Sunday, July 15, 2012

Early Week Two: 7/9 - 7/10

First of all, I would like to say that I was a fool to think I could blog every day.  Last week was such a whirlwind of learning and working that I had no time at all for reflecting or writing.  (Well, somewhere around Thursday or Friday I think I managed to post about our theatre trip from the previous Saturday!)

Monday was positively jam-packed.  At 9:00 David Schalkwyk (who I have since seen lurking around the library), editor of The Shakespeare Quarterly and author of Speech and Performance in Shakespeare's Sonnets, began with a personal anecdote, about being asked to read a sonnet on the occasion of his son's wedding.  This was not an easy selection because when the sonnets are read they come out in the voice of the reader.  There is a distinction between what is spoken in a play and in a sonnet.  I, personally, am grateful to Mr. Schalkwyk for clarifying the distinction in formallity between the usage of "thee" and "you", much as French has an informal "tu" and a formal "vous".  So "thee would be used when speaking to one of lower status, such as a servant, or one you are quite familiar with, such as a lover.  "You" would be used if speaking to someone on equal or higher social footing.  Schalkwyk traced the pattern of this usage throughout the series of sonnets which are directed to a young man, as a way of drawing conclusions about the evolution of the relationship.

I believe we then had a tour of the research rooms and systems in the library, and then spent the remainder of our time in both lecture / demonstration, and working collaboratively to try out the methodologies of Mary Ellen Dakin, English teacher at Revere HS and author of Reading Shakespeare with Young Adults and Reading Shakespeare Film First.  Ms. Dakin said her essential question is "How should we read Shakespeare in the 21st century with all our students?  Her answer, in a nutshell, was to suggest we use a triangle:

                                                              Literary






                    Theatrical                                                                     Cinematic


You might imagine that there are arrows showing the regular movement in both directions from point to point on this triangle.  There are many ways teachers can embrace this; Dakin said you might start with still images, but she had brought 5 flip cameras with her so that we could try a full on film-making  project.  We were given about one hour before lunch and another hour after lunch to make a film about the making of a film, in a sense.  So the film showed our groups working and discussing the scene we were assigned, and also interviewing experts and amateurs, rehearsing, and finally shooting our final project.  We edited all of this together after lunch and then showed the results.  I have to say, I loved working with my group, Robert, Kim, and Charlene, on our scene from The Taming of the Shrew.  I wish I could link to the film so you all could see it!  The most exciting thing we discovered in this process was that the rehearsal and production process entails many close readings, and students will be sure to reach deep understandings of complex literature in this way.  Next thing we knew, like Hermes,  Dakin was off like a flash to her next location

I, and several other of us campus dwellers, elected to not board the bus but eat dinner not far from the Folger, so as to stay for an evening lecture by Ralph Allen Cohen (who I introduced to you in my previous blog, as the driving force behind Blackfriar's Theatre in Staunton, VA) on the Blackfriars area of London during Shakespeare's time.  This coincided with the current show in the exhibition hall at The Folger on The City.  This part of the city, springing from the loins of the original Dominican monastery, was free from the laws of the Privy Council, thus offered freedom for theatre and other nefarious pleasures, such as painting studios, glass blowers, apothecaries, feather makers, and
prostitution.







On Tuesday Jay Halio, who wrote, among other things, Understanding Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, which I consulted yesterday in my research, presented the morning lecture on Staging The Merchant of Venice.  The big question is, do you stage it as a tragedy or a comedy?  For the first performances, did Will Kempt, who played the clown roles play Shylock or Lancelot Gobo?  Was Shylock presented as a comic villain, as some think?  Or as a tragic hero as is more often the case?  Shakespeare, himself, who often took an older role, may have played Antonio.

An interesting comparison was made to Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, which was notably anti-semetic and was revived around 1592 or 93, at the same time that Queen Elizabeth's personal physician, Roberto Lopez, a converso, or Jew converted to Catholicism, was hanged, drawn, and quartered, for supposedly attempting to poison her majesty, though she never believed it.  In Elizabethan England Jews were aliens, and had to wear yellow armbands to distinguish them.

There were many other interesting point to Jay's lecture, and it was a pleasure to discuss them in our new seminar groups with Margaret Mauer.  We decided our main points would be
  *  Anti-semitism
  *  Antonio
  *  Sympathies toward characters?
  *  Parallel Marital Situations of Portia and Jessica
  *  Stereotypes
  *  Love and Finance Language
  *  Portia as a character.

Margaret led off by saying:  "Theories of comedy are no laughing matter."

Several of us were quite happy to forgo sandwiches and lunchtime colloquium for our "Free Lunch Tuesday," and met up a Sweet Salads.  After lunch we divided into Montagues and Capulets.  I, with the Capulets, joined Caleen Jennings in the Theatre.  I am sworn to secrecy regarding what we did there, but suffice it to say, I came out a much freer actor than I was before.


Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Saturday 7/7, Theatre trip to Blackfriars



We were picked up by bus at 6:30 Saturday morning, dressed in our Saturday finery and carrying pillows.  We met the staff at the Folger Library at 7:00, who boarded the bus bearing muffins, grape clusters, juice boxes, and more, and accompanied by spouses in some cases.  We chatted, napped, and caught up on our reading during the long ride to Staunton, VA.  We stopped in a cute coffee shop, somewhat overwhelming its sleepy staff and then trooped up to Blackfriar's, a corner of which you see pictured above.
The detail to the right is a detail of the roof overhang, which was constructed with wooden pegs rather than nails, as was the recreation of the Globe Theatre in London.
Ralph Allen Cohen, who built the Theatre spoke about it, describing details that make it quite authentic to the theatres of Shakespeare's time, such as that the house is not darkened for performances, and that some audience members sit right up on stage, like our seminar participants behind Mr. Cohen.  We also did a bit of work with some of the archaic figures of speech that were in use in Elizabethan times, but may be unknown to us today.

We then listened to a fascinating lecture by Paul Menzer, who described his own early days in education, prepping students for a standardized test (the MCATs) and claimed we need idealogical literacy more than cultural literacy.  He said that 'verbal reasoning' is how a culture uses language as an opportunity for exclusion or inclusion, and talked about the three caskets that Portia's father in A Merchant of Venice uses as a test suitors must pass in order to win her hand.  These caskets, Cohen said, "illustrate the use of proverbial language as a means of exclusion or inclusion but disguises it as destiny or the inevitable."  Portia's father has prepared a standardized test.  When we examine the three suitors we see this has further parallels, as the local guy passes the test, while the outsiders are excluded from Portia's circle, much to her relief.


After  listening to these two gentlemen we retired for a pleasant lunch at tables of four or six, so we weren't subjected to the frustrations of a too large table, and thence, back to the theatre for the production of The Merchant of Venice.  There are many things one might say about the production, and quibbles one might make.  However, I will limit myself to saying that this emphasized the comedy, in this play that many modern students and viewers have a hard time accepting in that genre.  Shylock was quite serious and sympathetic, and a close, even romantic relationship between Antonio and Bassanio was emphasized.  Jessica still seemed an outsider, despite all Lorenzo's friends calling her "gentle", and that couple's doubtful future is the final note of the play.  There was also modern music, played with feeling from the balcony you see below at up stage.  We returned home in the evening, digesting our adventure.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Friday, 6/7/12

 Friday morning began (after coffee and a snack) with a lecture by Stephen Dickey of UCLA on The Comedy of Errors.  Dickey used primary sources such as descriptions of the first performance of Errors in 1594 and excerpts from Plautus' Menaechmus, the Roman play mined by Shakespeare to produce Errors in order to highlight the errors, themselves, of the play.  To begin with, Dickey referred us to several OED entries for the word, pointing out that at the time it was written it was not used to mean an accident, as it is now, but rather wanderings, and trickery, both of which are more apt to the play.  In his discussion, he focused on the trickery usage, and included twinning as a form of trickery, as it certainly is on stage, if not in life, being merely rare.

The first research presented was from Gesta Grayorum, the records of Gray's Inn, a brief description of the play on its first presentation, which connected it to its basis, Plautus's Menechmus, and concluded: "So that Night was begun, and continued to the end, in nothing but Confusion and Errors; whereupon, it was ever afterwards called, The Night of Errors.  This was day three of the twelve days of Christmas.

Dickey went on to highlight all the twinings in the play, from that first, with Menechmus, on to the rarity of the birth of the two Antipholus twins, to the even more rare circumstance that two other twins were born in the same place on the same day, and that Egeon purchased these twins from their impoverished parents to serve as servants for his own twin children.  The servants are doubled by Shakespeare, though not by Plautus.  Also, Shakespeare gives names to his characters, while Plautus names them as stock figures, ie. "wife," "rolling pin," "secondary," etc.

The greatest trick, a form of slight of hand, is that the twins can't meet until the end of the play, as that will then be... the end of the play.  This moment will be the anagnorisis, the moment when the characters learn what the audience has know all along.  Note the different effect when this occurs in tragedy, as when Oedipus learns that his wife is his mother, or that Othello admits that Desdemona was faithful.

The very beginning of Errors defies all expectations: the Duke does not speak first, Egeon does not address him respectfully or beg for mercy, the Duke does not really reply to Egeon, Egeon decries in great, and long detail his history, not in brief as requested.  In fact, this is the longest speech Shakespeare wrote, in his shortest play!

A couple of other interesting remarks included that the names of the two inns were the centaur and the phoenix, one a hybrid and the other the ultimate "singleton", and that these exemplified the methods of appropriation and adaptation.  Shakespeare "doubles down" by adding a second set of twins, then "doubling down again to offer the women Luciana and Luce who mirror downstairs what is happening upstairs.
Following Stephen Dickey's lecture we met for seminar, and then had an introduction to HAMNET, the Folger's search engine for research over lunch, with Georgianna Ziegler.  We were also pointed toward several useful search tools: the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, for biographies on all English people, the OED for etamology, Shakespeare Quarterly and the World Shakespeare Bibliography.  Another useful Resource Ms. Ziegler introduced us to was EEBO, or Early English Books Online.  This will provide electronic files of  early books and illustrations.  We also were instructed on how to use the Library of Congress, which I think sounds fun.

After lunch we went to our performance groups, and after warming up, presented the scenes we'd been working on from The Comedy of Errors.  I've never acted with so much physicality before, thanks to Caleen Jennings.  It was really fun!

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Shakespeare Inspired Festival in London

If I were in London I wouldn't be at the Olympic Games, I'd be here:

July 5th

     After getting plenty of rest on Wednesday I thought I would be less exhausted today, but my brain is at that full and tired state where it feels like there might not be room for any more.  This could be a problem since there are three and a half more weeks to go!  Today's morning lecture was by summer scholar, Margaret Maurer, professor of Literature at Colgate.  She spoke on "Duplicity in The Comedy of Errors", mostly through research into the etymology of certain words, such as "Duplicity", which means both double and to dupe.  She made a convincing case that both these words would have been in Shakespeare's lexicon.  She referred to a fascinating-sounding text by Putnam which assigns character roles to all the figures of speech, some of which are not in usage today, but others which are familiar, such as "Allegory," which he calls "The ringleader of figures of speech," and "Hyperbole," which is referred to as "the loud liar."  Maurer spoke of the joy of confusion, and pointed out how sometimes the designations for the two pairs of same-named twins are unclear.  She also talked about the different performance options, as to whether one actor should play both twins, and how the reveal at the end is really meant as a "See the magic we can perform, or Look at how well we have done it," sort of moment.  She then touched on Johnson's distaste for Shakespeare's "quibbles," and disagreed with him, stating that "the nature of theatre is duplicitous and doubling or punning.
     In seminar we continued the talk about confusion, and puns, and talked about the different productions we had seen of the play.  I also brought up the pun about "Doubling" as a pun for punning, from Romeo and Juliet, and so we all began talking about the multitude of puns in that play.

     At lunch we had a lunchtime lecture on locating images from the library's collection, and then my performance group when up to the theater with Caleen Jennings.  We did some warm-ups which utilized boxing and kicking moves and then we got very deeply in to creating physicality for words, working with the text of The Comedy of Errors.  The idea is that you attach a physical action and a vocal delivery to each word in the line, creating almost a dance, and linking the word to the action.  What was hardest, for me, was the little words like "of," "and," etc.  We were paired up and each pair got a scene to work on, to be continued tomorrow.

     Then we went to tea (I love this tradition) for 15 minutes and then to a lecture by Barbara Mowat, editor of The Folger Editions of all four plays we are studying this summer, and of the other plays as well.  She described her process and premises, and spoke to the fact that Othello was her most challenging work since there are so many variations between the quattro and the folio.  Mowat  mentioned a kinship she feels to editors from the past and was asked what kinship she might feel to Shakespeare.  She said, in part, "The language is so amazing and it is beyond me... but there is something in his insight into character... and his deep compassion (one reason I have trouble believing Timon of Athens, is that compassion is missing.) I think you find it running through all his plays.

July 3rd

Tuesday morning began with sweet bread (not sweet breads) and coffee and then a lecture by Jay Hallio, of The U. of Delaware, editor of the Cambridge edition of King Lear,  on "The Tragic Dimension of Shakespeare's Comedies."  To summarize briefly, and hopefully not baldly:  Socrates wrote that "The genius of comedy is the same as tragedy," and Elizabethan dramatists agreed, unlike other eras that kept them quite separate.  "Comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin."  Shakespeare adds many comic elements to Plautis' tale on which The Comedy of Errors is based.  Hallio then spoke of the "dark shades" of tragedy within many comedies, including: Loves Labour Lost, Midsummer Night's Dream, All's Well that ends Well, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, and Twelfth Night.  He spoke of Portia in Merchant of Venice and Roselyn in As you Like it as adding the comic provenance, and described how tragedy can be averted by kindness or "nobility of mind," as in Orlando rescuing his brother from the snake and the lioness in All's Well.
    Aristotle's equation of fear and pathos engendered by tragedy was evoked, and Hallio said that these same emotions are also evoked by cruel behavior within comedies, such as Mariah's treatment of Malvoio in Twelfth Night, and his embittered close of the play: "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of ye."  Then the song which ends the play, "And the rain it raineth every day," reminds us that there is sadness within the very texture of life.  Shakespeare's plays mingle tragedy and comedy with complexity.  In the q&a session afterwards we spoke of different determinations of genre, such as if it ends in death it is tragedy and if marriage, a comedy, but Hallio said that traditionally it was the rank of the portrayed characters that would determine the genre.  He said that moth include violence, revenge, and forgiveness / penitence, and that tragedy always has a "What if?".

     In the seminar discussion with Hallio afterwards we spoke of ways to teach The Comedy of Errors, and thought students would connect well with the theme of control vs. freedom, the beating and bullyng of the Dromios, the hands off parenting.  I liked the idea of asking them to imagine they were in a foreign land (as some 20% of the students at my school are) and that they were mistaken for someone very successful and got to benefit from all that person's respect and even possessions.  We also spoke of a method called "cut scene" where students work to cut the text as a means to help deal with challenges presented by the language.
     In our curriculum session we got our Shakespeare Toolkits, and worked with choral responses.  (At first I had trouble with this, as I didn't really get that we weren't supposed to stand out.)  We also got a list of "Don'ts" which probably included at least one thing each of us has been doing, so it was humbling.  It all comes down to:  Perform it!  Mike evoked Peggy O'Brian, who we will meet soon, who said to start with the words.  Then ask, What is happening in the scene in this line?  And, How do the words work so we know what's happening?  We practiced saying the word "O" and adding both tone and stress.

     Exhausted, many of us watched a bit of junk reality TV and ordered Chinese food.  I then retired to my room to watch The Game of Thrones, two episodes of which had just arrived via Netflix, and then to bed, to sleep 'til 10 as the 4th was a holiday.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

July 2

July 1st at TSI was mostly just orientation and icebreaking, but July 2nd we had an amazing lecture by the former director of the Library, who established the education department, Gail Pastor. She used digital images from the Folger's collection to talk about Shylock, Othello, and what signifies 'other' in the two Venetian plays. Then we went on to a performance exercise, which was really fun and then an acting/trust exercise, for which we used the actual stage of the Folger, that was surprisingly hard. After pizza we took an evening tour of the capitol, the highlights of which were the Roosevelt Memorial and the Martin Luther King Memorial, for me, at least. Wooot! I'll post a few pictures, just so you know I'm in DC.