Open Rehearsal: The Court Theatre Blog
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June 29, 2010
Shakespeare’s Archetypes
Costume drawings from a production of The Comedy of Errors staged by prisoners
in the German POW camp at Eichstätt, 1944
Like most classical comedy, Shakespeare has no fear of using archetypes, or instantly recognizable character types. Normally, he has a hero of some kind who falls in love with a woman, generally an innocent, ingénue type. The play is about these two trying to get together despite circumstances which oppose their marriage. Along the way, they interact with other archetypes: the hero has a witty comedic sidekick, while the ingénue has a wiser, more worldly female companion. There is usually a villain of some kind, almost always an older man, who seems threatening but becomes ridiculous before the eventual marriage. Finally, there is a group of clowns, whose attempts to wow people in power compose the play’s main subplot. Of course, Shakespeare spices this formula up in every case, adding a few different twists—be they fairies (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) or absurd laws (Measure for Measure)—but all of these character types are present.
The Comedy of Errors follows a very different formula. While most of Shakespeare’s comedies draw mainly from courtly romances of the time, which thrived off the hero and ingénue types, Comedy is far more grounded in Roman farce, being based off two Plautus plays (The Brothers Menaechmus and, to lesser extent, Amphitryon). Plautus himself used a whole series of archetypes, mainly based on Greek comedies: there is the clever slave, who is the only sane one in an insane world, the wise old man, the vain concubine, and the arrogant blowhard military hero. Roman farce also had a very different focus than courtly romance: while the second places the emphasis on a love story, the first focuses instead on layers of deceit, where characters become more and more confused by progressive lies.
The Comedy of Errorsis fascinating because, while it is rooted mainly in Roman farce, Shakespeare borrows elements from courtly romance to make it more palatable to his audiences. Thus, while the plot is driven by self-assured masters and their wise slaves, the play ends with a traditional coupling. There is a contrast between women, the innocent and the less innocent, but neither of them are young ingénues. Comedy thus reads as an interesting cross-genre piece. It has elements of traditional Shakespearian comedies, but lives in a noticeably different world than most of them. It thus creates a style of comedy all to itself, both a “comedy of errors,” a farce piece, and a romantic comedy.
—Will Bishop, Production Dramaturgy Intern
The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare opens September 16, 2010. It is adapted and directed by Sean Graney, the founder of the Hypocrites.
June 28, 2010
What is Court Theatre?
A dress rehearsal for Court Theatre in its Hutchinson Courtyard iteration, circa 1961.
Since 1981, Court Theatre has produced five shows per season in our 250-seat theater on Ellis Avenue. Our name, the “Court,” however, follows from our origins as a summer repertory theater that performed in Hutchinson Courtyard on the campus of the University of Chicago. Founded in 1955, the Court Theatre produced three classics per season before expanding their season into the new indoor theater. Since that time, we’ve sprung from a community theater to a nationally-recognized professional company. We no longer perform in Hutch Courtyard, though that tradition has been sustained by University Theater and the Dean’s Men (a recently-formed student society that performs strictly Shakespeare). From Court Theatre’s 1959 Season program:
WHAT IS COURT THEATRE?
About that time of year when the radiators in University Theatre are gasping their last rattle of the season and Buildings and Grounds is setting out daffodils and grass seed in Hutchinson Court, that sprawling activity known as the theatre in this community begins to move into high gear.
The classics (affectionately referred to as “the public domain boys”) are reviewed. The big and important word that somebody is doing three good plays goes out to most of the actors in the city. The tech men begin to haunt Maxwell Street for cable and crinoline. The addressograph is inked and cranked, and a fountain that does not work is covered with a stage that does. By the first of July actors have succeeded in usurping squirrels, mosquitoes have succumbed to DDT, Goth battlements have been wired for hi-fi, and a green campus court has been transformed into that elusive, transitory, magic thing known as theatre.
Court Theatre’s raison d’etre is a special kind of an audience that comes in shirt sleeves from Hyde Park and Glenview and Oak Street, from Gary and Western Avenue to sit on the grass and enjoy the classics.
We welcome you to our fifth season of productions. We look forward to hearing your ideas and comments. We hope to welcome you back next year. Mostly, we hope you have fun. We have.
MARVIN E. PHILLIPS
Producer, Court Theatre
For its 1959 season, Court Theatre produced Shakespeare’s Othello, William Congreve’s Love for Love (a Restoration comedy), and a seldom-performed nineteenth-century play titled Francesca Da Rimini by George Henry Boker, a verse adaptation of a tale from the fifth canto of Dante’s Inferno.
*The addressograph, circa 1955.
June 24, 2010
Best Theatrical Hat Trick
The Chicago Reader has recognized actor Chris Sullivan (The Mystery of Irma Vep, The Illusion) for his protean abilities:
Chris Sullivan first performed for Chicago audiences in Defending the Caveman—Rob Becker’s warhorse one-man comedy about the backward American male—and when the gig ended in 2007, he may have felt the need to prove that his range extended beyond playing fratboy neanderthals. If so, he’s succeeded stunningly.
In February 2009 Sullivan showed us what a real brute looks like with his depiction of Yank, the doomed stoker in The Hairy Ape, directed by Sean Graney for the Goodman Theatre’s Eugene O’Neill festival. Then, in November, the burly actor slid to the opposite end of the spectrum, switching among three roles—most notably that of the alluring Lady Enid—in a revival of Charles Ludlam’s camp quick-change farce The Mystery of Irma Vep, also directed by Graney, this time for Court Theatre. This spring Sullivan returned to Court as Alcandre, a powerful, cruel, wise magician, in Tony Kushner’s adaptation of Pierre Corneille’s The Illusion. Taken together, the three appearances constitute a tour of tours de force.
Here’s a sample of Sully’s work during Court Theatre’s 2009-10 Season:
Congratulations, Sully!
June 23, 2010
Chicago: Theater Capital of America
Kris Vire, theater editor at Time Out Chicago and a wonderful champion of Chicago theater, makes the perennial pitch: we should be are the theater capital of the United States:
A number of out-of-town critics have praised Chicago as America’s real theater capital over the last several years. What if, instead of continuing to export our stuff elsewhere for praise and dollars, we embraced what London’s Michael Billington, Toronto’s Richard Ouzounian, New York’s Terry Teachout and others have written and sell ourselves, not New York, as said theater capital?
If Cromer’s Streetcar [currently playing at Writers Theatre in Glencoe] deserves more viewers—and it surely does—why shouldn’t they come to Chicago to see it? Instead of courting the Scott Morfees and Jeffrey Richardses of New York, maybe Gigi Pritzker’s ready for another go at producing theater in Chicago after Million Dollar Quartet.
As Alan M. Berks notes in the first installment of his TCG [Theater Communications Group] report from the Twin Cities, one of the unofficial themes of Chicago’s TCG conference was the awesome, non-hierarchical nature of Chicago’s theater scene. Mayor Daley said a lot of great things to the nation’s theatermakers Saturday morning, as he did to the city’s press a couple of weeks prior when marking the tenth anniversary of the downtown theater district, in the presence of NEA chair Rocco Landesman, about the value of theater and other arts in building a world-class city.
So what if, instead of continuing the New York–centric 20th-century model, we make our city a theater tourism destination? With others so willing to call Chicago the real theater destination of North America, wouldn’t it be great if we embraced that label ourselves? What if theater audiences actually had to come to Chicago to see Chicago-style theater?
Coming off this weekend’s TCG conference here in Chicago (which, if nothing else, gave Chicago theater artists like Court the opportunity to strut in front of other national theater-makers), you’ll be hearing more talk like this throughout the coming year, leading up to a Columbia College-planned conference next spring titled Chicago – Theatre Capital of America: Past. Present. Future.
June 22, 2010
Shakespeare: Master of Adaptation
Illustration: the third-century B.C. performance of a Roman comedy by Plautus, re-imagined by sixteenth century engravers.
Shakespeare was a master of adaptation. Very few of his plays are completely original. For many, he took interesting stories which he read – whether fictional or historical – and reinterpreted them to make them work onstage. To write other plays, he took pre-existing plays and updated them to work for his audiences. The Comedy of Errors is a play of the second sort.
The play is a 16th century version of a mash-up, a music track where two very different songs are mixed together to create a totally new song. Shakespeare collided two of the famous Roman playwright Plautus’ plays to create Comedy. Consequently, Comedy has more in common with Roman farce than his later comedies. While his comedies begin to get darker as he matures, Shakespeare leaves Comedy as light as its sources, relying on slapstick and wordplay very similarly to Plautus. However, he adds an element of romance which is lacking in the original, as well as a Christian abbess who comes in to save the day at the end. These elements appealed especially to an Elizabethan audience – Shakespeare used adaptation to make a play more relevant for the audience who would be watching it.
Shakespeare’s affair with adaptation is especially relevant for Court’s production of Comedy. Sean Graney has again readapted the play, making it an adaptation of an adaptation. Like Shakespeare, Graney has adapted the play to appeal more to today’s audiences. I don’t want to give too much away, but expect cross-dressing, crazy wigs, and a witty misuse of Shakespearian English which will make you totally reevaluate Shakespeare’s use of words. Finally, you have the chance to laugh at all those Shakespearian terms which sound so funny.
So when you come see Comedy, you have the rare opportunity to see a story being retold multiple times onstage. Try to pick out what comes from Plautus, from Shakespeare, and from Graney – this is your chance to see how classics grow, change, and transform over time. This play is built on a long, exciting tradition of adaptation.
—Will Bishop, Production Dramaturgy Intern
The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare opens September 16, 2010. It is adapted and directed by Sean Graney, the founder of the Hypocrites.
