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.