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Shakespeare | Shakespeare in the Ruff - Part 2

A Thing or Two About Shakespeare

By | Acting, 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.

March 2014:

THING ONE (& only)

It’s General Audition Season in Canada! This means that all the actors you know are dusting off their monologues, Classical and Contemporary, and getting back to basics. With that in mind, an excerpt from John Barton’s marvellous ‘Playing Shakespeare’, we watch Judi Dench (Oscar nominee last night) do the most over-done soloiloquy Shakespeare wrote for women. But watch this and you’ll see why.

[youtube_video] QxftRZ_Uzq0 [/youtube_video]

A Thing or Two About Shakespeare

By | 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.

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?

 

 

A Thing or Two About Shakespeare

By | Announcements

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.

 

The Richard Series Part 3: Tom McCamus

By | Acting, Richard III

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.

Tom McCamus' RIII

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. 

The Richard Series Part 2: Tim Welham

By | Announcements

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.

Tim Whelam's RIII

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

 

 

The Richard Series Part 1: Seana McKenna

By | Announcements

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….

Seana McKenna's RIII

Next in our Richard Series, Tim Welham, takes us on the journey of his one-man Richard III; Crookback.

 

 

 

 

 

Long live the King!

By | Announcements

(Alex McCooeye writes about reprising his role as Richard III this summer, with Shakespeare in the Ruff, in Toronto’s Withrow Park)

It’s been five years since Diane D’Aquila directed my fellow classmates and me in Richard III at The National Theatre School. Time flies when you’re murdering royalty. And although it was an incredibly fulfilling experience for all involved, Diane and I have never been able to shake the idea of performing the play again, but this time, outdoors.

Ms. D’Aquila, who has previously played both Margaret and Queen Elizabeth at The Stratford Festival, will be playing The Duchess in our production (she’s too old for Ann now (I mean that respectfully)), has the rare ability to change the entire outcome of a scene with a slight shift in stress, or intention, or focus. During our time together at NTS, we spent as many hours uncovering the play as one might spend digging bones out of a parking lot.

Bad joke.

But one day, late in the process, when inspiration was at a low, and our minds were full of iambic pentameter, or prose, or who cared what the difference was, we were kicked out of our rehearsal room (probably because of those loathed French students (mes intentions sont respectful)). And so we were forced to do a run-through of the play in Laurier Park about 3 blocks down from the school.

Then everything broke wide open.

We had already been thinking of it as a young person’s play. A youthful royal, treacherously battling his way through the old guard to get to the top. But young people can run, and a park allows for running. A lot of it. I stood in the middle as a murderer chased my brother across a baseball field, or a messenger ran over a hillside, or my trusted sidekick cursed me from across the street. All of this chaos with one man at the centre of it, canoodling with the audience all the while.

This is the experience that we’ve been chasing since that fateful afternoon five years ago, and with Shakespeare in the Ruff, we’re bringing that to Withrow Park this summer. We’re dying to share it with you, or should I say murdering?

Final bad joke.

(a sneak peak of Alex inhabiting the hunchback King in our second season announcement video below)

[youtube_video] mdwWxcqPQ7U [/youtube_video]