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.

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.

Hamlet Timeline

A fantastic breakdown of the timeline of Hamlet (with helpful diagram) and extensive footnotes:

http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/07-3/2RothHam.htm

In the shadows of giants...

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.