Class Notes October 23rd

Class Notes
October 23^rd

Ellen.  How does one write about performance without failing to keep faith with what is most intellectually productive. One of the rules of thumb is to know yourself, know what you bring to the performance, exercise them form the standards, which you hold. This was an opportunity to throw out on the table where your loyalties lie.  Dislocated versions of Shakespeare do this because they have never been seen before. Clearly a difficult assignment with lots of different responses.

Amy. Let’s have Justin talk about the helmet.

Justin. I was trying to come up with a specific way where something points to the text that is confusing. This is an example where a dramaturg would look at a show, and come back and provide an enrichment opportunity. You can ground this show, if you’re doing motorcycles, do these helmets and you can do both the classic text, and the modern dress. Here’s the world we’re in. And it highlights the story, it tells you Richard is preparing for the upcoming battle. Is the dream real? Are the real ghosts? Or is it an unconscious choice on his part? Where he realizes man, I’m a really bad guy.

Amy. Let’s talk about the production and talk about what Ellen wants to talk about. How do you engage in the performance as a critic? How do we read performance and respond to it, separate from our expectations? Write down some things that you would like to engage in specifically about this production. Write down a couple of moments that you feel need critical engagement.

Ellen. Look at the production as you recall it and write down when the dramaturgy happened.  Where can we have critical engagement?

Amy. You can include into this conversation our Chicago plays. We’re looking for pieces of the performance that we can read as text.

[Class took a few moments to write down thoughts.]

Iris. The prologue as well as the two snippets. The end scene with Queen Elizabeth. The fact checker. The heads on the spikes,

Derek. Schizophrenic just woken up speech Richard has. The wedding scene, the way Anne was portrayed.

Sara. The double casting of Edward the fourth and Richmond. How does that relate with the lineage. And also Elizabeth’s speech in the end and how does that relate to the divine right of kings.

Andrea. When Elizabeth appears in her full Tudor gear. And before the play started how they were running the political ads. And also this isolate moment in the play, in the Richard and Lady Anne coffin scene. She spits on him. And how he took the spit and licked his fingers.

Jess. The prescription drugs. The skull helmet. Richard was the only one with a full helmet. It was confusing.

Justin. Flat screen TV and the anonymity of the fact checker. We understand that history is being rewritten, but by who? Casting of the two young women as the two princess.

Sara. Margaret as a ghost and a disembodied voice. Haunting the theatre as well as the play. The disembodied voices.

Kelly. Plot vs. Poetry.

Jenna. Cuts and ghosting connections of Margaret and ghosts. Duchess has a line about how Margaret is a living ghost. That connects dramaturgically of having the ghosts in act V. The way Margaret acts and the way that she curses, there is the need for Richard to be taken out by the ghosts. I heard Gavin kept Margaret and cut ghosts. She functions now as some choric Greek person. It doesn’t work as well because nothing in this world changes in the way that she is able to work in the sense of the supernatural elements.

Ming. The video’s beforehand. And Elizabeth stuck out. How different she looks.

Derek. The image of her appearing is very striking.

Jennifer. I was concerned when I heard about her in full Tudor gear. I thought of the scene from Black watch with the sign language.

Cody. Casting of Richard and Clarence. Clarence is older, yes? The body of the actor was much younger than the actor who played Richard.

Courtney. In black watch- Interested in how they cast the same actor as the interviewer in the post war scene and the sergeant in the way scenes. I was also interested in the dancing the actor’s did to represent fighting.

Derek. Regeneration (Book). A section in here that reminded me of black watch. The soldiers didn’t like the way they were sitting ducks and how it wasn’t really a proper war.  Reading this book helped me understand what was happening there and the masculine and feminine aspects of war. In this book they are talking about WWI and sitting in the trenches and being killed and how it was emasculating for them. And how that was a huge problem for them.

Amy. So, with everything on the table. Are there things that feel more or less fruitful in terms of inquiring our engagement? What needs our attention.?

Kelly. The cutting of the text.

Ellen. Shakespeare is someone we feel very concerned about the cutting of the text. A good spectatorship calls out the cutting of the text. Is that necessary/productive? There are productions of Japanese Shakespeare that still come off?

Dorothy. I was thinking about that in terms of things worth interrogating further? As a critic it’s important to see the difference between your personal judgments and the overall production.

Ellen. The text is a blueprint for the performance. Understandably a playwright should be concerned with the cutting of this. It is a tricky question to discuss what counts as a good cut or a bad cut. We never start from ground zero. We never start from a neutral point of view. One good example was Whitney’s post. Cross-contaminated with equivocation. Speaks to our theatrical experience. We must be cognitive about the experience.

Amy. In figuring out how you develop a critical prompt in your own ear, in which says, ‘who cares’. It comes down to Who Cares? Kelly can say let’s talk about the cutting. And I say ‘Who Cares?’. It’s not enough to say that Shakespeare cares, or I like it. Similarly, it wouldn’t be a fair answer to say, ‘I like it this way’, or ‘I don’t like Shakespeare so I wanted to cut it.’ Kelly can come to it with the importance of poetry in the play and come with seemingly unimportant chunks of texts with some claim that it matters. How do we decide which of these chunks of performance text is useful to engage with critically. You have to mount an argument that says they matter.

Ming. But we can’t say that because we feel that way? It seems that feelings need to be integrated. What place does it have?

Dorothy. What kind of feeling?

Jess. Like feeling of the production?

Derek. The feeling of the sacredness of the text?

Dorothy. The feeling of…?

Ming. I’m just confused how it comes up.

Iris. I think it’s important to note that that’s when you have a visceral reaction?

Jess. An alarm goes off. I feel sucked into it. Theatre is about evoking emotion. IF you don’t care about what’s going on, then we as theatre artists have failed.

Ellen. On one hand, we want to put aside as carefully as we can, immediate kick back reactions. They’re not valuable unless they are part of a larger conversation. The second part is one of the reactions you can have to an aesthetic experience. You must remained attentive to how you feel about your self-loss in a play. There is a spectrum of engagement or disengagement. As a critic, you are conscious of yourself watching. But that can’t account for the whole of the experience. Theatre has this power to move us in this way that forces us to leave behind of theatrical self-recognition. How we keep faith with  strong distaste?

Amy. Ellen is pointing to, in her original question is how do we attend to our own emotional reaction to our roll of being critic. That’s partially due to being aware of our own affection of disliking something. That is a really powerful and yummy place to be. It’s very safe and very comfortable. That is an emotional reaction.  Our job as critics is to recognize the difference. That’s one of the dangers about thinking/ writing about performance. It’s one thing to talk about the text of Shakespeare and to rarify it, but that’s not what theatre does. It puts it on stage. It’s going to fail in different ways. How do you maintain this relationship? It’s not just you and this little relic that get’s to perform scholarship with you. How do you continue to do the real critical work that performance and scholarship call for? Despite and because of all the people in the room.

Ellen. Bordeaux mix intelligence with Passion. Where it lives in its most powerful dimension. You have to risk liking, risk the embarrassment. What is the full register of the experience? We are trying to dice it up into much smaller units to get there.

Jennifer. So are we to focus on one particular dramaturgical moment? And how it was used, why it was used, if it worked, how it served the audience.

Ellen. (I tried to listen really hard and so I missed what she said.) Everyone had arguments to make about class/gender, etc. These arguments are descriptive and good arguments to have.

Amy. What if we take a few minutes to discuss the political debates? What if you were to think about if you were to look at those debates as performances? What if you were asked to discuss the debates as performances? As a critical scholar what are some things you might look for to mount as your evidence. What kind of things about the performance that you might point to.

Dorothy. The debate is not spontaneous. Yet, it feels like it is. Like how it’s set off. They receive a lot of time before hand to think about how they are going to respond to this debate.

Jennifer. That sounds a lot like Auslander. Like how Obama is supposed to be president and so he is acting like president.

Amy.  There is something about structure that is meant to perform or communicate spontaneity. We are not supposed to see the script.

Dorothy. On the first debate I heard a lot of ‘Oh, well I heard that Romney won because Obama was nice and people didn’t want to see a black man be aggressive towards a white man.’

Courtney. Even the idea of someone winning the debates is really interesting. What does that mean? It’s not a discussion. It’s a battle of words. It’s not about one specific topic.

Derek. One of the things I would look at in the debates is where the candidates are looking. The kind of facial expressions they have when the other person is talking. Whether they actually answer.

Amy. Let me pull out this idea of eye contact, which I would put in the category of gesture. You could turn the sound off and analyze that as a performance scholar might.

Jess. One of the things that were a big deal was the flag pin business. The color of the ties. Not only what the candidates are wearing, but also how nice they look. How is the cut of their suit? As well as how their wives look.  You can do that along side of the setting.

Andrea. A small moment in the debate is the initial handshake in the beginning. Which candidate puts their arm on the other’s shoulder. Do they face each other?

Sara. I’ve thought what was interesting was the social media quantitative data and how fast.

Ellen. How do the audience count? How are they there?

Justin. Sometimes they do break through. They’ll laugh and we are suddenly aware that they are there.

Ming I think it’s also a question of… Jon Stewart says he needs the audience there.

Sara. Rachel Maddow talked about how there was one debate without an audience. And how deadly that is. They are talking to each other, but they are not really talking to one another.

Dorothy. I was also thinking about the twitter situation. Late last night, after the debate. The national democratic convention put up a website about Romney’s tax. And the joke is you can’t click the button. I’m interested in this new level of hyper engagement. It’s not necessary a level of deeper engagement.

Cody. When you see people sitting outside the debate halls watching the debate on the television. IT seems much more like a sporting event. They have no direct effect on what is going on in the inside. There is this constant need of feeling like you are engaged.

Jennifer. Whenever I see the photos afterwards, I realized I never saw the images that they choose. how much power does the photographer have in his ability to capture this.

Derek. That’s interesting. We were watching it being streamed and sometimes the stream got paused and sometimes the image would freeze in ridiculous expressions on their face. And we snapped a picture of that. But did that moment actually happen? When they were in mid blink.

Ellen. I wonder what this tells us about liveliness. Just to think back to Phalan’s claim. It does seem to me that we are in a moment where we are going to have to extrapolate this argument. With these digital creations in reaction to these live debates. We need to have a different understanding of liveliness and what counts as presence and what counts as being caught in the aura of this debate.  What about the image of Richard on a motorcycle? That doesn’t happen in the play? What are we consuming in the moment and what is being structured into the play in order to make the production what it is. Certainly in a Shakespeare performance there is a need for a program or outside materials. One of the things we need to be highly critical about this is that. What is the effect? What would Hodgkin say? To the iconic image of him on a motorcycle versus the production.

Jess. I don’t know if it captured the feel of the production as I remember it. The production still is orderly almost, and the production was not. Looking at the image of the bike and thinking of the production in my mind, there is a difference.

Sara. They made a conscious choice of putting a motorcycle in the picture. Was the motorcycle motif a metaphor of more of a conceptual blend?  How does Biker guyness blend with kingliness.

Amy. It’s hard to talk about without talking about the fact that I think it failed. I think it’s an attempt of a blend. That’s true for any costume choice. What can be usefully borrowed and used and what can’t? There are certain things Gavin doesn’t want around and there are certain things that he doesn’t want evoked.

Derek. The end of Friday night performance. Michelson came out and presented Gavin with gifts in the reception. And he said that Gavin had originally wanted to do it in full period costume and Michelson said no you can’t. That’s why this happened. He was forced to think of something different to do. So the motorcycles, one slang term for motorcycle is a hog. And you have a boar imagery that is associated with Richard. I don’t know what process he went through to arrive at motorcycle, but that’s there. As audience we are left to conjure up the image of the absent motorcycle itself. We have to the work of ghosting ourselves.

Courtney. I wonder to what extent our discussion with the director encourages our dislikeness. At some point he said the fact that it was staged here at IU had nothing to do with his production.

Iris. It’s silly that it is too anachronistic.

Dorothy. Sons of Anarchy. Based on hamlet.

Ellen. My sense of the biker stuff is that there was no commitment to biker gangs. You could’ve done it in boy scouts. I would push Cody’s response in that I thought it edged towards self-satire. Especially in its representation of gender. Not on it’s intent, but it’s effect. There is a way that biker gang is as histrionic.

Amy. If you’re dramturging this production where would you push this production?

Ellen. Bad facial hair. The visible un-persuaviness of the facial hair. Andrea’s post was very successful to me in the fact of how Brechtian it is.  Just giving the ever so small indication of satire. And self parody. Doing the battle straight in Shakespeare, is really hard. How you handle the fight sequence is already a difficult thing to approach. So we’re going to stylize the event and we’re going to go over the top. The one thing I thought of, in terms of this was the Batman movies in the nineties. The bad ones. As if you told aliens about urban gangs and they tried to relate it back to you. The biker gang was like that.  You can push that though and it can become interesting. And even if that is not the intent it’s available. That seems like a very limited way, in terms of where you get resources. If a play has a critical edge, in which a production deploys. How is that deployment happening? There are always ways of seeing the productions investment,

Amy. Going back to this idea of liveliness. The image that never was. And to the debates. I think you’re right to point to a reconsideration of liveliness where it’s disappearance who death is always part of it’s presents. The essential thing about the debate is that it’s live, but it’s not actually live to any of us. At any moment one of the could gaff. These are being staged because we are waiting for the other one to screw up. We know what we are going to do and they are waiting for them to embarrass themselves.

10/23 Class Notes

Ellen- The dramaturgy assignment was an impossible one. The idea behind it was to probe how to write about performance without failing to keep faith with what is critically productive. It relied upon knowing yourself, what you bring to a performance, and the standard to which you hold a production. A dramaturg has the opportunity to declare their loyalties while still being self reflective in a critically productive way that does not hold others' productions to their standards.

If the devil tempt thee to do good (Jenna-Blog 15)

To our director:

Richard III is a play of such length that, in order to fulfill the theatrical conventions of our day, it must be cut to suit our audiences. Oftentimes, directors find that cutting the supernatural elements of the play provides a “quick fix” to the length problem as it leaves the plot relatively intact. In his 1995 film version, Richard Loncraine cut the supernatural to the bone. Not only did he remove the V.iii ghost scene, he also removed the character of Queen Margaret from the film and apportioned a selection of her lines to the Duchess of York. If you are considering making such a cut in our production, then this choice is the wisest one for two reasons. First, it would allow you to focus on Richard III as strict study in political machination, thereby closely calling attention to any particular political situation you which to reveal. This choice would generalize the medieval mentality of the play and allow an easy shift to a more modern setting. Secondly, if you are considering a supernatural cut, in order for the cut to be effective, you must cut both Margaret and the ghosts. If you simply remove the ghosts, you’ll weaken the dramaturgical structure of the play.

Richard III Casebook [Sara]: I saw good strawberries in your garden there I do beseech you send for some of them...

I began my inquiry into Richard III with Hasting's Strawberries in Act III, Scene IV.

GLOUCESTER

My noble lords and cousins all, good morrow.

I have been long a sleeper; but, I hope,

My absence doth neglect no great designs,

Which by my presence might have been concluded.

BUCKINGHAM

Had not you come upon your cue, my lord

William Lord Hastings had pronounced your part,--

I mean, your voice,--for crowning of the king.

GLOUCESTER

Than my Lord Hastings no man might be bolder;

His lordship knows me well, and loves me well.

HASTINGS

I thank your grace.

GLOUCESTER

My lord of Ely!

BISHOP OF ELY

My lord?

GLOUCESTER

When I was last in Holborn,

I saw good strawberries in your garden there

I do beseech you send for some of them.

BISHOP OF ELY

Marry, and will, my lord, with all my heart.

 Exit

GLOUCESTER

Cousin of Buckingham, a word with you.

Drawing him aside

Catesby hath sounded Hastings in our business,

And finds the testy gentleman so hot,

As he will lose his head ere give consent

His master's son, as worshipful as he terms it,

Shall lose the royalty of England's throne.

BUCKINGHAM

Withdraw you hence, my lord, I'll follow you.

Exit GLOUCESTER, BUCKINGHAM following

DERBY

We have not yet set down this day of triumph.

To-morrow, in mine opinion, is too sudden;

For I myself am not so well provided

As else I would be, were the day prolong'd.

Re-enter BISHOP OF ELY

BISHOP OF ELY

Where is my lord protector? I have sent for these

strawberries.

HASTINGS

His grace looks cheerfully and smooth to-day;

There's some conceit or other likes him well,

When he doth bid good morrow with such a spirit.

I think there's never a man in Christendom

That can less hide his love or hate than he;

For by his face straight shall you know his heart.

DERBY

What of his heart perceive you in his face

By any likelihood he show'd to-day?

HASTINGS

Marry, that with no man here he is offended;

For, were he, he had shown it in his looks.

DERBY

I pray God he be not, I say.

Re-enter GLOUCESTER and BUCKINGHAM

GLOUCESTER

I pray you all, tell me what they deserve

That do conspire my death with devilish plots

Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevail'd

Upon my body with their hellish charms?

HASTINGS

The tender love I bear your grace, my lord,

Makes me most forward in this noble presence

To doom the offenders, whatsoever they be

I say, my lord, they have deserved death.

GLOUCESTER

Then be your eyes the witness of this ill:

See how I am bewitch'd; behold mine arm

Is, like a blasted sapling, wither'd up:

And this is Edward's wife, that monstrous witch,

Consorted with that harlot strumpet Shore,

That by their witchcraft thus have marked me. (3.4)

I have puzzled over this seeming non-sequitor since first re-reading Richard this year, and my interest was again piqued when I noted that the moment was cut from IU Theatre's production. It seems such a funny thing to request--a bowl of strawberries--a medieval symbol of peace and prosperity--after just announcing in a previous scene that Hastings is essentially a dead man walking if he should refuse to disenfranchise the young princes:

BUCKINGHAM

Now, my lord, what shall we do, if we perceive

Lord Hastings will not yield to our complots?

GLOUCESTER

Chop off his head, man; somewhat we will do:

And, look, when I am king, claim thou of me

The earldom of Hereford, and the moveables

Whereof the king my brother stood possess’d. (3.1)  

And then moments later, his fate is sealed when Buckingham's fears are confirmed:

CATESBY

It is a reeling world, indeed, my lord;

And I believe twill never stand upright

Til Richard wear the garland of the realm.

HASTINGS

How! wear the garland! dost thou mean the crown?

CATESBY

Ay, my good lord.

HASTINGS

I'll have this crown of mine cut from my shoulders

Ere I will see the crown so foul misplaced.

But canst thou guess that he doth aim at it? (3.2)

Scraps from a Shakespeare character card from Richard III., c. 1890; "Scraps became extremely popular in Victorian England to be cut out by adults or children and stuck into albums, on to screens, or used for decorating greetings cards. This scrap is one of a series depicting Shakespearean characters played by popular actors. Edmund Kean first starred in Richard III at London's Drury Lane Theatre, 12 February 1814."

Looking for clues to riddle out this moment, I stumbled upon a letter to the editor written by Dr. J. Swift Joly in the in the British Medical Journal from 2 Jun1956 that puzzled over the same moment:

Presenting an "Unfinish'd" Richard III (Whitney)

This image has been on my mind since I was first introduced to it during a recent Renaissance Department lecture on early anatomy books. In doing initial research for our assigned dramaturgical work on Richard III, I kept returning to Richard’s deformity and the way the deformity has been staged and could be staged. Kelly’s post moves through each of the words and phrases Richard’s uses to articulate his deformity during his opening soliloquy, helpfully tracking the various opening references and proving a great springboard for my concepts.  Some of this opening language, specifically the lines “deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time/ into this breathing world, scarce half made up,” compelled me to return to this image (1.1.20-1). After initially trying to ignore the insistence of this image in my mind – simply because, like probably many of you, I find it chilling and difficult to analyze – I found myself starting to shape a concept of Richard built around the this image and the idea of a child and a man “unfinish’d.”

Richard III is most often portrayed as evil incarnate. Similar to Iago’s “motiveless malignity,” Richard is often staged as unnecessarily cruel and inherently evil, a tyrant who commits acts of terror and cruelty for, it seems, no reason at all. But, after watching the end of Henry VI, Part 3 (which, I’m ashamed to say I haven’t read) and hearing Richard’s lines after he kills Henry VI, I started wondering about his motives. Richard III is, in fact, not at all without motives (as Ellen pointed out in our recent class discussion). He has witnessed immense trauma in the deaths of his family members and has consistently been categorized as inferior because of his physical deformity. If every person’s gaze directed at Richard has been laden with disgust, pity, or horror, isn’t there room here for a certain amount of self-loathing and its potential results? Self-loathing and shame, as we see in other Shakespeare plays (Othello, for instance), can turn into rage directed outward. I would like to offer this reading as a possibility for a portrayal of Richard III that is not purely evil.

As a way into this reading, I offer this image. This image manages to be repulsive and beautiful. It displays a fetus at almost full term, but also suggests the possibility for further development. In other words, this child could be “unfinish’d” or “scarce half made up.” The possibility is what interests me. The tension between an “unfinish’d” body and it’s alternative – presumably “finish’d” or in some way more completely whole. I would like to suggest the possibility that this same tension can exist within Richard’s character. The tension between repulsion and beauty, between incompleteness and wholeness, between de-formation and formation. There is, obviously, much evidence in the play Richard III to support the common staging of Richard as evil incarnate. But even a play that depicts a character in such a way is limited by the constraints of itself. In other words, there is always the possibility that Richard was not always evil incarnate, and a Richard III that took into consideration a different set of motives for Richard – motives that are, perhaps, outside the constraints of this single play – could potentially stage a much more complicated and compelling figure.

*Image taken from The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus, William Hunter, 1774.

Richard III Casebook (Justin): Head Gear

Prior to Richard’s dream in Act V, Scene 3 in which he is visited by the ghosts of his various victims, Richard prepares himself for the approaching battle of the next day, ensuring that his armor and weaponry have been laid out for the impending conflict. The protective gear and arms referred to by Richard are a rather curious missed opportunity on the part of IU’s production. The biker motif chosen for this Richard III yields few concrete opportunities for pairing Shakespeare’s text with contemporary items deemed ‘bikeresque,’ yet Richard’s pre-dream statements concerning his personal protective gear clearly present such a moment.
   


Image 1 - Knight's Helmet

At lines 53-54 (Folger edition), Richard asks, “What, is my beaver easier than it was, / and all my armor laid into my tent?” The term ‘beaver’ in this instance refers to the visor on a helmet (see image 1). Richard is soon assured that his head protection and “all things” [his other pieces of armor] “are in readiness” (line 55). At this moment, why not make use of the modern protective equivalent for a biker – a motorcycle helmet? Add some metal adornments, such as a spike or two, and suddenly it will become a ‘war motorcycle helmet’ (see image 2).

Image 2 - Motorcycle Helmet (sans spikes)

This simple prop achieves several duties at once: (1) it makes the term ‘beaver’ somewhat intelligible to a modern audience [making the audience ‘feel smart’ is always a bonus – they tend to judge productions more favorably when their egos are stroked]; (2) the conceptual selection for a ‘biker’ world becomes more relevant as choices that serve the story are implemented – beyond providing a reasonable way of ‘labeling’ the characters with their names and affiliations, the biker concept now helps to tell the story of the approaching battle and Richard’s involvement in it; (3) the protective gear serves as a sign for what Richard is prepared for [hand-to-hand combat], but also highlights what he is incapable of protecting himself from [the ghostly visitors he encounters in his dream].  One simple prop has made Shakespeare’s text more comprehensible to a modern audience, further grounded the production in its chosen world, and helped advance the story.  

Richard III Casebook: Jennifer, Pacing

In our meeting with the director last week, he emphasized the need to trim down Richard III in order to make it more manageable for the modern stage. If the lines didn’t advance the action, reveal character, or show relationships, or if it they were repetitive, they were cut from the play. As the second-longest play after Hamlet, Webb - and many other directors -- are compelled to streamline.  However, the pacing of Richard III is vitally important to the overall operation of the play, and when I go see Webb’s production, I will be particularly interested in how he “advances the action” without losing the characters’ personalities and perspectives.

A good number of reviews of recent productions have complimented the speed with which the play moves, in spite of its long running time. “Posner directs this epic of evil with a sure hand and snappy pacing that holds the attention despite its length,” says a review of a San Diego production. “Briskly paced and sensibly edited, this ‘Richard III’ is relentless in its march towards its anti-hero’s tragic, self-inflicted destiny,” says a review of the most recent Chicago Shakespeare Theatre production of the play in 2009. No wonder Ian McKellan’s version (and others) have relied on militaristic motifs; the “marching” has a logical context. 

However, if the play goes too quickly, the modern audience will lose the sense of character and a clear understanding of why these people want each other dead. Webb explained that modern audiences don’t grasp the vital meaning of the various character names, so that information needs to be provided in other ways (sets, programs, additional lines, etc.). This has consequences. The 10 minute BBC cartoon version of Richard III certainly leaves a lot to be desired. More significantly, in a performance that was taken on the road by the Public Theatre’s Mobile Shakespeare Unit this August, the play was brutally cut down to 90 minutes. Charles Isherwood, the NewYork Times reviewer, was generous in nearly all respects, but took issue with the consequences of such pacing:

The abbreviated running time is naturally designed to appeal to audiences that rarely encounter Shakespeare . . . Still . . . shearing it in half inevitably makes for some uncomfortable shortcuts. While all the big set pieces are here . . . many scenes have been severely abbreviated or modestly refashioned. . . As a result the ambitious Richard dispatches foes and friends alike with a speed that is almost disorienting and on at least one occasion, a little confusing. 

Clearly, this production erred too much on the side of audience comfort/expectations and ended up damaging the play’s logical structure.

In contrast, a Richard without the powerful drive can reveal underlying weaknesses in the characterization. Of a controversial production at the Globe this past summer, reviewer Michael Billington of The Guardian said that “This is not the usual Richard: a symbol of active, energetic evil in the tradition of Olivier and Spacey. Instead [Mark] Rylance comes before us as a withdrawn, slightly apologetic figure as halting in speech as he is in gait.” However, this clashes with the “vituperation of the other characters” to the point that “Rylance's butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth approach to the role makes Richard's bad publicity a bit hard to explain.”

Therefore, the play must allow Richard to march through deaths and destruction, without inspiring us to lose count of the characters as quickly as he does. To pull from Dorothy Sayers’ novel Have His Carcase, “Richard [is] two men in one . . . One of ‘em’s a wormy, plotting sort of fellow and the other’s a bold, bustling sort of chap who chops people’s heads off and flies into tempers” (242-243) A good production will strike a balance between the two.

RIII casebook: RIII as Corporate Psychopath (Derek)

RIII casebook: RIII as Corporate Psychopath

Derek DiMatteo, 2012.10.22

“Corporations are people, my friend.” – Mitt Romney

“Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in its behaviour, this type of ‘person’ typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.” –  Kenneth Chisholm, synopsis of The Corporation film; source: imdb.com

Over the past several years the US has experienced the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Bad behavior in the halls of corporate financial institutions (Enron, AIG, Lehman Bros), and in corporations generally (GM failure, BP oil spill), have created a climate in which the public might welcome a play that addresses these issues in a critical way and which works to affirm the need for ethics and social justice within the corporate world. RIII is a play that decries the lust for power and argues for the ethical wielding of that power for the greater good. Framing RIII in such a broad way would allow for us to set the play in the modern world of corporate misbehavior, intrigue, and psychopathology. Doing so could enable a radical critique of corporations, and hopefully raise awareness about corporate citizenship.

We start by reconceiving the action of the play as occurring within a corporate structure. Instead of The War of the Roses, we get an internal power-play between the rival factions of a company or between two subsidiaries of a large conglomerate, where the York subsidiary is getting dominated by Lancaster subsidiary, but plots its ascendancy. The main characters of the play become executives and managers within the conglomerate. For example, Richard would be an executive in the York subsidiary who wants to become CEO of the conglomerate. To do so, he has to eliminate rival executives who are in favor ahead of him in the eyes of the Board of Directors, or who otherwise stand in his way. He does through various means, including framing one of them for industrial espionage (i.e. treason) or becoming allies with them (the character of Anne, an executive who reluctantly allies herself with Richard for self-preservation). Finally, the board elects him CEO. He is autocratic and a bit of a psychopath. He embodies the corporation and its ethos.

The final battle would be in a board room or in a shareholder’s meeting where the two sides would verbally spar and a vote would be taken. If this is not dramatic enough to sell tickets, then we could do the scene with some of the physical violence that Shakespeare used. For example, CEO Richard draws a knife and runs at his rival Richmond, who defends himself by redirecting the CEO out the 30^th story window using Aikido, symbolizing that it is Richard’s own self/momentum that proves his undoing.

But let’s back up.

The night before the final battle, CEO Richard has a dream. In it he is accosted by all the other executives and employees he exploited and killed. The dream should also contain a rebuke from families or people in a community whose lives were ruined as a result of his actions or his deceit (e.g., their water was poisoned, they got cancer from toxic waste, they were displaced, he fired all of them from a factory for unionizing). The final group of people should turn into a mob in his nightmare and start to move in on him, encircling him with hands outstretched, moaning, trying to grab his clothes, as he sinks (the imagery evokes both zombie films and drowning in an ocean). He awakes in a cold sweat, terrified. He is mentally unhinged, and has his nearly schizophrenic soliloquy, which illustrates the corporation’s refusal to acknowledge its own soulless conscienceless nature, even when confronted by it (as in the dream). The profit principle / imperative of shareholder value provide the mechanism for repressing any sense of soul or conscience.

CEO Richard’s embodiment of the corporate ethic would be psychopathic, while his arch-rival Richmond’s embodiment would be eco-friendly, ethical, and social-justice aware. Richmond comes from the Mexican unit of the Lancaster subsidiary. He is a handsome and charismatic leader who understands his workers, approves of workers’ unions, and does good work within the community because he believes that a corporation needs to be socially aware and a good local (and global) citizen. However, CEO Richard disparages Richmond and the Mexican employees of that branch of the company in his oration to his army (i.e. the executive support team which is going to the board meeting with him) on the morning of the final battle. His rhetoric in this brief speech is a continuation of his larger pattern of classism, racism, and exploitative behavior.

The hope is that the audience would see Richard’s psychpathology and understand that if corporations are people, they need to be held to the same standards as actual real people. They need a soul and a conscience.