breakinglight11 | Entries tagged with hamlet

I am happy to report that at long last, GHOSTSHOW is done and to effect that we are pleased and proud to have delivered. We've been working on it for a long time, and ran into a lot of stumbling blocks, and yet it turned out tonight as something we can be proud of.

To be honest, we got probably to the point of over-rehearsing. We originally prepared to have the show ready to go for October, in order to have a Halloween performance, but our inability to find appropriate and affordable space for it pushed it back. By the time we found the Democracy Center and got a date, we'd been working on it for months. We didn't want to get out of practice, so we kept rehearsing the whole time, but I think it caused us to get kind of bored with the material. But getting through tech week and then finally putting it in front of an appreciative audience reinvigorated us, and that magical thing happened where the whole performance steps up to a new level when it's finally in front of people.

Our audience was lovely, too. The space that served as our house was not especially large but we did manage to fill it, and even better, they were beautifully responsive. They seemed to follow what we were trying to do, and laughed at all the jokes. That is just so gratifying, and as a performer gives you so much energy. And each and every one of us, Charlotte, Gigi, Eboracum, Frances, Lenny, and myself, did well.

The most difficult thing about all this was being responsible for ALL aspects of putting a show together. All producer, technical, creative, and publicity duties. It's a ton of work and not easy to accomplish with no established structures or resources behind you. But we accomplished a ton in the end and learned a lot, so I'm really proud of us for tackling those new challenges.

I also feel like I accomplished my personal artistic goal going into this. Since the format was many short pieces of different styles, that meant we each played a number of different roles. I, for example, was Barnardo from Hamlet, Rorcius from crearespero's Ghost of Wittenberg, Pompey in dendron_ges's At Phillipi, and Richard from Richard III. I endeavored to make each of my characters different from the others, and I think I succeeded, from vocal pattern to physicality. I was particularly pleased with my portrayal of Rorcius, who is supposed to be in danger of becoming like Hamlet due to his same potential for madness, who had a great trajectory of starting out arrogant and just out for a lark and really got to break loose when he realized he wouldn't get to speak to the ghost he had been chasing. I also was very happy with Richard, who I struggled to get a handle on. The levels were what was important to me with him, the shifts between rage and fear, the aggressive moments versus the vulnerable ones. But I think I did a pretty decent job in the performance.

I'm really proud of us. We did a lot of hard work, overcame a lot of challenges, and came out with a very good end product. I'm glad to have done it, and glad it's done now, as I can use one fewer obligation on my plate.

Hold Thy Peace's fall 2013 production was Hamlet, directed by the lovely and talented Sam LeVangie, went up this past weekend, and I was very proud of them. They did a great job with very challenging material, and I couldn't believe how many talented people came together in that cast. It's so amazing to see how far Hold Thy Peace has come-- when I was in undergrad, it was very much the bastard stepchild of the Brandeis theater group, but now it seems to have completely moved past the old conflicts. Even the school respects it more, as is demonstrated by the three thousand dollar budget it got to put on the show. It makes me really proud and happy, as Hold Thy Peace was such an important part of my life.

The set was really gorgeous; designed by Ryan Kacani, they made a castle backdrop with beautiful faux stained glass windows, and the lighting effects for the ghosts were subtle and beautiful. niobien's recent intensive technical experience really showed as she stepped into Bernie's shoes as the new technical director. I loved Sam's vision for the show. Simply put, she has Horatio be a ghost that only Hamlet could see, and as other characters died, they joined the ranks of ghosts haunting the prince, chipping at his sanity, and silently foretelling his doom. Played by Aaron Fischer, he became a solemn Cassandra figure, understated in comparison to the intensity around him. Ryan played Claudius as a charismatic politician with an air of the ends justifying the means, his confidence designed to smooth over a crumbling inner state. His scene with Claudius's confessional monologue was one of the strongest scenes in the show. And of course there was Alex Davis as Hamlet, one of the most talented undergrads I've ever seen at Brandeis, whose tremendous ability to command a stage with his presence makes him absolutely mesmerizing. It was overall a wonderful cast, and I'm amazed to see multiple strong leading men in HTP for the first time.

I took this picture of Alex and Frances, the two Hamlets of HTP. Very different portrayals in all possible ways, and both amazing for different reasons. I like this little bit of history. :-)

The show also brought up a lot of memories. As you may recall, I directed the first production of Hamlet HTP ever put up, back in November of 2007. I was very proud of that show, and I think we did a very good job overall, despite struggling to find good people to be involved and so few resources for production. Honestly I was happy enough with my idea behind that show that I'd love to recreate it now that I'm more developed as a director. But at the same time it's become something that's a bit difficult to think about. It was a project that Jared was very deeply involved with, and I can't think about that play without having to think about him.

( Cut for bitching and whining. )

I'll just have to figure out some way to separate the two. For well or for ill, one thing I've always been good at is distancing myself from memories. They don't necessarily stick to me-- I tend to reframe them as narratives and hold onto them that way, rather than maintain mental snapshots or videos of the moments --and that's made me good at keeping what I want to keep and moving past what I don't. Hopefully I will be able to keep this from tainting the memory of something I should really be proud of.

Ever notice that Hamlet talks about "the undiscovered country from which no man returns" even though he's just SEEN A FREAKING GHOST? A lot of people argue that Shakespeare had some deep point he was making with that contradiction, but you know what? I think he just made a mistake.

In my writing program my teachers all treat as an axiom the idea that everything that is in a piece of written work was put there with absolute intention by the writer-- if it's in there, they say, it was put there deliberately, for a very definite reason, and therefore should be treated with the appropriate importance. But as a writer, i have to say I find that to be a load of bull. Yes, if it's there, somebody had to write it, but the reasons why they wrote it could be for the dumbest things.

Maybe the writer didn't know what to say at a particular part, so they just said some shit. Maybe they had a really good beginning and really good ending and they needed SOMETHING in there to bridge point A and point B. (I have that one a lot.) Maybe they wrote something that seems prfound and fitting to you but they really just stumbled onto it without realizing how well it worked. (I've had that one too!) Point is, I seriously doubt every single but of every piece is put there because of some deep, totally thought-out and internally-consistent reasoning.

So you may remember that few years ago I directed a little play called Hamlet. Because I was determined to not make it an heavy emotastic dramaslog, I wanted it to be funny in some places to contrast with the tragedy. This led to some decidedly weird bits making it into the final production. One of the weirdest being the idea of Mr. Alex d'Anjou, who played the gravedigger, who ended up being apparently a collector of his dead charges' skulls and the only truly happy character in the play. We began joking about how he must have had a field day with the throne room after the end of the final scene, with all those new pretties to harvest. I have no idea why it came to me today, but that wast the inspiration for today's weird-ass piece.

( Day #18 - "Chapfallen" )

Merely Players auditions happened last night. They went well, and I liked and would be happy to use every single person I saw, though out of eleven I only have room to cast nine. Alas, I am spoiled for choice. Poor me. ;-) I could probably nail down a list right now, though, except that Dave has requested that I wait until he can finalize the Margaret list next Wednesday. He's afraid of losing people he wants to other shows when common casting rolls around, and any shifts he has to make because of that might affect my list. I certainly can understand, I lost three actors that way back when I did Hamlet, and though it worked out, for a while it was quite painful to fill the gaps. Still, I kind of wish we could jump in and get started. Seeing people come out for my show last night has got me really raring to go.

After this crazy week ends, I need to get serious about finishing the blocking. I have a lot of ideas, and some things nailed down concretely, but I like to go into rehearsals with at least a solid idea of what we'll be doing. It always changes once it gets worked, of course, but it helps cut down on wasted time. Though one thing that's kind of exciting is that this is very much a living script, I expect it to evolve and change as we rehearse it, and I welcome suggestions and ideas from the actors. If anyone has a thought on how to make it flow better, or to make the piece funnier, I want to hear it to make it the most entertaining piece it can be. I've never really worked like that before, nor do I think any of these others have, but that's the way writers often develop their new plays. It will be an exciting new challenge.

I really liked the set design. It is a spin on the oft-used lego-block platform configuration of several HTP sets, with some major alterations that made it actually look very different. First of all, the platforms are not fronted, instead painted with dark wood stain to make them look more like real structures. The open air beneath them gives them a very different look, as does the stain. I also approve of not having to deal with fronting, or having to use the router to cut the fronting to size.

I have experience with wood stain, so I got to lead the crew on that particular task. It really isn’t hard, just paint it on in the direction of the grain and wipe off the excess, so once you know that it’s easy. We didn’t bother with multiple coats because it doesn’t have to be perfect for the stage, besides the fact that it had to be dry enough to rehearse on by the next day. I’ve always loved the look of stained wood (so much more elegant and expensive-looking than when painted) and it ended up quite lovely. To steampunk it up, we bought metal corner pieces that we screwed onto the front edges of all the platforms.

Also to that end were the streetlamps. These were especially cool given all the various theatrical departments contributed to them—lighting, props, and set crew. They found these great lantern tops which were placed on top of PVC piping spray painted black on the poles and bronze at the joints, with a cord running down through them that when plugged in actually made it possible to turn them off and on. They looked really lovely burning softly up there, and I am pleased to say that they will be saved in the Hold Thy Peace storage locker for possible use in another show.

The crew working on the show this time around was fabulous, both the dedicated techies and the actors doubling as set builders. Plesser in particular must be commended for his work as master carpenter, especially since he gave his all at that and then turned around and threw himself into four amazing performances as Othello. He is shaping up well in the position and is learning to be a real crew leader, so props to him. As a matter of fact, we had a remarkably competent group of people around, most of whom had developed some technical theater skill in building, working with lights, or anything else that needed to be done. It was a lucky thing, too, as some of the materials we used ended up using turned out to be harder to work with than what we were used to, such as the four-by-four legs that were so dense they required a lot more strength and finessing than the two-by-fours to attach to the platforms.

The only real criticism of it is the use of the moving bits. This is the first dynamic set we've had since Hamlet, which consisted of metal painters scaffolds that rolled around. They were reconfigured in various positions to represent different places in and around the castle of Elsinore. In Othello, there was a freestanding platform that represented the bed, among other things, a bridge in the middle that pushed in and out of the stage right platform cluster, and a low roller that came out of the front of that side. While the bed mover worked pretty well, I feel like the other two didn't do a huge amount to change the shape of the set. The front mover in particular didn't much affect anything. But I like the idea of dynamic sets, so I think we need to work this into the design with more mind as to how it will be used in the blocking and what change it will make to the look of the set.

Turned out not half-bad, now, didn’t it?

So I feel like a real stride forward has been made in HTP set design and construction. Hopefully what was learned here will be used to push the envelope even farther for the next show.

One of my favorite small pleasures that comes with directing is getting to put together the curtain call. It's akin to a little piece of decadent candy for me; small, not terribly important, but immensely delicious and satisfying. Curtain call exists pretty much solely as a reward for the actors, their moment to be acknowledged for their hard work. I also like using it as a way of deconstructing the relationships in the show, composing it in such a way as to display to the sharp-eyed audience member how the character relate to the plot and to each other. And while I guess I put entirely too much thought into it, but as I said, doing it just so gives me a great deal of pleasure.

Here is my theory of how curtain calls are best organized. There are two factors to consider, order and grouping. Order is the procession in which the actors appear, with the most important characters emerging later than the others. As an actor, I've always found it's really an honor to emerging in the last three waves of bows, with the coveted final one the most ego-boosting of all. If (n) is the number of waves of bowing, the most significant characters tend to appear in waves (n), (n-1), and (n-2). I firmly believe that the most significant deciding factor on where to place people is how much influence they have over the course of the plot. Role size I do feel is a factor to consider, but I find it much less important than plot significance. I would rather a smaller character come out later if they matter more to the story-- or if they are a particularly notable part, like Mercutio or Palamon --than strictly gauge by how many lines they have, or by how much time they spend onstage.

Groupings, as in, what combination of people come out at what time, I feel should be determined by character-relatedness, the similarity of the service they provide to the plot. Obviously characters who feature together and are roughly the same size parts should come out to bow together. But that also means that if they're doing the same kind of thing for the story, even if they don't interact much onstage, grouping them together makes sense. For example, if there are two parallel figures who both provide support to the main characters but don't deal much with each other, I like to have them come out together. Opposites-- such as Edgar and Edmond in Lear-- also make sense.

Let's use the curtain call of Romeo and Juliet as an example. I thought having Frances as Tybalt and myself as Paris come out together and fairly early made sense. Even though our characters don't have much to do with each other onstage, we served the same plot purpose-- immediate antagonism --and our roles were about the same size. By contrast, I felt like instead of having the Nurse come out alone in position (n-1) and Friar Lawrence come out alone at (n-3), they should have both come out together at (n-1)-- again, they had the same plot purpose of facilitating the efforts of the two leads, and had about the same time spent onstage. Sacrificing the solo bow I believe would have been worth both of them moved up to acknowledge their significance by the order.

The solo bow is a bit tricky. Normally I only give it to the most important characters (as in, the primary support comes out at wave (n-1) alone, and then the lead comes out at position (n) alone) but it's also a way to acknowledge the uniqueness of a supporting role. I find it appropriate for the fan favorite in a show, such as Palamon in To Think of Nothing, to get a moment for the audience to express their particular appreciation. Sometimes a compromise can be made status-wise by having certain character come out earlier, but alone. The solo bow is kind of an honor, so sometimes you can balance acknowledgement of two different groups' significance by having the earlier wave contain just one person bowing by himself, and the later wave come out with a group. This is what I did with Horatio; he appeared earlier in the order than Laertes and Ophelia, but he got the honor of bowing by himself. And sometimes you just have a character who doesn't go with anyone else in the show, and simply doesn't make sense in any grouping with anyone else.

For HTP, I designed the curtain call for both of the shows I directed, plus King Lear. I only sort of remember what I did with Lear; anyone who wants to remind me is welcome. It was remarkably difficult to design a curtain call for To Think of Nothing because everybody was pretty much just as important to the piece as everyone else. Hell, everyone being constructs of Cassander's brain, everyone literally IS the main character! So I couldn't use my normal formula there. What I settled on was that it would reflect the depth to which each character penetrated Cassander's thoughts. Which meant that even though Damon and Selene are respectively the second- and third-largest parts in the show (at least by line count), I decided they should be the first to come out.

As a side note, I have always been a fan of the "call out"-- when the actor or actors who came out in the previous wave remain just slightly to the side of center stage and make a gesture to "call out" the next wave and sort of present them to the audience as they take their bow. I have used it in the three prior HTP curtain calls I organized, specifically with the last two waves to emerge, with Claudius calling out Hamlet, Cordelia calling out Lear, and Andromeda calling out Cassander. I like it as a concept because it acknowledges the way actors and characters need each other for their plots to be interesting and their performances to be strong. It highlights the fact that Claudius and Hamlet, for example, need each other for the conflict to be meaningful, and the way Frances and Jared used each other's performance to make their own better. The call out allows Claudius to show his gratitude to Hamlet for that, and keeping Claudius present during Hamlet's bow acknowledges his own contribution. It's a moment where the actors actually get to demonstrate out of character, "And we thank each other for working together." I have never actually used it except between solo bows for the last two characters, as a sort of tribute to the lead and to the primary support, but I can imagine other contexts for it as well. Perhaps between a group that is strongly connected to another group, but who's contribution to the show as a whole is of a different nature.

Maybe I am unnecessary overcomplicating things, but I really enjoy thinking about this stuff. It's fun for me. :-)

Frances departs for England today. I will be taking her to the airport this evening, and we'll have dinner together before she departs. I made her a small token for her to take with her, a little gift I've had in mind for some time now. This will totally ruin the surprise is she sees this before I see her today, but whatever. It's a photo collage of her in my shows and me in hers around a shot of us together out of costume. It has her as Hamlet and Andromeda-- I love how different she looks between the two --and me as Cordelia and the Fool-- I love how different I look between the two --as well as us arm in arm in a picture taken right after Lear.

I learned so much about acting and directing from observing and working with her. Her method of acting was always so fascinating to me, and I think I learned my most valuable directing skill, that of deconstructing and quanitfying what an actor is doing onstage, in the process of trying to figure out what made her performances work and how she built them. When I directed her as Hamlet I fell in love with her physicality and wanted to use it to convey how strange, restless, and dangerous the character had become. She was so much more imposing and effective because of the way the character was invested in her body and in her every movement.

Since then I have worked to integrate her style into my own performances. She is such an expressive, wide-ranging physical actor extended by the fact that she is so strong and flexible, and by watching her I've learned a lot about how to bring my body into my acting. We were cast as twin brothers in A Comedy of Errors, so I did my best to sort of "match" her, be compatible with her portrayal if not necessarily imitate her. Since those were highly comedic characters, we just kind of went for the same sort of exaggerated, slightly spastic silliness, and I think it worked. In King Lear she cast me as the Fool, which is very clearly the Frances-type role in the show, and that time I pretty directly channeled her style. The Fool's strange body positions were directly inspired by her, and the ceaseless moving energy was extrapolated from there. This prepared me for playing Puck, easily my most physically demanding role to date, where I would have to move as inhumanly as possible and would achieve the best effect the stranger and more contorted I looked. Studying and working with her has taught me so much about physical acting, and I know I am way better at it now because I had the chance to learn from her.

Also yesterday was my audition for Love's Labor's Lost. I wasn't totally excited about it given how tired I was from the rest of the day, but I really do want to be part of this production and work with Shelby as a director. So I climbed back in the car-- blech, more driving --and made my way there. The audition itself went well enough; it wasn't my best, but it wasn't bad either. I think the biggest problem was how low my energy level was by that point, which probably didn't work so well with the Puck monologue I'd chosen to do because I've always liked how energetic it was. There may be a callback next week, and I should hear after that.

But the other cool thing about there was I got to meet a girl named Debbie Finkelstein, who now works at Brandeis but was a founding member of Hold Thy Peace. I knew she'd been in e-mail contact with Jared a bit, but this was the first time I'd actually met her. She told me she saw Hamlet and really enjoyed it! She even was impressed by my cut of the show. She's very nice, and according to her, I can now present a full history of the club's shows! I believe the complete list is as follows:

The Compleat Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) - Spring '01
Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet - Spring '02
Taming of the Shrew - Fall '02
Merry Wives of Windsor - Spring '03
Much Ado About Nothing (directed by Shelby) - Fall '03
Merchant of Venice (directed by Debbie) - Spring '04
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Fall '04
Twelfth Night - Fall '05
Macbeth - Spring '06
The Tempest - Fall '06
Dr. Faustus - Spring '07
Hamlet - Fall '07
A Comedy of Errors - Spring '08
King Lear - Fall '08
A Midsummer Night's Dream - Spring '09
Romeo and Juliet - Fall '09
To Think of Nothing - Spring '10
Julius Caesar - Spring '10
A Winter's Tale - Fall '10

I am unfortunately coming down with something. I have a pretty nasty sore throat, and it's a little tough to talk. Tech week is not a great week for having no voice, but I'm not letting it get me down. Things went too well last night for that.

Last night was our first night in the theater. We acquired the necessary desk and chair, and spiked the places for the stage blocks. There's always a shift in energy when you get into your actual performance space for the first time, but for me, it feels different when I do it as the director than as an actor. I remember noting it for the first time during Hamlet. For me, it's like I become hyper-aware, tightly energized to get things put together, to make things happen.

It shocked me how little work that required. Theater is by nature a train wreck, as I often say; it has so many moving parts to keep together that it is inevitable that things malfunction at least a little. But as I mentioned, I'd never felt a show was in such a good place across the board before going into tech week. Sure, we had a number of jobs left to do, but we had a plan for all of them, and in relatively short order with shockingly little fuss, one by one they got done.

The Graces finally look the way they're supposed to in their chitons, which pleases me to no end. I cannot praise, adore, and thank

blendedchaitea enough for her expertise and her help. She had come onboard to do makeup and hair, but she was enormous help getting the chitons just right. With some safety pins and extra pieces of gold cord I was making progress getting the proper shape to them, but Rachel saw what I was trying to achieve with the Graces and stepped in with exactly the right idea to polish and refine their look. With her help, they were transformed from girls wrapped in muslin to the elegant, magesterial figures from myth I hoped they'd be. She has a remarkably discerning eye; I was impressed with her ability to try something with makeup, evaluate it, and keep on with it if it worked, or try something else if it didn't. I can't thank her enough for all her help.

The technical setup in there is a bit primitive, but Bernie manned it capably as always. The lighting in the show was restricted by the fact that we weren't allowed to rehang or refocus anything in the Merrick Theater, but given those limitations he put together a reasonable facsimile of our original lighting plan. It is a pretty simple plot, with only twenty cues over an hour, but I think it conveys what we needed from it. We need to add in the music tonight, which may or may not be challenging, but it's the only major job left to do at this point.

Finally, the most shocking thing of all was how calm I was. Maybe it's having gained some experience, maybe it's because things genuinely felt so good to me. But I felt totally at ease and fully prepared to deal with anything that might arise. This stands in sharp contrast to Hamlet, as Bernie teasingly reminded me, when I was CONVINCED that everything was a mess teetering on the edge of theatrical disaster and a nervous wreck because of it. I fortunately get the kind of nervousness that makes me really quick-thinking and productive in a crisis situation, but it is incredibly draining and I crash immediately after the adrenaline wears off. This is so much better-- for my stress level, and the state of the show.

Tonight we want to get through two full runs with all the technical aspects in place. I am psyched to do it and have complete confidence in everyone involved. In the meantime I am pounding tea and trying not to talk, in hopes that I might have some voice tonight. At least I'm not IN the show, eh? Still, it makes it tough to yell at your puppet-people when you can't speak. And God knows that's the best part of directing. ;-)

Having Brenda and Frances over for dinner tonight. It is cold and sad outside, so I want comfort food. I have decided to make a big old meatloaf. Haven't had that in a while, and it will be easy, tasty, and comforting. Frances has an idea for a Hamlet-related theater piece that I'm interesting in hearing about, so we shall discuss that over dinner.

Yesterday I had a lovely lunch with Jonathan and heard about HIS theatrical piece he wanted my help with. As part of his final art show he wants to incorporate a sort of living installation that expresses his theme, and he asked me to play a part in it. I love his idea, and I'm very excited. This should be happening in April, I think, which means plenty of time to prepare.

Have all the headshots taken and prepped now. Just have to print out Jonathan's and we're good to go. I still need people's bios, though. I should send out an e-mail threatening that if I don't get bios by, say, Thursday, I'm writing them myself. And they will say nothing but how awesome I, their wonderful and long-suffering director, am.

As I said, I was joking to Jared, since I've cast him and Frances in To Think of Nothing as I cast them in Hamlet, that it's like Frances is Johnny Depp to my Tim Burton and his Helena Bonham Carter. ;-) I am the offbeat director who loves including them in my projects, he's my partner that contributes his talent to my shows, and she's my brilliant, strange, awesome friend who I just love working with. Despite Jared's grumbling, ("Why can't I be Johnny Depp?") I still find this an apt comparison. As I'm sure you know, I am immensely interested in Frances as an actress. Which is to say I find her wonderful, fascinating, engaging, and challenging, full of so much talent and so much potential.

( Cut for raving about Frances's acting. )

Been feeling very off these past few days. Trying to relax and get centered again.

Jared is finally finished with all his work and feels pretty good about it, which is an enormous weight off my mind. Unfortunately for me, his finishing means he needs to go home now. I'll be taking him to the airport after work today, and he'll won't be back until January 17th. I'm kind of sorry that now that things have finally evened out we don't get to be together for a month, but we'll make the best of it like we always do.

I am resolving to try and not get so irritated about everything the way I have been lately. I feel like I'm turning into this seething mound of discontent that my friends soon won't want to be around. Also I've been clenching my teeth a lot, which is a combination of anger-stress and constantly being too cold. There's a habit I'd like to kick as quick as possible.

I want to use this month effectively. There will be a great deal less going on to which I have responsibilities. No Jared around means a lot more lonely time, but its one positive is that it frees up my timetable a lot more-- no driving him places, no running errands, no conforming to his schedule --so since my time will be entirely my own I want to utilize it efficiently. Interesting people do interesting things. These are mine. I tell myself that when I start to want to lock myself in my room and never have responsibilities ever again.

The major things I must do--
- Prepare for the next session of Burn Notice. We're restarting after a long hiatus, but I really want this game to keep going.
- Work on my seven assigned characters for Labor Wars
- Block To Think of Nothing, and see if I can figure out how to schedule rehearsals in advance
- Get together applications for grad schools
- Finishing (finally!) the fucking Hamlet DVD

( Back from SLAW, as they were calling it, and I feel very good about what I did. )

There has been a practice attached to the last several Hold Thy Peace shows that seems to be well on its way to becoming a tradition, and I thought I'd talk a little bit about it. This new tradition, if you've never heard of it before, is the Naked Tech Run. The Naked Tech Run is our last cue-to-cue rehearsal through the technical stuff late on the Wednesday night before the show where the cast strips down to their underwear and perhaps a funny hat and runs through their actions onstage, humorously and satirically summarizing their lines, while all the light, sound, and other transitions are finalized.

How did this come to be a part of the SOP of Hold Thy Peace? Well, I am proud to say it began with Hamlet, my show. Hamlet required a lot of set moving, usually in tandem with some other technical transition, and so needed to be carefully coordinated and practiced. We were all there late on Wednesday, weary from the work and the hour, but valiantly holding together to get through it. And our Horatio, Dave Hinterman, as he is wont to do, decided that he had earned the right by this point to take his pants off-- if he was going to be staying so late, he was at least going to be comfortable. He would do whatever he needed to like that. So soon, other people were following suit, until I had a cast half-naked on the stage except for a gothy accoutrement here and there. This was rather sprung unexpectedly on the tech crew, as evinced by the now-famous startled outburst from Bernie over the God mike, "Oh, my God, Frances is naked! ... Oh, my God, Frances is ripped." Heh. And we ran our cue-to-cue like that, the actors having a good time after all their hard work and generating a really hilarious condensed version of the show.

The Naked Tech Run, a chance to be silly and have fun, is basically the reward for putting in all that work, as well as a release valve for all the tension of tech week. There are rules, of course, as established by Hamlet and faithfully maintained by all subsequent shows. Nobody has to take off any clothes if they don't want to, and nobody is allowed to pressure anyone into doing so. If any pictures are taken, the people in them have absolute veto power over anything that may be done with them. And finally, just because we're being naked and silly doesn't mean that the rules of rehearsing in the theater go out the window-- be attentive, be safe, and get your job done, even in your underwear. Thus far people have done a good job with these. I hope the tradition is kept. It really makes everyone feel good, especially after all the stress of putting together a show.

Yesterday we had load-in for Romeo and Juliet. Drained me earlier and harder than a load-in has in a long time. For the most part I like the experience of the cast coming together to do the necessary labor to make the theater our own; there is a real sense of satisfaction that comes from working hard and seeing the results of your efforts. But the longer it goes on the more you just want to be done with it, and I was getting kind of frustrated with the inefficiency and unhelpfulness of a lot of the people involved. I know we're limited by what needs done at the moment and how many of the appropriate tools we have, but I wish a lot of people were better at looking around and just finding work for their goddamn selves. If you can ask someone what to do, do it. If you can't, find something-- pick up screws, throw away debris, clean or straighten up something. Some, like Bernie, Plesser, and Charlotte, were amazingly hard-working and useful. Others were less so, and got on my nerves.

I also left at one, significantly earlier than I've ever left a tech week rehearsal before, but which was later than I probably should have and I'd put in seven and a half hours in already. On every other Hold Thy Peace show I've ever been in, and Romeo and Juliet makes my eighth, I stayed at build as late as I was needed and didn't go home until everyone else did. The worst of these was for Lear, when I stayed till four in the morning every night of tech week and which happened to fall during a period of extreme emotional distress, leaving me so drained and overtired I wrecked my car. Never want a repeat of that. And anyway, I have to get up for a real job these days, so I can't afford to make myself that blown.

One thing that really amuses me now is that I didn't realize how smoothly the Hamlet tech week went by comparison to the typical experience of moving a show into its performance space. Anyone who's done theater can tell you that the average production is one disaster after another, and it's only by the work of dedicated people fixing those disasters that the show goes off at all, much less well. It's kind of amazing when you think about it, how many elements must come together and do their job to make a show happen, so it's only natural that something with so many moving parts that they should be hard to coordiate and prone to malfunction. I remember being convinced throughout the process of Hamlet that everything was screwed up and behind schedule, when in actuality, at least compared to most shows, our rehearsals proceeded smoothly, our tech week was relatively easy, and most of the things that went wrong were handled with a minimum of struggle. Of course, it probably helped that our set was metal painter's scaffolds with cloth drapings and some banners hung from the fly system. And that when I wanted something done right, I almost always did it myself. The good part of it was I personally controlled everything to get the quality I wanted. The bad part was, Christ, that was a lot of work.

I just found out I have Columbus Day off. Cool. Brandeis and it's ultra-PC "Columbus is responsible for the destruction of native lives and culture" stance on not celebrating the holiday has made me forget that normal people don't have to work that day.

Now that I have given myself a reason to dress up, I need to figure out a Halloween costume for this year. The last time I wore anything was two years ago when I was directing Hamlet, and since we had to have rehearsal that evening, I had people come dressed up. I wore the costume Frances would be wearing in the show, so I was basically her Hamlet for Halloween. :-) This year I'm not sure what to do, though. The easiest thing to do would be to just goth it up and dress slutty, but that's gotten to be kind of my standby and I don't want to become boring and predictable. I may still do that if I can't figure out anything else, but I'm going to try to be a little more original. It occurred to me that I could be Alice, but Christ, that's not exactly a separation from the goth thing, and talk about the laziest costuming ever. So, no. It might amuse me if someone else was Alice, heh, but not me. Any suggestions are welcome.

Instructions: Look at the list and put an X after those you have read.

( These are a hundred books I should have read? )
Wow, stupid score. But frankly, I find this a very suspect list. I consider myself to be fairly well-read. Perhaps I'll make my own.

Well, this has been a full weekend of parties so far. Attended the Midsummer cast party on Friday night, and had a much better time than I expected to, and then had to put together the general Hold Thy Peace party that was to be held in honor of the day Shakespeare is believed to have both been born and died on. We held it at Elsinore, appropriately enough, and I was quite pleased to see that it went very well. Unfortunately the Hamlet DVD had some issues-- the audio track was extremely out of sync with the picture --so I was disappointed that it could not be shown, but even so people seemed to have a nice time. So nice a time, in fact, that a number of guests ended up staying way past the time the party was supposed to end. I'm glad they were enjoying themselves enough to want to keep sticking around, but I kind of wanted a little bit of not-the-host-anymore time between the end of the party and eight o'clock, when Jared and I were going to the BORG play.

I liked the BORG play, it was "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a nice change from the typical children's plays they normally do, so props to Ryan and the rest of the cast. I'm also a big Sherlock Holmes fan, I've read every one of his stories, and the one in particular from which this play was adapted has the distinction of being the only one I managed to solve myself during the course of my reading it. (If it makes any difference, I was less than fifteen when I first got in to them, so perhaps I was no quite as sharp or observant as I might have been if I'd first read them when I was older.)

Today will be for work and low-keyness. Though I wouldn't mind being with people in a casual way today, I don't think I up for any extensive social demands, and I certainly don't want to play hostess again for a little while. Just hanging out a bit would be okay.

Thanks to the lovely Marissa, I now at long last have a DVD of Hamlet in my possession. I haven't seen it yet, so I don't know how well it came out or how much editing it may require, but I do in fact have it. I'd like to be able to have it to show at the Hold Thy Peace party that is happening this Saturday at Elsinore, so hopefully today and tomorrow I'll have a chance to go over it, maybe fix it up if it needs it. I'm so excited; I was so incredibly proud of this play, and it meant a lot to me to have a copy of the performance. Here's hoping it comes out well. I owe lots of people copies, so I'd better get on that as well.

In addition to preparing the disk, I have to get things ready for the party itself. Jared and I will be shopping for snackies (if anyone has points they want to get rid of before they lose them at the end of the year, you're more than welcome to contribute) and I should probably clean. I'm not certain how many people will be coming, but I hope we get a good turnout. If only to have a larger audience for the showing of the DVD. ;-)

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All Eyes on Me

"Do you know why heroes boast? Because it makes them brave."

Entries tagged with hamlet

GHOSTSHOW accomplished

Hamlet memories

The fallacy of authorial intent

31 Plays in 31 Days: #18 - "Chapfallen"

First steps for Merely Players

Set for Othello

Musing on planning curtain call

To England, Hamlet

Love's Labor Lost and HTP history

First night in the theater

Meals with artistic people

My own personal Johnny Depp

Work for the downtime

Home from WPI

Hold Thy Peace tradition

Load-in weariness

Halloween this year

Book meme stolen from Contradictacat

HTP parties

Hamlet DVD!