"...She is a woman more worth than any man; men, that she is the rarest of all women"

Alright, screw it. I'm on a roll here so I'll continue on with the 'promised post' about misogyny in Taming of the Shrew. Everyone feels SOMETHING about this show (and you're welcome, both of you reading this, to weigh in in the comments section) but I've done it so long now and in such a pedestrian, work-a-day way (i.e. just learning the friggin' lines) that the 'secret' of the show is elementary to me.

This isn't a show about keeping the sisters down for many reasons.

1. What everyone forgets (and few produce on stage) is that it's a show-within-a-show. The entire misadventures of Petruchio, Katharina, Lucentio, Hortensio, etc. etc. make up the action of a play that is viewed by Christopher Sly, lousy hubsand extrordinaire. It's a FARCE, people. Everything that happens in the show is suspect, and it's all presented with tongue firmly in cheek. True, Shakespeare, in the full bloom of his stupid youth, forgets to append a pertinent coda to the 'on stage' action, but nothing that happens should be taken at face value.

2. Kate is not a turbo bitch for no reason. She has it pretty rough. She's the first-born sister, and Daddy dotes on his second-born baby. No offense meant to my younger sister, but I feel for Kate. She's also someone who is extremely dissatisfied with being auctioned off to a pair of old guys so her goody-two-shoes sister can tie the knot. In any other play (i.e. As You Like It or Much Ado About Nothing), Kate would be a friggin' hero. It denigrates her character and the author to assume that she's crabby just because she's a "bitch". She's a person witb problems and she's brave to lash out the way she does, considering the age she lives in.

3. Because the play involves a guy "taming" a girl, people assume that his actions are misogynist and her final speech is a nightmare of female submission. *I* think the final speech is a beautiful elucidation of the mindset that any spouse should have for his/her significant other. The only thing missing from the show would be a similar monologue by Petruchio about how important it is to be willing to do anything in one's power to please one's spouse, something I believe Petruchio, despite his rich dowry, despite the wager he wins through Katharina's 'obedience', despite all his crazy antics would do in a heartbeat for Katharina, his true equal in every way. Because the show's not called The Taming of the Madcap Swearing Jack, we don't get that speech, but there are other examples of Women getting theirs in Elizabethan sexual politics (see "The Tamer Tamed", et al.)

4. Petruchio be crazy, yo. Okay, Katharina is worked up over her situation, trust, and it's *possible* that someone could "get through" to her and make her feel better through gentle kindness, but the boisterous Pethruchio decides to make a fool of himself and imitate/magnify Kate's behavior in order to show her how ridiculous she's being, how she can have everything she wants (happiness and understanding through a true equal) by simply deigning to acknowledge the man who is turning himself inside out for her. "Making a fool out of yourself" for someone else is pretty much the definition of love in my book.

5. And finally, get over it, people. Men and Women sometimes have trouble making it work for a plethora of reasons: sexual politics, social standing, parents, money, sex, what movie to see and on and on. This is a play where the two people who have the courage to be themselves and to speak what they feel find happiness together and that's, frankly, awesome. I'd compare Taming to any number of "romantic" movies where the uptight society girl is charmed by the devil-may-care worldly guy and she learns to loosen up and he learns the joy of a loving commitment. The Aristocats, par example. Yes, Shakespeare's ghost haunt me, I just compared The Taming of the Shrew to a Disney film, and goddammit, I think the comparison stands.

"I'm half the man I used to be..."

"I'll have her but I will not keep her long..."

Henry is off of rehearsal this week as we rehearse Doctor and prepare to open Taming on Saturday. This period at S&C is affectionately called 'Hell Week', though truthfully it should be called 'Hell Fortnight plus One' or somesuch. For the next 21 days straight we will either be rehearsing or in performance for one or more of our three shows. After our performance on the Sunday of our third week (when all our shows are open) everyone sighs collectively in relief. Here's to a safe, productive Hell Week.

Oh, yeah. I broke up with my girlfriend...you know, the one who plays Kate to my Petruchio? My joke about surviving this summer just went from 'cute' to 'ironic'. Ha friggedy ha. Being pros, we're not going to let this affect us. but suffice it to say the 'acting' portion of our performances will be shifted from "pretending to hate each other at the beginning" to "pretending to like each other at the end".

"I hate you." "Oh, I hate you, too."

"It oft falls out, To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean. I something do excuse the thing I hate..."

Gah. So, I've gotten behind on blogging. No surprise there. I've gotten somewhat discouraged. I've had "big" seasons out there before (lots of roles or lines or responsibility), but this one seems to be getting to me. We open in two weeks and I don't know how we got here already. Plus, we essentially had a week off when our director was laid up, so all in all, I feel underprepared. I been thinkin' about a lot recently as pertains to the show and some of that stuff is gonna come out now, most likely in a haphazard way.

First of all, I've decided I disagree with the politics of the play. The invasion of France (including Edward III's and Ed Jr.'s previously) were wrong. Not just in a "all war is wrong" way, though I agree with that sentiment, but morally it's pretty indefensible. The English didn't want to pay rent on their French holdings and they wanted to make sure their wool exports would continue to go through Flanders, so bang zoom, let's kill some Frenchies. Henry and his court puff everyone up with the new religion of nationalism, mom and apple pie (or would that be Mum and figgy pudding?) but they've got to realize that their fine sentiments can't excuse their basic greed. I could never be a politician because apparently it involves doing a lot of bad things while making pretty piss poor excuses for them.

Thusly, I find it hard to relate to Henry, to really believe what I'm saying when I know he probably didn't believe a lot of it himself. I've played characters before that I didn't agree with (like when I played a rapist), but when the 'mirror of Christian kings' is a big fat liar, it makes it hard to jump in with both feet.

Ok, done with that. To be fair, Henry was a pretty good king for his short reign. He had a knack for problem-solving in the short term: he basically turned a dynasty that stunk pretty fairly of regicide and turned it into a war machine that handed one of Europe's strongest monarchies its royal Ass. If Henry hadn't died so soon after uniting France and England, we might be calling a
croissant 'crescent bread' and Joan of Arc might have been an unassuming farmer's wife. His ability to inspire men and win allegiance may have been overblown (three guys tried to kill him in Southhampton, after all), but he ultimately was an effective general and strategist, wisely playing the warring French factions against each other in order to improve the English chances. Historically, his life was meteoric.

The trouble with meteors, though, is that they burn up...aaannd I've lost my thread. I'll pick this up later...

WTF!?!

“Or can we cram within this wooden ‘O’ the very casques that did afright the air at Agincourt?”

The other night, we began the process of blocking the Battle of Agincourt (inside, because of the rain). There are no less than 19 combatants involved in the fight. “Can we cram within this wooden ‘O’”, indeed. This is certainly the most ambitious combat scene I’ve been involved in at S&C and if everything comes out right, it should be awesome. If things go wrong, we’ll probably have a few people who can’t count to 20 on their digits anymore.

Our fights can be pretty cool and I’ve been in a few great ones. I got to be Edgar in the climactic broadsword swordfight of Lear for my second year in the company, and I fenced as Laertes in Hamlet two years ago. One of our long-term (as in 28 years) company members is the fight coordinator and he does a great job of creating exciting but manageable fights. He’s also a big fan of wrestling, comic books and video games so he definitely gets a few “holy crap” moments in there. The big challenge this year is that of management. During each of the two sections of the Agincourt battle, there will be 4-5 separate fights happening all over the stage, and without a careful eye towards spacing and awareness, we could end up with a few missing eyes and stabbed backs. Maybe we should be doing Greek tragedy?

I saw “300” the other day. It was good, in a essentially mindless and flashy way, but the story struck me as being nearly the anti-thesis of Henry V. Both works feature a noble king and his small band of warriors facing overconfidence in overwhelming odds, and both feature the full or partial defeat of those odds through shrewd utilization of the “disciplines of war”. But the similarities end there. Henry features a war of aggression (how ever well justified it may debatably be) while 300 is about fighting against a foreign invader. Henry ends well (ostensibly) while 300 ends in tragedy, at least for the short term (as our non-Persian asses know, the “good guys” win the subsequent battles and the war). Trying to “analyze” Frank Miller’s “commentary” on ancient warfare and defending one’s beliefs to the death would be like exegizing an episode of Sesame Street, but I have to wonder about similarities in Henry and Xerxex’s characters. Apart from the 8 ft. tall, androgynous Coppertan model with a full body-piercing punch-card aspects, that is.

"Tonight...we dine...at SPAGOS!"

"Was ever woman in this humour woo'd? Was ever woman in this humour won?"

Sick yesterday so I took things easy. Now I'm ruminative and I been thinking...

The end of the play is horrifying! Every time I've seen it (including the time I directed it), it's done as this "aw, shucks", "will you go to the prom with me?" sort of afterschool special thing, like it belongs in one of the "earlier, funnier" comedies. It stuns me continually that audiences accept this treatment of the scene. Consider what's come before: England has, with little recent provocation, invaded France and killed or captured over 10,000 soldiers, 126 of them nobles, a fact that no doubt leaves Charles' castle feeling a little empty. In the scene itself, Burgundy delivers a speech that exhorts peace but in his words he can barely conceal his loathing for the continual aggression of the English. Henry basically says "Sign the paper and everything's cool, but if you don't, we have a problem." Oh, and by the way, can I talk to your daughter quick? Try to imagine Harry Truman hitting up Hirohito's daughter on the deck of the Missouri and you come close to the ridiculousness of this scene.

I understand that, despite the horrors of war on display in earlier acts, Henry V is essentially an historical adventure play for your average Elizabethan Londoner and every adventure needs a love story. But how the crap are we supposed to think this is cute? If I wrote a scene where a girl's dad made her marry the CEO who was taking over his company against her wishes and everyone was totally cool about it, there'd be rioting in the streets. Oh, but the CEO is cute and tells a self-deprecating joke or two, so don't worry about it.

We're going to block and work this scene tonight and I'm hoping for a breakthrough or five but I've got some serious issues about how this scene should be portrayed and how it'll be received. I know that, by the end of the play, people are ready to laugh and enjoy something light-hearted, but it seems like a disservice to make this scene fulfill that role. It ends up being more chauvinistic than people claim Taming of the Shrew is.

"Darling, being out of your box is a privilege, not a right..."

"Why should a man whose blood is warm within sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?..."

First week of rehearsal down. Our director for Taming took the week off so I was able to focus more on Henry V. We got a lot done in three days of rehearsal, including doing Harfleur, Bardolph's death scene AND St. Crispin's day all in two hours. Once more into the breach, indeed.

General thoughts? I'm gonna need a lot of water, but I'm not sure when I'll get to drink it. Also, it's FUN. Lots of fun. The general idea of the St. Crispin's Day speech is to act like you're jazzed about winning the upcoming battle and to joyously exhort the men, but truthfully, there's not much acting required. It's a bunch of fun to jump up on the platform and see all those expectant faces looking super jazzed already. It's gonna be great if I can avoid...

Yellitis. [ye·li·tis] :when a young, inexperienced (usually male) actor mistakes vocal volume for gravitas or intense emotion. see Jonathan Rhys Meyers in "The Tudors", Hayden Christiansen in Episode III, or Kenneth Branagh in any frickin' scene of Hamlet. Yellitis is a stone killer and it's out there. Sure, your character is upset. Sure, it's outdoor theatre. But yelling at the top of your lungs isn't acting; it's brachiating. There are other ways to convey emotional intensity. Look at Anthony Hopkins. How much yelling does Hannibal Lecter do? Those at highest risk for Yellitis are 20-30 year old male actors who are taking on more responsibility than they think they can handle. I'm watching plenty of "The Tudors" in an effort to inoculate myself against Yellitis, "the Noisy Killer".

I like the rehearsal process, so far; as previously mentioned, our director is extremely familiar with the play and is bringing some great ideas to rehearsal, but encouragingly, he is also open to other people's ideas and things that spontaneously happen during the work. I mean, we were only BLOCKING last week and we've already had a few "Holy Crap! let's do this! moments.

I need to amend a bit some of my earlier statements about the Falstaff Gang. The great thing about getting older is that you're supposed to get smarter, although for myself (and Congress) that curve seems to be irregular sometimes. I've been reading an old book of Shakespeare commentary recently for ideas. How old? It was one of my mother's English Lit textbooks when she was an undergrad, written back when Harold Bloom was deconstructing his high school prom. One of the things the book points out is how the action "in the trenches" (i.e. in the Boar's Head, on the battlefield) provides important contrast and commentary on the actions of the king and court. This is easy to forget, mainly because any stage or film production that wants to tell the story in 90 minutes usually cuts the counterpoint scenes first. I mean, people would rather see Henry yelling up on a platform than hear Gower complain about how they had to kill all the prisoners, right? We've cut those scenes as well, but we can hardly be blamed as our show length is as much about astrophysics as it is about audience interest; we only have so much daylight. Still, Shakespeare planted obvious parallels in both the action and dialogue of the "courtly" scenes and the "common" ones, even down to having characters echo each other literally. The best example I can think of is when Henry is reading the sentence of the conspirators and either honestly or politically invokes God in his God-like judgment of them:

"God quit you in his mercy!"

"...the taste whereof God of his mercy give you patience..."

"Since God so graciously hath brougth to light.."

"Let us deliver our puissance into the hand of God..."

Henry is both speaking for God and essentially holding up the idea that his war is approved by God. In the next scene, Mistress Quickly is describing Falstaff's last moments and remarks "So 'a cried out 'God, God, God' three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him 'a should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet." It's a strange parallel between Henry and the men he's rejecting and the man he has already rejected, Falstaff, and between what "God" means to a conquering king and what He means to a dying rogue.

Henry V is (or at its best, should be) about the nature of leadership and how a leader relates to his constituency, and vice-versa. It's not about a guy who doesn't like tennis balls and wants to kick Frenchy butt. In fact, I wish that there had been similar commentary embedded in the French court's dialogue and possibly even the French rank-and-file, detailing their opinions of their king and the situation their country finds itself in. Instead, it's mostly about their horses and how bad-ass they are. If Shakespeare had made his examination of wartime politics dipolar by seriously examining the French viewpoint, this might've been a truly great play instead just an okay, rah-rah English one. Speaking of opposite viewpoints, is there a French-authored tragedy contemporary with Henry V that deals with the terrible loss at Agincourt and how the French dealt with it? Like "The Madness of King Charles VI"? Just curious; might be a good one to do in rep with Henry...

"My lord? The upstairs neighbors are complaining about the yelling again..."

"The flat unraised spirits that have dared on this unworthy scaffold..."

Read Henry V finally, on Thursday night. I think every cast member has at least one role in the show, not to mention one of the directors. We didn't talk too much about the "concept" for the show, but it's obvious our director is very familiar with the show and he had some interesting things to say about it.

Some of my thoughts, post-read-through:

THERE ARE A LOT OF LINES. Nothing that was cut will be too sorely missed.

Canterbury/Ely conversation cut...oh, well...Making the audience sit through both that and the "King Pharamond" would be a little much to ask.

Henry's charge to Canterbury to "take heed" with the impawning is a warning to be fully open and truthful or is it Henry divesting himself legally of responsibility for what may happen later, because "we hear note and believe", i.e. Colin Powell said they had W.M.D.s and we trust him so...

Levels, man...it's all about the levels. It'll be a real Roman holiday finding the right tone for the various speeches Henry has. "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant..." could end really angry, but then you steal from "You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy", which gets sad around "so finely bolted didst thou seem", but can't be too sad anticipating "O, not today, think not upon the fault", which is somewhat cowed, similar to "tell thy king I do not seek him now"...etc. etc. The only part of this show that I feel 100% comfortable with is the tacked-on comedic ending, because it's funny and cute and I can do that.

The Falstaff Gang is fun but I wonder if they're completely necessary. There are plenty other "common" soldiers to play with in the show, like MacMorris and Gower (my girlfriend says they're the superfluous ones). What strikes me is that it seems they really were included because it's a continuation of Hal's through-line from the earlier history plays. You don't have to know anything about Falstaff to enjoy Henry V, but it helps. It's like when I saw Major League 2; I think I was able to work out the basic connections without having seen Major League 1. It's interesting to see Shakespeare paying service to his faithful audience members that way. "Sequels" seem so movie-ish but I guess we didn't invent them.

All three conspirators are being played by women. As if this show wasn't chauvinist enough, now we can't trust them devil women! Lets make the whole French court female (and Montjoy a post-op transgender)!

Well, the French lords that aren't suffering from organic brain dementia or who are suicidally stupid end up sounding like Henry's press agents. No one listens to the constable, anyway. Let's just say, I feel that this side of the battle is under-portrayed. It's like when you watch a Pearl Harbor movie (not Tora! Tora! Tora!, because it doesn't do what I'm describing) and Toshiro Mifune or whoever is playing Yamamoto and he's basically just a guy in an office on the phone saying "Yes. Bomb them now!" in English. Nationalism gets the better of historical accuracy here, for sure. Fun fact: Mifune Toshiro played Adm. Yamamoto in four separate films.

Just a note on Fluellen, Gower, Jamy and MacMorris: archaic racial stereotypes are always funny.

We'll see how a scene entirely in French and broken English (Frenglish?) will play with the good people of White Bear Lake.

Hanging Bardolph on stage FTW!

The French love their horses. Let's just hope the French don't LOVE their horses.

Ah yes, the war debate scene...good stuff. Of course, they're debating the cause of the war AFTER they've invaded the Continent...what does Petruchio say? "Better once than never, for never too late."

St. Crispian's Day rah rah. Up on the balcony maybe? It might be interesting to have the army up on the balcony and on the stage and Henry on the grass DC, exhorting the men but the audience, too by proxy. Heh heh, supposedly the actual historical speech given by Henry was a bit more pragmatic, running more along the lines of "All these French guys are rich, so if they get captured, they'll all be ransomed and get to go home. You poor bastards are broke and will be slaughtered to the last man if we don't win this thing. Uh...on ST. CRISPIN'S DAY!!!"

The battle is, of course, a mess, with both sides breaking the "rules" of war and inventing new ones, as well. Shakespeare inflates the losses a bit; it's more like 250 English lost to 6,000 French. STILL. Those are US Army vs. the Republican Guard type numbers. Those longbows must have come with a money-back guarantee. The French were not really as eager to fight as their scene implies; they were actually waiting for even MORE men to arrive and so the battle didn't start until 3 or so hours after dawn, with an opening volley by English bowmen. Our fights at S&C, whether cavalier, old Scottish, Edwardian, whatever, always feature two to four guys wailing on each other with longswords. It would be cool if we could capture the total quagmire the battle turned into...mud, blood, guys hatcheting each other and knights drowning in their own armor. I'm sure the mud will be vetoed by the costumer, but I'd like this one to be pretty vicious.

And the last scene, which is really cute if you can ignore that this chick is basically being auctioned off to a foreign conqueror so she can crank out a few future kings. Ah, love.

Well, more to come once we start blocking!

"Is it gone? Did I get it all?