Allyn
Monday, March 22, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Collaboration Continues to Yield Confidence and Learning
Watching my students work with Robert Walsh is freshly inspiring every year. Eliot Short Term Treatment has just completed its fourth year of collaboration with the Actors' Shakespeare Project, and each year has seen students taking their learning and performances to new heights. For the past four weeks, Bob Walsh has helped my students use both the pen and the stage to access Shakespeare's language and storytelling, and as they've examined love, jealousy, loyalty, and betrayal in Othello, they've come to see the themes and circumstances of their own lives mirrored in a story so old it is difficult even to read. As in years past, it was again a powerful experience to watch my students explore the possibility that to struggle may be universally human, that their circumstances may not be as isolating as they seem. Once again, as I watched Bob challenge my students to dig into their characters' desires and fears, I saw them digging into themselves.
Largely through Bob's tirelessness and passion, our collaboration has gained greater depth and breadth each year. True to form, this year saw the most powerful and dynamic student performances yet, with students staging three scenes from Othello for an audience of peers, caseworkers, actors, clinicians, teachers, administrators, and group care workers. With student input stronger than ever, student voice this year guided script edits, fight choreography, blocking, and live sound. Students collaborated in the development of original soundtracks for their scenes using audio recording technology, and in a moment of great creative insight, one student envisioned and put forth a teleprompter design that allowed students to perform without scripts in hand for the first time ever. Though both acting and performing for an audience were new and challenging experiences for every student, not a single student expressed upon reflection the sentiment that exploring Shakespeare through a more traditional classroom approach would have been better. Robert Walsh and ASP have once again helped my students discover fun in academia and contemporary significance in the arcane. Perhaps most importantly, ASP has helped my students find the courage to engage with and embrace something new. No matter the context or subject, real learning requires courage, and my students have proven themselves brave indeed. As one student wrote in response to the famous line from Julius Caesar:
I move forward with my life and rely on what's mine.
Can’t rewind for my past I left behind
They say, “Cowards die many times before their deaths.”
Well, I choose to fight until I have nothing left.
-DM
Evan Gentler
English Teacher, ESTT
Thursday, March 4, 2010
A photo's worth 1,000 words...
Last night was the final dress for BAA's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and here are some photos of the cast and crew putting the FINAL touches on!
Titania and one of Oberon's fairies applying make-up and nail polish for a fully polished look! (as designed by Seth Bodie)
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Naps, knifes, and neck snapping
Being a violence designer has apparently skewed Rob Najarian’s sense of beauty. During rehearsal when he declared, “That is a lovely picture,” he was not describing an early embrace between Desdamona and Othello or even one of Cassio and Bianca’s saucy entanglements. No, he was gushing about how Roderigo (played by Doug Lockwood) wielded his knife a few inches above Cassio’s (Michael Forden Walker) head as they began their deadly duet in scene V.1.
Devising violence for Shakespeare requires an alchemist’s expertise (as illustrated by last fall's post on the sausage tests required for Taming of the Shrew). Minimal stage directions, e.g. “They fight”, must be transformed into realistic brawls with a wide variety of weapons. Each switch of a blade, slap across a face, and snap of a neck must be broken down into minute details. Actors who may not have extensive stage combat training must quickly grasp all the nuances to safely execute maneuvers while keeping the Elizabethan dialogue rolling. And, unlike dance, performers can rarely rely on music to set a cohesive rhythm for the group.
Watching Rob bounce back and forth crafting jabs, thrusts, and falls for all the killings in Othello, is oddly enough thoroughly entertaining. Somehow he manages to remember each person’s individual sequence of movements complete with grunts and moans (his falsetto version of Desdamona ironically slayed everyone watching), maintain a narrative logic within the fight, and pepper his instructions with $5 words like penumbra.
If you are curious to know more about this bloody craft, feel free to check out my interview with Rob about fight choreography from Monkeyhouse's blog.
Karen Krolak
Assistant Director
Devising violence for Shakespeare requires an alchemist’s expertise (as illustrated by last fall's post on the sausage tests required for Taming of the Shrew). Minimal stage directions, e.g. “They fight”, must be transformed into realistic brawls with a wide variety of weapons. Each switch of a blade, slap across a face, and snap of a neck must be broken down into minute details. Actors who may not have extensive stage combat training must quickly grasp all the nuances to safely execute maneuvers while keeping the Elizabethan dialogue rolling. And, unlike dance, performers can rarely rely on music to set a cohesive rhythm for the group.
Watching Rob bounce back and forth crafting jabs, thrusts, and falls for all the killings in Othello, is oddly enough thoroughly entertaining. Somehow he manages to remember each person’s individual sequence of movements complete with grunts and moans (his falsetto version of Desdamona ironically slayed everyone watching), maintain a narrative logic within the fight, and pepper his instructions with $5 words like penumbra.
If you are curious to know more about this bloody craft, feel free to check out my interview with Rob about fight choreography from Monkeyhouse's blog.
Karen Krolak
Assistant Director
The Final Countdown!
I think I want to use this blog basically to toot the horn of the amazing student Stage Manager on the Midsummer Night's Dream that Jason Bowen and Magda Spasiano are directing at Boston Arts Academy. I went to a couple of hours of rehearsal on Monday afternoon (their final dress is this afternoon!) just to see if anyone needed any help. Every in the room continues to work so, so very hard on the show - Russ Swift, the lighting designer, was there on one side of the tech table, tweaking the timing on lights. Jason (who along with Magda is also designing the sound), sad on the other side of the tech table tweaking the volume of the final sound cue so both it and Puck's final speech could be heard. Jenna Lord, the scenic designer, and Seth Bodie, the costume designer, were not only putting the final touches on their design elements but continuing their role as teachers by filling the students in on theater etiquette (always check with the costume designer or wardrobe supervisor before you grab your costume off of the rack for the first time; the bag that holds your small costume pieces is a "ditty bag"). On the other side of the room sat three ASL interpreters, watching rehearsal to learn the script for the performance for which they will be interpreting.
And in the middle of everything and everyone, sat the stage manager. Now, she has not done this before. She is a junior in high school who never took blocking before, never wrote a cue into a script, never called a cue before. But there she was, calling the room to attention, telling everyone where to start and when, writing down all of the new blocking that comes in the final moments of rehearsal when new props are added and new scene changes require new entrances, setting the props table, keeping everyone informed of where and what and who and when! My favorite moment came during the scene when Puck and the fairies put the lovers to sleep so Puck can erase the erroneous charms on the men. The direction required Puck to give a specific hand signal on a specific line and the lovers to respond to this magic in a specific way so that a "button" sound and light cue can happen (a "button" cue is one that happens in a zero count usually on a specific movement or word so that it is extremely essential that it be spot on because a mistake will be more noticeable than on a cue that lasts, say 20 seconds). And the Stage Manager nailed it each and every time. She was able to communicate to Jason and to the actors what she needed in order to make it happen - consistency of movement and of speech rhythm. Her calling of the cues feels and looks like the culmination of everyone's weeks of work - the lights, the sound, the costumes, the words, she brings them all together and BOOM! she makes them go! She puts the poetry in motion. The beauty everyone imagined on paper, in the flourescently lit rehearsal room....she says Sound Cue A and Light Cue 1 go....and the beauty is realized.
Laura and I will be headed over today to watch their final dress and I can't wait to watch the stage manager call an entire show. I have no doubt it will be astounding.
See you there!
Adele
Manager of Artistic Operations
And in the middle of everything and everyone, sat the stage manager. Now, she has not done this before. She is a junior in high school who never took blocking before, never wrote a cue into a script, never called a cue before. But there she was, calling the room to attention, telling everyone where to start and when, writing down all of the new blocking that comes in the final moments of rehearsal when new props are added and new scene changes require new entrances, setting the props table, keeping everyone informed of where and what and who and when! My favorite moment came during the scene when Puck and the fairies put the lovers to sleep so Puck can erase the erroneous charms on the men. The direction required Puck to give a specific hand signal on a specific line and the lovers to respond to this magic in a specific way so that a "button" sound and light cue can happen (a "button" cue is one that happens in a zero count usually on a specific movement or word so that it is extremely essential that it be spot on because a mistake will be more noticeable than on a cue that lasts, say 20 seconds). And the Stage Manager nailed it each and every time. She was able to communicate to Jason and to the actors what she needed in order to make it happen - consistency of movement and of speech rhythm. Her calling of the cues feels and looks like the culmination of everyone's weeks of work - the lights, the sound, the costumes, the words, she brings them all together and BOOM! she makes them go! She puts the poetry in motion. The beauty everyone imagined on paper, in the flourescently lit rehearsal room....she says Sound Cue A and Light Cue 1 go....and the beauty is realized.
Laura and I will be headed over today to watch their final dress and I can't wait to watch the stage manager call an entire show. I have no doubt it will be astounding.
See you there!
Adele
Manager of Artistic Operations
Monday, March 1, 2010
Moving into the space
Sunday's rehearsal was the last in the rehearsal room. Tomorrow begins a new phase: moving into the performance space at Villa Victoria in Boston. Scenes that take place on the grand curving staircase or on the balconies, entrances and exits through the double doors or the upper doors or via the ladder -- places that till now have been suggested in rehearsal by low platforms or signaled by taped lines on the floor, or that have just been implied, in thin air -- will now be physically realized.
"Into thin air" -- hard to imagine not having that expression available in English, but what if Shakespeare hadn't invented it in The Tempest? A few now-common phrases in English that come from Othello: "a foregone conclusion" . . . also, the expression, "to wear your heart upon your sleeve," something Iago says he will never do.
At every rehearsal new windows open for me onto the play. Seeing the actors do the lines, I'll suddenly get it -- I'll think: "So THAT's what that line is for! That's WHY he says that! NEEDS to say it, at that exact moment! THIS is where she finally realizes it. THAT's when he suddenly feels the stab of it!" I find it infinitely fascinating, these glimpses into how the play works, how cunningly and intricately it's been composed. I love watching the actors make discoveries as they rehearse, and through watching and listening to them, I get to make them too. Often it's an actor's physical gesture, some movement or subtle intonation, that throws open the window in my mind. And then I'm amazed that I didn't see it before! But I didn't. The actors make it live. And then I think once again (as millions have before) how brilliant Shakespeare was at writing for the actors -- as well as for the rest of us.
Joyce Van Dyke
Dramaturg
"Into thin air" -- hard to imagine not having that expression available in English, but what if Shakespeare hadn't invented it in The Tempest? A few now-common phrases in English that come from Othello: "a foregone conclusion" . . . also, the expression, "to wear your heart upon your sleeve," something Iago says he will never do.
At every rehearsal new windows open for me onto the play. Seeing the actors do the lines, I'll suddenly get it -- I'll think: "So THAT's what that line is for! That's WHY he says that! NEEDS to say it, at that exact moment! THIS is where she finally realizes it. THAT's when he suddenly feels the stab of it!" I find it infinitely fascinating, these glimpses into how the play works, how cunningly and intricately it's been composed. I love watching the actors make discoveries as they rehearse, and through watching and listening to them, I get to make them too. Often it's an actor's physical gesture, some movement or subtle intonation, that throws open the window in my mind. And then I'm amazed that I didn't see it before! But I didn't. The actors make it live. And then I think once again (as millions have before) how brilliant Shakespeare was at writing for the actors -- as well as for the rest of us.
Joyce Van Dyke
Dramaturg
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