Too many things are lost in the process, too many hues, and nuances, and shades, and implied meanings just cease to exist the moment you try to turn them into another language… And Shakespeare’s English, this rich, iridescent language that was incandescently moulding itself at the time, just has no equivalent in Italian.

I didn’t realise this back then, but the fact is, there are several Italian translations of Shakespeare’s works, often clever and accurate, I’m sure, but… but. I read them, I saw them played onstage, I liked the stories, but the translation was always there like a sheet of slightly opaque glass, dulling, dimming the experience.

Add to that the exasperating schoolbook habit of presenting any and every remarkable artist as a lonely star, shining and floating in a sort of vacuum…

So yes, I knew I should like Shakespeare, and indeed, did like his plays, but always had this disconcerting impression I should have liked him more. Somehow, I missed the vibrancy, and was left guessing at the power of the words.

Frustrating. Very much.

And then I learned English. I fell in love with the language, and never turned back. I started reading in English when I was eighteen, and within a few years I shyly tried my hand at Elizabethan English – both in reading and onstage – and found I loved it. It, and the time and place that had prompted this sort of language, this sort of theatre… History I’d always loved. Starting to read about Elizabethan England was a sort of homecoming. For some reason, I still cannot open a book – novel, essay, play – connected with Elizabeth’s time without feeling at home – and the more I read about the time, the life, the people, the more I understood and appreciated the plays.

So, no – it wasn’t perhaps love at first sight, but a love it was. A slow, long one, rooted in language and in history as much as in theatre, which is perhaps, in part, why it lasts the way it does.