I’ve started reading The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum (Random House, 2006). I would call it a work of literary journalism exploring trends in Shakespeare textual scholarship and theatrical interpretation. Rosenbaum introduces us to his topic by describing how his life was profoundly changed by Peter Brook’s Royal Shakespeare Company staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the outset of the Seventies. Those of you who are theatre history junkies may know that such an extreme reaction to this production was not an uncommon one. I just wanted to offer a quote from the book about the production and leave it at that:

I’ve come to believe, on the contrary, that what made it so thrilling was not the way in which Brook’s Dream was new but rather the way it was radically old. The way in which it seemed to capture what one imagines was the excitement of the moment the play was first produced four centuries ago. The moment when its lines were first uttered, when its language burst from the lips of its actors in a kind of spontaneous combustion, as if the words were not recited so much as thought up and uttered, freshly minted, for the first time…it had more to do with the language, with the “verse speaking,” as Shakespeareans call it. With a company that had so totally mastered the technical and emotional nuances of the verse that it sounded less like recitation than utterances torn from them. Each line fluid, lightning-like, inevitable. It never seemed, as it does in so many mediocre productions, like emoting. The speech bubbled up, burst out, and then sparkled like uncorked champagne. And it had something of a champagne-like effect on me; I felt as if I were imbibing the pure distilled essence of exhilaration. For me it was like the night they invented champagne. It was like a love potion.

I just watched a documentary called Last Dance, documenting Pilobolus Dance Theatre‘s collaboration with Maurice Sendak on a new piece for their repetoire. It’s available on Netflix and worth a look. Regardless of what you might come to think of the final piece, you can enjoy watching a bit of creative collaborative process. Pilobolus works in a way very near and dear to my heart in which open improvisation leads to discoveries which are then developed and “interpreted” by the other collaborators (particularly Sendak in this case) in light of their own evolving imaginative interests. For me it’s very easy to take the dancers’ fluid physical and psychological sensibilities and apply them to the work of actors, keeping the possibilities just as open and extreme and transformative. The dancers are already quite accomplished “actors” anyway; they just choose to keep their mouths shut (and not even that restriction holds true if you consider some of the work involving mouths and fingers in the resulting piece). The film also allows you a look at how creative differences are worked through (or at least suffered) in the absence of one Director. It’s an enlightening opportunity to watch what happens when people gather in a room together to make something…

Due to a rising tide of interest and demand, Newnan School of Dance will be offering a new class: Dance for Musical Theatre.

The hour and a half class will be held weekly on Tuesday evenings, beginning at 7:30, starting this Tuesday, September 5. Rates will be reasonable (we have many interested high-schoolers) and info on that will be forthcoming.

The class will be conducted like a “dance class” in that it will begin with warm-ups, including barre work and floor work, but no previous dance experience is required. Then time will be devoted to various areas: general stage movement, dance in a variety of styles (jazz, modern, tap, some classical), singing and dancing, dance chorus, and perhaps some work on creating convincing choreography. Students will have the opportunity to request other topics of interest. The class will be led by a number of instructors at the School.