The Endgame

With tech rehearsals about to begin, the endgame commences. The costumes are getting finalized, the performances (you hope) are getting settled and starting to blossom, the set's nearly finished, the lights are hung. Any major changes, or even small ones, risk upsetting all the good that has come up to now. But sometimes big things remain undone…

 

By the final rehearsal run of the play (sans costumes or lights), the action was feeling tight, we had cut the running time down to a lean 2 hours 40 minutes, and the actors were all in high spirits. Everything was there. But something was nagging me, something important: WAS THE STORY BEING TOLD?

 

When Hamlet cries for his father, are we getting it? When the ghost of the king appears, are we getting it? When two months pass and Hamlet is in his "antic disposition," do we get it? If someone isn't already familiar with the play, will they follow it and understand the important information along the way? If those first several scenes aren't clear, does the whole play lose the power of its arc? I didn't want our production to be a collection of great acting moments without a clear story.

 

But this was the endgame. Resources had become scarce, TIME being the most valuable and rarest. (We had already made some last-minute simplifications to the set and lights in the interest of time.) To change the staging would take hours to rehearse, hours that could be used refining what's already working.

 

The final run was on Friday. Generally speaking, all the cues needed to be written by the end of Saturday, with adjustments during cue-to-cue and first dress on Sunday. After that, any major changes would be nearly impossible. I figured I had one more shot at this.

 

So on Friday night, with the question of "story" nagging at me, I did what any normal person would do: I watched a movie. Kenneth Branagh's Henry V. I really was just trying to relax before bed, but sometimes watching a movie or listening to a symphony -- anything not related to the project at hand -- can allow me to let my conscious guard down and my subconscious to run free.

 

I was struck by how clear the story of the film was. This story of a king and his complicated claim to the throne of France, and how he caught conspirators and left his childhood friends behind and won at Agincourt and courted his queen. One unversed in English history would understand it, though a connoisseur would also appreciate the skill with which each moment was told not only textually, but visually. It was stunning to look at: the battles, the contrast between the French and English courts, the long table of the final scene, the little flourishes of gesture and wit.  Branagh even included flashbacks to held explain things when necessary. 

 

While watching the movie, a new idea for the first few scenes of HAMLET started to materialize: 

• A woman (Horatio) speaks the prologue: "Let me speak to the yet unknowing world how these things came about…"
• We then see a photograph being taken: King, Queen, and Son. The loyal subjects applaud.
• Then we see a ghost. (The ghost of the man we just saw photographed.)
• Then another photograph. Same woman but different man. The loyal subjects applaud as before, but the son has receded to the background.

 

NOTE: One of Hamlet's underlying complaints in his first scene is how normal everyone is acting, even though their king just died and his brother married the queen. But it's NOT normal. The center of the kingdom has been ripped away and rapidly replaced. I felt like an opening tableau of a photograph would whet the audience's appetite to connect the pieces. I wanted them to see the ghost and know instantly that something is wrong. I wanted them to understand more clearly how Hamlet fits into this story and what he has to be upset about, so that when the play turns towards revenge it means something.

 

Another idea formed, which became a transition sequence bridging Shakespeare's Acts One and Two: Ophelia singing in the garden while Hamlet looks out the window. How much time has passed? We don't know, but we instinctively sense that something has changed, and so listen more closely for clues in the next scene between Polonius, Reynaldo, and Ophelia. We learn that Laertes has been in France a while, and that Hamlet is now mad, perhaps connecting this new information to Hamlet's warning to the watch that he will put on an "antic disposition." 

 

I called my Hamlet (David) late that night to tell him the idea. The next day (Saturday's dry tech) I talked it through with my set and lighting designers. Then the cues were written and the scenes were staged on Sunday, just under the wire.

 

Both of these moments (the opening tableaus and the transition into Act Two) are not in Shakespeare's play. They are my inventions. But they came out of a desire to tell the story most clearly and to make the relationships more potent to the audience. Do I wish I'd had the foresight to do this weeks ago? Perhaps. Though it may have been helpful to wait until the need became clear to me, and thus be forced to stage things simply because of time. (Something too showy and overthought might have drawn attention to itself -- "Oh, the director is trying to be clever.") Most of all, I am grateful that I was not too stubborn to admit that something was missing and needed to be done. Time be damned.

Opening Night

Tonight is opening night.  

And opening night is my favorite thing in the whole fucking world.  

One of my goals in life is to not have this tumblr account end up like so many on line writing projects I have embarked on- abandoned.  Left for dead.  A ghost town on the internet, an enterprise of great pitch and moment whose currents have turned awry.  

I have an excuse for not writing- I have been rehearsing Hamlet.  And playing Hamlet, I’ve come to find out, is kind of an all consuming experience.  I usually have three to four projects going at the same time.  I’m not bragging.  I don’t even think it’s necessarily a good thing- it’s just habit from college and my days of doing rep theatre. As recently as May I’ve had four projects going full steam- Hamlet research, The Elephant in My Closet promotion, my new play Folly Beach, and a pilot I was working on with a friend.  Plus trying to eek out a meager living and maintain my personal relationships.  I stay busy.  What can I say, I don’t drink anymore- that tends to free up a lot of time.  

But for the past three weeks it’s only been Hamlet.  And an amazing cast of actors.  A brilliant team of designers (seriously- the set and lights and costumes- I just can’t.)  And one of the most talented directors in the country.  In the most beautiful city in the world.   

It’s been actor heaven.  

In a few weeks I’ll start writing again because life will return to normal.  Life always returns to normal.  The sets will be torn down, the costumes will go into storage.  The gels in the lights will go back to wherever gels for lights go.  Our lines will start to slip away.  The actors will no longer see each other every night.  The director will back to New York.   It will be over.  

It’s one of the themes in Hamlet I find so inspiring.  No matter what we do, how powerful we become, everything ends.  In a perverse way it’s the thing I love most about the theatre.    It’s forward, not permanent.  The perfume and suppliance of a minute.  No more.  And while music and paintings and novels are tactile, and live on forever, theatre is a writing in water.  It’s an experience we, the actors, the crew, and the audience, have together, one time, and then it’s over.   Because no two shows are ever the same.  No two audiences are ever the same, and the play, no matter how big and powerful, will always end.  

It’s so beautiful.   And it breaks my heart.  

But that is not now.  That is yet to come.  

Tonight is opening night.  

And opening night is my favorite thing in the whole fucking world.  

Tech Process and before

Tonight was the first day of techs in the Chapel Theatre. The lighting designer (Lauren), her master electrician (Jake) and our stage manager (Bryan) went through and wrote cues for the entire show. Earlier today, a lot of the set got painted, with the floor still to come. This was the top of Act Five.  



 

In theatre, anything is what you say it is. Benches can be gravestones. I always strive for variety but also simplicity. Looking at an object or a moment in a new way. I always go in with too many ingredients, only to find that simplicity wins the day. I had a good many sound cues tonight, but now realize that by repeating certain live and recorded elements throughout, a richer tapestry could be created. If you listen closely, you'll hear some things in the 1st half that resonate in new ways come the 2nd.

 

I'm learning to get out of Shakespeare's way a lot. Remembering that he wrote for a stage with few scenic elements and no theatrical lights.

 

This spring, David (Hamlet) and I walked around old Charleston. We strolled  along streets south of Broad. I took research pictures of some houses, inspired by the columns, balconies, lights, and foliage.

 

 

On this walk, we saw a salamander stuck in a light fixture. The glass had a figure of a man with outstretched arms. We didn't know what this meant, but somehow it seemed like our play, or at least a play we'd like to see. 

 

 

Sometimes I do storyboards, especially for complicated plays that have lots of transitions and moving parts. It's a great way to visualize thoughts, and it helps with blocking too. Limitations or challenges become clearer. Usually I do this very early in the process, just before design meetings, and it's fun to look at these later to see what's made it in (usually very little). Nevertheless, I can see ideas beginning to take shape.

 

 It's always a little sad to me that I have very few specific notes about what the production ends up being. Even if I took notes now they'd likely be only partially accurate come opening. Theatre is a living form. It exists not in drawings, photos, or text, but in time and onstage.



To cut, or not to cut...

On Tuesday we had a the first run of the play, and it was… let's just say it ran long. Now I'm not one of these people who thinks that theatre needn't be long, so long as it is good. I recently sat through a production at the Met of Handel's opera Giulio Cesare which ran a thrilling 4-1/2 hours. And let's face it, this is "Hamlet." It's SUPPOSED to be long, right? It's literally ABOUT delay. 

We went into this project knowing that we wanted a reasonably lean, fast-paced production that focused on the revenge plot and eliminated the Fortinbras sections. That meant cutting a major soliloquy as well as re-thinking portions of the ending. So long, "How all occasions do inform against me / And spur my dull revenge." Happy trails, "Go, bid the soldiers shoot." By my calculation, dramaturg Kristin Vieira and I cut the play from 32,000 words to 25,000 words, or 22% of the play.  Further trims were made in rehearsal as things read too long, and a few (not many) lines were put back in. 

A confession: I went into rehearsals with a script that I knew was too long, because I feel that different actors might latch onto material differently. Perhaps one Claudius will make "like a man to double business bound" the most brilliant, key moment of his big III.iii monologue. Better to cut it later rather than before.

And now, the "later" is upon us. This week we all felt that the play was too long. The cast felt it because they looked at their watches backstage. I felt it because, as an audience member, I started to feel restless, started to feel the play go a little slack. I made notes of the times in which I felt these things, which provided me with guideposts to judge what to cut, what to speed up, and how to watch future runs.

The artist in me thinks that a play or production needs to be however long it needs to be. To quote from Peter Schaffer's Amadeus, when the Emperor tells Mozart there are "too many notes," he responds, "There are just as many notes, Majesty, as are required. Neither more nor less." But what to do about that pesky audience? What if my radar as an audience member is biased? What if Charleston audiences are less patient than New York ones? What if our production (*gasp!*) can't sustain the length?

I decided to handicap my radar. I decided that, in addition to working the pacing (which was, as any first run is, too slow at many points) and trimming a few sections, a good deal more cuts were necessary. Also, at this early period of the "late" stage, we must now choose what is most important to spend our time resources on. Yes, I'm sure that we could have gotten the section in I.iv about the Danes being drunkards to be brilliant -- but at what expense to the rest of the production? And is that section important to the story OUR production is telling?

Shakespeare, especially in this play, wrote long. Many scholars have remarked upon the fact that Shakespeare repeats concepts and doubles characters throughout "Hamlet." In his Prefaces to Shakespeare, Tony Tanner writes of this "compulsive doubling, as though Shakespeare will not use one word when he can think of two." Part of my job is to trim extraneous doublings down, in order to highlight the essential ones.

I received suggestions from some of the cast members, and made my own cuts as well, many of them difficult but necessary. I also sat down with my Hamlet (David Lee Nelson) and went through the entire play, deciding on many internal Hamlet cuts. In the end, I feel like everyone had to sacrifice something for the good of the production. Gone is "like a man to double business bound." Much shortened is Reynaldo, that wily servant. And don't get me lamenting the "crowing of the cock."

The production script is now about 21,000 words, or 65% of the full play, and a few more cuts may come. These cuts are necessary, and are part of what makes this production distinctly our own.

Visit to Folger Shakespeare Library

While Davey and I were in D.C. last week, we stopped by the Folger Shakespeare Library. They had some great stuff on display. Thought I would share a few pictures with you.

 This is Davey in front of a relief of the closet scene from Hamlet outside the library.

 An original Playbill from David Garrick's Hamlet, 1754

An original First Folio

The bird of dawning singeth all night long

Some fun with birds.

From Folk-lore of Shakespeare (http://www.sacred-texts.com/sks/flos/flos08.htm)

Cock.—The beautiful notion which represents the cock as crowing all night long on Christmas Eve, and by its vigilance dispelling every kind of malignant spirit and evil influence, is graphically mentioned in "Hamlet" (i. 1), where Marcellus, speaking of the ghost, says—

"It faded on the crowing of the cock.
 Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes,
 Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
 The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
 And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
 The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
 No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
 So hallow’d and so gracious is the time."

In short, there is a complete prostration of the powers of darkness; and thus, for the time being, mankind is said to be released from the influence of all those evil forces which otherwise exert such sway. The notion that spirits fly at cock-crow is very ancient, and is mentioned by the Christian poet Prudentius, (See my blog post "Hymn at Cock-crow" for this poem) who flourished in the beginning of the fourth century. There is also a hymn, said to have been composed by St Ambrose, and formerly used in the Salisbury Service, which so much resembles the following speech of Horatio (i. 1), that one might almost suppose Shakespeare had seen it. (You can read it here)

(A note from me: Cock-crowing, also called the Third Watch, was 12am-3am)


Heron.—This bird was frequently flown at by falconers. Shakespeare, in "Hamlet" (ii. 2), makes Hamlet say,
"I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw;" handsaw being a corruption of "heronshaw," or "hernsew," which is still used, in the provincial dialects, for a heron. In Suffolk and Norfolk it is pronounced "harnsa," from which to "handsaw," is but a single step. Shakespeare here alludes to a proverbial saying, "He knows not a hawk from a handsaw." Mr J. C. Heath explains the passage thus: "The expression obviously refers to the sport of hawking. Most birds, especially one of heavy flight like the heron, when roused by the falconer or his dog, would fly down or with the wind, in order to escape. When the wind is from the north, the heron flies towards the south, and the spectator may be dazzled by the sun, and be unable to distinguish the hawk from the heron. On the other hand, when the wind is southerly, the heron flies towards the north, and it and the pursuing hawk are clearly seen by the sportsman, who then has his back to the sun, and without difficulty knows the hawk from the hernsew."

From a great page called Shakespeare's Ornithology (http://www.acobas.net/teaching/shakespeare/masters/)

Lapwing "Like a Lapwing that runs away with the shell on its head" refers to the behaviour of the young of some ground-nesting species, they are able to leave the nest almost as soon as having hatched in case of an incoming danger:

This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head.:

Sparrow: From Matthew 10:29-31: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows." 

Pigeons and Kites:

 But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall

To make oppression bitter, or ere this

I should have fatted all the region kites

With this slave’s offal. (2.2)
"Although s large bird, and called by some the Royal Kite, it has not the bold dash of many of our smaller hawks in seizing live and strong prey, but glides about ignobly, looking for a sickly or wounded victim, or for offal of any sort." (From Harting's book "The birds of Shakespeare", 1871)
Pigeons do, in fact, lack a gall-bladder, as do most birds.

Woodcocks: 
"Woodcocks, for some unaccountable reason, were supposed to have no brains, and the name of this bird became a synonym for a fool." (Harting)  The trap ("springe") is very similar to a mousetrap. 

Falconry was at its height of popularity in Elizabethan England, and Shakespeare displays mastery of the subject throughout his plays. Pigeons were used as game that hawks would fly at--"the quarry." (See, "This quarry cries on havoc," Hamlet, 5.2) The quarry differed depending on what type of hawk you were using, although French falconers "do not appear to have been so particular: We'll e'en to it like French falconers, fly at anything we see." (Harting, 56) "To check" is a falconry term meaning "to fly at" but also means changing the bird in pursuit. (See 5.2. Claudius: "If he be now returned/ As checking at his voyage...")


Several of the articles and books I read at the library talked about birds in Charleston. Mockingbirds were mentioned as a continuous sound. You can listen to them here: 

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/northern_mockingbird/sounds

Also, because of the lack of proper sanitation in Charleston in the early 1900s, buzzards were a frequent sighting. In true Charlestonian style, the buzzards were re-named "Charleston Eagles."
From a 1901 New York Times article titled "Charleston's Buzzards":
"No wonder they are so haughty and without regard for the rights and feelings of others, for they have a trust founded upon the richest scavenger business in one of the oldest cities in the land, and theirs was perhaps the first trust in America. Trust magnates among men are always supposed to be defiant, and why should not they be likewise among buzzards?"

Hymn at Cock-Crow

I. HYMN AT COCK-CROW by Saint Prudentius

Awake! the shining day is born!

The herald cock proclaims the morn:

And Christ, the soul's Awakener, cries,

Bidding us back to life arise.

Away the sluggard's bed! away

The slumber of the soul's decay!

Ye chaste and just and temperate,

Watch! I am standing at the gate.

After the sun hath risen red

'Tis late for men to scorn their bed,

Unless a portion of the night

They seize for labours of the light.

Mark ye, what time the dawn draws nigh,

How 'neath the eaves the swallows cry?

Know that by true similitude

Their notes our Judge's voice prelude.

When hid by shades of dark malign

On beds of softness we recline,

They call us forth with music clear

Warning us that the day is near.

When breezes bright of orient morn

With rosy hues the heavens adorn,

They cheer with hope of gladdening light

The hearts that spend in toil their might.

Though sleep be but a passing guest

'Tis type of death's perpetual rest:

Our sins are as a ghastly night,

And seal with slumbers deep our sight.

But from the wide roof of the sky

Christ's voice peals forth with urgent cry,

Calling our sleep-bound hearts to rise

And greet the dawn with wakeful eyes.

He bids us fear lest sensual ease

Unto life's end the spirit seize

And in the tomb of shame us bind,

Till we are to the true light blind.

'Tis said that baleful spirits roam

Abroad beneath the dark's vast dome;

But, when the cock crows, take their flight

Sudden dispersed in sore affright.

For the foul votaries of the night

Abhor the coming of the light,

And shamed before salvation's grace

The hosts of darkness hide their face.

They know the cock doth prophesy

Of Hope's long-promised morning sky,

When comes the Majesty Divine

Upon awakened worlds to shine.

The Lord to Peter once foretold

What meaning that shrill strain should hold,

How he before cock-crow would lie

And thrice his Master dear deny.

For 'tis a law that sin is done

Before the herald of the sun

To humankind the dawn proclaims

And with his cry the sinner shames.

Then wept he bitter tears aghast

That from his lips the words had passed,

Though guileless he his soul possessed

And faith still reigned within his breast.

Nor ever reckless word he said

Thereafter, by his tongue betrayed,

But at the cock's familiar cry

Humbled he turned from vanity.

Therefore it is we hold to-day

That, as the world in stillness lay,

What hour the cock doth greet the skies,

Christ from deep Hades did arise.

Lo! then the bands of death were burst,

Shattered the sway of hell accurst:

Then did the Day's superior might

Swiftly dispel the hosts of Night.

Now let base deeds to silence fall,

Black thoughts be stilled beyond recall:

Now let sin's opiate spell retire

To that deep sleep it doth inspire.

For all the hours that still remain

Until the dark his goal attain,

Alert for duty's stern command

Let every soul a sentry stand.

With sober prayer on Jesus call;

Let tears with our strong crying fall;

Sleep cannot on the pure soul steal

That supplicates with fervent zeal.

Too long did dull oblivion cloud

Our motions and our senses shroud:

Lulled by her numbing touch, we stray

In dreamland's ineffectual way.

Bound by the dazzling world's soft chain

'Tis false and fleeting gauds we gain,

Like those who in deep slumbers lie:--

Let us awake! the truth is nigh.

Gold, honours, pleasure, wealth and ease,

And all the joys that mortals please,

Joys with a fatal glamour fraught--

When morning comes, lo! all are nought.

But thou, O Christ, put sleep to flight

And break the iron bands of night,

Free us from burden of past sin

And shed Thy morning rays within.