Pillar to Post
Visitors to the ASP's peripatetic theater in the basement of the Garage in Harvard Square, previously the site of productions of Titus Andronicus and Love's Labors Lost, and now of Henry V, have all been struck by the intrusive presence of a good-sized pillar--three, in fact--that stand near the center of the room, and become either impediments or advantages, depending (quite literally) on your point of view. Since the room at the BU Fine Arts Center in which we performed King Lear and Macbeth has similar features, while the theater at the Cambridge Y in which we did Julius Caesar and especially All's Well that Ends Well, had a whole semicircle of smaller ones, dealing with pillars has become quite a feature of the company's work--almost a signature.
It is my own sense that the pillars stimulated the designers of all these productions, and the directors and actors of King Lear and Titus, at least, to theatrically inventive and effective adaptations, which in the end offset the periodic inconvenience to spectators of having the pillars standing between them and one or more actors. I think especially of Ken Cheeseman as the Fool with his back against the pillar slowly sliding down it as the deadly wound he had just received from the King took effect, and the way the pillar in Titus became shrine, then hitching post, then shrine again, and of the rack of knives and other kitchen implements dangling from the pillar in Macbeth and waiting, like the gun on the wall in Ibsen, to go off. At this writing I have not yet seen Henry V, but would be very interested to read comments about the pillars in that production and the others, as I'm hoping to present a talk about them to the Blackfriars Conference next fall.
David Evett
Scholar in Residence
David Evett
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