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?
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?
posted by Scott Sharplin at 12:04 p.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home