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Shakespeare

Jul 24
0

Cymbeline Series Part I

By | Cymbeline, Shakespeare | No Comments

Cymbeline doesn’t land on most people’s lists of Top 10 Shakespeare plays, maybe not even Top 20. For this reason, we spoke to three people who have directed this play to get their take on a few questions that we’ve tackled since deciding to produce it. 

First up in this blog series, is Anita Rochon, who directed the play for Bard on the Beach, in Vancouver mere weeks ago. If you’re on the west coast, don’t miss it.

1-For a title character, King Cymbeline has very little time on stage and no time alone with the audience. How did you ensure that audiences would connect with him? Do you think the play would be better served by a different title?

“You know, I didn’t do anything more than the play suggested. I had to trust that the structure and amount of exposure that we had to the king would be enough. Off the top, I created an opening monologue for the actor playing Imogen,  pieced together from the original opening scene, and that gave a lay of the land, where the king and queen were highlighted. I think our idea of king and queen is so entrenched that we can easily identify them and are interested in who they are by virtue of their position. As for the title, gosh, I can’t really think of another name that would suit it better. He really is connected to all the plot lines and at the end, is the one who can either stay the way he’s been, or change and forgive.”

2-Most deus ex machina (god from the machine) moments are vital to the story. Jupiter’s descent on the back of an eagle in Cymbeline is often cut and feels less integrated than many similar interventions by the Gods in other plays. What was your take on this moment and how important a role did the unseen whims of the deities play?

“Our version had quite a small cast and was very character/plot-driven. I cut Jupiter, but did not cut the scene. That scene is there for a reason and is essential to Posthumous’ journey, and the audience’s journey as well. I think Shakespeare felt that we needed to have access to something mysterious and divine before that big cathartic last scene. So, rather than Posthumous’ dead family and Jupiter paying a visit while he’s in prison, I had him go to sleep, then see Imogen as an apparition (whether it’s a dream or something from the gods is up to the audience to decide). She’s singing a song with the words borrowed from “Fear No More”. If I were to direct this piece again, with a different set up in a different place, I may indeed stage it as written. It could be very powerful and awe-inspiring.”

Photo by David Blue
Cymbeline Photo by David Blue

3-Cymbeline isn’t produced very often, especially in Canada; is it just the ebb and flow of fashion, or are people are afraid to do it? And if so, why? 

“I have no idea! At Bard on the Beach, I’ve been skulking around the audiences before the play and at intermission, because I always like to hear what people are saying to their friends, to learn about who’s coming to see the show and hopefully, I can eavesdrop on what they think about this production. I’ve heard a lot of people on the way in saying it’s their favorite Shakespeare play. And then other people on their way out saying ‘How did I not know this play before!?!’. In my research I’ve read about a lot of productions that have been put up in the U.S. and in England in the past few years. I’m not sure why not in Canada. Maybe producers don’t want to take a box office chance on a lesser-known play? The gender politics in it are not the easiest to tackle either, so maybe people don’t want to take that on?”

Anita RochonAnita Rochon artistic co-directs The Chop in Vancouver with Emelia Symington Fedy, which has produced numerous new works including “KISMET one to one hundred” and “How to Disappear Completely” which continues to tour internationally. She frequently collaborates with some of the city’s most celebrated companies including Theatre Replacement, Théâtre la Seizième, Vancouver Opera and Electric Company Theatre. She is a graduate of Studio 58 (Acting) and the National Theatre School of Canada (Directing). She was awarded the Ray Michal Prize for an Outstanding Body of Work by a New Director, the Siminovitch Protégé prize and a Mayor’s Arts Award.

The next director we will speak to is Dawn McCaugherty who started Shakespeare in the Rough in 1994 – the company’s first production was Cymbeline in Riverdale Park. Shakespeare in the Ruff’s production runs from Aug 12th-Aug 31st in Withrow Park.

May 22
0

Green Eggs & Hamlet: A Conversation With David Ley

By | Acting, Education, Shakespeare | No Comments

University of Alberta professor, David Ley’s, shares his exciting way into teaching and speaking Shakespeare. David uses the words of Dr. Seuss to help actors find and use the rhetorical structures Shakespeare provides. It may seem like a strange pairing, but here David explains to us the impact it has on the way actors understand and take hold of language.

How did you come up with this technique? What made you connect Seuss with Shakespeare? 

I did a lot of reading to my own kids and since I’m interested in pattern identification I think I began hearing it; I have a mind that naturally compares and contrasts. All teaching looks for deep structure – what are we trying to get at underneath it – and so I think that’s where it all began.

I take my students to go and read to Junior Kindergarten classes and I do that because the thing that is going to hold our interest when we’re 4 is the same as when we’re 40 or 80. The ‘I Can Read’ series by Dr. Seuss should be called the ‘I Can Communicate’ series. I’ve always been interested in rhetoric and Seuss & Shakespeare each highlight different rhetorical structures. Dr. Seuss invites a playfulness that’s often missing in Shakespeare, as well as the willingness to engage in playfulness.

I think both are brilliant and people often say that in 400 years we’ll still be reading Dr. Seuss… We have become denotative… For example, the word, “ocean” can be so many different things, from a big wonderful place to a terrifying place. Seuss teaches us how to express these things – big or small, far or near, good or bad, but we often fail to give this information in the support of our communication.

What can Seuss teach us about Shakespeare’s words? Structure? Rhetoric?

I love Sister Miriam Joseph’s books (Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language) and books that list endless numbers of forms of rhetoric. When an actor picks that up, when you embrace it and you invest in it, it actually takes you somewhere bigger. In repetition, for example, what a modern actor will do is make them all different because they’ll go, “I can’t be all the same,” so what they’ll do is take it apart and spread it out on the field instead of stacking it. When you stack and you stack and you stack, you realize the power of repetition… So, there’s the aspect of repetition, there’s the breadth of antithesis; you can pitch tag an argument:

‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ Now as I continue through that speech, I actually now know that when I hit this pitch I’m talking about you and when I hit this pitch, I’m talking about the summer’s day. If I’m talking about apples and oranges it’s different than apples and jumbo jets. Then I would have to have a greater range in my voice to tell you that the things that I’m comparing are much further apart. So, things like that help the audience follow the language.

Articulation is another thing. I’m old fashioned because I always say let’s see what it’s like if we just pronounce all the consonants… We use, in a way, the Dr. Seuss to see how much people are accustomed to investing in sounds, so that the quality of the sound itself has an inherent action in it: “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.” If you don’t do the “v” on “love”, “luffing” is something a sail does when there’s no wind in it. I think if an actor invests in the word, if you look somebody in the eye and say, “I love you,” and you commit to every sound of that word, you’re actually going to feel something. Then the text can actually take you somewhere, you don’t have to make something of it – it can actually take you for a ride.

What has been the response of actors in using this approach? How has it changed their attitude toward or facility with Shakespearean text?

I’ve done this in front of Martha Henry and in front of school teachers and the response is always great. First of all, it’s a great diagnostic to find out what your habits are – what you do, what you don’t do… What’s neat about it is that it’s worked with high school kids, it’s worked with school teachers, with student actors and it’s worked with professionals. And also, it’s fun… people pick up Shakespeare and get all serious about it, we get all academic with it. The point is that we are taking what is ultimately an academic study (of rhetoric) and we’re applying it in a way which is fun. You know, kids’ books are great, all sorts of kids books, because in kid’s books you find books that are meant to be read aloud. Shakespeare was not meant to be read silently. I don’t think Shakespeare wrote Romeo & Juliet for some academic to go sit down in his quiet office while he listens to Chopin and works his way through that structure. Those words were meant to be spoken by somebody to somebody else. And the only words that we find like that now, besides some poetry, are kids’ books.

This stuff only works when you make people sit on the floor and pretend they’re three years old. It’s surprising how much people actually want to do that. So, it becomes a really fun little exchange where people are behaving like they’re three and responding to the reader like they’re three, which actually makes the reader have more fun. And then they take out their Shakespeare and there’s much more life, there’s much more dynamic expression and range in the way they present that text.

Seuss

Photo credit: http://www.adoremusbooks.com/onefishtwofishredfishbluefish.aspx

One of the great books is One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish – it’s the gold standard, it’s the ‘take the pebble from my hand’ book. What’s interesting is you actually have to coach actors to identify the patterns. So, what do we have to do when we’re reading that book?

Here’s one example: you have to encourage people to finish final consonants. I’m a voice coach and what do I have to do more than anything? Encourage people to finish final consonants, don’t drop the energy at the end of the line. That’s what I say more than anything else. “Say! Look at his fingers! One, two, three… how many fingers do I see?” We get people reading it really flat. But “three” is more than “one” so you have to tell people, “can I hear in your voice that three is more than one?” Then, the fact that he has eleven fingers is a big discovery, because you’ve built up to that. But modern actors, even at a pretty high level, are not going to do that, so they’re not going to get that wonderful discovery that happens, because they haven’t explored what it means for eleven to be more than one.

Then, there’s any number of pieces of Shakespeare that you can find that have that kind of repetition in them. Claudius’s ladder of thought in Hamlet is a classic example.

Do the Dr. Seuss, then do the Claudius one:

“Say! Look at his fingers! One, two, three… how many fingers do I see? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, he has eleven! Eleven! This is something new. I wish I had eleven, too!” (One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish)

“Give me the cups,

And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,

The trumpet to the cannoneer without,

The cannons to the heavens, the heaven to earth,

Now the King drinks for Hamlet.” (Hamlet 5.2.)

Do you have a favourite line from each of these writers?

A favourite line from Seuss… maybe: ‘Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not’ (The Lorax). Also fond of the book: Oh, The Places You’ll Go! It’s full of wonderful philosophy, which takes me to, ‘To thine own self be true, And then it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.’ (Hamlet). We get the philosophy of both writers giving advice to young men going out into the world. I have sons.

David Ley holds an MFA in performance from York University with a diploma in Voice Teaching. He is a Professor in the Drama Department at the University of Alberta where he teaches Voice and Speech, Dialects, and Acting. David has extensive experience in private practice teaching vocal skills to a wide array of professional voice users from schoolteachers to politicians and has taught many voice workshops both across Canada and abroad. He spent ten seasons as a Voice Coach at Canada’s Stratford Festival and continues to be a regular instructor in Stratford’s Birmingham Conservatory. He has done numerous feature newspaper interviews commenting on dialects and vocal performance and has been featured in two CBC documentaries on Canadian speech. Media outlets around the world have covered his work on the Vibrant Voice Technique including: The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian UK, the Huffington Post, Metro News International, and many others. David has 30 years of experience working as an actor in theatres across Canada and has acted in numerous film and television productions.

 

May 15
0

Context is King; a first foray into Shakespeare by Larry Smith

By | Education, Shakespeare

As we gear up for the Young Ruffian Apprenticeship Program this summer (applications due June 1st) we continue our Education Month with Ruff’s Chairman of the Board, Larry Smith, sharing the first assignment he would present to Grade 9 students green to Shakespeare and afraid of the language.

One of the reasons I always enjoyed teaching Grade 9 classes was that, for most students, Grade 9 English is often where they are first introduced to Shakespeare.  I am enthusiastically interested in all things Shakespeare – his work, his life, his world – and the opportunity to share that enthusiasm, maybe even instill some of it in others was something that the Grade 9 classes always offered.

Given the barriers that language and poetry present to those new to Shakespeare’s work, I tried to find a way to engage students in Shakespeare before we actually started to read is work.  I wanted students to make a connection to Shakespeare’s world that had relevance to them first, hoping that the shared connection would be a springboard for greater interest; and so, I asked students to “become a Shakespearean expert”. 

The basic idea was for students to determine what really interested them in their world, be it fashion, music, food, sports, war, travel, etc. Having established that interest, they then explored how that same interest existed in the Elizabethan era.  

For some students, the product might be a traditional report on “The Tudor Family” or “Elizabethan Discoveries”, but for most, the product would be models or drawings of the Globe, maps of explorers or war campaigns, paintings of costumes or fashion, or recreations of Elizabethan weapons.  The presentations were just as varied – always one or two musical performances, sometimes a sampling of the food or a presenter dressed in a traditional Elizabethan costume that they had made.

These presentations were delivered with an enthusiasm and authority that I have seldom seen matched in other assignments.  The students knew their stuff. Students watching the presentations were engaged by the presenters and fascinated by the trivia of another world, a world about which they had become an expert.

As we would enter into the works of Shakespeare, the class collectively knew more about Shakespeare’s world than I ever did – and they knew things about that world that interested them, that had connections and relevance to their world today.

I remember the first time I used a variation of this assignment in a Grade 9 class.  It was fairly early in my career; I was enthusiastic about teaching, but not always confident in my abilities as an “ENGLISH” teacher.  The day the assignments came in, I remember entering the English Office and excitedly telling my colleagues about all the great projects I had just collected.  Now, it may be that it was a different time in teaching, and maybe I went on a bit too long, but my enthusiasm was not entirely appreciated and one older teacher finally turned to me and said; “That’s all fine, Larry, but what has it got to do with teaching English”.  

Larry Smith (Chariman of the Board) running the Gala auction

Larry Smith (Chariman of the Board) running the Gala auction

The wind was knocked out of me.  I was one of the younger members of the department and what I had been doing in my class was obviously not acceptable.  The incident was momentarily painful but ultimately useful as it forced me to evaluate what I was doing in the assignment.

Rather than defeat me, that teacher strengthened my belief in the assignment because I realized I was asking the students to research, to read, to write, to create, to talk, present and listen – all things that have everything to do with teaching English, but with a sense of purpose and ownership that few activities ever have. 

Check out the assignment here and please use it!

Larry Smith is an English and Drama teacher in Toronto who has been a Head of English at both adolescent and adult schools in Toronto.  He first became excited by Shakespeare when in Grade 11 he was a member of the University of Windsor Youth Theatre and got to act in “A Comedy of Errors”. That enthusiasm for the bard exists to this day as he is a Founding Company member and Chairman of the Board of  Shakespeare in the Ruff.

 

May 08
0

“Meant To Be Said; Not Read” by Shawn Rocheleau

By | Announcements, Education, Shakespeare | One Comment

Shawn Rocheleau is a remarkable teacher who teachers high school Drama in the Toronto region. We were fortunate enough to meet Shawn a couple of years ago and our paths have continued to cross. We hope you’ll learn as much from Shawn as we have as you explore his philosophy of teaching Shakespeare and sample lesson plan, a beautiful way to introduce students to the rhythm, shape and movement of Shakespeare’s text.

I  fell  in  love  with  Shakespeare  early.  I  can  remember  reading (although  not  understanding)  The Taming  of  the  Shrew  in  late elementary  school,  and  even  though  most  of  it  flew  right  over  my head,  I  loved  the  language.  Even  my  monotonous  Grade  9  and 10 English  teacher’s  readings  of Romeo  and  Juliet  and  The  Merchant of  Venice  couldn’t  kill  my  love  of  the  Bard.  I  played  a dubious Claudius  in  Grade  11.  After  the  privilege  of  participating  in  a student  weekend  at  the Stratford  Festival  in  Grade  13,  and  the disaster  that  was  Introduction  to  Shakespeare,  I  managed to  get myself  through  Teacher’s  College  and  into  my  own  English  and Drama  classrooms.

My  love  of  Shakespeare  became  somewhat  of  a  crusade  when  I realised  that  my  fundamental premise  behind  teaching Shakespeare -­  it’s  meant  to  be  said,  not  read  -­  was  not  a universal  truth. While  lip  service  was  paid  to  “performing” Shakespearean  plays,  most  of  the  lessons  I  was handed  involved  a lot  of  textual  analysis  and  literary  inquiry; very  little  of  it  was  on-­your-­feet exploration.  I  was  even  told  by  a  vice  principal  that  I was  “using  too  much  Drama  in  my Shakespeare  unit.”

The  best  way  to  get  students  -­  any  student,  of  any  level  -­  to “get”  Shakespeare  is  to  get  them  on their  feet.  Get  them  moving. Give  them  the  tools  that  Shakespeare  himself  built  into  the  text and take  the  fear  out  of  the  words.  Because  it  is  those  words  that make  Shakespeare  so  special  and alive  to  audiences.

The  first  thing  I  do,  to  dispel  the  fear  of  the  story,  is  to  tell  it. Not  read  it.  Not  show  it  to  them  in  a video.  Tell  it.  I  use  some snippets  of  text  here  and  there,  where  I  remember  it,  and  I  tell it from beginning  to  end.  I  leave  some  things  out,  and  I  try  not  to editorialise  or  assign  value,  I  just  tell them  what  they  are  going to see,  hear,  and  eventually,  be.

Then  I  give  them  the  tools  of  the  trade.  We  talk  about  the rhythm,  the  meter,  the  rhyme  schemes, the  words  -­  all  of  the structural  pieces  that  Shakespeare  used  to,  well,  to  tell  the  story. We  play with  passages  from  the  script  we’re  working  on,  move around  the  room and  see  what  story  the punctuation  tells.

Shawn RocheleauBy  the  time  we’re  done,  students  have  been  playing  with  the  text and  have  enough  familiarity with  it,  so  we  can  get  down  to  the reading.  I  never  send  students  home  to  read  the  text.  We  do  it in class,  on  our  feet,  with  the  desks  cleared  away,  as  if  we  were  on a  stage.  If  we  can  get  a stage,  or  if  this  is  a  Drama  course,  all the  better.  I  treat  it  like  a  performance  text  (which  of course,  it is)  and  I  talk  to  them  like  they  are  actors.  What  did  you  just say?  Who  did  you  say  it to?  Why  did  you  say  it?  What  does  it mean?  Just  lots  of  questions,  and  everyone  can  answer.

Then  it’s  their  turn.  They  get  to  play  with  the  text  on  their  own, explore  the  meanings  and  the words,  and  eventually  create  their own  interpretation  of  Shakespeare’s  works.  They  must  use the text, and  they  can’t  alter  the  fundamental  storyline,  but  otherwise,  the world  is  their  stage. They adapt, they create and eventually, they perform.

And  then,  if  we  can,  we’ll  go  see  a  play,  be  it  the  one  we  have studied  or  another.  Watching students  react  to  something  they have  worked  on  and  performed  is  more  magical  than  watching the  play  -­  I  always  make  sure  I  sit  behind  them  so  I  can  watch their  reactions.  My  favourite moments  are  when  they  come  to  a new  realisation  or  understanding  of  the  text  -­  the  eureka moment where  you  know  that  their  understanding  of  the  world  just  got  a little  bit  broader.

There  are  a  ton  of  activities  and  exercises  we  can  use  to  get students  to  understand  and appreciate  Shakespeare.  The  Stratford Festival,  Royal  Shakespeare  Company,  Shakespeare’s Globe,  the Folger  Library  -­  all  of  these  places  have  fantastic  resources  for educators  who  want to  do  more  than  just  have  students  read silently  and  answer  questions.  In  my  opinion  -­  and  in  my practice  -­  anything  that  gets  them  off  their  seats,  on  their  feet, with  a  script  in  their  hand  and  an idea  in  their  head is  golden.

Shawn’s lesson plan: The Shape of Shakespeare can downloaded here. Some fabulous ideas, thank for sharing Shawn.

 

May 02
0

A Thing or Two About Shakespeare

By | Announcements, Education, Shakespeare | No Comments

As we gear up for our 2014 Young Ruffian Apprenticeship Program, we’ve dubbed May “Education Month” at Shakespeare in the Ruff. Each week in May, our Youth Development Coordinator, Lois Adamson, brings us a new education-focused blogpost for our audience of teachers, artist educators, students and actors alike.

To kick things off, we bring you a special education edition of A Thing or Two About Shakespeare and share some things the Bard has taught us.

THING ONE

Everything I need to know, I learned from Shakespeare. Or so says Blake McCarty of the New Victory Theater in New York, who lists the 50 best life lessons he learned from Shakespeare. Two lessons that particularly resonated with us.

11. “We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” (Hamlet, 4.5)

13. “Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.” (Romeo and Juliet, 2.3)

The full list can be found here.

THING TWO

English poet and spoken words artist, Kate Tempest, reminds us in this poem, My Shakespeare, of all we owe to him and how often without knowing we find his words coming out of our own mouths each and every day.

[youtube_video] i_auc2Z67OM [/youtube_video]

Next up: on May 8th, teacher Shawn Rocheleau shares some insights (and an awesome lesson plan) about igniting a love of Shakespeare in his high school students.

 

Apr 29
0

Shakesbeers Showdown 2014

By | Events, Shakespeare | No Comments

AJ Richardson, Ruff’s resident dramaturge extraordinaire, actor and notorious beer-guzzler participated in an event last weekend that brought together two of his favourite things: brew and the Bard. Competitors from six local Shakespeare companies (who knew there were so many?) came together to see who could best cold-read the First Folio (the first edition of many of Shakespeare’s plays published in a single volume, in 1623). Whenever an error was made, beer was consumed. Even without a line flub, beer was consumed. It was a fierce competition, and with Ruff as the 2013 reigning champions, the pressure was on…

In conjunction with many other worldwide Shakespeare events (celebrating his 450th birthday last week), The Shakesbeers Showdown of 2014 in support of Spur-of-the-Moment Shakespeare Collective’s Julius Caesar Project was a collision of Indie Shakespeare All-Stars at the Mây (876 Dundas West), who kindly donated the competitors’ beers with special guest Jessica Speziale providing rock music between rounds!

Spur-of-the-Moment, #Gamefaced by Luisa Zhu and Clare Blackwood, was the only team to be comprised entirely of women – perhaps this is a taste of things to come with their production of Julius Caesar later this summer. Last year’s runner-up, Scott Moyle of Urban Bard, brought a secret weapon in the form of new teammate Mel Hrymak. Humber River Shakespeare sent out Sara Moyle and the very sportsmanlike Steve Coombes. Shakey-Shake & Friends were represented by Shakey-Shake himself and his friend Len (handled by Tom McGee and former Guerrilla Ruffian Shakespeare Squad Captain Kyle Shields, respectively). Shakespeare Bash’d’s James Wallis and Julia Nish-Lapidus did their best to lure my teammate, Jesse Griffiths, when it was revealed that I left the ruffs (our uniform) at home. Luckily, thanks to a special delivery, they showed up in the nick of time and we were ruffed! But after Jesse was eliminated in a precarious first round match up which saw the other two readers advance, the pressure of bringing back the back bacon fell squarely on my shoulders. I was back, of course, to defend my title as last year’s champion.

Shakesbeers

AJ Richardson & Scott Moyle compete in round two

After being defeated fair and square in the first round by Spur-of-the-Moment’s Luisa Zhu, I magically found myself competing in the second round!?!  In a rematch of last year’s finale, Scott Moyle and I were both whistled for mistakes twice by the ump, Susan Bond.  I, ever the sportsman, actually took three drinks after calling myself out on an otherwise grey-shaded reading. Urban Bard, of course, only deals in black and whites, and it was Scott who advanced to the final round only to be defeated fair and square by Luisa Zhu as well.  I was beaten by the winner. (I was beaten by the dude I beat before and was thereafter beaten by the winner.)  I joked with them that Spur-of-the-Moment defeated me so seriously, I was going to end up in the hospital. And in a way, I will.  This fall, I’ll be directing their Shakespeare-in-Hospitals Program!  So, I think I can still say I was on the winning team.

Apr 15
0

2014 Season Announcement

By | Acting, Cymbeline, Shakespeare | 3 Comments

Ruff’s Artistic Director, Brendan McMurtry-Howlett, will be directing the company’s third show in Withrow Park; Cymbeline

Right, so after an obscure comedy like Two Gents, and a dark twisted play like Richard III, it perhaps would have made sense for us to do a really nice production of Twelfth Night. And believe me, we thought about it. But one of the things we keep talking about at Ruff is our desire to take the risks that we wouldn’t be able to take if we were running a big operation like Stratford, with millions of dollars at stake. Ultimately we just want to have fun, and believe me Cymbeline = Crazy-Amounts-Of-Fun.

I was also incredibly baffled by this play when I first read it. Through the lens of the psychological dramas Shakespeare is famous for, Cymbeline appears to be some freakish accident by a senile playwright past his prime. The scope of the play is huge – many seemingly disparate plot lines, huge characters, and one improbable event after another. Really, it’s totally crazy. But writing Shakespeare off as past his prime seemed too easy – he was only 46 when he wrote Cymbeline, and this play, along with Pericles, marked the beginning of what seems to have been a very intentional shift in style and content of his playwrighting, now grouped together as the Romances. It seemed to me that he was evolving past the naturalism that we now revere him for and into something more sophisticated and intuitive, loosening up his verse and creating epic, larger than life stories.

And then, fortuitously, I went to a cold-reading of Cymbeline by the wonderful group The Howland Company and in the discussion afterwards, as we tried figuring out what the hell was going on in this play, someone brought up Picasso and Cubism. Picasso was the son of a naturalistic painter and from an early age had mastered his father’s craft. Having perfected this he moved on to explore a new form of expression and ended up with Cubism – reality viewed through a sort of prism. I found this an exciting way to look at Cymbeline – a piece created as an exploration of new forms of storytelling, a kind of theatrical Cubism. It was after this that I knew I wanted to direct this show, and that it was the perfect choice for Shakespeare In The Ruff

But if I’m being honest here, the real reason we chose Cymbeline was because of the mind-blowing stage direction: Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle. He throws a thunderbolt. Mother f#%*ing Jupiter on a mother f#%*ing Eagle!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! See you in August in Withrow Park.

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This is the simplest version of a Synopsis I can come up with: Imogen, a princess, gets married to her lover in secret against the wishes of her father – King Cymbeline. Her husband is banished and she flees the kingdom to join him, but in the meantime her husband has been tricked by a crazy Italian man into thinking Imogen has been unfaithful and he now wants her dead. All of a sudden the outbreak of war throws everything into chaos and the couple must survive until everything is made clear and they can be reunited. This doesn’t even included men hiding in chests, the evil step-mother, beheadings, long-lost brothers, prophesies, and the deus ex machina. A more complete synopsis can be found on Wikipedia.

Apr 07
0

Suppressed panic; Ruffing It from an actor’s perspective

By | Acting, original practices, Ruffing It, Shakespeare | One Comment

Last October, we took our Original Practices Experiment to The Stratford Festival where company member Kaitlyn Riordan was working. Actors received a scroll with their lines and cues, were asked to memorize it all, not read the play, and then come together and perform it in front of an audience, having never rehearsed together. We began playing with this concept two years ago at our Season Launch party and a week from today (April 14th) we hold our third annual Ruffing It. Actress Carmen Grant spoke to us afterwards about her experience last October and the mayhem of playing Elizabeth in ‘Henry VI, Part III’, having never spoken the lines to another actor before encountering an audience. 

Carmen GrantRuff: Can you describe the challenge of working this way?

CG: I found that learning the lines was the greatest challenge for me within this process. I felt excited by the mystery of the process, but the majority of the morning was spent in a state of suppressed panic! As you know, learning lines is so much more than just memorizing words on a page. The motivation and objective of a character comes from what’s being sparked within their human impulses and, more often than not, a cue comes well before the other actor reaches the end of their line! But with only four words as a prompt (sometimes less!), the context of what I was saying was not clear. So, I would say my biggest challenge was learning the lines without knowing the entire text.

Ruff: How was it different from your normal process?

CG: My normal process is to read the entire play over and over again, so that I understand the story implicitly before I attempt to memorize my lines. That way, the lines I have to speak are already imbued with an understanding of not only my character, but the other characters in the play, how I feel about them, and the world as a whole. I usually find that by the time I’m on my feet in the rehearsal hall, I know the lines so well, I can almost forget them and am able to respond to the other actors in the scene by simply listening to what they are saying. The cues in their lines jump out at me more easily that way and the need to listen in a state of panic is removed! On the other hand, that’s part of what was exciting about it. The need to listen very hard to what the other actors were saying made for edge-of-your-seat presence onstage.

 Ruff: What surprised you most on the day?

CG: When I realized that George wanted Elizabeth as his wife, I had already made the choice to seduce Edward whole-heartedly … and it could have been REALLY interesting to play with the idea that Elizabeth actually wanted George as much as he wanted her and NOT, in fact, Edward – as the brothers’ text seems to indicate.

Apr 01
1

A Thing or Two About Shakespeare

By | Acting, Events, Shakespeare | No Comments

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.

April 2014:

THING ONE

What are you doing to celebrate Shakespeare’s 450th birthday this month? If you haven’t made any plans yet, consider heading to Stratford-Upon-Avon for the annual celebration that’s likely to be bigger than ever on this milestone year. This might be the one event where our ruffs would fit right in.

Join Shakespeare’s birthday party

THING TWO

If you’re not into celebrating the birthday of a man, long dead, then celebrate the coming together of two of our favourite things: Hamlet and Benedict Cumberbatch. The rumours have been substantiated and he’ll be playing The Dane at London’s Barbican Theatre in 2015.

AND ANOTHER THING

If you haven’t seen celebrity impressionist, Jim Meskimen, perform Clarence’s speech (from Richard III), don’t wait another minute – it is nothing short of brilliant. He’s aiming for 1 million views and is only about 30, ooo views away from reaching his goal. Let’s help him get there!

[youtube_video] j8PGBnNmPgk [/youtube_video]

 Our personal favourite is Woody Allen – such an unexpected and hilarious match.

Mar 25
0

Acting is Easy

By | Acting, Shakespeare | No Comments

Ruff’s Artistic Director, Brendan McMurtry-Howlett, has been on a ‘sabbatical’ of sorts out west, taking part in the Banff/Citadel Professional Theatre Program. The program has two stages – a four-week residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts and then two months working on a production for Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre’s main-stage season. In his case, Brendan is preparing to play Romeo, in Romeo & Juliet, which opens April 5th (show info). He learned many lessons, which he plans to share with the company and put into practice this summer when he directs Ruff’s show. Here, Brendan shares one the biggest takeaways he had from the training.

“Acting is Easy”:

Well actually, I should say acting is easeful; though this is easier said than done. This is something that our two voice coaches, Susan Stackhouse and Alana Hawley, emphasized during my time at Banff and one of the most important lessons I took away from my time there.

As a kid I played a lot of sports in school. I was never particularly skilled at anything I couldn’t catch a football to save my life, but my advantage was that I was a damn fast runner. I pushed myself in this – always running faster, harder. The lesson I took away was that if you want to get better at something, then just work harder, use more muscles, sweat more and you’ll eventually be better. This lesson has served me well in life so far, but the problem is that I’ve also applied it to my acting.  Unfortunately it doesn’t quite translate. Acting requires quite a bit more subtlety than that. Straining every muscle in your body won’t necessarily take you to the emotional place that Hamlet requires. In fact, so I’ve found during my time in Banff, it might actually prevent you from getting there.

My early sports lessons have translated into a tendency in my acting to work too hard at showing people how “good” an actor I am. This frequently means lacing every muscle in my body with as much tension as possible. For myself, I imagine it also comes from a feeling that who I am and what I’m feeling isn’t interesting or good enough to watch on stage. The result, though, is that who I am gets buried underneath all of those over-working muscles and that is definitely not interesting to watch on stage.

Muscles protect us. If we’re getting punched or hitting streetcar tracks and flying over our handle bars, flexed muscles protect us from breaking bones or damaging precious internal organs, but on stage, protection is the last thing we want, especially when it comes to accessing emotions. The goal is always to be as naked and vulnerable as possible, so that we can react honestly and emotionally to what happens to our characters in the course of a play. I guess this is why voice teachers are always doing so much relaxation work with actors.

Brendan-McMurtry-Howlett-Headshot_Theatre

One of my big “Ah-ha” moments during my time in Banff came while working with James MacDonald and Alana Hawley on a speech from Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 4 – Look here upon this picture…). I’m sure I’m not the only actor out there who sometimes carries tension in their shoulder and jaw muscles and working on this speech was no exception. There I was, a good student hitting all my line endings (thank you James), and discovering all my thoughts, but I wasn’t connecting to what I was saying in any kind of emotional way. Instead, I was flapping my arms around and reaching my head forward like a sprinter trying to get his nose across the finish line before anyone else.

Eventually, Alana came up and gave my neck and jaw a gentle massage, releasing the insane amount of tension held there. I went back at the speech, trying to consciously release it. At a certain point in the speech, I felt my neck tense and my shoulders ride up to my ears. I took a moment and relaxed and instead of leaning forward, I stood tall and continued. All of a sudden, stuff just started pouring out of me – I was blubbering away like a baby, tears and snot flowed out of me, but I was still riding the text like a beautiful wave of words and thoughts. It was unreal. I was one of the most pure moments of connection and “acting” I’ve ever experienced and it all came from simply relaxing.

Of course, when I did the speech again the next day all that tension was back and I couldn’t summon a single tear, even if my life had depended on it. I was trying to recreate that same moment and the more I tried, working it like an athlete, the further away I got from it. I was frustrated, but James reminded me that the emotional connection is the hardest part of acting and takes an entire lifetime to develop. One of the things he likes to say is “The only thing that is guaranteed to make you a better actor is age,” meaning, the more life you live, the more experiences you have, good and bad, the more emotional reference points you have in your acting. So thank you, James. I’ll take that small victory I found in Banff and keep living my life and then I’ll find my way back there once I’ve lived through enough emotionally-wrenching experiences in my life. Sounds fun, right? Can’t wait.

“Ah-ha” moments are few and far between. Have you ever had one while working on Shakespeare? What does it mean for you now?

Applications are now being accepted for the Banff/Citadell Program for 2015-apply here