While in a
production meeting this morning at College of Charleston, I spotted this poster from many years ago: "Amadeus" directed by my former acting professor R. Scott Lank with
sets by my first theatre teacher in high school Ike Stoneberger. Two men that I
greatly respect were having similar conversations in these same hallways. I
suddenly felt like a kid again -- and more like an adult.
In theatre, we are
often asked to follow in the footsteps of others. An audience will compare
tonight's performance to past productions in that same theatre or by that same
company or college. And because many plays get produced time and time again,
many audience members go in having seen another production of that play or, god
forbid, the movie. Any production of a play in the canon such as "Death of
a Salesman" or "Our Town" carries some baggage, from audience
preconceptions to theatrical precedents, not to mention the fact that these
plays are heralded as "masterpieces" and so they'd better be
good.
Perhaps no play
carries with it more baggage than "Hamlet." It is THE masterpiece by
THE master playwright. We have seen pictures or heard stories of everyone from
Richard Burbage to Edwin Booth to Laurence Olivier to John Gielgud to Daniel
Day Lewis to Keanu Reeves playing the lead. More books and essays have been
written about the play than one could read in a lifetime. Whenever I tell
people that I'm directing "Hamlet," their eyes get big. An old mentor
of mine gave me a stack of books to read as research. A director friend gave me
another stack. Cultural analyses,
annotated texts, studies of great productions. This is big stuff. The stuff of
greats. Don't screw it up.
So. How to begin? I
sat with the play for many months and got nowhere, daunted by preconceived
notions of nearly every moment. Is it even possible to read the "To be or
not to be" speech with fresh eyes? I started to try to knock the play down
a few notches. I asked myself, Why do I like this play? DO I like this play?
What is the story? What are the problems with the story? What parts make no
sense at all? I stopped thinking about the play as a masterpiece and started
thinking of it as just another play. It's messy at parts -- do I leave those
parts messy or try to iron them out? It's overlong -- do I trust the length or
try to streamline the story? And what is the story WE as a cast and team are
most interested in telling?
People started to
ask me, "What's your concept?" I felt pressured to say something
interesting and brilliant, something worthy of the greats. But every grand idea
seemed either to have been done before, or sounded fake in my head like I was trying too hard. My team and I decided
that we wanted to base the play in Charleston…but when and where? What does the
castle and court feel like? For me what was missing, what I was praying for, was that
one idea that would put it all into focus. I tried to stay patient.
It started
with a joke. I found myself joking that the last scene of the play is like
"a garden party gone horribly awry." That's how the idea started to
take shape. I started to be able to see and hear and touch the characters. And
through that one image, other elements and moments of the play started to
unfold in my mind. A garden party. It sounded ridiculous, not "grand"
at all, and yet… "A hit, a very palpable hit." I had started to find
my way.
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