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...

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...

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.

Interest in these questions in the last decade of the sixteenth century was high, because questions about succession faced the England of Elizabeth. The problem this time was not too many claimants, in a sense, but too few. Elizabeth was childless. So were the siblings who had preceded her as monarchs, her younger brother, Edward VI, and her older sister, Mary I. This meant that in order to find a legitimate successor, it was necessary to go back two generations--and to look at the female rather than the male line. The search led to the sister of Henry VIII, Margaret Tudor; it was her grandson, James VI of Scotland, who by the mid-1590s was pretty clearly established as the heir apparent, and who did indeed succeed Elizabeth as James I of England. He was a foreigner, however--king of a country with which England had been at war forever. Worse, his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, had been Queen of France before her French husband died and she returned to Scotland, and associations between Scotland and France had been close for generations, so he was seen as more French than English.

We know nothing directly of Shakespeare's own ideas about these things--though almost as soon as he was crowned, James became the patron of Shakespeare's company. None the less, it was in this environment that Shakespeare wrote King John, probably in 1595-96, in the gap between the two tetralogies. And the ground of this play, as in the matter of the Elizabethan succession, was a complicated family history involving French and English connections. A history, indeed, in which power achieved and sustained through the female line was central.

The play treats John's reign from his accession in 1199, aged 33, to his death in 1216. It is useful to know two things. First. that since the conquest of England by William Duke of Normandy in 1066, the English monarchs had retained land in France and close connections to the French aristocracy. Their family language and customs were French; they made dynastic marriages with the children of French monarchs and peers. John's father, Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Anjou, claimed the English throne because his mother Matilda was the daughter of Henry I of England, and supported by much of that country as queen, though much of England was loyal instead to her cousin Stephen. Henry's own wife, John's mother, Eleanor of Acquitaine, was the daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine, and for a time the Queen of France. When her marriage to her French husband, Louis, was annulled, she married Henry Plantagenet, bringing with her control of Aquitaine, the southwestern third of modern France; her lands bordered Henry's. Henry was 11 years younger than she, and their marriage was so turbulent that for the last years of it Henry kept Eleanor emprisoned to inhibit her meddling in his affairs, but they had five sons and three daughters, and when Henry forced the dying Stephen to accept his claim, so that he became king Henry II of England, Eleanor became his queen.

All of their children were lords of extensive lands in France, and spent more time there than in England. The oldest, William, predeceased his father. So did the second, Henry. The next three, Richard, Geoffrey, and John, all ambitious, fought with and against their father and each other. Both Richard and Geoffrey were at one time allies of Philip, King of France. Richard, who became king, died childless; Geoffrey died before Richard, and his son, Arthur, Duke of Brittany, was thought by many (including Philip) to be the rightful heir to the English crown. Eleanor, however, favored John, and helped arrange a will whereby Richard named John his successor. He was thus duly crowned King of England on April 6, 1199. His French associates and relations, however, supported his nephew Arthur, and through Arthur, their own interest in the English crown.

That's the situation when the play begins. It's pretty messy. And the process by which it arose, involving dynastic marriages, annulments, interfamilial fighting on the Continent, in England, and across the channel, was in many ways different from the process by which Elizabeth and James came to the throne. Shakespeare's immediate source, the anonymous author of an earlier play called The Troublesome Reign of King John, was somewhat confused about it. So, perhaps, was Shakespeare. So, perhaps, am I--there are certainly complexities I have overlooked or misunderstood--the many connections among the ruling families of Anjou, Aquitaine, and France, for example, and the role of the Church of Rome, which was repeatedly called upon to ignore ties of blood that might normally have prevented dynastic marriages--or to assert them. We'll leave it to the actors to clarify the ones that matter.

David Evett
Scholar in Residence

Much about the play looks ahead, however. It incorporates features of the two hottest trends in Jacobean theater: tragi-comedy (grief and separation at the actual or apparent death of an important character giving way to comic reunions and reconciliations and joy) and the masque (a hybrid form, extensively and expensively patronized by the royal family, in which rudimentary stories conveying clear-cut political and moral messages are filled out by singing, dancing, and slapstick comedy, with elaborate costumes and props). The mechanism that turns it from death toward life is the love-story of two youngsters who are as fresh and lively as Romeo and Juliet, if less fully developed. It incorporates utopian images of a political order in which the firmly established social hierarchy that had characterized European life for centuries, and which was indeed in the process of breaking down, would be replaced by something much more egalitarian. Over against this, the play refracts extensions of English power that would entail major changes in the country’s political makeup—the early steps, following the accession of James VI of Scotland as James I of England, toward unification of the two countries under one crown and parliament, consolidation of the recently reaffirmed control of England over Ireland, the first British experiments with overseas colonies in North America and elsewhere. Increased contact between Britons and the indigenous peoples of East Asia, Africa, and the New World, light skins and dark, seems to explain elements in the treatment of Caliban, a theme that has dominated scholarly and critical approaches to the play in recent years. Shakespeare had worked with these forms and issues in three earlier works also termed romances by modern critics—Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Winter’s Tale—but The Tempest takes them up with a concentration and economy that is both brilliant and highly demanding; it has an apparent clarity and simplicity that turn out to be full of ambiguity and complexity, and that pose severe challenges to actors, directors, designers, and audiences.

David Evett
Scholar in Residence
The Actors' Shakespeare Project

Patrick Swanson, the director of the upcoming show, in so many ways captures the sensual magic of Shakespeare’s language.  Each moment seems poised to explore the impact of taste, sight, and sound on an audience’s intellect.  Prospero becomes more than a protagonist, but the director of a stunning entertainment sequence, a play-with-a-play, which progresses under the guidance of the show’s lead magician. Set on a catwalk-like raised stage open to a hanamichi, the play moves through a sequence of special effects. The scenic designer, David Gammons, artfully conceals any technical clumsiness, and it is amazing how the design crew transcends the limitations of the performance space. 
The show boasts a circus-like appeal, supplied by the ornate set and its bizarre array of characters.  Ariel’s (Marianna Bassham) buoyancy-of-being lends her wings, and Caliban’s (Benjamin Evett) monstrosity makes for a convincing outcast.  A giant thunder instrument creaks off-stage at various intervals throughout the play, and a wind-machine sings as part of the scenery.  Swanson’s carefully designed blocking allows Epstein to play the characters like pawns.  In one scene, Miranda (Mara Sidmore) and Ferdinand (Jason Bowen) engage in a game of chess, as if to hint at the larger game Prospero plays with the characters. 

As a Stage Management Intern, I wonder at the exploratory nature of Swanson’s adaptation.  He evokes the mystery of existence, and the possibility of a larger-than-life force operating somewhere beyond our human grasp.  I am consistently struck by the fluidity of the narrative— the humor, the tragedy all melded into a simultaneously thought-provoking and delightful piece of entertainment.  My experience working on the show has opened my eyes to the complexity of the relationship between playwright and cast.  It has reemphasized for me the power of Shakespeare’s language, and the ways in which a particular theme can best enhance the psychology of his writing.  From the jesters, Trinculo (John Kuntz) and Stephano (Robert Walsh), to the mischievous Ariel, Shakespeare imbues The Tempest with a wonderful eccentricity, and with Swanson’s exploration of the play’s capacity for dimension, it becomes accessible and enjoyable on a multitude of levels.

In short, I have enjoyed every minute of my work, thus far, and continue to enjoy the time I spend watching the cast draw the magic from the text; it is a gift to observe the process, and the various ways each contributor paints the stage with his/her talents.

-Augusta Thompson

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

Working through the play yet once more, however, what I keep finding is children, and beyond them parents, and beyond them families.

Shakespeare is fascinated, even obsessed, with families, from the fractured group of Aegeus, Aemilia, and their twin sons and twin servants in Comedy of Errors at the beginning of his career, to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and the joyously received baby Elizabeth at the end. Comedies start with broken families and end with new ones just starting out. Histories follow one Plantagenet with a father and some uncles and aunts and cousins and brothers and one or more sons and nephews (and a wife or two, and even one daughter!) through four plays, and then another similar set through four more. Tragedies turn out to be comedies manquées, in which already cracked families are broken to pieces, and despite some promising early steps are decisively not renewed.

Shakespeare only occasionally presents us with an image of even a small complete family group—mother, father, child. Very briefly, if unequivocally, at the beginning and end of Merry Wives and at the end of Comedy of Errors and Pericles. Briefly and equivocally in I Henry IV (the Yorks) and at the end of All’s Well. Most extensively, and very equivocally, in Romeo and Juliet. Far more commonly we find childless couples, or single fathers or mothers (but not both together), and one or more children, and then perhaps some uncles and nephews and cousins.

The Scottish play does not break the mold: the familial element is subtle but inescapable. Lord and Lady Macbeth are childless (though Lady M says she has “given suck,” there are no living kids). Duncan has two sons but not, evidently, a surviving wife, and his death not only leaves the boys fatherless, but also separates them from one another. Banquo has a son but no wife; his death makes Fleance an exiled orphan. At the end of the play we meet the soldier Siward and his soldier son; the latter is Macbeth’s final victim. There is one whole family, the Macduffs. We do not see them together, however: Macduff the paterfamilias leaves Fife and Scotland for England to join the resistance to Macbeth’s increasingly tyrannical rule, and in his absence the tyrant brutally slaughters his wife and children.

In a way this moment serves as the moral hinge of the play. Until then, the murderous usurper carries all before him. It is as though killing other noblemen to gain and sustain political power were so normal as to be quite acceptable; indeed, if you read the preceding and following chapters of Raphael Holinshed’s chronicle history of Great Britain, Shakespeare’s source for this and many other plays, you get the idea that Macbeth’s bloody deeds were just business as usual. When Macbeth orders his underlings to kill Lady Macduff and the Macduff children, however, for no reason of state but apparently only out of spite at Macduff’s refusal to honor him, some crucial line is crossed, and thereafter everything goes wrong for the tormented king.

The sequence of scenes is powerfully suggestive. Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost, and is deeply shaken. He consults the Weird Sisters and is initially cheered to learn that his throne is secure unless an impossible event occurs—that the trees of Birnam Wood cross the 15-mile width of the Tay valley to Dunsinane Castle. Then he is further shaken by apparitions that show Banquo’s descendants, not his, mounting the throne of Scotland. He learns of Macduff’s flight to England and resolves to “give to th’edge of the sword / His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls / That trace him in his line” (4.2.150-52). That is, if Macbeth cannot found a dynasty, neither can Macduff. The next scene mingles apprehension with comedy, as Lady Macduff snaps out irritably at her absent husband and their feisty son cracks witticisms on politics and violence. Their murder (perhaps by a member of their own household secretly also working for Macbeth) is swift and brutal. News of their deaths rouses Macduff to seek vengeance, and he it is, in single combat, who kills Macbeth and brings the usurper’s head to the stage as evidence. At the end of the play, not even partial families remain on the stage—Lady Macbeth has died before her husband, perhaps by her own hand, Siward’s son has fallen to Macbeth, Macduff is a childless widower, the unmarried and virginal Malcolm has only an absent brother. The final lines speak of reunification and a promising future, but phenomenologically, the family units that might produce it are nowhere to be found.

David Evett
ASP Scholar in Residence