4.4: The Battle, Part One

There's something of the masochist in me, in that when I am directing Shakespeare, I often fixate upon tiny scenes, or even scenes that don't officially feature in the script, and elaborate upon them until they're gigantic. When I directed The Merchant of Venice, I felt compelled to choreograph a bustling opening sequence featuring all 13 actors weaving around one another up and down the Rialto to the tune of "Funiculi Funicula." All silent, all technically unnecessary.

Here we are again, in the second last scene of Lear. In this scene, Edgar brings blind Gloster on and tells him, in a nutshell, that he must sit tight while the battle rages on. Edgar exits, and then there is a simple stage direction: Alarum and retreat within. Shakespeare knew he couldn't simulate an entire battle onstage, so he just gave us the last couple of sound effects, and then Edgar comes back in to tell Gloster (and us) that the war is over, and France has lost.

Today we blocked about half of the battle that Shakespeare was too smart to include in his play. We're doing it somewhat stylistically, relying on lights and sounds to suggest most of the carnage. But the series of vignettes we blocked today tell some important stories, including the unheralded deaths of several supporting characters. It also gives Gloster something more definitive to react to (his lines after Edgar re-enter suggest that the ambient horrors of war have, once again, sent him into a funk).

I say we blocked about half of it, because we only had about half of the necessary actors there. Bodies, once again, were absent. But I'm going to try to catch us up later this week, on a night when I'd only scheduled scenes we've already blocked.

Time is getting precious; I can feel it starting to tug the rug out from under me. As Edgar says, "Ripeness is all." And logically, I know that means I should not be squandering any of it on gratuitous scenes like this one. But, hey... there's no going back now.