Saturday, June 14, 2008
Hi Hugh and everyone. One question that's been nagging at me is why Toby is in Olivia's caretaker (or is he the caretaker. What is his actual role and why is he in the house). I had a professor at NYU say that it's because Olivia is a minor, but the comments she makes on Viola being to young to marry, and that one day he'll make a fantastic husband, makes me doubt that. Any thoughts? Malvolio makes more sense to me. In our production what is his relationship to Olivia's family. Did he work for my father. What is his status in the home?
Thursday, June 12, 2008
General notes on text
I have worked with most of you and am completely excited to get to know the rest of you better. Even a few of you former ATPers are relative strangers to me. I often say that when I direct my overriding goal is that the play is cool. Not, cool as a cucumber cool; rather, cool as in, wow, or, ah ha, or, daddio or something. I want the audience to see it and say, "Cool" to themselves repeatedly throughout. Our set design is definitely cool. It is clean and nearly leaves a bare stage for us to act upon. I will send you some schematics of it soon. Lighting will play a huge part in delineating where we are in our world.
Here are a few comments about the script. First, I followed the punctuation, usually, from the First Folio. I keep finding mistakes, though. For example, there is no such thing as an exclamation point in the Folio 12th Night and I left a few. In the first few scenes I left some long spellings because at first I intended to include them. There is a suite instead of a suit and a faire for fair and so on. Also, I tried to indent when a line is shared but I noticed that I missed many indentions of the second half of the line. Even though I did not include the long spellings and within-sentence caps from the Folio I am a firm believer in their importance. As you all know you can find a number of Folio copies online. I would definitely suggest perusing them and using the caps and odd-spellings to your advantage for clues and such.
Most of you know Jaq and have already been through the way her group at The Globe developed techniques to perform the full-length plays with no cuts and at around two hours. There were a few basic guidelines that were employed that were generally aimed at avoiding the need to pause anywhere except for line endings and sometimes not even then. Many of the same ideas can be applied to the prose as well, valuable to us since about half the play is in prose. I long ago decided that when I direct Shakespeare I put aside my fear that I will offend someone who already has studied him extensively and might feel that I am talking down to him. I am going to list a few of the ideas I remember from Jaq and add some others that I find effective as well. I know that Chris is in a superb position to give further ideas about this way of handling the language as well as the rest of you from your experience. Please feel more than free to make comments that either concur or don't with what I say. Here are a few of the guidelines:
Note: there are often exceptions to these guidelines but I have found that usually a way can be found to use them to avoid pausing. Most of the time pausing at all, except at the end of a line, can hamper the audience's ability to comprehend the intent.
1. Try to drive through to the end of the line without pausing, even if an endstop (period) or colon seems to necessitate a pause or caesura.
2. Use the within-line punctuation as a springboard rather than a yield or stop sign.
3. Commas, semi-colons and parentheses can be handled with emphasis on the word directly preceding it. Of course, emphasis can be loudness, pitch, softness, elongating or any number of ways to bring attention to that word.
4. Words directly following periods and colons receive emphasis, often giving the feeling of a "fresh start" or a new idea.
5. Using the caps and long-spellings as mountains in an otherwise flat plain of delivery can help bring out meaning considerably.
6. Throw all the above out if intention and meaning is achieved by not following it. I say, though, that almost always it works and makes the play zip along with greater intelligibility for the listeners.
7. Apply the above to prose as much as possible.
8. In general, avoid the pause at all costs.
Obviously, the intention of what you say is the governing principle of acting. The cool thing about Shakespeare is the way the words and rhythms are what provide the actor with ideas for intention and tactics rather than sub-text being the source for objectives.
You have noticed, I am sure, that I have switched some of the Sebastian/Antonio scenes around for continuity in our production. I have retained the original Act/Scene numbers, though. We have decided that our Viola is an assistant rather than a eunuch or butler. I have tried to change very few words from those used by Shakespeare. Sometimes, though, especially when changing the gender of the character, it is completely acceptable to say she instead of he. We are not doing that in this version; however, we do have a Doctor instead of a Captain and an assistant whose absence of genitalia won't be labeled. It's imagined proportions might be described or compared to something but we will allow Orsino to assume that Cesario does possess junk. Ok, enough of that. There are a few other slight vocab changes, some of which I will mention specifically in the next blog. There are also some stage directions that I included that may or may not remain. When I sent the script it was still in process but I wanted you to have it. Our goal is to only use the script at the very first so you can write in staging but to discard them soon. We have a three week rehearsal period and our Equity actors have even less. Let's be as memorized as possible when we begin. This is something I don't usually do but find it necessary this time.
Ignore the long line of xxxxxx's in I.5. I used such to mark my place and forgot to delete it. I will refer to our place in the text by act and verse; however, it might be wise to put page numbers on before you print it so we can be more specific for rehearsal, since line numbers are not included. Apply the numbers prior to cutting or adding anything so that we all have the same basic page numbers. I had to hand-write my numbers on my hard copy because I did not put them on before printing. There are 76 pages. We are having an intermision after Act II, which is about two pages before the half. Take the dumb scene at the first with some flexibility. We will work it and definitely make it cool.
Ok, that's enough for this time. Please ask any questions through the Comments tab. I am anxious for your input. You will not offend me with any question or comment.
Oh, one more thing. Please email me a photo of you and your bio. We are using the actors as the main point of marketing for the show and want to take full advantage of our amazing cast at whatever level of the profession you find yourself. Thanks, Hugh
Here are a few comments about the script. First, I followed the punctuation, usually, from the First Folio. I keep finding mistakes, though. For example, there is no such thing as an exclamation point in the Folio 12th Night and I left a few. In the first few scenes I left some long spellings because at first I intended to include them. There is a suite instead of a suit and a faire for fair and so on. Also, I tried to indent when a line is shared but I noticed that I missed many indentions of the second half of the line. Even though I did not include the long spellings and within-sentence caps from the Folio I am a firm believer in their importance. As you all know you can find a number of Folio copies online. I would definitely suggest perusing them and using the caps and odd-spellings to your advantage for clues and such.
Most of you know Jaq and have already been through the way her group at The Globe developed techniques to perform the full-length plays with no cuts and at around two hours. There were a few basic guidelines that were employed that were generally aimed at avoiding the need to pause anywhere except for line endings and sometimes not even then. Many of the same ideas can be applied to the prose as well, valuable to us since about half the play is in prose. I long ago decided that when I direct Shakespeare I put aside my fear that I will offend someone who already has studied him extensively and might feel that I am talking down to him. I am going to list a few of the ideas I remember from Jaq and add some others that I find effective as well. I know that Chris is in a superb position to give further ideas about this way of handling the language as well as the rest of you from your experience. Please feel more than free to make comments that either concur or don't with what I say. Here are a few of the guidelines:
Note: there are often exceptions to these guidelines but I have found that usually a way can be found to use them to avoid pausing. Most of the time pausing at all, except at the end of a line, can hamper the audience's ability to comprehend the intent.
1. Try to drive through to the end of the line without pausing, even if an endstop (period) or colon seems to necessitate a pause or caesura.
2. Use the within-line punctuation as a springboard rather than a yield or stop sign.
3. Commas, semi-colons and parentheses can be handled with emphasis on the word directly preceding it. Of course, emphasis can be loudness, pitch, softness, elongating or any number of ways to bring attention to that word.
4. Words directly following periods and colons receive emphasis, often giving the feeling of a "fresh start" or a new idea.
5. Using the caps and long-spellings as mountains in an otherwise flat plain of delivery can help bring out meaning considerably.
6. Throw all the above out if intention and meaning is achieved by not following it. I say, though, that almost always it works and makes the play zip along with greater intelligibility for the listeners.
7. Apply the above to prose as much as possible.
8. In general, avoid the pause at all costs.
Obviously, the intention of what you say is the governing principle of acting. The cool thing about Shakespeare is the way the words and rhythms are what provide the actor with ideas for intention and tactics rather than sub-text being the source for objectives.
You have noticed, I am sure, that I have switched some of the Sebastian/Antonio scenes around for continuity in our production. I have retained the original Act/Scene numbers, though. We have decided that our Viola is an assistant rather than a eunuch or butler. I have tried to change very few words from those used by Shakespeare. Sometimes, though, especially when changing the gender of the character, it is completely acceptable to say she instead of he. We are not doing that in this version; however, we do have a Doctor instead of a Captain and an assistant whose absence of genitalia won't be labeled. It's imagined proportions might be described or compared to something but we will allow Orsino to assume that Cesario does possess junk. Ok, enough of that. There are a few other slight vocab changes, some of which I will mention specifically in the next blog. There are also some stage directions that I included that may or may not remain. When I sent the script it was still in process but I wanted you to have it. Our goal is to only use the script at the very first so you can write in staging but to discard them soon. We have a three week rehearsal period and our Equity actors have even less. Let's be as memorized as possible when we begin. This is something I don't usually do but find it necessary this time.
Ignore the long line of xxxxxx's in I.5. I used such to mark my place and forgot to delete it. I will refer to our place in the text by act and verse; however, it might be wise to put page numbers on before you print it so we can be more specific for rehearsal, since line numbers are not included. Apply the numbers prior to cutting or adding anything so that we all have the same basic page numbers. I had to hand-write my numbers on my hard copy because I did not put them on before printing. There are 76 pages. We are having an intermision after Act II, which is about two pages before the half. Take the dumb scene at the first with some flexibility. We will work it and definitely make it cool.
Ok, that's enough for this time. Please ask any questions through the Comments tab. I am anxious for your input. You will not offend me with any question or comment.
Oh, one more thing. Please email me a photo of you and your bio. We are using the actors as the main point of marketing for the show and want to take full advantage of our amazing cast at whatever level of the profession you find yourself. Thanks, Hugh
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Welcome
Hi everyone: I will begin our table work on this blog tomorrow night. It should be a blast. Let's pretend we are sitting around a table and introducing ourselves, eh? Hi, I'm Hugh, director boy. I am way excited to do this. I live in Riverdale, Utah, am married to the producer of Salt Lake Shakespeare, Leslie. We have three children, one (Jeremi, our daughter) is in Brooklyn at Pete's Candy Store with her alt-country band, Band of Annuals, tomorrow night. Our son, Greyson, is helping us remodel our house and our daughter, Mia, is presently at Bonnaroo Music Fest in Tennessee. I teach Acting, Speech and Voice and a strange internet class involving TV in Theatre Arts at the U. of Utah. My MFA is in Directing. I also have a Masters Degree in Speech/Voice Pathology. I sing and act and such and have done some of each with many of you. My latest directing project was Top Girls and the next one after this project will be The Pillowman. I am looking forward to seeing all of you again. Those of you who haven't worked with me will hopefully get a little idea of who I am over the next few weeks through this blog. Take a moment to introduce yourselves to each other. Looking forward to hearing from you. Hugh
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