Behind the Arras

We've been in the space for about a week now - translating the work we did in our small, white, classroom at Boston Conservatory to the warm and expansive room at the Cathedral. It's been really good - and the show looks great in there.

I've had a particular challenge gnawing at the back of mind for months now, which I finally could confront. One of the things that makes the room unique is the presence of a painted labyrinth on the floor. It looks kind of like this one, which comes from Chartres Cathedral:

It is used in a practice called "praying the labyrinth" which is a spiritual journey that is taken during Pentecost. It's not a maze, in that you can't get lost in it - rather a long and winding journey from out to in (or maybe it's in to out, I'm not actually sure). It's a wonderful image - it forms a natural stage boundary - our own "Wooden O", and a nice texture underneath the action.

But I have known from the beginning that I would have to find a way to use it during the production - it is an essential element of the space, and, as you know, we always try to take inspiration from the space we are in. But how? Who would walk it? Constance, when she has lost her boy? Arthur as he tries to escape from prison? John? I had no idea until I got in there and saw the play begin to live in the space.

I'm not going to say what I did - you'll have to see for yourself! All I can say is that I take my hat off to my brilliant sound designer Cam Willard, whom I made write a whole 2 and half minute piece of music with three days before previews start. I hope it works for you...

Ah, the excitement of being a small itinerant company! The Boston Conservatory has generously donated a rehearsal room for King John - a good sized room with relative quiet, a good floor, some light, a place for actors not being used to hang out. Well, until this weekend. A fire alarm malfunctioned on Friday, and suddenly our rehearsal space was locked down for the weekend, with no access to the room or to any of our stuff - rehearsal props and costumes, etc.

BoCo scrambled to find a place for us to rehearse - thanks to Katie Shinay in the Theatre Office - and we ended up in a dance studio in the basement of the performing arts building. We can hardly complain, because at least we had enough room (barely!) to work, but it sure was an interesting weekend. For much of our rehearsal time this weekend we had either piano waltzes, or, more frequently, incredibly loud music from Hairspray or Chorus Line blaring through the paper thin door from the studio next door, not to mention exuberant BoCo dance students whooping, hollaring and chattering through the halls just outside. Add to that a loud car alarm, two tow-trucks and an insistent leaf-blower, and you begin to get some sense of the challenge that we faced.

So my hat is way-way off to my flexible and resilient actors, who not only survived this sonic onslaught, but got a lot of great work done in the process - and to my ingenious stage management team for digging up enough chairs, tables and makeshift props to get us through. If only there had been a street percussionist banging his trash cans out there as well...

We're most of the way through the second week of rehearsal, and I'm finally catching a chance to set down some thoughts about the process. It's such an interesting play. So much of the it is so gleefully amoral, so matter of fact in its assessment of opportunism as a driving force in social interaction, that you almost forget what an empathic playwright Shakespeare is. Then suddenly, he strikes with a deep and moving moment that gets to very heart of human care and emotion. In particular, his treatment of the boy, Arthur, and his loss. It's devastating. We were rehearsing the scene in which Constance responds to loss of her boy today, and I couldn't even speak to give notes, it touched me so much.

Grief fills up the room of my absent child
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;

I can't help thinking of poor little Hamnet, Shakespeare's boy who died in 1596, right around the time this play was likely written. The understanding of the loss of a little boy is so specific, so profound, its utterly heartwrenching - what he must have been going through - as a father of two little boys I can't even begin to contemplate a loss like that. But there it is, deep in the fabric of the play.

I have been wanting to do this play for a long time. I acted in it way back in 1985, as a student, at the A.R.T., where I played Dumaine, and ever since I've been looking for an opportunity to do it again. I find it such a charming, sweet, funny play. When we began talking about doing a show with a very small cast, and lots of doubling, I immediately knew that LLL was the perfect play for it. It has 3 sets of neatly divided characters: The Lords, the Ladies, and the Townsfolk - whom, thought they often interact, maintain discreet identities. It made perfect sense for each actor to take one role from each set, and have the boy Moth act as a consistent viewpoint on the follies of the adults.

Having the four lords and the four ladies they love played by two men and two women, so that there were always two characters playing cross-gender, serves several functions. First and foremost, it gives us a lot of comic potential and the constant opportunity to find the humor in gender. But thematically I think it serves the play, as well. This play, all about courtship, is thus all about play - the roles we take on when we woo and are wooed, and how our masculinity and femininity become the chief elements in our romantic interactions. I thought it would be really interesting to highlight gender behavior in these scenes by comparing the behavior of the actors playing their own gender with the interpretations offered by their colleagues crossing the gender line.

Even though the characters neatly divide into three groups, there are constant changes of character throughout the production. One of the actors told me that she changed character 28 times in the show, and that was before I added several more changes, so her count is well over 30 now. My biggest problem was how to allow the actors to make these changes without interrupting the flow of the story. This meant that they would have to change in as little as 5-10 seconds. I thought about simple costume pieces - scarves, hats, etc., but soon realized that to adequately define the separate characters these pieces would be woefully inadequate, and the move to more evocative costume pieces - jackets, wrap-around skirts, and the like - would be difficult, distracting, and mostly like take too much time.

I was in the middle of a meeting one day when I had a brainwave. We'd keep the costume constant - something clean and elegant but gender neutral - and change the silouette of the head with a hat, attached to a wig. If done properly, the actor could transform completely in a matter of seconds. I got the name of Rachel Padula from Jennie, who worked with her at the Huntington, and she proved to be exactly the right person for the job. She came up with wigs that looked great but were extremely easy to take on and off, and would hold their shape during the multiple changes each actor had to make. It proved to be the key.

Shakespeare Behind Bars: an intriguing title that moved me to attend a showing at the Boston Film Festival in the fall of 2005. There was a full house at the weekday matinee at the Brattle Theatre. That autumn afternoon, Shakespeare Behind Bars took the audience members, most of whom were either on their feet, or weeping, or both at the end of the film, on a year-long journey with the Shakespeare Behind Bars theatre troupe.

Actors’ Shakespeare Project is very fortunate to be sponsoring a showing of this inspiring, funny and moving film on Sunday December 3 at the Brattle Theatre. The Director of the prison program, Curt Tofteland, director of ASP’s forthcoming The Winter’s Tale, will be on hand to talk with the audience. There will also be a performance of the work of the teen-age girls in ASP’s incarcerated Youth Program. This Special Event begins at 11:00 with a light brunch. Ticket sales benefit our Outreach Programs.

-Bobbie Steinbach

ABOUT THE FILM
From internationalfilmcircuit.com http://www.internationalfilmcircuit.com/shakespeare/index.html

ABOUT THE EVENT AT THE BRATTLE
http://www.actorsshakespeareproject.org/season3/shakes.behind.bars.html