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.



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?"

Charleston Politics

Some facts about Charleston that I learned at the South Carolina Historical Society:

"Of all the slow places on the planet, it was the slowest."

From "Charleston Politics in the Progressive Era," a thesis written in 1963:

New Progressivism: an aversion of the common people to the aristocracy.
Charleston Mayor John P. Grace (Mayor 1911-1915, 1919-1923) was an Irish Catholic politician and lawyer who was a believer in majority rule and an antagonist of aristocratic privilege. Traditionally, politicians in Charleston were "boni" (aristocracy of English or Huguenot ancestry).

"The government of the city had long rested in the hands of a few old families, among them the Gadsons and the Rhetts. The overthrow of this ancient and aristocratic rule (with the election of Grace) was spoken of by the New York Sun as being not a mere change in municipal government, but the fall of a dynasty which had controlled the city politically, financially and socially for a century and a half."

 (If you're interested in this, here is another article: http://www.thestate.com/2011/03/20/1743237/after-charlestons-fall-the-mob.html)

After Grace, however, the next few mayors were of the "boni" class-- Thomas P. Stoney (though unusual because he did not live South of Broad) and Burnet Rhett Maybank (mayor of Charleston 1930-1938) are prime examples. Maybank was the direct descendent of five South Carolina governors.

I have lots more info on this, but just wanted to give a general overview. If you have any questions or would like more resources, let me know. I think it's an interesting parallel with the elected monarchy of Hamlet.

1917 Harper's Magazine

Here are some snippets from a travel article about Charleston, published in Harper's magazine in 1917:

"Without being exactly one pattern, [the houses] were of a general type which I found continually repeated throughout the city. A certain rather narrow breadth of stone or brick or wood abuts into the street, and as wide a space of veranda, colonnaded and rising in two or even three stories, looks...over a more or less ample garden ground."

"Nearly all the gardens are shut in by high brick walls and it is something fine to pass in or out by the gate of such a garden, with a light iron-work grill overhead and small globes on the high shouldered brick piers..."

"The tobacco chewing habit, so well-nigh extinct in the North, is still rife in the South."

"To this moment, I do not know what must be the prevalent feeling concerning slavery. It was intimated only once, from lips that trembled with old memories in owning and affirming the Negroes, "They were slaves, but they were happy.'"

"Their presence is of an almost unbroken gloom......[they have] little or no gradation from absolute black to any lighter coloring...but there may be paler shadings of the mulatto, the quadroon, the octaroon, but I did not notice them, though more than once I took persons for white who would have shown to the trained eye as black."

Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, Charleston, SC

Ashley Hall, Magnolia Gardens, Charleston, 1910-1920

Charleston, early 20th century

By the early twentieth century, Charleston seemed more like a medieval city than a modern port. Hogs and dairy cows lived in the alleys and walked the streets, while buzzards provided a primary public sanitation service. The city had no professional fire department or police force. In a city becoming known as “too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash,” Charleston’s elite had little interest in or vision of economic renewal. Most shops and even banks in the city opened in late morning, closed at midday to allow the proprietors to enjoy a long and leisurely three o’clock dinner, then reopened briefly before sundown. Charlestonians had the reputation of being lost in a dreamy contemplation of the past. Grace was unwilling to let the city sleep. He instituted a series of reforms that began its modernization, such as raising taxes to pave roads and build sidewalks. Grace held o ffi ce from 1911 to 1915 and again from 1919 to 1923 . Seeing the city’s potential for tourism, in his second term he saw to it that the city contributed to the building of the Francis Marion Hotel, which still stands on the corner of King and Calhoun streets across from Marion Square. The city finally developed professional police and fire protection and other services. Farm animals disappeared from the streets. But the old elites of the city hated Grace. He lost in 1915 by a handful of votes to Tristram T. Hyde. Armed partisans for Grace and equally well-armed partisans for his opponent showed up at Democratic Party headquarters at the corner of George and King streets. A scuffle over ballots led to a wild shootout. Two ballot boxes were hurled into the street, a Charleston News and Courier reporter was shot and killed, and only intervention by police and local militia ended the violence. Meanwhile, although African Americans lacked any meaningful vote in the early twentieth century, they did more than simply accept the marginal place whites attempted to assign them. Unable to challenge Jim Crow as a social system, they worked to improve their position within it. These efforts planted seeds of resistance that would come to fruition in the civil rights struggle.

 

Bass, Jack. Palmetto State : The Making of Modern South Carolina.

Columbia, SC, USA: University of South Carolina Press, 2009. p 76.

http://site.ebrary.com/lib/baruch/Doc?id=10559535&ppg=93

Copyright © 2009. University of South Carolina Press. All rights reserved.

Charleston

Charleston