Open Rehearsal: The Court Theatre Blog
2010/2011 Season
January 4, 2011
Three Tall Women: Set Preparation
Glimpses of the set for Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women. Production completes the finishing touches this week in time for the actors to move into the space on Thursday.
Three Tall Women runs January 12, 2011 through February 13, 2011 at Court Theatre.
October 7, 2010
25% Shakespeare ABV
While critics have raved about The Comedy of Errors, all of them have observed that “a hefty portion of Shakespeare’s dialogue has been excised,” even remarking that “there isn’t a great deal of the Bard’s actual prose on the Court stage.” So how much Shakespearean verse actually survived, and how much is the invention of the director, Sean Graney? Dramaturg Will Bishop explains:
As a dramaturg, one of the most exciting aspects of working on this show was helping Sean Graney, the director, with his process of adaptation. Sean originally walked into the Court with his driving concept for this piece - directing the show with six actors. He consequently cut down the text to facilitate this, leaving Shakespeare’s language intact, in a cut down form. After this reading, Artistic Director Charlie Newell began to encourage Sean more and more in the direction of full-scale adaptation.
Working with Sean on this, our first step was figuring out the intentions of Shakespeare’s play. The title provided the first clue - this show is supposed to be funny, supposed to be a comedy, and is supposed to contain a lot of errors - people thinking they are in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong people. This play was written to be a situational comedy, where laughs grow out of ridiculous situations. Our next step was to tease this comedy out of Shakespeare’s text. Sean was devoted to taking this intent and modernizing it, finding the parts of Shakespeare that can stand independently and are clear from the get-go, and digging into the parts which become confusing to reveal their original comic intent.
We walked into our first rehearsal with a text which was about 50% Sean and 50% Shakespeare. The rewritten elements all came directly from Shakespeare’s text. None of the situations were changed or altered, just streamlined and cleared up to facilitate understanding. Every single comedic “error” in Shakespeare’s text carried over into the adaptation.
From the first reading, it was immediately clear that there were long sections of Shakespeare’s text which were working perfectly. Shakespeare’s own jokes about Luce, the fat kitchen maid, were so funny that there was no point in altering them. Shakespeare’s language in the Antipholus-Luciana love scene also worked perfectly, and helped Erik Hellman and Elizabeth Ledo to tap into the emotions of that scene perfectly.
In other sections, however, Shakespeare’s language began to prove an obstacle to the actors. For example, originally, the Courtesan scene included much more of Shakespeare’s dialogue, but, in rehearsal, the cast realized this language began to detract from the hilarity of the situation. We thus changed this language, updated the jokes involved to put the focus on the comedy of the situation. We always looked back to Shakespeare’s original intention, to create a ridiculous situational comedy, and began to transform the text only where it began to oppose this intention.
The play then underwent another process of adaptation through rehearsals, with Sean and his cast continuing to trim down the script and rewrite and modernize jokes, compelled by the simple question of “Is it funny?” Our focus was always on Shakespeare’s intention to create a wacky comedy with a focus on the humor of mistakes. The play which finally emerged, and currently lives onstage at Court, is probably around 25% Shakespeare, 25% Graney, and 50% the product of collaborative rehearsal room adaptation.
But, most telling of all, none of us can tell anymore. When I return to the script, I am, at times, shocked to find jokes which I thought Sean wrote were actually penned by Shakespeare. The script of this play is a beautiful, postmodern jumble of Shakespearian English, faux Shakespearean English, and the words of the contemporary world. Shakespeare’s language is as much our language as ours is Shakespeare’s.
Will Bishop is the Assistant Dramaturg for The Comedy of Errors, and a student in Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago. The Comedy of Errors runs Wednesday through Sunday until October 17.
September 17, 2010
Second Preview Tonight: The Comedy of Errors
It’s impossible to predict how our first audience will react to any given show at Court Theatre, and that’s why we wait with bated breath to absorb your reactions in the post-show discussion. When the first audience reacts positively, it’s an uncommonly validating experience for the artists. Here are some of the comments left on our feedback forms last night:
“A romping great time.”
“Crazy”
“Hilarious and innovative”
“Funny update of a classic.”
“Terrific set”
“Impossible to describe—you have to see it to believe it.”
“It was cool!”
“Zany”
“Totally hysterical; amazing and unbelievable. You have to see it to believe it. Even beats [The Mystery of] Irma Vep.”
“Best theater experience in Chicago.”
“Recommended!”
Of course, there was also some constructive criticism:
“Try to clear up the speech a little: slower, clearer. I know it’s hard with all that action but it would help more of us get more punchlines.”
The actors are working on just that for tonight’s performance. Thanks to all the audience members who came to our first preview; you are an integral part of our process!
The Comedy of Errors runs Wednesday through Sunday until October 17 at Court Theatre.
September 16, 2010
First Preview Tonight
Erik Hellman as Antipholus and Alex Goodrich as Dromio in Court Theatre’s The Comedy of Errors
The first preview performance for The Comedy of Errors is tonight. Just this morning, I had the opportunity to join a conversation between Director Sean Graney and Artistic Director Charlie Newell, who sat down to review how the dress rehearsal went the night before and to discuss the kind of changes Sean was interested in making over the next few days. Sean and Charlie have a productive creative relationship with each other, and they’ve used Comedy of Errors as an opportunity to learn from one another. Sean has sought Charlie’s advice about the fine details of working with Shakespearean text, while Charlie has studied and learned from Sean’s canny sense of comic timing. The two directors make an interesting picture, sitting together—Sean in his John Deere cap, tattoos and piercings; Charlie in his crisp button-down shirt (“my costume” says Charlie)—but they both have much in common in their approach to directing classic plays. From the very beginning, Charlie has encouraged Sean to follow his directorial instincts, to not back down from radical choices with the text; that searching spirit to “push” the text is shared by the cast, who seem hungry to make this show the best version of Comedy of Errors possible.
They’ll have lots of chances in the coming week, as they learn from audiences about what’s working and what’s not. That’s preview week at Court Theatre: a time of great pressure, but also a time of great creative excitement!
The Comedy of Errors opens tonight, and runs Wednesday through Sunday until October 17.
September 9, 2010
Actor Erik Hellman on The Comedy of Errors
Erik Hellman in The Mystery of Irma Vep, Arcadia, Titus Andronicus, and Irma Vep, respectively.
Actor Erik Hellman plays three characters in The Comedy of Errors: Antipholus of Syracuse (the first twin), Antipholus of Ephesus (the second twin), and Egeon (the father of the twins). In the essay below, Erik sheds some light on his unique approach to performing multiple characters at once.
As a youngish man of average build with a favorable ratio of cheekbone to jowl, I play a lot of ingénues. And, though playing the love interest has its benefits—the occasional sword fight and the opportunity to kiss beautiful women nightly in front of hundreds of paying witnesses—it also has its determents. Ingénues tend to be underwritten, narrowly conceived and yet so plot-bearing as to be intractably immune to interesting characterizations: Florizel must love Perdita, Ferdinand must love Miranda; they must be a bit naeve, a little wild but true of heart, they must be over 5’8” and under 185lb and they must stay the hell out of the way. However, I have been fortunate in that, occasionally, I get to step away from the ingénue trajectory of observe, peruse, achieve and do a multiple character show. Comedy of Errors marks my fourth fall in a row working with director Sean Graney and I have never played less than three characters in any one of his plays. This makes me feel, perhaps in error, that I might have something to say on the subject.
While preparing for last year’s production of The Mystery of Irma Vep I read a lot about Charles Ludlam, its creator and star. One of Ludlam’s most famous roles was as Camille, in a version of his own devising. To play the part of a 22-year-old female ingénue, Ludlam first pretended to be an older actress trying to play below her age, a sort of nesting doll effect wherein the 30ish male Ludlam played a 50ish female actress who was playing the part of the 22-year-old Camille. Ludlam loved old film actresses and often used them as a short hand for scene work. For example where most actors would break down the demands of a scene like this:
“When I come in I’m in love, then something happens and I become heartbroken, and then suddenly I’m furious.”
Ludlam might break it down like this:
“When I come in I’m Judy Garland, then something happens and I become Greta Garbo, and then suddenly I’m Gloria Swanson.”
Though I never saw Ludlam perform, due to legal restrictions baring 8 year olds from explicit midnight performances in the East Village, I imagine his particular genius was in blending this parade of imitations into a cohesive and unique character. From this I started thinking that maybe the same approach could be used to create multiple characters that felt uniquely individual.
Often actors who do a lot of multiple-character roles have remarkable physical and vocal technique, qualities highlighted by that style. But too often their characters, while running the gamut of vocal range and physical differentialization, seem to all have the same feel, the same attack, the same energy, and though one talks high and one talks low and they all walk in different ways, they are not unique, because they are intrinsic to the aesthetics and abilities of the person who is performing them.
Bearing this, as well as my own technical limitations, in mind, I entered the first rehearsal for Comedy of Errors not with three distinct characters, but with three wildly different local actors in mind, through which I intended to interpret the three characters I was to play, using each actor as a filter and an engine for the creation of the character. Asking, in effect: “What would such-and-such do here?” I am not telling who they were, and I feel fairly confident that in performance no character will reveal its origin—I’m a poor mimic and the characterizations have all softened and broadened in the rehearsal room—but this approach has been, for me, an invaluable way into each character. What works about the “nesting-doll” approach is that rather than being guided by my own aesthetics, I open myself up to someone else’s, constructing multiple characters, not out of my individual choices, but out of multiple systems of choosing. Stepping into another actor’s shoes maximizes the paths you can go down. If you, for example, spend much of your year playing ingénues, you can get stuck on that path, trapped in your type as it were, building an aesthetic around being likable and looking good with your shirt off. But if you can release yourself to someone else’s aesthetic, you can ditch your inner ingénue and engage your inner character-actor.
In truth, I am a youngish man of average build, naive, a bit wild but with a good heart, who is moving through the conquests and disappointments of love. It would be useless to pretend I am not an ingénue in the play of my life. But, there is a part of me that is also a coquettish Scottish maid, a daffy English adventurer, and a vampire. There is a part of me that is…I don’t know…a tree, or a dog or Sean Connery. I think people come to the theatre to witness dimensions of themselves. And I think I do theatre to explore my own dimensionality. Sometimes, however, you have to first engage someone else’s choices to explore your own.
The Comedy of Errors opens September 16 at Court Theatre.
