The Isle is Full of Noises

It's been a busy week in Lake Wobegon...

I begin with this Garrison Keillor reference (The News from Lake Wobegon is the last segment of every Prairie Home Companion broadcast, for those who don't know this great public radio show) because this week has been about listening.

By this week of a process (Week 3), actors have a strong sense of most of the basics: Who they are, Who they are talking to, What they want from the other person, How they are going to get what they want, Where they are, What happened in the moment before the scene, etc. What we're talking about here are two of the key things that make us who we are in any given moment: 1) Point of View and 2) Need or Objective. The way I see another person (my Point of View on that person) dictates my behavior around and toward that person. That is, I generally behave differently toward my mother than I do my best friend (unless, of course, my point of view in a particular scene is that my mother is my best friend!). My Point of View on a place figures into my behavior therein (a church, a bar, my apartment, a dark alley late at night, etc) just as importantly. Need or Objective (as seminal theatre artist, teacher, and theorist Konstantin Stanislavski called it) shapes much of human behavior and is worth examining and revisiting throughout a process. Tactics, finally, are the ways in which--the HOW--I will get what I want in a scene.

So those choices are all settling in nicely at this point. Scripts are almost completely absent from the stage now--that is, the words are in the actors' heads and are in the process of dropping more deeply into their bodies. Most scenes have been worked through on their feet at least twice and blocking is becoming more specific. What we're doing now is listening work. James is listening for the clearest possible and most worthy story. The actors are listening to each other from a more informed perspective and, as a result, the words people are saying mean more.

This is the stage that separates the pros from the hobbyists. An actor must strive to UNDERSTAND the character and not JUDGE or play the idea of the character. Giving the character the respect and dignity to make him/her a full person--yes, even in wild comedies--is what will make the AUDIENCE listen, sit forward, and be moved. The trick is, it costs something to go that far. It takes time. It takes patience with oneself to get it wrong, to look foolish, to kick at one aspect of a character's point of view for awhile, to dare to care so much, to risk being "all in", so to speak.

The great voice teacher Patsy Rodenburg calls this the Power of Presence, or being in Second Circle--a place of genuine presence and contact with others and the world around you. First Circle is being within oneself/thinking about oneself and not fully available or present to others and the world--as we are in the morning, stumbling to the coffee maker, thinking about how you feel and what you have to do today. Third Circle, essentially, is a place of talking AT someone or someones. It's almost a form of bullying. I want results and not relationship, therefore I talk AT you. Second Circle is where it's at.

At a workshop I was in with her, Patsy told a story about when she was a kid. She was thinking about the story of Adam and Eve hiding after they had eaten of the forbidden fruit. God said to Adam "Where are you?" Patsy thought "What kind of God doesn't know where he is? Isn't he supposed to be all-powerful and all-knowing or something?" Years later, it hit her. God and Adam, prior to the disobedience of eating the forbidden fruit, had RELATIONSHIP--Second Circle style--full presence relationship wherein they were both all there, really listening to one another. That was broken now. Adam left the Second Circle, causing God to ask "Where are you?" Thanks for that, Patsy.

Patsy also says that our kids want nothing more than for us to get down into Second Circle with them--be all there with them, really in play, really listening to them. My kids want that. My wife wants that. My friends want that. And...my scene partners want that. Being fully present, all in, all there. It's risky and it costs something, but there is no other way to bring a character to full life.

As the Russian said "It should be like in life."

The Beating Heart

Monday, the Theatre's day off!

Here Libby and I sit in a local treasure: The General Store in Spring Green. The place is a friend to APT, and beloved by APT employees and patrons alike. Good food, fun sundries (everything from Japanese decorative masking tape to local beer and cheese!), community news, and good coffee (so Libby tells me)--a real community joint. I love places like this.

In today's installment, I'll share a bit about a key part of the theatre-making process: shaping and protecting the story.

James is a great shepherd of story. In my own rehearsals, I call this the beating heart. Close reading, listening, and more reading, and kicking the play around with the design team and the actors will reveal the beating heart of each play. Some plays take more time and more reads to reveal the beating heart. The beating heart is the clear journey on which you want to guide the audience--making sure there are no moments wherein the audience gets lost (healthy disequilibrium is good, lost is deadly). It's been rich watching James subtly nudge the actors to heighten this moment or that so as to keep the story clear and actively and compellingly moving forward (and deeper).

For example...

A week ago, during tablework--the several days of reading and discussing each scene while seated at table (hence the term tablework)--we paid particular attention to the storyline of the relationship between Prospero and Caliban. The team agreed that, after Prospero and Miranda landed on the island and found Caliban (a native misshapen creature whose dead mother was a witch and whose father may have been the devil), took him in and tried to nurture him--this is one of the places from which colonialist interpretations of this play spring. Caliban and Miranda existed happily together like brother and sister, playmates, as they grew. Miranda taught Caliban language, Caliban taught Miranda (and Prospero) about the island and all was good.

One day (and we have decided that this day was very recent--which is most dramatically interesting), Caliban "noticed" Miranda in a new way, and tried to take sexual action based on what he noticed. An unfortunate choice, indeed. Paradise lost. This is the stuff of Act One, Scene Two--when we learn of the attempted rape--which results in Caliban being removed from living with Prospero and Miranda and moved into something like a cave ("...here you sty me in this hard rock..." Caliban says). There is hurt, confusion of emotion, and broken relationship. Really hard and beautiful human story.

Fast forward to yesterday. We are staging/blocking (deciding where, when, how, why people move so as to physically tell the clearest and most interesting story) the last scenes of the play. We're near the end of Act Five, Scene One when Caliban's plot to kill Prospero has been foiled--he had enlisted the aid of his new "gods": the drunken butler Stephano and jester Trinculo. Prospero admonishes Caliban, but clearly (in our production anyway) still cares about him. He tells Caliban

"...Go, sirrah, to my cell;
Take with you your companions; as you look
To have my pardon, trim it handsomely."

In this moment, Ken (our Prospero) offered his hand, took Steve's (our Caliban's) hand, gently pulled him up, put his hand on his shoulder, and spoke to him like a father who was guiding a prodigal son back into grace. I fought back tears--and am doing so even now--as I watched the beauty of a carefully sculpted piece of Act One story come into full bloom in Act Five. The beating heart revealed. This is a play about choosing forgiveness over vengeance.

For those of you who don't know THE TEMPEST, the Prospero/Caliban story is only one thread of the forgiveness theme--I'll discuss more threads in future posts.

We are hard-wired to respond to story. In my view, the forgiveness (and the journey to it), that is brought to life in THE TEMPEST is a mature exploration of humanity tapping our divine family tree.

His heart softened, Prospero says "the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance." And he chooses forgiveness of his various enemies.

Fellow prodigals, I wish you the joy of forgiving and being forgiven. My heart beats because of it.

My hat, what a picnic!

The title for today's entry comes from THE MAGICIAN'S NEPHEW, the first book in the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. We read a chapter most nights at bedtime. Upon taking in the fullness of a bizarre scene, one of the characters, Digory (the nephew in the title), remarks "My hat, what a picnic." My children (and I) think it is a hilarious phrase. Luca, our youngest, improved on the phrase by coining "My hat, there's a picnic in it!". Gales of laughter. Not a quiet bedtime. Joy.

My days making theatre in rehearsals for THE TEMPEST have been nothing short of exquisite picnic. APT does things right. I have not met a single person here who does not take the greatest pride in doing the job well. As promised, I will continue to touch on each of the director's tasks. So, back to the preparation conversation...today: editing and critical thought.

I have grown mightily in the quality of my pre-rehearsal preparation over the last six years. I have also continued to hone my abilities in reading, teaching, interpreting, coaching, and acting from the folio edition (the 1623 first printed version of Shakespeare's plays), but nothing prepared me for the Lion of Preparation that is James Bohnen. In my last entry, I proudly mentioned my great liking of and insistence on using the Arden edition of Shakespeare's plays when doing preparatory reads. Yes, well, in addition to offering great thoughts from Mark Van Doren, Coleridge, Montaigne, and others into the tablework conversation, James assured me that the most recent Arden editors of THE TEMPEST, Mr. and Mrs. Vaughan, were good, very smart, indeed, but the generally recognized authority is Frank Kermode, who edited the Arden edition of THE TEMPEST prior to the current one. Of course, you all knew that, didn't you.

My copy should arrive tomorrow and will be tucked IN FRONT OF the Vaughans in my bag.

Then, I learned that the Penguin edition of THE TEMPEST (which I had always small-mindedly dismissed as lesser simply because it wasn't the Arden) was certainly not worth dismissing! Oh, not because of the editing of the play, necessarily, but because of the enormous worth of the introduction written by Anne Barton. Anne Barton who is a Fellow in English at Cambridge. Yes, Anne Barton who is married to John Barton...John Barton of RSC fame...John Barton who led the Playing Shakespeare series the RSC filmed back in the early 1980's. I wonder what dinner conversation is like at their house? Did I mention that this is the Penguin Classics edition from 1968? That's right, not the current edition, silly.

I ordered that one at the same time. Anne and Frank will keep each other company in my bag.

I'll be ordering the New Variorum edition of THE TEMPEST (I did know about this one! It's the edition that contains nearly three centuries worth of critical thought on each of Shakespeare's plays) when we get back home.

And so I am happily humbled by the reminder that--if I know where to look--I can stand on the shoulders of giants when I engage the making of a new production of a Shakespeare play. But where do I look? Needless to say, I'll be e-mailing James every time I begin work on a new play, in addition to going down blind alleys and making mistakes of my own. Wisdom comes from experience, after all. James is, as his wisdom suggests, 25 years older than me. Thank you James Bohnen for being a living example of discipline and relentless pursuit of all thoughts and things that might bear fruit down the road when you could easily rest on the fact that you're a smart and experienced dude. That's just plain righteous.

We e-mailed and spoke today about how he prepares for these first two weeks and, by implication, why he reads and reads and reads... He had this to say "...reconnecting to research done months before and only half remembered, is all so crucial to creating an energy in the room of constant probing and exploring and stimulation....if you get all that working reasonably well, then good actors will see into the play and individual scenes more deeply than I ever could....THAT is when the tiny miracles of insight happen and everyone benefits and feels great about themselves...which is our only REAL job as directors."

My hat, what a beautiful picnic, indeed.