Category: production

Work sessions, 6/23 & 6/30

Posted on by Dale

6/23: Scott, Dale present

We worked on some of Edgar’s bits, especially II.3, where Edgar is on the lam. We played with the metaphor of Edgar shedding his clothes as he quickly sheds his identity and assumes that of Poor Tom. It works, of course, but there are limits to what we can pull off (pun intended) in our hometown. We decided that when we take the show to Edinburgh, we can rethink that concept.

We looked at ways to dissect Poor Tom’s ravings so that they a) make sense, and b) are easier to memorize.

6/30: Dale, Scott, Greg present

We played with IV.1, III.7, and I. 4, getting Greg in the mix with Gloucester, Cornwall, and Lear. We recapped some of the concepts we’ve been playing with and let Greg get acclimated.

We really need more people to start playing with. Dale decided to establish a Lacuna group on Facebook to help start advertising this opportunity for people.

Work session, 6/16/10

Posted on by Dale

present: Dale, Scott, Jeff A.

It’s been a while since this blog has been updated with any work we’ve done, even though we’ve been working a little during the winter and spring. Tonight, however, we dug back in in earnest.

One night in May, we met in Dale’s backyard, where he revealed his scathingly brilliant idea: disassemble the entire play and rearrange it in what we hope will be a powerful new sequence. Enough about that for the moment.

Tonight, Dale started out working with Scott on I.2, where Edmund first sets Edgar up as a traitor to their father. The goal was to strip out all “acting” and see how close to everyday speech patterns we could make it. Jeff joined us midway and we cycled through all the roles.

Scott moved us into I.4, the Fool’s first appearance, and we tried the same thing. It was interesting to go over the scene again and again and see where we could pull away from that huge sense of theatricality embedded in our perception of Shakespeare and take it as far towards “mumble-core” as we could.

We talked about the insane asylum image Jeff came up with in May. We joked about needing alcohol, et al., and perhaps including a bar at one end of the performance space for the actors.

We wondered whether we could be brave enough to do the thing with only the three of us. Jeff suggested a framework of the three of us reading through it and leading the audience into the world of the play that way. Dale referenced Shakespeare’s R&J, playing this summer at Serenbe Playhouse, which does just that, and Gatz, now playing Off-Broadway, which does the same thing with The Great Gatsby. Still, we discard nothing.

Jeff suggested that one way to work on the play with only the three of us committed at the moment is to study the storyline of Lear, the Fool, and Edgar. We began with the storm scene, III.2, and moved to III.4 (first appearance of Mad Tom), playing the scenes over and over to start to sound the rhythms of each set. We also played with varying stages of undress to see how they impacted the scene. Lots of discussion–and artistic nodding of heads–regarding potential nudity (!), but of course no commitments on that subject.

We have our path mapped out now, pending the adding of others. If anyone is interested in Gloucester and Kent, those would be the characters we would need to add next.

Lear, 3/24/10

Posted on by Dale

present: Dale, Jeff B., Scott, Jeff A. Spencer

We started by looking at III.7, the “eye” scene. How does one tackle such a scene? As Jeff said, nothing any of us have done in theatre has been this depraved. And then, not to get too Monty Python about it, how the hell do you pull something like this off? How do you gouge someone’s eye out? What do you do with it once you’ve got it? Should Gloucester face downstage? Upstage?

We played with various setups, and came to no real conclusion yet. Cornwall and Regan are a fun couple indeed. Their sado-lust is horrifying in the scene. (We decided Cornwall could hand Regan the first eye, leading to a very amusing take on “One side will mock another. Th’ other too.”)

We then looked at the III.2 storm speeches, the most famous in the play. After reading through the speeches independently, we began to explore.

One of the first aspects to pop up was the tendency, the compulsion to rage “nobly.” First of all, that’s very hard to sustain. Second of all, why after two complete acts of acting like an idiotic old man, is Lear suddenly oh-so-noble? Sure, he’s been wronged, but he’s there because of his own bad behavior.

Dale pulled back from the nobility and went for the petulance, which we liked. Variations followed, culminating (just as Jeff A and Spencer arrived) in Dale’s doing the speeches with a walker. Very ludicrous.

We pushed it even further: with Jeff B as the Fool, Dale rode him piggyback and railed at the skies, dismounting only for “Here I stand your slave,” and ending by sitting on a prostrate Fool: “O ho! Tis foul!” Something very appealing, very Eastern European about it. We filed it away for future reference. It’s certainly a bold choice.

Spencer and Jeff A leapt into I.2, between Edmund and Gloucester. We noticed that if you skip Edmund’s opening monologue (which they had), the scene plays out as the setup from a comedy. Spencer and Jeff went through it again, joined by Scott as Edgar. Finally, Dale assayed Edmund, Jeff B Gloucester, and Jeff A Edgar.