So it’s Valentine’s Day! Like many of us here, you may be panicking because life got in the way and you didn’t get your loved one something special like flowers or chocolates or even a card. So we at Shakespeare in the Ruff decided to offer you a little help. Our resident lover, hopeless romantic (he was playing Valentine in the picture above after all) and might we add single, Jesse Griffiths, has compiled his Top Ten List of romantic lines from Shakespeare. If you are in a pinch for an incredible romantic gesture, take a minute to memorize one of the lines below and wow your lover (or bestie), with your diction and line endings.
As an added bonus, if you can top Jesse’s selection with a love line of your own (does not have to be Shakespearean), Ruff will award you and a guest with VIP passes to our annual Ruffing It event coming up at the end of March. This will include free admission, reserved seats and a round of drinks on us! Post your love line in the comments section before the end of Valentine’s Day for your chance to win.
Happy Valentine’s Day from Shakespeare in the Ruff!
1. Romeo and Juliet
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
2. The Tempest
Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service.
3. As You Like It
If thou remember’st not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved.
4. Sonnet 116
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
5. Hamlet
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
6. Love’s Labour’s Lost
When Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
7. Venus and Adonis
Love is a spirit all compact of fire.
8. Romeo and Juliet (there had to be at least 2 from this play)
Love goes toward love as school-boys from their books,
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.
9. Twelfth Night
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
10. Cymbeline
I can express no kinder sign of love, than this kind kiss.
You got something better? We’d love to hear it.
We, here at Shakespeare in the Ruff, come across a myriad of Shakespeare-related material. Every month we choose some of our favourites to share with you.
February 2014:
THING ONE
From the same people who brought you The (new) Globe Theatre on London’s South Bank, we now have another destination; the recreation of an indoor Jacobian theatre called The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. The King’s Men (the final incarnation of Shakespeare’s company) performed at The Blackfriars, starting in 1608, and it required hundreds of dripping candles to keep the actors visible. We’re pleased to share that the new one is up and running and the first performance took place in mid-January. For more details, check out this article from The Guardian.
Oh, and they still light the place with candles…here’s how:
[youtube_video] nU92wfyW31o [/youtube_video]THING TWO
Dave Matthews puts his own spin on one of Shakespeare’s tunes from Twelfth Night. A haunting take on ‘Come Away Death’ and a reminder of how versatile this language can be:
[youtube_video] fdPsXZNqKA8#t=11 [/youtube_video]Know of any contemporary versions of Shakespeare’s songs we should hear?
Being an understudy used to be a right of passage for any actor working in the theatre. That’s how many people got their start in the business; a kind of trial by fire experience that could be the making or breaking of any actor. These days, however, an understudy is a luxury that very few theatres can afford anymore, and being an understudy is not something that was ever covered in theatre school…trust us.
However, actors get sick, actors get hurt, actors get drunk, or at least they used to anyway, and understudies will always be needed. This past season, Shakespeare in the Ruff Company Member, Kaitlyn Riordan, was at The Stratford Festival where she understudied two hefty roles and James Wallis, Shakespeare BASH’d founder and Artistic Director, found himself as an unexpected understudy in his own production of ‘Romeo & Juliet’.
Kaitlyn:
I spent a huge portion of my time this passed season learning lines and then rehearsing them alone, in my living room. Being an understudy required an enormous amount of self discipline, especially when the parts you’re covering have so much to say! I went into it without really knowing how it was done and what was off-putting was that no one had any definite answers for me. Where do you begin? Do you make all the same choice as the other actor? How do you go on stage in front of 1800 people and play Portia in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ having had only 4 rehearsals? The nuances of it were trusted to me to decipher, but the technicalities of the process it were this:
-Understudy line run half way through the rehearsal process (we sat in a circle and spoke our memorized text)
-Two blocking rehearsals (led by our Stage Manager, when copious amounts of notes are taken,)
-Two rehearsals on the stage (led by the Assistant Director and, in the case of The ‘Merchant of Venice’, took place on the Festival Stage at Stratford, one of the most magnificent stages I have ever been on. We do a run and get notes. I never thought I’d be so happy to get notes.)
And that’s it. Of course the scope of the work that I did on my own was vast, but what became clear to me was how valuable the rehearsal process is. Just having those words in you is thrilling, but then you have to be sure to keep them in you, because a show can run for months. Lots of understudies went on this past season, and by all accounts, did very well. I, for better or for worse, was not one of them. Many would argue, Shakespeare in the Ruff included, that Shakespearian actors probably didn’t rehearse at all, so understudying is more like the original experience. To that I say, they can keep it.
James:
To begin at the end, I would say it was the most terrifying moment of my professional life.
There’s a thin line, I believe, between excitement and terror. I straddled that line as I began this crazy journey of picking up Mercutio with 10 hours to prepare. More than straddled – I rode that line like a freakin’ dragon.
It was the third night of my company’s five-night run of “Romeo and Juliet,” which I had directed, at The 3030 in the Junction. My company, Shakespeare BASH’d, does Shakespeare in a bar to create a relaxed setting for the audience to experience the plays. We were happy and proud of our show and we were ready for another sold-out crowd!
The show was going well, but when the boys (Romeo, Benvolio and Mercutio) began their big scene, I noticed that halfway through, as Mercutio starts on his rant about “Queen Mab,” he was standing still. Up till then, Milan Malisic (who played Mercutio) had been very frantic and physical with his movements during that speech, so I was certain that something was wrong. Or maybe he was taking some of my notes of stillness? But as I saw my friend Milan limping off the stage, I knew something was up.
After the scene, I dashed backstage to find almost the entire cast huddles around Milan, who was clutching his ankle in pain. However, the show would go on. And with the help of my wonderful company, it did. Milan, miraculously, was able to finish the first act, basically on one leg, and as soon as Mercutio died, he was off to the hospital. I was distraught – no one should get hurt doing theatre – and after the show, I received a text from Milan saying he had torn his Achilles tendon. Which meant we were without one Mercutio.
I began thinking of how to fill the role and I soon realized that the only other option would be for me to go on which, I must say, was not an easy decision, but seemed like the best one to preserve the show. Then the cramming began. After the show, I had script-in-hand looking over the scenes. I was up most of the night working in my living room with my wife, Julia Nish-Lapidus. I was with Jesse Griffiths the next day drilling the scenes. It was as if my hand was permanently attached to a copy of “Romeo and Juliet” and I was spouting Mercutio text like a Berserker. Miraculously, I somehow knew most of it and so preparing was relatively straightforward. To my relief, the words were sticking.
First, I went for sense, trying to make sure that I knew “what, why, who” in the text, and I’m thankful that, as a company, we had taken the time to work on early in rehearsal. Then, I started to think about what I thought this guy was about. Why was Mercutio such a tremendous spirit? What was his “endgame”? By that I mean, what was he trying to achieve? On top of that, I knew that I needed to connect with the text, my fellow actors, the audience, etc. Milan had brought such energy to it, which I wanted to keep, though I knew it would have to be different. I would have to rely on the words as much as possible to propel me through the adventure of Mercutio.
I can’t explain how nervous I was. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced it before. Facing an audience with such little prep time, despite being confident that I knew the words (and being an actor primarily), was certainly not my idea of a good time. I was up there on the deck with no rehearsal of most scenes and the fear that I might just dry completely, without a hope of pulling myself out of the theatrical hole. That feeling of my blood running at its height, I will never forget. At one point at the end of “Queen Mab,” Romeo said “Peace, peace Mercutio thou talk’st of nothing.” After a moment to catch my breath I replied with “True…” I will never forget the reaction of that audience – not just the laughs (there were a few, which was nice), but also the recognition that they were with me, listening intently and understanding. “At least I was doing it right,” I thought as I chopped my way through the weeds of the next text monster.
The thing that really grounded me was that I knew I had such a great company there to back me up. My fantastic scene partners – Kelly Penner as Romeo, Kyle Purcell as Benvolio or Jeff Yung as Tybalt, amongst others – really taking care of me as we did the third act fight between Mercutio and Tybalt. And Jeff trusting that I wouldn’t stab him to death! On the second night, the nerves were less striking or at least I knew that if I had done it once I could do it again. I was trusting myself more. I was finding more and more to cling to in the text which was exciting! Too bad it was closing night.
All in all, I tried to find him within myself as fast as possible. With great help from a tremendous company I was able to have a fraction of success in the Mercutio. My final word on this experience: I never want to do it again.
So which was the best of times and which was the worst of times? Understudies – do you wish you had gone on or are you glad you didn’t? What was it like to go on?
We, here at Shakespeare in the Ruff, come across a myriad of Shakespeare-related material. Every month we choose some of our favourites to share with you.
January 2014:
THING ONE
In celebration of the return of Sherlock this month (a favourite amongst us Ruffians), check out this audio clip of Benedict Cumberbatch performing ‘The Seven Ages of Man’ from As You Like It.
[youtube_video] YM8LAbuateI [/youtube_video]
THING TWO
Shakespeare to stay put here in Canada. The Sanders portrait of Shakespeare is likely being sold to a Canadian family with plans to exhibit it at one of our major art institutes.
READ GLOBE & MAIL ARTICLE HERE
AND ANOTHER THING
In honour of Peter O’Toole’s passing last month, we wanted to share a fascinating conversation he had with Orson Welles about Hamlet, as seen on the BBC’s Monitor in 1963. At the time, he was playing the title role in The National Theatre’s inaugural production, directed by Laurence Olivier. O’Toole and Welles, along with a couple of the hosts, discuss the various approaches that people have taken in playing The Dane, as well as some of the big questions that every director has to grapple with when approaching the play. Intelligent and funny, this clip serves as a reminder of what captivating men both O’Toole & Welles were.
[youtube_video] smMa38CZCSU [/youtube_video]Anything you think we’d like, please let us know in the comments.
As rehearsals for Richard III go into full swing, Jesse shares some advice with Charlie about acting in Withrow Park.
[youtube_video] 6khsfJskNoQ [/youtube_video]
In the first episode of Ruff Encounters, Jesse & Charlie meet on the first day of rehearsals for Richard III.
[youtube_video] HCquqYhJHso [/youtube_video]
In the final instalment of our Richard Series, we speak to Tom McCamus, who played Richard at The Stratford Festival in 2002 and is currently spending his 13th season at the Festival, playing Friar Laurence in ‘Romeo & Juliet’ and Antonio in ‘The Merchant of Venice’. In our series, Tom arguably brings the most traditional approach to the role of Richard III, but as anyone who has seen Tom act can attest to, his invention and perspective are anything but conventional.
1-What was your relationship with the audience while playing Richard and did it change throughout the play?
Particularly at the beginning of the play, I spoke to the audience. Someone told me once that the best way to do that kind of thing, if you’re playing Richard III, is to imagine that the whole audience is made up of Richards, the assumption being that they all agree with you, so that you’re not trying to convince anyone. And that’s what I thought about and it made me laugh and it worked out well, because he’s such a fabulous, theatrical character. The connection with the audience diminishes as the play goes on, but I did this one thing throughout with a list – as I talked about all the people who were dead, I’d cross them off the list. Towards the end, I crossed the wife off and that was pretty direct to the audience, but by that point, Richard actually wasn’t looking for anything from them. I feel like he cuts them out partly because he’s becoming more and more concerned about everything falling apart around him to be too much aware of the audience.
2-How did you develop the physicality of the part and what informed your choice?
I kept talking to people when I first got the part and they’d ask, ‘Are you gonna have a hump?’ and I’d think, ‘Of course I’m gonna have a hump; if you’re playing Richard III, you’re gonna have a hump.’ But I used to say to them, ‘Oh no, no, no – we’re gonna start the play sitting at a desk and he’s gonna look totally normal, talking to the audience, and then halfway through the scene he’s gonna get up from the desk and he’s gonna have the biggest bum you’ve seen in your whole life and then he’ll spend the entire play having to turn sideways to get through doors.’ That made me laugh a lot, but then somebody said, ‘Careful – if you tell Martha (Martha Henry, the director), she might actually suggest you do that.’
Ultimately, for the physicality, I had a hump, but it wasn’t huge – it was more of a small deformity – and I also played with various degrees of Cerebral Palsy. I did the play ‘Creeps’ a long time ago, so I had explored that type of physicality and that kind of fit with Richard. My basic premise was that it came and went, depending on what he wanted from people. So, if he wanted more, the hump would be bigger, because it would elicit a certain amount of pity and then nobody would think he was a threat. He was like a dog that everybody kicked out of the way and before they knew it, boom, he was there.
3-Did anything surprise you about playing the role?
Everything. I didn’t know a lot about it when I went to play it, so I was surprised by how funny he was, how theatrical, how different he was from everybody else in the play, just in the writing of it and in the character of it. I was surprised that he really had no feeling for anything or anybody, other than himself. It’s a pretty early play and there’s a lot of verse and structure to it, but Richard’s kind of outside of that structure.
Another surprise is the way people reacted to things I did. They often said, ‘Why does he fall (out of a tree at the beginning and during the coronation)?’ or ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ about all kinds of things I thought were great. Part of it, especially with Shakespeare, is that people have such a strong idea of what it should be and if what you do doesn’t fit, they don’t always embrace it, and that surprised me. Most of the Shakespeare I’ve done, I’ve discovered, they haven’t been roles I’ve always wanted to play and so I just do whatever comes to me.
Ruff’s ‘Richard III’ is playing from Aug 13th-Sept 1st in Toronto’s Withrow Park. All the information can be found at www.shakespeareintheruff.com.
In the second installment of our Richard Series, we confer with Tim Welham, who is currently reviving his one-man adaptation of Richard III, ‘Crookback’. Originally wowing Toronto audiences in 2010, ‘Crookback’ plays this month at The Etcetera Theatre in London, England where Tim recently completed his Masters at The Central School of Speech & Drama. Playing not only Richard, but every part in the play, Tim brings a unique and multifaceted perspective to our Richard Series.
1-What was your relationship with the audience while playing Richard and did it change throughout the play?
We (director Megan Watson & myself) used Richard’s unique soliloquies, and his incredibly intimate relationship with the audience, as a springboard for the concept of our adaptation. So right from “Now is the winter”, we invite the audience into Richard’s mind, and the soliloquies act as a kind of confessional with the audience members. For me, the beginning monologue is always the hardest. Since each audience is different, each performance requires many subtle shifts in intention, focus, and address. I tend to speak directly to audience members when I play Richard, and some people find this quite disconcerting at the beginning of the show! So it takes a while to warm the audience to the concept and for them to feel comfortable inside Richard’s head. However, as the play progresses and the action grows, I’ve noticed most people end up encouraging Richard, and willing him to victory. It’s an interesting change – and one that Shakespeare deals with very well in his writing. By the time we get to the final soliloquy, after the famous nightmare on the eve of the Battle of Bosworth, Richard asks many more questions of the audience and is, essentially, begging them for a response – he is desperate for answers. Shakespeare’s use of short (sometimes incomplete) sentences and questions forces Richard into a kind of self-reflective state, and in turn jarrs the audience into reconsidering their own views of this very troubled and lonely man.
2-How did you develop the physicality of the part and what informed your choice?
The physicality! Well, for me to first begin creating a unique body, I needed to research what other actors had done before. The most memorable are probably Laurence Olivier’s 1955 hopping crow (mainly because it was one of the first to be preserved on film), and Antony Sher’s 1984 spider for the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company). Olivier’s is a difficult shadow to dodge, since his portrayal is so prevalent in our cultural consciousness, and Sher’s version is probably the pinnacle of physical dexterity. So, I went down the middle. Taking clues from Shakespeare’s text (not historical references), I ended up with my left arm in a sling, walking with a slight limp of the left leg, and curving my head and spine slightly to the left as well. The idea was to portray a slight compression & twist in Richard’s spine – perhaps the result of scoliosis? – that slowly amplified throughout the play. All of my clues came from the text, and mainly from names and descriptions of Richard by other characters.
3-Did anything surprise you about playing the role?
At the beginning of the process, I had an image of Richard as a gleeful, mischievous murderer without much of a moral compass. I thought he would spend most of his time in a state of high adventure – like Commander of a frigate on the high seas chasing a pirate ship. In the end, I discovered that much of Richard’s drive to life comes from a place of incredible loneliness and sadness. He has been, essentially, disowned by his mother and shunned by the rest of his family. He has never really known love. I found this to be the core of Richard’s character: his desperate need for love, comfort and understanding. And this came to a head during his final soliloquy on the eve of Bosworth where he says “I shall despair, there is no creature loves me, / And if I die, no soul will pity me.” He is human, and like all of us, wants to love and be loved in return. His tragedy is perhaps that it took him too long to realize that.
Next in our Richard Series, Tom McCamus recounts discovering the role of Richard III at The Stratford Festival in 2002. Ruff’s production of ‘Richard III’ is playing Aug 13th-Sept 1st in Toronto’s Withrow Park, all info at www.shakespeareintheruff.com
A coveted role from its debut, Richard III has been a delicious vehicle for actors for hundreds of years. Over the next few weeks, our Richard Series will offer the perspective of 3 distinctive Richards who have pondered the same 3 questions about playing the role. We start with Seana McKenna, who has spent 22 seasons at The Stratford Festival and is currently playing Madame Arcati in ‘Blithe Spirit’ & Queen Elizabeth I in ‘Mary Stuart’. In 2011, she played the title role in Richard III at the festival and brings a unique perspective to our Richard Series as one of the few women to have played the part.
1-What was your relationship with the audience while playing Richard and did it change throughout the play?
Richard’s relationship with the audience is paramount. The first words of the play are Richard’s, speaking to the audience. He invites them to be confidantes, co-conspirators, and makes them complicit in his plots. He wants them to laugh with him at all the idiots around him who cannot see through his duplicity, encouraging the audience to feel superior to these gulls. We like him – he makes us laugh, he seems smarter than everyone else on stage, and he is the underdog. Above all, Richard is a sublime actor. He revels in his ability to turn on the tears, to entertain, to be whatever anyone wishes him to be in order to get what he wants. He delights in his versatility, in the fact that he is a consummate impostor. And the only reason for an actor to exist is his or her audience. It is a co-dependent relationship. In the production I was in, director Miles Potter found a moment where I stopped talking to the audience, excluding them from my confidences, no longer trusting even them. That is when Richard is truly alone. His last soliloquy seems more like Richard talking to himself out loud, than a direct address to the audience.
2-How did you develop the physicality of the part and what informed your choice?
Director Miles Potter, designer Peter Hartwell and I were all determined that playing Richard would not seriously injure my body, as it has so many other Richards. You can go many ways with Richard’s alleged and talked-about deformities, but ultimately, we wanted what people said of him to be true, that there would be a reason why the other characters use animal imagery in their descriptions of him, besides describing his inhumane internal self. We wanted to create a strange creature, both female and male, or neither, who was the embodiment of evil, a creature who more than anything else, was closest to the popular character from medieval mystery plays, Vice.
The first practical consideration was which arm to “wither”. Richard has a broadsword fight at the end, and I am right-handed, so we withered the left arm. To accentuate the smallness of my own hand, Peter and cutter Joanna Billings designed a corset/hump that was also built up and padded on the right shoulder, upper chest and arm. This made my right side look square, muscular and male, while binding my breasts and curving my spine with sculpted foam. Lightweight, and leaving the hips and legs utterly free. I curled my hand and rested it on my flattened chest at all times.
After trying out many gaits in my kitchen in the preceding months, I worked with Alexander teacher Kelly McEvenue and movement teacher Wendy Allnutt on my walk. I wanted no lifts in my shoes or anything external to force my walk- I wanted to divest myself of my “deformities” whenever I walked off-stage. We developed a rolling, loping kind of gait, that was irregular in rhythm and that allowed me to move very quickly, cutting figure eights in space. If I had to describe my outward appearance by the end, I would say it was close to a bird of prey, a small vulture…a black crow.
To aid in making me appear more masculine, or perhaps more gender-neutral, we decided I would have a receding hairline, with long stringy hair. Think aging second-rate rock star. I put on a bald pate first, and wig mistress Julie Scott and I applied makeup to the pate and my face, complete with red spots and blotches , almost as though I had had a difficult birth. On top of the pate, I wore the thin slightly oiled wig that Gerry Altenburg created for me. I darkened and thickened my brows. Sometimes I would look in the mirror and think, “Something’s missing”. And I realized the makeup was not complete until I changed my view of the world, and saw the world through Richard’s eyes. The inside had to colour the outside, and Richard’s insides were…bleak.
3-Did anything surprise you about playing the role?
I knew that Richard would be, had to be, fun – if my interpretation was going to translate. As Richard delights in his acting abilities, I had to delight in my own. Richard has a marvellous sense of humour, black though it may be, and for most of the play I think the audience laughs with him. After the innocent princes are murdered, their laughter ceases. I knew I would find pleasure playing him, but I did not think that playing Richard would be as exhilarating as it was, on many levels. First, I was able to combine my years of experience with a leading Shakespearean role, something very rare for a woman over fifty, but customary for a male actor. Most major Shakespearean roles for women are played when you are in your twenties and thirties, occasionally your forties. So this was a gift, to lead a company when I actually had the experience to warrant it. It was liberating to play a man, and a villain, and not apologize for speaking my mind or reacting as forcefully as Richard does. The face could be as unattractive and unpleasing as possible, the outward appearance actually repulsive. ( We were not going for the sexy leading man with a hump idea, but a being who obsessively observes and consequently knows how to manipulate people) .
What also surprised me was my sense of camaraderie with the males in the company, and I remember feeling this at fight call before each show. I felt part of a pack, part of the majority – and to feel it in a Shakespeare play was strange, but comforting. Is this what men feel like all the time in a classical company? Is it a good thing for them? Do they feel supported, or competitive? I don’t know. I do know that as a woman playing a man, I was allowed to straddle both worlds at once, and felt part of both. I could enter either washroom without apprehension. But I didn’t.
The other thing that surprised me was how attached I became to my dagger, hanging at my hip. Hmmm….
Next in our Richard Series, Tim Welham, takes us on the journey of his one-man Richard III; Crookback.