Images I

Images, vignettes, stage pictures, frozen moments...

Kent in the first scene, standing up for Cordelia. His sword comes out, not to threaten but to plant in front of Lear, a gesture of his loyalty but also his intransigence. Lear kicks the sword away from him.

End of the first scene, Goneril trying to convince Regan that something must be done about their father. But Edmund has made his entrance for Scene Two a bit early, and Regan is distracted. Goneril grabs her face, hauls her sister’s eyes to meet her own. Foreshadows Goneril plucking Gloucester by the beard...

Edgar runs from mounted soldiers (before his soliloquy in 2.3). Trying to make a simple line across the stage, but every time he sees a light, or hears the thunder of hoofbeats, he ducks down...

Lear and Fool in the storm. They try to make a simple line across the stage, but every time they see the flash of lightning, or hear the thunder, they duck down. The moment of terror in a lightning storm is the silence just after the flash, when you can’t help but count the seconds before the crash. Is it getting closer? Is it coming for them? Will they find shelter? Or will Lear fight back?

Desperation in the Fool’s jokes once they’re in the hovel. Perhaps the weather has done him in—a racking cough or the spasms that accompany a fever. But he fights it, tries to comfort Lear with bits of their old banter. Their last exchange, quiet, hopeful but acknowledging all that’s been lost:

LEAR: We’ll go to supper in the morning.
FOOL: And I’ll go to bed at noon.

Edgar, standing with his blind and suicidal father, trying to convince the old man that they stand before the cliffs of Dover. Did they go there, long ago, when Edgar was a boy? Gazing down with wide eyes at the tiny people on the shore, it was the first time he ever truly saw something, the first time he appreciated what it meant to see, to have sight, what a gift it was. His father took him there, gave him the gift of understanding. Can he make his father understand the gift of life?

...Yes, we’ve suffered, yes, we’ve lost so much. We’re losing still. But what do we still have? “See better, Lear.” Look past the faults and find the heart.

Dissin' the Theorists

Reading too much theory can be depressing. Recently, I read the Lear chapter in E.A.J. Honigmann’s book Myriad-Minded Shakespeare, and also the relevant portions of Stephen Booth’s King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition and Tragedy. Both great writers with lots of cogent observations...but not a whole lot that a director can make use of.

Honigmann was hung up on describing the “uniqueness” of King Lear—that is, why it did not conform to any of the other Shakespearean tragedies (that, right there, should have been my red flag. I’m not directing any of the other plays. What difference does it make if Lear is different from them or not?). His feeling was that Lear diverged primarily because it wasn’t a play that drove towards anything. Its protagonist doesn’t have a goal, its characters do not envision a future or even a destination. It is rather a play about “discussing the meaning of things”—and that puts it in a category with Oedipus and Endgame: philosophical plays in which characters try, and usually fail, to understand the universe.

I can’t deny that there’s a hefty portion of philosophy in Lear. And it has certainly been compared to Beckett enough times—in fact, entire productions have been done based on that similarity (Peter Brook’s famous production in 1962). But let’s be honest here: who really wants to pay to sit through three hours of people (mostly madmen) “discussing the meaning of things”? The very idea makes me yawn.

Does Lear have a goal? Does the play have a destination? I wrote earlier that the rhythm of the play is like a vortex, drawing in all movement, energy and light. Now I’m starting to see the down-side to that discovery. It means lots of going around in circles, with no progress and no resolution.

Stephen Booth is no help either. I love his ideas and I recommend his book to anyone, but god help me and my audiences if I tried to put his thoughts on stage. He sees Lear as a play about “indefinition,” about the tendency for things to not resolve, to not explain themselves. Furthermore, he thinks that Shakespeare deliberately made Lear too long, put in a bunch of false endings and trick moments of non-resolution, so that the story ends before the play does, and the audience is left wincing and squirming in their seats.

Well. Okay. The play is too long, yes. So are most of Shakespeare’s plays, especially the tragedies (Macbeth is the exception—short, dark, and bloody. Why didn’t I suggest that one instead?). And yes, the play’s ending is ambiguous, and yes, most audiences do an awful lot of squirming at the end, although that may have something to do with the incredibly horrific scene that’s unfolding before their eyes. But come on, Stephen! Why would Shakespeare—genius that he was—deliberately seek to make his audience feel awkward and uncomfortable? I mean, yes, the play is too long, but why call attention to that fact?

I’m sorry, no. I disbelieve. Shakespeare’s patrons in the Globe were busy people. They came and went during the performance, and I have no doubt at all that they would have felt free to voice their discontent (like Polonius in Hamlet) if they felt the play was dragging. So the only thing for Shakespeare and his company to do would be to keep them riveted right up to the last line.

And that brings us back to Honigmann. A play about old crazy dudes debating life is not exactly riveting. But a play about a desperate, frantic King who knows he’s made a terrible mistake and feels as though he’ll die if he doesn’t make amends, except he’s running out of time and options, and his daughters and the elements and maybe his own sanity are conspiring against him...? A play about a character who wants something, has somewhere to go, and does everything a human being can to get there...?

Yeah, I might just stick around to see how that story ends.

Counting the Attendants: Coda

Man, I really should read through the play more carefully before I go and have these giant brainwaves. Last night, looking at Act One, Scene Four, I find this stage direction:

Horns within. Enter LEAR and [four or more Knights as] attendants.

Lear immediately sends one of them off to fetch dinner. [Exit 1 Knight] Then, 35 lines later, he calls for dinner a second time, and he sends another knight off to find his fool. [Exit 2 Knight] Three lines later, there’s a bit of back and forth with Oswald, during which a third knight exits and then returns. 25 lines after that, he sends Knight 3 to find Goneril—[Exit 3 Knight]—and he sends another attendant to find the Fool. [Exit 4 Knight] That just leaves Lear, Kent, and (shortly) the Fool. No stage directions indicate that any of those vanished knights come back in.

So there’s my clever plan to shrink Lear’s visible support network, body by body. Shakespeare beat me to the punch. I suspect this is going to happen to me a lot.

Counting the Attendants

I made a preliminary casting sheet today—that is, I attempted to chart out how many actors I would need, and how to double-cast them (or triple- or quadruple- cast, if necessary). It was preliminary because A) I haven’t even started making cuts yet, and B) I don’t know what size of cast is realistic. Basically, I just started counting characters, and doubled up anyone who didn’t seem to have a lot of stage time.

The results were eye-opening. Lear is a big, big show. I always knew that in theory, and indeed, it’s part of the reason I proposed it as a Walterdale show in the first place. The Walterdale community is large, and I knew there would be a lot of interest in a Shakespeare play (the last one they did was Taming of the Shrew, about four years ago). The last theatre company I worked with never had the budget for big casts, and when I wanted to do Shakespeare, I was always forced to creatively prune the cast size down (and I got very creative about it, as my four-person Tempest and three-person Othello will attest). So I wanted a different sort of challenge this time.

But still...Lear is big. My first attempt resulted in a cast size of about 18. Now, as I said, there’s nothing final about that. I took a lot of liberties while I was working it out—for example, when faced with a stage direction like Enter Attendants, I took the plural literally, even though one attendant often does the trick. I also tried to avoid double-casting demanding parts, so that even when a character like Edgar disappears for five or six scenes, the actor doesn’t have to worry about quick changes—he can rest up his energies for the scenes to come.

But still...18 actors? Most scholars think that Shakespeare’s company typically employed about 13 or 14, but they may also have dragged in extras to fill up the stage during ceremonial scenes and such. I’m sure that productions of Lear have been done with fewer actors. I should probably do some research on recent productions, to see how double-casting is usually handled.

Or should I? The best solution is to make this production stand on its own. I know that, over the course of my work, I will end up stealing ideas from other artists who have worked on Lear over the years. But there’s no point in putting the nimble fingers to work on something as basic and important as cast size. It should arise organically out of the production concept, not materialize magically out of thin air.

So the question is: what kind of world does Lear inhabit? Is it well-populated, like a modern-day bustling metropolis? Or is it sparse and empty? Or maybe both, at different times? If I do go with a big cast, I shall have to use it wisely—and resist the urge to throw tons of bodies onto the stage as often as I can.

I remember, now: in Act Two, King Lear butts heads with his daughters over the number of knights he keeps in retainer. He wants a hundred knights to follow him wherever he goes. Goneril (or maybe Regan) tells him to dismiss fifty of them. Then Regan (or is it Goneril?) says no, dismiss even more.

GONERIL: Hear me, my lord.
What need you five-and-twenty? Ten? Or five?
To follow in a house where twice so many
Have a command to tend you?

REGAN: What need one?

LEAR: O reason not the need!

A lot of critics feel that line, that moment, is one of the pivotal points in the play. It’s certainly a turning point for Lear, who suddenly realizes that all his command, all his former power, is slipping through his fingers. He can envision his power dwindling, the numbers of followers shrinking to zero. He feels his bald head, clutches for his crown. He looks wildly back and forth at the two daughters who have (in his mind) betrayed him, undermined him, yanked his power out from under him. And two scenes later, he’s alone—except for the Fool—completely powerless against the storm.

It would be extremely tacky to try to illustrate that dwindling effect there and then, at that moment. The language does it much more effectively than a director ever could by shuffling actors around on a stage. But it would be great to show that moment macrocosmically—to use actors’ presences on stage as a metaphor for Lear’s shrinking authority. Throughout Acts One and Two, every time he turns around, there’s one fewer attendant, or soldier...or daughter. It makes the moment of his recognition much more potent, if he’s been struggling to deny it all along.

Cadging from Chekhov

I had a brief preliminary discussion about costumes with Geri Dittrich, the Walterdale’s very own Edith Head. Talking to someone who’s been designing and constructing costumes for years, and trying to put my embryonic thoughts about Lear into practical terms, I realize how little I have figured out. “Sort of pre-history...but not really Druid stuff...but also sort of Renaissance...maybe sort of outside of time?”

I’m obviously going to have to get things straighted out a bit better in my own head before I do any more recruitment. It’s hardly inspiring for artists and designers coming on board a project as complex as King Lear to be greeted at the door with those sorts of vagaries.

So here is what I think about costumes now, having had a chance to think and write about it a bit. I think that pre-historic Druidic robes are cliché, and I think that Renaissance costuming is safe but boring. I think that, if I had to pick another setting, I would be most inclined to a late nineteenth century Eastern European or Russian setting—the sort of costumes one expects to see on characters in a Chekhov play.

There are two reasons for choosing that setting: first, it hasn’t been overdone, at least not with respect to Lear. True, Grigori Kozinstev’s film version of Lear (1969) is set in Russia, but it’s more of a medieval Russia—and, in any case, not many Canadians have seen that film.

The second reason is because I think that setting can illustrate two of the play’s central themes quite effectively. It can capture the political dimensions of the play because it has a great deal to say on the subject of class and status. In pre-revolutionary Russia, there was a tremendous cultural gap between landholders and the serfs who worked for them. And it can also serve as a shorthand for the family theme, mostly because of Chekhov. His plays were all family affairs, and when we see characters onstage in those sorts of costumes, we come to expect a drawing-room drama. Lear is different from Chekhov, of course, but its differences speak for itself, whereas its similarities need a bit of help to become clear.

In preparing for the season launch in May, my next task is finding photography and artwork that we can use to advertise the six shows in the season. Now that I have a stronger idea for the appearance of Lear, I can look for images which reflect that theme. If I’m lucky, I’ll stumble on some which I can then pass on to Geri, to inspire her. And then she’ll make some sketches, and they’ll inspire the actors, and the inspiration wheel will continue to turn.

Counting the Hours

I’ve been thinking about the tricky timing of the rehearsal schedule (because of the Christmas break), and I decided to sit down and plan out a whole production timeline, just for fun. I know it will need to be revised a hundred times, but having it laid out on calendar sheets in front of me helps to visualise the time frame.

Planning a rehearsal schedule is a little like designing the structure of a play. Everything should start low-key, but needs to move fast. The energy rises swiftly until it reaches a major, frantic climax (about 24 hours before opening). Then the tension drops away swiftly—for the director, at least. Once opening night has passed, I get to relax.

Anyway, I used the Walterdale’s generic fifteen-week production schedule as my template. It’s actually more like eleven weeks, because it counts the two before rehearsals start (auditions and call-backs occur here), plus the week of the run, plus a week for clean-up and “post-mortem” meetings.

Eleven weeks is still luxurious by my standards, so I let myself be flexible in scheduling rehearsals. Because the Walterdale is a community theatre, most of its artists have day jobs, so the rehearsals must be in the evenings and weekends. Even so, and accounting for three weeks of Christmas holidays, I found the potential for 169 rehearsal hours between call-backs and preview nights—out of which 93 occur before the break!

There’s no way on Earth I’ll get that much time. I don’t even think I want that much time. Christmas break may creep back into early December, or forward into January; I may have to delay starting rehearsals a bit longer than I figure, especially if call-backs require a lot of time; and I’m sure I’m overlooking other holidays and Walterdale events.

But even so, I no longer think the break will be a problem. Four weeks would be tight (I need at least three weeks to get the play blocked), but five or six give me room to maneuver.

Permission to Laugh

This week I saw Walterdale’s production of The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh. The company did a wonderful job of maintaining the delicate balance of McDonagh’s tragic humour—the frequent collisions of off-beat comedy and very bleak reality that took the audience aback as they struggled to reorient themselves.

It made me think about Lear’s sense of comedy and tragedy. It’s hardly a balance, of course; Lear is far more relentless in its tragic vision than Inishmaan (or any other work of literature, except maybe Oedipus). But Shakespeare knew audiences well enough to know that too much relentlessness takes its toll. And there are moments of levity to help them pace themselves through the long, dark night of Lear’s soul.

The recent production at the Globe Theatre (2001, dir. Barry Kyle) apparently received a lot of laughter from its audiences—but it was probably nervous laughter, because it’s never very long in Lear until the darkness cloeses in again.

Part of the problem might be with the Fool. He’s supposed to lighten the first three acts of the play (he disappears at the end of Act Three), but modern directors tend to make him old and sad—sometimes even caustic in his quips at Lear. Also, modern audiences have trouble understanding his puns and songs—although I happen to think that some of his lines are meant to be nonsensical, that doesn’t stop us from trying to work them out. And that’s not funny, it’s just frustrating.

But probably the biggest challenge to Lear’s comedy is letting the audience know that they’re allowed to laugh. That means finding ways to engage them on that level very early in the play. How did Shakespeare do it? The Fool doesn’t appear until Act 1, Scene 4. I suppose Edmund gulling Gloucester (in 1.2) might contain some laughs, especially if the actor playing Gloucester lets the lines in that scene lead his character (he sounds like Polonius—a windbag and a toady). But if there’s any humour in the “love auction” scene (1.1), it’s all but invisible to our eyes.

Of course, there are always silences to fill, if one is creative but stays within the boundaries of the text. I have an odd image of the first three lines of 1.1 in my head: Kent and Gloucester are discovered talking downstage:

KENT: I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.

GLOUCESTER: It did always seem so to us; but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most, for equalities are so weighed that curiosity in neither can make choice of either’s moiety.

Then they fall silent as they hear a giggle from behind the empty throne. They extract Edmund and a chambermaid, hastily dressed.

KENT: Is not this your son, my lord?

GLOUCESTER: His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge. I have so often blushed to acknowledge him that now I am braz’d to’t.

I don’t know if that would create the ideal context for Lear’s strange recipe, but it’s still not a bad idea: after all, there’s nothing like a naughty bit to grab an audience’s attention right off the top (see Romeo & Juliet if you don’t believe me).