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.

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.

Wanting to Kill (from The New York Times)

"I knew that my brother's killer was serving a life sentence in an Arizona state prison. I didn't want to confront him. I was in truth scared to death at the possibility, however remote. Here I was being sent to the same prison system as the man I wanted killed....
"It's easy enough to think about vengeance, even to declare a desire for it, but being confronted with the mechanics of murder is a different matter entirely. It forced me to examine my motives more closely, and to think about the sheer intimacy inherent in acts of violence."

Click here for the full article.