Living in Exile Rehearsal Update!

Greetings from the Living in Exile rehearsal room!

Our first week of rehearsal has had some spectacular moments—chariot races and armed rebellion, funeral pyres and ritual sacrifice, celestial voices and divine intervention. Did I mention this all takes place in a living room? With a cast of two actors and two musicians?

What Bob Walsh and Tamara Hickey do on stage is some cross between veterans telling war stories and children playing war games. They jump across time, space, characters, and furniture taking us not just through the story of The Iliad, but also the 9 years prior to the start of Homer’s epic when the Greeks “lived in exile” on the beaches of Troy.

Playwright John Lipsky had the War in Vietnam on his mind when he wrote the play, but his words still have powerful resonance today. Whether we’re politically pacifist or not, stories of war and violence are at the heart of our Western culture and provide the backbone for our shared oral traditions. Confronting this reality in an intimate domestic space such as a living room (or in a storefront in Davis Square) makes for powerful drama.

In rehearsal we’ve been drawing on imagery from contemporary warfare as well as from Greek antiquity. Keep checking back here for in-depth discussion of the rich and varied source material we’ll be bringing to life on stage.

-Roxanna Myhrum
Assistant Director
Living in Exile

The Winter Festival Presses On

We have had our hands full with the Winter Festival over here at the Actors' Shakespeare Project, and since my last post our foremost production of the Winter Fest -- Cymbeline -- has debuted at the storefront in Davis Square.

My internship here has been marked by new (and surprising) experiences -- even watching Cymbeline was novel to me, as it has been many years since I have patronized the theater, and I certainly have never sat that close to the action on stage. Before Cymbeline's premier, I was enlisted to work in the space setting things up and getting things ready for showtime. Sometimes it is nice to break the monotony of routine -- and negotiating extension cords around the storefront, hammering nails and getting the venue ready for the actors certainly serves as a reminder of how close to the stage we really are.

The most memorable experience from this week was helping Tamara Hickey read through the script for our third play of the Winter Festival: Living in Exile. The ritual may seem commonplace to most of the people around the offices here, but to someone less experienced in theater, it was captivating to some degree. It amazes me how much these actors are able to memorize in such short and busy periods of time. I'm looking forward to seeing the script put on in the space, and everything seems coming along well.

This weekend I look forward to bringing a student group I have organized on my own to come see Cymbeline. Doug Lockwood's production is certainly worthy of a second viewing, and I anticipate that my group is going to love the space and the experience of Shakespeare. Will keep you updated on the highlights of my time here. Over and out.

Fun Times Preparing for the Winter Festival (First post)

So I come in to work today from a five day weekend, and I got a new computer/desk setup -- big monitor and all. Could do worse, couldn't I?

So far we at Arts on the Armory have been plagued (or blessed, depending on your perspective) with numerous snow days. As I speak, the snow is falling in Somerville and Greater Boston, and it looks like we are going to be trapped out of the office again tomorrow. While the weather truly is fitting for The Winter Festival, days off are bittersweet in the sense that we have so much to prepare for!

My first month in the ASP offices working with marketing has been a novel experience. The whole idea and concept of marketing is something I have hardly any experience with, and our marketing director here has really been showing me the ins and outs. I think the best example I can proffer was watching her barter the price for MBTA ads down to less than half the price, with free ads thrown in on top of that.

But the story I was really excited to share occurred last Wednesday. Laura and I went in with the Winter Festival directors (Doug Lockwood, David R. Gammons, and Allyn Burrows) as well as Tamara Hickey to film a segment for Somerville Community Access Television. Long story short, the folks at the studio threw me on one of the cameras, essentially because they could (like the Mallory quote: "Because it's there"). It was like being a kid all over again, even though I just stood there without having to do anything but watch the camera monitor and put on a big set of earphones. Interview went great (did it in one take), and we hope to have it on the website once the segment is finalized.

Clichéd moral of the story: anything can happen at Actors' Shakespeare Project. Coming up: Winter Festival in one week, leading a student group to come see Cymbeline, battling the snow for the next few days! Will keep you posted.

-T

Without Fail: Every Time I Perform Shakespeare

No matter how much Shakespeare I've performed, how many of his plays I have seen or read, the amount of reverence I endow shakespeare with always astounds me. Its almost to the degree of feeling unworthy to speak his language - foolish, right? I remind myself that it is only language - my language - words, when strung together a phrase - nothing more. Yet, I have this nag in the back of my head screaming, "but it's poetry, beautiful poetry, don't mess it up!!!"

In rehearsal however, when I watch my fellow actors shape, justify, fumble over, examine, love, hate, cry through Shakespeare's words I know I am sooooo not alone. Though my cast mates may not have the nag chanting in the back of their heads, we're all just trying to figure out. Truthfully, it's like any other play I've ever done, I just have to make sure those strung together phrase make sense. Thank you Shakespeare Lexicon.

History Comes Alive...in a Basement

"Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son?" Henry IV asks of Hal at the beginning of Henry IV Part I. These days, it's a juggling act in the rehearsal room. What scene are we doing? Which act? Who am I playing this time? Wait...what PLAY is this?

Yes, what play indeed. We are rehearsing Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2 simultaneously. What a great amount of theatre ASP is generating with this production; and what a fitting way to usher in the fall and kick off their seventh season.

As always, Shakespeare's words are the guiding light in the room, only to be matched by the intelligent and probing minds of the actors taking the story on. Fifteen big talents meander in and out of the coveted basement in Harvard Square six days a week to analyze and bring to life the text. "How can you make what you want ok to get?" one actor asks during an early table work session.

Henry IV takes the crown from his cousin, Richard II. Hal rebels against his future as king by fraternizing with drunks and prostitutes. If nothing else, the chemistry between Hotspur (Allyn Burrows) and Lady Percy (Sarah Newhouse) is so precious, that as an observer sometimes I think love can conquer all. Then we start work on the next scene, and I remember Henry IV is primarily wrought with familial turmoil and the waging of wars instead.

I go in the next room to get a five foot sword for someone to hold. Douglass kills Blunt in under two minutes. We go on dinner break. We come back and Hotspur is about to demolish Hal at the end of Part One. Who's going to win? Only you can cheer on the opponents when history comes alive Sept 29.

Melanie Garber
AD

Right. This text is immediate and we're thick in it. A massive story, and a feast. If we do it justice, and we're throwing ourselves that direction, there'll be every reason to see both.

MY WOUNDS AKE AT THEE

Who is not Timon's. What heart, head, sword, force, means but is Lord Timon's?

Fully entrenched in the rehearsal process, I find myself now with these verbiages from the text. Shakespeare's work (and/or whoever else) tends to stay with you...and with a room full of high caliber performers such as this one the story is becoming a vivd dream to me, whilst awake and even when I'm asleep.

These melodious eight creatures that make up the cast of Timon are creating a world that demands twenty three characters of them--and counting. With a hat, a change in posture, a different register of voice each storyteller figure flows into the next as this ensemble drudges up and dusts of the sometimes forgotten meaning of what it means to play in a theatrical context. In large part, if there isn't a sense of joy in the creating, then why do it in the first place? Any other reason is married to ego and hype. I'm honored to watch these professionals be betrothed to the text and constantly work towards serving it in an intelligent, engaging and clear manner.