Stratford Festival Composite Script Collection

Stratford Festival Composite Script Collection Figure 1. William Hutt as Prospero, The Tempest, 2005, Stratford Festival, directed by Richard Monette. Photo by David Hou, courtesy of the Stratford Festival Archives 64 ctr 156 fall 2013 doi:10.3138/ctr.156.012 Stage-Managerial Collections | “SCRIPT” When a Script is Not a Script by Kathryn Harvey With this issue on Theatre Archives, Jenn Stephenson and I considered many options for the “script” section. There was the tried and true path, trying to find a short Canadian play in which archives featured prominently. We could have gone that route, but as we tossed around ideas with the carefree abandon of those presented with a clean slate, we jointly became tempted to try some- thing different. Rather than a playfeaturing archives, we considered choosing a play whose many drafts have been archived and publishing excerpts from early through later versions as a sort of “show and tell” (really more “showing” than “telling”). We also talked about asking individual theatre practitioners (actors, de- signers, administrators, playwrights, etc.) whose papers have been archived to write a couple of paragraphs about the reasons they chose to donate papers to archives and how they felt about their experience with the whole process. All of these alternatives would have made compelling additions to the issue, and—as also often happens when presented with a plethora of options—we found it difficult to choose. But we had to commit to one—and quickly!—and since we had already read through the proposed articles being considered for inclusion, we saw a great opportunity in Toby Malone’s paper Figure 2. Founding Stratford Stage Manager John Hayes (1920-1993). to highlight the script as archival object while at the same time Photo by Peter Smith, courtesy of the Stratford Festival Archives drawing attention to the role of a theatre practitioner-turned-archivist in creating an archival record. Malone’s examination of the Stratford Festival’s prompt-book and “composite-book” collection reveals how an active company has valued its past enough to invest in understanding how past productions were conceived and uses that knowledge to inform future productions. The stage nourishes the archives, and the archives nourishes the stage. doi:10.3138/ctr.156.012 ctr 156 fall 2013 65 “SCRIPT” | Stage-Managerial Collections “Distract parcels in combined sums”: The Stratford Festival Archives’ Stage- Managerial Collections by Toby Malone The Stratford Festival houses the world’s largest collection devoted compiled without official guidelines, which means stylistic differ- to a single theatre, with holdings encompassing over sixty-one sea- ences occur not only between generations, but between produc- sons. Founded in 1967, the Festival Archives is best known for tions in the same season. As a case in point, we can look as far back its impressive collections of production-worn costumes, props, and as the Festival’s debut season. John Hayes stage-managed Tyrone photographic materials, but a less well-publicized strength is their Guthrie’s Festival-opening Richard III and All’s Well That Ends exhaustive stage-managerial collection. Between 1953 and 2013, Well in 1953, stage-directed by Elspeth Cochrane. A common Stratford has presented 660 productions, which includes 231 ver- season and stage-managerial team does not necessarily equate to sions of Shakespeare’s plays: 74 tragedies, 117 comedies, and 40 organisational standardisation, however, as demonstrated in Fig- histories. Most frequently offered is Twelfth Night (11 produc- ures 3 and 5. tions), As You Like It (11), and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (11); The first two prompt-books are the actual 1953 in-show while Troilus and Cressida (3), Henry VI Part III (2), and The Two working texts, but their structural differences are remarkable, even Noble Kinsmen (1) are the least regularly produced. This produc- beyond the obvious contrast in tidiness. Essentially, prompt-book tivity has furnished a vast, meticulously catalogued stage-manage- compilation may be reduced to three distinct approaches: 1) re- rial collection, in both prompt-book form and in a new, innova- typed/transcribed, compacted complete text with cuts omitted tive Composite Script format, which emerges from the collection’s (Figure 3); 2) photocopied (or cannibalised, which involves the stage-managerial roots, and offers intriguing scholarly potential. physical cutting up and pasting of a paperback text) with cuts struck through (Figure 5); 3) printed complete text (retyped or The Stage-Managerial Archivist copied from the Internet) with cuts struck through (Figure 6). Fifteen minutes with archives assistant Nora Polley is enough to Benefits are clear for each approach: the “clean” Richard III is draw the conclusion that the archivists themselves are some of the easy to follow and unfettered by annotations, while the cannibal- Festival Archives’ most important assets. A former Stratford stage ised All’s Well leaves textual cuts and rearrangements in plain sight. manager, Polley is devoted to detail and organization and has an Richard III has been altered and retyped with changes removed, encyclopaedic mental catalogue of company anecdotes and pro- seen in Gloucester’s “Your beauty…” speech, where fourteen omit- duction histories. Polley has worked in numerous organizational ted lines after “bosom” are not noted. This script is lightly annotated capacities at the Festival for over forty years and was given her first with word inflections and pauses (indicated with a fermata symbol) stage-managerial position by the Festival’s first stage manager, the and is clearly designed to be a simple-to-read working document. late John Hayes. All’s Well shows pencil-marked line cuts, and the pasted-in text Over a series of conversations with Polley, I established a set addition offers production clarity and fascinating archival texture. of prompt-book milestones which effectively tracks the Stratford To contrast with a modern example, Figure 6 is an emended and stage managers’ developmental chronology. Prompt-books are retyped text, updated prior to rehearsal: the line “They cannot be- 66 ctr 156 fall 2013 doi:10.3138/ctr.156.012 Stage-Managerial Collections | “SCRIPT” Figure 3. Stage manager’s prompt script, Richard III, Stratford Festival, Figure 4. Richard III, 1953. Stratford Festival. Directed by Tyrone Guth- 1953, directed by Tyrone Guthrie, stage-managed by John Hayes. rie. Alec Guinness as Richard. Courtesy of the Stratford Festival Archives Photo by Peter Smith, courtesy of the Stratford Festival Archives tween heaven and the ocean / Perceive a sail,” is altered from Shake- speare’s “I cannot ‘twixt the heaven and the main / Descry a sail.” A manual cut (lines 17–27) extends this alteration, presumably for clarity or expediency. Each of these cutting and arrangement approaches is entirely valid, and depends on the individual stage manager’s organization. The Stratford Festival Archives are heavily laden with this rich variety of prompt-books, which offer vivid insight into not only the productions but the teams behind them. Despite the breadth of approaches throughout the Festival’s history, there is a noticeable chronological thread that links to stage managers’ central endowment of knowledge through mentorship. Young stage managers may learn their profession at theatre school, but the true learning is passed on as they toil as assistant stage managers or prompters. Nora Polley learned her craft in-house at the Festival, resulting in a technical toolkit such as seen in Figure 7’s snapshot from The Taming of the Shrew. The contrast between Hayes’ early prompt-books and Pol- ley’s more sophisticated latter-day work is striking. Line numbers are added to the heavily annotated script, for easy reference to the extensive blocking and cueing annotations on the right-hand page. Hand-written additions include incidental lines such as Pe- truchio’s “Here sir…” (line 21), the servants’ calling the spaniel (line 32), and the inclusion of Italian-language song lyrics (lines 25–27). A sketch of the Festival stage (top left) notes placement of set piece (tables, chairs), on which blocking may be noted based on diagrammatical stage quadrants. Tabs at the bottom right Figure 5. Stage manager’s prompt script, All’s Well That Ends Well, corner correspond to scene numbers, and the heavily annotated 1953, Stratford Festival, directed by Tyrone Guthrie, stage-managed blocking sections serve as rehearsal tracks which later assists di- by John Hayes. Courtesy of the Stratford Festival Archives doi:10.3138/ctr.156.012 ctr 156 fall 2013 67 “SCRIPT” | Stage-Managerial Collections Figure 7. Stage manager’s prompt script, The Taming of the Shrew, 1988, Stratford Festival, directed by Richard Monette, stage-managed by Nora Polley. Courtesy of the Stratford Festival Archives Figure 6. Stage manager’s prompt script, Othello, Stratford Festival, 1994, directed by Brian Bedford, stage-managed by Hilary Graham Courtesy of the Stratford Festival Archives rectors and understudies in rehearsal. Beyond an archival video, prompt-books are the best possible entry into recreating a production, both for researchers and for possible remounts. These four examples offer a small sampling of the approaches to stage-managerial material found in the Festival Archives. To contrast the lightly-annotated Richard III with the consistent best-practices Taming of the Shrew, we see approaches that span Figure 8. The Taming of the Shrew, 1988. Stratford Festival. Directed the development of stage management as a professional industry, by Richard Monette. Colm Feore as Petruchio and Goldie Semple as as each generation learns from its predecessors and layers in les- Katherina. Photo by Michael Cooper, courtesy of the Stratford Festival Archives sons from the past. represent multiple prompt-books on a central text, which allows The Stratford Composite Scripts for comparison of line cuts, changes, and insertions for at-a-glance Discussion of layering innovation is a useful segue to turn us analysis of show-specific colour-coded annotations.

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