October 18th, Richard III Clips
Ellen--hoping to have a handout of all your questions in response to the artifacts at Lilly
Clip 1: An Arab Tragedy News Night clip from Richard III adaptation, Global Theater
Amy- Same director did Hamlet in similar way. Thoughts on clip?
Dorothy- The prayer beads have a lot of signifying power.
Ming- Cell phones, DNA, UN, --an interesting juxtaposition with the "no modern detritus" that Gavin grounded his modernized take on Richard III with
Sara- But the cell phones were mimed?
Someone- They had earpieces.
Amy- There's that quick cut of the newscaster looking away in the framing mechanism of the evening news
Clip 2: Olivier's Richard III from 1955,
Amy- Thoughts?
Sara- Camera forces us to participate as one of the townspeople at points
Whitney- Brought me to wondering about what film can do that theater can't, and forcing this kind of participation is one of those things: being made to do something specific as a viewer
(Someone said something about musical cues, didn't catch who it was)
Derek- Political machinations were more obvious than in the Arab Tragedy clip
Amy- More?
Derek- The political machinations were presented to us in a more straightforward way
Amy- impact of degree to which we see him fooling us. What do we stand to gain from something done the way Arab Tragedy is?
Sara- a critique of the media in that cultural context without overtly saying one. By looking over Richard's shoulder in the other clip we see it's his job to manipulate a crowd of people. I was surprised by the amount of people in that crowd, bought it was effective to drive home necessity of controlling them because 50 people can really do harm
Dorothy- Interesting to see the media as something people are aware of without being able to see the machinations
Derek- I don't know much about Arab media but I like to think the newscaster guy was given the clip, and that the clip had been made somewhere else, so his looking-off was a reaction
Amy- It's important to note that central to Richard III is the machination of propaganda. In the opening soliloquy this is laid out; any adaptation has to remind the viewer of swallowing media so they are able to look at it with a smarter eye
Clip 3: Ian McKellan's Richard III from 1995, the take-the-throne "convincing" scene
Sara- Blatant that he's putting on a mask, with the makeup room thing, it's both overt and subtle
Jenna- Performative nature of the speech, and that moment of eye contact places you as a member of the conspiracy
Whitney- The "fear in the hearts of men" moment plants the seed for Richmond to later act as he does
Derek- In the Olivier clip, the crowd was deeply ambivalent about what was going on--the key for me was the "call them back" moment--whether hey were ready to go. In Olivier clip the whole thing is more of a formality. In the other, Buckingham is the only one leaving…
Sara- Never realized how like Caesar this was until I saw the McKellan version
Jenna- (something about Richmond being in the scene, didn't quite catch it)
Clip 4: Henry VI pt 3
Ellen- Shakespeare wrote 2 groups of 4 plays, 1st deals with later history. Ling prehistory to this.
Derek- She is mighty mighty.
Ellen- Thoughts on the bloody handkerchief?
Jennifer- Prompts me to think of how evidence was used back then. What stood for evidence of a death. If someone handed me a rag as proof that my friend had died, I wouldn't believe them. But is DNA, as in the first clip, and more believable a story, really?
Amy- What would Sofer have to say about this?
Andrea- It's the representation of death rather than death itself; it's used liturgically
Jennifer- Wouldn't work to use it as a symbol of defeat
Dorothy- It's a visual prop as reminder
Iris- The handkerchief is duplicitous. Makes me think of Othello, where the is no blood, but in any case it's something Shakespeare does later: that a prop can be used to lie for you
Clip 5: More Henry VI, later in the film, I think? Execution soliliquy
Amy and Ellen- There's a lot of filling in in these groups of plays because of how much they cover
Derek- Who’s getting killed?
Ellen- The Lancastarian king (red rose guys), so York family (white rose guys) could take over. At end of Henry VI we finally enter the dominance of one family, since they’ve killed off the heirs to all the others
Clip 6: Coronation scene in Olivier’s film
Jess- Everyone has a crown. That makes it a little anticlimactic
Sara- It speaks to the tradition of laurels. If someone gets a fancy hat you get to put yours on too.
(Sara passes around photos of Anthony Sher as spider-Richard in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1984 production)
Jennifer- This is like a big game of duck duck goose
Jess- His hair reminds me of Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men
Jennifer- There is so much velvet
Iris- Is this a quintessential Richard? Is this how the prototypical Richard looks?
Amy- (Runs through a history of the part, including Anthony Sher and Kenneth Brannagh) Ian McKellan is on the more masked and subtle end of the spectrum of performances of Richard, with Anthony Sher on the other end
Ellen- What prologue-ic info can we get from this?
Amy- What are the stories the audience needs to know before "Now is the winter" and how does the director tell them?
Jenna- We need the familial relations mapped, the way to hard-won peace, etc.
Sara- (didn't catch it)
Ellen- Elizabeth, Edwards wife, mom of two boys (something about Robert Downey Jr? Sorry, got behind on note-taking here)
Jenna- Portrayal of the Woodvilles in the McKellan version shows how gauche they are and how their presence in the royal family is a problem. We can see more clearly their presence in the world of the Yorks
Amy- Along the way there is influence shown (didn't catch it)...What did you glean from the words of the script-page of credits in the Olivier version? And the "petting" of the words we have to do as viewers?
Justin- Given that the actors' names are bigger than the those of the characters they play, it sets up celebrity more than characters.
Jess- Red and white roses were (helpful?)
Jennifer- Seems to set up the presumption that all legends have this sort of awful things happening, terrible people, and then the period at the end of the opening credits brings finality to that
Whitney- I see that being undercut a little by (didn't catch it)
Jennifer- (didn't catch it)
Amy- Nods back to Worthen and the performance of text. It also forms a relationship with the Book of Hours
Dorothy- It also nods to the fact that the film was made in 1955, when those credits were more normal--lengthy scrolls at the beginning
Ellen- the audience's recognition of the actors was the main engine by which they could differentiate between the complex long list of characters. the conjurable faces helped.
Courtney- I had to pick and choose which to look at--actors' names or characters'
Ellen- ref. Andrea's question about how text operates for us. Authority saturated into the lushness of the faux manuscript. Scale of typography is pretty extraordinary. how does that balance work...dramaturgically speaking, are you sympathetic to the investments being made here?
Amy- (didn't catch it)
Whitney- We talked before about the tiny fact-checking screen in the grand, large spectacle of the Richard III production here at IU...what the actual effect of that is...incredible pretense--how you can come to power in such a way that the spectator is moving along with you...text overshadowed by play that surrounds it
Ellen- makes me think of Arab Tragedy clip, puts us into different interpretive action.Toggling between spectacle and text. The projected text of the script in Equivocation had a profound impact on us as spectators. Any theater brought in from the international circuit. Any time you're asked to read, also. Brings a different set of practices to bear.
Amy- Regardless of any critical practices, everyone knows at any production of anything that they're getting a duplicate. Either you accept that it does, or don't think it does. But the issue of fidelity and adaptation is always at work. However you drop in, there's always a huge gap between original and production in these translations or transmigrations or transportations. Strong variations?
Jess- I'm trained to read costuming decisions, and look for ways that costumes used are iconic gestures. Several parts of the Richard III clip I thought were used brilliantly to pull the audience in.
Ellen- Do we come to Shakespeare to "feel historical"? Which of these clips exemplifies an imposition of text (?)
Dorothy- I found Olivier's version to be imposing modernization, as it was in 1955. The word "story" is capitalized. The music is triumphant with a militaristic percussion. Vaguely medieval, but still with a militarizing rhythm. England, British, Terrible, some WWII references in there--
Amy- Right, it's a production that gives us a discernibe bogeyman to squelch, a tragedy and melodrama set up to make us feel good again when the bad guy goes down.
Iris- and the symbolism of the crown lets us now that it's ok, that the monarchy, at least will continue
Ellen- As this is a sequel, what about the ambition to historicize? Tony actors, phony accents, a modern enterprise poised on a brink--
Amy- Jennifer, Cody's absent, but what about your post?
Jennifer- If I were a dramaturg who wanted to talk about Richard's body...in victorina literature, your character is evidenced by your person. If you have a broken body, you're probably a broken person. They kind of half-did it in the McKellan version, because his deformities are hidden. He's only awkward to the point that he inspires sympathy. This didn't work for me since the fundamental character of Richard is completely unsympathetic, unadulterated evil.
Courtney- I read the evocation of that sympathy differently--the moment McKellan looks at the camera, the viewer is accused, which produces a kind of sympathy that involves guilt.
Jennifer- (something about understanding why Anne gives in; didn't quite catch it)
Jess- There is kind of a sick delight to seeing someone evil act out their evilness
Derek- Isn't that the director's choice? To portray a character as sympathetic?
Jennifer- The assignment was about why these dramaturgical choices were made
Jenna- I thought is was briliant--his manipulation of people, even the viewer, was pulled off well
Ellen- Doesn't take into account the way a dramaturg should the arc of his character. People are gutted, bathing in the blood of their kin, and Richard makes a concious decision to craft himself as someone who does these things for political ends
Amy- The degree of sympathy thing is absolutely still apropos, as evidenced by the noise around the VP debate, Paul Ryan washing dishes, we're still having the same conversation...
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