Film: "Balance"

On the upside, there's this brilliant, Oscar-winning animated short film called "Balance" by Christoph and Wolfgang Lauenstein. It perfectly dramatizes the balance metaphor which I've been chewing on for weeks--how a precarious world-balance can lead to power struggles, and how things get more and more fragile as you get closer to your goal.


It's just amazing. I must find a way to show it to my cast at the first rehearsal. Check it out online at http://media.putfile.com/balance. You'll need Flash Player installed.

Once More Unto the Drawing Board

Things are not as clear as I had hoped. I went through Act 1, Scene 4, scanning the verse and trying to imagine the scene if it were to “block itself” according to the intention & verse rules I put forward in my last two posts.

To make a long story short, it didn’t work. Never mind the fact that the first half of the scene is almost entirely in prose. Never mind the fact that even the verse sections are routinely broken up by prose and/or the Fool’s doggerel (which is verse, but not blank verse). No, my scheme just doesn’t hold up against lines like these (Lear is speaking):

Darkness and Devils!
Saddle my horses: call my Train together.
Degenerate Bastard, I’ll not trouble thee;
Yet have I left a daughter.

Mostly, this is rough verse. It starts and ends with broken lines (the first line, “Darkness and Devils,” may be a continuation of Goneril’s last line, “Which know themselves, and you”—but even so, it scans very distinctly). The second line begins with a trochee (dum-de) and has a feminine ending (an extra, unstressed syllable). The third line could be made to scan (if you elide “degen’rate”), but I’d probably suggest scanning the second half as “I’ll not trouble thee” (dum dum dum-de dum), which is anything but regular.

So it’s plenty rough. If the actor playing Lear were following my rules, he wouldn’t be moving on a rough line—he’d be standing still and “feeling” out the balance of power. But look at the content of the lines, for Pete’s sake. They simply scream motion.

Or consider Lear’s famous curse speech, where he wishes sterility upon Goneril. It starts with a heavily stressed (ie. rough) line. Then it has 8 lines of fairly smooth verse. Then it gets rough again, at least until the last two lines.

Hear Nature, hear dear Goddess, hear:
Suspend thy purpose, if thou did intend
To make this Creature fruitful:
Into her Womb convey sterility,
Dry up in her the Organs of increase,
And from her sickly body, never spring
A Babe to honor her. If she must teem,
Create her child of Spleen, that it may live
And be a thwart disnatur’d torment to her.
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,
With cadent Tears fret Channels in her cheeks,
Turn all her Mother’s pains, and benefits
To laughter, and contempt: That she may feel,
How sharper then a Serpent’s tooth it is,
To have a thankless Child. Away, away!

So...what? Lear starts still, then starts moving (where, exactly? Towards Goneril? But he’s talking to “Nature,” not to his daughter), then stops, then starts again? Lear is unsure, then sure, then unsure again, then sure again? Balderdash.

There is one thing I did observe from this experiment (and again, I have no idea whether it’ll hold up throughout the play). The characters who speak in smooth verse are most likely to be the ones in power at that moment. So, for example, at the very end of the scene, Goneril chastises her husband, and he attempts to rebuke her:

Goneril.
No, no, my lord,
This milky gentleness and course of yours
Though I condemn not, yet under pardon,
You are much more at task for want of wisdom,
Than praised for mildness.

Albany.
How far your eyes may pierce I cannot tell;
Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.

Albany’s rhyming couplet may appear to be smooth, but in fact it’s rather shaky rhythmically (“How far your eyes may pierce I cannot tell”), while Goneril speaks in calm, honey-smooth lines like “You are much more at task for want of wisdom.” It’s clear from the verse who’s in command.

So perhaps all is not lost. But I don’t think I can reasonably expect the play to block itself. Too bad; I was really looking forward to having all those extra nights off!

Smooth and Rough Verse

Note: This thread is continued from "What's My Motivation?" Read that entry first, or this won't make any sense (and even then, it's iffy).

Most Shakespearean practitioners believe that the Bard encoded instructions for blocking directly into his verse. Some take this to extremes: Patrick Tucker, of the Original Shakespeare Company, believes the best way to perform Shakespeare is virtually unrehearsed, with the actors never having spent time together before opening night. They just step onto the stage and let the lines lead them. I’m not that much of a zealous; and besides, that quasi-improv approach demands highly trained (and suicidally confident) actors, whereas some of my cast may never even have acted before. They’re willing to try the trapeze, but they still need the net.

But I think some very general distinctions about verse could help me to help them to block the scenes as we go. The biggest distinction is between smooth verse and rough verse. As you probably know, Shakespeare’s verse is iambic pentameter:

De-dum de-dum de-dum de-dum de-dum.
O lady, lady, shame would have it hid.

Iambic pentameter, or blank verse, is repetitive, sometimes almost hypnotic—and very easy to memorize. By the time he wrote Lear, however, Shakespeare was experimenting with variations on the blank verse pattern. He would sometimes shift beats around, put a stress where you don’t expect it—make the smooth flow of blank verse into a rough, bumpy ride. For instance:

Dum dum de-de-de dum de-de dum dum...
Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law...

Some rules still apply, of course. Usually, there are five stressed beats per line; but they’re in an unexpected order, and so the line throws emphasis on the words which break the pattern. Once in a while, he’d even throw in a line with more than five stresses, to make extra sure you get the point:

Dum de-de dum-de-dum! Dum dum dum dum!
Rumble thy bellyful! Spit fire, spout rain!

The result is, smooth verse and rough verse sound very different, albeit in subtle, sometimes subconscious ways. They can be used to determine the temperament of the speaker (usually, smooth = calm, rough = agitated). And I think, in my case, they can also be used to help with blocking.

In my evolving model, Step One involves determining the intention of the speaker, in physical terms which apply to balance and status:

Are they advancing/trying to gain power?
Are they retreating/relinquishing power?
Are they circling/trying to support another’s power?

Once they have an intention, Step Two would involve studying the scansion of the verse: is it rough or smooth? The answer may help to determine whether the actor is literally moving on their lines, or whether they are moving through their lines—that is, standing still on the stage, but using the rhythm of the lines to accomplish their intention. Remember balance: sometimes it’s not safe to move, because the stage is destabilized. So instead you (metaphorically) lift a foot up, gingerly feel your way forward, and try to assess the current state of affairs.

If the verse is smooth, it’s safe to move.
If the verse is rough, stand and feel your way along.

I tried this out on a passage from the play, to see if it bore any fruit. The passage is from 1.4, when Goneril is chiding Lear for letting his Knights abuse her hospitality (I’ve altered this speech from its original form, but I tried it on the original too, and got the same results):

Not only, Sir, this, your all-licenced Fool,
But other of your insolent retinue
Do hourly Carp and Quarrel, breaking forth
From rank, and (not to be endured) riots, Sir.
I’d thought by making this well known to you,
T’have found a safe redress, but now suspect
That you protect this course, and put it on
By your approval; which if you did, the fault
Would not escape our notice, nor our judgment.

Goneril’s intention is clear, here: she’s making a bid for status, and should therefore be advancing, trying to claim the fulcrum for herself.

Now look at the verse. The first four lines are quite irregular. If you tried to speak them in a sing-song de-dum de-dum rhythm, then only line 3 would even remotely work. However, lines 5 through 7 seem more regular (although line 7 clumps its stresses together in the middle of the line, with “this course”). Then lines 8 and 9 become irregular again, with the final line seemingly containing an extra beat, as in:

De-dum de-dum de-dum, dum dum dum-de
Would not escape our notice, nor our judgment.

(All this scansion work is highly subjective, of course. But that’s why we’re artists, not scientists.)

So, the speech goes irregular, regular, irregular. So what? So, imagine that Goneril has just come on stage to find Lear goofing around with his Fool yet again. It’s the last straw; something must be done. She opens her mouth to chastise her father, for what is probably the first time in her life. She’s uncertain. She’s testing the waters. As she speaks, she gains confidence—and she starts to advance on him. Power is shifting. But that provokes a reaction from him—something physical, something intimidating—and she has to stop moving. Notice the verse becomes rough again when she starts talking about Lear’s “fault” and her own “judgment”—these are legal terms which cast her as judge, and him as criminal (a deliberate reversal of the power dynamic).

So, it sort of works. That’s just one small example, of course, and it will only get more complicated from there. Plus, there’s another big issue: 25 per cent of the play is not in verse at all, but in prose.

Hmm...reading over what I've just written, I realize it sounds awfully muddy and subjective. I’m going to have to seek out some more examples, and see if my “method” holds up.

"What's My Motivation?"

A solution to my blocking dilemma is coalescing in my brain...it’s not quite perfect yet, and I think it’s a little obscure, but maybe if I take it slowly I can sort it out.

Any actor can tell you that intention is the beating heart of theatre. It may not have been popular in Shakespeare’s time, but ever since Stanislavsky, and certainly in the wake of the American Method, intention has been the actor’s primarily tool to character development and execution. Some actors are so fiercely devoted to it that they will even resist a piece of blocking if it doesn’t appear to have an intention.

(It’s an old joke. Director: “Now walk downstage and sit down.” Actor: “What’s my motivation?” Director: “Four hundred bucks a week.” Of course, Walterdale actors are volunteers, so the joke falls flat for them. Or maybe it’s even funnier. Anyway...)

My thematic exploration of potential blocking methods has led me into the land of Balance, and I think that, while it might take them a bit of adjustment, my actors will respond well to the idea that their movements can literally destabilize their theatrical universe. Their intentions can then be boiled down into very simple, physical categories: Edmund speaks and moves because he lusts for power. He wants to be in the centre of the world, and to sweep all his adversaries off its edges. Cordelia may move because she senses an imbalance, and she wishes to correct it. Kent moves in circles around Lear because he wants to keep the focal point on the old King, and he is lending him his gravity.

It may seem like I’m reducing complex characters to black and white extremes, and I guess that I am. But when you start out, it should be simple. It should be black and white. Shades of grey come later, when you’re doing runs, and even once the show has opened. At the start, it should be very simple: advance, retreat, or circle.

So that’s Step One. I work with actors on a scene. I get them to identify each line according to the movement—the drive. Is it forward-moving? Are you vying for status? Or are you relinquishing or lending your status to someone else?

But that system implies that the characters will be in constant motion. And so they are—on the inside. But we need another step, in which the actors can determine when to literally move, and when to internalize their movement. Sometimes, Edmund may want to advance, but the ground is too unstable. He needs to know when it’s safe to stride forward, and when to feel his way along.

I think the key to that step lies within Shakespeare’s verse, which is a very important subject about which I’ve been silent for too long. To be continued...

The Schedule That Ate My Brain

I have completed a draft of my rehearsal schedule. Like the rescripting work, it involved a lot of juggling and shuffling, trying to fit an excess of material into a container far too small to accommodate it all. Unlike the cut-script (which will, I hope, remain mostly unchanged from here on in), I know this schedule is going to remain in flux until at least November—and quite possibly all the way through to February. Looking at it now is like trying to bond with your new pet caterpillar.

The only thing that’s keeping it from bursting at the seams is my half-baked plan to blend text work with blocking work. If you’re not familiar with the theatrical rehearsal process, try to imagine learning to play hockey at the same time as you’re trying to work out your season all-star picks. The muscles involved in the two tasks are different, and actors just aren’t accustomed to using both sets at once. Add to that the fact that many of these actors will not be familiar with Shakespeare’s language, and you’ve got a recipe for mental overload.

Perhaps what I need is a text coach. In nearly all of my previous productions, I have charged myself with the task of making the language clear to my actors, because I feel it’s one of my strengths. But now I’m starting to suspect that I need another Shakespeare-savvy artist onhand who can work with actors when they’re not being blocked—sometimes only for a few minutes at a time, before their entrance, or during a sequence when they’re not particularly active onstage. Like the primpers on a film set who swoop in and apply an extra puff of makeup before the camera starts rolling—someone who can swoop in and fluff up their dialogue while I’m concentrating on the big stage picture.

Text coach...or Assistant Director, I suppose. Any takers?

"Shake" Online

I've sort of avoided posting online links on this site (aside from the generic links to the right), because I don't want to give privilege to every random Shakespeare site I stumble on. There are hundreds of thousands of sites devoted to Shakespeare on the Internet, and most of them are garbage (whether this site is an exception or not, I leave for the reader to decide).

Having said that, I do have a keen interest in electronic teaching resources (in fact, one of my day jobs involves building them). I'm always curious to see how theatrical concepts have been adapted or translated into a virtual medium. Usually, what happens is the Internet adapts (or re-mediates) materials from other media--and so, you get online essays (which are usually hard to read) or online movies (tiny and choppy).

The Banana TV website is up-front about the fact that it's trying to translate the aesthetic of television onto the Internet. It's an Australian site that gives screen-time to notable Aussie actors, giving them a chance to sound off about their areas of interest. Sounds self-indulgent and trite, I know, but David Ritchie, who does the "Shake" series on Shakespeare, clearly knows his stuff.

Ritchie devotes six 10-minute "televised" lectures to King Lear, talking about a range of motifs, themes, and images in the play. He also has segments on Shakespeare & Sex, Shakespeare & Violence, and Shakespeare & Popular Culture. It's essentially just a talking head (and you need Windows Media Player to watch it), but Ritchie is an engaging actor, weaving quotations into his lectures with enthusiasm and wit.

I wouldn't recommend the site as a substitute for reading the play, of course. But if critical theory puts you to sleep, you might find Ritchie's energy keeps you a bit more involved. I also like the little Aussie promotional commercial that plays at the start of each episode.

Costumes & Props: The Map

Had another good meeting with Melissa today. We talked about the function of costumes in the first scene, and found an intriguing way to potentially blend the costumes, props, and shifting power dynamics into one simple device.

Lear's first command (after "Attend the lords of France and Burgundy", which I've cut) is "Give me the map there." He uses a map to delineate the rewards of the first two sisters:

"Of all these bounds, even from this line to this,
With shadowy forests, and with champaigns riched,
With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,
We make thee lady."

At first, I'd just assumed that the map would be a simple prop: something for Lear to point at, maybe something to throw or kick when he got fed up a little later. But Melissa and I were talking about costume items which could illustrate the newly bought status of the two elder sisters (crowns? coronets? sashes?), and my mind kept coming back to the map. How could we tie the two things together?

"Of all these bounds, even from this line to this." So there are already lines on the map (rivers, maybe. Or territories?). What if they were ribbons, not drawn on but pinned somehow, so they could be moved--or bestowed. What if they were held on with badges, or with intricate brooches with heraldic symbols which stood for the various regions of the land? Then, when Lear bestows the lands upon his daughters, he (or his servants) literally attach the badges of power onto them. They become the incarnations of those lands.

Another nice bit: if they are connected by sashes, then when it comes time to divide Cordelia's territories ("With my two daughters' dowers, digest this third"), the sash can be split between Goneril and Regan--torn apart onstage. As Melissa said, "Ripping fabric sounds cool."

It occurred to me later that the brooches might actually come off of Lear's clothing, not off the map. That would be a more direct illustration of Lear's abdication. But where this all really pays off, costume-wise, is watching the power of the two daughters grow in the subsequent scenes. Having been given one or two ribbons of fabric apiece--say, blue for Goneril and red for Regan--then each time we see them afterwards, those colours, and the designs on the brooches, will be larger, brighter, stronger, more decisive. The "busyness" and complexity of their costumes might diminish, but we'll get to watch as their single-minded drive for power increases.

Themes: Commanding Love

Sometimes the best answers are right in front of you.

I was discussing Lear over dinner with my wife, Sheila, who is an English PhD student and knows a thing or two about Shakespeare. I confessed to her that I was still hung up on some basic thematic issues, and was not looking forward to the false confidence which I would have to put on when I talked about the play to my actors.

My quandary, I explained, began with the first scene. Where does Lear err? I've been discussing the blocking-balance thematically, as though it's obvious that everything goes haywire the moment Lear steps away from his throne. But Sheila disagreed; she thought Lear's error lay not in his decision to abdicate, but in his treatment of Cordelia after "nothing" is spoken.

We bandied these details about for awhile, and then I tried a dirty trick, introducing a quote which I'd found somewhere (I think it was somewhere in "The King Lear Perplex", an anthology of criticism). Paraphrasing heavily, it said, "The first lesson in Lear is 'don't give away your land.' The second, more subtle, lesson is, 'if you are going to give away your land, don't expect to be coddled. Sacrifice is sacrifice.'"

This quote brought the thematic spotlight back onto Lear's abdication. But Sheila (wise to my tricks) replied with an interpretation that was both more astute and more easily conveyable to actors. She said that if a single message could be extracted from Lear, it would be "You can't command love."

That's pretty brilliant. Lear spends the whole play reassessing what he, as a quasi-King and pseudo-Father, can and cannot control. His great tirade to the storm has been compared to the myth of Canute, the King who tried to command the tides (and got his feet wet for his troubles).


In the end, Lear becomes a beggar, a transient, and ultimately a prisoner--someone with no control over his destiny. And that's when he gets the love he sought.

I think it can even be made to work with the balance-blocking, if I shift my focus slightly to think of it not in terms of Lear's abdication, but in terms of Cordelia's absence. The three sisters created a balance, and when Lear banishes one of them, the balance is upset.

It requires a lot more thinking, but I like the way it feels already. Love, love, love. All you need is love. Can't buy me love.

What About the Fool?

Funny, I haven’t talked about the Fool yet. He’s certainly been on my mind a lot, especially as discussions with my costume designer continue. But I haven’t quite figured out what role he should perform in the world I’m creating. In one respect, his jobs are very straightforward: he entertains Lear, he chides Lear, and (in the storm) he protects Lear, or tries to. But seen another way, the Fool is a major destabilizing influence over the whole play—and, in a production that is coming to concern itself more and more with balance and equilibrium, that makes him as volatile as nitro.

Early on, I decided that the Fool should be a character who can break the fourth wall any time he likes. I also felt his humour, when directed at the audience, should not feel confined to the world of the play—that is, if he needs to imitate Yoda or Arnold Schwarzenneger to get a laugh, he should feel free. Ultimately, that sort of freedom will need to have limitations put upon it; but in the rehearsal process, the actor playing the Fool should feel encouraged to screw around with expectations, and generally take the air out of the play.

It’s not so strange for the Fool to be outside of Lear’s world. In fact, at one point he pretty much comes right out and admits to the audience that he isn’t a formal part of the play. Following a long (and mostly non-sensical) mock-prophecy, he says “This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time.” That makes him either a time-traveller or a meta-theatrical trickster, momentarily ripping the illusion down to remind the audience that they’re watching a play.

Although I’ve cut that speech out of my version, I still want the Fool to convey that sense of timelessness. Melissa and I have discussed the idea of costuming the Fool in a motley composed of fragments from many different times and places, including modern fabrics and fashions. That means that any time the Fool is on stage, he will be visually disrupting the play’s reality. Upsetting the balance.

Part of me really likes that idea. I’ve always imagined the character moving frantically about the stage like a little monkey; and that style of movement would have the same effect on the blocking-balance of the play. I guess the question is, how much disruption can Lear’s world, or the audience, handle? If it’s constant throughout the first half of the play, it may be too much. If the spectators never really get a chance to settle into the world of the play, they won’t be able to feel for the characters as they begin their downward spiral.

Mind you, the Fool disappears half way through the play, and there must be a good reason for this (Shakespeare doesn’t usually just forget about characters, especially ones as memorable as the Fool). Maybe Shakespeare knows the dramatic limits of entropy and disruption, and he’s already set up the play so that the chaotic force of the Fool is eliminated just when it starts to become a problem.

It’s a calculated risk; but you have to trust Shakespeare on an awful lot of counts. Why not trust him, having given us a reckless, meta-theatrical trickster character, to write that character out at the appropriate time?

Blocking + Balance = Rehearsal Goodness

More thoughts about the thematic issue of balance, which I'm still convinced is somehow at the heart of the characters' negotiations with the world, and with each other:

When learning about Shakespeare, one of the first concepts that high-schoolers get dropped on their collective lap is the Elizabethan World Picture. That phrase comes from a book by E.M.W. Tillyard, and it refers to the way Shakespeare and his contemporaries envisioned the structure of the universe. Elizabethans imagined the cosmos as a hierarchical construct, a ladder with God at the top, the Devil at the bottom, and humankind somewhere in the middle. Or not just somewhere, very precisely placed beneath angels, and above animals, plants, and inanimate objects.

Even mankind itself had an inherent hierarchy, a miniature version of the Big Picture. The King was at the top, followed by royalty, nobility, knights, commoners, and finally peasants and beggars. Women were subservient to men, Jews were subservient to Christians (can you guess who invented this hierarchy?), and so forth. Everyone, and everything, had its place.

Now here's where the Great Chain of Being comes into play for us: when the hierarchy gets disrupted somehow, it sends shockwaves throughout the natural universe. When an ordinary man kills a king, for instance (as in Macbeth), or when children disobey their parents (R&J), or even when a king voluntarily submits to his inferiors (Lear), all of nature recoils at the deed. In Shakespeare, you tend to get earthquakes, storms, lions in the streets and sometimes (if you're really lucky) two-headed calves!

So Lear abdicates, and the universe--nature and civilization alike--promptly goes ass-over-teakettle. By the time he got to Lear, Shakespeare had used this thematic device so often that he could afford to parody it by putting it into Gloster's mouth (at a point in the play when Gloster is still more or less a buffoon):

"Love cools, brothers divide. In Cities, mutinies; in Countries, discord; in Palaces, Treason; and the Bond cracked ‘twixt Son and Father."

Students can grasp this concept--the hierarchy of the universe--without too much trouble. But it's rather abstract, and tough for actors to translate into concrete theatrical terms. For one thing, the images of the chain and the ladder are vertical; but unless your stage has a lot of levels and balconies to play in, your actors will mostly be working horizontally.

But there was another, related cosmic metaphor in Shakespeare's time: the Spheres. The Ptolemaic vision of the universe which placed the Earth at the centre and expanded outwards to the stars. The Spheres suggest authority through concentric circles, which you can easily depict on a horizontal, flat stage. It's not a perfect correlation (since, if I recall correctly, Heaven was actually on the outermost sphere), but we can crush it a little and make it work.

Now, this is where Balance comes in. For a universe of concentric circles to function smoothly (picture a great machine, like Augra's astrological contraption in The Dark Crystal), it needs to be perfectly weighted and balanced. It needs a single, steady weight in the centre, and a number of precisely calculated weights on each outward circle--probably the weight would have to be more evenly spread out as you go outwards, otherwise the whole thing would tip over.

Now picture those weights as human beings, with the King in the centre, and all of his people revolving around him--royalty on one ring, nobility on another, knights and servants and beggars on others, everything precisely placed. Everyone's movements choreographed to keep the machine functioning.

Now take the King out of the centre.

Things wouldn't fall apart immediately. They might do so, especially if the King's disappearance is a violent act which shakes the whole machine (Macbeth again, or Julius Caesar). But if he simply stepped back, onto another ring...well, ajustments would have to be made...people might have to move over, or step from one ring to another...and if someone on one side moves, it means somebody on the far side of the machine will have to move as well, to counter them...and suddenly the whole thing becomes terribly precarious. The only way to stabilize the machine would be to get somebody new into the centre spot.

But there isn't just one person. There's two daughters, plus Cornwall and Albany, plus Edmund, barrelling towards the heart of the machine with such reckless abandon, he doesn't care what topples over in his wake. And then there are others, like Kent and Cordelia and France, who want to get Lear back into his spot in the centre--so they have to move in such a way as to block the others. It's like a chess game, except the board keeps tilting, and if you're not well placed, you'll fall.

I think that, once this idea gets illustrated to a cast, it will be very useful for blocking purposes. In fact, I think that I can combine it with my early work on personal rhythms in such a way that the characters will practically block themselves. Advances, retreats, and lots of concentric movement will all fall into place, because the actors will be watching one another, calculating balance, compensating for other movements and groupings on the stage.

And fast blocking means fast memorization, and that means more runs, which means a better, tighter show. Three cheers for balance!

Music Metaphysics

This afternoon I met with Curtis Knecht to discuss music and sound for Lear. Curtis is a local actor/musician/arranger with a lot of experience working on Shakespeare--we semi-collaborated on a production of Midsummer Night's Dream several years ago (he played Oberon, I was the producer).

Before our meeting, I told myself, "Don't screw this up by putting your own ideas on the table too quickly. Just because you've been daydreaming about having a big percussion ensemble onstage doesn't mean that it's the right way to go." This lesson was particularly relevant when it came to sound and music, because I'm really rather naive about it. I don't know what's feasible, what's practical, and what's outrageously expensive. And besides, for all I knew, Curtis would decide that canned (ie. pre-recorded) classical music was the best way to go.

You can imagine my delight when the first words out of his mouth were, "Percussion ensemble." By the end of the meeting, we'd determined with reasonable confidence that the show should have two percussionists, plus maybe a guitarist (he knows a local guitarist who can throw a vast array of effects on his axe, making it sound like anything in the universe).

We also agreed that it would be cool to have the musicians onstage but separated from the action of the play--possibly above it, like the gods. And finally, Curtis seemed most intrigued with the idea that, of the three themes that keep cropping up, music should serve the metaphysical aspect of the play. Not only would it help to generate the thunder and lightning which Lear faces off against in his dark night of the soul, but it could also "speak" for the gods throughout the play--commenting on the action, as it were, or falling silent at those moments (like the climax) when even the gods themselves are struck dumb by the suffering of man.

It was, in short, a splendid preliminary meeting. I now have a confirmed set designer, costume designer, and sound designer. Lighting may still be up in the air (no pun intended). And I desperately need a stage manager (any thoughts, dear readers? Someone who can afford to give up four months of their lives this winter?). But, all in all, I'd say things are looking great.

What About the Suitors?

Burgundy and France stand on either side of Cordelia in the first scene, vying silently for possession of her and all her soon-to-be-bequeathed lands. In the staging I mentioned before, they would all be downstage centre, and thus very much in focus. Since the audience must form an opinion of them quickly (and amidst much hullaballoo), they should be physically striking in some way that suggests their unsuitability.

And come to think of it, Cornwall and Albany ought to look a little off as well. I don't mean ugly, necessarily--but maybe a bit too old for their respective partners. Albany might come across as a bit dim to start with. All of this needs to add up to the message that Lear doesn't match his daughters up with the suitors they'd prefer. It makes Cordelia's resistance more believable.

I include France in this, even though he turns around and charms the pants off Cordelia anyhow. It's the first of many occasions in the play where appearance and reality collide. We should be put off by France and Albany at first, just as we should be more than a little smitten with Edmund. Then outer layers start to drop away: France reveals that he's a sweet guy, and willing to court Cordelia despite her sudden lack of "value." And Albany, who strikes us as a bit vacuous, ends up becoming one of the strongest moral forces in the second half of the play. And Edmund...well, you know what happens to people who fall for Edmund's charms.

Costume Politics

Today I welcomed another artist into the Lear fold (or ensnared them in the Lear web?): Melissa Cuerrier, a graduate of the BFA Design programme whose work I have followed for some time. Melissa brings not only practical experience, but also a sharp, almost intuitive understanding of the thematic functions which costumes can play in a show -- and which they must play, in a text that features lines like, "Through tattered robes small vices may appear."

Our preliminary conversation moved quickly past the basics and into the political potential of the costumes in the Lear world. I mean political quite literally, here. As I have observed, Lear intertwines issues of family, politics, and metaphysics throughout. Now, thanks to Melissa's comments, I can see that the clothes which characters choose to wear can help to tell the story of political collapse, leaving the actors free to concentrate on family matters (and the director free to fret about philosophy).

Here's a tangible example. Melissa says that, when a monarch dies (or steps down, in this case), the fashions of a country almost immediately change. If they were conservative, they become ostentatious; if they were extravagant, they get simple. Either way, the costumes in Act 1, Scene 1--when Lear is still in power--should reflect one world, and the costumes in later scenes (as early as Act 1, Scene 3, when we first meet Oswald) should reflect another world--one which has no place for Lear. Indeed, the costumes should be offensive to Lear, and represent a large part of his discomfort.

Another good example: in times of war (says Melissa), fashions become lighter, more portable, more practical. Makes sense. That means that, in the first half of the play, when there are no overt signs of violence, fashions can afford to be more cumbersome. Then, gradually, those layers get stripped away--quite literally, in the case of Lear or Edgar. Maybe those discarded strips actually litter the stage, reminding the audience of what the characters use to have. This "de-layering" reflects a major theme in the play: that clothes equals status, and status is an illusion, a construction. By the end of the play, all men (and women) are the same: vulnerable, mortal, flawed. Exposed.

This does not mean that the cast will finish the play au naturel--although that would certainly lend a saucy new meaning to Lear's harrowing line:

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones!

Scheduling Woes

A long time ago, I wrote that the rehearsal schedule for Lear (which runs from Oct. 30 to Dec. 8, and then from Jan. 1 to Feb. 1) was a peach. That is, I should have no difficulty fitting in all the components necessary in rehearsing a Shakespeare play: character work, language work, intention work, rhythm work, scansion, blocking, fight choreography, musical work, and lots of runs. Lots of time, I thought.

I was a blithering fool.

Lear is huge. Right now I'm aiming for a cast of 15, portraying 29 characters. All of those actors will need individual attention at some point or other. If I devoted even one single rehearsal to each of those characters, I'd have used up half my rehearsals, just like that.

Lear is complicated. Most of the things I mentioned above will take twice as long as they would with a lightweight Shakespeare like Midsummer Night's Dream. I have some ideas of how to simplify the blocking process, but I can't afford to skimp on most of the others. The rhythm work and scansion will be particularly difficult, because of all the wild, crazy rhythms and the frequent shifts from verse to prose. Fights will also be time-consuming and complex.

And then there's that big ol' break over Christmas--which, again, I wasn't the slightest bit worried about in the abstract. Now I think it's a real conundrum. I want to be able to tell my actors to come back on Jan. 1 with their lines memorized. But most actors find it tough to get off-book without their blocking. And you can't block the play until you're clear on everyone's intentions, and you can't do intention work until you've done basic language work... and suddenly it seems like, if I really want Jan. 1 to be my off-book date, I have to find a way to fit 80% of my process into the first 50% of rehearsals.

To compound my angst, I've been supervising the casting of Walterdale's first production, The Rez Sisters. The director has secured a fantastic cast, but talented people have busy lives, and working around everyone's schedules is proving to be very difficult. Now, Rez only has 8 actors in it...so what's it going to be like for me?

Excuse me while I hide under my bed for awhile.