Class Notes 2012.10.16 (Derek)

Class Notes 2012.10.16

Prepared by Derek DiMatteo

Part I: At the Wells-Metz Theatre for RIII Talk

Director Gavin Cameron Webb talked to the class about his upcoming production of William Shakespeare’s Richard III.

He likened the experience to hypothetically directing an episode of The Daily Show 500 years after its air date: audiences wouldn’t know most of the references or what they represent. For example, the person Jane Shaw has no meaning for us today, but would have made everyone in Shakespeare’s audience laugh.

He discussed his decisions in terms of style and substance.

Style

He chose to use a motorcycle gang as the context for the play for three reasons. First, motorcycle gangs are more familiar to the audience and the actors than are courtiers and dukedoms. Second, the factions involved in the War of the Roses behaved very similarly to thugs and gangs. Third, this allows for the use of emblems, badges, and tattoos as signifiers within the play; e.g. they can put names on the back of the jackets of major characters, which will help the audience tell which side they’re on. “It sorts itself out visually for the audience.”

He stressed that despite using motorcycle gangs for context, this is not a modernization or modern equivalent of the text. They will just use the motorcycle motif to convey what the play is about. Most of the rest of the play will be as Shakespeare wrote it, with few exceptions (e.g. brutish weapons instead of swords).

The set is made of corrugated fiberglass and iron. They moved the seating to enable the use of the theater’s pre-existing balconies and catwalk, but needed to add a spiral staircase.

Substance

The play is a lie, historically. Shakespeare took the Tudor propaganda (written by Thomas Moore) and wrote the play. Moore had been tasked with depicting RIII as monstrous because HVII needed his reign legitimized. Apparently, RIII was none of the things he is depicted as being in Shakespeare’s play (e.g. not deformed, not evil).

Because of where the USA is in its presidential election cycle (2012), they decided to include a video screen that will act as a fact-checker to illustrate the truth in contrast to the historical lies presented in the play. The goal is to show how effective propaganda is, since this play remained relatively unchallenged for over 450 years. “Tell a lie often enough, it becomes true.”

They also wrote a prologue to tell some of the background, specifically information that comes from the end of HVI, which will be included in this production through the character of Queen Margaret, ghosting around the catwalk overhead, and through her dialogue.

Question and Answer

Whiney asked about what changes he made to the play. He replied that he cut parts that don’t advance the action, don’t reveal character, or are repetitive. The play is now down to about 2 hours instead of a potential 3.5.

Ellen asked how the motorcycles will be included. Would they be ridden on stage? He replied that the motorcycles would be evoked using sound effects and by the way the actors move (e.g. walk as though they had just gotten off after a long ride). This is a matter of choreography of post-cycling.

Jenna (?) asked about costuming. He replied that the nobles would wear leather, including the women, but that the chorus/extras would be in business attire. “The costumes are not meant to evoke any period at all.”

He then mentioned that they would use sound effects for beheading and spiking. Also that the soundtrack is based on a custom-modified version of NIN’s Ghost Tracks, which were released to the public freely downloadable and modifiable (all source files provided).

Part II: In the Classroom

Dramaturgy Casebook

Next major project is a dramaturgy casebook. Each student is responsible for 1 page of the casebook. Focus on one thing/image/idea or particular approach that you think is important for staging a production today. Review Levin’s article for the parts where he discusses the role of the dramatug.

Class Discussion

Amy – Let’s focus on the readings. We’ll start with Crane. Can someone start us off with a brief articulation of part of her argument?

Jen – she focuses on the etymology of words used to describe performance, showing how they were different from the vocabulary we use today.

Amy – This is a critical terms approach familiar to us from Davis.

Andrea – She focuses on embodied performance

Jen – She keys in on New Historicism.

Amy – What does she offer instead of New Historicism?

Jess – p.170, Shcechner and Turner

Jen – She continues looking for the right approach on p. 171, discussing cognition.

Ellen – Yes, it’s a Davis-like move to recover the etymology. The key is the shift to The Alchemist.

Jen – shows the complexities of how they view performance.

Ellen – the play mocks or undermines the way theatre works.

Amy – what does she say about performance and exercise? See p. 172, bottom.

Cody – There’s a degree of materiality to performance.

The difference in the way talked about = difference in way thought about.

Interesting nexus of historicism and a cognitive scientific approach. She’s resuscitating a conceptual difference between how we/they think about what we now think of as performance. There was not a sense of representation being enacted in the theatre. This is different from how we are used to thinking of what was happening in this period.

Ellen – Look at the bottom of 183, top of 184. Imagined structure – we have the power to imagine these things differently. Build a theory of theatre from the ground up. Something imagined can have material effects. Crane notices material consequentiality and integrates it. Teleology doesn’t exist in social hierarchy—no self-fashioning into a higher status (e.g. into nobility), although the business-wealthy are sometimes indistinguishable when on the street. No single unitary understanding of how performance works.

Amy – A different understanding of cognition. Exercise of the brain…it’s an embodied experience.

Ellen – similar move as in Davis, with regard to the etymological investigation. … In Looking for Richard, Al Pacino absorbing onto himself everything is similar to RIII doing it.

Amy – The power of casting. The way the actors’ bodies are being “performed” (made), altered and altering, when they take on those roles. As if Pacino decided, well I’ll just “borrow Shakespeare’s authority to rocket myself up a few notches in respectability.”