Late night musings

Hey all, insomniacal tendencies striking, so I thought I'd share my thoughts from today's rehearsal.

I thought we had some terrific conversations about the interplay between Valentine and Thurio, Silvia and Proteus today. The problems of both Courtly position and the potential problems of aggression between Valentine and Thurio wasn't something that had particularly struck me as important, but it really informs how I react to Brian (and vice versa) and can give the final scene some extra punch when Thurio gives up straight away.

I'm really enjoying developing the bromance aspects even further as we get closer to blocking and developing the betrayal scene. I'm excited to see what AJ and I can do with the dichotomy of emotions between Valentine and Proteus after V's banishment. Have to say, I loved the gag Matt inserted after Proteus' kiss of Sylvia's hand. I think that will play even better as we go along.

Looking forward to next week!

Crab, My Dog

Hey guys,

So if you don't know already my Crab is simply a leash (or lead as Matt Davies says) that has no dog connected to it. But it looks like there is an invisible dog on the end of the leash. Currently I am using a coat hanger to get the shape for the leash and the feel of holding something down. What I want to know is: does anyone have any ideas for how to make the leash look better than a bent hanger?

Steph

Character: what he things; what others think

Playing Thruio is interesting. He is the guy no one wants to get the girl. Your not supposed to wan him to get the girl. But he's supposed to want to get the girl and he's not supposed to think of himself in the same way as the other characters and even everyone talking about the play. We all refer to him negatively. Even a the Arden, lists him as "the foolish rival of Valentine." But for all that, I have found a way to like the guy. The reason we don't like him is because he is living, wooing, by set of social norms that no one else in the play cherishes. Not even the Duke, in the end. You see, as I begin trying to figure out character motivations and the like, I have decided that Thurio wants to marry Silvia for social reasons, not romantic ones. For him it is a financial and political arrangement. So it is natural that he would go to the duke and not Silvia. He isn't malicious or trying to ruin her happiness. He is just not concerned with romance. I think he understands his world in terms of social position and political status and that affects all of his affectations. This doesn't make him a nice guy by our standards but he doesn't think by our standards. Obviously, this is just my reading of the character, but for me understanding why a character does something that we don't like is important for being able to play the character. So for me Thurio is the protagonist of his own narrative: this one is a tragedy, in which sticking by his ideals of marriage as a social contract, he looses a most advantageous marriage to a very beautiful woman.

Father and Son

I'm wondering if there is some way we can reinforce to the audience the father and son relationship between Antonio and Proteus. If maybe they both share some idiosyncrasy or gesture. The same would go for the Duke and Silvia. I just feel that there is still a disconnection there. Also, I am still working on how to work with the cane. I'm trying to figure out why Antonio would need to use it; age, ailment, or for authority. I want to use it.

Thoughts from the Arden intro and Matt Davies' document on working with prose

I finished the Arden intro tonight, and so much of what it brought up is really fascinating. The discussion about how editors, directors, and actors often try to mitigate the impact of Valentine's offer at the end particularly held my attention.

In particular, Collier's idea on p. 114 struck me as very interesting and even potentially plausible.

But I don't really think it could work. If ideas like his had their origin in anything other than discomfort with the plain meaning of what seems to be happening, they would be more persuasive. As it is, that is the only motivation: "This is terrible. Surely he can't mean that."

I suspect that the right thing for actors and directors to do with such moments is not to shrink from them and their rightly uncomfortable awfulness, to find an escape hatch through which to avoid playing something really twisted, but rather to play them with honesty and courage.

That's not to say I'm not open to alternate readings of Valentine's offer. As with every rehearsal so far, I'm sure when we get there I'll make discoveries in rehearsal that I never anticipated in my preparation work. But I think my instinct is to reject any idea whose primary motive seems to be discomfort at the tension Shakespeare deliberately forces us to experience between the conflicting loyalties of different types of human relationships.

Also, I really loved Matt Davies' Peter Hall document, the one he sent by email. The Launce monologue really is like a stand up routine! In light of all he discussed, he was definitely justified in asserting that the scene's precision is "worthy of Samuel Beckett."

I also found this quote particularly relevant and helpful:

The primary need in speaking prose is to feel the rhythm of the sentence so that the requisite words can be emphasized in order to point the paradoxes and the comparisons.

Looking forward to tomorrow!

What Others Bring To A Scene

Jonathan, my fabulous Valentine, said something to me the other night about our scene together and after that conversation I got to thinking about how amazing it is acting with other people and how much it brings to a scene. Rehearsing lines on your own is wonderful and before coming into a rehearsal an actor already has a sense of who their character is and what they want out of the scene. But when you throw in another actor so much of that can change. Another actors portrayl of their character can change your tactics and can completly alter the energy of the scene. Thinking about these things made me realize even more a) just how much I LOVE being an actor and b) how lucky I am to be acting with all of you! We are such a talented class and I am just so proud of everyone's work. I can't wait to see what Cast B is doing with Matt Davies and I am so excited to share our work with them. Thank you all for inspiring me even more and for being so fabulous!!

Text issues

Hello everyone,

Enjoying the blogs. Tony Tambasco and I are pondering how to create an electronic master text with stage directions that the whole company can access. This would require the prompter/stage managers who notate the blocking to transfer the hardcopy to a web text. As we discuss, we're happy to receive thoughts and ideas.

Prose vs. Verse

Out of suspicion and curiosity, I compared my lines in our Arden with the Norton, and I was - only mildly - surprised to find that I was right: even these contemporary editions sometimes disagree on which lines are prose and which are verse. I'm definitely going to be attentive to this in the future and do what I did this time: if something doesn't smell right in the Arden, I'll look it up in the Norton. If it's just me, I'll see that and move on. If I'm right and it could be either one, then I'll know we've got a decision to make about that line.

I'm absolutely fascinated by characters' transitioning between prose and verse.

EDIT/UPDATE: Actually, I was wrong. I'm pretty sure the two parts I was looking at are set as verse in both the Norton and the Arden.

I was thrown off by the Arden's format due to the fact that Valentine finishes a line that Silvia starts; I think it's because of that that it puts "Valentine" and his words on the same line even though it's verse.

Silvia definitely catches him off-guard there, so I was surprised at first, but now I think it makes sense that it's verse, since it's short: it's short by a whole foot. So Valentine is not exactly at his most regular there anyway, but he still attempts to finish her line... and fails. Ahahaha...

Once again, these transitions fascinate me... though the matter is made difficult by quirks like prose that could scan perfectly as verse. For instance:

SPEED: Sir, your glove.
VALENTINE: Not mine - my gloves are on.

That's a headless line. But other than its headlessness, it's perfectly regular. The Arden even sets it as verse. But then - three lines later - it abruptly switches to prose. I get that Valentine was being poetic ("Sweet ornament that decks a thing divine"), but why was Speed, whose second line is set as verse as well?

A Lot of Little Logistics

So, as Thurio I feel that I am on stage for a long time without saying anything. In the one year of Acting I took at in undergrad, we worked a lot on acting on the line, but very little on what to do when you have no lines. That is something that I will be interested in working on in class today.

By way of finding something to do with Thurio when he's not speaking, I also noticed that one of the editing notes suggests that Thurio leaves almost as soon as Proteus. Then he returns where our book says "Enter Servant" and says the servants lines. I think that works and we'll see what Matt and Colleen want to do with it in class, but it saves us having to find someone else to be the servant.

Lastly, I wanted to add to the discussion of an intermission. While each show is only going to be 90 mins and therefore intermissions don't really feel necessary for the audience, as someone who has recorded plays before, I can tell you that 90 mins is too long for one tape. Therefore, if we want the plays recorded and put in the Library, we need an intermission in in the middle of each play as well as between them. I hope this helps with thinking about whether or not to put in an intermission to give speed/duke time to change.

Memorization and Props

Memorizing has always been a sore spot with me. The method I have now is to write the first letter of every sentence so that if I forget a word I look to the letter and try to recall. The problem that I've been finding is in paraphrasing I will won't to use my paraphrased word instead of the actual word. When I do speed throughs I like to be mobile, which helps since I'm an external actor. I really would like to know how you all memorize lines and which way is working for you.
I found Peter Hall's advice about comedic prose interesting. In working with contemporary prose I've been told to pull through the sentence and hit the ending. For comedy, I believe, you don't want to lose audience attention, so this would help in keeping them surprised. I think also as Peter Hall related, specificity is key for Launce's schtick. The props need to contrast heavily to what he relates.

Courtly Love

So at this point I am starting to find courtly love rather disappointing. Yes it is pretty, but rather formal. At first when I was reading Sylvia's lines, before I read the footnotes, I was interpreting her pet name for Valentine of "servant" as some sort of teasing mind game that an intelligent woman might play with a guy when she doesn't have something more serious to keep her occupied like getting into Harvard Medical School or arranging all of the paper work for her summer internship with NOW. I interpreted it at a sort of status game - "I'm the master you are the servant" (followed by subtle maniacal chortling) but at the same time a code for "shh my dad is watching, but every time I say this word I've kissed you in my mind" - the sort role playing that makes her kittenish enough for Valentine to put up with the letter gag and her cryptic and slightly twisted sense of humor. But then I read the footnote, and it says that for a lady to call a man a "servant" was "a term from the courtly love tradition."

Well, from what I recall about courtly love it was not necessarily supposed to be a requited or actualized thing. Like Dante spends years worshiping Beatrice until one day Mrs. Dante decides to put cyanide in his bolognese. The next day Beatrice goes out and buys a new pink dress and matching shoes. At dinner that night while her husband is reading the obituary section of the paper and she scrutinizes her manicure he says, "Did you know that dead guy wrote a poem about you?" And she responds "Oh really, that's nice dear...we've got cheesecake in the fridge...um, I sent in an application with my CV, transcripts, and letters of rec last week to the University. I have to take some prereqs for the MBA so you won't see me on Tuesday and Thursday nights." Mrs. Dante takes the same course online from the prison computer lab. They are both happy that they didn't have to take medieval literature. But I digress.

Courtly love seems a bit twisted. You show all your fine manners, but you do not verbalize your true feelings, except in subtleties. Sylvia does not call Sir Turio "servant" even though he is behaving towards her in the same courtly fashion. She is lightly teasing with both of them, but Turio clearly senses her favoritism to Valentine - yet bizzarely this favoritism is so blatant that she continues to use the same "servant" banter with Proteus, her favorite's friend, which seems to create an awkward moment where she has to leave the room (according to the new cut) and somehow you get the feeling that poor fickle Proteus got caught in the crossfire thinking "she called me servant - hmmm - maybe she likes me" and Valentine hasn't taken the opportunity to say "Oh, yeah that "servant" thing - Dude, that wasn't for you - that's our game." So, yeah, I'm trying to resolve my issues with courtly love, and how to play it, and medieval lit and stuff.

Thoughts on the Letters

Hello all!

I am piggy-backing on Michael's post dealing with the idea of the hand-written letter (in a time when the printing press was coming into being) and the receiving and writing of these letters. When I met with Colleen to do some work on Julia, the letters also came up. I think it is very interesting not only to consider the intimacy of such correspondence, but also the "hands" the letters travel through during the play and what this means. For example, Proteus has a letter from Julia. How did it get there? Furthermore, we know Julia's letter went through at least two, if not three, hands (Speed, Lucetta and, possibly, Valentine) to make it to Julia. Given the intimate nature of the letters, what does this choice to let them pass through so many hands mean in terms of the relationships between the characters?

Just something I've been mulling over.

Where's my Jerkin?

So working on costuming idea for Thurio. My lines call for me to wear doublet with an apparent false jerkin attached to it, or such a horrible coat that someone would assume that it has to be a coat cover. Or at least that is how I'm reading it at this point in time. I'm trying to come up with clothing styles that would let me make the text work. The funniest I've come up with is a hoodie with a puffy vest attached on top of it.... If you have other ideas let me know.

Memorization

Hey everyone,
So because I am trying to memorize Launce's first giant speech (about his dog...of course), I thought I would ask everyone about what they do to memorize. I'm having quite a difficult time memorizing this because it's not verse so I don't have a set rhythm to rely on. The speech does, however, have A LOT of repetition.
The other thing that's daunting about this speech, for me at least, is the huge amount of audience contact it contains. I'm not super familiar with audience contact moments and how to do it. My only knowledge about it is watching lots of ASC productions and the one day we spent on it in Dr. Cohen's class. So I think it will be interesting to see how the audience contact moments work out.
Steph

Letters and Manuscript

"Here is her hand, the agent of her heart
Here is her oath for love, her honour's pawn"
These initial trochaic, anaphoric, isocolonic lines begin a wonderful thought that also stemmed from Jamie's post about the importance of letters within this work, especially here at the beginning. Proteus asserts that the use of Julia's own hand here illustrates her fidelty and truthfulness in love. The fact that he has received her hand-written note translates into the fact that he receives her true affection and love. To me, this becomes problematic both historically for Shakespeare and thematically for the characters. To the latter first, we obviously watch as Proteus shifts his one true love from one woman to another. His devotions seem to become too much about LOVE than about the love object. Julia, Sylvia, it does not matter to the courtly gentleman who only cares about pursuing the lover. This makes his emotions and his desire duplicate, a copy so to speak.
This brings us back to the former issue. I can't help but wonder if Shakespeare is investigating the idea of duplicitous love within the framework of writing because his age was experiencing the awe-ful power of the printing press. Print allows for easy duplication of words, ideas, etc. Though it does not produce exact copies, the press's variants are less immediately detectable, and copies can continuously be made. Are typed words less true or less sincere than hand written ones? I think culturally we would agree that yes they are. The duplicitous nature of print, the way that it is easily copied and changed creates distance between the writer and addressee, which the relative difficulty in creating an exact duplicate hand-written copy makes the connection between writer and audience more intimate. Interestingly, Shakespeare takes this whole issue up again in Merry Wives of Windsor, when Falstaff destroys our notion of the intimacy of handwritten notes by handwriting the same letter to two different ladies (one of whom is Mistress PAGE...)
Perhaps then, Proteus is a printing press of emotions, who too readily fabricates identical feelings.
Thoughts?

Text

Dr. Menzer brought up a very good observation today in Textual Culture about the many, various forms of text that we used in our first rehearsals. I'd love to somehow get a survey of everyone by the end of the rehearsal period about how various forms of text were helpful/not helpful during the rehearsal process, which you prefered to work from/with during rehearsal or on your own time, and your own "text" habits (for example, I prefer to make my own sides and transcribe all my cues and lines onto notebook paper and then do my scanning, whereas someone else may prefer to take notes directly in the Arden.) Some "texts" to consider: the promptbooks, the Arden, photocopied scenes, manuscript sides, manuscript notes, typed notes, online published notes, prop letters, performance letters, etc. I will attempt to draft a survey and distribute it sometime during this process....Thanks!

Props

Today during rehearsal as prompter I made a list of props needed for Act 1. Cast B...I am not sure you need all of the same props or if there are seperate props you will need. If there are props you need...please add them to this list. If anyone has any of these props and wouldn't mind volunteering them for this production please let us know! Hope everyone had a wonderful 1st rehearsal!! I feel so lucky to be surrounded by such talented people!!

~Rachel

Props Needed:

*Coin Purse (already volunteered by Monica (Thank You!))

*Coins

*Cane

*Bag

*Letters (I was thinking for the letters...since we all write copious amount of paper...if you have any scrap paper left over from editing papers and what not...instead of throwing them away...keep them as we can use them for letters since we will go through a good amount of letters from Julia in Act 1 alone. Thoughts?)

Switching directors

I just had a thought I wanted to share: talking with everyone after our first rehearsal seemed to reveal that Prof. Kelly and Prof. Davies are really approaching the play - or at least the characters - differently. That actually makes me more excited, not less, for when we switch directors half-way through, since both casts will get to have a little bit of both of their approaches. We can easily resolve any outright contradictions that ensue as the process moves on, and as for mere "inconsistency" - well, we all know what Ralph Cohen kept saying last semester about consistency. I really do agree with him on that, so I'm actually really happy with the plan and hope that working with both directors stretches us and our performances.

Anyway, that's what I expect and hope for.

Getting Started

Well, just about to get ready to head out for our first rehearsal. I spent most of yesterday going over all of my paraphrasing and trying to get my memorization down. I was having difficulty getting my lines for 1.1 down, for some reason, but apparently my brain just wanted some sleep to let it sink in. Funny how that works sometimes.

I'm still trying to figure out the best place from which to approach Valentine, who seems equally intelligent and completely unaware. I'm looking forward to using this extended rehearsal process to get know everybody in our class better as actors.

Comparable Characters

As Speed I couldn't help but watch the character through the rereading of the script this last week. I could only think of the Commedia play "The Servant of Two Masters" where Truffaldino bites off more than he can chew by serving two masters. For Truffaldino it was all about the money and not getting beaten. For Speed it seems all about the money and a display of wit. A fun comparison and maybe helpful in my character development. Anyone else find comparable characters to others from other plays?

All this makes me wonder as well, why in 1.1 Proteus has Speed (Valentine's servant) deliver his letter to Juliet and not his own servant.

Tilts and Falls

I just figured this out. So I've discovered that in 1.3 the merged conversation into soliloquy allows for my character to have more audience contact. I'm also looking into the reference of Tilts, which the book describes as a form of combat performed at courtly festivals like jousting. I know Two Gents is filled with letters and messages. I feel that Antonio in the same way is sending off or mailing off his son. Let me know what you think.

Also, as far as costuming I'm obviously worried. I don't know where to begin.

Some Prompting

I've never done this before so I hope it turns out correctly. I don't have to have anything memorized tomorrow although I started to work on my lines already because I'm not as fast at some people at learning lines.
I am, however, excited to do prompting tomorrow (or I guess today considering the time) for people.

Steph

The first place my mind goes..

Costuming! I know it's early to be thinking about what we will wear on stage but its the first thing I thought of. I figure that since the focus of this course is the acting costuming is most likely a low priority. Despite (or perhaps in light of) that I would be willing to work outside of the confines of the class on costuming for the show. Since I'm in cast A, that would be my priority. I wasn't really thinking anything fancy, mostly just seeing what things we have that would work. That said, I also feel that there should be some coherency among the costumes in each cast. (Does everyone know by now that I have a giant trunk full of costumes for a myriad of different times and styles?) I would really love for my character (Thurio) to wear a Top Hat (I have one). Has anyone else had thought on this yet?

Checking In

Apparently, Google had issues emailing to my pre-existing account... but now all is well!

Made some minor edits to 1.3, around lines 38-42 (cleared with prof. Davies) Wanted to make sure the audience knew why Antonio was kicking his son out the next day...

Lots of elisions, and a few scan-wonky lines. Turning a conversation into a soliloquy is my greatest challenge in this scene. I'm especially looking for points of audience contact, and there's a bit of erotema and anaphora that should help me out.

Bros before Prose...or Hoes...or Hose...

So, while scanning out my lines I noticed that in the middle of the first scene Proteus switches from Verse to Prose after a rhyming couplet (line 75). I think that he is trying to leave Speed and exit since his business with his loved one (his Bro, Valentine) is concluded, but Speed distracts him with the sheep rhetoric. It isn't until Speed has left that Proteus goes back to Verse.

Also, this isn't the most academic website, but they can't all be wikipedia, right? It's the Bro Code, which the Proteans and the Valentineans might find interesting/useful: http://jigarbpatel.blogspot.com/2008/12/official-bro-code-part-1-articles-1-40.html

Hello All, I am posting to confirm my invitation and to wish everyone well. I am still working through memorizing my lines. In an attempt to help myself memorize I have created two audio tracks one with my lines and one with my cues. So far its been a big help but only time will tell. I'm sure you all have your own methods of memorizing but I thought I would throw out my little discovery to you. I look forward to Monday with shaky nerves and lots of excitement.

Best,

Kimberly

Hello!!!

Hellooo!!

Thanks for the invite! Got it!

Kim

Ok, I am not in a scene that is rehearsing on Monday, but I am the first prompter for Cast B. So I went ahead and created a prompt script out of Professor Davies' pdf of Two Gents so that each individual page takes up a full 8" x 11" so that it is easy to follow along, and we can write notes on the blank side. I've only made one, because Professor Davies and Kelly may prefer us to use something else. If so, I will still keep the script for my own notes throughout the rehearsal process and to help anybody run lines. That doesn't seem very exciting, but it may prove useful. I am very much looking forward to this production.

Maria

Prose vs. Verse

I'm aware most folks here have verse to scan, but I don't because am playing Lance in Cast A. I have mixed feelings about this, none of them negative.

My first reaction was "Fantastic! One less task to add to the pile of work." Then I gave it a second thought, and realized I was a little disappointed. I am not the best at scansion at all, and I guess I thought I would be able to use this experience to get better at it.

But what I can take away from this is that I can focus on other parts of the speech, and the character, and that I can find other projects to work on my scansion. Or perhaps I can look at others' scansion to get a better idea of what they're saying in the scenes we share (Michael).

Introductory post

Hello cast,

If you get this message and have received an invite to join the MBC Two Gents 2011 blog, can you please reply. I have no idea how this particular Google site works yet, and we need to get blogging to see where we're at - technically speaking. So drop in and say hello asap.

Many thanks,

Matt