Shakespeare and Possibility, Part 6: Directorial Concepts and Cutting the Script

Ever wonder what it's like to direct a Shakespeare play? The rules of romance are upended in As You Like It, a gloriously entertaining romantic comedy that gleefully interrogates traditional notions of gender, politics, and love. Listen in to a pre-show discussion between Sara Holdren, director of As You Like It at the 2024 Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival and theatre critic for New York Magazine, and Jennifer Thorup Birkett '23 PhD, Shakespeare at Notre Dame postdoctoral research associate.

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Transcript

1: 0:06

Welcome to the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival. Is this anyone's first time at the festival? Okay, fantastic. Anyone's like fifth time? 10th? 20th? Scott's I have at least my 20th. This is our 24th season doing Shakespeare Summer Festival, or what we call the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival, and we are so grateful you are here. My name is Jennifer Burkett or Jenny Burkett. I am a postdoctoral fellow or research associate here with Shakespeare at Notre Dame, and I'm the coordinator of all the pre show and post show events. So you'll see me a lot with this microphone interviewing the best people in the world, including our director of tonight's show, Sarah Holdren. So I'm gonna let Sarah come join me. Sarah and I will spend about 15 minutes, 20 minutes just chatting about her concept for As You Like It and the production and a little bit about the backstage happenings of what it's like to be a director of a Shakespeare production. And then we'll open it up to you all. I'll pass the mic around and you can ask whatever questions are on your heart. about the play or about the production, what you've seen, what you're excited to see, maybe from things we talk about. Anyway, so we'll start there. I'm going to start by asking Or saying that a lot of the work of a director actually starts long before actors show up in the rehearsal room. and that's what some people don't realize is they think like the director flies in, they coach the actors, and then they put the show together, and that's and then they fly out, and that's it. But there's so much that goes on way far in advance, including what sometimes we refer to in the theater business as the concept of the show. so I wanted to ask you, Sarah, about Your concept for this production of As You Like It, and what inspired it, and what you were really hoping to emphasize or bring forward the themes, the things you were excited about when you got given this play specifically to do.

2: 1:57

Yeah, thank you, and it's really good to be here. Hello everyone. I'm Sarah. yeah, so let's see. yeah, that is true. I can't remember exactly. I think it was like, October or November or something that I came on and really I've been thinking about and working on As You Like It since then. So it's, no matter when, any, and even that was, I think, earlier that's, or sorry, later on that certain processes. So there's a lot of, there's a whole lot that goes into it. Let's see, where do I start? So on a Shakespeare play, I feel like with me, the process of cutting the play is actually, your sort of, I, I think of it as Directing 1. 0, because when you approach a Shakespeare text, the vast likelihood these days is that it's gonna, you're gonna cut it in some way, shape, or form, mostly because, despite Romeo and Juliet calling it the two hours traffic of our stage, most of the texts, if you don't cut them, are more like three and a half or four, especially with American actors, speaking them, we tend to speak a little bit slower than British actors, So we're most, we're like, we're trying to, we're trying to create, something that, that feels compelling at a certain length, but we're also shaping what story from inside a kind of myriad, possible world of stories, we want to tell. so I always think of, getting into the text and starting to play with it, starting to think about, do the scenes flow in the order they originally flowed in? Do the characters stay, stay interpreted the way they originally appeared on the page? how it wants to, how the thing wants to be shaped textually ends up being a first draft. It ends up being like playing with chess pieces. it ends up being a first draft of how the thing is going to play in space and in bodies. and in, in setting about to cut As You Like It, As You Like It is actually a play that I've done, this is my third time directing it, which is wild, and the most recent time was, really a funny experience, it was early, earlier in the pandemic, it was the spring of 2021, no one was vaccinated and I was doing it with students. And everyone had to wear a mask and everyone had to stay six feet apart the entire time. So we were doing a romantic comedy where we couldn't see each other and we couldn't touch each other. and that was a first sort of round with this play of really, I like to think of every time I do a show as a draft, but that, that really felt like a sort of draft production just because of its circumstances. But it was really, it was wonderful because it called on all of us that to think about, we're, we have this wild moment that we're being asked to do this in. And as you like it. Can be, I mean it is inherently a really joyful play, a really funny play, and it can be a very light play in multiple ways. Like it can be light in the sense of wonder and, and enjoyment. It can also be, it can also feel fluffy, which I'm not actually, I don't mean to say that with bad or good attached to it. It just, it's capable of feeling that way. And so I, our process that first time around, I think had a lot to do with figuring out, what is this? What does this play that can be a bit of a bauble, this like beautiful fun thing, how can it retain those qualities and also what does it have to say in this moment, in this really wild, uncertain, scary moment? And we're not in the same moment now, but because I had a bit of a, like I say, a draft experience with that play then, I was ready to come to this time around asking, asking that question anew, and, and say, we're not, what moment are we in? what does it feel like now? And how could it, as you like it? exist in and speak to this time, this place. so that, those were questions that started to really inform my cut. And as I worked on the script, I found myself really interested in these ideas of utopian experiments. so I, thinking about the Forest of Arden and thinking about the way that this play moves from a space of oppressive society out into a green world where people are playing and experimenting and re figuring themselves out and re figuring out who they want to fall in love with and who they want to be and how they want to build the world. Arden, to me, seemed like this space of play and possibility that had a lot of really fascinating real life analogues. Just, thinking about the history of these, Moments in the world where people have gone off grid and tried to found a new community or an artistic organization or or some sort of like We did a lot of research involving things like the Rainbow Gathering, which is this like wild thing in Montana where people get together from all around. And it's this kind of it's like the last great hippie commune in America. and then we also, I did a lot of research surrounding a theater company called Bread and Puppet that was founded in the sixties, by an amazing artist named Peter Schumann. That theater company still exists today in Vermont. I was able to spend some time with them earlier this year, and they are very much a, an old school collective, they're building puppets, they're baking bread, they're living with showers in the woods, and toilets that you have to muck out yourselves, they're basically outhouses, they're farming, they're, this is a, it's really a sort of, the art, the practice of, the practice of art making and the practice of kind of sustaining, sustaining the community together is all interwoven, and so that became hugely inspirational in terms of, what is going on out in the forest of Arden and how can we think of it as a place where conscious community making and sort of art making is all happening? and yeah, like that. I think I also wanted to get away from the idea, as you like it, I think, sometimes drags around a little bit of that sort of pastoral myth that the kind of Marie Antoinette thing, Oh, shepherds and shepherdesses, what a sweet romantic, we lie around on a hillside and do nothing. And for a long time, I think that was, it was like, that was a very popular aesthetic. And the play, I think, did have this kind of feeling of, when we go out to the Forest of Arden, everything is romantic and everything is pretty and work evaporates. And I also wanted to push back against that and get a feeling of what Arden were. beauty, where we're more thinking about the beauty of the world rather than prettiness. where it's this is a place where people work, and where people get cold in the winter, and where people have to feed each other, and and and clean the outhouse, and all the Wash all the mugs. Yeah, wash all the mugs. Who's

1: 7:57

responsible for these?

2: 7:58

Yeah, exactly. So it's it is a place of work, but it's also a place of A chosen ethos of caring about each other and of stepping away from, authoritarian structures.

1: 8:08

That's something that's really interesting in this production, but also in the play once you open that up through the production and through this concept of Dora Sera, is the moments in which you find characters in the community having difficulty being together in the community. I think we, you'll see this with J Queeze and Orlando have a little bit of a small moment where they kind of butt heads and they, and it's a funny moment where they jar at each other, but in jest of like kindness, which is fun. But you have other people who, it's questions of who's in charge and who's got the right philosophies, but also, Oh, we are not exactly the same kind of people, but we've all agreed to live in this community together. so I wonder if as you were thinking through this concept, and as we, as you brought this forward in this production, do you feel like those moments as a director, you wanted to pull them out, or they come out naturally? this notion of we're all in this, we're now all in this forest, because it is a moment where, you We get, we're in the court, you'll see you're in the court, and then from all various circumstances everyone ends up in the forest. Kind of like Into the Woods in that way. If you've seen that, you're like, we're all just going to go into the forest and bump into each other, and conflict's going to happen, and we'll untangle it somehow. But the question is, of course, that They are all there for different reasons, but they all have to agree to live together and work together and Create together and it's not always that they perfectly get along, but they agree to a set of kind of set community Understanding.

2: 9:28

Yeah, I think that is I think those moments do naturally emerge and I definitely wanted them to like one One thing I can think of is the way in which So our heroine, Rosalind, who we meet in, in the court, and who then decides to dress up as a boy when she goes into the forest, a boy named Anony, we see her, kind of like really flexing her new freedom and playing with her, like this, all the kind of liberty she feels inside of this costume. And we also see her best friend Celia, who, when we saw them together at the court, they were equally loquacious, they were, they could match each other consistently, and we see Celia get very quiet and recede a bit. and I really wanted, I wanted, it's not something that the play actually cleanly resolves, which I think is okay. I don't think it has to. but I wanted there to be moments where you witnessed Rosalind, really getting to experiment while Celia, in this production, I have her in the scene, doing laundry in the background, and there is something to me that, is interesting about, okay, the one of them who dressed up in boys clothes gets a little bit, a little monofocused, and is able to do whatever she wants, and the one of them who didn't dress up in boys clothes, it's I guess I'll take care of it, need to be taken care of, So there are tensions like that, that I think are extant in the text, whether or not you have Celia doing laundry, she doesn't speak much, so that's already something. and there, and yes, those sort of tensions between people like Orlando and Jaquies who are just fundamentally so different, like in their kind of cores. But it is, I think it is that thing of like, When we talk about, arts organizations and artists, I think, would love to talk about community so much, and it is that moment of really having to squarely reckon with the fact that doesn't always mean being like someone else or liking someone else. what it means is this larger, ethos of care, and of like how we all want to try and exist together and handle issues, so there's something about Arden that I think is really fascinating because it and it's by default leader, the duke of the forest, who in our production is named even though, it doesn't force, It doesn't force people to, into a kind of like false, like a false chumminess. Yes. like there, there is a, it has a sort of more expansive, more, more elastic idea of, what it means to live together, I think, than that.

1: 11:46

Absolutely. And, another question I have for you is you talked about the cut of the show, and as the director, as Sarah pointed out, especially with Shakespeare, there's always the expectation that you're going to have to cut the show in some way or else we're making the audience sit for four hours, and no one wants that. You don't want that. We don't want that. Maybe someone wants that. if it's the greatest thing you've ever seen, but it's a lot to ask. And this show happens to be a show that has a lot of music in it. It's the most musical of Shakespeare's, plays. And so a lot of times directors will actually, that's like the go to easy cut is, oh, we'll cut out some of the songs. Yeah. But you actually add a song in the script. So I don't know if, Like, how important was it to you that the way that the music and the lyrics and the, and in this show, this production especially, how much did you want to lean into the music, what was so important to bring in those songs and let that kind of add to the concept of the community?

2: 12:34

I just think there's this play of Twelfth Night, I think the songs are so vital to their souls, and they're different, But there's something about the music in both of those plays that just feels, it feels if you take it out, you've really, something very drastic has changed about the sort of texture and heart of the world, and I think one of the reasons I really wanted to lean into the songs in this play is that They offer these moments of kind of non action and contemplation and that are really fascinating to me. there, Orlando has this beautiful line, there is no clock in the forest, which I love. and is a kind of, he says it, he says it as a bit of a joke, but really it makes you pause and think about, okay, this is a space wherein the aggressive march of time, as we know it out in the world, where you have to do your job, and you have to get paid, and you have to do this, and you have to do that, it's that's on pause here, and there's different laws happening in art, and, one, this might not be, may or may not be apparent, but, an artist who was actually really inspirational to me in working on this show is the director Hayao Miyazaki, movies like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, and there are these beautiful animated films where I think one of the things that's really unique about Miyazaki as an artist is, he's, his painted landscapes and his relationship with the natural world are so stunning. I And he fills his movies with these moments of pause, with these moments of little visual fascination, it's like a water drop on a leaf, a bug crawling slowly across, a piece of wood at sunset or something, things that aren't actually necessary to the story in terms of, we gotta move along, we gotta do the plot, And I think that those moments create something, this sort of contemplative texture and this attentiveness to the world that felt really in keeping, I think, also with what's happening in the Forest of Arden and how characters become in the Forest of Arden and the way in which they stop and start to see and see each other and see the forest and see, there's this kind of, there's also that unbelievable line in King Lear, see better Lear. And I think Arden has that effect, right? Like people start to see in different ways, which requires a slowing down and which requires a kind of actual appreciation and attentiveness to beauty. and the songs, I think, offer that opportunity. and they're also just, they can also just be great fun. and they can also be theatrical tools in a really wonderful way. I know I just talked about them being moments of pause, but, on the flip side of that coin, they can also be really beautiful moments of, allowing us to shift our world on stage, or, creating a transition of some kind, moving the story theatrically forward. So they, to me, they felt like huge opportunities, that, In terms of shortening the thing, they're not where I want it to go because they just feel so integral to me.

1: 15:28

I love them. You're all going to come out, I'm assuming, I'm going to say, I'm going to make a bet. You're going to come out of there and you're going to have at least one of the songs stuck in your head. Every morning I wake up with it in my head.

2: 15:38

I should also say that we're using, except for one song, which I'm, it's a different, we can talk about it, it's not Shakespeare's lyrics. All of them are Shakespeare's lyrics, but I should say that they've all had their music composed by our absolutely brilliant sound designer and composer named Kate Barbet, and the music that she's written for these. I just love so much. We did a lot of listening to, British folk revival music, Fairport Convention, Steel Eyes Fan, these kind of like wonderful bands from the 60s who were unearthing old folk songs and like revivifying them, and that's the feel we were hoping for. I really like that.

1: 16:14

and you're also going to notice, as Sarah said, seeing more in the forest. this is something. I think we, you did very specifically with the design of the transition from Arden into, from the court into Arden was to open the stage up in a big way and You're going to see so much. For those of you who have seen the DCO stage, you're probably going to see more of the DCO stage than you have ever seen before, just because we've expanded it and there's so much prop and there's so much there. and it's really exciting to see life happening on the stage in a kind of, in a chaotic kind of beautiful way.

2: 16:45

Yeah, there's a, I'm so excited by how the scenic world turned out for this show. Our wonderful designer, his name is Park. Thank you. and I think talked from the very beginning about a kind of, like a consistent opening up over the course of the play. And not I don't want to necessarily give too much away but i'll just say that you can As it goes along see more and more layers peel back and peel back and yes, eventually you get to a version of that space where where there's hardly any masking hung where you can see a whole lot of the machinery where you can Look at lights. You can look at cables. You can look at the whole wing space on either side and that means that, the actors have a big task in terms of filling that whole space with life, but that's really what felt right, to get to a space that was actually really exposed and very, acknowledged the, acknowledged and played with the artifice, and said, yes, on the one hand, this is a theater, and on the one hand, Arden is a theater, we have this sort of, If Arden is a space of possibility, if it's a space of freedom, if it's a space of experiment, if it's a space of making, then, it actually is also the theater. all the worlds of stage

1: 17:54

is our big, theme from this production, so I think that goes really well. I'm gonna ask you one last question before I turn it over to our audience, so get yourselves thinking about which questions you want to ask. This is just a general question. It can be about this production, but also can be about other experiences you've had directing Shakespeare. I want to know, when you're directing Shakespeare specifically, so Shakespeare in text or, an adaptation in some sense, what for you as a director is the most challenging thing? And also, what's the most rewarding, for directing that specific kind of theater? That's such a good question. Big question. Yeah. There's probably multiple answers and they can be the same thing. Maybe a challenge is in fact the most rewarding.

2: 18:30

Yeah, I think they do. they do come hand in hand. I guess the things I can think of as most challenging, not in a bad way, are that are really that sort of deep digging to the heart of a show to find out, what is the question that I, that what is the question? I think this thing is asking. And how are we going to most clearly articulate that? There's this really beautiful, there was a Russian director named Georgi Tostadov, who, I really want this, it's very dramatic and very Russian, but he described part of a director's job as Getting so intimate and familiar with the text that you could articulate the author's suffering, the thing that the author at the heart of this thing, not the plot, not the narrative, but what is it that's at the beating heart of this play that the author is like grappling with, And then your job is to take that, once you feel like you've found it, and transform it into the director's scream. Again, very Russian. But there's something beautiful about it, it's like, to try and find this sort of nugget at the center of things. Which in certain plays, can be so vast, right? It's Cy Campbell. You could direct a political play, you could direct a family play, you could direct a play about succession, a play About generations about so it's like there's also the task of saying, you know Which of these are we doing and what feels the most? What feels the most? compelling and And needful in, in our world at this time. So I think that initial, but also it stretches across the entire project. You have to keep returning to it over and over again. That task of digging to the center and going, what really lies at the heart of this? And how can I try and make every moment, reflect back on that in some way? How can all of this be emerged from that part? that's, I think that is the center of the challenge, and also a huge, privilege and pleasure, when you're in the midst of it. I think that the most rewarding thing, that's, it's also, it's also very rewarding when you can like, when you're, when you can sense that working, right? I think the most rewarding thing, frankly, there, there are infinite rewards working on Shakespeare, I think, that's why I can't, that's why I can't stop, but there really are, like, the, working with actors on Shakespeare, I just think is some of the most Like joyful compelling work that you can do and at any age. I love working with young people on Shakespeare I love working with any actors at Shakespeare because there's just I have a friend of mine a friend who Calls Shakespeare's language free money and it is just this thing of like it gives so much to actors It is so rich. It is so full of incredible tools and surprises and little bits of direction and little bits of oh my god, like when you get into it and you start to get into the poetry and you start to get into the meter, it is, no other text, offers you as much just on the face of it, I don't think. and it also requires that actors embrace this, embrace and and just dive right into this thing that I don't think we're, I don't think we're very, We don't move towards it a lot in American theater, Which is a real, it's a combination of authenticity and artifice, like it's a real sort of acknowledgement that like, on the one hand, I am fully invested in this role, and I am playing truth, and I am here, and I am present, and I'm having feelings, and on the other hand, I am completely a craftsperson. And I am speaking poetry, and I am nimble, and I can jump from this thing to that thing, and, and I know the audience is here, and I can acknowledge them even as I drop it to something incredibly deep with you, that is what's always inherent in Shakespeare's dramaturgy for actors, and it's so thrilling to me, and I also think that, his worlds offer such, infinite design playgrounds, and also, and it's brilliant because you can do nothing about it. And you can do everything. That's right. Which is what's so rewarding, right? Because it's they were created for this wouldn't know and for imagine everything, right? The room is practically empty. Use your imaginations. Let's go. And that can still be utterly just mind blowing. And also, you can flesh them out on massive scales design wise and do something that, that really feels, That feels rich and exciting in a completely different way. You can have a massive puppet. Yeah

1: 22:45

exactly Absolutely, right and it's something so wonderful to listen in and look into your rehearsal with the actors because So much i'm going to give you a backstage look so much laughter occurs So much joy so much enjoyment of learning the script and finding those moments where things are tight and beautiful and exciting and also just Yeah You know the text so well, no one has to even call for a line. Sarah's I know the next line. So it really shows both your challenge and your reward all at the same time is the way that you work as a director with those actors is, that script so well. And also you have so much fun and they're having so much fun. And when you see this production, You will see they're having so much fun, which will make you have fun. I'm certain of it Anyway, now I want to give it to you So if you have a question for Sarah or for myself about the play about Shakespeare about the production We'd love to hear it and I'll pass this mic around so that everyone can hear Perfect.

3: 23:41

So when you first start in on this process of making your cut of the script and you have The first seeds of your concept and you're really digging into the text of the first time How much are you shaping the text with your concept and how much are you shaping your concept? With the text and more specifically what is your process to go on?

2: 24:02

Yeah, I think no, it's a great question I think I usually do at least two or three rounds on a script and the first time, the first time does not have to do as much with me like trying to make certain ideas happen as it does me going through and, and going like, how can this sing in the most, not just succinct and powerful, but also like a way that feels resonant and exciting and without, Essentially, without, without fat, and without moments that, might be regrettable now, right? there's a lot that, I was just talking to, my partner about, there's, it's these plays are beautiful, and also they have, they have these, they have moments in them where, somebody will say something that's, here's a joke about women, or, it's something, or whatever, just, there, there's infinite stuff that, you can point to that's like, all right, cool. This was written in 1595, and cut trying to go through and be, be really excited about the heart of the play but also say All right. one of the things that feel like, they're not helping us like make the world we want to live in, like that is first round of cutting for me and also just shape flow like that's first round of cutting I think as I get further in and I start to think about all right what are the things that are most important to me in this story? What do I feel like the heart of it is, then I start to really go like, all right, And also when I know things like how many people do I have that's actually huge. Because cutting a play for 8 actors is entirely different than cutting a play for 16 actors, and, like I can, I remember doing a Merchant of Venice with 8 actors, and I specifically was like, alright, there's gonna need to be, like, I will actually not be able to put these scenes in this order, because I have to use, Portia has to play Lancelot Galvo, and this is how it has to happen, like, all of those technical things figure in, but really the most interesting stuff, I think, is the stuff where it comes to, okay. When I know what I think this is really talking about, like, how can I try and bring that up? bring that to the surface. there's a very, this is a somewhat more radical, example, but in this play, again, not to give away too much, but, if you've seen it or if you're gonna see it, you've either heard or will hear Rosalind speak in epilogue. That is not the epilogue Rosalind speaks in the original, in the folio, etc. and the reason behind that, and I can talk more about that if people want, and the text of that thing that she speaks is still 99. 9 percent Shakespeare with a little bit of knitting together by me. The reason that it isn't the original is I sat with the original, which is a piece where, in 1595, et cetera, 1599, a boy actor would come out on the stage and say, Hi everybody! I'm a boy, but I'm a girl, but I'm a boy! let's all have a fun moment. Yeah, here's the joke, and let's have a moment about that. and to me it felt I love the fact that this character has an epilogue. It feels crucial to me that she speak at the end of the play, but what she's saying doesn't actually feel that resonant anymore. it feels like what she's saying was really resonant then. that's what was happening. She, that person, that boy came out and talked about the thing that was really happening right then. That's not the thing that's happening anymore, so what is happening? And how can Rosalind come out of the stage, be with us, openly and intimately, and speak about something that is present? and that still feels like it doesn't take away from that kind of joyful, let's all share in this enigmoment together spirit, as well. So that's, that, those are the kind of challenges I really love, and sometimes they're more, again, Cutting wise, sometimes they're more radical than others, but it's those moments where I'm going, okay, you know what, this moment has a function, and I love its function, but is the text serving that function in the world that we actually live in? And yes or no, and what can I do to make it serve that function better?

1: 27:46

That's great. Other questions for me or for Sarah?

5: 27:50

Yes. When you were just mentioning that, I wondered, so when the play is over, when the last performance is done, what do you do?

2: 27:59

Every time, this time. When the last performance is done. frankly. this is a complicated question. I It starts with the next performance. Yeah, and it really depends because being a, being a director is so odd. And it's it's feast or famine and sometimes you have a next project and sometimes you don't. I am lucky that I also have another, complimentary career, which is that I write theater criticism for, New York Magazine. And so at this point, I'm gonna go back and do that for a little while before the next show happens, which is in January. so it's nice to, to have, it's good to have, brain work. frankly, my postpartum begins like on after opening. It's not like actually after closing, like closing is its own thing, but once it's, cause it's They're doing it now. I'm in here,

1: 28:43

I think most people don't realize, it took me a long time to realize this, is a lot of the time the director, gets the show to opening night and then they leave just alongside the designers and it really is just the actors doing their thing for the whole run of the show. And you just have to let the baby fly at that point. Sarah, of course, stayed a few extra days at my bequest to be here tonight for this and it's, but yes, I think it is that moment where the director has to go, I've done what I can do and now I just have to let it run. Yeah. Probably exciting and also oh, yeah, it's very bittersweet. Any other questions? It's

4: 29:18

a quick one. Yeah, you mentioned an artist you got visual inspiration from?

2: 29:24

Miyazaki. Yeah, he's a, so he's a director, Hayao Miyazaki. It's M I Y A Z A K I. And his movies, so he makes these beautiful animated movies. I think in the United States, sometimes we're oh, these are kids movies, but it's like, they're not kids movies. or even when they are, they're unbelievable pieces of art. I could not recommend them more highly. I think they are stunning pieces of work. Yeah.

4: 29:48

Can I ask another? Yes, you've got the microphone. When you, did blocking, did you work separately with a little, prototype of

2: 29:57

this, of the set? Oh, interesting. no, I don't do that. I actually really love, yeah, so so it is crucial for me in my own brain, like thinking about flow, And at pace and things like that, it's crucial for me to have a pretty clear picture of the space in my head beforehand, but I definitely don't, I don't pre do anything, in a kind of model, I really love, frankly, my, the way I stage is very much okay everybody, let's introduce ourselves to the space, here are the entrances, here are the exits. let's begin a scene, do what you think we would do, and I'm gonna pause you and be like, that feels weird, or what if you tried this, or, I mean it's, but it's all based on Actors just walking in and starting to offer their own instincts. like what I love, so this is, ties back to the most rewarding thing. I feel like the kind of collaboration that I love the most is this sort of collision of really enthusiastic, strong offers, and I feel like part of my job is to walk in and have all of this preparation, but not in order to be like, this is what we're doing, but to be like, I have a wealth of stuff with which I can respond to you. So when an actor comes in and goes I have this huge offer or this huge idea, or I think I'd run over there and throw myself against the wall or whatever, I can be like, awesome, great. Or I can be like, oh, interesting. this is what I had been thinking, but okay, cool. Let's try that anyway. it's there's a lot of that, that's where the process gets really exciting and fun and elastic because they do things you never would have expected and they're better. And then you go with that or you, or a synthesis happens.

1: 31:27

And a lot of the original rehearsal happens right in this room where you're sitting and standing. so it's a lot of moving from one space to the next.

2: 31:35

I also, blocking wise, I believe in, I try to sketch the entire show with the company quite quickly, because I really believe in, the sort of, getting that feeling of an entire arc inside your body, and then when we go back and do it again, I'm very, stage managers write down blocking, but I have this I don't know, this kind of perverse belief that if we don't remember it when we go back to do it the next time, it might not have been that good, so let's just do it again, Like, so there, it's, I really believe in it as Really as a visual artist would sketch, like sketch, and then shade. Yeah,

1: 32:07

yeah. All right, we have time for one last question.

6: 32:09

Hello, Sarah. Hello. Could you share some of your favorite moments when you take lines from other Shakespeare plays and put it in a similar cue? I noticed some of my favorite lines from Much Ado About Nothing, spoken by Pat Stone, who's already in the last scene. Yeah.

7: 32:28

Maybe some from Pamela in the last one, and I think there are many more of it, many more of them, but I probably didn't recognize.

2: 32:36

So this is something that I, again, I I got really interested in this thing that in my head I call the Shakespeare verse. It's like the OCU, but like, but cool and good and for Shakespeare. but to me, I feel like all of the plays live in this same sort of beautiful universe of language together. and one of the things I love, going back to, to talking about this idea of how can, maybe, how can something that I know has a kernel in there, but maybe the way it's being expressed isn't, isn't quite speaking to the moment or to this particular group of actors, one of the ways I like to solve that is with Shakespeare's own text, because I feel like, Whoever this person was, they were such an expansive soul that if they didn't express something exactly, if they didn't express something in a particular way over here, chances are, like, they did somewhere else. it's just wild what the canon has to offer. and so yes, you definitely do hear Touchstone and Aubrey speaking bits of Much Ado, bits of Henry V, bits of Taming of the Shrew. and the reason for that in this play is that I felt very strongly that relationship in the original, essentially, lacked the kind of, it lacked a sense of two people who were actually equals to each other and we're functioning on a level of real mutual affection and like a certain kind of respect. The way that comedy plays out in the original, for one thing, the character of Audrey is a woman, and a lot of the way in which Touchstone talks about her is fairly dismissive. there's a lot of jokes at the expense of her intelligence. and I think that stuff probably, it probably was played with a very specific kind of like clowning back in the day, much, I think, maybe more a bit more slapsticky, et cetera. And I was interested in, okay, I don't want to take the comedy out of this, I think they, they should be funny and fun. but what would happen if these two people, if the relationship here wasn't so much based on one kind of constantly making fun of the other, but was based on people, this is why so much Beatrice and Benedict is in there, sparring, like people who, they're very different. Touchstone is very intellectual and very neurotic, Aubrey is more like chill and free and easy and not book learned, but like street smart. And if those two people are, have, if those two people have a crush on each other, how do they needle each other, but in a more, a way that feels more humane and more we can, we could follow their relationship to the end and see them grow and actually feel very fond of them. so that yeah, that was the reasoning there. Yeah, there was just there was a I really wanted for all of the relationships in this plague it's so full of couples by the end. to have as much feeling of real, to have as much feeling of nuance and just and as much feeling of nuance as I could, and as much feeling of, these are two people that we really care about, and, and even when we laugh at them, we want to go along with them, and we care about what's going to happen to their relationship, and nobody is being, no, the humor doesn't, I think, want to ever feel mean. the humor never wants to feel like something that's fully, at, again, at someone else's expense. And it doesn't mean that there can't be, like, really cheeky stuff. for sure there can. I just, I, wanted to see what would happen, though, if, like, all of the, all of it felt a little bit more here we all are in, again, a kind of somewhat more caring space together, I think.

1: 35:44

Absolutely. For myself, some of my favorite of those lines that come from other plays happen in the epilogue, because I think it's intentionally playing with this kind of question of what kind of epilogue are we going to get, and how many different versions of epilogue are there in Shakespeare, and can, can we kind of, what do you expect and what do you not? So it's tell you, I think that's a very playful, piece there. but I just want to thank you for joining us and thank you all for joining us today for this pre show event. Just a reminder, you can follow Shakespeare Another Day on Instagram so you can hear about our, all of our upcoming events. We do our Shakespeare Festival in the summer, but we do stuff all year round. We've got our actors from the London stage coming at Halloween with Twelfth Night. So if you can't get enough of this whole cross dressing comedy thing, we're gonna do it again, but just slightly different. so keep us in mind all throughout the year, and we can't wait to see you again. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thank you.