Six Companies in Search of Shakespeare: Rehearsal, Performance, and Management Practices by The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Stratford Shakespeare Festival, The Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare & Company, Shakespeare‘s Globe and The American Shakespeare Center

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University

By

Andrew Michael Blasenak, M.F.A.

Graduate Program in Theatre

The Ohio State University

2012

Dissertation Committee:

Professor Stratos Constantinidis, Advisor

Professor Nena Couch

Professor Beth Kattelman

i

Copyright by

Andrew Michael Blasenak

2012

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Abstract

This dissertation examines the artistic and managerial visions of six "non-profit" theatre companies which have been dedicated to the revitalization of Shakespeare‘s plays in performance from 1935 to 2012. These six companies were The Oregon Shakespeare

Festival, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, The Royal Shakespeare Company,

Shakespeare & Company, Shakespeare‘s Globe and The American Shakespeare Center.

The following questions are considered in the eight chapters of this study:1) Did the re- staging of Shakespeare's plays in six "non-profit" theatre companies introduce new stagecraft and managerial strategies to these companies? 2) To what degree did the directors who re-staged Shakespeare's plays in these six "non-profit" theatre companies successfully integrate the audience in the performance? 3) How important was the coaching of actors in these six "non-profit" theatre companies for stimulating rewarding rehearsals, quality performances, and actor loyalty to the company? 4) Was "ensemble acting" in these six "non-profit" theatre companies detrimental to the professional and emotional well-being of the actors? 5) To what degree were rehearsal patterns in these six "non-profit" theatre companies influenced by the relationship established between actor and audiences during performance? Extensive on-site research that included interviews with actors, directors, coaches, and managers, as well as published and unpublished accounts of the rehearsal and management practices of the companies,

ii yielded a wealth of data that indicate the following: the dedication to re-staging

Shakespeare‘s plays encouraged innovation in stagecraft, casting, and new play development. These six companies produced Shakespeare‘s plays not to recover the theatrical past, but to invent techniques for the future of theatrical performance.

Elizabethan-inspired thrust stages encouraged actors and directors to integrate the audience in the performance, but it was the individual directors and actors who chose to integrate or to ignore the audience. Voice, text, and movement coaches marginally increased the quality of the productions. However, they contributed to the satisfaction and loyalty of the actors who used coaches. Ensemble acting benefited the emotional and professional well-being of those actors who disliked the practices of the commercial theatre, but those actors who expected that their employment would make the same demands of the commercial theatre disliked ensemble acting. The level of collaboration between actors and directors in rehearsal reflected the level of integration of the audience in performance.

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Dedication

To Chelsea, who understands.

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my advisor, Stratos Constantinidis, and readers Beth Kattelman and Nena Couch for guiding and encouraging this dissertation.

Part of this project was made possible through the support of The Ohio State

University Alumni Grant for Graduate Research and Scholarship, the Center for

Medieval and Renaissance Studies Howe Grant, and the Department of Theatre for providing travel assistance to London, Stratford-upon-Avon, Stratford, Ontario, and

Lenox, Massachusetts. I thank all those who opened their homes and hearts for this project: Jaq Bessell and Jan Knightley, Jon and Amy Higham, Brett and Holly Santry and

Robert Signom III.

This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and generosity of the following: Bill Rauch, Lue Douthit, David and Rebecca Clark Carey, Scott Kaiser,

Tom Knapp, Joy Dickson, Sarah Langan, and Susan Whitmore at the Oregon

Shakespeare Festival; Antoni Cimolino, Des McAnuff, Robert Blacker, Nora Polley,

Janine Pearson, Nancy Benjamin, Martha Henry, David Latham, Lezlie Wade, Eric

Benson, Michael Roth, Francesca Marini, Jacob Gallagher-Ross, Elizabeth Knazook, and to no small extent Ron Nichol, Elke Bidner, and Benjamin Nelson at the Stratford

Shakespeare Festival; Michael Boyd, Jacqui O‘Hanlon, Tim Crouch, Lyn Darnley,

Alison Bomber, and Struan Leslie, at The Royal Shakespeare Company; Tina Packer,

v Tony Simotes, Dennis Krausnick, Kevin Coleman, Lizzie and Malcolm Ingram, Daniella

Varon, Katharine Goodland, Elizabeth Aspenlieder, and Kristin Wold. Steve Ball,

Catherine Wheeler, Nicholas Bussett, Nick Puma, and Hope Kelly at Shakespeare &

Company; Dominic Dromgoole, Farah Karim-Cooper, Patrick Spottiswoode, Sian

Williams, Giles Block, Christine Schmidle, Casey Caldwell and the research staff at

Shakespeare‘s Globe; and Ralph Alan Cohen, Jim Warren, Jay McClure, Colleen Kelly,

Cass Morris, and Sarah Enloe at The American Shakespeare Center. Finally, thanks, and ever thanks, to the multitude of actors for sharing their time, inspirations and frustrations.

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Vita

1998……………………Vandalia-Butler High

2002……………………B.A. Theatre, Marymount Manhattan College

2007……………………M.Litt. Shakespeare in Performance, Mary Baldwin College

2008……………………M.F.A. Shakespeare in Performance, Mary Baldwin College

2008 to present…………Distinguished University Fellow, Department of Theatre,

The Ohio State University

Field of Study

Major Field: Theatre

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Table of Contents

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………….……...ii

Dedication………………………………………………………………………………...iv

Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………v

Vita……………………………………………………………………………………....vii

List of Tables ...... ix

List of Figures ...... x

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 2: The Oregon Shakespeare Festival ...... 37

Chapter 3: The Stratford Shakespeare Company ...... 81

Chapter 4: The Royal Shakespeare Company ...... 131

Chapter 5: Shakespeare & Company ...... 180

Chapter 6: Shakespeare‘s Globe ...... 224

Chapter 7: The American Shakespeare Center ...... 244

Chapter 8: Epilogue ...... 275

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………307

Appendix A: Interview Questions……………………………………………………...318

Appendix B: Founding Mission Statements/Articles of Incorporation………...………321 viii

List of Tables

Table 1. Timeline of Shakespeare Companies ...... 30

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Oregon Shakespeare Festival campus, 2010, photo courtesy of Oregon

Shakespeare Festival, photo by David Cooper...... 49

Figure 2: The Elizabethan Stage, 1947, courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival...... 50

Figure 3: The Elizabethan Stage, Love's Labour's Lost, 2011, courtesy of Oregon

Shakespeare Festival...... 52

Figure 4: The Angus Bowmer Theatre, 2009, courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, photo by Jenny Graham...... 55

Figure 5. The New Theatre, 2010, courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, photo by

David Cooper...... 56

Figure 6: Angus Bowmer Stage, Measure for Measure, 2011, courtesy of Oregon

Shakespeare Festival, photo by David Cooper, René Millán, Brooke Parks; Musicians:

Vaneza M. Calderón, Mary M. Alfaro, Susie Garcia...... 60

Figure 7: Angus Bowmer Stage, Measure for Measure, 2011, courtesy of Oregon

Shakespeare Festival, photo by David Cooper, featuring Anthony Heald, Brooke Parks,

Stephanie Beatriz...... 60

Figure 8: New Theatre, Julius Caesar, 2011, courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, photo by Jenny Graham...... 62

Figure 9. The Festival Theatre 2010, courtesy of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival

Archives...... 91

x Figure 10. The Festival Stage, 1953, courtesy of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival

Archives ...... 93

Figure 11: Langham Redesign of the Festival Stage, 1962, courtesy of the Stratford

Shakespeare Festival Archives ...... 95

Figure 12: The Festival Stage, The Festival Stage, Twelfth Night, 2011, courtesy the

Stratford Shakespeare Festival Archives ...... 100

Figure 13: Avon Theatre, 2011, courtesy the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Archives 102

Figure 14: Jesus Christ Superstar, Avon Theatre, 2011, courtesy of the Stratford

Shakespeare Festival Archives...... 103

Figure 15: Tom Patterson Theatre, 2011, courtesy of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival

Archives...... 104

Figure 16: The Studio Theatre, 2011, courtesy of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival

Archives...... 106

Figure 17: The rebuilt Royal Shakespeare Theatre view from the Avon River, 2011, courtesy of Royal Shakespeare Company, photo by Stewart Hemley...... 141

Figure 18: The Swan Theatre, 2010, courtesy of Royal Shakespeare Company, photo by

Stewart Hemley...... 143

Figure 19: The Swan Theatre Stage, pre-set for The City Madam, 2010, courtesy of Royal

Shakespeare Company, photo by Ellie Kurttz...... 144

Figure 20: Dunsinane, Swan Theatre, 2011, courtesy of The Royal Shakespeare

Company, photo by Simon Anand...... 146

Figure 21: The Courtyard Stage, 2008, courtesy of Royal Shakespeare Company, photo by Stewart Hemley...... 147

xi Figure 22: The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 2011, courtesy of Royal Shakespeare

Company, photo by Stewart Hemley...... 148

Figure 23: The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 2011, curtain call for Romeo and Juliet, courtesy of Royal Shakespeare Company, photo by Ellie Kurttz...... 149

Figure 24: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Directed by Tina Packer 1978, The Mount.

Photo Courtesy of Shakespeare & Company...... 190

Figure 25: As You Like It, Founders Theatre, 2011. Featuring Merrit Janson. Photo courtesy of Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, MA. Photo by Kevin Sprague and Studio

Two Design...... 191

Figure 26: As You Like It, Founders Theatre, 2011. Photo courtesy of Shakespeare &

Company, Lenox, MA. Photo by Kevin Sprague and Studio Two Design...... 193

Figure 27: Women of Will, Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, 2011, featuring Tina Packer.

Photo courtesy of Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, MA. Photo by Kevin Sprague and

Studio Two Design...... 194

Figure 28: Tartuffe, The Rose Footprint Stage, 2012. Photo courtesy of Shakespeare &

Company, Lenox, MA. Photo by Kevin Sprague and Studio Two Design...... 196

Figure 29: Shakespeare's Globe, 2010, photo courtesy of Shakespeare‘s Globe...... 224

Figure 30: Henry V at Shakespeare's Globe, 1997, photo courtesy of Shakespeare‘s

Globe...... 226

Figure 31: Much Ado About Nothing, 2011, photo courtesy of Shakespeare‘s Globe. .. 233

Figure 32: Jig from Doctor Faustus, 2011, photo courtesy of Shakespeare‘s Globe. .... 234

Figure 33: The Blackfriars Playhouse 2009, photo courtesy of The American Shakespeare

Center, photo by Lauren D. Rodgers...... 250

xii Figure 34: The Blackfriars Playhouse, Much Ado About Nothing, 2012, Dogberry using a lantern to indicate a nighttime scene, courtesy of The American Shakespeare Center, photo by Tommy Thompson...... 252

Figure 35: Part (Cue Script) for Hamlet, amended with [notes] marking the number of missing lines between each cue...... 263

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Prelude

From 1895 to 1905, William Poel produced Shakespeare‘s plays in conditions he believed approximated those of their original performance in order to challenge the practices and assumptions of the professional theatre. The stagecraft of the professional theatre at the time had reveled in the pictorial realism of Herbert Beerbohm Tree. In order to compensate for the time and resources dedicated to creating such spectacle, theatre artists severely cut the texts of Shakespeare. In reaction to these practices, some scholars began to argue that Shakespeare‘s plays could be best understood by imitating the stagecraft of Shakespeare‘s original theatre.1 Specifically, they argued for the use of a bare platform stage, rapid transitions, minimal props, and the practice of actors speaking directly to the audience. Poel, inspired by this scholarship and equally frustrated with current staging conventions, attempted to put these theories into practice.

As the head of the Elizabethan Stage Society, Poel erected ―the Fortune fit-up,‖ a unit set based on the building contract for the Fortune theatre, in theatres and halls across

1 As J. L. Styan argues in The Shakespeare Revolution, The Malone Society, and scholars such as W. W. Greg, J. Q. Adams, A. H. Thorndike, W. J. Lawrence, and E. K. Chambers, linked the structure of playhouse design and the dramatic conventions of the Elizabethan stage. Notably, they linked evidence such as the 1888 discovery of the Swan drawing, and Phillip Henslowe‘s Diary and Papers (both edited by W. W. Greg) to construct some physical conditions and conventions of the playhouse. E.K. Chambers compiled the evidence, the arguments and the speculations derived from the sources and scholarship of this period in the four-volume The Elizabethan Stage. 1 England.2 His productions provided audiences with a glimpse of his interpretation of

Elizabethan verse-speaking, staging, and acting. These experiments with Elizabethan stagecraft earned him the reputation of an ―antiquarian‖ and, according to Beerbohm

Tree, ―an absolute crank,‖3 but Poel claimed his productions sought, ―to keep the past in touch with the present.‖4 By embracing rather than erasing the challenge of

Shakespeare‘s full text and the conditions of his original theatre, William Poel and his company were forced to re-invent styles of performance outside of the practices of the professional theatre of their day. In 1913, he rebutted his critics:

Some people have called me an archeologist, but I am not. I am really a

modernist. My original aim was just to find out some means of acting

Shakespeare naturally and appealingly from the full text as in a modern drama.5

Throughout the twentieth century, this blend of historical influence and innovation pervaded the practices of those theatre artists who challenged the realistic visual stagecraft of the professional theatre.

Although his practices had minor critical approval, but less financial success, Poel inspired a century of theatre artists who found success using the stagecraft of

Shakespeare‘s Elizabethan theatre. In 1921, Nugent Monck built the Maddermarket

Theatre in Norwich based on W. J. Lawrence‘s research of the architecture of

Elizabethan playhouses in order to produce plays from all countries and eras of theatre

2 The 1895 inaugural production of Twelfth Night performed in Burlington Hall, and St. George‘s Hall. Edward M. Moore, ―William Poel,‖ Shakespeare Quarterly 23, no. 1 (1972): 28. 3 Joe Falocco. Reimagining Shakespeare’s Playhouse: Early Modern Staging Conventions in the Twentieth Century. (Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 2010),16. 4 William Poel, An Account of the Elizabethan Stage Society: Printed for the Society (London: Elizabethan Stage Society, 1898), 12. 5 Robert Speaight, William Poel and the Elizabethan Revival (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1954), 90. 2 history.6 Another of Poel‘s collaborators, Ben Iden Payne, brought the ideas of

Elizabethan staging to America both at the Carnegie Institute of Technology as early as

1914 and at the University of Washington in 1931. In turn, one of Payne‘s students,

Angus Bowmer, used these Elizabethan stagecraft techniques when he founded the

Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The interest in the original staging conditions of

Shakespeare‘s plays subsequently inspired the creation of replicas of Shakespeare‘s 1599 playhouse, The Globe. The Globe replica in the Chicago World‘s Fair in 1934 inspired, among others,7 Sam Wannamaker‘s desire to build Shakespeare‘s Globe in London. In

England, Nugent Monck‘s productions in the 1930s inspired, in part, Tyrone Guthrie‘s drive to stage plays on ―open stages‖ if not in the full Elizabethan style.8 Guthrie was further galvanized by the success of the 1937 Hamlet at Elsinore, where rain forced the actors and audience into a makeshift stage with a surrounding audience.9 Guthrie‘s dedication to the ―open stage‖ inspired stages throughout North America that were built as part of the regional theatre movement. Whether by financial necessity or ideological commitment, the stagecraft started by Poel reverberated through Shakespeare‘s plays in production throughout the twentieth century.

Because these theatre artists focused their attention on the reinvigoration of

Shakespeare for modern audiences, they each derived their own interpretation of the

Elizabethan or ―original‖ context for performance. A few key elements of Poel‘s

Elizabethan performance aesthetic remained relatively constant throughout these interpretations, however. These theatre artists primarily argued for the use of a bare

6 Falocco, Reimagining Shakespeare’s Playhouse,82. 7 The Old Globe in San Diego (1935) and another replica in Dallas (1936) 8 Falocco, Reimagining Shakespeare’s Playhouse, 96. 9 Falocco, Reimagining Shakespeare’s Playhouse, 105. 3 platform stage or a unit set, and allowing the actors to define the locale of the scene through verbal cues, physical behavior, or indicative costumes. For instance, Rosalind in

As You Like It transports the play from the court to the woods by saying ――Well, this is the forest of Ardenne.‖10 Alternately, at the opening of Hamlet, the appearance of armed guards who cannot initially see each other sets the scene at night in a military setting.

These artists also sought to use only the necessary props for scenes so as to allow rapid transitions between scenes. Instead of waiting for set crews to remove the previous locale and install a new one, actors simply walked on stage as others left and maintained the momentum of the play‘s action. Finally, these theatre artists argued that actors should speak directly to audience members in an attempt to integrate the audience into the performance. In addition to instructing actors to break the fourth wall in soliloquies, asides, and in other dialogue, these directors often designed thrust stages intended to bring the actors into closer proximity with the audience. These central tenets of Poel‘s

Elizabethan theatre became inspirations to other theatre artists, even as those theatre artists took great latitude in the interpretation of other elements of Shakespeare‘s

―original‖ performance.

The Challenge of Modern Shakespeare

The six companies in this dissertation represent only a small portion of the one hundred and eighteen company members of the Shakespeare Theatre Association11 and an even smaller portion of the number of companies worldwide which were dedicated to

10 William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2.4.11. 11 Shakespeare Theatre Association, ―Member Index,‖ accessed September 6, 2012. http://stahome.org/memberindex. 4 the production of Shakespeare‘s plays. All of them, however, shared an Elizabethan- inspired stage and an artistic commitment to challenging prevailing stagecraft, rehearsal, and management styles of contemporary professional theatre. The way they challenged the prevailing styles, however, varied between the companies. The artistic leaders at the

Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which produced its seventy-fifth season in 2011, responded to the challenge of their physical distance from major metropolitan centers by providing an artistically rewarding environment for the actors, with new plays, training resources, and ensemble management practices. The leaders of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, which produced its sixtieth season in 2011, used its history and renown to foster its reputation and mission as a national theatre of Canada, serving not only Shakespeare but the next generation of plays and theatre artists. The Royal Shakespeare Company, which produced its fiftieth season in 2011, was the most famous of these companies, but artistic director Michael Boyd revitalized the quality of the plays and the company by adopting the ethos and rehearsal practices of fringe theatres. Shakespeare & Company, which produced its thirty-fourth season in 2011, used Shakespeare‘s plays as a medium to reinvigorate actor training. Shakespeare‘s Globe, which produced its fourteenth season in 2011, achieved massive popular success as a theatre attraction but distanced itself from its own history by hiring directors with novel designs and by producing new plays. The

American Shakespeare Center, which produced its eleventh season in 2011 in the recreated Blackfriars playhouse,12 experimented with early modern rehearsal practices in addition to Shakespeare‘s stagecraft and architecture. Each theatre company varied in the degree to which they attempted to recreate Shakespeare‘s original theatre in stagecraft

12 The American Shakespeare Center began as the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express in 1988, but they did not have a permanent performance venue until they built the Blackfriars playhouse in 2001. 5 and architecture, but all of them justified their dedication to Shakespeare as a means of challenging contemporary theatrical practices.

The focus on Shakespeare forced theatre actors, directors, and designers to reconsider their techniques. Actor training programs often did not prepare actors to analyze and to perform Shakespeare‘s texts. In the United States, actor training was chiefly influenced by Lee Strasberg‘s interpretation of Stanislavski‘s An Actor Prepares.

Strasberg‘s ―method‖ helped actors portray character through the creation of an internal map of thought and emotion that helped them to reveal the subtleties of subtext, both on stage in naturalistic plays and under the scrutiny of the camera in films. The American method, as it came to be known, often regarded the words spoken as subordinate to a character‘s intent because words often failed to express what a character wanted. This method often assumed that vocal and physical choices would develop naturally in service of a character pursuing his or her desire. The method succeeded in crafting actors equally suited for recorded media and intimate theatres, but it did not equally enlighten the performance of Shakespeare. Director Elia Kazan, a follower of Strasberg, noted: ―We have not solved the classical acting problem.13 I failed with it.‖14

The ―classical acting‖ problem challenged contemporary actors who were incentivized to develop acting techniques for the best-paying jobs of television and film.

Theatre companies dedicated to Shakespeare, therefore, often included an actor-training program as part of their mission to revitalize Shakespeare‘s plays on Elizabethan-inspired stages. The Royal Shakespeare Company, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, the Oregon

13 ―Classical acting‖ is a broad and often misused term in the professional theatre to refer to any play written before 1900 that includes poetic or otherwise complex language. 14 Elia Kazan, quoted in David Garfield, A Player’s Place (New York: Macmillan, 1980), 181-82. 6 Shakespeare Festival and Shakespeare & Company all developed actor training programs that used the structure of Shakespeare‘s verse and his rhetoric to inform the choices a naturalistic and/or method actor would make. Techniques like these attempted to combine the emotional depth of naturalistic acting and the clarity and rhythm demanded by Shakespeare‘s plays. At Shakespeare‘s Globe and the American Shakespeare Center‘s

Blackfriars Playhouse actors were encouraged to react to the audience directly without any kind of fourth-wall boundary between actors and audience. The ability to incorporate the audience‘s reactions challenged assumptions of and techniques for the creation of

―character.‖ The complex texts of Shakespeare and the challenge of the stage created the need for actors to expand, not to replace, their previous acting techniques.

Shakespeare‘s texts challenged contemporary actor training chiefly because he wrote in an age before the advent of psychological realism. Shakespeare‘s actors, according to Joseph Roach, strove not for consistency or depth of character, but variety of action and the changing of passions. In Roach‘s study on acting, The Player’s Passion, he describes the Elizabethan actors:

In a practical sense, prevailing stage conditions and dramaturgical conventions

insured that actors of the stamp of Burbage, Alleyn, and later Betterton were

indeed called upon to change shapes with dazzling frequency and swiftness. The

constant rotation of the repertoire demanded the personation of far more parts in

shorter blocks of time than has been expected of more recent actors. Moreover,

within a given role an actor could be expected to effect sudden, highly visible

transitions between passions in the length of a speech or even a single line. As

modern actors rehearsing the jealousy of Leontes or the lust of Angelo have

7 occasion to note, playwrights demanded that actors depict the passions as sudden

and violent metamorphoses.15

Shakespeare‘s style of writing challenged naturalistic actors who struggled to justify such rapid changes based on psychological understandings of character.

Many teachers, specifically John Barton of the Royal Shakespeare Company, emphasized ―antithesis‖ as the key rhetorical tool to signal and signify rapid changes in order to help actors understand Shakespeare‘s writing. These antitheses rewarded actors who vocally and physically portrayed the ―sudden and violent metamorphoses‖ with the words of Shakespeare rather than the depths of unspoken emotion. For instance, in Much

Ado About Nothing, Claudio‘s rapidly changing passions and extended antithesis often challenge young actors:

O Hero! What a Hero hadst thou been

If half thy outward graces had been placed

About thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart!

But fare thee well, most foul, most fair, farewell

Thou pure impiety and impious purity.

For thee I‘ll lock up all the gates of love,

And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang

To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm,

And never shall it more be gracious.16

15 Joseph Roach, The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1985), 42. 16 William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1.98-106. 8 An actor grounded in method acting would likely believe the pain of dishonor and betrayal he feels at having been wronged by Hero is more important than expressing the meaning of each word. He would likely not make a large vocal or physical differentiation between ―most foul‖ and its antithesis ―most fair.‖ Similarly, the oxymoronic ―pure impiety‖ and ―impious purity‖ are complex and inventive antitheses, and the actor is challenged to maintain vocal clarity at a moment of the character‘s extreme emotions. The vow at the end of the speech that promises to turn ―beauty‖ into

―harm‖ necessitates that the actor playing Claudio make clear not only the depth of his emotion, but rather the fact that Hero‘s perceived betrayal has deprived him of his ability to love. Without this personal loss and harm, the abuse Claudio throws on Hero seems unnecessarily cruel, and may undercut Leonato‘s line that comments on the action:

―Would the two princes lie? And Claudio lie, / Who loved her so that, speaking of her foulness, / Washed it with tears?‖17 The antithesis of Claudio‘s emotions, both of love and of pain, rather than a generalized hurt and anger allows the actor to evoke pity from the audience for his character as well as Hero. This pity later justifies, for the audience, the forgiveness Claudio receives from Leonato and Hero.

Elizabethan-inspired thrust stages also challenged actors. Because actors on a thrust stage often performed with their backs to part of the audience, they sometimes strained their voices to be heard. Physically, actors had to figure out ways of keeping the audience engaged with their characters even when the audience could only see their backs. Vocally, they had to be understood by audience members behind them without

17 William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1.151-153. 9 straining their voices. In response, each company provided coaches to aid actors‘ physical and vocal techniques.

The complex antitheses of Shakespeare‘s texts also challenged actors to follow

Hamlet‘s advice to the players, to ―suit the action to the word, the word to the action.‖18

Actors made vocal and/or physical shifts to accompany the shift of short antithetical phrases or even single words in order to make the text more clear to the audience. For instance, what helps the actor playing Claudio unleash tears is the juxtaposition of the imagined fairness and foulness of Hero, and committed changes in body and voice to reflect the imagined fairness and foulness. Just as the remembrance of the life of the person at a funeral unleashes more tears than the fact of their death, an actor imagining, voicing, and embodying the extremes of fair and foul will often convey a more complex experience than an actor who wishes to convey the hurt of Claudio through commitment to a single subtext. People do not easily vacillate back and forth between the two emotions of love and disgust, but an actor‘s ability to do so on stage shows incredible artistry. Similarly, the quick doubling of an actor from hero to villain revealed the virtuosity of the actor, as John Douglas Thompson did when he was cast in the roles of

Duke Frederick and Duke Senior in As You Like It (2011) at Shakespeare & Company.

His ability to change back and forth between two ideas and emotions on a single line revealed a technical virtuosity to the delight and admiration of the audience.

Shakespeare‘s text allowed for modern actors to be interesting not because they discarded their previous Stanislavski-based training, but because they used that previous training to

18 William Shakespeare, Hamlet. 3.2.16-17. 10 shift emotions in a much smaller span of time, a span as small as the brief time it took to say a single word or even a Shakespearean ―O.‖

The desire to shift between complex ideas and emotions in short, antithetical phrases inspired several voice teachers to develop techniques to use the sound qualities of individual vowels and consonants to convey meaning and emotion. This close attention to each element of Shakespeare‘s text helped actors appreciate the artifice of

Shakespeare‘s writing while still being able to connect emotionally to the words. Many beginning actors are intimidated or confused by blank verse or the use of ―heightened language.‖ These unfamiliar structures motivated voice and text coaches to develop techniques for actors to make meaningful emotional connections to words and verse forms. Shakespeare‘s texts, to them, were not in the way of understanding; they were the way of understanding character, thought, and emotion.

This need for the actor to communicate the emotion and meaning of

Shakespeare‘s words precisely was further reinforced by the relative sparseness of design on Elizabethan-inspired thrust stages. Shakespeare‘s use of little scenery and less rehearsal combined with a surrounding audience created new challenges for actors trained in psychological realism. Because of this difficulty, theatre companies used

Shakespeare‘s plays, and the original conditions of performance, to challenge the prevailing aesthetics of realism and re-focus the audience on the actors (and the audience on itself) rather than on the set design. According to Styan, ―the flexible Elizabethan mode of performance, playing to the house, stepping in and out of character, generating a stage action allegorical and symbolic, making no pretense at the trappings of realism, encouraged a verbally acute, sensory and participatory, multi-leveled and fully aware

11 mode of experience for an audience.‖19 Because characters in Shakespeare‘s plays often spoke directly to the audience, either in monologues or in what would later be labeled

―asides,‖ the performance dynamic emphasized the interaction of actors with audience as well as the audience members‘ awareness of each other. Actors had to learn how to manipulate the audience‘s imagination with words, as when Rosalind sets the scene

―Well, this is the forest of Ardenne.‖20 They also had to learn how to include the audience as additional characters in the play and how to incorporate their spontaneous responses.

Beyond this, several Shakespeare companies investigated a more complete dismantling of the boundaries between actor and audience, play and theatrical event.

The thrust stages inspired by Shakespeare also require that actors develop vocal and physical skills so as to be able to communicate to audience members sitting behind them. Often, directors like Michael Langham adopted styles of blocking that incorporated frequent movement so that actors would spend only minimal time standing with their back to audience members. Actors often learnt that they had to embody their characters more fully since audience members had a view of them from many different angles. Instead of focusing on the image they projected to the camera or a proscenium theatre‘s audience, they learnt what some actors call ―backting,‖ the ability to keep the body engaged and reacting to other actors so as to communicate to the audience behind them. Several companies discussed in this dissertation have hired coaches in movement and Alexander technique to help actors address the challenges of the thrust stage.

Although Shakespeare‘s plays and stagecraft challenged the artistic techniques of actors and directors, they also provided opportunities to challenge the practices of the

19 Styan, The Shakespeare Revolution, 5. 20 William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2.4.11. 12 company‘s management. Many actors joined Shakespeare companies to remove themselves from the often enervating practices of the entertainment industry. Because theatre artists were far more numerous than available theatre jobs, they had to specialize in the appearance, speech, and actions of specific character types: the ingénue, the heavy, the leading man, etc., in order to gain employment. Directors, likewise, developed specific styles of production for reviewers, agents, and producers to recognize their contributions to a performance. Whereas most theatre artists enjoyed the challenge of creating new and varied roles, the risk-averse theatre industry sought to hire actors to do the same types of performances that had succeeded in previous productions.

Performances by equity actors were legally obligated to be repeatable and unchanging. If a show was lucky enough to be successful, actors had to perform the same lines and same actions night after night for years. One actor, who spoke of a friend performing in Cats for six years, understated, ―that‘s a long time to be a kitty.‖21 Although these practices were designed to provide the audience with a quality performance and to protect actors, they often limited actors‘ satisfaction and opportunities to develop their acting technique.

Companies dedicated to Shakespeare‘s plays and theatre, however, often used management practices inspired by the necessities of regional theatre which provided actors with greater personal and artistic satisfaction. Many Shakespeare theatres were founded as ―destination theatres‖ in small towns removed from major metropolitan centers.22 The audience members often visited festivals for a few, concentrated days;

21 Anonymous, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Ashland, OR, September 11, 2011. 22 The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is over 280 miles from Portland and Sacramento. The Royal Shakespeare Company is 100 miles outside of London. The American Shakespeare Center is 150 miles from Washington D.C. Shakespeare & Company is 130 miles away from both New York and Boston. The Stratford Shakespeare Festival is over 90 miles from Toronto. 13 therefore, the companies benefited from producing a repertory of plays to attract the same audience members with different shows during their visit. The repertory system also provided greater opportunities for actors. Instead of playing a single role in one play, actors were challenged to perform a variety of comedic, dramatic, and musical roles.

Since actors performed in multiple shows and often had understudying opportunities, they gained experience with a wider range of roles than would be possible in a Broadway or West End theatre.

The structure of Shakespeare‘s plays also provided greater challenges and opportunities than the professional theatres of Broadway or the West End. Since

Shakespeare wrote plays for large casts of diverse ages, the rehearsal rooms filled with actors of varying backgrounds and experience levels which encouraged informal mentorship for younger actors. The large cast and episodic plot structure also limited the rehearsal time a director could use to shape actor performances compared to plays involving few characters in a single plotline. Therefore, the cast of actors had to be well prepared with ideas for their character and the staging of the play. The actors trained in the specialized performance of Shakespeare‘s plays, therefore, became valuable collaborators in rehearsal more than servants of a director‘s vision.

Additionally, actors who preferred to perform Shakespeare‘s plays were often more willing to do extra work to keep the company viable so that they could ensure valuable performance experiences in the future. Actors sacrificed financial and professional opportunities available in the entertainment industry when they signed a long contract with a regional Shakespeare company. Some actors were attracted by the stability of the long contract, but many actors expressed artistic and personal satisfaction

14 from working on Shakespeare‘s plays. Actors joined a Shakespeare company because they enjoyed the work they do, so the company was encouraged to provide challenging performance and training opportunities in order to fulfill their artistic, if not financial, goals. Although some actors bristled at getting paid less to do more work, the actors who stayed with a company for a long time were often willing not only to perform more roles but also to undertake administrative duties as well. Therefore, keeping a group of artistically satisfied actors was vital to the success of a Shakespeare company.

With challenges to both aesthetic and management practices, Shakespeare companies were able to thrive critically and financially. The Elizabethan practice of using a bare stage and minimal props reduced the start-up costs of many of these companies. The focus on actor and audience, as well as the text of Shakespeare, also made the theatrical event significantly different from other entertainment options like movies, television, or sporting events. The challenge of the bare stage and complex plays of Shakespeare led to innovations in voice, movement, and textual analysis skills that helped actors match Shakespeare‘s words to the sensibilities of their audiences. Many of the companies selected for this study ensured the quality of their productions not through hiring large-name stars, but by training actors and providing unusual casting opportunities unavailable or discouraged in the commercial theatre. Because

Shakespeare‘s plays and the repertory production schedule provided different opportunities for actors, directors, coaches and designers, companies dedicated to the production of Shakespeare‘s plays on Elizabethan-inspired stages offered a different experience than those available in the commercial theatre.

15 Statement of Purpose

This dissertation describes and compares the founding visions and the practices of six major Shakespeare theatre companies in Canada, England, and the United States in

2011 and 2012. Those companies were similarly inspired by Shakespeare‘s plays and interpretations of Shakespeare‘s plays and original theatre. The purpose of this comparison is not to discover why Shakespeare was the influence for these changes, but rather to analyze how Shakespeare‘s plays and their original staging conditions challenged theatre artists in the twenty-first century and how these plays influenced stagecraft, management, and rehearsal practices.

The six theatre companies in this study, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The

Stratford Shakespeare Festival, The Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare &

Company, Shakespeare‘s Globe, and The American Shakespeare Center, had at least one main stage inspired by the architecture of the Elizabethan theatre. They all shared Poel‘s goal of reimagining Shakespeare‘s original theatre for the purpose of revitalizing his plays in performance. Although the stage architecture and the play texts reflected the traditions of the Elizabethan theatre, the artistic missions and theatrical sensibilities of these companies were firmly grounded in the artistic theories and expectations of their current theatrical practice.

This dissertation seeks to provide a more detailed examination of the reciprocal relationship between understandings of Shakespeare‘s original theatre and the demands of modern performance and company management in the practices of six professional theatre companies dedicated to the production of Shakespeare‘s plays. The influence of the structures and practices of the professional theatre on the plays of Shakespeare

16 received less attention than the influence of Shakespearean criticism on performance conventions. Moreover, the understanding of the theatrical art in England and North

America focused on the efforts and visions of individuals rather than the practices of groups. The six theatre companies, chosen on the basis of their dedication to

Shakespeare‘s plays and their influence on scholarly understandings of Shakespeare‘s original theatre, provided a spectrum of approaches for how Shakespeare‘s plays form and reflect the practices of the contemporary theatre.

Literature Review

Recent studies recorded the practices of actors and directors who gained fame for performing and directing Shakespeare‘s plays. The Routledge Companion to Actors’

Shakespeare (2011) and the Routledge Companion to Directors’ Shakespeare (2008) gives accounts of individual directors‘ and actors‘ techniques and philosophies regarding

Shakespeare‘s plays. As the editor, John Russell Brown, argues, ―The concentration on

Shakespeare‘s plays, especially those most frequently produced, brings contrasting intentions and methods into clear focus.‖23 These sources provide an excellent account of the ideas and practices of directors relevant to this study such as William Poel, Ben Iden

Payne, Michael Langham, Peter Brook, Tyrone Guthrie, Peter Hall, and Mark Rylance

(as director) as well as actors like Judi Dench, Greg Hicks, Jonathan Slinger, and Sir Ian

McKellan of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Colm Feore of Stratford Shakespeare

Festival fame, and John Harrell of the American Shakespeare Center. However, while each individual chapter offers in-depth analysis of a given actor or director, these editions

23 John Russell Brown, introduction to Routledge Companion to Directors’ Shakespeare, (New York: Routledge, 2008), ix. 17 offer no broad ranging comparisons between the subject of each chapter. Neither were the practices of individual actors and directors contextualized within the overarching managerial framework that supports, challenges, and changes their artistic practices. The structure of the companies that reflected these artistic practices remained hidden. Since the studies often focused on artists who performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company, they paid little attention to Shakespeare‘s Globe and The American Shakespeare Center and none at all to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival or Shakespeare & Company.

Reimagining Shakespeare’s Playhouse (2011), by Joe Falocco, provides an argument for the influence and purposes of the Elizabethan stages in England and North

America. Falocco traces a lineage of the endeavors to create theatres designed for the staging of Shakespeare‘s plays in conditions approximating original performance, including efforts by William Poel, Nugent Monck, Tyrone Guthrie, and Sam

Wannamaker. The book redefines the purpose of these recreations not as a study in antiquarianism but as a means of innovating the present art of theatre. For this reason, he diminishes the reputation and influence of Harley Granville-Barker because his writings and his stage productions had little correlation. Falocco, however, limits his study to the history behind the creation of theatres. He examines neither the use of these stages in later performance, nor how the stages continued or failed to alter the scenography or performance conditions. He did not include Shakespeare & Company, The Oregon

Shakespeare Festival, the Royal Shakespeare Company, or the American Shakespeare

Center.24

24 The American Shakespeare Center‘s Blackfriars Playhouse, however, is the cover photo for his book. Joe Falocco, Reimagining Shakespeare’s Playhouse: Early Modern Staging Conventions in the Twentieth Century, (Rochester, NY, D. S. Brewer, 2010). 18 Several scholarly studies from the latter half of the twentieth century attempted to theorize the significance of Shakespeare in performance. Often they focused on the theoretical implications of performance, rather than the process of rehearsal. J.L. Styan‘s

The Shakespeare Revolution (1977) argued that Shakespeare scholarship in the twentieth century reflected a trend to understand Shakespeare‘s plays in performance. The book linked the academic study of Shakespeare in performance to the practices of twentieth- century stagecraft, culminating in an analysis of Peter Brook‘s 1970 A Midsummer

Night’s Dream. While Styan provided a link between Shakespearean scholarship and performance practice, the link changed throughout the later half of the twentieth century.

W.B. Worthen‘s Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance (2003) examined the link between the historicity of Shakespeare and contemporary performance, asking

―In what sense is production of a Shakespeare play meaningfully engaged with

Shakespeare?‖25 and, ―can performance enable the text‘s past meanings to speak?‖26 The book focused chiefly on Shakespeare‘s Globe and criticized the performance event and attendant company rhetoric of the historically inspired design practices. Artistic director

Dominic Dromgoole, who joined Shakespeare‘s Globe in 2005, modified the emphasis of the theatre from the historical to the contemporary, and his rehearsal and performance techniques had not yet been examined.

Less scholarly books by actors offered to give a behind-the-scenes account of rehearsal and performance. Books written by actors at the Royal Shakespeare Company gave insight into the rehearsal processes. Nick Asbury‘s Exit, Pursued by Badger (2010)

25 W. B. Worthen, Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), 24. 26 Worthen, Modern Performance, 38. 19 and Keith Osborne‘s Something Written in the State of Denmark (2010), were written in the format of blog posts during the rehearsal process. These books were personal and descriptive, rather than general and critical, but nonetheless they provided a primary account of rehearsals.

Some more extensive, scholarly accounts of rehearsal existed. David Selbourne documented an exceptional production in The Making of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: an Eye-Witness Account of Peter Brook’s Production From First Rehearsal to First Night

(1982). Steven Adler attempted to synthesize the practices of the first fifty years at the

Royal Shakespeare Company in Rough Magic: Making Theatre in the Royal Shakespeare

Company (2001). Unfortunately, neither of these books documented how Michael Boyd changed the working practices of the company in ways that mirrored many of those of

Peter Hall.

Other theatre companies often have promotional biographies. Angus Bowmer‘s autobiography, As I Remember Adam (1975), provided his personal account of his building of the festival. The Stratford Shakespeare Festival was celebrated in Robert

Cushman‘s Fifty Seasons at Stratford (2002), which provided a retrospective account of the successes of the festival. Stratford Gold (2002) by Robert Ouzounian provided interviews with fifty actors, directors, and designers from the festival. These sources focused on individual artist‘s opinions and had the implicit desire to promote the continued success and significance of the festival. They were far from critical, but they revealed the ways in which the Stratford Shakespeare Festival promoted its own legacy.

Shakespeare & Company and especially Tina Packer received attention in Companies

She Keeps (1985) by Helen Epstein. This book provided a report of the difficulties and

20 triumph Packer faced in the founding of the company, but it did not reflect the practices of the company from 1985-2012. These sources, though admittedly biased, provided an account of the founding of the companies and the personal views of the founders.

Books on Shakespearean acting technique arose from the practices of several of these companies. The quintessential text with specific techniques for acting in

Shakespeare‘s plays was John Barton‘s 1984 book Playing Shakespeare, based on his

1979 television series of the same name, that ―married‖ Stanislavski-based acting with

Shakespeare‘s verse and rhetoric. This book detailed the acting and textual analysis techniques of the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s, and it remained a foundational text that inspired other teachers and performers of Shakespeare. For instance, in Mastering Shakespeare (2003), Scott Kaiser of the Oregon Shakespeare

Festival emphasized a link between Stanislavski and Shakespeare. He aimed ―to apply all of Stanislavsky‘s work [specifically An Actor Prepares and Building a Character] including those long-neglected ideas about body and voice, to the lifelong pursuit of mastering Shakespeare.‖27 A host of other books attempted to provide quick and easy solutions to acting Shakespeare, including the John Basil‘s Will Power: How to Act

Shakespeare in 21 Days (2006), Louis Fantasia‘s Instant Shakespeare (2003), and Patrick

Tucker‘s Secrets of Acting Shakespeare: The Original Approach (2002). These books sell quick-and-ready systems of acting in Shakespeare‘s plays that reveal strategies for using Shakespeare‘s verse and rhetoric structures, even though they sometimes advocate use of non-historic clues for acting, such as capitalization of words in the First Folio.

27 Scott Kaiser, Introduction to Mastering Shakespeare: An Acting Class in Seven Scenes (New York: Allworth Press, 2003), xv. 21 Although these books of technique often derived from the practices of their authors, few accounts showed how these techniques were used in the rehearsal room.

Shakespeare‘s texts also inspired voice teachers and their techniques. Former head of the Royal Shakespeare Company‘s voice department, Cicely Berry, gives voice exercises for actors to help them render viscerally and aurally the meaning of each of

Shakespeare‘s words in The Actor and the Text (1992). Kristin Linklater‘s Freeing

Shakespeare’s Voice (1992), follows up on her techniques in Freeing the Natural Voice

(1976) and her experiences with Shakespeare & Company and other professional theatre.

Her text, compared to Berry‘s, focuses on a greater variety of possible expression through

―freeing the human being from the constraints that our culture puts on us as we grow up.‖28 Patsy Rodenburg‘s Speaking Shakespeare (2002), developed from her work with

London‘s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, provides techniques to create character through commitment of body, breath, and word. These books provide actors strategies for speaking Shakespeare and using verse, but few reflect practices in the rehearsal room.

Several books examine the verse and rhetoric of Shakespeare‘s texts, but many of them are written from a literary perspective. George T. Wright‘s Shakespeare’s Metrical

Art (1988), Russ McDonald‘s Shakespeare and the Arts of Language (2001), and Sister

Miriam Joseph‘s Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language (1947) provided ample examples and understandings of the function of Shakespeare‘s rhetoric, but little of how to put such knowledge into performance. Scott Kaiser‘s Shakespeare’s Wordcraft (2007) attempted to reduce the intimidation of rhetorical terms like ―epizeuxis‖ by grouping

28 David J. Diamond, ―Balancing Acts: An interview with Anne Bogart and Kristin Linklater,‖ in The American Theatre Reader, ed. The staff of American Theatre Magazine (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2009), 483. 22 rhetorical structures according to their dramatic function in categories like ―additions,‖

―repetitions,‖ ―reverberations,‖ ―transformations,‖ ―substitutions,‖ ―omissions,‖ ―order,‖ and ―disorder.‖ He did not expound at length how to use these, but he provided examples from Shakespeare‘s texts that illustrated their use. Still, none of these books proposed how actors could utilize Shakespeare‘s rhetoric within a current acting system, so their use remained dependent on the interest and technique development of individuals.

Methodology

Each of the six companies selected for this study, The Oregon Shakespeare

Festival, The Stratford Shakespeare Festival, The Royal Shakespeare Company,

Shakespeare & Company, Shakespeare‘s Globe, and The American Shakespeare Center had Elizabethan-inspired thrust stages. Moreover, these companies had artistic missions/visions that sought to revitalize Shakespeare‘s plays for modern audiences.

The directors at each of these companies, however, used widely different stagecraft techniques. Together, these six theatre companies revealed a variety of ways

Shakespeare‘s ―original‖ theatre had been interpreted in the modern theatre, both in performance and in rehearsal.

Because this dissertation attempts to compare the working practices of the six different theatre companies, the chief method of information gathering was through on- site interviews with actors, coaches, artistic directors, and company managers. These theatre artists were asked a set of questions (see Appendix A). The questions were designed to prompt each interviewee‘s qualitative analysis of the process of rehearsal, the training practices, the company‘s attempt to institute ensemble principles, and the use of

23 the stage. Most actors are quoted anonymously so as to keep their remarks from adversely affecting their positions within the company. Each of these interviews was recorded via digital voice recorder as well as handwritten notes.

The information provided in the interviews was contextualized in several ways.

First, the demographic information and career paths of the interviewees helped reveal their own priorities for their employment within a company. For instance, younger actors tended to be more positive and enthusiastic for elements of training and ensemble while more established actors were often less likely to express appreciation for such resources, unless these actors previously had worked with coaches employed by the theatre company. Second, responses were compared to each other in order to show ideas shared consistently among the company. Third, the interviewees‘ responses were compared to marketing and publicity statements by the company to compare the practice with the image of the theatre. Fourth, responses were compared to secondary accounts of the company to compare the practices from 2011-2012 to the history of the company in order to provide a sense of continuity or change from the founding practices. The secondary sources consulted included biographies of founders and histories of the theatre companies, theatre programs and actors‘ blogs, as well as stage manager rehearsal notes and daily schedules. Together, these accounts provided multiple qualitative analyses of the practices of the theatre companies which, when taken together, revealed a variety of opinion regarding the ideal vision and best practices of the theatre company and the frustrations to achieving those aims.

Observations of performance and rehearsal provided case studies for the practices of these theatre companies. Because each theatre had at least one Elizabethan-inspired

24 thrust stage, the differences in stagecraft could be marked through an analysis of performances attended by the author. The analysis of the stagecraft used in these performances derived from the author‘s personal experience performing and studying

Shakespeare‘s stagecraft at the American Shakespeare Center‘s Blackfrairs Playhouse.

Observations of rehearsal were recorded as descriptive case studies. In general, the author was allowed to sit in the rehearsal room whenever the full company was called in order to observe the process of rehearsal. The selection of moments to be included in the sections on rehearsal reflected the author‘s selection of illustrative examples that contextualized or demonstrated earlier comments of the previous sections of the chapter.

Due to the timing of the author‘s visit to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, no plays were in rehearsal to be observed. At Shakespeare‘s Globe, the director expressly forbade observations of rehearsals during the time the author was in residence. Therefore, the four accounts of rehearsal are to be compared not only to each other, but to the content of the chapter in which they are contained.

Chapter Breakdown

Each chapter analyzes the practices of a separate Shakespeare company from extensive on-site observations and previously published (and unpublished) materials.

Each chapter is divided into five sections: ―Legacy and Continuity‖ ―Stages and

Stagecraft,‖ ―Actor Training and Coaching,‖ ―Ensemble Acting,‖ and ―Rehearsal

Practices.‖ These five sections examine how the actors and directors of each company interpreted Shakespeare‘s plays and conventions of Shakespeare‘s playhouse and how those interpretations influenced their rehearsal, stagecraft, and management practices.

25 The first section, ―Legacy and Continuity‖ compares the artistic vision of the company at its founding to the artistic vision in 2011. The major investigative question of this section is, ―did the re-staging of Shakespeare's plays introduce new stagecraft and managerial strategies to six ‗non-profit‘ theatre companies?‖ These six theatres distanced themselves from rehearsal and management practices of the commercial theatre through a dedication to Shakespeare‘s plays and stagecraft. Although these six companies used

Shakespeare‘s plays and the conventions of his original theatres as a means to challenge naturalistic acting and realistic stagecraft, they also feared earning the label of ―museum theatre.‖ Through the commissioning of new plays, postmodern casting policies, and the adoption of a variety of stagecraft practices, these companies balanced their dedication to

Shakespeare‘s plays and their actors and audiences.

The section ―Stages and Stagecraft‖ examines how Shakespeare‘s staging conventions and Elizabethan-inspired stages influenced actors, directors and designers.

The major investigative question of this section is, ―to what degree did those directors who re-staged Shakespeare's plays in the six ‗non-profit‘ theatre companies integrate the audience in the performance?‖ Each of the six companies had at least one theatre design inspired by one of Shakespeare‘s original playhouses.29 The Elizabethan-inspired stages encouraged a direct relationship between the actors and audience, but in practice, the

Elizabethan-inspired stages did not force directors or actors to integrate the audience into the performance. Theatres such as Shakespeare‘s Globe and the American Shakespeare

Center‘s Blackfrairs Playhouse attempted to recreate the conditions of early modern performance, so they encouraged the actors to address the audience frequently and to

29 Typically, the Globe inspired many reconstructions, but the Blackfriars, the Rose, and the Fortune theatres also inspired the stages. 26 incorporate their reactions in the show. The actor training, which was developed at

Shakespeare & Company, incorporated direct audience address, and the shows reflected this training. Directors at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, the Royal Shakespeare

Company, and The Oregon Shakespeare Festival used significant design elements that often, but not always, limited the degree to which the plays incorporated the audience.

The next section ―Actor Training and Coaches,‖ examines formal and informal programs for technique development that these six companies offered to the actors. The major investigative question of this section is, ―how important was the coaching of actors in the six ‗non-profit‘ theatre companies to stimulate rewarding rehearsals, quality performances, and actor loyalty to the company?‖ Training programs and coach use varied among the six companies. The Stratford Shakespeare Festival offered conservatory-style training for young actors as well as voice and movement coaches during rehearsals. The Royal Shakespeare Company, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Shakespeare‘s Globe had a combination of workshops and coaching staff to foster actors‘ skills. Shakespeare & Company offered professional actor training workshops that were separate from rehearsals. The American Shakespeare Center offered little training aside from the performance experience of the actors. Actor training programs and coaches in these six companies helped actors overcome the vocal and physical challenges of their stages and the deficiencies in contemporary actor training. Some actors and directors remained wary of acting systems or conflicting direction offered by teachers, but most actors, especially young actors, greatly appreciated the coaches and the technical and emotional support they offered.

27 The section on ―Ensemble Acting‖30 reveals the association between the practices of working in a repertory theatre and the dedication to Shakespeare‘s text. The major investigative question of this section is, ―was ‗ensemble acting‘ in the six ‗non-profit‘ theatre companies detrimental to the professional and emotional well-being of the actors?‖ Multiple-month contracts and the geographic isolation of five of these six companies,31 posed significant challenges to the professional well-being of actors. To attract talented actors, the six companies often offered rehearsal and management practices that emphasized the input of the actors and respect for their artistic opinions.

Each of the six theatres produced plays in repertory where actors played multiple roles.

The plays of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan-inspired stages provided actors with performance experiences unlike those available in much of the commercial theatre. In the best circumstances, the artistic leadership shared with the actors the commitment to reinvigorate Shakespeare in performance. The actors who formed strong ensembles were capable of efficient rehearsals and performances worthy of critical and popular approbation. The section shows the how the task of producing a large repertory of plays could increase the cohesion of an ensemble and emotional well-being of the actors in order to offset professional disadvantages.

30 The eight characteristics of ensemble, according to John Wilk, are: 1) A permanent company of actors, 2) A consistency in acting style, 3) A commitment of the actors to the ideal, 4) Equality in and cooperation among members of the acting company, 5) Unified productions created either by a particular playwright or by the company‘s regisseur, 6) Financial security to allow growth and experimentation toward the furthering of the art, 7) Often, but not always, a no-star system of acting whereby small and large roles alike are shared by all in the acting company, 8) An overriding ideal often based on the societal factors of the company‘s environment and engendered by the company‘s management. None of the six companies upheld all of these principles. The acting company, nonetheless, was often referred to as the ―ensemble‖ in many of the theatre companies. John R. Wilk. The Creation of an Ensemble: The First Years of the American Conservatory Theatre. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986. 31 Shakespeare‘s Globe, located in London, can more easily attract agents, reviewers, and casting directors who are beneficial to the actors‘ careers. 28 The final section, ―Rehearsal Practices‖ gives case-study examples of the rehearsal methods used by four of these theatre companies. The major investigative question of this section is, ―to what degree were rehearsal patterns in the six ‗non-profit‘ theatre companies influenced by the relationship established between actor and audiences during performance?‖ The Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare & Company, the

Stratford Shakespeare Festival, and the American Shakespeare Center, all adopted collaborative rehearsal methods, but the set designs for the stage, the available budget, and the duration of the rehearsal period influenced the level and quality of the collaboration. The relationship between director and actors in rehearsal often reflected the relationship between actors and audiences in performance. The directors at

Shakespeare‘s Globe did not allow observations of rehearsals, and the time and budgetary concerns prevented the observation of rehearsals at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Each of the companies in this study sought to reach positioned Shakespeare, in varying degrees, as both an Elizabethan and a contemporary theatre artist. In order to do so, they often established systems of management and rehearsal that brought about innovation in styles of theatrical performance. Each chapter details a specific theatre company dedicated to the production of Shakespeare‘s plays, its stages and stagecraft, and the company management model to suggest how Shakespeare‘s plays and theatre make fundamental changes to the composition and artistry of the theatre artists involved.

29 Table 1: Timeline of Shakespeare Companies

Oregon Stratford Royal Shakespeare Shakespeare & Shakespeare’s American Year Shakespeare Shakespeare Festival Company Company Globe Shakespeare Festival Center Location Ashland, OR, USA Stratford, ON, Canada Stratford-upon- Lenox, MA, USA London, UK Staunton, VA, USA Avon, Warwickshire, UK 1879 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (SMT) opens --§§§§-- 1932 New Shakespeare Memorial theatre opens

30 --§§§§--

1935 Elizabethan Stage built in Chautauqua shell, Merchant of Venice plays, Angus Bowmer Artistic Director 1936 1937 OSF incorporated --§§§§-- 1941-46 OSF closes during WWII 1947 Redesigned Elizabethan Stage opens 1948 Anthony Quayle becomes Artistic Director of SMT 1949 1950

30 Continued

Table 1, Continued Oregon Shakespeare Stratford Shakespeare Royal Shakespeare Shakespeare & Shakespeare‘s Globe American Year Festival Festival Company Company Shakespeare Center 1951

1952 SSF Foundation incorporated; Tyrone Guthrie appointed Artistic Director; Tanya Moiseiwitsch designs Festival Stage 1953 Inaugural performance season 1954 31 1955 Michael Langham becomes Artistic Director 1956 1957 Permanent Festival Theatre built 1958 Peter Hall becomes Artistic Director; Aldwych Theatre leased in London 1959 New Elizabethan Stage opens, patterned on the 1599 Fortune Theatre 1960 1961 Name changes to Royal Shakespeare Theatre; Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) founded 31 Continued

Table 1, Continued Oregon Shakespeare Stratford Shakespeare Royal Shakespeare Shakespeare & Shakespeare‘s Globe American Year Festival Festival Company Company Shakespeare Center 1962 Langham and The Studio Founded Moiseiwitsch make by Peter Hall, Peter major alterations to Brook, and Michel Festival Theatre stage Saint Denis 1963 1964 Avon Theatre opens 1965 The Studio ends Tina Packer becomes an ―associate artist‖ at the RSC 1966

32 1967 Jean Gascon becomes

Executive director, John Hirsch becomes Associate Artistic Director 1968 Trevor Nunn becomes Artistic Director 1969 Jean Gascon becomes sole Artistic Director 1970 Angus Bowmer Sam Wannamaker Theatre opens, founds the season extends to Shakespeare Globe Spring and Fall Trust and International Shakespeare Globe Centre 1971 Jerry Turner The Third Stage built appointed Producing (later named the Tom Director Patterson theatre) 1972

32 Continued

Table 1, Continued Oregon Shakespeare Stratford Shakespeare Royal Shakespeare Shakespeare & Shakespeare‘s Globe American Year Festival Festival Company Company Shakespeare Center 1973 Ford Foundation Grant allows Tina Packer, Kristin Linklater, John Barton, John Broome, and B H Barry to train a group of actors for a performance 1974 Robin Phillips The Other Place becomes Artistic created from former

Director storage/rehearsal 33

room

1975 Festival Theatre redesigned; Phillips founds the first ―Young Company‖ 1976 1977 Black Swan Theatre opens 1978 Shakespeare & Company Founded in residency at The Mount; Tina Packer Artistic Director 1979 1980 Artistic Directorate of Pam Brighton, Martha Henry, Urjo Kareda and Peter Moss succeed Robin Phillips

33 Continued

Table 1, Continued Oregon Shakespeare Stratford Shakespeare Royal Shakespeare Shakespeare & Shakespeare‘s Globe American Year Festival Festival Company Company Shakespeare Center 1981 John Hirsch appointed sole Artistic Director 1983 Tony Award for Extensive renovations ―outstanding to the Third Stage achievement in (later named the Tom regional theatre‖ Patterson theatre) 1984 1985 John Neville appointed Artistic Director 1986 Terry Hands becomes Artistic

Director; Swan 34

theatre created in

shell of 1879 theatre 1987 1988 OSF Portland Ralph Alan Cohen established and Jim Warrne found Shenandoah Shakespeare Express 1989 David William appointed Artistic Director 1990 SSE performs at the Shakespeare Association of America 1991 The Third Stage Adrian Noble renamed Tom becomes Artistic Patterson Theatre Director; The Other Place redesigned as purpose-built theatre 1992 Allen Pavilion of SSE tours to Elizabethan Theatre Edinburgh Festival completed Continued 34

Table 1, Continued Oregon Shakespeare Stratford Shakespeare Royal Shakespeare Shakespeare & Shakespeare‘s Globe American Year Festival Festival Company Company Shakespeare Center 1993 Richard Monette becomes Artistic Director 1994 OSF Portland becomes independent, changed named to Portland Center Stage 1995 Libby Appel named Artistic Director

1996 35

1997 Festival Theatre Globe Opens; Mark redesigned with 180° Rylance appointed audience arc Artistic Director 1998 1999 Stratford Festival Conservatory for Classical Theatre Training (later the Birmingham Conservatory) founded 2000 70 Kemble Street purchased 2001 RSC leaves the Founder‘s Theatre Blackfriars Barbican built Playhouse opens; Blackfriars conference founded 2002 Black Swan Theatre The Studio Theatre Rose Footprint Stage closed, New Theatre created built built

35 Continued Table 1, Continued Oregon Shakespeare Stratford Shakespeare Royal Shakespeare Shakespeare & Shakespeare‘s Globe American Year Festival Festival Company Company Shakespeare Center 2003 Michael Boyd becomes Artistic Director 2004 2005 Name changed to American Shakespeare Center; Actors Renaissance Season begins 2006 Antoni Cimolino Courtyard Theatre Dominic Dromgoole becomes General opens becomes Artistic 36 Director Director 2007 Marti Maraden, Des RST & Swan McAnuff and Don Theatre close for re- Shipley appointed construction Artistic Co-Directors 2008 Bill Rauch becomes Des McAnuff becomes Elayne P Bernstein Artistic Director; sole Artistic Director; Theatre built Green Show simulcast of Caesar highlights diverse and Cleopatra appears cultural and artistic in Cineplexes 2009 traditions Michael Langham Tony Simotes workshop for Classical becomes Artistic Theatre Direction Director founded 2010 2011 Redesigned RST & Planning phase Swan Theatre begins for indoor reopen Jacobean Theatre 2012 Antoni Cimolino Gregory Doran appointed Artistic appointed Artistic Director Director

36

Chapter 2: The Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Legacy and Continuity

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, began in 1935. The

Festival is located far from the closest metropolitan centers, Portland (280 miles away) and San Francisco (350 miles away). This distance allowed the theatre to develop systems of training, ensemble and stagecraft that can differ from the practices of the professional theatre elsewhere.

The theatre initially challenged stagecraft and design practices through an attempt to recreate Shakespeare‘s original theatre. Angus Bowmer founded the festival to practice the Elizabethan staging conventions he learned from his teacher Ben Iden Payne, a key collaborator with and follower of William Poel. The success of this style of production, and the drawing power of Shakespeare, allowed the company to succeed with mostly student actors for many of its beginning years. As the Oregon Shakespeare

Festival grew through its seventy-five year history the company broadened its repertory and mission to fulfill many of the aims of the regional theatre movement, including the production of contemporary plays and the maintenance of a steady ensemble of actors. In

2011, the theatre extended its mission to represent a distinctly American regional theatre, not just one dedicated to Shakespeare. Through stages that emphasized the actor more than the technical effects, casting policies that sought to reflect the rich cultural heritage

37 of the United States, and the commissioning of new plays written for the relatively stable acting company, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival attracted artists from throughout the

United States who were interested in an alternative to the casting, repertory, and performance practices of the commercial theatre. Because Shakespeare‘s stage and their performances built a solid foundation, the Festival enjoyed the ability to extend its mission beyond a historical revival by responding to the cultural necessities of its present.

Angus Bowmer founded the Oregon Shakespeare Festival four years after he came to Ashland in 1931 to teach theatre at the Southern Oregon Normal School, later the

Southern Oregon University.32 In his autobiography, he states that ―B. Iden Payne was the one who directly inspired the early attempts to recreate productions of Shakespeare‘s plays on the first of the Ashland Elizabethan-type stages.‖33 He was ―exhilarated‖ by

Payne‘s ―insistence upon a smooth rapidity in tempo and his encouragement of actors to contact the audience directly, especially in the soliloquies and asides.‖34 Since this style of theatre required little start-up capital, by 1935 he envisioned a way to use the modest resources of the town ―to achieve something of significance in American theatre.‖35 He set out to create a theatrical event inspired by Payne‘s teaching, establishing an ethos that

―the Festival has always been operated on the principle that the economic value of art, no matter how great, is short lived unless the aesthetic values are the result of skill and integrity.‖36 The festival‘s rigorous historical practices provided the ―integrity‖ of the enterprise with lectures and recreations of Elizabethan stages, and the ―skill‖ remained

32 Angus Bowmer, As I remember, Adam: An Autobiography of a Festival (Ashland, OR: The Oregon Shakespeare Festival Association, 1975), 37. 33 Bowmer, Autobiography, 25. 34 Bowmer, Autobiography,30. 35 Bowmer, Autobiography,40. 36 Bowmer, Autobiography,84. 38 committed to attracting professional actors and directors and training less-experienced company members.

As an academic theatre artist from the Pacific Northwest, he carried few assumptions of the professional theatre with him. The initial seasons reflected a chance to put in practice the teachings of Ben Iden Payne. Bowmer noticed the similarities between the shell of a local Chautauqua dome and the shape of the Hollar drawing of The

Globe, and found its bare platform advantageous for the production of Shakespeare‘s plays in Payne‘s style.37 In the first festival season he directed and acted in two plays for

Ashland‘s fourth of July celebrations. He revived The Merchant of Venice (playing

Shylock) from a spring production at the Normal School and Twelfth Night (playing Sir

Toby Belch) with Elizabethan costumes, a unit set, and a lively tempo. Jerry Turner, artistic director from 1971-1991, wrote: ―The basic idea of production on the Elizabethan stage is both startling and simple: to treat the space of the theatre as a tool for performance rather than an illusion of reality. The playing space is neutral; the words define its locale.‖38 This simple idea, combined with the drawing power of Shakespeare and support from actors and town members alike helped found this long-lived company.

In these beginning years, Bowmer was open to experimentation because the stakes of the enterprise were so low. ―We knew,‖ he wrote, ―that being at the bottom we had nothing to lose by experiment.‖39 Some of the more daring experiments included following Payne‘s argument and eliminating intermissions despite the conventional wisdom that audiences would never accept a full play without one. After the first few

37 Bowmer, Autobiography, 9. 38Jerry Turner, epilogue to As I remember, Adam: An Autobiography of a Festival (Ashland, OR: The Oregon Shakespeare Festival Association, 1975). 39 Bowmer, Autobiography, 76. 39 seasons, Bowmer took a sabbatical and travelled through America and Europe. When he came to Stratford-upon-Avon his former teacher B. Iden Payne noted the advantage of starting a theatre removed from theatre artists with different assumptions of how

Shakespeare should be played:

Angus, you have had more success with your Elizabethan venture than I

have….In my first years here [at Stratford-upon-Avon] , they allowed me to do

some of my productions in the Elizabethan manner. This year they are not

allowing me to do any in that manner.

The Elizabethan stage and the heavy sway Bowmer had over the artistic practices of the company defied the conventional wisdom of prior theatre practices. Bowmer also noted that Payne used his dedication to producing plays in the Elizabethan manner to ―fight to be free from the artistic meddling of the Stratford Board of Directors.‖ 40 Payne was later successful in the separating of managerial and aesthetic concerns at the Memorial

Shakespeare Theatre, and Bowmer reflected this practice as the Oregon Shakespeare

Festival hired separate leaders for artistic direction and production management.

The artistic freedom Bowmer instituted by separating the powers of management from the aesthetic allowed him to challenge, successfully, the prevailing visual modes of theatre. After attending lectures at Stanford, he used the theories of Aristotle to justify his own interest in the primacy on action, character, and diction: all elements essential to

Elizabethan productions. He rejected current trends in production as he wrote, ―reaching outside the script for elements of music and spectacle, such as did Peter Brook and the late Tyrone Guthrie, has no place in a theatre that has a reputation for producing

40 Payne, quoted in Bowmer, Autobiography,129. 40 Shakespeare on an Elizabethan stage‖41 The resulting simplicity of staging also kept the production costs relatively low throughout the Depression. Because his productions reflected his lively imaginings of the Elizabethan performance, Bowmer invited the audience to imagine the theatre of the past as superior to current techniques for the plays of Shakespeare.

In 2011, artistic director Bill Rauch emphasized both continuity with

Shakespeare‘s past and contemporaneity with the current American theatre. The company used Shakespeare‘s plays and theatres to innovate in production styles, to highlight American actors of diverse cultural heritages, and to inspire new plays based on the methods of Shakespeare. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival adopted an explicit commitment to this goal in the mission statement: ―Inspired by Shakespeare‘s work and the cultural richness of the United States, we reveal our collective humanity through illuminating interpretations of new and classic plays, deepened by the kaleidoscope of rotating repertory.‖42 One of the large-scope projects that the theatre committed to was

American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle. Alison Carey,43 the director of the project, likened Shakespeare‘s interest in dramatizing and commemorating English history to their own drive to dramatize American history. In 2008, the Oregon

Shakespeare Festival began producing the first of ―37 new plays sprung from a moment of change, inspiration or conflict in United States history.‖44 Starting in 2008, plays began to be commissioned from various established and developing American

41 Bowmer, Autobiography,184. 42―Our mission,‖ The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Accessed July 28, 2012, http://www.osfashland.org/about/index.aspx. 43 Alison Carey was cofounder of Cornerstone Theater Company with Bill Rauch, where they balanced new play development and productions of canonical works. 44―American Revolutions,‖ The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Accessed July 28, 2012, http://www.osfashland.org/about/moreart/us_history.aspx. 41 playwrights.45 Through the creation of thirty-seven new plays, the Oregon Shakespeare

Festival hoped to establish a new canon of work that was significant to the American theatre in the same way Shakespeare‘s history plays were significant to his English audience.

The United States History Cycle paid homage to Shakespeare‘s influence by producing an equal number of plays as appear in Shakespeare‘s canon, thirty-seven, but the content of the plays reflected their effort to commemorate American history and challenge contemporary stagecraft. For instance, in 2012, the Oregon Shakespeare

Festival produced Party People, a play about the rise of the Black Panther Party in the

United States. This collaboratively-written play drew on a variety of performance traditions including ―theatre, poetry, jazz, blues, hip-hop, boleros and salsa.‖46

Alternately, The United States History Cycle substantiated the new playwrights by likening their work to Shakespeare‘s. The marketing for Robert Schenkkan‘s play, All the Way, legitimated him as a contemporary theatre artist by announcing his Pulitzer prize. In addition to this contemporary authority, the marketing appealed to

Shakespeare‘s authority by proclaiming the play to be ―Right out of Shakespeare‘s playbook‖ and calling the main character Lyndon Baines Johnson ―a Shakespearean figure of towering ambition and appetite.‖47 The trend for diversity of stagecraft and story and authority in American culture influenced the practices of American theatre, through the production of Shakespeare‘s plays and new plays alike.

45 Other theatres, such as Shakespeare & Company and The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, have a similar commitment to producing plays that emphasize American subject matter. 46 ―Party People,‖ The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, accessed August 6, 2010, http://www.osfashland.org/browse/production.aspx?prod=241. 47 ―All the Way,‖ The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, accessed August 6, 2012, http://www.osfashland.org/browse/production.aspx?prod=238. 42 A similar duality appeared in the repertory that included experimental new shows and established plays. Rauch emphasized the importance of new plays, but he also included musicals into the Oregon Shakespeare Festival‘s repertory. In addition to All the Way and Party People the Oregon Shakespeare Festival had two additional world premiers (Mary Zimmerman‘s White Snake and Alison Carey‘s The Very Merry Wives of

Windsor, Iowa), and one adaptation by Bill Rauch and Tracey Young,

Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella, a play that melds together three similarly-structured plays to establish connections between such different plays. The experiment with so many unknown plays was enabled by the Festival‘s reputation for Shakespeare and by the popularity of the musicals introduced into the season. In the 2011 season, The Pirates of

Penzance achieved over one hundred percent capacity in the Elizabethan stage, the largest theatre, averaging 1,197 audience members in 43 shows. Premiers also did quite well in smaller venues. In 2011 The Language Archive and Ghost Light respectively achieved 92% and 91% percent capacity with an average of 251 audience members per show.

Shakespeare‘s plays that were the staple of the company‘s repertory seemed to fare less well than other plays. Rauch‘s critically-acclaimed production of Measure for

Measure reached 77% capacity in the Angus Bowmer Theatre, playing to an average of

457 audience members per performance. In the Elizabethan theatre, Henry IV, Part Two reached 54% capacity, playing to 638 audience members per performance. Love’s

Labour’s Lost, also in the Elizabethan theatre, fared better with 83% capacity and 982 audience members per performance. Julius Caesar, in the New Theatre, achieved 94% capacity, but averaged only 337 audience members per show. Many factors influenced

43 these results, such as the availability and willingness of school groups to attend Julius

Caesar but not Measure for Measure due to the sexual themes in the latter. These results also reflected the preference for comedy over history. The performance quality also varied between the shows. However, the respectable attendance numbers in 2011, though slightly lower than 2010, reflected a steady audience base which returned year after year.48 The diverse repertory gave options for these visitors, and positive experiences with Shakespeare offered assurance that any play done by the acting company would be worthwhile.

Just as the repertory included a blend of Shakespeare and contemporary plays,

Bill Rauch‘s artistic vision blended the texts of Shakespeare and contemporary sensibilities in his stagecraft and casting. Instead of returning to Shakespeare‘s theatre to inspire the present, Rauch situated Shakespeare‘s text in recognizable contemporary settings, such as Southern California in Measure for Measure and the contemporary

Middle East in Troilus and Cressida. Instead of making the cast‘s cultural heritage and the production‘s setting subservient to the text of Shakespeare, Rauch sought to illuminate what these real communities were through the texts of Shakespeare. As part of this strategy, he encouraged actors to interpret what the texts meant to them personally and to offer suggestions in rehearsal by repeatedly questioning ―what is the story we are telling?‖49

48 The Oregon Shakespeare Festival prints ―Bard Scorecards‖ for the audience members to keep track of which Shakespeare plays they have seen. Since the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has produced each of Shakespeare‘s plays at least three times, it is likely that these are designed to encourage the ―completists‖ in the audience to come to lesser-known plays. 49 Anonymous (actor), interview by Andrew Blasenak, Ashland, OR, September 11, 2011. 44 This vision of producing Shakespeare‘s plays to reflect various American cultures requires that the Festival sacrifice some stability in the acting company for the new possibilities new actors bring to the company. From its early days, the festival has found that maintaining a core ensemble of talented actors was vital to the theatre‘s stability and growth. Under Rauch, the ensemble had to include actors from more diverse backgrounds in order to accomplish his goal of having an acting company that reflected

―the rich cultural heritage of the United States.‖50 This desire sprang from the value he found producing plays in underserved communities as founding artistic director of the

Cornerstone Theatre Company (1986-2006). Rauch explained:

I am moved to make plays with the majority of our population who claim they

have no stories to tell because I have learned that they always do. I am moved to

make plays with people who have often never even seen a play because everyone

is an artist, even if most of us have not had the opportunities and the privilege to

find our artistic voice.51

By setting plays in specific cultural settings, Rauch asks actors to emphasize their own cultural heritage and understanding of the actions and words of the play. Instead of color-blind casting, this enables a color-rich casting as actors are encouraged to embrace their own identities first and the words of Shakespeare second.

In addition to allowing specific settings for Shakespeare‘s plays, the diversity of the acting company allowed the company to produce plays that mostly-white companies could not perform, such as Lynn Nottage‘s Ruined (2010) and Carlyle Brown‘s The

50 This strategy of bringing canonical and new plays to American communities started in his work with the Cornerstone Theatre Company. 51 Bill Rauch, ―Bill Rauch, Cornerstone Theater Company,‖ Leadership for a Changing World , May 31, 2002, accessed November 15, 2012, http://www.leadershipforchange.org/talks/rauch/. 45 African Company Presents Richard III (2011). More importantly, this casting policy included actors who had been habitually excluded from the production of Shakespeare‘s plays. In addition to actors of all race and gender, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival also considers differently-abled actors like deaf actor Howie Seago who performed by using sign language which other characters translated verbally for the audience.52

The effect of the policy of adapting plays to racially identifiable cultures appeared in Rauch‘s 2011 production of Measure for Measure, set in southern California. In this production, the Latino/a actors mixed Shakespeare‘s lines in English with occasional

Spanish translations. A three-woman mariachi band from southern California provided live music. Instead of suggesting a setting, or keeping locales vague and flexible as in the original ideal of Angus Bowmer, Rauch emphasized the specific relevance of Latino-

American actors who were not asked to erase their cultural heritage to perform in the plays of Shakespeare; rather, they were asked to use their cultural heritage, in language, music, dress, to revitalize Shakespeare‘s text. Similarly, the actors in Rauch‘s 2010

Hamlet used rhythmic elements of hip-hop as a tool to speak Shakespeare‘s verse. The grafting of American art forms and social realities onto the texts of Shakespeare produced a hybrid product that could simultaneously legitimate American artistry and revitalize the texts of Shakespeare.

The balance between the two aims was precarious, but the price of failure with the texts of Shakespeare was less financially risky than with new plays. If a particular approach or technique failed for a play of Shakespeare, the artists were condemned for meddling with Shakespeare or getting away from ―the text.‖ Shakespeare‘s quality was

52 Michael W. Shurgot, ‖Breaking the Sound Barrier: Howie Seago and American Sign Language at Oregon Shakespeare Festival,‖ Shakespeare Bulletin, 30, no. 1 (2012): 21-36. 46 rarely doubted. Few complained if an approach successfully bridged the gap between

Shakespeare‘s play or original theatre and the modern audience. If a technique did manage to make Shakespeare‘s plays understandable and enjoyable, that technique, and the actors who previously developed it, was used for other shows. In this way, the 2010

Hip Hop Hamlet helped pave the way for the 2012 mixed influence Party People.53

Directors at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival also experimented with removing boundaries between the actors and their audience as well as the beginnings and ends of the theatrical experience. These ―prologues‖ and ―epilogues,‖ as dramaturg Lue Douthit called them,54 could expand the theatrical experience before the first line was spoken and beyond the final curtain. For the 2011 production of Julius Caesar in the New Theatre, banners with images of assassinated leaders decorated the posts outside the theatre and the lobby. Audiences walked past each banner with a positive description of the leader on one side and a negative description on the other. For instance, the banner bearing

Abraham Lincoln‘s likeness proclaimed ―tyrant‖ on one side and ―emancipator‖ on the other. Once inside, several actors taught the audience members when and how to chant for Caesar, and the play incorporated this chanting for Caesar‘s first entrance. Likewise, before The Imaginary Invalid in the Bowmer Theatre, the actor playing Guy busked with an accordion and displayed a sign that said ―LISTEN It may Change your WORLD

VIEW.‖55 The audience members were not told that this was part of the play. The audience recognized that the performance began as they entered the theatre later when

53 Claudia Alick, Associate Producer, served as Hip Hop dramaturg for Hamlet, and ran a number of initiatives in the Mixing Texts (2008-2011) and Nexthetics play development series that sought to combine the poetic rhythms of Shakespeare and those of contemporary American forms like Hip Hop. 54 Lue Douthit, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Ashland, OR. September 9, 2011. 55 Catherine Foster, ―Breaking Barriers,‖ Prologue [Magazine for members of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival], Summer 2011, 5. 47 Guy appeared on stage and complained to his sister about his inability to change the world through music. Likewise, the boundaries blurred between stage and town in the promenade production Willful which performed on several sites in and around the Oregon

Shakespeare Festival campus (Figure 1). These creative additions to the plays allowed actors to invent ways of augmenting and modernizing the theatrical experience for the canon of plays they typically produced.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has used its distance from centers of theatrical activity to challenge prevailing assumptions of the commercial theatre. Although Angus

Bowmer challenged contemporary practice through his dedication to Elizabethan staging principles, under Bill Rauch the Festival sought to lead theatrical practice through its staging, repertory, and casting in order to make the company reflect the ―rich cultural heritage of the United States.‖56 Innovations such as these, however, were the result of the past successes with the plays of Shakespeare. Shakespeare‘s plays continued to attract audiences, but the solid company of actors and its critical reputation allowed the

Festival artists to experiment with contemporary techniques, such as Hip Hop, and dramaturgical strategies as in Medea / Macbeth / Cinderella. By building upon the established success and the guaranteed draw of Shakespeare, the company affirmed its mission to reflect the cultures of the United States rather than imitate those of Elizabethan

England.

56 Bill Rauch, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Ashland, OR. September 8, 2011. 48

Figure 1: Oregon Shakespeare Festival campus, 2010, photo courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, photo by David Cooper.

Stages and Stagecraft

The design of the stages of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival similarly shifted from the Elizabethan playhouse to stages designed for contemporary plays. The

Elizabethan Stage encouraged the minimal design and fluid stagecraft that Angus

Bowmer envisioned for Shakespeare‘s play. With the addition of the Angus Bowmer

Theatre and the New Theatre, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival became capable of producing modern plays with more demanding design elements. The emphasis on the stagecraft of the Elizabethan era, however, including a unit set, the use of characters and costumes to define the fictional space, and a fluid transition between scenes still pervaded the production styles of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

49

Figure 2: The Elizabethan Stage, 1947, courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

The Elizabethan Stage (Figure 2) was the key to Angus Bowmer‘s envisioning of the theatrical event. Bowmer built the theatre within the shell of an old Chautauqua dome that included a raked auditorium and a bare platform stage. Bowmer wrote:

Our conception of this stage, borrowed from Mr. Payne, was based on the theory

that players at one time played in the open courtyards of Elizabethan inns. Thus

our stage represented one side of an inn yard, modified for the purpose of

presenting plays. The use of an architectural façade meant the spaces were non-

specific and could, for instance, be transformed by words only from a court

50 (identified by the presence of courtiers) to a forest: ‗So, this is the forest of

Arden.‘57

Fortuitously, ―the size of the old Chautauqua stage‖ Bowmer noted, ―was quite comparable to that of the Fortune, and consequently, by implication, Shakespeare‘s

Globe.‖58

The style of theatre Bowmer learned from B. Iden Payne required little more than a bare platform, so the unused Chautauqua stage was viable, and in fact preferable, for the creation of an Elizabethan type of theatre. Bowmer‘s stagecraft eschewed extensive scenery but used, instead, Elizabethan costumes and verbal cues to set scenes. Bowmer was trained, however, in a tradition of theatre-making that used electric lights.

Performances in the early years used makeshift lights, and lighting remained a key concern of Bowmer who argued ―the effectiveness of actors and setting during any moment in a play is enhanced, impaired, or even destroyed by the lighting.‖59 Instead of embracing the Elizabethan use of universal lighting or performing during the day to keep transitions fluid, the theatre took a loan in 1959 to buy a $50,000 custom-designed light board that allowed the lighting technician to fade between two light cues as fluidly as actors entered and left the stage.60 Although the Elizabethan Stage allowed Bowmer to discard the demand for large scenery, his stagecraft used state-of-the-art lighting equipment to focus the audience‘s attention (Figure 3).

57 Bowmer, As I Remember, 76. 58 Bowmer, 79. 59 Bowmer, 249. 60 Bowmer, Autobiography, 250. 51

Figure 3: The Elizabethan Stage, Love's Labour's Lost, 2011, courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Bowmer throughout his autobiography quotes B. Iden Payne‘s philosophy of the

Elizabethan style of theatre: ―That‘s not a subject to write about; it‘s something to be done.‖ What Bowmer did was create a style of theatre that allowed contemporary theatre artists to reinvent performance by reflecting what W.B. Worthen called the ―pastness‖ of the play. The costumes for the festival were Elizabethan.61 When marketing the redesign of the theatre in 1956, he claimed that the new façade, based on the Fortune contract, was

61 Bowmer had done several productions of Shakespeare‘s plays in modern dress when budget demanded it, but all the publicity photos and stage marketing reflect a preference for the Elizabethan dress. 52 ―authentic in every detail.‖62 The theatrical event created and delivered the expectation that the performance the audiences came to see was as close as possible Shakespeare‘s original play. This argument in publicity, however, only told part of the story of the actors who were energized by the quick pace and textual clarity demanded of the stage and the surrounding audience. Bowmer used the stagecraft of the Elizabethans as a means to train a company of actors who could continue to perform by making Shakespearean plays entertaining and understandable. The actors were committed to finding performance techniques that the stagecraft encouraged, even as the Elizabethan architecture and costumes rooted performances in an Elizabethan aesthetic.

The Elizabethan stage, however, also necessitated a break from some theatrical traditions which Bowmer learned through his many years of performing and directing.

When Frank Lambett-Smith‘s Hamlet attempted to upstage Bowmer‘s Polonius during the ―words, words, words,‖ scene, Bowmer was able to counteract this scene stealer because:

on the proscenium arch stage, the up-stage positions are more forceful than the

down-stage positions. The opposite is true of the open stage, for when far down

on the forestage one has the audience on three sides so that he may ‗cheat‘ by

appearing to talk to someone upstage while facing three-quarters of the

audience.63

By redesigning the stage and repositioning the audience, the upstaging trick of the star system did not work. The stage necessitated a larger group effort since each person took

62 Kathleen F. Leary and Amy E. Richard, Images of America: Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009), 52. 63 Bowmer, Autobiography, 170. 53 command of a portion of the audience. This lack of star focus reflected one of the core principles that Bowmer called ―The Oregon Shakespearean Festival Manifesto:‖ ―[The

Oregon Shakespearean Festival] should not be a theatre in which the talents of any one theatrical artist are exploited to the detriment of either the audience‘s enjoyment or the playwright‘s intent.‖64 The performance dynamic of shared focus determined by the

Elizabethan stage became a moral principle guiding the management of the company.

In 1970, when audience demand overwhelmed the seats available, the Oregon

Shakespeare Festival built the 600-seat Angus Bowmer theatre (Figure 4).65 The theatre design for the indoor Bowmer theatre was not to imitate the Elizabethan stage, but

―rather‖ Bowmer wrote, ―it was to represent the most modern ideas in theatre architecture‖ which, in consultation with Richard Hay was described as ―one in which the actors and the audience are in the same room.‖66 Hay‘s design maintained the stage shape of the Elizabethan theatre, but he gave the audience a steeper rake and set seats abutting the edge of the stage. In use, the indoor Bowmer theatre was ―a release-valve for more visually-oriented directors.‖67 Moreover, it was a release-valve for the festival to do more contemporary plays. Shakespeare was the dominant playwright for the

Elizabethan stage,68 but the indoor Bowmer theatre in 1970 ran a repertory of Jean

Anouilh‘s Antigone, Tom Stoppard‘s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom

Jones and Harvey Schmidt‘s The Fantasticks, Tennessee Williams‘ The Glass

Menagerie, Kaufman and Hart‘s You Can’t Take It with You, and the production of their

64 Bowmer, Autobiography, 159. 65 In 1966, the theatre had started using the Varsity, an unused movie house, to produce one non- Shakespeare play a year, but the theatre burned down in 1969. 66 Bowmer, Autobiography, 264. 67 Turner, Epilogue. 68 The 1970 season ran a repertory of Julius Caesar, Richard II, The Comedy of Errors and The Merchant of Venice. 54 first of Moliere‘s plays, The Imaginary Invalid. This repertory revealed a continuity with the ―any place and no place‖69 setting of the Elizabethan stage (Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern are Dead and The Fantasticks), as well as a break from this tradition in plays set in commodious living rooms (You Can’t Take It With You, The Imaginary

Invalid) and a blend of the two (The Glass Menagerie). The unit set designs for each these plays showed the continuity between Shakespeare‘s bare platform stage with the permanent stage house and the practices of several contemporary authors; therefore, the design and staging present no great challenge to the actors.

Figure 4: The Angus Bowmer Theatre, 2009, courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, photo by Jenny Graham.

69 The Elizabethan bare platform stage allows the audience to imagine any setting, but it has no clear physical or visual definition that constrains the audience‘s imagination. 55 The Bowmer theatre expanded the repertory to include noteworthy and canonical plays, but the Oregon Shakespeare Festival only started producing new plays and experimental works after building the small Black Swan theatre in 1977. With this smaller space, the festival could take the risk that unknown plays could fill a house merely on the reputation of the acting company. This strategy of testing new plays and experimental stagecraft was pursued at the New Theatre, built in 2002 (Figure 5). The

New Theatre, an arena stage with flexible seating for 270-360, shared little with the

Elizabethan theatre, but its flexibility provided for continued experimentation with actor- audience relationship, lightweight design, and imaginative staging possibilities.

Figure 5. The New Theatre, 2010, courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, photo by David Cooper.

With these three stages, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival produced plays from any time period. Shakespeare‘s plays were still central to the repertory and staging 56 conventions, but the blending of new plays with canonical plays, reflected the creative goals of the regional theatre movement. As the theatre grew, the diversity of plays became desirable to the artists and necessary for the repeat audience. In 2011, all of

Shakespeare‘s plays had been produced at least three times previously at the Oregon

Shakespeare Festival. Of the thirteen-play 2011 season, four plays were Shakespeare‘s:

Henry IV, Part 2 (Elizabethan Stage), Love’s Labor’s Lost (Elizabethan Stage), Julius

Caesar (New Theatre), and Measure for Measure (Bowmer Theatre). The season also included a new adaptation of Moliere‘s The Imaginary Invalid (Bowmer) by Oded Gross and Tracy Young. The majority of the other plays were twentieth-century plays set in

America, including To Kill A Mockingbird (Bowmer), August: Osage County (Bowmer),

The African Company Presents Richard III (Bowmer), and Ghost Light (New). The season also had Julia Cho‘s 2009 play The Language Archive (New) and one new, site specific play, Willful, which was devised by company actors with a director and designer.

Finally, The Pirates of Penzance (Elizabethan) held a key point in the season and furthered Bill Rauch‘s trend of regularly including musicals in the seasons.

Although directors were given free rein to direct as they see fit, none of the stages were designed with the storage space or stage area to run multiple large sets for a repertory of twelve plays. The limited design budget also encouraged the primacy of the actors, the text, and the audience. Several stages had performances of more than one show per day, the sets had to be dismantled, stored, and erected in about an hour.

However, under Libby Appel and Bill Rauch, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival hired more designers who had never worked there before. These designers often modified the

Elizabethan Stage though the addition or removal of architectural features. Usually,

57 designers and directors removed or altered the central balcony area since actors struggled to be seen or heard underneath the balcony and the appearance on the balcony was rarely a strong position because it was so far removed from the audience. The audiences that returned year after year were often delighted to see the transformation of the stage for each show, but as production manager Tom Knapp explained, ―the Elizabethan Stage is so overpowering that attempts to put a set in front of it fail.‖70 The Elizabethan Stage, though modified, was too large to be covered up or ignored.71

The 2011 productions of Love’s Labour’s Lost and Henry IV, Part 2 showed two different alterations that adapted the Elizabethan stage with contemporary design sensibilities. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, the platform stage was covered with synthetic grass, including raised banks with synthetic flowers. The stage space underneath the balcony was entirely enclosed with wood paneling, but the design included a sliding door that allowed access to the stage. A wooden ladder on the front of the balcony provided access to the upper playing area from the stage. The addition of props, chairs, tables, and other bric-a-brac transformed the bare platform stage from a place where imagination alone transformed the scene to a heavy indicator or the time, tone, and mood of the play.

The synthetic grass, combined with the 1950s-era costumes attempted to signify to the audience a specific message about the play through these design elements rather than adherence to the bare platform that could be changed through verbal cues.

The design for Henry IV, part 2 added an architectural feature to avoid the weak balcony areas: a retractable staircase the width of the center balcony. The staircase allowed many levels for blocking possibilities and created specific settings with minimal

70 Tom Knapp, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Ashland, OR. September 12, 2011. 71 Knapp, interview. 58 set changes. For instance, in the tavern, several actors were cast to play nameless prostitutes and customers, some on the upper stage, some below, which added ambiance and defined the stage space more definitely than the interaction written between Falstaff,

Mistress Quickly, Doll Tearsheet, Falstaff‘s cronies, and the prince. The designer and director also used many large props, including tables, chairs, and musical instruments to set this scene, and achieved the goal of filling the entire stage visually. The automated staircase and the use of actors to change the set, however, allowed the theatre to transform from scene to scene with minimal time for transitions, staying true to

Bowmer‘s original goal of quick pacing.

The Angus Bowmer theatre encouraged the unit-set approach but used many more resources for technical effects. Bill Rauch‘s Measure for Measure combined the use of a unit set as well as projections, props, and additional characters and actions to fill the stage visually (Figures 6 and 7). In each scene, the stage was filled with chairs, tables, desks, a podium and other props as well as background actors to indicate courtrooms, boardrooms, community centers, and brothels. In order to add depth to the stage, the back wall of the stage was a large clear window that opened on a runway where prisoners could be processed, prostitutes could proposition, and people in business attire could bustle. On the back wall, projections helped set a photo-realistic scene that could be transformed quickly. The technology of the digital age allowed directors to transform scenes visually as quickly as the staging conventions of the Elizabethan era once did verbally and imaginatively.72

72 The Imaginary Invalid was equally exuberant in the design of a 1960s Mod Parisian set with quirky modern art and sculptures. 59

Figure 6: Angus Bowmer Stage, Measure for Measure, 2011, courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, photo by David Cooper, René Millán, Brooke Parks; Musicians: Vaneza M. Calderón, Mary M. Alfaro, Susie Garcia.

Figure 7: Angus Bowmer Stage, Measure for Measure, 2011, courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, photo by David Cooper, featuring Anthony Heald, Brooke Parks, Stephanie Beatriz.

60 Julius Caesar in the New Theatre had the lightest technical support, but the director used this limitation to focus on the interaction between actor and audience with a few moments of spectacle. At the beginning of the show, actors spoke to the audience members as they walked in not portraying a fictive character need, but rather welcoming them into the theatre and establishing a rapport with them. As show time neared, each of the actors would lead a section of the audience in chants of ―Caesar, Caesar‖ in preparation for the arrival of the titular character played by long-time company actress

Vilma Silva (Figure 8). In this prologue, the actors also made clear through their improvised comments that they were in competition with each other to see who could make the loudest section. This practice set the scene in a state with an authoritative regime not through transforming the visual design of the theatre but through transforming the audience into a mindless, jingoistic populace. This strategy of incorporating the audience in the action of the performance blurred the boundaries between actor and audience and between the fictional world of the play and the reality of the audience in the theatre.73

The design for Julius Caesar resembled the bare staging of many black box productions, but with moments of vivid visual displays. For instance, the company staged Caesar‘s dream, an event discussed but not shown in Shakespeare‘s play, by unrolling a long roll of paper and having the conspirators dip their hands in a bucket of stage blood and wiping their red handprints on the paper. At the end of the dream the paper was taken away and the space returned to the table-made-bed upon which Caesar

73 Blurring the liminal space between the start of the performance and the event of going to the theatre could also be seen in the appearance of Guy, the musician character in The Imaginary Invalid busking outside of the theatre as the audience entered. 61 slept. The limitations of resources available and the actors‘ use of direct audience address resembled the Bowmer‘s initial goals for the Elizabethan stage. Unencumbered by extensive costume, set, or prop demands, the play moved at a clip and the actors became the main focus of the storytelling action. The talent and training of the actors and the close proximity and use of the audience led reviewers to call the rhetoric-heavy play

―attention-grabbing‖ and ―electric‖74 and ―thrilling.‖75

Figure 8: New Theatre, Julius Caesar, 2011, courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, photo by Jenny Graham.

74 Terry Teachout, ―The Glorious Tragedy of Julia Caesar,‖ The Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2011, accessed September 9, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903461304576524141482224466.html. 75 Tony Frankel, ―Regional Theater Review: Julius Caesar.” Stage and Cinema. September 12, 2011, accessed September 9, 2012, http://www.stageandcinema.com/2011/09/12/julius-caesar-osf/. 62 The stagecraft at Oregon Shakespeare Festival shared Bowmer‘s original vision in the quick scene changes and the use of a unit set modified by large props and costumed characters. Individual directors, however, differed in their stagecraft as they often provided visually specific settings rather than attempting to allow the audience‘s imagination and actor costumes to set the scenes. Actors and directors pointed to this variety as one of the strengths of the festival. This variety of stagecraft attracted actors and audiences who were eager to experience many different types of theatre. However, the difference in the stages and repertory of the theatres also required that actors and directors had the techniques and skills to negotiate any play or space that they used.

To conclude: the newer theatres helped bridge the gap between the stage and aesthetic of Shakespeare‘s early modern theatre and postmodern trends in theatrical production. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival did not constrain designers and directors to use only the Elizabethan stage for productions of Shakespeare‘s plays. The stagecraft practiced at the Bowmer and New Theatre vindicated approaches to Shakespeare‘s plays that reinvented or recycled the practices Angus Bowmer envisioned for the Elizabethan stage. Shakespeare became not a playwright reserved for a specific stage that communicated his historicity; rather, his plays were adapted and adjusted to the visions of each director. These approaches, because they worked with Shakespeare‘s plays, confirmed the value and continuity of approach with plays from any era. Since all spaces were designed with the aim of bringing actors and audiences into closer proximity, they equally required and rewarded new approaches to actor training and performance. This training enabled plays like Julius Caesar to bring the audience into the show, but the visions of directors still determined whether such an inclusion was necessary or desirable.

63

Actor Training and Coaching

Actor coaching and training had been a key part of the Oregon Shakespeare

Festival since its founding. Training was necessary throughout the thirties and forties because most members of the acting company were college students, many of whom had little actor training and experience with Shakespeare. In 2011 the company attracted actors from throughout the nation with skills necessary to perform their roles in repertory.

The attraction of professional actors increased, rather than decreased, the demand for coaches. Primarily, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival‘s staff of voice and text coaches helped actors to address the difficulties of Shakespeare‘s plays and the Elizabethan stage.

More importantly, the coaches, actors, and other training staff offered workshops and training opportunities in order to counterbalance the loss of educational experiences available in large metropolitan centers. The training at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, therefore, minimized the drawbacks of living in a remote location but maximized the satisfaction of artistic collaborators who wished to develop new techniques for performance and play development.

The system of repertory was necessary for the theatre‘s survival because out-of- town visitors comprised the majority of the audience.76 This repertory structure provided the diversity of the plays and stages, the length of rehearsals, and the duration of the season contributing to actors‘ training in performance techniques throughout the season.

Actors typically performed roles in two or three plays for nine months. Actors sometimes rehearsed several shows at the same time, alternating between texts and stages from day

76 ―Stay four days, see four plays‖ was the slogan the company used to attract audiences in the earlier years of the festival. Leary, Images, 37. 64 to day for six to eleven weeks, and through this time they received input from directors, voice coaches, and dramaturgs. This collaborative process gave actors the opportunity and responsibility to develop new roles in a variety of plays. The rigors of a multi-play repertory and the performance conditions of the outdoor Elizabethan stage, however, required actors to take care of their voices and bodies. Instead of a single director playing coach to the large casts necessary for Shakespeare‘s plays, as Bowmer did in the

1930s and 1940s, the size of the company required the assistance of a staff of dedicated coaches.

In 2011, The company hired two designated voice and text coaches, David and

Rebecca Clark Carey. Their credentials included teaching for the Royal Academy of

Dramatic Art (RADA) and the Central School for Speech and Drama, two major centers for classical acting training in England. These two coaches aided actors in individual sessions to develop greater specificity of language and emotion as well as vocal projection and health. They also taught accents and specialized voice use, including instances of shouting and screaming.

These voice coaches were able to track the needs and development of each actor because they attended all rehearsals for which they were available. Their presence and notes in rehearsal, they said in interview, helped to build a relationship with the actors so that they could have more productive coaching sessions. In the 2011 season they worked on nine of the eleven shows. Because they were the local authority on vocal matters in

Shakespearean plays and modern plays alike, actors often felt more comfortable with them in their role as supporters, rather than critics. Rather than teaching a system for voice use, the coaches responded to the needs of the actors and requests of the directors.

65 David Carey said, ―part of our job is to be able to fit into each individual director‘s production and mediate that for the company, but it is not our duty to impose a standard, but our responsibility to make sure the language is clear, understandable and audible.‖77

By keeping the focus on these technical, rather than interpretive, goals, they could support actors‘ growth without upsetting the director‘s vision.

In addition to show-oriented coaching, the company prioritized the development of the entire acting company, with the belief that actors who were challenged and learned at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival would be more likely to remain with the company in future seasons. Scott Kaiser, the director of company development,78 had the task of making sure the company of over one hundred actors was challenged in their casting and supported in rehearsals. A position such as his implied a radically different approach to the use of actors in a festival. Instead of treating actors as subcontractors who performed a single role for the company, the director of company development assured that each of the actors could develop skills to play multiple roles and serve the company in a variety of ways. Kaiser summarized the practicality of this ethos:

[We do not cast] everyone in roles they can just sit in and have an easy time of. If

you have a clown, and cast him as a clown year after year, you‘re going to burn

that actor out. [An actor may be terrific as] Trinculo [in The Tempest], but we

need to put him in that Arthur Miller play. You have that in school all the time.

You have faculty telling people about development. In the commercial world,

77 David Clark Carey, interview by Andrew Blasenak, August 31, 2011. 78 The position of director of company development has few parallels in theatre companies in America. Kaiser named Kenneth Washington of the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis as the only other person in the professional American theatre who had a similar position. Lyn Darnley of the Royal Shakespeare Company has a similar position. Regardless, such a position is rare. 66 that is very rare. We pay you to do what you do well. We don‘t care if you get

better. There are very few theatres who will pay you to improve. We do that

because when we improve our actors, (because of the repertory and resident

company) we reap the benefits.79

The attention to the development of the individual was a practical choice because it increased the skills of the actors who returned to the company for many years, but more importantly Kaiser‘s philosophy changed many actors‘ perceptions of the company.

Several, but not all, actors described the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as different from other employers because its management cared about the development of the actors and was dedicated to the improvement of their acting. The coaching resources provided served the future of the company as well as the current satisfaction of its actors.

This same philosophy of company development applied to individual skills such as clown, accents, dance, stage combat, Feldenkrais, and a variety of others. Instead of losing those skills to another company, the practice of hiring several of the same actors each season meant that those talents benefited future shows that used those actors. This had the added benefit of providing artistic and emotional satisfaction to the actors. For instance, long-term company actress Vilma Silva received a Lunt-Fontanne fellowship to study with Olympia Dukakis in a master class. Even though she had to leave the festival for a week, the company supported this opportunity since she would use that experience for her roles at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The time off also showed Silva that the company cared about her individual goals as much as the success of the shows. Because the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was committed to maintaining the most successful

79 Kaiser, Interview. 67 actors, such a practice ensured that no actor felt like he or she was missing out on their professional goals by being with the festival.

All the training provided sought to further individual growth, which contributed to the building of a collaborative artistic team capable of providing a diversity of views and opinions. The directors that Bill Rauch hired often had collaborative rehearsals that required the input of well-trained actors and coaches. In order to have the best results of creative collaboration, the company resisted having a single style or approach. As Scott

Kaiser noted: ―what‘s the point of seeking a highly diverse company of artists and then trying to unify all of their approaches. It‘s antithetical.‖80 Instead the training focused on each actor:

Every project, director concept, every actor, every acting experience is so

different, a company‘s uniform training approach [would be] too much of a

straight jacket. We work with one hundred individuals. Each is an individual

artist and we work with them that way. How they get mixed up is a matter of

direction.81

The purpose of training at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, therefore, sought to foster the technical confidence and artistic vision of each artist so that in rehearsals ideas could be proposed, considered, and challenged by artists who had developed their own artistic vision. Because several the actors felt that the company cared about them as artists, not just employees, they were more satisfied in their work and more willing to contribute to the company even when they did not receive the most enviable of roles.

80 Kaiser, interview. 81 Kaiser, interview. 68 This sort of reciprocity resulted from the remote locale of the Oregon Shakespeare

Festival. The lack of professional opportunities within three hundred miles, and the nine- month contracts encouraged actors to devote themselves to their rehearsals rather than career opportunities. The lack of resources near Ashland required that the Oregon

Shakespeare Festival provide all the opportunities for actor development. As Kaiser explained, ―We have to provide a lot for actors which actors would normally end up paying for themselves. [This is] not necessarily a negative, because it enables us to show how much we care by providing [training opportunities].‖82 By fulfilling the desires of the actors to train and grow, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival built a reputation that allowed them to attract the top talent among regional theatre actors.

In addition to the show-oriented coaches, the company also provided volunteer training opportunities for the actors to develop performance or physical skills. Although

Kaiser noted that training was so important to the company that he would have liked to make vocal warm-ups and classes mandatory, the conflict with union rules forced these additional classes to be voluntary. The training offered included daily warm-ups, technique classes, and weekly ateliers. Warm-ups prepare actors‘ voices and bodies for performance. To reduce the number of actors getting injured in the arduous repertory schedule, the company provided a personal trainer, a position that paid for itself in the reduced insurance costs. Weekly ateliers allowed the company to focus on novel skills and company issues, such as the ―Mixing Texts Artists‖ atelier of August 31, 2011 wherein Kaiser and hip-hop dramaturg Claudia Alick compared the verse styles of

Shakespeare and rhyme strategies of contemporary hip-hop artists. The ateliers also

82 Kaiser, interview. 69 offered actors the ability to teach their skills to each other, ranging from stage movement to meditation to scansion, so that they developed as teaching artists as well.

The coaching staff also helped articulate the preferences between artistic directors. Since Bill Rauch preferred Shakespeare‘s speech to sound like colloquial

American speech, actors adapted from the more formal verse speaking and articulation of former artistic director Libby Appel. Scott Kaiser made a memo that articulated the preferences of the new artistic director so that long-term company actors could change their approaches to reflect the Rauch‘s eclectic American aesthetic and continue to get hired.83

Finally, actors, especially the young actors in the company developed their performance skills and knowledge of Shakespeare by becoming teaching artists in the

Oregon Shakespeare Festival‘s School Visit Program. Founded in 1971, this off-season employment allowed the company to keep actors employed over the winter rather than losing their talents to another company. The program also gave actors more performance opportunities with the texts of Shakespeare for a very demanding audience: students. As teaching artists, they gained a stronger understanding of Shakespeare‘s plays and the local audience members. Further, these young actors were given leadership positions in the classroom that allowed them to encounter ideas on tour or in a classroom discussion that they could later contribute to rehearsal. As with all training opportunities in the company, this teaching allowed actors to solidify their ideas and inspirations so that they could collaborate in the rehearsals.

83 Some changes included the embracing of regionalisms, the elimination of emphasis on liquid U‘s, and other verse preferences that emphasize the actors‘ natural or habitual speaking rather than any formal speech. 70 Each of the training opportunities served the dual aims of improving the actors‘ performance skills and increasing the satisfaction of actors far removed from other theatrical resources. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival cannot compete financially or professionally with the money or opportunity available in metropolitan centers of the entertainment industry like Los Angeles or New York. Instead, these training and coaching programs allowed some actors to believe that their talents were developed and appreciated throughout their contract. Although not all actors received the same benefit or equal enjoyment, the presence of the training programs demonstrated a concern for the well-being of the actors rather than a sole dedication to the production of shows.

Ensemble Acting

When Bowmer founded the company, he avoided the star system in favor of an acting company that shared the responsibility and success of the Elizabethan-inspired theatre. Bowmer even went so far as to imply that the seasons William Ball spent with the company in 1951 inspired ―the shaping of the [American Conservatory Theatre] repertory company,‖84 which introduced many actors to the virtues and challenges of ensemble acting. In 2011, several of the actors either graduated from or were influenced by the workings of the American Conservatory Theatre, where they were taught principles of ensemble in a repertory schedule. William Ball wrote, ―A theatre company that is dedicated to the health of the actors is likely to produce the best possible theatre.‖85 Many actors remarked that the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was one of the

84 Bowmer, Autobiography, 211. 85 John R. Wilk, The Creation of an Ensemble: The First Years of the American Conservatory Theatre (Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1986), 145. 71 last theatres in the nation to maintain such a dedication to ensemble acting. The theoretical dedication to ensemble acting, however, was only one way in which actors were incorporated into the artistic and management practices of the company. Through a dedication to collaborative rehearsals, the inclusion of actors in the artistic decisions of the company, and programs designed to overcome the professional disadvantages of the removed locale, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival sought to increase the professional and emotional well being of the actors in the company.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival involved actors in many aspects of the theatre company. Because the theatre began outside of commercial centers with amateur actors, the company developed without the benefit of star power. Artistic authority was earned and shared among the artists who returned to the festival for many years rather than those who had earned fame elsewhere and lent it to the festival. The dynamic arising from this core group of actors who dedicated their careers to benefit the Oregon Shakespeare

Festival encouraged collaboration in rehearsal and in management. Because the satisfaction of the actors was a primary concern for the artistic vision of the company, many programs, such as Boar‘s Head (play selection committee) and SHARES

(Shakespearean Actors Requiring Employment Soon) were established to reflect the value of the actors‘ artistic input and their need for employment. As the ensemble changed with the inclusion of actors from more and varied ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, these programs allowed the new actors to influence the company while helping older actors find employment elsewhere. Compared to other professional theatres, rehearsals and programs like these helped actors feel that their employers cared about their well-being.

72 The establishment of an ensemble mentality was present in the earliest years of the festival. All actors had technical as well performance duties. Some professional actors hired through ads in Theatre Arts came to the festival and remained for several years as they developed skills to benefit the festival. The responsibilities were shared.

The repertory structure and somewhat equitable distribution of roles meant that actors could lead in one play and then play a supporting role in another. The theatre could never be assured of attracting stars since it was so far removed from major cities. The actors who remained with the company learned to perform starring roles as well as supporting roles. Through challenging roles and a company-wide dedication to the Elizabethan- inspired stagecraft, actors who stayed stopped thinking of themselves as employees of the festival and started thinking of themselves as members of a company. They became more willing to make personal sacrifices for the benefit of the theatre. The growing reputation of the festival, however, and the satisfaction of the core of actors attracted new actors who would take much smaller roles in order to be a part of the prestigious company. As Bowmer wrote, ―in the sixties the reputation of the Festival as a stepping stone to professional theatre became so widespread that talented young theatre people were willing to spend a season or two doing walk-on or bit parts or assisting in one or another of the technical departments in the hope of improving their positions the next season while learning from their co-workers.‖86

Fifty years later, the theatre had changed drastically in size, but its company members still sought to maintain the belief that they worked for the good of the festival.

However, this belief lasted only so long as they felt the festival worked for them. The

86 Bowmer, Autobiography, 253. 73 key way that the management, chiefly Scott Kaiser, attempted to satisfy the most talented actors was through casting actors in a satisfying distribution of roles year after year.

Ideally, the progression of top quality actors would mirror the experience of

Christine Albright. She came to the company in 2006 to perform supporting roles in Up and Cyrano. Her agent worried that she would sideline her career because The Oregon

Shakespeare Festival had a reputation for attracting and keeping actors. The next season she was offered Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and stayed. The next year she was challenged to portray a role outside of her type of the fiery ingénue: she was cast as Titania in A

Midsummer Night’s Dream. This casting was a vote of confidence from the artistic management that told her she was expected to expand her range. By her fourth season, she was cast as Judith Shakespeare in the original play Equivocation87 which received great acclaim and toured with the original cast to Seattle and Washington D.C. These challenges and variety of roles provided her an experience she would not be able to get if she had stayed in a major theatrical center playing, as she had previously.88

This breaking out of the typical practices of the commercial theatre was all the more important to actors of any non-white ethnicity who were likely to be typecast according to racial stereotypes. One actress noted that she felt a ―debt of gratitude‖ to the vote of confidence Bill Rauch and the artistic leadership gave her when they cast her in roles usually reserved for white actresses. The rarity of casting against stereotypes in the

87 A play like Equivocation is one of the benefits of the steady ensemble of actors. It was written with some of the company members in mind for certain roles. The play presents actors from Shakespeare‘s company, a group of people who live and work together extensively. When the play has been produced by other theatres by groups of actors brought together for 4-6 weeks, it has not enjoyed as much success. According to Tony Heald, long-time company actor, the OSF actors have the unspoken understanding and ego-deflating abilities of the fictional company of actors in the play. Although the play deals with Shakespeare‘s fictional history, the play‘s style is ideally suited to the OSF company of actors for which it was written. 88 Christine Albright, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Ashland, OR, September 8, 2011. 74 entertainment industry led her to commit to her work with more effort than she would at a

TV or film role, even though she was making in a week one-fifth of what she was paid in a day for television work. The casting practices and support of directors, coaches, and administration compensated, year after year, her personal choice to deny herself opportunities in entertainment industry.

Bill Rauch‘s vision to increase the racial diversity of the acting ensemble had the added benefit of expanding the repertory of plays that the company could feasibly perform.89 The race-neutral casting of Shakespeare‘s plays opened up many more possibilities for the kinds of shows the company could produce. For instance, in the 2011 season, the company produced The African Company Presents Richard III, a play about the nineteenth century company of black actors of the African Grove Theatre who had challenged a white theatre with the same repertory. The actors in the play, as with actors in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, found their own voice in the plays of Shakespeare that allowed for novel interpretations. Moreover, Rauch had gone beyond race-neutral casting to emphasize the cultural heritage of the actors in the production design and interpretation. Instead of erasing one‘s cultural identity to partake in the plays of

Shakespeare, Rauch divorced Shakespeare‘s plays from their doublet-and-hose origins to allow the voices and interpretations of contemporary actors to be heard.

As the theatre rose to national prominence, much of the casting took place in major acting centers like New York City and Los Angeles. The expectations of actors, and the warnings of their agents, in these major industrial centers directed the Oregon

Shakespeare Festival to seek actors with the talent and disposition for regional theatre

89 Another aspect of Bill Rauch‘s work with the Cornerstone Theatre Company was the use of the diversity of American cultures as a lens to understand canonical plays and create new ones. 75 work in centers such as Minneapolis, Seattle, San Francisco and Portland. Casting director Joy Dickinson remarked that in these regional centers there were ―terrific actors who we don‘t get to see as much [who are] not always battling with pilot season and agents who want to keep their clients in town.‖90 Although the duration of the contracts and geographical distance from major centers of the entertainment industry frustrated the recruiting efforts, these difficulties helped ensure that actors who joined the festival were committed to producing theatre in styles proposed by Angus Bowmer.

Although the company attracted actors who had careers in television, film, and theatre, it did not have any stars. Instead, the audience that came to the shows enjoyed watching the actors who had performed there many years. This enabled projects where actors could portray the same character over several consecutive plays. From 2010 to

2012, the company produced Henry IV, part 1, Henry IV, part 2, and concluded with

Henry V in 2012 with much the same cast of actors. The lack of stars also meant that the quality of all the actors must be higher since the name of actors with national or international fame could not be relied upon to bring audiences to the theatre. This commitment to company and community created regional audiences that invested their time and money in a company of actors who had invested their time and talents in the same company as well.

Not only did the ensemble increase actor satisfaction, but it also made possible different types of plays, such as the successful show Equivocation. Anthony Heald noted that the play was produced in other theatres in more traditional rehearsal practices, where actors met for the first time and four to six weeks later put on the show. In each of these

90 Joy Dickson, interview by Andrew Blasenak, September 18, 2011. 76 cases, the show was neither critically nor financially successful. Heald attributed the success of the play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to the ensemble practices of the company. Art imitated life as the actors portrayed members of an acting company dedicated to the production of Shakespeare‘s plays which, Heald claimed, allowed them to achieve a greater emotional depth and nuanced understanding of their character relationships. Additionally, the playwright wrote the play for specific actors at the

Oregon Shakespeare Festival, a luxury rare in any theatre but common to Shakespeare‘s original company. The stability of the ensemble allowed this custom-made play to highlight the talents of the actors and achieve success on tour throughout the United

States.

In order to keep artists at their most creative potential and ensure a diversity of opinions, however, turnover was necessary. Attracting actors to the company was difficult for those who sought fame and jobs in recorded media. Actors who sought the stability of a resident repertory theatre, however, were likely to stay as long as they could.

Because actors who were satisfied with their employment conditions often remained, they limited the number of roles available for new actors. Under Libby Appel, casting often took place before general auditions because she rewarded actors who performed well with roles in the next season. Bill Rauch, however, did not guarantee that stability because he needed a culturally-diverse company to fulfill his artistic vision. He also encouraged actors to remain viable in the acting marketplace by taking a season off to refresh their acting skills and to see some theatre from other professional companies. This practice also remained an efficient way of removing actors whose work did not fulfill the artistic standards or goals of the company. Because the actors far outnumber even the

77 extensive artistic team of directors and coaches, the success of the shows was highly dependent on the individual efforts of the actors. The actors who improved their performance skills either on their own, or with the support of the coaches and directors, were the ones who were invited back.

Some seasons did not have enough roles for the actors who had impressed the artistic leadership. For this reason, the company instituted programs that considered the actors‘ career goals. In order to ensure the continued success of the actors working either in or beyond the festival, the company of actors contributed to the SHARES

(Shakespearean Actors Requiring Employment Soon) program. Each actor contributed

$200 to cover travel expenses for directors and casting directors to Ashland who saw the shows and had a series of eight-minute interviews with each of the actors. The actors valued this system more than traditional auditions. As one actor said, ―the best audition you can do is to have people see your work.‖ Actors welcomed this networking possibility to stay viable in the theatrical, television, and film marketplaces. Even with the company-wide dedication to ensemble, they did not expect permanent employment.

Some actors who had spent many years with the company were invited to take part in the season selection committee, called Boar‘s Head. 91 In this committee, actors met with the artistic directorship, literary staff, and representatives from the education department, to answer the question, ―what play is best for the company at this time?‖

Amongst so many stakeholders, the needs of the actors found equal support. In addition to picking shows, actors were invited to submit a ―wish list‖ of roles for which they wanted to be considered and a list of those roles they did not want to play. Some

91 Boar‘s Head is named for the pub in which Falstaff and his cronies hang out. This sets a more informal tone to the business decisions of the company rather than any meeting with the label ―committee.‖ 78 company actors, depending on their previous relationship, could sit down with the artistic director to discuss the roles they wanted. Even though directors still had the final say in casting, this additional step gave the actors the opportunity to have their goals known and possibly fulfilled through cooperation with the leadership. Through these casting policies, the artistic leadership displayed their equal concern for the development of actors and the quality of the shows.

Finally, the theatre maintained a culture of collaboration and support that helped the company face adversity on all levels. In the early summer of 2011, a central ceiling beam cracked in the Angus Bowmer theatre, and the company closed the theatre immediately. Within twenty-four hours the full company of actors, stage management, designers, and costumers transferred the show to another venue, originally a local armory, and later a tent. The company members did not complain about the rough and ready substitute theatre. Rather, they acknowledged the adversity, faced it together, and explored how the plays operated under the different circumstances. A situation that could have been demoralizing was seen as an opportunity for actors to get a closer connection to the audience without the benefit (or challenge) of extensive design elements.

Although the company was too large for all the actors to work together, the leadership and company structures reinforced the ethos of collaborative endeavor. There was room for frustration as some actors felt the casting or training opportunities were not supporting their personal goals. The fact that the company sought input from actors in rehearsal and in the direction of the company helped to keep the most talented and well- trained actors invested in the company. The training and diverse play selections allowed the actors room to grow, and often that growth was part of making the company

79 ―healthy.‖ The ensemble was not as cohesive as it could be in smaller theatres where actors work together on every show in the same company style. Instead, actors knew they were part of a collective endeavor, watched actors in other shows, hoped to work with them, and knew that they were part of a company where talented and exciting actors offered them opportunities for growth and mentorship. While the size made the theatre resemble the entertainment business in miniature, the ethos and leadership made the theatre resemble a smaller company of committed actors.

80

Chapter 3: The Stratford Shakespeare Company

Legacy and Continuity

The Stratford Shakespeare Festival began in 1953 in Stratford, Ontario.92

Journalist Tom Patterson planned a Shakespeare festival to revive the economic fortunes of the serendipitously-named town. Patterson engaged Tyrone Guthrie who was attracted by the townspeople‘s commitment to producing a festival of ―significance‖ and the ability to build an open stage. Together they founded what would become one of the most successful Shakespeare Festivals in the world. Through the sustained quality of the acting company and the challenge of Guthrie‘s iconic stage, the Festival met the desires for a national theatre and a regional movement. By 2012, Des McAnuff continued the legacy of the founders, but shifted the focus of the company away from the actors toward the collaboration of actor, director, and designer.

Tyrone Guthrie was initially attracted to the project since it allowed him to create the type of stage that he thought would be ideal for the production of Shakespeare‘s plays. The legend surrounding the rained-out production of the Old Vic‘s 1936 Hamlet at

Elsinore confirmed for Guhrie that the open stage was the ideal setting for Shakespeare‘s plays. Actors, their costumes, and the imaginations of the surrounding audience indicated setting and tone. Guthrie‘s 1948 production of the obscure medieval play, Ane

92 The original, and still official, name of the company is ―The Stratford Shakespearean Festival of Canada,‖ a title that incorporates both the heritage of Shakespeare and a nationalistic commitment to Canadian theatre. 81 Satyre of the Thrie Estaites,93 succeeded on a purpose-built thrust stage in the Assembly

Hall at the Edinburgh Festival. On March 24, 1952, eight weeks prior to Patterson‘s phone call, Guthrie addressed the Shakespeare Stage Society saying:

There will be no improvement in staging Shakespeare until there is a return to

certain basic conditions of the Shakespeare stage. There is no need for an exact

replica of the Globe Theatre, but it is essential to make contact between players

and audience as intimate as possible.94

Few existing theatres had the desire or resources to build the stage of his imagining.

Guthrie needed a new project to make a permanent open stage a reality.

The ―improvement in staging Shakespeare‖ was a significant project that he had in mind when he spoke to the citizens of Stratford. In the reenactment for the documentary The Stratford Adventure Guthrie said to them:

If you want to make a lot of money and fill the place with tourists and ring merry

chimes in the cash registers, I think I can tell you one thing to do: don‘t have a

Shakespeare festival. Have a line of beautiful young things, let them loose on a

brightly lit stage. Far less trouble and expense. Can‘t fail to make a profit if you

think of a nice refined title….something French, such as Follies Le Girls or

Bottoms Up.95

In response to their laughter Guthrie proposed:

93 Iain Mackintosh, The Guthrie Thrust Stage: A Living Legacy (Association of British Theatre Technicians, 2011), 8. 94 Mackintosh, Stage,10. 95 The Stratford Adventure, directed by Morten Parker (1954; Toronto, ON: National Film Board of Canada, 2005), DVD. 82 All right then, if you want to do something significant, something that Canada can

be proud of that isn‘t just a boxcar full of this or a shipload full of that, well, I

think you can do that, too. A Shakespeare play, for instance, produced at a

standard that‘s equal to the best in the world. Though, but mind you, standards, in

the theatre as elsewhere, cost money.

Patterson and the Stratford citizens agreed that they wanted something significant.

Guthrie, without delay, suggested they need to two major elements: a stage and a star.

Tom Patterson had envisioned the production of the play in the local band shell. Guthrie convinced the town committee to raise the money to build a stage ideally suited to his vision of Shakespeare‘s theatre.

The ability to imagine the performance possibilities on an Elizabethan-inspired stage allowed Guthrie to attract world-famous actors like Alec Guiness and Irene Worth.

After the success of the festival, most people recollected the endeavor not as one of financial worth, but of historical significance to the practice of theatre. According to popular legend, the telephone line cut out when Patterson offered Guthrie the modest sum of $500, but Guthrie came since he heard Patterson say ―expenses.‖ The letters between

Guthrie and Guiness similarly emphasize the enterprise of starting a new theatre rather than the money or fame that would attend on performance in London.96 Irene Worth summed up the spirit of the time: ―That first year was a profound experience. Nobody was looking for fame, glory, or money. We were all working for each other, and no one

96 According to Guthrie: ―the deciding factors were the opportunity to play Shakespeare in the particular conditions which our stage afforded, and also to take part in what he felt to be a pioneering venture of a gallant and unselfish kind‖ [―The Story of the Festival Stage,‖ The Stratford Shakespeare Festival, accessed July 27, 2012, http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/about/impact.aspx?id=1182]. Additionally, a letter from Guthrie to Guiness cited in the documentary The Stratford Adventure remarked: ―I have never before felt so convinced of the obvious practical ―value‖ of anything I have been asked to be connected with.‖ 83 was working for himself. It was for the theatre.‖97 By committing to Shakespeare‘s plays on an Elizabethan-inspired stage, Guthrie offset the loss of time, money, and fame for the fulfillment of his ideal theatre. Although Worth says no one was working for glory, the actors ―inevitably felt that they were making history.‖98

Part of the history making included the establishment of a company of Canadian actors. The success of the early years of the festival relied on the fame of Guthrie and the

English stars (Guiness, Worth, James Mason, Douglas Campbell, Michael Bates, etc.) who attracted large audiences to Stratford. Guthrie ensured the continued survival of the festival by casting a large company of Canadian actors to work with and learn from the stars. As Robert Cushman relates: ―Guthrie, as it happened, had no compunction about employing people who were technically amateurs99—and no alternative either, if he wanted a Canadian company.‖100 Guthrie cast forty-plus Canadian company members from interviews, not auditions.101 Instead of hiring actors capable of performing in a single show, Guthrie sought members of a company who would commit to the long-term vision he set forth. Through the first three seasons, from 1953 to 1955, Guthrie and the

English actors inspired an ensemble of actors capable of maintaining and adapting to their own visions the unique stage and Shakespeare‘s repertory. By 1960, critic Brooks

97 Robert Cushman, Fifty Seasons at Stratford (Toronto, ON: Madison Press Books, 2002), 20. 98 Cushman, Fifty Seasons, 12. 99 The use of amateurs to initiate new ways of performance is a common practice of theatrical innovators. When Goethe developed the Weimar style, he used actors with little fame or experience. William Poel drilled his mostly-amateur actors in the Elizabethan Stage Society to recover Elizabethan staging and verse- speaking conventions. Guthrie was likely attracted by the ability to begin a new tradition on a new stage. 100 Cushman, Fifty Seasons, 19. 101 Timothy Findley, interview by Richard Ouzounian, Stratford Gold: 50 Years, 50 Stars, 50 Conversations (Toronto: McArthur & Company, 2002), 51. 84 Atkinson called the company ―the finest group of classical actors in North America.‖ 102

The development of the actors and their craft reflected the demands of the Festival stage.

In the same 1960 review, Atkinson credited the stage as the reason for the company‘s ―sustained form and style‖:

For eight seasons it has developed in one tradition around a bold stage that sets

the mode of acting. The platform stage retains the main values of the Elizabethan

theatre. There is no scenery to distract the theatre-goer or to hide the actor. He is

always out there in the open without defenses except acting ability.103

Martha Henry, the head of the associated Birmingham Conservatory of Classical Acting, credited the stage with requiring a greater physical and emotional investment of the actors since ―there is nowhere to hide.‖104 This inability to hide required, and the mentorship provided by the high-profile supported the development of the young

Canadian actors. Several actors came to fame after their early days of the festival.

William Hutt, William Shatner, and Christopher Plummer, translated their skills to successful careers in television and film. Through the joint legitimacy of Shakespeare,

Guthrie, and international stars, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival founded a tradition that could be assumed by the Canadian company once the English stars left.105

Whereas the stage and the acting company formed much of the renown of the theatre, the artist director from 2007-2012, Des McAnuff, viewed the theatre as equally

102 Brooks Atkinson, ―Canada‘s Festival: High Praise is Given to Acting Company,‖ The New York Times. July 3, 1960. 103 Brooks Atkinson, ―High Praise.‖ 104 Martha Henry, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Stratford, ON, July 8, 2011. 105 Cushman, Fifty Seasons, 8. 85 prioritizing the actors, directors, and designers.106 Des McAnuff‘s artistic style brings a

―literal as well as visual‖ understanding of the text,107 which has proven successful with audiences and critics. McAnuff was mentored early in his career by Michael Langham.

Langham was the second artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival whose attention to text and the challenges of the stage earned him credit as the spiritual and aesthetic founder. McAnuff‘s professional experience included directing the premier of the Tony-award winning Jersey Boys at La Jolla playhouse and a few movies.108

McAnuff attempted to achieve his personal balance in the management of the company.

McAnuff prioritized, however, the visual design as the means by which he improved the overall quality of the festival. McAnuff described the large design budgets as the momentum behind a ―perfect circle:‖ ―resources attract directors and designers, who attract actors. The strong acting company makes it more attractive to people like

Christopher Plummer, and he in turn attracts directors.‖109 With a large design budget, and strong directorial visions, the plays reflected the visual styles of Broadway plays.

Although clarity of language and virtuosity of the acting company remained a vital part of the productions, the Gesamtkunstwerk of McAnuff‘s staging equally prioritized music and spectacle while striving for fluid transitions. McAnuff justified his adherence to large-scale visual design since ―for modern theatrical tastes, it is not enough on its own that the text be well spoken. The world of a play needs to be imaginatively

106 Des McAnuff, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Stratford, ON, April 11, 2012. 107 Robert Blacker, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Stratford, ON, July 9, 2011. 108 Some townspeople have taken to calling him ―Hollywood Des‖ for his penchant for flashy staging and background in the film industry. 109 McAnuff, interview. 86 realized though the visual arts as well.‖110 Through this attention to the visual, he attributed the success with younger audiences. He claimed: ―at Stratford, I always make a point of sitting in on our first student matinée performances so I can see for myself how they‘re being received. What I‘ve noticed is that the level of the students‘ enthusiasm for a Shakespeare play has much to do with how the production looks.‖111 McAnuff further justified his style as a continuation of Shakespeare‘s practices and Guthrie‘s founding.

He cited Shakespeare‘s move to the Blackfriars Playhouse and the influence of court masques as a ―movement toward a more complete kind of theatre‖ reflected in plays like

Cymbeline and The Tempest.112 He equally challenged the perception of the theatre as an actors‘ theatre as he noted the company respect for ―directors of vision and imagination but also for the idea of ambitious design – an idea, by the way, that I believe informed the vision of our first Artistic Director, Tyrone Guthrie.‖113 Although McAnuff has been financially and popularly successful with this style, the focus of the large-budget productions often reduced the challenges of the Festival‘s stages and resembled the theatrical practices of the theatre profession in general, rather than a specific Shakespeare festival.

McAnuff attempted to mirror the successes of other large theatrical companies by increasing distribution and touring possibilities of his successful shows. In the 2009

Stratford season his A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum received an extended run and transferred to Toronto. In 2011, despite an otherwise lagging box-

110 Des McAnuff, ―Season Opening Night,‖ May 28, 2012, Stratford‘s Longstanding Artistic Philosophy, accessed August 15, 2012, http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/about/about.aspx?id=12654. 111 Des McAnuff, ―Live Art in the Digital Age‖ (Keynote Address to the Bi-annual Congress of the International Society of Performing Arts, Toronto, ON, June 15, 2011. 112 McAnuff. ―Opening Night.‖ 113 McAnuff, ―Opening Night.‖ 87 office, McAnuff‘s rock-musical Jesus Christ Superstar and rock-musical-inspired

Twelfth Night received extended runs and Jesus Christ Superstar toured to San Diego and

New York City. McAnuff also reached wider audience though the release of films that played to classrooms throughout Canada. Additionally, the Festival recorded and distributed DVDs of McAnuff‘s The Tempest, Caesar and Cleopatra, and Twelfth Night.

In turn, McAnuff credited these DVDs as tools to attract audience members to live performance.

In addition to this extended reach of popular shows, McAnuff developed new plays. When McAnuff arrived in 2006, he committed to producing three new Canadian plays a year.114 This focus allowed the theatre to promote its Canadian mission and counterbalance the limited repertory of Shakespeare‘s plays. McAnuff also saw new plays as the key to developing greater reputation and financial resources for the Festival.

At La Jolla, he noted that the development of plays like Jersey Boys and the transferrance of successful plays to New York and London provided income streams for the company worth millions. By fostering new plays and transferring others, he hoped to mirror the successes of the Royal Shakespeare Company‘s Matilda and the National Theatre‘s

Warhorse. Since the resources at Stratford were similar to those of these other large theatre, he saw such a strategy possible and necessary.

In 2008, Managing Director Antoni Cimolino announced the change of the company‘s name to The Stratford Shakespeare Festival to refocus the ―centrality‖ of

114 Robert Blacker, interview. 88 Shakespeare to the festival.115 The name changed, but the average number of

Shakespeare‘s plays produced marginally decreased compared to the previous decade.

Due to the large numbers of stakeholders (actors, directors, designers, fundraisers, administrators) the theatre sought to serve many different constituencies. Although

McAnuff reconciled the financial and artistic aims of the company through his successful touring and video distribution of his productions, such harmony was rare. McAnuff‘s predecessor, Richard Monette once denounced the outgoing president of the board:

You pig! ...We have spent our lives in this theater. We have given of our time

taking care of our art. You talk to us about money all the time. ... You have no

morals. I don‘t know how you can sleep. I care deeply and passionately about this

place, and you must address yourselves to your consciences.116

Monette‘s outrage revealed his emotional investment in the company as well as a frustration with the lowered status of the artists. The revolutionary intentions and legacy of Guthrie and Langham abutted the management necessary to accommodate the growth and diversity of the twenty-first century theatre industry.

In 2011, The Stratford Shakespeare Festival, as a national theatrical institution, was as invested in its own history as in Shakespeare‘s. The Stratford Shakespeare

Festival and its actors have attained such a solid place in the theatrical marketplace that several projects have focused on the story of the festival rather than the plays produced there. The television series Slings and Arrows, written and performed by many of the

115 ―Stratford put Shakespeare back into festival,‖ Canwest News Service, July 17, 2007, accessed July 24, 2012. http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=8f2308d6-c496-4189-9abc- 4b355a562f00&k=72877. 116 Bruce Weber, ―Richard Monette, Artistic Director for Shakespeare Festival, Dies at 64,‖ New York Times, Sept.11, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/theater/11monette.html. 89 festival actors, mythologized a fictional Shakespeare festival which reveals tensions between maintaining ideals of artistic fulfillment and commercial pressures. In 2012 two shows, Hirsch and A Word or Two, highlighted major personalities of the festival.

Hirsch is a one-man show about former artistic director John Hirsch who has been described as ―the greatest director ever to have grown up in Canada‖117 for his extraordinary artistic failures and successes. A Word or Two, an autobiographical play with Christopher Plummer advertised as a ―journey through the literature that has stirred his imagination since youth‖118 combined Shakespeare‘s literature and the legitimacy of one of the most famous actors to appear at the festival. Without the theatre‘s reputation for quality actors and insistence on its own significance, such a show would hold little appeal to the artistic management.

The large, high-profile theatre allowed diverse artistic visions: a Shakespeare theatre, a new works lab, a center for training, a place for the promotion of Canadian playwrights and actors, and a major tourist attraction for the town of Stratford (Figure 9).

Although many of these forces are opposed to each other, and the ideals set forth in the first seasons of the festival have dramatically changed since the institution has grown, those ideals still remain in the hearts of many of the actors who wish to escape the short- term contracts and long-term unemployment indigenous to the professional theatre.

Actors enjoyed the focus the contracts and support systems allowed, but many still felt the pressures and uncertainties and status of actors of other professional theatres.

117 Cushman, Fifty Seasons, 70. 118 ―A Word or Two,‖ Stratford Shakespeare Festival, accessed July 27, 2012, http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/OnStage/productions.aspx?id=16138&utm_source=Homepage&utm_mediu m=billboardlink&utm_campaign=hp-billboard&prodid=41235. 90

Figure 9. The Festival Theatre 2010, courtesy of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Archives.

Stages and Stagecraft

The design of the Festival stage once challenged and inspired directors like

Guthrie and Michael Langham to change their approach to staging. The stage did not preclude spectacle, but more often constrained it to the costumes and visual effects created through the company of actors. McAnuff‘s equal priority of actors, design, and directors encouraged directors to produce plays according to their own visions rather than any festival style.

When the Festival Stage was built in 1953, it was hailed as a revolution in staging

Shakespeare. Walter Kerr of the New York Herald-Tribune called the Festival theatre,

―The only really new stage and the only really new actor-audience experience of the last hundred years on this continent.‖119 Guthrie championed the stage as ―the theatre of the future,‖120 even though it was specifically designed to benefit Guthrie‘s productions of

119 qt. in Kevin Ewert, ―Michael Langham,‖ in The Routledge Companion to Director’s Shakespeare, ed. John Russell Brown (New York: Routledge, 2008), 220. 120 Joe Falocco. Reimagining Shakespeare’s Playhouse: Early Modern Staging Conventions in the Twentieth Century. (Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 2010), 127. 91 Shakespeare‘s plays. The change that the stage brought to the production of

Shakespeare‘s plays and the quality of the acting company was echoed by Brooks

Atkinson who wrote in 1954, ―whether the play is good or bad, a basic principle still obtains: The Stratford festival as an institution is a contribution to the cultural life of

North America…For everyone recognizes now that the Stratford festival is a sound enterprise, the stage is so illuminating and the professional standard of the acting is so high.‖121 The novelty of the stage and resulting change to stagecraft and acting became the key draw of the festival, even though the shows themselves received mixed reviews through the early years of the festival.

Guthrie enlisted designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch to build a stage that combined elements of the Globe and the Classical Greek theatres. The original 1953 stage featured a unit set, a thrust stage of the Elizabethan stage, but a round playing area and surrounding auditorium arranged in a 220-degree arc inspired by Greek theatres (Figure

10). The central balcony reflected Elizabethan stage design, but its triangular shape accorded the sightlines of the circular audience. The arrangement of the staircases at the side and pillars underneath the balcony benefitted theatrical conflict. These entrances benefitted productions, as the Association of British Theatre Technicians summarized:

Shakespeare‘s plays frequently require a clash of opposing forces or characters—

a situation effectively exploited on the stage if there is a direct diagonal approach

121 Brooks Atkinson, ―Shakespeare Festival: Measure for Measure' Staged in Canada,‖ New York Times, June 30, 1954, 23. 92 from opposing corners leading to inevitable conflict in the centre. This is planned

for in the new stage by setting the rear side doors directly opposite the tunnels.122

Figure 10. The Festival Stage, 1953, courtesy of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Archives

The bare stage encouraged rapid transitions. The thrust allowed actors to look directly at each other instead of cheating out, as was customary in proscenium theatres. The surrounding audience also forced actors to move frequently in order to be seen by

122 Iain, Mackintosh, The Guthrie Thrust Stage: A Living Legacy (Association of British Theatre Technicians, 2011), 11. 93 different sections of the audience. The Festival stage, then, encouraged a kinetic, rapid, and actor-centered performance style.

Tyrone Guthrie‘s own stagecraft reflected the values that the stage encouraged.

Guthrie was often described as approaching Shakespeare‘s texts as musical scores where he would understand tempo, rhythm, tone, and mood rather than the complexity of thought, word, and language. Anthony Quayle, who played King Lear for Guthrie, remarked:

He was keenly aware of rhythms—the overall rhythm of a scene rather than the

clear carving of syllables. So there were often passages where he didn‘t care if

the audience heard exactly what was said. He aimed for a general impression; the

clarity of dialogue was comparatively unimportant…So there‘d be a great

impression of brouhaha, confusion, noise, embattled opinion, out of which one

vital line would emerge-bang!—like that, and hit you with a wallop. He‘d throw

away twenty lines to achieve one which would slam you in the face.123

Counter to this ―general impression‖ of the dialogue, Guthrie created scenic effects with large casts of actors that exemplified his vision of a ritualistic theatre. The 1953 Richard

III was:

Ceremonial, and hypnotically incantatory, this was a show which made use of an

extravagant palette of crimson, black and gold, huge looming crucifixes and

glittering halberds, fluttering banners and tolling bells, ghosts rising from

123 qt in Robert Shaughnessy, ―Tyrone Guthrie,‖ in The Routledge Companion to Directors’ Shakespeare (New York: Routledge, 2008), 124. 94 trapdoors, a torch lit funeral procession, armies sweeping through the auditorium

and across the stage. As sheer visual spectacle, it was breathtaking.124

Most of these effects were completed by actors setting the scene with their costumes and movements which kept transitions rapid while providing a large theatrical effect. The stage Guthrie designed, therefore, suited the stagecraft he had practiced before he arrived at Stratford.

Figure 11: Langham Redesign of the Festival Stage, 1962, courtesy of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Archives

124 Shaughnessey, ―Guthrie,‖ 131. 95 Michael Langham, artistic director from 1956 to 1967, embraced the challenge of the Stage and Shakespeare‘s texts to change the approach to the performance of

Shakespeare. From his concerted efforts, he became the intellectual architect of the

Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Langham noted that he initially ―fought‖ blocking on the

Festival stage and that only after six years of producing plays there did he learn a system of blocking suited for it.125 After modifying the façade to allow faster entrances (Figure

11), he discovered the dynamic movement that the Festival stage encouraged, both in the peripatetic movement of the constantly-shifting actors as well as the long entrances possible in the 1962 redesign of the stage. At its best, his use of the stage was

―centrifugal‖ where small movements by actors in the middle of the stage were countered with larger movements by those on the outside of the stage. In Act Five of the

Langham‘s 1992 Measure for Measure, Isabella made a half turn in the middle of the stage to confront the Duke, a movement which, when echoed by the guards following her, nearly flung them off the stage. The dynamic movement on the bare stage became the hallmark of the festival style that would influence future artistic directors, including

Richard Monette and Des McAnuff.

Additionally, Langham created one of the most iconic staging moments of the

Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He used the vertical space with his signature ending of

Love’s Labour’s Lost: the Langham leaf drop. During the songs of Winter and Spring, the four couples of lovers say their goodbyes to the melancholy tune while red maple leaves drop from the rafters falling over cast and into the audience. In a moment like

125 Cushman, Fifty Seasons, 43. 96 this, the goals of the revised space, the Canadian nationalism, and the performance of

Shakespeare came together.

The design of Langham‘s plays often focused solely on the actors more than visual effects. In a 1956 production of Hamlet at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, he draped the set with black fabric and only included ―a few moveable pieces [that] came in and out swiftly during the action.‖126 Although Langham considered this approximation of the Elizabethan staging conditions revolutionary, critics ―decried the production as far too visually drab, austere and boring for Stratford. An angry letter to the editor of the

Birmingham Post went even further than the critics, calling the lack of scenery—and furniture, and a front curtain—a travesty and a kind of theatrical nihilism.‖127 A similar design prevailed in the 1992 Measure for Measure where ―before a word was spoken, the mood was established by the black tiles on the floor, black metal grilles across the back of the stage, a metal desk, a black sofa, a group of men in black and gray; there were little spots of color, such as the Duke‘s gold medal on a red and gold ribbon.‖128 Langham‘s use of minimal fixed set pieces and a focus on the actors remained part of his aesthetic throughout his career.

Through the series of artistic directors to follow Langham, the balance between large design and the stage‘s focus on actors and swift movement created artistic tensions between actors and directors. Richard Monette, artistic director from 1994-2007, got his start with the Festival as an actor in 1965. He coined the phrase ―tyranny by design‖ to describe the tendency for all shows to use the full resources of the company to create

126 Kevin Ewert. ―Michael Langham,‖ 216. 127 Ewert, ―Langham.‖ 128 C. E. McGee, ―Shakespeare in Canada: The Stratford Season, 1992,‖ Shakespeare Quarterly 44: no. 4 (1993), 477-483. 97 visual effects at the cost of the focus on the actors. The stage highlighted actors and audience, but directors and extensive designing budgets emphasized set, lighting, costume, and special effects.

Des McAnuff attempted to balance these two foci by likening the production of all theatre to the same art. The key to all of his productions was smooth transitions, which he said ―it‘s not just Shakespeare: one of the things I love about directing musicals is bending my imagination to the task of keeping the story moving forward through its transitions: ensuring that it flows visually and dynamically as well as musically from one section to the next.‖129 The uniformity of approach was especially clear in the 2011 season where his smooth transitions and visually impressive stagecraft made Jesus Christ

Superstar popular with audiences, and his Twelfth Night used the text as a jumping off point for a larger theatrical creation laced with original rock musical-style songs and a myriad of sporting events extrapolated from the various image chains that involve sport or playing, such as ―If music be the food of love, play on.‖ However, the visual demands of a large design problematize the smooth transitions that are the priority of his stagecraft.

McAnuff claimed, ―The thing about the festival stage [is] we tend to make a very big deal about it, and I don‘t think it‘s all that mystical.‖130 Although he recognized the

―staggeringly intimate‖ relationship of actor and audience, and the audience‘s self- awareness, he joked that the reason so much hubbub was made about the wonders of the stage was to keep young directors away from it and that the staging was, mostly,

129 Des McAnuff, ―Annual General Meeting, March 3, 2012,‖ Stratford‘s Longstanding Artistic Philosophy, accessed August 15, 2012, http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/about/about.aspx?id=12654. 130 Des McAnuff, interview. 98 ―common sense.‖131 Since critics and audiences responded positively to his stagecraft, there was no incentive to embrace the limitations of the original stage design. Although

McAnuff inherited the encouragement and support of Langham, Langham left the practice of the stage to McAnuff‘s discretion. McAnuff, consequently, made a theatre to respond to his current audience tastes rather than endeavoring to recapture the open staging movement.

In 2011, however, the simplicity of design attendant on the original Festival

Theatre was altered through the ―build up and cover up‖ strategy of designers and directors who changed the Festival stage rather than their stagecraft. In Twelfth Night and The Merry Wives of Windsor the design used the upstage space as a proscenium arch from which sleds push out scenery. For instance, the Garter Inn set was a large oak bar that occupied much of the up-center stage in Merry Wives of Windsor. Throughout

Twelfth Night sporting equipment and furniture occupied center positions (Figure 12), including a tennis net that Malvolio stumbled over to woo Olivia and a wet bar into which Andrew Aguecheek vomited. To accommodate the design elements for a repertory of plays, the Festival hired three tractor-trailers attached to the Festival theatre for storage between shows.

131 Des McAnuff, interview. 99

Figure 12: The Festival Stage, The Festival Stage, Twelfth Night, 2011, courtesy the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Archives

Because of this obstruction to the center of the platform, designs often included platforms built up over the downstage left and right stairs in order to provide more playing area. Although the transitions were as fluid as possible, they still took more time than actors entering to a bare platform. These platforms reduced the kinetic energy of entrances which, instead of putting people directly into conflict, made them skirt around 100 the edges of the stage. Concerns about sightlines further encouraged non-active characters to stand static on the down right and down left platforms. What happened, then, was that the plays focused on the front, center portion of the audience more than the sides or balconies. The inequality of theatrical experience was reinforced in 1997 when the theatre was redesigned to reduce the arc of the audience from 220 degrees around the stage to 180 degrees, reducing the capacity from 2262 to 1833. Even so, the seats on the sides of the stage were discounted by as much as thirty-five percent, even for seats located a similar distance away from the stage.

Many actors were interested in the demands the stage made of their acting techniques. Martha Henry fondly remembered the first time she saw the stage, and remarked that in the low light of the dim theatre the stage seemed to be breathing.132 She ascribed to it living qualities, noting that it has been known to throw inexperienced and unprepared actors right off the stage.133 Other actors went to the archives to view

Langham‘s stagecraft that they praised for its physical lyricism brought by the constant movement of his productions. Because of current designs and additional platforms, actors more often used downstage left and downstage right positions to hide from the action by keeping their backs to a significant portion of the audience. Actors rarely had centrifugal and strongly kinetic staging.134 Rather they were instructed to follow former

132 Martha Henry, interview. 133 Martha Henry, interview. 134 One notable exception was in Merry Wives of Windsor when Tom Rooney as Master Ford gathered his accomplices to go search for Falstaff in his house. He made a spiral in the middle of the stage addressing each accomplice who stood in different corners of the stage before whirling them up to follow him offstage. 101 artistic director Robin Phillips‘s advice to consider the stage as two proscenium arches, one facing the downstage right corner, and the other facing the downstage left corner.135

Figure 13: Avon Theatre, 2011, courtesy the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Archives

Although the Festival Theatre was the premier venue of the festival, in 2011 three other theatres held plays in their twelve-show season. The largest of these was the 1090- seat Avon theatre, a former movie house used as a proscenium theatre, which was purchased by the Festival in 1963 (Figure 13). The three contemporary plays at the Avon in the 2011 season were The Grapes of Wrath, The Homecoming, and Jesus Christ

Superstar. Ironically, the most popular of these productions, in addition to its advantages as a musical with a superb cast, also had the most flexible design. Trucks and houses and boxcars encumbered Grapes of Wrath. A realistic living room unit set held The

Homecoming. Jesus Christ Superstar, however, had a unit set of metal stairs, girders and

135 Quoted by Des McAnuff in rehearsal, Stratford, ON, April 14, 2012. 102 two ladders in the upstage area, which gave the actors a variety of levels and the imperative to create place with actor physicality and hand-held props. For instance, for

Herod‘s palace, the two metal staircases were pushed together center stage to create a grand staircase for Herod to descend. On the back wall, a giant marquee ―H‖ glowed and flashed. On the stage, a white grand piano was pushed on stage right. The stage was otherwise bare but for a gaggle of toga-clad dancers. In addition to this bare platform design, McAnuff allowed a direct relationship with the audience, as he set Jesus on a platform that jutted out into the audience (Figure 14). This was the sort of work that Des

McAnuff excelled at before he came to Stratford, and the ability to produce a contemporary show with a set that blends the imaginative possibilities of a fluid stagecraft that fits plays of Shakespeare and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Figure 14: Jesus Christ Superstar, Avon Theatre, 2011, courtesy of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Archives. 103 The 480-seat Tom Patterson Theatre, a three-quarter thrust stage, made spectacular design difficult (Figure 15). Many actors enjoyed this stage because of the emphasis on actor and the surrounding audience and its capacity for rapid, fluid movement. The audience surrounds the long stage bordered by two steps and an aisle.

Vomitoria allow for house entrances like in the Festival theatre, but the smaller size of the theatre gives more audience members a closer connection to the performers. Since the upstage unit has no fly system nor sleds to push in sets, the actors must create the sense of place with verbal, costume, and prop use as well as other elements that can be brought on by actors.

Figure 15: Tom Patterson Theatre, 2011, courtesy of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Archives.

104

The Tom Patterson Theatre did not prohibit spectacle, but changed the way it was delivered. In the 2011 Titus Andronicus directed by DarkoTresnjak, Titus made his first entrance pulling ropes attached to a platform on which the bodies of his two dead sons lay. Once the sons were taken through a downstage vomitorium and placed in the verbally defined ―ancestral tomb,‖ Titus removed the sheet over the platform to reveal a cage holding the Goth prisoners. The narrow stage and surrounding audience forced economical choices in staging that focused on the actors, even though Tresnjak still used many spectacular elements. The effect of the Tom Patterson Theatre on the first scene, then, changed the focus from the spectacle of a triumphant military march into the story of a single man who suffers loss in his conquests. These sorts of solutions appear when the space limits a pictorial understanding of the play and encourages an imaginative spectacle focused on the body, action, and words of the actors.

Although the Tom Patterson Theatre centers on the actors, it was one of the most challenging theatres for actors to be heard by all audience members. Like the Festival

Theatre, the only place actors could stand without turning their backs to part of the audience was upstage center. However, since the momentum of actors entering directed them downstage, they often brought the action closer to the downstage area. The audience members near the entrance of the stage, therefore, had the most difficulty hearing and seeing the actors. The seating prices discounted these seats since actors speaking in a two person scenes downstage center often directed their voices and faces away from those audience members for much of the time. This distance also necessitated the many blocking shifts through the scene and the physical reinforcement of the power

105 dynamics between the characters. In the scene between Bethany Jillard‘s Lady Anne and

Seana McKenna‘s Richard III, when Richard III on his knees offers Lady Anne his sword to stab him Lady Anne‘s statuesque strength encountered Richard III‘s obsequious wormlike pleadings. This power dynamic changed physically as Lady Anne‘s shoulders melted and recovered their tensions as she rejected Richard‘s plea to stab him from his more firm and focused position on the ground. These veteran actors, accustomed to the challenges of the spaces, and with little technical or spectacular help to tell the story needed to use their voice and body to tell these stories in a way much more in line with the challenges faced at the founding of the company.

Figure 16: The Studio Theatre, 2011, courtesy of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival Archives.

106 The 260-seat Studio Theatre was a black-box space with flexible seating and a stage designed to mirror the dimension of the Festival Theatre (Figure 16). This space allowed for a greater intimacy than the Festival Theatre due to the greater proximity of the actors and budget restraints of the designers. For its extreme intimacy, the Studio has the nickname of ―The Chapel.‖ The intimacy of the theatre encouraged small-cast shows, including in the 2011 season, one and two person shows, Shakespeare’s Will and

Hosanna, respectively, and the eight-person The Little Years. The plays designed for this space were distinctly intimate in tone, reliant on in-depth views of the thoughts, emotions, and perplexities of individual characters. The theatre allowed a variety of performance styles. Seana McKenna used direct address as Anne Hathaway in

Shakespeare’s Will. The two actors of Hosanna used the conventions of realism on a set resembling an apartment.

The small size of The Studio also allowed the management to take more risks in the repertory produced there. In 2012, the Studio held three world premiers of new plays.

Because of its resemblance to the Festival stage, the Studio was the training ground for actors in the Birmingham Conservatory. Once they learned to succeed on this stage, they were better prepared for the larger house of the Festival theatre. The people, not the spectacle, were most clearly on display here, and the stage allowed for a reinvention of the dynamic began in the vision of Guthrie and Moiseiwitsch. So, this space maintained the architectural limitations of the Elizabethan theatre which in turn influenced both new plays developed there and the development of actors new to the Festival.

Although Shakespeare‘s original theatre and the Greek theatres inspired the original stage design, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival perpetually dedicated itself to

107 the visions of contemporary theatre artists. When Des McAnuff was asking for advice from Michael Langham later in his career, Langham withheld an opinion, preferring for

McAnuff to follow what he thought was right. The respect for the vision of the next generation was allowed to change, or ignore the lessons of the previous artists. Most actors and directors agreed that the oft-gloried past of the festival should form a basis, but not a limitation, of current practice. However, where Langham had once dedicated his mission to discovering how to stage plays on the Festival stage, current directors were more concerned with providing the spectacle and design that will appeal to audiences and critics. The Stratford Shakespeare Festival honored the legacy of Shakespeare, Guthrie, and Langham, and produced mostly established plays, but the theatre artists focused only on the present stagecraft and design of the time. Where the stage made the largest difference, however, was in the training and performance preparation of the actors.

Actor Training and Coaching

The Stratford Shakespeare Festival has had a long history of bringing together actors from multiple generations who have been able to pass on their knowledge and experience. From the beginning of the company, Tyrone Guthrie had an emphasis on training, knowing that he would be casting many actors with little experience in performing Shakespeare. By bringing accomplished actors from England, Canadian actors could learn from them in rehearsal. The fostering of the Canadian actors also appeared explicitly when Alec Guiness sent Richard Easton and Timothy Findley ―to

London to attend drama school at his expense.‖136 Less formally, but equally

136 Cushman, Fifty Seasons, 23 108 importantly, Guthrie fostered the considerable talent of Michael Langham who would develop the ideological foundation of the company. Langham in turn mentored Des

McAnuff, whom he instructed to mentor other artists as payment for this advice and guidance. The Guthrie ethos of training and mentorship that continued throughout the life of the company helped to ensure the quality of the acting company and long-term survival of the company.

Many actors and teachers spoke admiringly of how the Festival theatre challenged actors to develop their own techniques and modify their assumptions. Martha Henry noted that in the 1990s many actors who auditioned had talent but did not have the tools to understand and use Shakespeare‘s texts or the stages of the festival. Antoni Cimolino, former actor and managing director from 2009-2012 and artistic director beginning in

2013, said that the Festival Theatre requires a ―greater physical honesty‖ than on proscenium stages. The thrust stages of the Festival challenged actors who only trained for film since actors must use different physical and vocal techniques to fill the stage and auditorium. In the 1954 season, James Mason as Angelo in Measure for Measure and his co-star Frances Hyland who played Isabella were criticized for their inability to fill the large, tent-covered theatre: ―As Angelo, Mr. Mason has one of the briefest of the parts.

He leaves it generally colorless, partly, no doubt, because his voice is not heavy enough for so huge an auditorium…Although Miss Hyland has the part firmly in hand, her voice also is a little light for so vast a space.‖137 As Robert Cushman later summarized,

―[Mason] was out of practice on the stage. In an intimate theatre, he might well have been ideal for Angelo…. On the Stratford platform he was—at least early in the run—

137 Brooks Atkinson, ―Measure for Measure.‖ 109 overstretched….but he worked tirelessly through the run; his farewell performance in

Measure was a personal triumph, and he proclaimed himself extended and exhilarated by his Stratford experience.‖138 Mason was but one of large group of professional actors invigorated by the difficulties of performing Shakespeare‘s plays on the Festival Stage.

Michael Langham established the approach to Shakespeare‘s text that formed the basis of the theatre‘s continued actor training: ―living thought.‖ Although few actors or coaches define exactly what living thought is, Robert Blacker described it: “leaving no separation between thought and word makes the verse live.‖139 The embodied and voiced action of the character fulfilled the form of Shakespeare‘s verse. Instead of a formal approach to the poetry forms or rhetoric of Shakespeare‘s plays, Langham encouraged actors to find the alacrity of thought and action that would match his sweeping, fluid stagecraft. This did not require a retraining of actors‘ techniques, but rather a specific, unified understanding of the purpose of Shakespeare‘s text and how to fulfill it. For the exacting demands of having no space between thought and word, his rehearsals were notoriously taxing emotionally. When he was a teacher at Julliard, his students stopped wearing mascara to class due to the likelihood of tears.

Langham was also concerned about the size of the audience and the ability of actors to maintain the intimacy of the theatre for an audience of over 2000. He worried that ―the size and sweep of the house ‗impels the actor to push.‖140 In order to maintain the ideal of living thought while still filling the theatre, he encouraged his actors to ―take

138 Cushman, Fifty Seasons, 27. 139 Robert Blacker, ―A Tribute to Des McAnuff, June 13, 2011,‖ Stratford‘s Longstanding Artistic Philosophy, accessed August 15, 2012, http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/about/about.aspx?id=12654. 140 qt in Ewert, ―Langham,‖ 219 110 deeper breaths and the play will gradually fill the space.‖141 Instead of adopting specific vocal techniques, Langham committed actors to a deep, psychological understanding of the thoughts of the text. The greater breath behind such thoughts, and the confidence of actors in his direction, would help them fill the theatre.

The challenge of performance on the Festival Stage inspired the need for voice and movement coaches. Because the audience surrounded the stage in a 180-degree arc, actors learned to act with their back to large portions of the audience and still be heard and understood. Because actors could not face the full audience, they could not project their voice with facial resonators and diaphragm support alone. Actors needed to include their back and ribs as resonators as well. They practiced the sense of radiating their voice into the space, picturing it reaching out from them in all directions in order to fill up the theatre. This required a greater amount of breath and vocal relaxation, since actors cannot just ―project‖ but rather they must relax their bodies so that they can achieve a greater amount of resonation. Alexander technique coaches often helped actors to become centered and aware of their bodies. Instead of prioritizing their face and front, as could be the style in a proscenium arch, actors felt like they were embodying a character.

As actors developed, they fought the need to push that Langham feared, by thinking of inviting the audience‘s attention to them rather than projecting their performance to the audience.

In 2012, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival continued the tradition of providing assistance to help actors meet the vocal and physical demands of the season by hiring three voice coaches, a speech pathologist, two movement coaches, an Alexander

141 Ewert, ―Langham,‖ 223. 111 technique specialist, and had relationships with local chiropractors and otolaryngologists in London, Ontario and Toronto. The voice, movement, and other technique coaches provided 3000 voluntary tutorials over a six-month span in 2010 for the cast of over one hundred actors.142 With all this support actors often remarked that they felt like Olympic athletes. Some actors, like Lucy Peacock, often consulted Janine Pearson, the head of voice and coaching, on the creation of her roles since she considered one-on-one voice coaching a key part of her rehearsal process. Actors who were unfamiliar with the coaches or were worried about the stigma attached to seeking help did not use them at all.

Similarly, although Pearson and other coaches offered full-company warm-ups, not all actors were required to attend. This actor-initiated use of the coaches reflected Pearson‘s coaching philosophy defined as ―my job is to give you tools and trust that you will use those tools as you require them.‖143 The role of coaches within the festival, remained always in a supportive, rather than interpretive capacity. The final interpretation of roles and plays remained driven by actors and directors alone.

Even though the company had so many coaches, they still did not meet the demand for advice from all the actors, so mentorship and apprenticeship became a key way young actors developed. One young actor noted that the coaches taught him ―to trust

[his] own instinct and watch and grow from everyone around me.‖144 Additionally, he noted that the theatre remained a challenge, but was thankful that ―there are actors here who know the space‖ who could answer whatever questions he may have. Formal mentorships were part of the training programs in the 1990s, but they were abandoned for

142 Janine Pearson, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Stratford, ON, July 7, 2011. 143 Janine Pearson, interview. 144 Anonymous (actor), interview by Andrew Blasenak, Stratford, ON, August, 19, 2011. 112 the organic bonds of friendship that arose from the rehearsal process. Still, many actors dedicated their own success to the actors who shepherded them in their early years of the company.

The company created The Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre in

1999 in order to address young actors‘ unfamiliarity with Shakespeare‘s texts. This program formalized the training provided by Langham‘s living thought, and the teaching styles of Powys Thomas who helped found the National Theatre School of Canada. The current head of the Birmingham Conservatory, Martha Henry, who was part of the first class of the National Theatre School of Canada, modeled the Conservatory on the

National Theatre School.145 The feedback of the actors involved was overwhelmingly positive. As one program actor said: ―After studying for fifteen weeks and taking classes, and then finally being able to put that to use, being part of the season being able to watch some of the greatest actors in the country. What better way for a young actor to learn?‖146

The training of the Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Acting was intense.

A group of eight early-career actors were paid to take classes and perform small roles in the Festival. During the first off-season session of seven weeks, actors were immersed in nothing but Shakespeare‘s text, studying voice and movement techniques from ten in the morning until two in the afternoon. From three until seven, they studied Shakespeare‘s verse and rhetoric structures. Evenings were reserved for performances of small roles in the festival. In the second term of five to six weeks, the members of the Conservatory

145 Martha Henry, interview. 146 Offstage-Onstage: Inside the Stratford Festival, directed by John H. Smith (Toronto, ON: National Film Board of Canada, 2002), DVD. 113 produced a play with a guest director, often an actor or director with some connection to the festival. In the third term of five weeks, the Conservatory actors produced a play in the Studio theatre in the off-season. This combination of classes and performance allowed actors in the conservatory to put their training to use in a show so actors linked their training exercises to role creation. The contact with the years of experience of the teachers, actors, directors and coaches of the festival maintained the legacy of the festival‘s practice and gave the actors people they could ask for advice in the future.

The actors put their skills to use in six readings and two shows in 2012. These off-season shows were directed by David Latham, head of the Michael Langham

Workshop for Classical Direction,147 and Stephen Ouimette, a long-time company actor.

Without the pressure of succeeding at the box office, the larger roles taken by the actors allowed them to be ―completely free to explore.‖148 Since these performances were in the context of training, actors used their own ideas of what might work to fulfill what they see in the text, rather than adhering to the preferences of more senior actors or prestigious directors.

Martha Henry also emphasized professional decorum and respect in such a large theatrical institution. To foster greater collaborative respect for all artists, Henry had

Conservatory actors meet with people from various departments, from wigs to choreography to education, in order to understand the care and craftsmanship that goes into each part of the show. Once actors learned the artistry of the people who support the

147 The Langham Workshop on Classical Directing provided early-career directors with text classes like those held for the Birmingham Conservatory, resources (actors, props, costumes, stage management) to stage workshop productions, professional promotion, and the opportunity to be assistant directors of the experienced directors in the Festival. The program was designed to augment familiarity with Shakespeare‘s plays as well as teach young directors how to use the resources of a large theatre festival, a rare experience for most young directors. 148 Martha Henry, interview. 114 performance, Henry said, ―[they] will never throw their costume on the floor or yell at the

Stage manager.‖149 This increases the level of professionalism and makes the actors much more pleasant to work with, which can influence the chances of being cast.

Moreover, Henry hoped that the commitment and craft of all the artists in the Festival would motivate actors to honor that work with their own commitment to their roles.150

Since the Stratford Shakespeare Festival often proclaimed itself as the best

Shakespearean theatre in North America, actors quickly learned the excellence expected from them. Fortunately, the support of the coaches, teachers, and fellow actors helped them feel confident in their abilities to perform under such exacting pressure.

Because the training is accompanied by security and the long contract, young actors were better able to focus on acting rather than the auditioning and job searching of most early career actors. Since the contract was finite with no guarantee of renewal, the

Conservatory required actors to excel or look for new work next season. Actors in the

Conservatory felt so fortunate that they often did not tell their peers about their generous contract. The Conservatory also allowed a safe laboratory for actors-turned-instructors and directors. Although patterned on the National Theatre School of Canada, Henry perceived the duration of instruction as too short since, ―you can‘t recreate a human being in five months.‖ Instead, the Conservatory allowed actors to learn techniques on a longer term than in the course of rehearsals. Henry‘s ideal was to create artists who share her artistic philosophy that, ―we find art in ourselves to make us fully alive. If we are true to ourselves, push ourselves, do work that is worthy of our talent, we will still be alive.‖151

149 Martha Henry, interview. 150 Martha Henry, interview. 151Martha Henry, interview. 115 This need to be have a life fulfilled by acting and the improvement of technique, however, ultimately resided in the actors who are ideal for the company. However, size of the company, tradition of actors returning for many years, and the casting of young actors in mostly small roles limited of the opportunities for these actors. Because the training resources were great, and the opportunities limited, many actors shared the philosophy that the Stratford Shakespeare Festival was a place to learn as much as they could and then take those lessons elsewhere in the professional theatre.

The tradition of mentorship, the commitment to training, and the adaptation to a different type of performance space made the Stratford Shakespeare Festival rare in the professional theatre. Those actors who received the gifts of training were not only more likely to invest the time in the company, but also invest their time in passing on their advice and techniques to future generations. This continuity and stability of training and mentorship within a central, well-funded institution helped the Festival maintain its reputation for high-quality acting.

Ensemble Acting

Although the Stratford Shakespeare Festival was always a repertory company dedicated to providing a variety of experiences for the acting company, in the 2011 season actors performed in two or three shows out of a twelve-show season. The size of the company challenged the maintenance of a cohesive ensemble of actors. Moreover, under Des McAnuff, the stability of the company of actors was seen as a danger to creativity, rather than a benefit. As McAnuff said: ―There is a danger of this place

116 becoming a closed company. People were rewarded for loyalty rather than talent.‖152 He noted that in the 1990s actors were often asked to direct in their tenth year with the company, regardless of previous experience. Although he noted ―Actors will always want to push this towards being an actors‘ theatre,‖ he argued that the tradition of the theatre, as started by Guthrie and Langham was a collaborative art form, sharing actor and director influence.153 The Festival, therefore, highly valued the talent of the acting company, but did not take steps to create a solid ensemble, or invite the actors‘ input beyond their contribution to performances. Because the Stratford Shakespeare Festival is one of the premier theatre companies in Canada, McAnuff, argued that the belief in the work of the festival attracted actors rather than any auxiliary benefits: ―There are some actors who are here because Stratford pays better,‖ he said, ―but the vast majority believes in the work.‖154 The plays, not the actors, defined the festival.

The Stratford Shakespeare Festival held a tenuous balance between emphasizing itself as a place for Canadian actors to be fostered and a place that strives to produce

Shakespeare by visionary directors. The theatre had long-lasting loyalty from a handful of actors who returned to the festival year after year, but offered few formal opportunities for the actors to participate in the management of the company. In 2011, actors enjoyed the long contracts, a community in which to set down roots, and the ability to work with some of the best theatre artists in Canada. Any ensemble principles arose chiefly from the tone of the directors or the leadership of senior actors. Since the plays of Shakespeare bring together generations of actors, and the actors are generally committed to each other

152 McAnuff, interview. 153 McAnuff, interview. 154 McAnuff, interview. 117 as well as the plays, mentorships and friendships with long-term company actors arise to help less experienced actors. Although some actors spent significant years with the company, the practices of the company much more resembled those of the commercial theatre not a small acting ensemble.

The dedication to crafting an ensemble of competent and ambitious actors was vital to the beginning of the company. The 1954 documentary, The Stratford Adventure, attests to the significance not only of the ambitious theatrical endeavor, but also to the practices of the ensemble playing. This documentary was shown to all new company members to instill in them the collaborative spirit of the theatre,155 and it still remains a part of the Birmingham conservatory. The documentary made world-famous actors like

Alec Guiness seem approachable and collaborative, and set this tone for young actors working with some of the country‘s top theatre actors. This approachability of the star actors in the documentary was further reinforced by in a scene where Timothy Findley asks Alec Guiness for advice on a line. Under the tent moorings and between cigarettes,

Guiness offers Findley advice to deliver six lines of Hastings‘ speech on one breath (―As actors we haven‘t the right to throw away an author‘s intentions just because we haven‘t got enough breath in our lungs‖) and a central philosophy of being an actor in rehearsal:

―To do anything decent in the theatre, to do it really well, you‘ve almost got to forget how to do it.‖156 This meeting of generations, of experience and inexperience, was important not only to the growth of the nascent Canadian company but also to the

155 Bard, Sweat, and Fears, prod. Ragtop Productions, Stratford, ON: The Corporation of the City of Stratford, 2002. Videocassette. 156 The Stratford Adventure. This meeting in the film closely resembled the mentorship that Guiness offered Findley in real life, as Guiness financed Findley‘s training in London, and set the stage for his acting and writing career: Ouzounian, Stratford Gold, 52. 118 working philosophies of the theatre that upholds the devotion to the work. For this reason, yet another scene shows Guiness arriving to rehearsal 30 minutes before his call because he is interested in knowing what is going on. Because the documentary casts

Guiness not as an aloof star, but approachable, interested in the work, and offering a fountain of knowledge to all comers, it sets forth the Stratford Festival not as a theatre company in line with commercial theatre, but as something designed to foster generations of actors. Such a mentality was shared by William Hutt near the end of his life when visitors to his hospital bed were regularly asked about rehearsals.157 The work of rehearsal and the actors interested in the production of Shakespeare‘s plays continued to be the chief draw of the theatre.

Guthrie himself appeared in the documentary, not only as the source of visionary leadership, but also as a collaborative director. In these shots, he was in complete control of the rehearsal, often stalking around the stage adjusting the stage positions of actors as they worked through the scene. In addition to some delightfully worded notes,158 he articulated principles that shifted the work from his own shoulders to the actors providing their own input. He encouraged two young boys playing the ghosts of the princes to be more limp in their movement. Instead of taking time to work specifically on them in a full-group rehearsal he told them ―rehearse something in the bedroom and astonish us in the morning.‖ He further articulated this necessity for actor involvement as he said:

157 Martha Henry, interview. 158 Some of the more choice Guthrie phrases include: ―This is supposed to be a party scene and it looks like a kindergarten display in front of very formidable aunts: it has that deadly awful dull shyness. Now, kill yourselves to be gay‖ and ―You‘re weakening that by not moving definitely. And please darling girls will you please sit the other way around you look like three starlings on a telegraph wire.‖ 119 I do wish that all of you would please get away from the idea that acting is a kind

of terrible drill with the director as sergeant major. It simply isn‘t so. Acting is

invention, make-believe. Now this time, will you please cough up some ideas and

let me say they‘re terrible.

Guthrie allowed for collaboration and cooperation among the sizable cast. There was no doubt that he was in charge, but the ensemble of actors in this rehearsal process became a strong supportive force not only for the play but for each other. This dynamic remained in the ethos of the company.

The production calendar made the cohesion of a multi-talented ensemble more difficult. Because the theatre produced over fourteen plays in the 2012 season, it needed multiple casts. Actors enjoyed the ability to perform in classics and contemporary plays and musicals, but the casting practice of the company often specialized actors according to their skills in Shakespeare, contemporary plays, and musicals. For instance, a majority of actors in Henry V were also in Much Ado About Nothing, specializing in

Shakespearean plays. A few other actors from Henry V enjoyed a crossover of experience as they worked on Wanderlust, a new musical. Musical theatre actors tended to work on the musicals. Most of the actors in 42nd Street appeared in Pirates of

Penzance. Actors from You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown also appeared in Wanderlust and Pirates of Penzance.

The musical theatre and the Shakespearean company were further divided by experience. Many of the actors in the musicals were first-time company members. The actors in the Shakespeare plays mostly were returning actors, some with decades of experience. Because the cast of 2011‘s Jesus Christ Superstar was touring in New York

120 City, they had to be replaced in Stratford by new actors. Although the 2012 season created many more opportunities for musical theatre actors, few of the company enjoyed the benefit of a repertory: the ability to play contemporary and ―classical‖ plays.

Whereas this diversity of repertory was once an ideal attraction of the company, the specialization of actors reduced the risk of casting actors beyond their established skills.

Instead of encouraging actors to grow through casting in roles for which they may not be prepared, the actors were expected to perfect the roles in which they were cast with the help of the coaching staff, fellow actors, and directors.

Several actors argued that the ideal of the company was to cast actors, regardless of their fame, in a variety of leading and supporting roles. When Maggie Smith came to the company in 1976, she played Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra, but she also played

Mistress Overdone in Measure for Measure, a character who only appears in two scenes.

In 2012, many of the leading actors play leads, such as Sean Arbuckle who plays both

Julian Marsh in 42nd Street and the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance. Ben Carlson has a slight distribution, playing the lead role Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing and a featured supporting role of Fluellen in Henry V. Some of the less experienced actors in the company play only two small roles. For instance, Luke Humphrey, an actor who was recently part of the Birmingham conservatory in his second season with the festival, played Michael Williams in Henry V, but was a non-speaking character in Much Ado

About Nothing. In 2011 Brian Dennehy played Sir Toby Belch (the largest role in

Twelfth Night) and Max in Pinter‘s The Homecoming. This sort of distribution of roles does not place all actors as equal, but rather puts the senior company members or highest- profile actors at the center of the company and younger actors in supporting roles only.

121 Young actors learned by working with and watching experienced actors, and attempted to prove their worth to the directors in small roles. The dedication to Shakespeare‘s plays in repertory, therefore, did not encourage a change to the hiring practices of the professional theatre that required specialization and rewarded the top actors with the most complex and interesting roles.

What inspired some sense of ensemble was that actors felt a part of a significant theatre. This rhetoric proclaiming the theatre as the finest theatre for Shakespeare in

North America was often repeated in publicity for the shows as well as actor handbooks and company meetings. The commitment to excellence branched through much of the company, and the actors recognized the talent of their other members and the support of the coaches and design. Young actors with small roles, therefore, often felt glad just to be a part of the high-quality company.

Mid-career and late-career actors with small roles were attracted by the stability of the contract and commitment to excellence. Since so many of the plays require a variety of men in middle age, as was reflective of Shakespeare‘s original company, these men were often more able to find roles in the company. The proficient small part actor, who neither needs nor wants to play King Lear159 was a perpetual necessity of the

Festival which rarely cast actors outside of their age range.160 Despite the stability provided by Shakespeare‘s casting, all actors warned against complacency. As a company legend said, ―when you buy a house in Stratford, you won‘t be invited back the

159 Nora Polley, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Stratford, ON, April 8, 2012. 160 In the television series modeled on and created by members of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Slings and Arrows, two characters Frank and Cyril, personify this late-career supporting actor as they play small roles like guards and various lords and other auxiliary characters but never the leads. 122 next year.‖ The demands for quality performance overrode any commitment to loyalty or ensemble stability.

In addition to the demands of the shows, the change of artistic directors often led to the shedding of some actors from the company and inviting new ones. McAnuff, in addition to reforming the company as a company equally valuing actors, designers, and directors, also redefined the acting company to be more racially diverse. McAnuff wanted the company, ―to reflect the population of Canada and trip down Young Street in

Toronto.‖ If McAnuff had not assumed the artistic direction, and the company continued to reward loyalty rather than talent, there would have been little room for new actors to join the festival. McAnuff saw the maintenance of a solid ensemble in a company the size of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, not seen as a benefit, but as a hindrance to the success of individual shows and the seasons.

Rehearsal Practices

On April 9th of 2012, artistic director Des McAnuff began rehearsals for Henry V for the 1826-seat Festival Theatre. Over the next ten weeks before previews the actors rehearsed in repertory with the full cast called for primary rehearsals three times a week, and secondary rehearsals held when actors or designers were available. Since McAnuff recently had announced that he would be stepping down as Artistic Director at the end of the 2012 season, he treated this rehearsal as one of the last chances he would likely get to work in the circumstances of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. McAnuff style mixed the spectacle of Broadway shows with the simplicity of actor on the bare stage, and he argued that he used the text to inform action, character, and stagecraft to a greater degree

123 than previous Stratford Shakespeare Festival directors. The rehearsal focused on contextual information for actors, definitions of the story and actions, and the creation of fluid transitions augmented by the full design capabilities of the company.

The first day of rehearsal was an overwhelming affair in the large and prestigious festival. Veteran stage manager Nora Polley noted the conventional wisdom that the sole purpose of the first rehearsal was to get to the next rehearsal, but the first rehearsal helped establish the status, tone, and vision for the production. In attendance were a crowd of thirty cast members, ten ―jobbers,‖161 one assistant and one associate director, four stage managers, two dramaturgs, a handful of designers and choreographers, and dozens of observers from administration and other departments throughout the festival. Into this throng of humanity, arriving at a brisk pace a few minutes after call, walked Des

McAnuff in a hounds-tooth checked suit.

McAnuff began the rehearsal with a forty-five minute director‘s talk in which he established that he had a clear artistic vision for the play and the expertise to stage it thoughtfully.162 After noting several contexts for the play, from Machiavelli‘s influence on its writing to key productions in its history (both at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and elsewhere), McAnuff stated that his vision was to highlight Shakespeare‘s dialectical, and often paradoxical, treatment of war. This play neither supported nor condemned war, but merely presented many sides of a war experience, from glory to despair. This ambivalent stance focused actors on playing their text according to their own

161 Jobbers are actors hired for non-speaking supporting roles. They often fill out public scenes where smaller cast shows often must refer to the audience when attempting to make a scene seem public. In Henry V, they filled out the scenes as monks, citizens, and soldiers. 162 As part of this speech, he noted that Joe Papp at the Public Theatre had discussed with him the possibility of a production of Henry V in the 1980s, and that his thinking about the play has been developing over the last thirty years. 124 interpretations, rather than trying to make their words fit into a predetermined director‘s concept.

This speech also set the expectation that actors be active in the rehearsal process.

McAnuff referred to the actors as the ―brain trust‖ in order to acknowledge their experience with Shakespeare‘s plays and to encourage them to offer their ideas in rehearsal. He also set high expectations for the actors‘ rehearsal efforts by urging them to memorize their lines as soon as possible. In order to hold the actors to a higher standard, he told them that Christopher Plummer did a ―ridiculous‖ amount of homework for his role as Prospero in McAnuff‘s 2010 The Tempest. This individual actor homework was especially important since rehearsal would address complex blocking and use of large props rather than minute attention to the acting of each moment. McAnuff concluded by reiterating his enthusiasm for the company, the play, and the joy of working together.

In accordance with McAnuff‘s artistic vision, rehearsals equally emphasized actors, director, and designers. To draw attention to the full company of actors, he divided the chorus among the cast rather than giving it to a single actor. McAnuff told an anecdote of how actors request the role of the Chorus more than any other role in all of

Shakespeare‘s play. This role has remarkable imagery and uses direct address, both techniques the bare, open Festival Theatre encouraged. By dividing the text of the chorus among the full acting company, McAnuff honored and flattered them saying ―if we have built the magnificent company, as I believe [we have], we not only may but must [do this] to hoist the Stratford flag of a great Canadian company.‖163 In this opening day,

McAnuff tied their rehearsal efforts to the honor of the company, Shakespeare‘s play, and

163 Quoted by Des McAnuff in rehearsal, Stratford, ON, April 9, 2012. 125 the nation of Canada, thus continuing the drive to make theatre of significance in the small town of Stratford.

Throughout the designer presentations, McAnuff‘s visual preference to set scenes with indicative props, sets, or costumes appeared. A parade of monks would set the first scene in a monastery. A boar‘s head on a pike announced the scene at the Boar‘s Head tavern. A large coffin marked the death of Falstaff. When the chorus spoke of horses, the company would bring on wooden sawhorse structures that bridged the gap between the imagination and the illusion of the scene. The largest visual event planned was the presentation of the sails at Southampton. The prologue of act three asked the audience to imagine the sails at Southampton, ―O, do but think You stand upon the ravage and behold

A city on the inconstant billows dancing,‖ and actors carried on masts and sails to create a visual approximation of the city of sails. ―This is our helicopter,‖ McAnuff remarked, alluding to the spectacular entrance of a helicopter onstage during the fall of Saigon in

Miss Saigon. Although these designs blended the literal and the imaginative, the mere number of scenes and props necessary to achieve these effects meant that much rehearsal time would be spent choreographing their use.

After a break and the dispersal of many of the onlookers, the company began the first read-through. In the read-through, the company of actors had distinct ways of approaching the text for the first time in front of the company. The younger actors often attempted to make the verse sound ―natural,‖ avoiding making the words sound poetic.

Some of the actors that had been with the company for many years spoke with more resonant and rounded voices as they sought to get a handle on the sounds of the speech and avoid detail. As the actors spoke, the company, some of whom had worked together

126 on other shows, allowed others to make their first impressions. This pressure, although actors attempt to ignore it, led actors to use to their previous working habits rather than staying attentive to the development of the scenes.

After the read-through, McAnuff set out the progress of rehearsals going forward.

The rest of the first week included table work with the full company, a tradition started with Tyrone Guthrie so as to keep all actors committed to understanding the full play.

McAnuff described this first week as going to graduate school for a course on Henry V.

Robert Blacker and his assistant dramaturge, Jacob Gallagher-Ross, provided readings from various scholarly sources for each scene. After a read-through of each scene, company members would read aloud quotes from these articles. McAnuff and Blacker framed these readings not as a lecture or set vision, but as ―the opening of a discussion‖ since many of the readings had contradictory opinions. These contradictions, however, reinforced McAnuff‘s argument that the play had contradictory portrayals of war and the character of Henry V.

The text itself was based in the Oxford edition, but several words were changed for clarity, such as ―Cadwallader‖ was changed to ―Welsh King‖ and ―ancient Pistol‖ was updated to ―ensign Pistol.‖ This updating of the text allowed the actors to avoid spending a great deal of time trying to communicate overly occult terms and jokes to a contemporary audience. As they continued to work through the play, the actors were asked to start tracking ―image chains‖ where terms or images are repeated: puissance, foul, brother, etc. The responsibility for marking these became homework for the actors so that each of them recognized and shared key images in the play with their fellow actors. This analytical stage was designed to build a much richer understanding of the

127 play that some actors found useful in performance. As with costumes, sets, and visual cues, this literary analysis provided a set of resources and approaches that could inspire actors‘ choices. More importantly, the study of the play, in addition to traditional rehearsals, elevated the respect for the play and engaged actors, ―the brain trust,‖ with various interpretations of the play. The table work sent the signal to the actors that they were encouraged to consider the overall interpretation of the play, not just their roles. It set the expectation and terms for collaboration in rehearsal between director and actors.

In the blocking rehearsals the creative team worked in seamless collaboration.

Michael Roth, the composer, started offering musical sounds, songs, and underscoring to help set the scene and communicate specific messages. Nancy Benjamin, voice coach, provided feedback to the actors practicing accents while other actors received acting notes. Dramaturge Robert Blacker and his assistant, as well as the well-informed assistant and associate directors, were present to take notes and do research on any questions that came up in the read-through. Whenever an actor had a question about their text, two or three people started working on finding an answer while Des would continue discussions with the actors. Once a run-through of a scene finished, McAnuff had priority to give notes, but the coaches and choreographers also provided feedback.

Choreographer Nicola Pantin, in addition to wrangling the jobbers, was often asked to block out scene changes and some more complex group blocking. Just as the various coaches and assistants were able to offer help in rehearsal, the assistant stage managers were present to provide materials for the rehearsal. The moment someone mentioned a prop like a lantern, in the matter of seconds, a lantern would appear from the rehearsal props with little intrusion to the rest of the process.

128 The seamless support of the rehearsal, including material, intellectual, and creative support, was the hallmark of a large theatre accustomed to producing such a large calendar of plays with an extensive support staff. The seamless support gives a large amount of feedback to the actors in a short amount of time. The risk of working in this way was most theatre artists focused on the literal and visual, rather than the imaginative or metaphoric. With the large resources, creative solutions to staging often had to be inspired by the director, while the rest of the creative team solved the logistics of doing such a staging. Although McAnuff welcomed feedback and challenges to his directorial vision, the momentum of rehearsal often left little time for discussion, especially in scenes with many actors. Therefore, any experimental visions of

Shakespeare‘s staging or interpretation remained chiefly with the director.

McAuff‘s directing style often signaled to the acting company that their input was welcome. When an idea was not working to his satisfaction, he admitted that his idea may not be good and asked the company if they had solutions. He often leveled his status with the actors. Instead of directing from behind a table, he walked over to the actors to ask them questions after running of a scene. Each actor‘s question was seriously entertained by director, dramaturgs, and assistants so as to signal that thinking actors were highly valued. Unprepared actors, or those slow to get off-book, were not criticized openly in rehearsal but noted later among the artistic leadership. In general, the rehearsal room was meant to be one of positive collaboration so as to take advantage of the many years of experience from all involved.

McAnuff repeatedly credited the quality of the actors, the support staff, and the interpersonal relationships of some actors who have been with the company for many

129 years, as the reason the collaborative method worked. Just as McAnuff‘s stagecraft blended the literal and imaginative, as a leader he blended his authority with a spirit of collaboration that encouraged actors to have a great deal of input, even though he reserved the responsibility to decide which was the best idea for the play.

130

Chapter 4: The Royal Shakespeare Company

Legacy and Continuity

The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre was built in 1879 to help revive the flagging economy of Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and had been in relatively steady use as a touring house and regional theatre until 1961. The Royal Shakespeare Company, however, began in 1961 when artistic director Peter Hall changed the name and artistic mission of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Whereas ―Shakespeare Memorial

Theatre‖ connoted a building honoring the memory of Shakespeare, the ―Royal

Shakespeare Company‖ connoted a group of actors in the royal service of performing

Shakespeare‘s plays. By emphasizing the actors of the company rather than the cultural icon and totem that was Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, Hall set out to create a group of actors who would revolutionize the way the industry considered company management and actor training. In 1961 and again in 1964, Hall provided actors three- year contracts and training opportunities while expounding principles of an ensemble culture. In 2011 Artistic Director Michael Boyd attempted to uphold many of these same principles, but the size and preeminence of the company mandated that the company undertake projects of national significance. In 2012, for instance, in addition to performing a season of twenty shows in Stratford-upon-Avon, London, and on tour, the

131 Royal Shakespeare Company helped coordinate the World Shakespeare Festival164 and ran a far-reaching educational program called ―Stand Up For Shakespeare.‖ The organizational structures necessary to make large-scale projects possible often conflicted with the drive to support and develop actors‘ artistic skills as Hall envisioned.165 These tensions were particularly pronounced under Artistic Director Adrian Noble (1990-2003), where the actors often felt that the work of the Royal Shakespeare Company rarely matched its reputation because it mirrored the practices of the entertainment industry rather than a refuge from such practices. Michael Boyd revitalized the company‘s critical and financial successes by creating a stage and using stagecraft similar to Shakespeare‘s originals and by returning, in part, to the company management practices of Peter Hall.

Between 2003 and 2012, Michael Boyd revived the critical and financial success of the Royal Shakespeare Company through his vision to run a large organization like a fringe theatre. Boyd brought to his position as artistic director his training with the

Malaya Bronnaya Theatre that emphasized ensemble principles in the acting company and a direct relationship between actors and audience in performance. From this training, he used the plays of Shakespeare as a means of testing the worth and abilities of this style of theatre on the English stage. Through the success of his ensemble and production style with the plays of Shakespeare he hoped to change the very zeitgeist of the English theatre from a culture obsessed with stars and individuals to one that emphasized collective experiences for the audience and actors alike. His desire to adopt the organization and

164 The World Shakespeare Festival, partnered with Shakespeare‘s Globe and the British Museum, invited theatre companies from around the world to produce each play in Shakespeare‘s canon in the summer of the 2012 London Olympics. 165 Just as Peter Hall used Shakespeare to confirm the worth of the staging and design techniques of post- war Europe, Michael Boyd applied his inspiration of the Russian theatre as a means to find greater emotional depth and ensemble commitment to improve the plays of Shakespeare. 132 aesthetic of a vital fringe theatre, however, was not shared by all the members of the acting company or other directors. Because the English theatre had an ethos that valued the autonomy of the artists to pursue multiple projects and to follow their own career goals, the radical change Boyd sought to bring to the English theatre could only be gradual in a company that employed so many established actors and directors.

Michael Boyd revitalized the critical and financial success of the company166 through a dedication to the vision and practices he called ―anti-Zeitgeist.‖ By labeling his practices as purposefully revolutionary, he challenged the artists that he hired to reconsider the purpose of the theatre company. Instead of hiring actors for one show, he revived Hall‘s practice of hiring actors for long, thirty-month contracts. He rebuilt the

Royal Shakespeare Theatre as a thrust stage, not to get the audience closer to

Shakespeare, but to get them closer to the actors and each other. He included a coaching staff and skill-training classes as part of rehearsal to reinforce the principle that professional actors should never stop learning their craft. He adopted long and collaborative rehearsal processes that were not dedicated to the cool efficiency of staging a show to highlight the actors‘ talents, but to the discovery of the relevance of a

Shakespearean text to a contemporary audience with the input of all of the actors.

However, because the theatrical talent of England was centralized in London, only 100 miles away, the practices of film, television and commercial theatre often built actors‘ expectations of rehearsal, training, and performance that conflicted with the artistic philosophy and professional ethos of Michael Boyd.

166 Charlotte Higgins, ―RSC's Artistic Director Michael Boyd Announces Final Curtain,‖ Guardian, October 14, 2011. 133 Boyd argued that theatre can help regain a ―collective humanity‖ in a culture more and more obsessed with individuals, an obsession shared by the entertainment industry. Pointing to obsessions with celebrities and the interactions of the internet, Boyd stated: ―Our dominant secular western culture has long been eroding our capacities for collective encounters [sic]. We have been obsessed with individualism and seduced by the promise of the tailor made life.‖167 In contrast, the theatrical event, especially in a theatre with a thrust stage where the audience members could see each other during the performance, was for him a ―collective encounter.‖ Rather than a group of individuals watching a play on a removed stage in the dark, Boyd sought to emphasize the interactions between actor and audience as well as those between audience members. By acknowledging the presence of all people in the theatre building, Boyd sought to make theatre an event negotiated rather than a product delivered. In his ambitious artistic goals and company ethos, he noted that the theatre added ―a new immediacy now.‖ He did not credit Shakespeare‘s original theatre as the inspiration for this stage, although it certainly is well-suited for the plays of Shakespeare. The stage as with other material changes provided a spirit of inquiry into the current art of theatre that has energized much of the company.

While Boyd‘s vision energized the company, established actors and directors were unlikely to reinvent their approaches to rehearsal or performance when joining the

Royal Shakespeare Company. The Royal Shakespeare Company cast actors mostly in

London and held some rehearsals there, so many of the actors expected that their work

167 Michael Boyd, ―Making Theater and New Communities: A Talk by Michael Boyd‖ (presentation New York Public Library, New York, NY, June 20, 2008). Accessed July 28, 2012. http://newyorkpubliclibrary.org/audiovideo/making-theater-and-new-communities-talk-michael-boyd. 134 for the Royal Shakespeare Company should reflect work elsewhere where they strove to fulfill the individual director‘s visions. The size of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the use of repertory allowed actors to work with many different directors, which was beneficial since directors often hired actors with whom they enjoyed working. Further, the London connection helped actors gain more recognition amongst casting directors and agents. Boyd maintained these practices, but he sought to remove the perpetual emphasis on actors‘ career development to allow actors to focus only on rehearsal and continued technique training.

Perhaps the best example of his challenge to established modes of production was in the Olivier-Award-Winning Histories Cycle. For the Histories Cycle, Boyd hired actors for thirty-month contracts, created a rehearsal environment that welcomed input from coaches and actors alike. The task of producing and performing eight plays in repertory challenged Boyd, the actors, and the voice coaches to develop performance techniques and working practices that made such an ambitious project a success. Boyd produced all eight of the plays chronologically, from Richard II to Richard III, and directed seven of the eight plays himself.168 The contractual maintenance of a solid company who rehearsed and took classes together helped both actors and coaches develop mutual respect and new performance techniques in response to the demands of the shows. The combination of training and ensemble growth worked well under the single vision of a single director.

Boyd‘s training with the Russian company, the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre,

Moscow, led him to adopt collaborative rehearsal methods unlike those of the other

168 Henry IV, part 2 was directed by the Assistant Director, Richard Twyman. 135 theatre companies in the UK. Rather than directing actors to a vision of the play that he developed before rehearsals, Boyd asked actors to aid in the constant revision of the play‘s interpretation and staging. Boyd encouraged actors to add their own artistic voice to the plays of Shakespeare. On his role as a director, Boyd said, "I was impressed by the

Russian directors' sense of themselves as artists. I know very few British directors who would call themselves artists. Most say, 'No, no, we're just interpreters of text.' Well, I don't believe that. I am an artist."169 Boyd did not constrain his practice within an attempt to revive Shakespeare, but used Shakespeare to revive collaborative rehearsal methods.

Boyd‘s rehearsals necessitated that actors similarly become collaborative artists, not just interpreters of a role. Most actors spoke of the rehearsal as a process of interpretation toward the establishing of the show as a fixed vision of the director. Boyd needed actors to "work as an ensemble in a spirit of deep enquiry, to connect people with

Shakespeare and to reengage with the contemporary world and contemporary theatre works."170 The spirit of deep inquiry over the eleven-week rehearsal process encouraged actors to contribute deeper understandings of the relevance of the play for the contemporary audience. By hiring a group of actors for thirty-month contracts, Boyd hoped to create a respectful rehearsal room that allowed actors the freedom to voice their own and challenge each others‘ interpretations. This ideal rehearsal room, where all actors were equals with the director and each other, needed the support of the finances and history of the Royal Shakespeare Company to be possible. The dedication to

169 Daniel Rosenthal, ―The Power Behind the Throne,‖ Independent (London), December 13, 2000. 170 Michael Boyd, ―Who‘s Who: Michael Boyd,‖ The Royal Shakespeare Company, accessed July 28, 2012, http://www.rsc.org.uk/about-us/our-work/boyd.aspx. 136 Shakespeare‘s plays, and his reputation for complexity that required ―deep inquiry,‖ justified the use of such a practice.

Mirroring the inclusiveness and collective endeavor of the rehearsal and performance, Boyd‘s emphasized a global participation in the production of

Shakespeare‘s plays. In the 2006-2007 Complete Works Festival and in the 2012 World

Shakespeare Festival the Royal Shakespeare Company invited performances from theatre companies throughout the world visit Stratford-upon-Avon and London to perform

Shakespeare in their diverse artistic visions. Boyd argued that:

The performance of Shakespeare has at times, and not least, and not intentionally,

has been a colonial activity…We certainly distance ourselves from that. We are

not interested in a one-way traffic from some Parnassian source in Stratford-upon-

Avon to the rest of the world…. I‘ve seen too many brilliant productions of

Shakespeare from elsewhere, not least from here….Shakespeare belongs to Serra

Leone as much as he does to England.171

In addition to this international inclusion, the Royal Shakespeare Company introduced many children to Shakespeare with the wide-reaching educational program,

Stand Up For Shakespeare. This program encouraged educators to introduce

Shakespeare to younger audiences, to have them see his plays live, and to get the students up on their feet to perform, rather than read, Shakespeare. This had been a major emphasis and interest for Boyd since the student audiences allowed Boyd to introduce his new brand of theatre to an audience with fewer preconceptions:

171 Boyd, ―Making Theater.‖ 137 Time may be right for theatre to offer a better, more honest, more active, more

intimate relationship also between the performer and the audience. I sense a new

contract being drawn up among young theatre artists, between young theatre

artists and audiences that acknowledge the audience as part of this ensemble as

well. They are an ensemble that has the ability either to achieve a consensus or

disagree. They are not sitting in the dark, they‘re participants.172

This new audience for which Boyd produced plays also had a reflection in the physical configuration of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

The major initiative of Michael Boyd‘s vision of performance has been the rebuilding of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre that materially redefined the relationship between actors and audience if not the stagecraft of all directors. The transformation of the proscenium stage to a deep thrust not only enabled Shakespeare‘s plays to be performed in their original configuration, but it also proposed a challenge to directors and actors trained or aspiring to other media. Boyd embraced these challenges for the purpose of changing the audience‘s experience. The interactivity of the thrust stage encouraged a collective response rather than a personalized, individual response of other media:

There is a new vivid theatre emerging that has learned from the informal,

interactive communities of the internet. Acknowledged from them, a new, honest

hunger to belong. I think from them theatre has realized its own potential to offer

a more authentic, durable, palpable, and frankly enjoyable sense of belonging than

the net can offer. I think it‘s also developing a new confidence, a new chutzpa, to

challenge those media provided and controlled by a dwindling number of self-

172 Boyd, ―Making Theater.‖ 138 interested billionaires. There is an irreducible humanity about the theatre act that

moves me. That simple conspiracy of the performer and audience to arrive at the

same space at the same time and share something together in real time. There is a

humble vulnerability of that encounter on both sides that is not replicated

anywhere else.173

He went on to note that there was no replacement for actors and audience sharing the same space at the same time, a goal shared by many artists in the six companies examined in this dissertation. The rebuilding of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre built on the previous success with audiences and enjoyment of actors on the Swan and Courtyard stages that brought actors and audience into close proximity.

Boyd did not dictate that stagecraft of other directors adhere to the collective audience experience he sought in his own productions. Most of the actors and directors of the Royal Shakespeare Company artists argued that the diversity of stagecraft and rehearsal practices was proper and good, often stating their fear of a single authority or company-wide system. This attitude reflected the individual goals of the artists rather than the revolutionary goal to redefine the purpose of theatre. Actors rarely expressed opinions that reflected a sense of being part of a collective company. Rather, they were excited by the diversity of actors and directors with whom they worked because these opportunities expanded their professional network and helped them find possibilities for future employment. The frustrations and career limitations inherent in the thirty-month contract caused some actors to leave the ensemble before the end of their contracts. The actors‘ desire or willingness to be a part of a collective was only maintained when the

173 Boyd, ―Making Theater.‖ 139 collective was necessary to achieve a daunting task like the Histories Cycle. Without the mutual respect arising from such a challenge, the actors and directors continued to view their work with the Royal Shakespeare Company as part of their individual careers.

The demands of the large theatrical institution conflicted with Boyd‘s desire to connect with actors and audiences in ways different from the commercial theatre. While

Boyd hoped to achieve the personal intimacy and committed effort of a fringe theatre in the large organization, the number of people involved in the enterprise lessened his ability to change the practices company-wide. Further, actors once hired did not need to buy into his philosophy (or that of the other directors) as long as they developed strong performances. When Boyd stepped down, he noted that he would not work in a large organization for a while, since he ―[would] like to spend more time with [his] actors."174

The simplicity of director and collaborative ensemble was complicated by the expectations, profile, and size of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Stages and Stagecraft

The main theatre of the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Royal Shakespeare

Theatre (formerly the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre), frustrated and disgruntled theatre artists throughout the company‘s history for its dissonance with the preferred styles of production. Tyrone Guthrie, before going to Stratford, Ontario, had little love for the theatre and its constraints on his vision of Shakespeare in performance: ―It‘s dreadfully

174 Higgins, ―Final Curtain.‖ 140 old-fashioned theatre. You can only do old-fashioned work there. Push it into the

Avon!‖175 (Figure 17).

Figure 17: The rebuilt Royal Shakespeare Theatre view from the Avon River, 2011, courtesy of Royal Shakespeare Company, photo by Stewart Hemley.

When Peter Hall assumed leadership of the company in 1960, he wanted to rebuild the theatre to bring the actors closer to the audience. In his first year, he planned to redesign the stage to include ―a rake, a new false proscenium arch, and an apron stage

175 Joe Falocco, Reimagining Shakespeare’s Playhouse: Early Modern Staging Conventions in the Twentieth Century (Rochester, NY: D.S. Brewer, 2010), 119. Others remarked that the audience was so distant from the stage that they felt as if they were performing on the cliffs of Dover to an audience across the English Channel. 141 that jutted fourteen feet into the auditorium.‖176 An unexpected drop of Arts Council funding forced Hall to shelve his plan to build the theatre as ―a 2000-seat thrust-stage amphitheater.‖177 Fifty years later, in 2011, Michael Boyd finally succeeded in transforming this proscenium theatre.

The stagecraft of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and former Shakespeare

Memorial Theatre, often conflicted with the proscenium-arch stage. The Shakespeare

Memorial Theatre hired directors who were at least partly inspired by William Poel:

William Bridges-Adams, Ben Iden Payne, Robert Adkins, and Barry Jackson.178 Peter

Hall and artistic director Michael Boyd have little background or history in the

Elizabethanist movement, but were often inspired by the ensemble theatres of continental

Europe. Unlike at the Globe or Blackfriars, the re-design of the theatre reflected the demands of the experimental theatre of the twentieth century as well as the plays of

Shakespeare.

The Royal Shakespeare Company for much of the 1960s developed the style known for its minimalism and imagination in design and setting. Peter Brook‘s iconic production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1970-1971) used a white box set with trapeze and platforms rising to various levels to set forth a production style emphasizing minimalism and imagination. Kenneth Tynan called Hall‘s Comedy of Errors

―unmistakably an RSC production.‖179 ―How is it to be recognized?‖ he continued, ―By solid Brechtian settings that emphasize wood and metal instead of paint and canvas; and

176 Sally Beauman, The Royal Shakespeare Company: A History of Ten Decades (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1982), 239. 177 Beauman, History, 255. 178 Beauman, History, 59. 179 Tynan, quoted in Beauman, History, 251. 142 by cogent deliberate verse speaking, that discards melodic cadenzas in favour of meaning and motivation.‖180 Similar to Shakespeare‘s staging practices, this ―Brechtian‖ setting created a theatre emphasizing imaginative rather than pictorial scenery. The lack of visual elements to interest the audience required that actors engage the audience directly with the clarity of their language and the specificity of their actions.

In order to accommodate production styles that emphasized the well-trained company and their ability to speak to the audience, the Royal Shakespeare Company built the Swan Theatre in 1986 in the shell of the 1879 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (Figure

18).

Figure 18: The Swan Theatre, 2010, courtesy of Royal Shakespeare Company, photo by Stewart Hemley.

The close proximity of the audience, some of whom bumped their knees on the stage from front-row seats, made this stage a favorite of actors, directors, and audiences. The theatre had two downstage vomitoria for entrances and exits, and a relatively shallow

180 Tynan, quoted in Beauman, History, 251. 143 upstage area, both of which drew actors down stage into the midst of the audience and minimized the room for sets upstage. For the inaugural production at the Swan, the

Royal Shakespeare Company presented The Two Noble Kinsmen, a little-produced play with oddities like a Morris dance with a baboon, a series of soliloquies of complex verse where a secondary character, the jailor‘s daughter, goes mad, and a combat sequence offstage narrated by characters onstage. While the nearness of the audience enhanced their response to physical activities like dances, the lack of downstage scenery put greater emphasis on the language actors used. The choice of The Two Noble Kinsmen as the best play to feature the theatre revealed a confidence in Shakespeare‘s plays to succeed in the minimalist conditions of performance.181

Figure 19: The Swan Theatre Stage, pre-set for The City Madam, 2010, courtesy of Royal Shakespeare Company, photo by Ellie Kurttz.

181 The 1986 production transferred to the Royal Shakespeare Company theatres in London. The play had only been produced once before, in 1959 in the Open Air Theatre at the Avonbank Gardens, and once since, in 2006, also in the Swan Theatre. 144

The Royal Shakespeare Company often used the 450-seat Swan Theatre to present new plays that had a similar performance dynamic (Figure 19). Michael Boyd‘s vision stated: ―Our charter gives us the clear obligation to nurture new writing under the protective wing of Shakespeare‘s enduring popular appeal.‖182 In 2011, the RSC hosted

Dunsinane, a play written by David Greig and derived from improvisations with the company of actors from the National Theatre of Scotland and the Edinburgh Lyceum.183

The play used elements of Elizabethan stagecraft as Siward (a character drawn from

Shakespeare‘s Macbeth) instructed a squadron of men with tree branches to create

Birnam Wood (Figure 20). This deconstruction of the Birnam Wood illusion from the end of Macbeth set the tone for the revisionist history of the play while mocking the illusory stagecraft of the siege of Dunsinane. Upstage left, a single set piece of a Celtic cross and surrounding stairs provided a background for all the scenes of the play. Every other locale was defined by actors naming the place and by props being brought on. The production borrowed the actor emphasis, skirmish battles, and fluid scene transitions from Shakespeare‘s tradition. Although the play had opened at a Victorian proscenium theatre in Scotland, the cast changed the show to the space in a single eight-hour rehearsal and remounted the full show in eight days.184 Because the play focused on the actors rather than illusory scenery the play could be transferred in such little time.

182 Michael Boyd, ―Playing our Proper Role. The Way Forward for The Royal Shakespeare Company‖ Memorandum, The Royal Shakespeare Company, October 2003. 183 In a talkback, the director Roxana Silbert noted that Greig felt relieved at the workshop approach since it alleviated his anxiety concerning the quality of his writing to be performed alongside Shakespeare at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Roxana Silbert ―Director Talk: Dunsinane,‖ Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, June 17, 2011. 184 Silbert also noted the pleasure of using the extensive prop and costume resources made available to them at the Royal Shakespeare Company. When she asked for a prop head, the next day a sack of heads 145

Figure 20: Dunsinane, Swan Theatre, 2011, courtesy of The Royal Shakespeare Company, photo by Simon Anand.

Before breaking ground on the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre in 2007, Boyd led the creation of the 1,045-seat Courtyard Theatre as a trial run for the architecture that would change the staging and performance practices of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The Courtyard replaced the Royal Shakespeare Company‘s second stage, the Other

Place,185 a stage often used for new and experimental staging. Boyd took the spirit of the

Other Place, an intimate theatre with surrounding audience, to a larger scale as he envisioned the Courtyard (Figure 21) and later redesign of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre

(Figure 22): ―Both theatres are an open space, with actors sharing ideas, emotions, and arrived to give her several choices. These resources support the visual storytelling of the play, but Silbert kept such props at a utilitarian minimum so as to keep the pace of the show quick and transitions smooth. 185 The Other Place, a 150-seat theatre adapted from a storage and/or rehearsal room, opened with King Lear in 1974. The Other Space was redesigned as a purpose-built stage in 1991. 146 the air with the audience which is in turn aware of itself.‖186 Notably, Boyd‘s Oliver-

Award-Winning Histories Cycle performed at the Courtyard (and the Roundhouse in

London) to great acclaim. The Courtyard, it seemed, vindicated the staging practices that

Boyd had envisioned and put into practice through his exercised control over the stage‘s use.

Figure 21: The Courtyard Stage, 2008, courtesy of Royal Shakespeare Company, photo by Stewart Hemley.

186 Michael Boyd, ―The Imminent prospect of a radical new theatre.‖ Memorandum, The Royal Shakespeare Company, September 22, 2008. 147

Figure 22: The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 2011, courtesy of Royal Shakespeare Company, photo by Stewart Hemley.

Boyd‘s direction for the Courtyard and rebuilt Royal Shakespeare Theatre (Figure

23) discovered staging possibilities for these stages. Boyd‘s stagecraft often mirrored

Shakespeare‘s own as he left the central playing space bare, but frequently Boyd flew in actors and set pieces in the area above the thrust stage. The 2004-2008 Histories Cycle included ladders flown in from the ceiling upon which actors fought and died.187

Similarly, at the beginning of Henry VI, part 1, the coffin of Henry V was flown in on a giant cross, around which the characters began to lament and bicker. For Boyd‘s 2011

Macbeth, the three weird sisters were three dead children flown in on halters who awoke from death hovering in the middle of the theatre. Similarly, to wash their hands after the murder of Duncan, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth knelt at a silver bowl while a long trail of

187 Nick Asbury, Exit Pursued by a Badger: An Actor’s Journey Through History with Shakespeare (London: Oberon Books, 2010), 100. 148 water fell from the ceiling. Little else was brought on stage and the frons of the stage held a crumbling façade of a gothic church-like space, and upon the balcony three cellists observed the whole play and underscored various moments of the action and breaks between scenes. The actors came into the audience and stood in the aisles to lead choric reactions to moments in the play, such as the crowning of Macbeth. The actors, often in soliloquies, spoke directly to the audience. The Porter threatened the audience with dynamite that he tossed about the stage in mad nonchalance during his monologue. From all these choices, Boyd‘s direction sought to blur the boundaries between actors and audience and take advantage of the sculptural elements of blocking on a thrust stage.

Figure 23: The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 2011, curtain call for Romeo and Juliet, courtesy of Royal Shakespeare Company, photo by Ellie Kurttz.

149

Rupert Goold‘s 2011 Merchant of Venice emphasized an excessively visual rather than sculptural use of the stage. Goold and designer, Tom Scutt, filled the stage with a veritable orgy of design elements, overcrowding the stage for the purpose of creating a visually lush, but emotionally shallow, Las Vegas setting. This visual saturation contrasted with the barer settings in scenes of negotiation between Antonio, Bassanio, and Shylock and scenes of love between Bassanio and Portia. Goold also added a 20- minute improvisation to the beginning of the play during which actors gambled at various gaming tables, and girls delivered drinks while a live band assembled on an upstage platform. Later, a couch surfaced from an elevator center stage and two monitors dropped in (facing the central portion of the house) to make a game show set for the selection of caskets at Belmont.188 Even in the scenes with Shylock, a large table overwhelmed much of center stage. Actors rarely spoke directly to the audience. The stagecraft remained visually-oriented mostly towards the central audience rather than the surrounding audience. By filling the center of the stage, actors often had to play on the front portion of the stage or around the sides of central objects. The scenic design fulfilled a thematic purpose by counterbalancing the exuberant design with the moments of the simple, heartfelt love between Bassiano and Portia (and Bassiano and Antonio), but the directors‘ vision took priority over any mission to discover how the stages can change production styles.

188 On June 14, 2011, the elevators lifting up the couch was off its rails and broke the stage as it rose. In the 20 minute break that followed, actor Jamie Beamish who played Launcelot Gobbo as an Elvis impersonator, led the audience in a sing-along of Elvis songs while the technicians attended to the elevator and stage repairs. This moment, in spite of the intricate design, helped realize the ―conspiracy between performer and audience‖ that was Boyd‘s ideal. 150 Although directors had the discretion to use the stage as they saw fit, the design of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (and Courtyard) stage supported the stagecraft that was long the ideal of the company: well-trained actors in proximity and in ―conspiracy‖ with audience members to imagine the play through Shakespeare‘s words. When the Royal

Shakespeare Company toured five plays to New York City in 2011 (with the support of

The Ohio State University and the Lincoln Center), they brought with them a portable replica of their stage on which to perform. The company shipped the 161-ton stage and

150-ton auditorium in 46 large steel shipping containers to America to erect and store the

85 tons of scenery and costumes for the 6-week run. ―It took just 18 days to build the intimate, 3-level, 975-seat auditorium where the furthest seat was only 49 feet from the stage.‖ 189 The Royal Shakespeare Company, blessed with a large budget, could afford to showcase their new stage to an American audience rather than showcasing only their actors and the audience. Ostensibly, by refusing to transfer the plays to a proscenium stage, the Royal Shakespeare Company showed the New York audiences the significance of their new stage. Because the stage was new to the Royal Shakespeare Company, they marketed its design as revolutionary. Without a similar revolutionary bent in the directors of the company to discover the stagecraft, however, contemporary stagecraft and design practices would easily overwhelm the direct actor-audience relationship.

Actor Training and Coaching

Because so much of the acting company was drawn from London, most actors commented that the repertory of plays, length of performance contracts, and use of

189 ―RSC by the Numbers,‖ Park Avenue Armory, August 31, 2011, accessed July 28, 2012, http://www.armoryonpark.org/index.php/emails/110831_newsletter. 151 multiple stages provided the best actor training. As actor David Oyelowo noted in the

1999-2000 annual review, ―The RSC is now one of the few companies where you work on a range of plays, and where you have sixteen months solid to steep yourself in language." He valued the variety: "I also performed [in addition to Oroonoko] in Volpone and Antony and Cleopatra so I was working every night in different theatre spaces. This is phenomenal training.‖190 Performance remained the key training experience, but when actors faced difficulties they had many people to whom they could turn for support.

However, Michael Boyd and the coaching staff often sought to serve the Royal

Shakespeare Company tradition of innovating performance techniques and improving actors‘ skills.

Under Peter Hall, the Royal Shakespeare Company began such a tradition of improving actors‘ skills for the purpose of expanding the capabilities of the acting ensemble. Training, under Hall, became another way for the company to establish itself as forward-looking rather than memorial. In 1962, Peter Hall invited Michel Saint

Denis191 and Peter Brook to become Associate Directors. Together they set up a formal training program called the Studio. Its ambitious goal, according to Saint-Denis‘s manifesto, was ―to evolve the ways and means to find out the kind of work and to conduct the experiments through which a contemporary way of producing Shakespeare and the Elizabethans—and perhaps other styles, as a consequence—can be prepared.‖192

190 Miriam Gilbert, ―The Leasing-out of the RSC,‖ Shakespeare Quarterly 53, no. 4 (2002): 520. 191 Saint-Denis, a student of Jacques Copeau, established theatre training programs worldwide, including the London Theatre Studio (1934), the Old Vic Centre (1946), the National Theatre School of Canada (part-founder 1958/9), Juilliard Drama School (1960). 192 Colin Chambers, Inside the Royal Shakespeare Company (London: Routledge, 2004), 146. 152 The Studio was a voluntary training program that offered classes around the rehearsal schedule. The program had the dual roles of professional training and experimental laboratory, where Saint-Denis could train actors in a cross-fertilized technique, but Brook, Hall and the other teachers and directors could experiment with ways of making theatre, including changing the actor-audience relationship from the visual style prescribed by proscenium theatres.193 Aided by a 3-year grant from the

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the training program had the time to explore ―technique

(movement, dance, acrobatics, wrestling, fights; voice, diction, singing; playing of simple stage instruments) and the exploration of acting (improvisation with and without masks, theoretical and practical work on varied styles, discussion of Elizabethan and all modern theatre currents).‖194 Saint-Denis‘s vision of the training never received the material support in the form of space availability, commitment from all actors, or time that would make it a full-company endeavor. Show production took priority over technique innovation. In addition, its devotion to exploration without visible, measureable results, made it seem like something that could be cut when the company hit its first budgetary crisis in 1966.195 Soon after the Studio closed, however, Peter Brook used many of the trained actors in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the ensemble-driven Marat/Sade. The

Royal Shakespeare Company would not have a conservatory again, but voice and text coaches were integrated into rehearsals.

John Barton and Cicely Berry developed techniques in, respectively,

Shakespearean acting and voice in service of productions at the Royal Shakespeare

193 Chambers, Inside, 147. 194 Chambers, Inside, 147. 195 Chambers, Inside, 150. 153 Company. John Barton‘s television miniseries and book Playing Shakespeare196 articulated a technique for acting in Shakespeare‘s plays on the premise that actors

―marry the two traditions:‖ the Elizabethan forms of verse and rhetoric and modern (i.e. naturalistic) acting.197 Barton familiarized Shakespeare by claiming that the acting technique used in the Elizabethan era was the foundation of the contemporary,

Stanislavsky-based acting techniques.198 His analysis of verse, diction, and rhetorical forms informed a character‘s given circumstances and objectives, and gave actors ways of strengthening emotional connections to the words. This widely imitated approach allowed actors to maintain their confidence in their own technique while learning new tools to use the complex text of Shakespeare‘s plays.

In 1969 Trevor Nunn hired Cicely Berry to lead the voice department. Through her fourteen years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, she developed techniques that explored the link between meaning and voice that enhanced both acting skill and vocal production.199 Nunn praised Berry‘s book, The Actor and the Text, as ―a fundamental part of the RSC‘s achievement,‖200 because her techniques allowed actors to speak with clarity and ease as became the circumstances of the characters. In addition to aiding the texts of Shakespeare, Berry adapted her techniques for Jacobean, Restoration, Formal

Modern and Modern texts as well. Like Barton, Berry emphasized continuity and useful juxtaposition between classical and contemporary texts:

196 John Barton, Playing Shakespeare, (London: Metheun, 2001). 197 Barton, Playing Shakespeare, 21. 198 Barton, Playing Shakespeare, 195. 199 Chambers, Inside, 158. 200 Trevor Nunn, foreword to The Actor and the Text, by Cicely Berry (New York: Applause, 1992), 7. 154 It is the interchange between modern and classical writing that enriches both and

makes each more alive. Work on Shakespeare opens our awareness to language

even when they are rooted in a modern reality. And work on modern text keeps

our ears tuned to the colloquial rhythms of everyday speech, which needs to be

integrated into our speaking of verse. We should be always balancing the two for,

in a sense, every piece of text we speak on a stage is heightened—it is

performed—and we have to find its particular voice and place that particular

language.201

She also posed the connection of voice to meaning to remedy the extreme naturalistic acting that she described as ―post-articulate.‖ Language on the stage, she argued, should appeal to both reason and emotion by being ―thought in action.‖202 In addition to this immediacy of thought and emotion, Berry included the demands of the twentieth century non-naturalistic theatre: ―We have to honour a greater need, and that is to make what we say remarkable to the hearer. This is what Brecht was after.‖203 The final goal she set forth in her book was to provide actors with confidence in their own techniques.204 The

Royal Shakespeare Company‘s approach articulated by Barton and Berry emphasized the actors‘ confidence in their current technique as much as the exercises and approaches to the ―heightened language‖ of Shakespeare‘s texts.

In 2011, training continued both in one-on-one coaching sessions and in workshops. The first month of the rehearsals began with a series of workshops in

201 Cicely Berry, The Actor and the Text (New York: Applause, 1992), 10. 202 Berry, Actor, 11. This goal is remarkably similar to Michael Langham‘s goal of ―living thought‖ taught at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. 203 Berry, Actor, 10. 204 Berry, Actor, 11. 155 physical techniques, voice use, and verse analysis. Several actors considered these classes to be chiefly ensemble-building exercises, a place where actors learned to play together and admire each other‘s skills before working on the play proper. In the

Histories Cycle, Boyd referred to the rope and trapeze classes as ―a good McGuffin205 for actors.‖ Boyd valued the McGuffin because

Actors so busy being tired and sore that they weren‘t able to be self-conscious

about what they were doing on the rehearsal room floor. And quite apart from it

being a good way of staying in tune and doing some exciting acrobatic work in

the shows.206

The workshops, then, often helped establish a rehearsal and company dynamic that actors and directors found valuable, regardless of the quality of the technique learned. For the duration of rehearsals, coaches were available for one-on-one sessions with the actors and rehearsal observations at the request of directors. Instead of a season-long studio for actors to explore the possibilities of verse speaking, vocal production, or audience interaction, the coaches detailed their notes to the individual actors and demands of the shows.

Michael Boyd valued coaches as equal collaborators in the rehearsal. Because vocal techniques like Cicely Berry‘s addressed both sound and meaning, coaches often had an opinion to offer on the interpretation of the text. Boyd welcomed additional interpretations even if they challenged his original vision. Actors who expected the rehearsal to be the steady building toward a singular director‘s vision, however, could

205 ―McGuffin,‖ is a term borrowed from Alfred Hitchcock‘s technique of misdirection in film where a director uses cinematic conventions to highlight an unimportant element as a vital piece of the story. 206 Boyd, ―Making Theater.‖ 156 resent any contradictory choices a coach provided. One actor even accused the coaches of offering ―subliminal direction‖ rather than the support he sought.207 Therefore, to make the most positive use of many coaches the Royal Shakespeare Company hired, the rehearsal process had to welcome the interpretations of all collaborators.

Boyd was similarly anti-zeitgeist in his approach to theatrical training within a professional company, ―dancers and musicians take life-long daily training for granted and theatre could still do with catching up.‖208 Because the culture of the professional theatre did not train daily, actors generally valued coaches or workshops only insofar as they benefitted performances. Voluntary workshops were often ignored. Although

Michael Boyd had hoped to change the culture of the entire institution, the conventional rehearsal and hiring practices of other directors hindered actors‘ interest in pursuing training opportunities outside of rehearsal. The actors who desired additional input sought coaches; the culture of the institution did not change their traditional goals of role creation.

Actors‘ backgrounds influenced their attitude toward training. Young actors with little experience with performing Shakespeare were highly complimentary of their coaches. In rehearsal, these actors often had small roles with few lines. The one-on-one coaching sessions gave these actors the time to improve their understanding of

Shakespeare‘s text that increased their confidence in performance. One young actor praised his coach:

She is not patronizing. She works with your strengths and builds your

weaknesses. She inspires you to want to be better. I can say this about a handful

207 Anonymous (Actor), interview by Andrew Blasenak, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, June 15, 2011. 208 Boyd, ―The Imminent Prospect.‖ 157 of human beings that I have encountered in my life. In [its] simplistic form [she]

makes me want to be the best at what I do. I will miss her the most.209

Some more established actors considered the training to be an auxiliary part of the rehearsal process rather than a vital part of their continuing development. However, long-term company members like Patrick Stewart often consulted coaches as part of the rehearsal process. These actors, trained in the philosophy surviving from Hall in the

1960s, shared the anti-zeitgeist approach to the acting profession that Boyd endorsed.

The reconfiguration of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre created a greater need for attention to the actors‘ bodies. Boyd understood that actors‘ bodies had to help make sculptural compositions, so he hired Struan Leslie as a movement coach in 2008. The surrounding audience created the demand for actors to be skilled both vocally and physically to communicate to members of the audience behind them in the relatively large theatre.

One enduring element of training that helped include the entire ensemble was the company-wide warm-up. Before each show, a movement and a voice teacher in tandem led the actors for thirty minutes of exercises. The warm-up was voluntary, and several actors preferred to warm up on their own (or not at all) rather than with the coaches.

Without a universal commitment from the actors, this warm-up failed to unite the ensemble before the show and remained a benefit to only the individuals who desired it.

The training that actors most valued was the practice of universal understudying.210 Boyd removed the stigma this lower-status assignment by establishing

209 Anonymous Royal Shakespeare Company actor, email to author, August 7, 2011. 210 Although Boyd claimed that all actors understudied, some actors were wary of understudying because of the lower status attached to the practice. Some actors reportedly opted out of understudying even though 158 the principle that all actors understudied, no matter how experienced they were. Younger actors were able to work on larger roles in their understudy assignments. The limited rehearsal time for understudy roles encouraged them to consult coaches for their preparation. Understudying also unified the actors of ensemble. Understudies communicated with the principal actors about the roles, and many company members attended understudy runs to see the talents of the up-and-coming actors. The ability to work on larger roles on the Royal Shakespeare Company stages provided actors the challenge to develop new skills for a greater variety of roles.

Understudying and using coaches also provided one of the few chances for advancement. Actors were cast in the Young Person‘s Shakespeare production of Hamlet after the season had opened, so the director could evaluate their commitment and previous development. Dharmesh Patel, who had little previous experience performing

Shakespeare‘s plays, had small roles in the main season of plays. His impressive work on these roles and a positive report from the coaching staff encouraged the director of

Hamlet to give him the title role.

Because much of the training at the Royal Shakespeare Company focused on the individual, the actors did not necessarily share the collective dynamic Boyd envisioned.

Instead of describing a specific approach to performance, many artists and writers spoke in mystical terms of the process. Boyd spoke of the ―special alchemy‖ that happened on a stage with the surrounding audience. Others spoke of the performance as ―magic.‖

Others looked for the ―chemistry‖ among the actors in rehearsal. Because the Royal

the entire company, in Boyd‘s vision, was to participate. This attempt to make mutual respect among the ensemble still met resistance from the actors who believed that understudying represented a step backwards in their career. 159 Shakespeare Company had so many mid-career actors and well-established directors who had branded their images, the artistic administration could neither afford nor insist on a unified conservatory-style approach. Without a consistency of style determined by the stages or the company, the actors‘ and directors‘ talents mostly determined the quality of the shows, but the coaches were available to make sure that all actors could be confident in the technique behind their talent.

Ensemble Acting

The Royal Shakespeare Company under Peter Hall and Michael Boyd alike extended rehearsal periods and lengths of actors‘ contracts for the purpose of insulating them from the continuous pressures of seeking employment in the entertainment industry.

The stability of these contracts provided actors the ability to improve their acting techniques through the rehearsal and training opportunities. Under Hall, the benefit of these conditions combined with the profile of the Royal Shakespeare Company produced some of the most well known actors of the British stage and screen. Under Boyd, however, the practices and expectations of actors trained for jobs in the broader entertainment industry conflicted with his dedication to ensemble.

Peter Hall as artistic director prioritized a steady ensemble of actors, similar to the models of companies like the Berliner Ensemble and the Moscow Art Theatre. Instead of hiring established stars for short contracts, Hall committed the company to hiring to a stable core of actors who undertook group training and long rehearsals. Newer actors worked with more established ones until, ideally, they were promoted from within the ranks of the company for their exceptional work and training. From this system arose

160 stars, before they had names for themselves, such as Judi Dench, Peggy Ashcroft, Ian

McKellan, Patrick Stewart, Ben Kingsley, and several other actors who became some of the most celebrated actors in the British theatre and world cinema. Through the triple aims of long actor contracts, extended rehearsals, and the institution of company actor training, Hall helped create a new definition of ensemble in the British theatre.

Hall offered actors three-year contracts in order to provide them stable employment and a consequent focus on the craft of acting. Actors were guaranteed work, or at least seventy-five percent of their salary when no roles were available for them.

Many actors were enthusiastic about this guaranteed employment, and, ostensibly, the time to develop their acting craft. But this substantial investment and trust in the actors who were hired did not ensure that they would devote themselves wholly to improving the craft of acting, or ensure that they would stay with the company. The contracts assumed that actors would motivate themselves to train their acting technique or pursue other projects while not employed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Such a dedication was not universally shared, and the contracts sometimes earned the nickname

―the Ibiza charter,‖ implying that those actors who were not cast in plays were on paid vacation.211 Conversely, those actors who were successful did not exclude other opportunities for the good of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Peter O‘Toole, one of the first actors to receive a 3-year contract, ―was wildly enthusiastic‖ about this way of working at the beginning of his contract.212 When offered the title role in Lawrence of

Arabia after the first year, O‘Toole left the company. Instead of returning to the Royal

Shakespeare Company the following season to play Henry II in Beckett, O‘Toole played

211 Beauman, History, 240f. 212 Beauman, History, 240. 161 Henry II in the film of Beckett.213 The commitment that the company gave to the actors did not ensure that the all of the actors would commit their time to their classes, rehearsals, and craft.

The dedication to ensemble under Hall fostered a group of well-trained actors who helped revitalize performance practices. But in 1964, Peter Hall noted that the actors who succeeded in the ensemble were often enticed by more lucrative employment.

He concluded of the Royal Shakespeare Company‘s ensemble company structure: ―If you are lucky enough to create it, it immediately begins to disintegrate.‖214 Those actors who received the benefits of classes, challenging roles, and a supportive company developed their skills to the point that they could confidently pursue (or be approached by) better- paying, higher-profile employment. This turnover was useful for the long-term growth of the Royal Shakespeare Company. When the top actors left, they provided advancement opportunities for newer actors in the company. Just as understudying created a ―knock- on‖ effect where actors playing supporting roles stepped into larger roles for performance, the new casting rewarded actors who developed their craft and worked successfully on challenging roles. The commitment to ensemble, rather than the hiring of stars for the sole reason of box office appeal, rewarded actors who dedicated their time and talents to the company for many years.

In addition to this benefit, those actors who left to pursue more high-profile projects sometimes returned to the company to work in the ensemble methods established. Patrick Stewart, for instance, was a core member of the Royal Shakespeare

Company from 1966 to 1982, and he developed international fame as a star of film and

213 Beauman, History, 240. 214 Beauman, History, 245. 162 television. He regularly returned to the Royal Shakespeare Company, however, where his fame drew greater box office receipts. His fame was not his sole contribution. He also assumed the role of a senior member of the company, fostering the next generation of artists through holding cast-wide parties at his house and collaborating in rehearsal.

Patrick Stewart found more lucrative work in other venues, but the texts, the people, and the ways of working at the Royal Shakespeare Company provided attractive working conditions that offset the lower pay and longer commitment of a theatre job.

This ideal of maintaining a solid company of actors was threatened and restored in the early twenty-first century. Near the end of his tenure in 2001, Adrian Noble proposed the controversial ―Project Fleet‖ which, among other significant changes, would shorten the length of contract so the Royal Shakespeare Company would be ―a more attractive place to work for actors and directors.‖215 Long contracts limited the networking and audition opportunities for those actors who aspired to better-paying employment or greater exposure in the entertainment industry; therefore, many actors and their agents were averse to nine-month contracts. In 2002, Royal Shakespeare Company had five separate acting companies, so the actors rarely had the sense of cohesion available to a smaller acting company. But that same season, Michael Boyd, as an associate director, directed the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III with the same ensemble of actors. This cohesive unit, amidst a divided company, created an Olivier-

Award winning production. Greg Doran216 noted in 2002 that the realities of the entertainment business meant that ―actors are less ready to work away from London for

215 Gilbert, ―Leasing-out,‖ 518. 216 Greg Doran was named to succeed Michael Boyd as Artistic Director in 2012. 163 long; directors are less prepared to cross-cast.‖217 Instead of discarding the principles of ensemble that required cross-casting (the casting of the same actors in a repertory of plays) and long contracts, Michael Boyd placed the importance of company over all else.

Boyd‘s anti-zeitgeist focus on actors and audience, rather than directors and company, attempted to challenge the conventional wisdom of the entertainment industry in the hopes of producing better quality theatre. As he led the rebuilding of the Royal

Shakespeare Theatre to get the audience closer to the actors, he returned to the practice of hiring actors for thirty-month contracts to get the ensemble of actors closer to each other.

The first project that he undertook with this ensemble was the same project that he had undertaken a few years earlier, and the same project that Peter Hall undertook when he hired actors on three-year contracts, i.e., the complete cycle of Shakespeare‘s History plays. Boyd reflected on the difficulties of instituting a ―long ensemble‖:

It felt like a very anti-zeitgeist thing to do. And even after some considerable

success with our first project along these guidelines, the Histories Cycle, it can be

seen by some agents as a difficult, daring decision by some actors to take.

They‘re closing down their options. There is a terror, in some ways, of

commitment out there amongst the agents. And, indeed, it affects some of the

actors too. Such a long commitment to your art and craft can be seen as shutting

down your freedom and your choice and I am there at the moment. On the

tipping point between our pursuit of ensemble either being the way forward for

217 Gilbert, ―Leasing-out,‖ 520. 164 the RSC or is it going to be a failed idealism. So far it feels like its making

sense.218

The high-quality productions of Shakespeare‘s lesser-known and less-produced plays, validated the worth of the ensemble as a way of working. Boyd argued that the ―long ensemble‖ had shaped the expectations of actors. Before Boyd began the second ―long ensemble‖ in 2008, he stated, ―I sense we are at a tipping point, and I feel that what we are doing at the RSC is becoming less anti-Zeitgeist.‖

Many of the actors involved shared similar feelings about the value of the ―long ensemble.‖ Nick Asbury spoke fondly of how tightly bonded the cast was and how common their sacrifice and support had become in his book Exit Pursued by a Badger:

An Actor’s Journey through History with Shakespeare. For the final opening night, he wrote:

[Press night] seems quite strange now, after two years and two months to be

‗opening‘ a show—ridiculous—but that‘s where we‘re at….We have total faith in

ourselves and each other to be able to do the best we possibly can. Not cockiness

or arrogance. Just belief. And that‘s not just tonight but every performance we

do. This project has abnegated the need for press approbation. We just get on

with it and it‘s very refreshing.219

In addition to this quality of performance among an epic task of performing eight different plays in as little as three days, the ensemble also allowed a different experience for the audience. Those audience members were able to appreciate the talents of the ensemble of actors who each played multiple roles. Boyd also used thematic doubling so

218 Boyd, ―Making Theater.‖ 219 Asbury, Exit Pursued, 125. 165 that the resonance of an actor‘s role in one play could influence how s/he was seen in another. Chuk Iwuji created the epic-sized role of Henry VI in Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and

3, and in Richard III as Henry‘s ghost. Other actors had a variety of roles. Asbury played

Bushy, Pistol, Lord Somerset, and a bookish 2nd Murderer (in Richard III). These casting practices gave the audience a deeper appreciation either of the depth of a single character, or the versatility of an actor. The fact that the actors became accustomed to playing together over two years further emphasized the confidence in the acting abilities of the ensemble.

In order to inspire individual actors to work as an ensemble, however, required a performance schedule so demanding or actors of such great and diverse talents that each actor could not imagine doing another actor‘s job. As Peter Hall noted in a 1995 interview:

On the whole, I think actors have an enormous respect for talent. Even if they

don‘t like somebody, providing the man or woman is a genius they will forgive

them and enjoy working with them. The most important thing about the theatre is

that every actor, however great, is totally dependent on the actors around him, and

unless there is a real sharing, a real sense of support, no actor can play as well as

he could when he is being supported by his fellow.220

Much of this support, however, came from the diversity of talent in the ensemble, as one actor from the 2011 season said: ―a great ensemble is where you can do what I can‘t do.‖

The ensemble mentality at the Royal Shakespeare Company, therefore, derived from

220 Peter Hall, ―Chekhov, Shakespeare, the Ensemble and the Company,‖ New Theatre Quarterly 11, no. 43 (1995): 207. 166 actors confronting their own limitations and needing the support of others to attain artistic success.

The second hiring of a ―long ensemble‖ revealed that the practices of the commercial theatre, and the demands of the directors, conflicted with the conditions necessary to foster an ensemble. For the 2009-2011 season an ensemble of actors was hired on a thirty-month contract to perform in King Lear (dir. David Farr), As You Like It

(dir. Michael Boyd), A Winter’s Tale (dir. David Farr), Julius Caesar (dir. Lucy Bailey), and Romeo and Juliet (dir. Rupert Goold), with the possibility of also performing in the

Young Person‘s Shakespeare 75-minute Hamlet. Instead of Boyd having the freedom and responsibility to cast the actors in the ensemble in roles as he saw fit (or establishing his priority to cast the company before the directors),221 each of the directors maintained their responsibility to casting their own show as strongly as possible. For instance, Greg

Hicks, one of the strongest actors in the ensemble, assumed the roles of Leontes, Julius

Caesar, and King Lear. Because of his talent and experience, many of the directors wanted him in their leading roles. Most reviewers, who were trained to analyze shows, not ensemble acting, supported this policy and remarked that some actors were ill-suited for some of their roles.222 Although the actors were best served by sharing responsibilities for large and small roles alike, most directors did not want to take the risk of casting less-experienced actors in leading roles. Ultimately, the quality of the play was the thing that caught the conscience of the directors, not the company‘s development.

221 Boyd, ―Making Theater.‖ 222 Charles Isherwood, ―Theater Talkback: A Final Scorecard for the RSC,‖ New York Times Arts Beat (blog), August 18, 2011, accessed July 28, 2012, http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/theater- talkback-a-final-scorecard-for-the-rsc/. 167 The splitting of the ensemble between the visions of several directors caused many challenges to the building of a cohesive ensemble. Actors spent less time together, and most actors were only in two or three of the five shows rather than seven of eight.

Further, there were no common McGuffins for the actors to train together. Whereas the previous ensemble was praised for its cohesion, critic David Jays of the Guardian commented of the second ensemble: ―despite many engaging performances in the four shows I've seen so far, I don't sense cohesion or common purpose. The actors may have lived in each other's pockets, but their work lacks the dense intimacy I'd expected.‖223

Although working with a new director each show would be typical for actors working in the professional theatre, since the plays were presented in repertory, the actors often had to rehearse with one director‘s style in the morning and then another director‘s style in the evening. For instance, although Michael Boyd and Rupert Goold both encouraged actor input, they approached rehearsals incredibly differently. Boyd encouraged discarding former choices and always trying new interpretations; Goold gave a structured visual and conceptual framework in which the actors could contribute. Boyd encouraged all actors to have input in all parts of the play; director David Farr sometimes had private conversations with Greg Hicks in the midst of King Lear rehearsals. Since all actors attempted to make their directors happy by fulfilling their demands, spoken or unspoken, the shifting between styles and expectations caused considerable strain and frustration.

223David Jays, ―Are the RSC‘s ensemble glory days over?‖ Guardian (Theatre blog), February 1, 2011, accessed July 28, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/feb/01/royal-shakespeare- company-ensemble. 168 The autonomy of directors diminished the sense of ensemble for the sake of fulfilling their own visions and working practices.224

Many actors still praised the Royal Shakespeare Company as one of the last theatres in England that considered itself an ―ensemble‖ company. The Royal

Shakespeare Company‘s dedication to actor development through the training resources it provided and challenging main and understudy roles increased the actor satisfaction.

However, few actors had a clear understanding of what it meant to be part of the Royal

Shakespeare Company. Although many were excited by the improved quality of the shows, the new theatre, and the commitment Boyd made to the actors, few saw the company as an artistic home. The practices of the commercial theatre led directors to hire only one-third of the actors from the Histories Cycle for the second ―long ensemble.‖

Either actors left to pursue greater fame and financial compensation or directors did not want to cast them. Without the artificial stability and continuity of a visionary artistic director, the practices of the self-serving entertainment industry ultimately prevailed.

Rehearsal Practices

For the Young Person‘s Shakespeare production of Taming of the Shrew, the

Royal Shakespeare Company hired director Tim Crouch. Crouch, whose work in plays like ENGLAND and The Author, is known for having a style of theatre that eliminated boundaries between character and actor, theatrical and metatheatrical, and actor and audience. Jacqui O‘Hanlon, head of education, said that the management hired directors like Crouch for the Young Person‘s Shakespeare because he would have more liberty to

224 In the 2009-2011 ensemble, two actors resigned from the project not to take other jobs, but to leave a working environment not conducive to their artistic process. 169 experiment with the direct actor-audience dynamic that young audiences enjoyed. The hiring of Crouch, therefore, was an extension of Boyd‘s missions to redefine the actor- audience dynamic and to include the audience more directly in the shows. This style of performance also accommodated the smaller budget and prop limitations of a touring production. Crouch had collaborated on many shows before, but this show would be the first time that he assumed the role of director. With a director opposed to hierarchical structures and authoritative staging, the rehearsals for The Taming of the Shrew reflected the artistic vision of Boyd for ensemble and staging practices. However, Crouch‘s rehearsals began after the actors had worked together with two radically different directors, so he was prepared to encounter tired actors who might resist his collaborative process.

His previous work showed a penchant for fuzzy boundaries that had succeeded so well in previous Young Person‘s Shakespeare tours. In the play ENGLAND, Crouch and another actor escorted the audience through an art gallery, giving information about the various pieces on display. Then, the actors guided the audience‘s imaginations when they spoke in the present tense about the events in the story. They did not act out the scenes for the audience. Rather they reacted to audience members as if they were the characters in the play. In The Author, the actors sat among the audience throughout the play. The actors recounted to the audience the events of ―a violent, shocking, and abusive play written by a playwright called Tim Crouch‖225 The proximity of the actors, and the blur of the line between the fictive events of the play and the present theatrical event, played with the ideas of what was true and fictitious.

225 Tim Crouch, ―The Author: An Article by Tim Crouch,‖ Tim Crouch Theatre, accessed July 28, 2012, http://www.timcrouchtheatre.co.uk/shows/the-author/the-author. 170 In the Royal Shakespeare Company‘s 2011 season, Crouch also performed his one-man shows, I, Peaseblossom, and I, Malvolio. These plays retold of the events of A

Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night from a supporting character‘s point of view using direct audience address. Rehearsals for The Taming of the Shrew, shared this focus on the audience and ethos of collaboration derived from his previous work.226 ―I am an outsider here,‖ Crouch noted, ―and I am sure that‘s one of the reasons they brought me in.‖227 Although Crouch‘s stagecraft and rehearsals differed from those of other directors at Royal Shakespeare Company, his performance aesthetic matched Boyd‘s artistic vision.

The actors in rehearsal for The Taming of the Shrew were not part of the 2009-

2011 long ensemble but the shorter 2011 resident ensemble. These actors played supporting roles in Merchant of Venice and Macbeth. Both of these shows had opened after rehearsals with both Rupert Goold and Michael Boyd. The less-prestigious Young

Person‘s Shakespeare production of The Taming of the Shrew allowed the nine actors to take on more large roles in a shorter show.228 The rehearsals were split into two three- week sessions: three weeks in June and three weeks from August 29th through September

19th. Therefore, instead of jumping into blocking, Crouch spent these first few weeks to

226 Crouch also noted that he was able to buck trends of the RSC‘s machinery of theatrical production because it was a touring show. Saying ―my work is dematerialized,‖ he gladly ignored the massive design possibilities for discussions between actors and designers to help get only design elements that actors desired. 227 Tim Crouch, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, June 16, 2011. 228 Crouch was originally asked to direct Henry V, but he was not interested in the play. When he suggested The Taming of the Shrew, the initial reaction was that it was not suitable for the student age range, but Crouch provided a cutting of the script that emphasized the youth and unhappiness of the characters and the unfair family dynamics throughout that made the play suitable in Crouch‘s opinion. The nine actor in the show were: Nikesh Patel (Petruchio) and Madeline Appiah, (Katherina); Jamie Beamish (Christopher Sly); Caroline Martin (Baptista), Jason Morell (Grumio/Gremio), David McGranaghan (Lucentio), Daniel Percival (Tranio), Emily Plumtree (Bianca) and Daniel Rose (Hortensio). 171 learn about the actors and to start improvising character relationships. He wanted to set the actors on a path of exploration that could help them improvise blocking and develop character in later rehearsals. Crouch immediately realized how tired the actors were from having been in rehearsals and performances for two other shows. He was glad, therefore, to have time to introduce the actors to his priorities and ways of working and then give them time to work on their own.

Since The Taming of the Shrew was inspired by the practices of the Stand Up For

Shakespeare education program, the actors had the additional task of learning the educational programs as well as the show. The first week of rehearsal, therefore, showed the company preparing for performance in educational settings, learning Crouch‘s way of working, and exploring some blocking and character choices.

In the first rehearsal, Crouch and members of the education department introduced actors to elements of the Stand Up for Shakespeare curriculum. Crouch asked the actors to recall their school experiences with Shakespeare, and most actors described dreadful reading experiences. The actors‘ dread of reading contrasted to their joy of performing in Shakespeare‘s plays, and they were encouraged to help students make a similar discovery by undergoing the process of performing small bits of Shakespeare‘s texts. After this background discussion, members of the education department introduced actors to theatre games to be used in the classrooms such as expressing through gesture emotionally descriptive words and creating tableaux that communicated themes of the play. In the final exercise, inspired by Augusto Boal‘s theatre of the oppressed, a member of the education department pretended to be a school superintendent concerned with the themes of The Taming of the Shrew. Actors were encouraged to offer advice or step in as

172 the representative of the Royal Shakespeare Company, but one actor easily handled the imagined superintendent‘s imagined concerns.

This first rehearsal frustrated several of the actors. In rehearsal the actors did not complain, but backstage during evening performances, they spoke negatively about the exercises and questioned the utility of such a day. They were only concerned with doing the work of professional actors: staging the shows. The theatre games, the mock interview, and the personal introductions did not have a clear connection to blocking or character development. The actors wanted to rehearse, not to pretend that they were back in school.

In the second rehearsal, Crouch addressed the actors‘ frustrations. Crouch explained that the exercises attempted to build sensitivity to the student needs. Quickly moving on, Crouch jumped into the open and collaborative rehearsal. Crouch established the stage dimensions and asked the actors to imagine the audience sitting on the floor on three sides of the stage. Typical of his boundary-free blocking, he sat actors in the audience to begin the play. On stage, he asked the actors to help define the elements of the set as Bianca‘s and Katherine‘s bedroom for the purpose of an extended pre-show improvisation. The actresses used masking tape to define their portion of the bedroom as their character would. The ensuing argument over how to divide the room helped the actresses improvise conflicts and clarify character relationships.

Crouch asked actors questions to develop their characters with a sense of playfulness. He asked actors to find songs that expressed their character that could be played on a practical stereo/iPod dock during the show. He prompted actors to consider what small prop might help the audience understand their characters. Crouch also

173 allowed other actors to voice opinions on what props or actions would suit Katherine and

Bianca. The actress playing Katherine was excited by the choice to read a book, while the actress playing Bianca embraced the suggestion that she constantly text on her mobile phone while listening to garish pop music. Crouch and the actors discussed the actions and status relationships of sisters before asking the actresses to improvise a scene that would establish the character relationship of Katherine and Bianca. Crouch explained that the improvisation could last as long as ten minutes before the performance of The

Taming of the Shrew. Just as Crouch tried to blur the lines between actor and audience during performance, he tried to blur the distinction between the beginning of the play and the continued life of the characters.

Once Crouch established the sisters‘ dynamic he introduced one of the key characters: Christopher Sly. Crouch used this framing character to disrupt the theatrical frame as Sly drunkenly stumbled across the stage during the sisters‘ improvisation.229

The actors rehearsed this improvisation and concluded as Crouch asked them to ―log the stuff you think is working well and always try new stuff.‖ Rather than giving a speech of his directorial vision, Crouch established himself as a collaborative leader of an ensemble who prodded actors to try new ideas. He also gave the actors license to push the boundaries of naturalistic acting by saying ―it is a joy to play it big, and this play can be played big.‖ He challenged the actors to step outside of their usual habits and reinforced the character choices and actions that worked for him.

This sort of working reflected the culture that Michael Boyd sought to build.

Several actors noted that the company was much more democratic in its approach under

229 Crouch noted that the audience could accept two realities ―beautifully,‖ i.e. both the ―notated fictional time‖ and audience-actor reality. 174 Boyd, with the sense that anyone could perform Shakespeare‘s plays. While Des

McAnuff flattered his actors that it took 10,000 hours of training master any craft, Boyd encouraged actors who came straight from actor training programs with little or no prior experience with Shakespeare to trust their own artistic interpretations. This generous, approachable dynamic that the actors praised counteracted their previous frustration with directors like Adrian Noble.

Actors of the Royal Shakespeare Company were excited to work with different directors, but the conflicting styles of Rupert Goold and Michael Boyd rarely satisfied actors in both rehearsals. Rupert Goold, director of The Merchant of Venice, had a clear vision of the performance before rehearsals began, and some remarked that he did not seem to need the long rehearsal period preferred by Boyd. Goold worked at an intense pace directing actors in their blocking. He provided the visual framework and design to tell the story he envisioned, but freely left to the actors the development of character, motivation, examination of given circumstances, and the moment-to-moment acting.

Boyd, however, consulted with actors about their character choices and interpretation of the play. He resisted setting blocking even up until final dress rehearsals so that actors could continue to have freedom to explore possibilities of staging and character interpretation.

The conflicting working styles of the two plays that rehearsed simultaneously frustrated some actors. Actors had to meet the conflicting expectations of separate directors as they switched between directors in a single day of rehearsals. The workload of the actors was not equitable because the actors playing Portia, Shylock, Macbeth and

Lady Macbeth were only in one show. Actors playing roles in both plays felt that they

175 had to do twice as much work in half the rehearsal time. The perception of unfair practices and the struggle to switch between various director styles undercut the cohesion of the ensemble and the actors‘ confidence in performance.

Boyd‘s style of direction challenged actors accustomed to the production styles of

Goold that reflected the practices of the commercial theatre. The continual consultation with the actors and resistance to setting blocking often denied the steady sense of accomplishment that accompanied other rehearsal processes where actors set the moments that ―worked‖ in previous rehearsals. Actors became anxious when they could not figure out how to please both directors. As one actor noted, the actors wanted to learn the rules that a director worked by, and then get positive reinforcement from performing the way the director wanted. Boyd‘s attempt to change the power dynamics of rehearsal to be more ―democratic,‖ some actors simply saw his approach as yet another set of director‘s rules that they had to fulfill in order to have confidence in their performance and future employment. These attitudes of professional actors were dissonant with the theatre Boyd was hoping to create, one where actors were active interpreters of the full play, not just doing their own part.

Crouch prioritized the well-being of his actors in order to encourage their collaboration in rehearsal. During the first week of rehearsals he set up individual times to meet with each actor in order to discuss their mental, physical, and creative states.

Amidst the general complaints of the session with the education department, one actor told him that he did not want to be in rehearsal for The Taming of the Shrew. Crouch was glad to hear even the actor‘s negative feelings so that he could better understand the actors‘ responses in his collaborative rehearsals.

176 Crouch had developed a supportive relationship with the actors well in advance of rehearsals. Before rehearsals began for The Taming of the Shrew, the ensemble had been rehearsing and performing together for five months. They had established personal and status relationships. Crouch knew that he would be at a disadvantage not knowing this ahead of time, so he tried to position himself as an ally of the actors. Before rehearsals, he discussed the play with actors via email and sent them good-luck cards on the opening nights of Merchant of Venice and Macbeth. He supported their creative talents not only to allow them to contribute freely to rehearsal, but because he believed that was the proper way of treating people. Crouch said, ―[it] doesn‘t matter if the work is better for it, humanity is better for it.‖230 This realignment of priorities helped actors to invest their creative efforts in rehearsal more freely. The confidence of the collaborative actors appeared at one point in rehearsal was when Crouch asked, ―who‘s the fucking director,‖ and one actor answered positively, ―we all are.‖

Crouch had never worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company‘s voice, text, or movement coaches in rehearsal. The coaches approached him before rehearsal and said

―if you need us, we are here.‖ Crouch decided how or whether to use them. Although one voice coach attended a rehearsal in the first week, Crouch said he did not feel as if he needed them yet. He assumed that if actors knew what they were doing they would use their voices properly.

Crouch extended these inclusive principles in the third rehearsal, an open rehearsal for local teachers involved in the education programs. Crouch asked that each of the observers bring a gift to the rehearsal. As the teachers and observers offered jaffa

230 Tim Crouch, interview. 177 cakes, artwork and tea, they physicalized the idea that they were supporters, not judges, of the actors. The day started with two theatre games: ―Mashed potato‖ which encouraged big acting choices, and ―paper cup‖ which encouraged simplicity of action on stage. These games built a vocabulary that Crouch used in future rehearsals.231 The actors returned to the extended improvisations with the aim of transitioning into the first scene. The nature of Sly‘s disruption was further developed as Crouch asked them to treat him as if he did not belong in the world of the play. They were able to tell him to get off of the stage as Katherine and Bianca as well as annoyed actresses who were trying to perform.

Because Crouch challenged the rehearsal practices at the Royal Shakespeare

Company, he was hired. He paid attention to the well-being of the ensemble. He paid attention to the actors. He developed the show collaboratively. He allowed actors‘ personalities as well as their character interpretations to be part of their performance.

Crouch encouraged actors to express their own opinions. He trained the actors to respond to the audience and each other so that they would adapt to young audiences in performance. His style extended the power of the show creation to the imaginations of the audience. It also undercut the expectation that a play was a fixed product that audiences only watched and became a room in which actors and audience built, disrupted, and reformed the events of the plot. In the relinquishing of control to the audience, the rehearsal had to change to get actors to be mentally flexible in their

231 Another choice phrasing was ―your idea is strong and not wrong‖ and ―your idea is strong and wrong‖ which allowed the actors and director to talk about choices, not people when applying criticism. 178 preparation. This style worked well with the young audiences, and Crouch was rehired to direct the Young People‘s Shakespeare production of King Lear for the 2012 season.232

232 Crouch also continued to work with the RSC in his 2012 solo show I, Cinna (the Poet), a piece accompanying Julius Caesar. 179

Chapter 5: Shakespeare & Company

Legacy and Continuity

In 1978, Tina Packer and a group of master teachers founded Shakespeare &

Company in Lenox, Massachusetts to revolutionize actor training and performance through the integration of voice, body, intellect and emotions in the rehearsal and performance of Shakespeare‘s plays. Packer also explored management practices that reflected the dynamics of collaborative rehearsals. All actors assumed administrative duties in addition to their roles for performance. The unique training experience and the artistic quality of the shows attracted actors who worked long hours for little pay. These structures encouraged ensemble principles in the dedicated actors who sacrificed other opportunities and better pay to work with the company. In 2010, when Tony Simotes became the artistic director, the company produced a repertory of seventeen plays each year, ran far-reaching educational programs, and offered several professional actor- training courses. This larger company could not maintain the cohesive ensemble that earned the company its reputation. The core ethos and signature rehearsal techniques developed from 1978 to 1988 continued to attract and inspire actors, even though the company had adopted some of the hiring and rehearsal practices of the commercial theatre.

180 Tina Packer founded the company after she became frustrated with the acting techniques and management styles of her successful theatre and television career.

Packer‘s professional acting career began in 1965 when she was awarded a three-year contract as an associate artist at the Royal Shakespeare Company. She enjoyed working on Shakespeare‘s plays because his ―terrific philosophical ideas‖ rewarded her emotional and intellectual investigation of his words.233 She worked with John Barton and learned his text analysis and acting techniques for Shakespeare‘s plays. She received challenging roles and enjoyed the ensemble principles, but she later reflected:

It‘s very hard for people not to be unhappy in a theater group…I was happy but I

saw other actors being promised roles and then not getting them. There would be

a dispute about something, all the Associate Artists would meet to discuss it and

find a solution, and then our director, Peter Hall, would say it was just not

possible to use it. All of us would then get up in arms. I couldn‘t understand then

why the greatest theater company in the world shouldn‘t also be the

happiest…Now I‘m more tolerant.234

At the age of twenty-nine, she realized that ―what I really wanted to do was to develop my own style of doing Shakespeare.‖235 When she began her own company, she sought to invent non-hierarchical management practices as well as an ensemble of actors who

233 Helen Epstein, The Companies She Keeps: Tina Packer Builds a Theater (Cambridge, MA: Plunkett Lake Press, 1985), 23. 234 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 26. 235 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 30. 181 would develop an approach to Shakespeare‘s plays that incorporated the strengths of both

English and American actor training.236

Packer first taught acting at the London-Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in

1971. At this school she met fellow teachers Kristin Linklater and B. H. Barry, who were equally interested in recreating actor training for Shakespeare‘s plays. She also grew to admire the development of her American students.237 From these experiences, she proposed the development of a method of working with Shakespeare‘s text that conveyed both meaning and emotion ―through the emotion contained within the sound of the word itself.‖238 This proposal attracted the attention of Dick Kapp at the Ford Foundation who encouraged her to develop her technique. In her 1972 grant proposal to the Ford

Foundation, she argued that actor training was deficient:

I am aware that there are other companies doing Shakespeare, but none are doing

what we are doing. To take the most obvious examples, Mr. Papp‘s company [the

New York Shakespeare Festival, later the New York Public Theatre] and Mr.

Langham‘s company [The Stratford Shakespeare Festival]: the former, while I

admire the actors‘ vigor enormously and feel they often capture Shakespeare in

spirit, are hard put to catch his soul because that is contained in the verse which

Mr. Papp‘s men seem to fear; and the latter, while admirable in many respects,

perpetuates the English Shakespearean acting tradition which even over here (in

England) is obsolete and in the States can only be a false grafting without

236 Packer argued that English actor training which focused on text analysis and vocal and physical techniques did not engage the depth of emotion that American actors used. Likewise, the American actors, she argued, lacked the knowledge of how to use the structure of complex texts like Shakespeare‘s plays. 237 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 37. 238 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 32. 182 reference to a strong indigenous roots of American theatre. And neither company

has the intention, or the time, to explore new approaches to the text that require

re-training in actual acting methods.239

In addition to this vision, she had the support of Peter Hall who wrote ―cross fertilization of new American talents with the craft and expertise of the English Shakespeare tradition is something that can do nothing but good.‖240 She won the grant. Her training program combined a group of actors and master teachers, John Barton, John Broome, B. H. Barry, and Kristin Linklater, who would work as ―one organic whole‖ rather than so many separated specializations.241 In 1973, however, this training failed to translate into a noteworthy performance.

In the second attempt in 1978, Packer directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream and began the first of many artistically successful seasons. Packer had several members of the acting company at New York University in a production of ―The Wars of the Roses,‖ a conflation of many parts of Shakespeare‘s History plays. Many of the students that she taught and directed were inspired by her approach to Shakespeare‘s plays, and willingly sacrificed other opportunities for the chance to continue working with her and the other master teachers. One of these students, Tony Simotes, walked away from a role in All’s

Well That Ends Well at The New York Public Theatre because he ―was not dreaming about the play.‖242 Dennis Krausnick, the head of training, decided to join the company instead of continuing his studies toward a Jesuit priesthood. Five of the actors even

239 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 35. 240 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 38. 241 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 38. 242 Tony Simotes, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Lenox, MA, May 28, 2011. 183 signed on to stay with Krausnick at The Mount, Edith Wharton‘s crumbling estate, through the winter in dedication to the company.

The company of actors felt that they shared the revolutionary spirit embodied by the Group Theatre in The Fervent Years.243 They also thought the shows and practices of

Broadway to be unoriginal and bad. The plays of Shakespeare and the quality instruction from master teachers compensated for the poor living conditions at The Mount, low pay, and long hours. A Midsummer Night’s Dream rehearsed for ten days with actors who knew the play and Packer‘s working methods. The production was so successful artistically that it started to build local support.

Throughout the next ten years, the actors and teachers worked together to create the theatre company that they envisioned with Packer. She and the teachers sought to make use of Shakespeare‘s verse and rhetoric to inform a character‘s emotional and psychological circumstances. They also revitalized the extra-textual clowning heritage in many of Shakespeare‘s plays. Linklater continued exploring the connection between the sounds of words and the emotions of the actors. Packer encouraged actors to ignore traditional interpretations of their roles and to use their own sensibilities to interpret the words of the play. The gender-blind and race-blind casting practices further strengthened this need for individual actors to innovate new character interpretations through their own sensibilities. Packer also fought the enervating practices of rehearsal and performance in the commercial theatre. As Natsuko Ohama stated:

Tina is my favorite director because she is not as form-directed as other directors.

There are many actors for whom this is a problem. They want more of a structure

243 Simotes, interview. 184 than she provides. But for me, her way of working is incredible. I have a real

sense of creation in every performance. Most shows you see are geared toward

opening night. They‘re set. And then, gradually, the performances die. Our

productions always seem to get better so that, by the end, we are doing our best

shows instead of being glad it‘s over.244

In rehearsals and performances, as with the acting techniques and classes, Packer and company balanced forms (verse, text, stages) and freedoms (improvisation, artistic sensibility, revision).

Packer and the expert teachers crafted techniques for contemporary performance, but they did so under a Romantic interpretation of the Elizabethan theatre and culture.

The vision statement argued that Shakespeare‘s theatre was directly relevant to their audiences. The vision was:

To create a theatre of unprecedented excellence rooted in the Elizabethan ideals of

inquiry, balance, and harmony, performing as the Elizabethans did; in love with

poetry, physical prowess, and the mysteries of the universe. To establish a theatre

company which, by its commitment to the creative impulse, is a revolutionary

force in society, which connects the truths of the past to the challenges and

possibilities of today, which finds its source in the performance of Shakespeare's

plays, and reaches the widest possible audience through training and education as

well as performance.245

244 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 92. 245 ―Mission, Vision, and Values Statement,‖ Shakespeare & Company, accessed July 27, 2012, http://www.shakespeare.org/sandco.php?pg=about&pg_record=34. 185 By reaching back to the questions Shakespeare raised in his plays, the actors and directors of the company hoped to connect their audiences to the creative engagement with contemporary issues.

Because of the quality of the performance and training experiences, actors willingly assumed administrative duties246 in publicity, box office, education, and even gardening.247 Packer credited this group effort as the reason Shakespeare & Company succeeded through the early years:

there have been a hell of a lot of people all pushing in the same direction here and

it wouldn‘t have happened without them either. If one person can‘t do something,

there‘s always been someone else to step in for them. It‘s the collective spirit that

has allowed us to survive.248

The company-wide commitment to the success of the company revealed the value actors found in the rehearsals, training, and performance. As some long-term company members noted, they had to stop thinking of themselves solely as actors and had to redefine their identities to include various other jobs as well, such as education, management, or even development and box office. Whereas the commercial theatre emulated industrialized models that rewarded specialization and interchangeability, the

Shakespeare & Company model rewarded development of the present talent and diversity of education and training. The actors‘ positive artistic experiences influenced their

246 In the 2011 season, some equity actors who had restrictions on the number of hours they could work only performed their roles and did not have additional administrative duties. 247 When approaching the box office on a visit to Shakespeare & Company, Dennis Krausnick, a founding member of the company and head of training, was planting flowers out front. 248 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 104. 186 willingness to develop administrative talents, but the company ethos of self-discovery and improvement encouraged actors to reevaluate their career goals beyond performance.

Training programs for professional actors helped the company meet the costs of productions and actor and teacher salaries. The master teachers, and their followers, offered professional actor training that integrated various traditions and techniques for voice, text, and movement through a focus on Shakespeare‘s texts. Shakespeare was not the reason for actor training, but his texts used elements of poetry, verse, complex diction, as well as clown, combat and dance. Richard Dreyfuss stated in 1979: ―I have come here because it gives me an opportunity to explore every facet of the actor‘s equipment, and integrate them through the astounding medium of Shakespeare‘s work.‖249

Educational programs for local students helped sustain the company‘s finances and kept the ensemble actors employed when they were not in rehearsal. Kevin

Coleman, who began as an actor with the company, developed the education program from the questions and techniques used in rehearsals. In 2011, the education program reached over 40,000 students per year,250 and included award-winning programs like

Shakespeare in the Courts. Programs like these mirror the company‘s use of Shakespeare to realize their own artistic goals, rather than attempting to honor the playwright. The use of Shakespeare‘s text gave students a chance to discover their own thoughts and feelings

249 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 84. 250 The company estimated that over one million elementary, middle, and high school students took part in the education programs between 1978 and 2012. ―Education.‖ Shakespeare & Company, accessed July 27, 2012, http://www.shakespeare.org/sandco.php?pg=education. 187 by confronting the language and dramatic situations in the text. One student said: ―the whole project is particularly meaningful because it helped me figure out me.‖251

In 2011, the company still shared the ethos of personal discovery through the texts of Shakespeare for actors, workshop participants, and students alike, but the rehearsal and hiring practices more closely resembled those of the commercial theatre. When Tony

Simotes became artistic director, he reduced the size of the company and payroll while increasing ticket sales and achieving critical success. Simotes maintained a core of long- term company actors and directors, but often hired actors who had neither worked nor trained with the company before. Equity contracts also prohibited some actors from assuming the administrative duties. Several actors argued that the division of artistic and administrative duties to specialized personnel benefitted the quality of both. The ethos of the company did not reflect the revolutionary spirit of the early years; rather, the actors and directors committed to applying their techniques and experience to rehearsal as they would in the rehearsal room of any company. The training of the company lived in the artists who rehearsed and taught for the company and the thousands of professional actors who had trained with them. The practices, though grounded in the ethos and training of the company, accommodated the large repertory of plays, numerous actors, and diversity of visions like any large Shakespeare company.

Stages and Stagecraft

Because the aesthetic of Shakespeare & Company featured the actors and the company training, the theatre used bare thrust stages and imaginative blocking solutions

251 ―Education.‖ Shakespeare & Company, accessed July 27, 2012, http://www.shakespeare.org/sandco.php?pg=education. 188 rather than illusory stagecraft. From 1978 to 2001, the company renovated and performed in the mansion and on the grounds of Edith Wharton‘s former estate, The

Mount. A small stage erected at the edge of a grove of trees was the setting for the summer Shakespeare productions. More intimate shows were produced within the rooms of The Mount. In 2001, the company moved to the property on Kemble Street, the former

Lenox Boys School, where they built new theatres. The company performed primarily in the flexible-seating Founder‘s Theatre as of 2001, the black box Elayne P. Bernstein

Theatre, opened in 2008, and began a project to rebuild The Rose Playhouse252 which due to budget limitations only included a bare wood platform and three-door frons scenae under a tent as the Rose Footprint Stage (opened in 2002). Each of these thrust stages put the actors in close proximity with the audience. The company‘s interpretation of the

Elizabethan theatre as one of shared communication of actor and audience, these stages encouraged such a dynamic without allowing room or resources for extensive set design.

The intense focus on the actor and limited design budget253 were apparent in the

1978 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the grounds of The Mount (Figure

24). The pastoral setting served as the set of the play. Costumes were simple. A few lights hung from trees. The performance relied on the actors‘ emotionally invested interpretations of Shakespeare‘s text and vigorous physical movement in tumbling and clowning. 254 The audience responded enthusiastically, both in print and in financial contributions. Through the next thirty-five years the budgets increased and designers

252 The foundations of the Rose Playhouse were discovered in 1989 and provided the most complete architectural evidence of an Elizabethan playhouse to date. 253 Packer once noted that ―most directors spend $100,000 on costumes and I spend $8‖ Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 61. She continued ―but I need money for master teachers and that‘s very expensive. I also need a place to perform.‖ 254 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 76-77. 189 were hired, but the company‘s performance style still focused on the simplicity of actors performing with the audience.

Figure 24: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Directed by Tina Packer 1978, The Mount. Photo Courtesy of Shakespeare & Company.

The chief performance venue in 2011 was the Founder‘s Theatre that had a flexible seating arrangement for over four hundred audience members. In the 2011 season, the stage was set as a three-quarter thrust with entrances from the downstage left and downstage right vomitoria. The configuration mirrored the Swan Theatre at the

Royal Shakespeare Company as the audience abutted the stage on three sides. A narrow balcony wrapped around the theatre above these seats. Due to the proximity of the audience to the stage, audience members shared the light spilling from the stage, which 190 encouraged actors to speak directly to them (Figure 25). Upstage center, a two-level scaffold held designs for the shows. It also allowed for actors to play on different levels and even use as a jungle gym.255 The blocking, however, often sent actors downstage toward the audience. Actors entered with vigor from upstage or the vomitoria toward the center of the often-uncluttered stage. The bare stage and visible audience demanded that the actors use their bodies as well as their words to create character, conflict, and spectacle.

Figure 25: As You Like It, Founders Theatre, 2011. Featuring Merrit Janson. Photo courtesy of Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, MA. Photo by Kevin Sprague and Studio Two Design.

255 When Rosalind (Merrit Janson) was reading Orlando‘s poems, she climbed up the scaffolding, swung herself upside-down, clutched the paper between her feet and read the poem. 191 The Founder‘s configuration forced more creativity in the staging of scenes.

Since the balcony/second level of the stage was so far removed from the audience, actors were encouraged to set the scene with props or imaginative floor patterns. For the famous balcony scene, in the 2011 Romeo and Juliet, the director did not use the second level of the upstage scaffold for the balcony. Instead, Juliet stood on a chair in the middle of the stage, and Romeo crouched below her, pretending to hide underneath her balcony. For

Tony Simotes‘ 2011 As You Like It (Figure 26), the design consisted of benches made to look like Parisian landmarks: Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower (ca 1920). Actors created seating arrangements for the court from these benches and cleared them for the wrestling and woodland scenes. These small and versatile set elements suggested a setting reinforced by the actors‘ costumes, songs, and dances. For instance, the outlaws in the woods carried WWI-era rifles and legionnaire caps to create a clear contrast with the finery of the court. Actors in smaller roles played songs on guitars and mandolins to set the scene. Because actors defined the setting, the design never overwhelmed their performance. The design could neither compensate for an actor who was unclear vocally or uninteresting physically.

192

Figure 26: As You Like It, Founders Theatre, 2011. Photo courtesy of Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, MA. Photo by Kevin Sprague and Studio Two Design.

Other theatres allowed a direct connection between actor and audience with a light demand for technical elements. In 2008, the company converted a former hockey rink into an office, rehearsal and performance space, complete with scene shops, rehearsal rooms built to the dimensions of the Founder‘s Theatre, designer and stage managers‘ offices, a bar, and the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre. The Bernstein theatre, a black box, could hold a realistic unit set like the bedroom setting of The Memory of

Water. The realistic design matched the fourth-walled realism of the play, and actors, though excellent in their performances, rarely spoke to the audience. The set for the

Performance Intern production of Two Gentlemen of Verona, however, had only a couple

193 of benches and a tennis judge‘s chair as a set. The actors frequently spoke to and moved into the audience in an attempt to draw the audience members into the show.

Figure 27: Women of Will, Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, 2011, featuring Tina Packer. Photo courtesy of Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, MA. Photo by Kevin Sprague and Studio Two Design.

The company‘s focus on actor and audience interaction appeared clearly in the five-part series Women of Will. In these plays, Packer performed women in scenes throughout Shakespeare‘s canon to illustrate her narrative describing Shakespeare‘s life and development as an artist. Packer explained:

I believe the women reflect the development of Shakespeare‘s own

psyche….Shakespeare, being one of the greatest artists who ever lived, is able to

194 reveal over a 25-year span his mind to us, and this in turn actually exposes on an

archetypal level the development of a universal human psyche.256

In the show she likened her own development as an artist to the development of

Shakespeare‘s ―universal human psyche.‖ These performances showcased the acting talents of Packer and scene partner Nigel Gore, as well as Packer‘s own biography, philosophy, and a direct relationship with the audience. The set (Figure 27) held eclectic set pieces that were used only when needed for each scene. A ladder formed Juliet‘s balcony. A steamer trunk became the altar in the church where Beatrice collapsed praying for vengeance. A collection of silken cushions and sheets center stage became

Cleopatra‘s court. This use of these various props invited the audience to use their imagination to set the scene through the cues contained in Shakespeare‘s language.

Because language defined the space, Packer could easily step out of character and speak directly to the audience and then, in the fraction of a second, resume the playing of the scene. The lack of definition in the setting also allowed a particularly virtuosic mash-up of a scene of Rosalind and Orland interwoven with a scene between Desdemona and

Othello. The bare stage and direct address to the audience, which were parts of the company‘s stagecraft from the beginning, allowed Packer to demonstrate the entire canon of Shakespeare‘s women rapidly and fluidly.

256 Tina Packer, ―Author‘s Note,‖ Theatre Program for Women of Will (Lenox, MA: Shakespeare & Company, May 27, 2011). 195

Figure 28: Tartuffe, The Rose Footprint Stage, 2012. Photo courtesy of Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, MA. Photo by Kevin Sprague and Studio Two Design.

The Rose Footprint Stage linked the style of the company to the Rose Playhouse of the 1590s (Figure 28). Based on the architectural dimensions of the foundation of the

Rose Playhouse, the Rose Footprint Stage was the key project in the development of the

International Center for Shakespeare Performance and Studies. It was to become a center for scholarship and exploration of how the Elizabethan architecture influenced actors and audiences in performance. The Rose Footprint Stage, however, only added a historical link to the current practices and stagecraft of the company. Packer‘s argument to build the Rose reflected a concern to rediscover history for the sake of investigating contemporary questions. She said:

196 A theatre is more than a Theatre. It is a place for debate and exchange. It is a

place for education. It is a place for community. At its core is humanity and

understanding. Its contribution is creativity.257

Packer‘s interpretation of the Elizabethan texts and the Elizabethan playhouse both served the needs of contemporary actors and connections with audiences.

In 2011, the company did not have the funds to build the full replica of the 720- seat Rose with traditional building materials and techniques. To begin to experiment with the staging conditions of the Rose Playhouse, the company erected a wooden stage and stage house under a tent. The stage house reflected the polygonal shape of the theatre. A two-story, Tudoresque wooden frons scenae had a large central double-door. Doors stage right and left angled entrances slightly toward the center of the stage. These entrances, like the downstage vomitoria in the Founders‘ Theatre, encouraged actors to come into physical conflict center stage. A row of benches lined the walls of the Rose foundations, and lawn chairs provided seating for nearly two hundred audience members. Of all the theatres Shakespeare & Company used, however, the Rose Footprint Stage most resembled a proscenium theatre. The audience did not surround the stage. Actors made a virtue of the unfinished playhouse to make entrances from the audience and through the moorings of the tent. In order to continue their staging tradition of bringing actors and audience into close proximity, the actors denied the constraints of the historically inspired stage.

The selection of plays for the Rose Footprint Stage often featured physical comedy and broad playing. It was a stage that accommodated bold physical and

257 ―The Rose Playhouse U.S.A. Project,‖ Shakespeare & Company, accessed July 27, 2012, http://www.shakespeare.org/sandco.php?pg=about&pg_record=84. 197 character choices. The commedia dell‘arte text The Venetian Twins by Carlo Goldoni suited the stage since it required only a set of doors and included extensive audience address. The Dr. Seuss-inspired costumes and the extensive physical activity, including fights, dances, songs, and chases, helped the actors illuminate this otherwise bare stage.

Many of the actors had trained with the company previously, and they were prepared to overcome the limitations of the space by focusing on the audience and creating great specificity in their text and character choices. This bare stage and rough tent setting, more than other stages, required that the actors keep the audience interested in their performance through a variety of performance tactics and tactics of variety performance.

They did not rely on intimacy or subtlety or deep personal emotion but relied on pace, energetic movement and line delivery, and delightful, comically structured plays.

The theatres of Shakespeare & Company focused the audience on the present actors rather than a recovery of Shakespeare‘s past. Shakespeare & Company‘s understanding of Shakespeare‘s plays, as founded in the 1960s company principles and teachers of the Royal Shakespeare Company and developed further by Packer and

Linklater and a solid company of actors, trained actors to take command of Shakespeare‘s language and bare stages and to direct the audience‘s imagination. Shakespeare &

Company actors and directors retained a vision that communed with the ideas of the

Elizabethan era, but their stagecraft focused on the immediacy of actors and audiences in the present moment of performance.

198 Actor Training and Coaching

Shakespeare & Company began with a strong commitment to training and a way of rehearsing that became more divided and specialized as the company grew. The training once maintained a group of teachers and actors at the core of the company. From the success of this way of working, company members became teachers both at the company and in academic theatre programs throughout the nation. Training at

Shakespeare & Company served as a means of supporting the work of the company as it continuously sought to discover significant and life-changing lessons through the plays of

Shakespeare. In 2011, the company solidified the methods developed to help actors make these life-changing discoveries in intense workshops. From weekend single-topic workshops to month-long and summer-long actor-training intensives, the training resources provided opportunities for students to learn about Shakespeare and themselves.

Shakespeare & Company‘s training programs were one of the rare examples of a professional company taking on the role of training on a large, professional scale,258 but this role developed as a natural offshoot of the founding company.

The company sought to challenge both current modes of management and theatrical production, and it saw a clear need to develop a sustained program of training to maintain the company. As Terry Curtis Fox remarked in her 1980 review:

For this theatre—as free in its experimentation as it is strict in its devotion to text,

as concerned with training as it is with performance, permitting such deep and

258 When Packer applied for the 1972 Ford Foundation Grant, she noted that companies like the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival had neither the time, resources, nor inclination to train. 199 textured work—is not supposed to exist anywhere, much less in the American

equivalent of the greenwood.259

But it did exist. In fact, the retreat away from the pressures of the entertainment industry

(the constant auditions, the search for work, the networking) allowed them to commit fully to training and performance. This incredible focus, fostered both by teachers and the lack of competition, allowed the training to develop in a bold and taxing way that involved stripping away the layers of habit and psychological protection to enable actors to have a strong emotional connection to their words.

Packer and her coaches saw a need to change actor training. Packer realized that

Strasberg‘s interpretation of Stanislavski was useless for Shakespeare‘s plays.260 She also saw the need to distance actors from the ―correct‖ Royal Pronunciation way of speaking she was taught at RADA. Linklater‘s vocal techniques turned from the neutral, beautiful-sounding speech of Edith Skinner toward embracing the actors‘ natural voice and its capability to express emotion. Linklater summarized:

Our basic premise is that we are all equipped at birth with voices that can express

every nuance of our emotional life. But as we grow up and are socialized we put

limits on those voices. What you will be doing here is releasing those restraints

that you have created over the years and getting to your natural voice.261

259 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 94. 260 Tina Packer, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Lenox, MA, June 3, 2011. 261 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 108. 200 In Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice, the book that resulted from her years of experience, much of it with Shakespeare & Company, she reflected a combined approach of voice, body, and mind through the exalted focus on Shakespeare:

The basis of all my work is the belief that voice and language belong to the whole

body rather than the head alone and that the function of the voice is to reveal the

self. This book, in consequence, has a more ambitious aim than that of a verse-

speaking manual. It aims to recondition both mind and body so that the voice can

express the visceral and spiritual urgency that was its subject matter in

Shakespeare‘s day.262

This unified vision of technique sought to address not only vocal production, but the psychology and artistic philosophies of each student.

At Shakespeare & Company, the individual was the key source of creativity, but the training sought to create a supportive environment in which actors could express that creativity. Instead of working to fulfill a director‘s vision, Linklater and Packer sought to fulfill the actors‘ potential. Packer, inspired by Erhard Seminar Training that sought to strip away layers of psychological protection and habit, developed a company-wide basis of ―communal trust‖ where actors could safely take risks and become more emotionally connected to Shakespeare‘s language.263 With Linklater, Packer developed a practice of

―dropping in‖ that helped actors develop an immediate emotional connection with each word they spoke: ―they fed the actors one word at a time, had them imagine that they were breathing the word into their bodies, and asked them to let the word play on

262 Kristin Linklater, Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1992), 4. 263 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 107. 201 emotions and memory.‖264 The commitment to this practice petered out over the years as the company hired more and more people unversed in this type of training.

Additionally, the training included John Barton‘s ―more conventional analysis of the structure of the verse, teaching the actors to read the clues in the written text by speaking the verse and examining the implications of punctuation, line endings and meter.‖265 B. H. Barry taught fight and tumbling. John Broome developed movement.

The company also developed ―personalization.‖ Instead of focusing on recovering a traditional interpretation of a role, actors were encouraged to craft the role solely based on how they viewed the role from their own real-life experience. Several of the original participating actors were trained in Stanislavski-based (Stella Adler) naturalism with

Olympia Dukakis and Peter Cass who had valued greater actor input in the process.266

Simotes noted that this basis was not ignored but augmented through the extensive work with teachers of techniques. This support continued in 2011, as the company handbook advertised to new actors: ―The symbiosis of performance, training, and education creates clarity and a deepening of experience critical to a healthy company, and enhances the creative impulse.‖

The value of the training emphasis of the company contributed to the development of more skilled and daring actors and the creation of a tighter ensemble.

Many of the actors who came to the month-long intensive training had a transformative experience. Each week, actors had ten to twelve hours of class time per day for six days.

Actors had classes and workshops in ―Text analysis, Voice, Movement, Elizabethan

264 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 43. 265 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 45. 266 Simotes, interview. 202 dance, Alexander Technique, Stage fight, Exploration of the actor/audience relationship,

Sonnet work, Scene work, and In-depth discussions about the function of theatre and the role of the actor in today's world.‖267 The purpose of this overwhelming schedule, according to Dennis Krausnick, was to create the ―ah-ha moment.‖ This moment marked a transition to knowledge when an actor stripped away layers of his or her psychological defenses and fully embodied a character‘s given circumstances and expressed their desires with his or her natural voice. Once an actor had an ―ah-ha‖ moment, she or he reformed their definition of what it meant to act. With this discovery, an actor could focus his or her future rehearsals and role preparation to reach this performance state again.

The relentless search for self-discovery matched the company‘s search for a deeper understanding of Shakespeare‘s texts. As Ben Brantley aptly summarized: ―The company is dedicated to the proposition that Shakespearean speech, a foreign language to many, can be best understood when its speakers understand it themselves.‖268 Actors were encouraged to investigate every word that they spoke, with the same intensity of the practice of dropping in, for the purpose of establishing a deeper emotional connection to the words in Shakespeare‘s plays. This effort gave them confidence in their ability to understand Shakespeare‘s plays which allowed the actors a playfulness in performance with their words and their reactions to their fellow actors.

267―Comprehensive Training: the Month Long Intensive,― Shakespeare & Company, accessed July 27, 2012, http://www.shakespeare.org/sandco.php?pg=learning&pg_record=31. 268 Ben Brantley, ―Turning Shakespearean Self-Discovery Into Child‘s Play,‖ review of Twelfth Night, New York Times, August, 29, 2009, accessed July 27, 2012, http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/08/29/theater/reviews/29twelfth.html?pagewanted=all. 203 The benefits of the training became clear during the first rehearsal of Carlo

Goldoni‘s The Venetian Twins on the Rose footprint stage. The cast had all experienced a month-long training intensive, and several of them had worked together before. In the first rehearsal they improvised staging for the entire play with no premeditation or discussion. They had prepared clear actions and character choices on their own. This mutual preparation allowed the actors to challenge each other with unexpected and far- fetched actions and line interpretations. Instead of spending early rehearsals building trust and respect among the actors, the actors blocked the play efficiently and joyfully.

Training gave actors a common ethos and working vocabulary that strengthened the ensemble. When several of the long-term company actors rehearsed together, they did not indicate their choices to each other. They knew each other well enough to pick up on aural and visual cues of their partners. This trust arose from training and working together for many years. Young, untrained actors often lacked confidence in their ability to be understood by their fellow actors. In beginning rehearsals, they often overacted and expressed a physical and vocal tension that was not necessary for their roles. The ensemble made bolder choices that challenged many preconceived (safe and conventional) notions of what a scene was.

An actor‘s ability to have confidence in his or her craft was one of the most important aspects of Shakespeare & Company‘s training. The training gave actors techniques as well as inspirations to use the sounds and structures of Shakespeare‘s words. Teresa Spencer, upon completing the training, remarked that ―I went from

204 thinking, ‗I want to be an actor,‘ to knowing, ‗I am an actor‘.‖269 The training unlocked

Shakespeare‘s text and gave actors like Spencer techniques for using their full voice and body, but it also challenged actors to find themselves in their roles. As Lulu Fogarty, another alumna remarked, ―it's surprising how quickly we forget to play because we try to be 'right.‘‖270 Instead of attempting to create a ―right‖ interpretation, actors interpreted

Shakespeare‘s words according to their own real-life circumstances. For instance, Tony

Simotes was initially excited to play Peter, the clown, in Romeo and Juliet, and when the play changed to A Midsummer Night Dream, and he was recast as Puck, he resisted the role. He did not want to play an airy fairy that danced around the stage as had appeared in countless other productions. Instead of circumscribing his performance in the perceived tradition, he became a most reluctant Puck who made Oberon‘s requests burdens. The choices he made for his role allowed him to have much more confidence and ownership of his performance since he was making choices that made sense to him.

This empowerment changed some actors from people who performed the visions of others to artists who created visions of their own.

The company also benefitted from the raised profile the training brought. The company trained over eighteen hundred actors from twenty different countries, including some established and famous actors.271 The reputation for training encouraged one actor from the 2011 season to ignore both of his agents‘ wishes and sign a four-month summer

269 Teresa Spencer, ―Professional Actor Training: Alumni Response,‖ Shakespeare & Company, accessed July 27, 2012, http://www.shakespeare.org/sandco.php?pg=learning&pg_record=147. 270 Lulu Fogarty, ―Professional Actor Training: Alumni Response,‖ Shakespeare & Company, accessed July 27, 2012, http://www.shakespeare.org/sandco.php?pg=learning&pg_record=147. 271 Shakespeare & Company‘s famous alumni included Karen Allen, Lauren Ambrose, Gillian Barge, Alicia Coppola, Richard Cox, Rebecca DeMornay, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Firth, Karen Glazzer, Jennifer Grant, Christine Lahti, Andie MacDowell, Maureen McCormick, Joe Morton, Bill Murray, Bronson Pinchot, Oliver Platt, Diana Quick, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Rubin, Jane Sibery, Anna Deavere Smith, R.H. Thompson, Courtney Vance, and Sigourney Weaver 205 contract with the company. He had never taken workshops or trained with the company before. Shakespeare & Company‘s reputation convinced him that he would learn better acting techniques by working with the company, even though he could have earned better pay elsewhere. This actor benefitted from a good deal of rehearsal time and the support of voice and fight coaches, but the working conditions of the company did not mesh with his way of working on a role. At the end of the season, he claimed that he did not learn about Shakespeare or acting as much as he expected because he felt the director limited his interpretation of his role. Once the show opened, however, he and the cast adjusted some of their choices to respond to the audience‘s reaction rather than the director‘s vision. Through this process, he gained more confidence in his own artistic interpretation.272

Rehearsals allowed little time and resources for training actors. Actors were expected to have trained before rehearsals, but some actors benefitted from one-on-one sessions and daily warm-ups with Lizzie Ingram, resident voice coach. Ingram could not teach a full technique to actors in this limited capacity, but she helped actors achieve greater specificity and emotional depth in their parts. Shakespeare & Company hired several actors who had not trained before for the purpose of fulfilling a director‘s view of the play. Actors, therefore, often had different techniques for performing Shakespeare‘s plays. This diversity of approach had long been a strength of the company, as Fox noted in her review of The Tempest: ―[the cast] ranges from conventional rep actor Harris Yulin to post-Chaikinist Arthurt Strimmling who a few years ago would never meet on the

272 Anonymous (actor), interview by Andrew Blasenak, Lenox, MA, August, 19, 2011. 206 same stage.‖273 Actors and directors were often excited by actors with different interpretations of the purpose of acting and theatre, but the lack of common vocabulary or rehearsal expectations could slow rehearsals and create friction among new and old ensemble members. The training allowed for profitable pre-rehearsal preparation, but the process of rehearsals was a negotiation of actors from varied backgrounds attempting to stage a play.

Shakespeare & Company was a company founded with a mission to explore the ways of rehearsing and performing Shakespeare‘s plays. As those discoveries became a teachable system of exercises, the company offered them as training to other actors.

These exercises increased the actors‘ confidence in their technique and their artistry. The large number of positive training experiences raised the profile of the company in the professional acting world which allowed them to attract a variety of talented and diverse actors. However, when the company cast actors who had not had the training, the benefits of sharing a common approach and vocabulary diminished.

Ensemble Acting

The principles of ensemble at Shakespeare & Company were largely a product of innovative training and established performance techniques. Tina Packer founded the company structure as a means of challenging the strictly hierarchical models of company management. She was frustrated with authoritarian figures in her prior acting experiences and inspired by Shakespeare‘s company of actor-sharers who performed and ran the company. Each company member assumed artistic roles (actor, director, designer)

273 Epstein, Companies She Keeps, 94. 207 and management roles (teacher, administrator, publicist, facilities management). In 2011, the members of Shakespeare & Company had more specialized duties. Some administrative staff only managed part of the company. Some Equity actors did not hold any additional duties. The exceptional group effort of the beginning years, however, forged an ensemble ethos that valued collective efforts and the development of diverse talents.

The ideal of actor-managers served practical ends as well. All of the senior artistic leadership of the company (Dennis Krausnick, Kevin Coleman, Tina Packer, Tony

Simotes) had administrative as well as artistic responsibilities. Younger actors received little executive power, but their artistic fulfillment in rehearsals and performance made them willing to take on additional administrative duties. The collective sacrifice of time and effort to ensure the survival of the theatre company reinforced the actors‘ respect and conflict resolution skills necessary for ensemble rehearsals. However, as the company has grown to include more actors who sought training and performance experiences, the distribution of responsibilities and privileges became less equitable.

The company started with a much more solid ensemble of actors working on a smaller number of shows. By 2011 such a model was untenable in the extensive performance, training, and education commitments. Shakespeare & Company hired people solely for administrative tasks to increase the competency and satisfaction of the people in these positions. On the one hand, many people remarked that the administrative work was of a better quality when the employee had no acting aspirations.

On the other hand, it lessened the necessity for company members to stop seeing themselves as mere actors and to start thinking of themselves as members of Shakespeare

208 & Company. The sense of ownership over the company that came from having administrative duties as well as artistic ones created as greater buy-in from the actors who learned to develop skills beyond their acting technique. For instance, Jenna Ware thought that she would be happier working only as an actress, so she left the company for a few years. Although she worked steadily, she was not satisfied by the limited challenges that performing role after role provided her. She returned to Shakespeare &

Company specifically because she found the variety of work more fulfilling than the specialization required by the commercial theatre. She found Shakespeare & Company and the teaching, learning, and directing opportunities more fulfilling than the specialization of an acting career.

The inequitable workload for the actors in the 2011 season inspired inequitable levels of commitment. During the 2011 nine-show summer season several different ensembles worked together. The premier ensemble rehearsed Romeo and Juliet and As

You Like It for performance in the Founder‘s Theatre. Nine actors with supporting roles rehearsed both plays, but several actors with leading roles appeared in only one show.

The ensembles mixed long-term company actors in leading roles, young actors who had trained and worked with the company in supporting roles, and new actors distributed amongst the various casting ranks. Romeo, Lady Capulet/Celia. and Tybalt/LeBeau were all played by actors who had never trained or worked with the company before. For many of the older characters (Dukes, Princes, Fathers, etc.), veteran actors who had performed with Shakespeare & Company for many years took up these key roles that were played by the key actor-sharers in Shakespeare‘s company. The three-actor Hound of the Baskervilles and six-person The Memory of Water cast long-term company

209 members who had trained and worked together before, often with a director who had been with the company for years. Tina Packer held the stage alone in Red Hot Patriot, and shared it with Nigel Gore for all six plays in her Women of Will series. A group of junior company actors who had all done some form of training at Shakespeare &

Company performed in Goldoni‘s The Venetian Twins and a revised morality play

EveryActor. Many of these junior actors also held administrative duties. Finally, actors new to Shakespeare & Company participated in workshops and performed a shortened version of Two Gentlemen of Verona as part of the Performance Intern Company.

This company structure resembled Shakespeare‘s company, since it had a core of veteran actors, a host of up-and-coming actors, and new initiates. It differed in the distribution of roles that reflected the commercial practices of hiring the best actor from the audition to fit a role. The Romeo and Juliet/As You Like It company reflected this hybrid of core ensemble with exceptions. The artistic director and a long-term company director hired actors they knew and trusted for their core of actors. Then, they sought to hire new actors who suited each director‘s vision of roles they need fulfilled. This structure more closely resembled the hiring practices of other regional theatres that maintained a group of actors and added new company members from auditions in major cities. In many of the smaller roles, the company employed some of their teaching artists and actors with other duties. Most of these actors accepted this arrangement because they were content to serve, for a little while, the artistic mission of a company whose work they admired.

The company that performed on the Rose Footprint stage, and the smaller-cast productions such as The Memory of Water and The Hound of the Baskervilles that

210 featured long-term company actors reflected the actor-manager practices of the founding of the company. Most of these actors had additional duties in administration, education, publicity, or other shows. For instance, David Joseph, who came to the company after playing off-Broadway and in national tours, played both twins in The Venetian Twins and held duties as Director of Sales and Special Events. Most of the Rose Footprint actors served as education artists. The improvisational style prevalent in performances on the

Rose Footprint stage benefitted from the actors mutual workloads, the lingua franca of the training, and their prior experiences working together.

The performance intern company learned clown techniques to build cohesion in the ensemble. Through clowning workshops, the actors improved their performance skills and established the status and theatrical habits of their fellow actors. Because none of these actors had worked with Shakespeare & Company or each other before, they lacked the trust, courage, and confidence apparent in other ensembles. This company most reflected the practices of the entertainment industry as the actors had the dual task of building their relationship to the company of actors and the relationship of their characters to each other.

Because the company had the triple aim of training, performance, and education since its inception, it reaped benefits from a common ground among actors who had trained and rehearsed and worked together. The hiring of new actors into the company ensured that the company produced the best quality shows that it could. Even though new actors reduced the efficiency of rehearsals among familiar actors, talented actors often excited the long-term company members. In the 1990s, a shared vocabulary and rehearsal practice allowed directors to shorten rehearsals from seven weeks to as little as

211 three weeks. Rehearsals in 2011 for Romeo and Juliet lasted seven weeks. As You Like It rehearsals lasted five weeks. Much rehearsal time was devoted to working with the new actors, many of whom stepped into leading roles. Part of the time, actors learned about techniques like ―dropping in‖ and ―feeding in‖ and had the additional task of trying to figure out how to benefit from such exercises. The long-term company actors prepared much of their roles before rehearsals and were skilled in reacting to each other‘s physical and verbal cues. The scenes blocked with little help from the directors. The actors tried bold character choices freely and played along. Because the long-term actors shared an unspoken ethos of the company, younger actors struggled to match the expectations of their fellow actors. The very pressure to maintain a fresh and ambitious acting company subverted their ability to maintain a cohesive ensemble.

What attracted actors to the company, as Packer said, was the quality of the shows and the rehearsal experience.274 Without that nothing else mattered. As Shakespeare &

Company benefited from the success of thirty-four years of production, it grew larger to accommodate its success. Shakespeare & Company‘s deserved renown for training and performance methods brought more new members to the company seeking to learn the performance techniques. One actor in the Performance Intern Company remarked in no uncertain terms, ―I will be your bitch if you train me.‖275 The worth of the training and company ethos resonated with actors who wanted to be a part of something significant that they felt would improve their acting skills and personal satisfaction as artists.

Conversely, some of the new actors in Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It considered their employment at Shakespeare & Company only a brief stop on their way

274 Packer, interview. 275 Anonymous Shakespeare & Company actor, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Lenox, MA, June 1, 2011. 212 between Boston and New York, or a short hiatus from their career path in television and film. These actors reflected the commercial theatre: they expected to reap benefits from working on the show, but did not assume that they needed to train or to obsess over their homework or to contribute to administrative tasks in order to succeed. The actors who remained with the company generally believed in its mission and the quality of the work.

This belief made them willingly undertake additional efforts in order to ensure the survival of the theatre. From the interns to the artistic director, the collective endeavor of having top quality training and performances, and the jointly-discovered system that provided it, remained the reason that individuals were willing to sacrifice higher paychecks, better living conditions, or more centrally located companies.

Shakespeare & Company in 2011 retained elements of its beginnings as an ensemble acting company while embracing management practices of the commercial theatre. Ensemble principles arose in the earliest years of the company from the core of actors who developed Shakespeare & Company‘s rehearsal and performance techniques.

The low budgets and labor-intensive commitments were balanced by the dedication of the fellow actors and vision of Packer and the teachers. In 2011, several actors joined

Shakespeare & Company due to its artistic reputation rather than any ideals of ensemble in rehearsal or management. The administrative work, therefore, often conflicted with an actor‘s vision of their ideal career, especially since not all actors had to share the administrative responsibility equally. The lack of administrative tasks allowed the company to attract actors who otherwise would not consider working with the company.

The responsibility of administrative tasks, however, encouraged actors like Jenna Ware to develop a more rewarding career path. More often, the dislike of a split focus between

213 administrative and artistic duties, and the inability to advance into roles filled by more talented actors encouraged actors to leave the company. The company maintained a commitment to the artistic style of rehearsal and performance which fulfilled the artistic satisfaction of many actors, but the ensemble management practice only in rare cases fulfilled the professional satisfaction of these actors.

Rehearsal Practices

The rehearsals at Shakespeare & Company reflect the composition of each of the companies and the spaces for which they were designed. Rehearsals for the summer season began for As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet on 24 May 2011. During the same week, the intern company began training in clown techniques and rehearsing Two

Gentlemen of Verona. On 27 May, rehearsals began for The Venetian Twins on the Rose

Footprint Stage. Each show had a different director, different stages and different actor contracts. The rehearsals for each show served demands and composition of each ensemble.

The ensemble rehearsing As You Like It shared several actors with Romeo and

Juliet. These two ensembles rehearsed in similar ways. Each day at 10:30AM, Lizzie

Ingram led a vocal warm-up that was required of all non-equity actors and recommended to all equity actors. Several, but not all, of the equity actors attended these warm-ups.

Since the companies shared so many actors, the directors alternated days in which they could work with the full cast. On secondary days, (i.e. when the other show in repertory had the priority for calling actors) they worked with actors who either were not called, or who were only in their show. This arrangement allowed the directors and coaches to

214 work with individuals or small groups of actors on secondary days while having the luxury of a full cast on primary days. While a collaborative rehearsal process often prevailed in the primary rehearsals, some of the specialized techniques of Shakespeare &

Company were used on the secondary rehearsals.

Some of these secondary rehearsals included the ―dropping in‖ exercise. This exercise helped actors explore their associative connections with specific words in their text. To begin, actors sat in chairs in a relaxed and aligned posture276 and concentrated on their scene partners. A director then ―fed in‖ lines to an actor. In the ―feeding in‖ exercise, a prompter standing behind an actor spoke the actor‘s lines in short phrases with a neutral tone. The actor would then repeat the phrase as appropriate to his or her character‘s circumstances and the reactions of the scene partners. This exercise allowed the actor to conceptualize his or her character‘s thoughts in images and emotional connections rather than the denotation of the words. The ―dropping-in‖ exercise further challenged the actors‘ instinctual connections to the words when a director asked questions of the meaning of the words as they fed the line to the actor multiple times.

Shakespeare & Company once ―dropped in‖ the full play, but in the 2011 season, few actors did the exercise. Kevin O‘Donnell ―dropped in‖ Mercutio‘s Queen Mab speech with the aid of director Daniela Varon. Varon asked O‘Donnell to relax, close his eyes, and listen to the sounds of the room. The actor did not respond vocally as he was asked to imagine that he was in Verona with Benvolio, Romeo, and other gentlemen.

The director started ―feeding in‖ small phrases and single words of text. The brevity of

276 Throughout dropping-in exercise a director would touch parts of the actor‘s body that held tension, including the joints between head and neck, shoulders, hands, and legs, so as to encourage the actor to relax this tension. 215 the phrasing allowed the actor to hear and to feel the sounds of each single word as he repeated the phrase. To explore emotional and connotative qualities of the words, the director asked O‘Donnell questions to prompt a different use of the word or phrase. For instance, Mercutio‘s monologue begins, ―O then I see queen Mab has been with you.‖277

The director got to the word ―I‖ and then asked, ―who is this I?‖ and repeated the word for the actor, ―I.‖ O‘Donnell responded, ―I,‖ while concentrating on the question.

O‘Donnell was not trying to answer the director‘s question directly; rather he was to let the question prompt whatever free associations it may as he repeated ―I.‖ By working in such a detailed way, each word and each sound could inform O‘Donnell‘s character choices.

For the ―dropping in‖ exercise, the directors needed to know how to prompt the actors and actors needed to know how to respond to the rapid questions and that called for nearly a subconscious textual exploration.278 ―Dropping in‖ was especially useful when the director knew the actor well and helped him or her connect to ideas that resonated. The questions were sometimes personal, like ―Have you ever known anyone who died in childbirth?‖ and ―were you angry when you were at war?‖ to prompt an actor to connect to Mercutio‘s words ―midwife‖ and ―soldier.‖ Questions were sometimes absurd such as, ―what‘s a fairy‘s orgasm like?‖ or otherwise associative, ―ever been on

Law and Order?‖ to prompting the actor‘s response to the word ―lawyer.‖ Other questions encouraged the actor to consider the homonyms associated with a word like

277 Romeo and Juliet, 1.4.53. 278 Varon noted failures of ―dropping in‖ when prompters did not know which questions to ask or when prompters abused the trust of the actor by repeating psychologically sensitive questions to get an intense emotional response rather than to inform the character or text. Alternately, actors had to avoid the hypnotic pace of the questions and remain focused on the task. 216 ―o‘er,‖ meaning ―over,‖ ―or,‖ and ―ore.‖ Afterwards, the actor discussed with the director the utility of the exercise. He recalled the sensation of making words, noting a lot of M‘s,

N‘s and S‘s, the ―wooshing‖ of the phrasing as the imagery builds faster and faster, as well as getting a more clear image of what Queen Mab looks like and how that image changed and deteriorated through the course of the speech.

―Dropping in‖ incorporated the textual analysis of John Barton and the deeper psychological connections to the spoken words sought by Packer and Linklater. It allowed actors to explore many different interpretations of a line with minimal prompting. However, this technique needed actors accustomed to the exercise and directors who were sensitive to the actors. For this reason, few actors in the 2011 season used the ―dropping in‖ exercise as part of their rehearsals. Even though ―dropping in‖ was efficient for in-depth text analysis, it took a significant amount of rehearsal time and did not address the immediate goal of staging the play.

In the five-week rehearsals for As You Like It, director Tony Simotes did not use the ―dropping in‖ exercise. He began rehearsals alternating between reading the scenes and blocking them. For Romeo and Juliet, the ―dropping in‖ exercise was used only for monologues and intimate two-person scenes and only with the actors who requested it.

The ―dropping in‖ exercise, once vital to the rehearsal practices of the company, was mostly discarded due to restraints of time, lack of common training, and the assumption that actors were doing similar in-depth text analysis before rehearsals began.

Without time for individual attention in rehearsal, actors often came in with a good deal of their text analysis complete. In rehearsal, the actors experimented with ways of reacting to each other and the audience while building their character

217 relationships. Although this was also the aim and practice of many theatres, the sense of play and ability to challenge each other by making bold (sometimes disruptive) choices was more freely practiced by the members of the company who had been there for a long time and had worked with each other before. Because the company formed its ethos as a training program, the rehearsal and performance ethos stipulated that the staging of the play and development of character relations was always incomplete.

The first rehearsal for The Venetian Twins showed the abilities of a tight ensemble of actors committed to a common way of working. On the first day of rehearsal, the actors began by ―checking in‖ with each other. In this ensemble-building exercise, the director asked the actors to ―say what you need to say to be in the room.‖ This exercise marked the liminal space between the other duties of the actors and the rehearsal that was about to begin. Many of the actors in The Venetian Twins had administrative duties, so several of the ―check-ins‖ reflected each actor‘s thoughts about their other tasks. After the costume designer‘s presentation, the actors did their first read-through, which was actually a full, improvised staging of the play. This staging was possible, according to director Jenna Ware, because the actors had ―not just a shared vocabulary, but a shared faith‖ in the way of working they developed in Shakespeare & Company‘s training programs. The shared training gave these actors the necessary skills and commitment for this type of rehearsal where actors tried choices that could bewilder or disrupt the other actors. For instance, David Joseph played Zanetto, the foolish gentleman,279 with wide- eyed idiocy, vociferous cowardice, and lusty avarice. Often, Joseph would invade the personal space of his fellow actors with such enthusiasm that they had to resist breaking

279 Joseph doubled as Zanetto‘s twin Tonio, a role that required more courtly behavior. 218 character with uncontrollable laughter. The actors enjoyed working in this way that encouraged them to embrace the ridiculousness and farcical confusion of the play. The session ended with a second ―check-in‖ exercise, this time called ―reinforcement.‖ The actors said something positive about their work in rehearsal. This exercise gave them a sense that they had accomplished something.

The actors of the Performance Intern Company did not have the benefit of prior training or performance experiences with each other. In order to build a sense of ensemble and provide skills for the performance of Two Gentlemen of Verona, the actors took workshops together in clowning techniques with Michael Toomey, and did scene study with Dennis Krausnick. By taking workshops together, this group of actors discovered each other‘s abilities and temperaments and built a common vocabulary.

However, in such a short amount of time, the disparity of backgrounds and ability levels easily led to some actors to identify the actors they liked and those they did not. Instead of guaranteeing mutual respect and knowledge of how to work together, actors gravitated to the actors they could work with most efficiently rather than those they did not understand or who challenged them. The guidance of a master teacher and the company- wide dedication to ensemble principles mitigated, but did not eliminate, some of these tendencies. For much of the training, Toomey attempted to physically exhaust the actors to create the conditions for personal psychological and technical breakthroughs.280

Krausnick did not cast the actors before rehearsals, so he allowed each actor to read many of the roles as they read through the play together. Together, they encouraged the actors‘

280 The instructor described the process as ―opening Pandora‘s Box,‖ of clown. They had just seen a fraction of what was possible and then had to move on to rehearsals. 219 self-improvement and respect for the ensemble in ways that were rare in the professional theatre.

Budget constraints forced several changes during the 2011 season. Each

Founder‘s Theatre show used to have a dedicated voice coach. The 2011 season shared one, Lizzie Ingram, between both shows. She was not able to attend every rehearsal and was not fully integrated into the two rehearsal processes. In addition to her daily warm- ups, she met with actors individually to explore sections of their text with the voice.

Because the rehearsals for As You Like It lasted only four weeks before technical rehearsals, the company rarely practiced the in-depth exercises that helped create a greater sense of ensemble. The actors did no training together. After the first read- through they had no ―table work‖ where the full cast could read and discuss the play.

Actors did not have the extra time to do the ―dropping-in‖ exercise, nor did they often use the ―feeding-in‖ practice for staging. The rehearsals for were highly dependent on actors having the confidence and ability to bring in character choices and react to each other in rehearsals.

The brief period of rehearsals for As You Like It tested the abilities of the ensemble to stage the show in a short amount of time and still make artistically innovative choices. Tony Simotes, artistic director and director of As You Like It, was a founding Shakespeare & Company actor. He trusted the actors to offer better performance choices than he could for their characters. His trust was reinforced by

Shakespeare & Company‘s commitment to the technique of ―personalization.‖ Actors were to read their roles not through the lens of the history of performance but through the way the lines spoke to the actor in his or her present circumstances. Character, therefore,

220 was not a pattern of external behaviors merely, but a reflection of personal motivations and attitudes. During the first week of rehearsal, the actress playing the melancholy

Jacques rehearsed the scene where Touchstone described his intent to marry Audrey in order to satisfy his sexual needs. Instead of addressing the line ―Go thou with me, and let me counsel thee‖281 to Touchstone as a warning about the dangers of marrying a lower- class woman, this actress addressed the line to Audrey as a warning about the dangers of marrying an insincere man. Through avoiding a tradition of interpretation in moments like these, the actors spoke to their current circumstances and found new interpretations in the play.

The personal approach to character required actors to prepare their roles before rehearsal, but many of the rehearsal dynamics aimed at fostering the creativity of the ensemble. On the first day of rehearsal, Simotes did not give a director‘s concept or an introductory speech. Instead, the actors jumped right into the rehearsal and read the play through. The read-through allowed the actors to hear each other and to consult other texts, particularly the First Folio, for alternate line interpretations.282 Simotes reminded the actors of the short rehearsal period and encouraged them to make choices at home.

During rehearsal, Simotes framed the action of the scenes as ―games‖ that the characters played, keeping the actors focused on their scene partners and their movement rather than interpretations of their lines. For instance, when Rosalind meets Orlando for the first time in act three, scene two, the actors played around with the best way to illustrate the many signs of a true lover. They also considered ways of incorporating Celia in the

281 As You Like It, 3.3.78. 282 Neil Freeman worked with the company to instruct them in a bibliographical background of Shakespeare‘s original text(s) and the word and punctuation options available in an un-edited version of the text. 221 scene even though she had no lines. Simotes posed the actors with this challenge, and after a few attempts, the actors turned Celia into the model of a ―true lover‖ who had to make rapid physical shifts to match each verbal description.

The rehearsals were collaborative in several other ways. The directors in each rehearsal avoided sitting behind a table. They preferred to walk among the actors to discuss their performance and pose them questions. When working fight scenes, the director blocked actors not involved in combat while the fight choreographer blocked the fight. Directors almost always asked questions, rather than giving statements, about the given circumstances of the characters and the actors‘ intentions. Sometimes, these questions asked actors to strengthen or revise their interpretations. More often, directors asked questions as if they did not have an answer so that the actors felt that they had a strong control over their roles. Most actors valued the freedom to create their own interpretations, but actors accustomed to pleasing directors often expressed a desire for directors to tell them what to do.

The directors shared the actors‘ spirit of collaboration. In many repertory companies, the actors had to be protected from directors who rehearsed beyond reasonable hours. Kevin Coleman argued that the culture of Shakespeare & Company283 rejected the jealous guarding of actors for individual shows since all directors and actors were, ostensibly, committed to the same goal: to make the company (not just the shows) succeed.284 For instance, Coleman received an angry call from the stage manager because he rehearsed with an actor who was in intense rehearsals for another play. The stage manager sought to protect the actor, but he did not know that the actor volunteered

283 Shakespeare & Company was described by one actor as a company ―founded by workaholics.‖ 284 Kevin Coleman, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Lenox, MA, May 29, 2011. 222 to come in for a short rehearsal with Coleman. The ease with which the actor volunteered his time showed his dedication to the company and reassured Coleman that such a rehearsal was not abusive.

Rehearsal practices in 2011 had changed since 1978, but the company maintained its collaborative ethos (and some of the collaborative exercises) that made it a good place to work. The rehearsal techniques developed during its earliest years continued to appeal to developing actors who participated in training. Rehearsals were not designed to help actors with personal breakthroughs. Rather they were designed to stage the play as efficiently as possible. The double focus on artistry and efficiency required that much of the work had to be done by the actors at home. In rehearsal, that preparation met the reactions of other actors. In performance, the show‘s preparation met the reactions of the audience. Because actors practiced responding unpremeditatedly to each other in rehearsal, they were more able to incorporate the audience‘s reactions in the performances. These rehearsal and performance experiences allowed the company to keep the actors who enjoyed these ways of working. The actors who remained were often more passionate about the work than getting more time off.285 This incredible devotion was the result of the collaborative conditions and actor-centric rehearsal process that had yielded shows of exceptional artistic merit.

285 Tony Simotes, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Lenox, MA. June 2, 2011. 223

Chapter 6: Shakespeare‘s Globe

Figure 29: Shakespeare's Globe, 2010, photo courtesy of Shakespeare’s Globe.

Legacy and Continuity

Shakespeare‘s Globe opened in 1997 in Bankside, Southwark in London,

England, close to the location of the original theatre.286 The American-born actor Sam

Wannamaker, the chief visionary behind the project, founded the Shakespeare Globe

286 This was not the first attempt to recreate the Globe Playhouse. Other notable examples included one in the 1912 ―Shakespeare‘s England‖ exhibit at Earl‘s Court that featured actors portraying an Elizabethan audience, one in the 1934 Chicago World‘s Fair, designed by a student of Ben Iden Payne, Thomas Wood, The Old Globe in San Diego built in 1935. For more detail, see Falocco, Reimagining Shakespeare’s Playhouse, 149-154. 224 Trust in 1970 to raise money to recreate Shakespeare‘s theatre. Many theatre artists and potential donors were concerned that this American artist would cheapen the cultural heritage of Shakespeare through the creation of a Shakespearean Disneyland. To distance the Globe project from rank commercialism, he engaged foremost

Shakespearean scholars, such as Andrew Gurr, and authentic carpentry practices of Peter

McCurdy. A mission of historical authenticity made donors and officials less squeamish in their support of the project. This foundation also led to the current missions of the company that encompasses academic research, audience education, and performance.

The directors and actors who performed at Shakespeare‘s Globe (Figure 29) were more concerned with making Shakespeare‘s plays clear and relatable to contemporary audiences than reviving an ―authentic‖ Elizabethan theatrical experience. The stagecraft indicated by a close reading of Shakespeare‘s plays and Elizabethan staging conventions, limited the practices of directors and designers since they initially could not use electronically derived sound, lighting effects, or sets. Under Mark Rylance‘s artistic direction from 1997 to 2005, several actors found little value in the use of authentic

Elizabethan costumes, single-gender casting, and other experiments in Elizabethan stagecraft.287 The ability to react to contemporary audiences, rather than Elizabethan conventions, most excited the actors and directors. When Dominic Dromgoole was hired as artistic director in 2005, he discarded much of the dedication to the Elizabethan practices and treated the stage as a blank canvas for directors, designers, and actors to create staging conventions that fit the architectural demands and technological limitations of the theatre. Instead of recovering Shakespeare‘s past, Dromgoole focused on the

287 The use of rushes strewn about the stage, for instance, was historically ―authentic‖ but noisy, distracting, and, in fights, slippery. 225 present use of the theatre. As Dromgoole argued: ―modernity is already there because it is present in the audience.‖288

Figure 30: Henry V at Shakespeare's Globe, 1997, photo courtesy of Shakespeare’s Globe.

Under founding artistic director Mark Rylance, Shakespeare‘s Globe applied several of Shakespeare‘s staging practices to the production of Shakespeare‘s plays. In the May 1997 production of Henry V (Figure 30), for instance, Jenny Tiramani led the construction of historically accurate Elizabethan costumes, sewn and dyed using historically accurate techniques, including Elizabethan underwear. The historical costumes on modern actors only minimally informed their stage movements. Other

288 Dominic Dromgoole, interview by Pat Cerasaro, ―Shakespeare‘s Globe Film Spotlight: Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole,‖ Broadway World.Com, August 16, 2011, accessed July 28, 2012, http://broadwayworld.com/article/SHAKESPEARES-GLOBE-FILM-SPOTLIGHT-Artistic-Director- Dominic-Dromgoole-20110816. 226 attempted experiments included the 2004 Romeo and Juliet and the 2005 Troilus and

Cressida wherein actors spoke with the accent and pronunciation used in Shakespeare‘s

London. Musicians composed original songs for historic instruments, including the sackbut, recorders, and drums, a practice continued under Dromgoole.289

Actors and directors found more value in the visible audience than in these historic stagecraft practices. Dromgoole maintained the company‘s focus on research and education, but discarded alienating historical practices in performance. His productions directors and actors liberty to use the stage as they best saw fit. Consequently, he attracted stronger actors, directors, designers, and critical praise.290

The relationship of the actors and audience was different from most other theatres because the lights (whether natural light during the day or electric light by night) illuminated actors and audience equally. Dromgoole and the actors remarked that the biggest, and most important character in the play was the audience. The universal lighting and limited design possibilities of the Globe prevented directors from focusing the audience‘s attention through the use of lights or large sets. Actors learned to address the audience directly so as to include their reactions in the play. The limited design also required that actors guide the audience‘s imagination to set the scenes. As Dromgoole explained:

[Actors must] have a concrete understanding of what [they‘re] saying in [their]

bones. [They] have to understand relationships between people….In the absence

of sets or lights or sound effects, the physical body says: it‘s night time, we‘re in a

289 Original music also accompanies shows at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, so this practice adapts rather than changes existing theatrical norms. 290 Dominic Dromgoole, interview by Andrew Blasenak, London, UK, June 22, 2011. 227 bedroom, there is a window there, it‘s cold, there‘s a breeze running through here.

The body does all that.291

Actors took the responsibility to define all the actions, settings, and words of the play with little help from design elements.

The audience members were aware of each other as much as the actors. Unlike other theatres that required the audience to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show, much of the standing audience at Shakespeare‘s Globe interacted with the actors by making room for their entrances, hiding them from other characters, or responding to the promptings of the actors. When not engaged with this activity, the rest of the audience members watched these improvisational performers. Therefore, the theatrical event at

Shakespeare‘s Globe emphasized the interaction of actors and audience in addition to

Shakespeare‘s plays. Mark Rylance encouraged actors never to set their blocking so that they would be free to react to each audience. Dromgoole noted that some actors, once they experienced the reaction of the audience were willing to sacrifice the tempo or plot of the play in order to garner more attention. The audience remained an important character in each play, but directors often prohibited actors from pandering to them.292

Dominic Dromgoole‘s approach at the Globe was greatly influenced by his years of experience in new play development, both with the Peter Hall Company and as artistic director of the Bush Theatre where he had premiered sixty-five new plays.293 Dromgoole commissioned plays written specifically for the performance conventions of

291 Dromgoole, interview by Andrew Blasenak. 292 The fear of ―pandering,‖ one actor noted, constrained the freedom of actors to react to the audience. The plays, and the unity a director brought to performance, overshadowed the immediate response to the audience. 293 ―Changing of the Guard: Dromgoole at the Globe,‖ Whatsonstage.com, April 21, 2008. Accessed September 16, 2012, http://www.whatsonstage.com/index.php?pg=207&story=E8821207748550. 228 Shakespeare‘s Globe. In 2011, the Globe had produced five plays set in the past, Anne

Boleyn (2010, 2011), The Globe Mysteries (2011), Bedlam (2010), Helen (2009), A New

World (2009) and two set in modern contexts, The God of Soho (2011) and The Frontline

(2009). Many of these plays used modern language. In the new plays, the performance conventions of Shakespeare‘s Globe became disassociated from Shakespeare‘s plays.

They represented, instead, innovations within the constraints of Shakespeare‘s original theatre.

Dromgoole further disassociated Shakespeare‘s Globe from its historical tradition by hiring directors who had little previous experience with Shakespeare‘s plays. He encouraged directors to treat Shakespeare as if he were a modern playwright not a cultural icon that needed reinvigoration. He described his hiring practice:

[We] try not to work with people who have worked on Shakespeare because most

people who have worked on Shakespeare have been so corrupted by the degree to

which they‘re given influence, the degree to which they‘re expected to control the

production with a concept or with a ―vision.‖…What we tend to do is go with

people who have worked with new plays and new writers….If you‘re working on

new plays your job as director isn‘t to say ―hello, look at me, aren‘t I fabulous‖

your job is to say ―isn‘t this play fabulous.‖294

The emphasis on realization rather than interpretation of Shakespeare‘s plays encouraged actors and directors to simplify their approach to the plays. Dromgoole argued that

Shakespeare‘s plays as interpreted by modern actors and directors would be relevant to a modern, visible audience. He hired directors that excited him with their stagecraft and

294 Dominic Dromgoole, interview by Andrew Blasenak. 229 rehearsal practices, not those that held a fidelity to Shakespeare‘s original theatre. The technical limitations put on the productions by the historical conditions of performance and the dynamic of a large, visible, standing audience provided the means for innovation in both the staging and performance of Shakespeare‘s plays.

Stages and Stagecraft

The Globe stage excited both scholars and practitioners with its promise to approximate the Elizabethan staging conventions. Through fifteen years of productions, both scholars and practitioners abandoned the possibility of creating an ―authentic‖ or

―original‖ Shakespearean experience because the audience itself would never be

Elizabethan. Dromgoole was concerned with giving the theatre back to the audience:

without becoming stupid, or populous, or craven, [Shakespeare‘s Globe] has said

the audience are the people you have to respect in the theatre….It‘s them that the

event is about, the event is not about the actors, it‘s not about the director.295

In 2011, the modern audience, and their enjoyment, became the sole purpose of the theatre. The manner in which directors incorporated the audience in their productions varied as they changed the architecture of the theatre to suit their stagecraft practices. The stagecraft conventions of Shakespeare‘s Globe limited the design possibilities for directors, but their blocking and stagecraft resembled practices of the commercial theatre and proscenium theatres.

The lack of movable sets and theatrical lights placed much of the design on the actors‘ bodies. Matthew Dunster used an ensemble of actors and puppets to define the

295 Dromgoole, interview by Andrew Blasenak. 230 setting in the 2011 Doctor Faustus. Actors dressed in black cloaks, hats, and dark sunglasses became, alternately, Faustus‘s library by holding books and his observatory by rotating planetary spheres. Actor-operated puppets became supernatural creatures. In the jig, actors animated rod-puppet fiends as they danced and sang. Faustus and

Mephistopheles flew over the Alps on bone dragon puppets that were wheeled onto the stage. Stilt-walkers in shaggy fur robes and goat-skull masks stalked Faustus as he remembered his mortal contract. Actors also created spectacle. Mephistopheles produced fire from his hands. Faustus was decapitated as another actor held the shoulders of his cloak and the actors playing Faustus dropped his head into the cradle of his arms. In the pageant of seven deadly sins, Pride, Covetousness Envy, Wrath,

Gluttony, Sloth, and Lechery, each sin inspired his or her vice in the fellow sins moving in choral harmony. The pageant ended with all seven sins writhing in Lechery-inspired group grope. Within the limitations of the staging conventions, Dunster created the spectacle required by the text with and through the actors.

Dromgoole hired directors not because they had prior experience with the staging of Shakespeare‘s plays or deep knowledge of Shakespeare‘s original theatre, but because their previous work interested him. Instead of seeking to get closer to the original practices of Shakespeare‘s stage, the directors at Shakespeare‘s Globe were encouraged to provide their own solutions to the design limitations of the performance space (no electric sound or lighting effects). This inspired a variety of approaches to staging.

Directors often used the ―build up and cover up‖ strategy that allowed them to succeed in spite of the space rather than because of it.

231 Shakespeare‘s Globe challenged blocking habits because two columns hid actors standing center stage from the view of much of the audience. Actors and directors in

2000 repeatedly questioned the size and positioning of the columns.296 They extended their frustration to the scholars who insisted that they were accurate, even though they were noisome.297 The surrounding audience and positioning of the columns required that actors move more frequently than on a proscenium stage. The most powerful and visible positions on the Shakespeare‘s Globe stage were upstage center next to the frons that acted as a sounding board298 and in the downstage left and downstage right corners where actors were surrounded in a 270-degree arc of audience members. Actors enjoyed the sensation of being surrounded by so many people as equally as they hated the columns that hid them.

Instead of embracing the changed dynamic of the stage, directors and designers built additions to the front of the stage and covered up the frons so as to provide a different design for each play. Directors and designers have built additions like an extended apron (e.g. Much Ado About Nothing 2011, dir. Jeremy Herrin) (Figure 31), runways extending into the audience (e.g. Dr. Faustus 2011, dir. Matthew Dunster)

(Figure 32), ramps (e.g. Coriolanus 2006, dir. Dominic Dromgoole), or other audience projections so that they could position actors as far away from the columns as possible and closer to the middle of the audience. This configuration encouraged the abandoning

296 Jacquelyn Bessell, ―Actor Interviews 2000,‖ Shakespeare’s Globe Research Bulletin, issue 18, (March 2001), accessed September 16, 2012, http://www.globe-education.org/files/Actor_Interviews_2000.pdf. 297 To accommodate the actor and directors complaints, the bases of the columns were reduced in size. 298 W.B. Worthen, Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), 108. 232 of upstage positions behind the pillars and the playing of scenes more in a proscenium- like blocking with the stage starting in front of the pillars.299

Figure 31: Much Ado About Nothing, 2011, photo courtesy of Shakespeare’s Globe.

Directors transformed the stage so that it looked less like Shakespeare‘s Globe.

Instead of investigating ways to use the trompe l‘oeil and marbled-painted set, they treated the stage as if it were a bare theatre into which they had erected their own set.

These directors reduced the historicizing ability of the stage by covering up its architectural elements. In Much Ado About Nothing (Figure 31), the painted columns were covered with plain brown canvass sleeves. Orange-tree branches were added so as

299 Audience members sitting in the area closest to the stage right and stage left entrance often abandoned their seats midway through performance. The columns prevented them from seeing any of the action downstage. 233 to create an ―arbor‖ for the play. Staircases allowed entrances from the front of the stage.

Shallow pools of water were built into the extended apron increased the playing area and provided stage business. The frons was covered with screening, which reduced the upstage playing area and hid the marble-painted frons.

Figure 32: Jig from Doctor Faustus, 2011, photo courtesy of Shakespeare’s Globe.

This build up and cover-up strategy300 ignored the people on the sides of the stage

(Figure 32). The sets that covered the frons forced actors further downstage, and the columns forced the actors even further downstage. In order to avoid playing on a small strip of stage, the designers built platforms into the audience that moved the actors even

300 Dominic Dromgoole claimed that directors used set design more than he thought was necessary. Dromgoole, interview. 234 further downstage. The blocking did not address the challenge of the columns, but often resembled a proscenium theatre in front of the columns. Audience members frequently moved closer to the front of the stage in order to see the action. Downstage center became the focus of the production, as in proscenium theatres, which ignored the surrounding audience.

The presence of the surrounding audience removed the surety that all audience members would experience the performance in the same way. At the Globe, actors were able to appeal to parts of the audience rather than thinking of the audience as a cohesive whole. For instance, during the June 21, 2011, performance of act two, scene two of

Much Ado About Nothing, the audience‘s attention drifted away from the actors playing

John the Bastard, Conrad and Borachio. The actors were not particularly loud, and their verbal plotting did not motivate much movement. However, one actor stood in the downstage right corner and made a joke to the audience that made only that section of the audience laugh. This laughter signaled to the audience that the scene was worthy of their attention, and the rest of the audience quieted down and listened more intently. In moments like these, the audience members had different experiences of the play. A single artistic vision or audience experience was not possible at Shakespeare‘s Globe.

However, the unification of theatrical elements was exactly the type of training directors, especially those practiced in contemporary plays, received. Shakespeare‘s Globe changed the expectations of audience from the polished presentation of a show to a multivalent, interactive event that was meant to be experienced.

235 Actor Training and Coaching

The performance conditions at Shakespeare‘s Globe encouraged actors to develop vocal, physical, and textual analysis skills. This open-air theatre, with airplanes overhead and sirens nearby, challenges actors to be heard. The large stage and surrounding audience of sixteen hundred people encouraged larger gestures and energetic movement.

Finally, since the actors had to draw the audience‘s attention primarily with their words, they had to be clear with both their words and character intentions. Finally, the actors received instant, and sometimes unexpected, feedback from the visible audience that forced the actors to adjust their performance or lose their audience. The actors did not train in historical methods of performance, and several believed that ―absolute historicity‖ as anathema to the vitality of their performances.301 A total dedication to

Shakespeare‘s history, to them, stymied their goal of communicating with the modern audience. Instead, they were interested in investigating how the actor-audience dynamic changed the way they prepared. As one actor noted, the need to respond to the audience prevented naturalistic acting because they could not prepare for audience reactions in their conception of their character. 302 The actors had to learn how to perform and react rather than create repeatable characters.

Mark Rylance attempted to use the challenge of the stage and conventions at

Shakespeare‘s Globe to redefine acting company management. Rylance envisioned an acting company that would have the same technical discipline as musicians and dancers who practiced technical exercises each day. He had actors train in techniques for performance that would, simultaneously, strengthen the ensemble mentality of the actors..

301 Anonymous Shakespeare‘s Globe actor, interview by Andrew Blasenak, London, UK, June 22, 2011. 302 Anonymous Shakespeare‘s Globe actor, interview by Andrew Blasenak, London, UK, June 22, 2011. 236 In the 2002 production of Twelfth Night, the company trained together for one hour twice a week in workshops with the master of text, Giles Block, master of voice, Stewart

Pearce, and master of movement, Glynn MacDonald.303 Some actors also did circuit training together to improve their physique and endurance. This training aided the general skills of the actors, but it lacked a direct relationship to the shows.

Because the training was disconnected from the rehearsals, few actors found it useful. In these training sessions, actors worked on sonnets and speeches from other plays not on the text they were paid to perform. Training sessions sometimes forced actors to come to the theatre on days they were not needed for rehearsal, which they considered a waste of their time.304 The training that sought to increase the professionalism of the actors in the company actually took time away from their professional duty of creating a role for the play. Because the training sessions did not serve the production and did not yield clear results, it was eventually cut down to a warm-up before the shows.

The challenge of Shakespeare‘s plays and the inexperience of some actors validated the continued efforts of the coaching staff, however. In 2011, Giles Block, master of verse, helped actors speak the verse quickly and naturally.305 Sian Williams choreographed the jigs at the end of Much Ado About Nothing and All’s Well that Ends

Well, aiming to build confidence and cohesion among the actors. Voice coaches ensured actors could be heard in the open-air theatre, and movement coaches helped actors develop appropriate movement for the sizable stage. These coaches helped actor gain

303 This was a change from previous productions where the acting company would train for the first week of the production and every morning of rehearsal. 304 Anonymous Shakespeare‘s Globe actor, interview by Andrew Blasenak, London, UK, June 22, 2011. 305 Giles Block, interview by Andrew Blasenak, London, UK, June 19, 2011. 237 better understandings of the Elizabethan theatre and Shakespeare‘s plays, but addressed the needs of individual actors, not an institutional style of performance.

Giles Block, the master of the word, worked at Shakespeare‘s Globe since the beginning and remained the expert for speaking verse. Depending on director preference,

Block either attended rehearsals or worked one-on-one with actors to help them make the language clear, spontaneous, and expressive. He stated that he aimed to make audience members believe that the actors had changed Shakespeare‘s language to modern

English.306 To get to this result, he helped actors recognize verse forms through phrasing and rhetorical structures in complex passages. Conversely, he encouraged simplicity when the text was straightforward and plain. After each run-through to which he was invited, he delivered to each actor a marked-up script with notes on how to construct a clearer phrasing for each line of text. He estimated that at least eighty percent of the actors he coached were enthusiastic about his notes and one-on-one training. In interviews, actors often confirmed the value of his insights.

The availability of coaches like Block upheld the institutional commitment to training actors; however, his input served only the needs of each production. Actors and directors sometimes ignored his advice or interpretation of specific lines. At least one director prohibited him from speaking with actors, and the ensemble had no regular meetings with him. His value to the company appeared in the support of individual actors who gained ease and confidence in their performance of Shakespeare‘s plays, not as an additional director.

306 Block, interview. 238 The Globe itself was a catalyst for training and study for many more theatre artists than those involved in productions. Because the historical space made demands on actors that informed their techniques, the education department developed working relationships with several academic institutions. Rutgers University partnered with the Globe for a full-year course of study for acting and design undergraduates. Beginning in 2006, the

Drama Center London307 included a six-week intensive workshop at Shakespeare‘s

Globe. The design of the stage and the use of Elizabethan conventions challenged actors and teachers in these programs to adapt their techniques.

Many of these programs explored how the Shakespeare‘s Globe stage altered vocal and movement demands and how the performance conventions alter conceptions of character and rehearsal practices. James Garnon, a veteran actor, remarked that he did not worry about consistency of character from scene to scene or an overarching through- line, only the separate lines and actions of his script.308 For instance, he relied on the audience feedback to modify or to strengthen his interpretation of Parrolles as a pragmatic negotiator of the dangers of warfare. As the audience and other characters began to perceive Parrolles as a coward, he found a greater commitment to the lines he had prepared that justified or excused his actions. The audience provided an external obstacle to his character‘s objective to portray himself as a war hero. 309 Garnon still approached his character in terms of naturalistic acting, i.e. with obstacles and objectives, but the audience helped inform the choices he made each night.

307 Partnered with the Vaktangov Institute in Moscow 308 James Garnon, interview by Andrew Blasenak, London, UK, June 22, 2011. 309 Garnon, interview. 239 The performance conditions at Shakespeare‘s Globe also trained actors to be clear in their characters‘ intentions and relationships. This clarity allowed the actors to prompt an audience response and incorporate their reaction. But this performance condition required that actors be flexible in their blocking, character intentions, and line delivery.

The creation of meaning was no longer a transaction between director, actors, and audience, but a negotiation between actors and audience. This was exactly the reason why Shakespeare‘s Globe was such an exciting space for actors and audiences. In order to prepare for this performance dynamic, actors needed utter confidence in the voice, text, and movement techniques. Coaches and directors helped actors gain this confidence throughout rehearsals, and the audience sustained this confidence in performance.310

The rigor of preparation and the necessity of reacting to an ever-changing, visible audience provided actors with a greater understanding of which techniques held the audience‘s attention. Dromgoole noted that these actors who performed at Shakespeare‘s

Globe, including Mark Rylance, often gained fame as actors in other theatres.311

Performing at Shakespeare‘s Globe remained a training ground that reformed the actors‘ ideas about what was useful in other theatres and media.

Ensemble Acting

Shakespeare‘s Globe, located in London, had access to a wide variety of theatre professionals, so directors were able to hire stars of stage and screen as well as actors specialized in performance on the Globe stage. Even with this access to actors, Mark

310 Dromgoole noted that actors were generally terrified before their first entrance, but after five minutes on stage they often became so enamored of the feedback that they had to be reminded to leave the stage and allow the play to move forward. 311 Dominic Dromgoole, interview by Andrew Blasenak, London, UK. June 22, 2011. 240 Rylance challenged the hiring practices of the entertainment industry by committing to the development of an ensemble.312 Dominic Dromgoole prioritized the hiring of directors who would bring myriad artistic visions. Dromgoole sometimes maintained the practice of hiring actors as an ensemble that would perform two shows in repertory, but often actors were hired for only a single show. These hiring practices often led to positive reviews and continued popular success because Dromgoole was able to attract more and better directors and actors. The maintenance of ensemble principles was not a vital part of the Dromgoole‘s mission, the quality of the shows was.

The stuff of legend surrounded the Globe stage. Some actors quit after their first show because they were unable to handle the live audience reacting in ways for which they were not prepared.313 Actors, especially those in their first season, were anxious about the way the audience received them. The actors who continued to audition and get cast year after year (such as Peter Hamilton Dyer and James Garnon) thrived in the interactive performances staged at Shakespeare‘s Globe. They were excited, not unnerved, by the uncertainty of interactions with a live audience. They also valued the voice, text, and movement coaching that helped them be as clear and well-prepared as possible leading up to performance. Therefore, a core ensemble grew from the actors who enjoyed the performance conditions.

When Dromgoole assumed artistic leadership, he attracted more famous and accomplished actors. Eve Best, who became internationally known for her roles as Wallis

Simpson in The King’s Speech and as Dr. O‘Hara in the TV series Nurse Jackie and held

312 Mark Rylance, and several of the veteran actors at Shakespeare‘s Globe often referred to the performance dynamic, like the company management, as ―more democratic‖ than other theatres and theatre companies. 313 Anonymous Shakespeare‘s Globe actor, interview by Andrew Blasenak, London, UK, June 21, 2011. 241 two Tony nominations and an Olivier award, played Beatrice in the 2011 Much Ado

About Nothing. She also appeared as Lady Macbeth in 2001. Arthur Davril, famous for portrayal of Rory Williams in Doctor Who, appeared as Mephistopheles in Doctor

Faustus. Two-time Olivier award-winner Roger Allam played a well-received Falstaff in

Henry IV, parts 1 and 2 (for which he won one of his Olivier awards for Best Actor).

Even though the theatre was not located in the West End, its hiring practices came to resemble the hiring and management practices of the professional theatre.

Under Mark Rylance there were two distinct ensembles, often color coded, as

Yellow company and Blue company, to perform a repertory of plays. These two ensembles did not share actors between them to minimize rehearsal conflicts and payroll costs. Actors in each ensemble frequently had more than one role in each show. This casting policy rarely allowed actors to specialize in only one type of role; rather, they had to be protean and flexible to play any role that they were assigned. Rylance instituted the training programs in order to make a company of actors capable of undertaking the demands of performing a repertory of plays. Further, the directors often had to adjust their artistic visions to suit the ensemble rather than casting the ensemble to suit their visions. Rylance‘s attempt to maintain an ensemble at Shakespeare‘s Globe did not yield positive reviews. Dromgoole saw little convincing evidence to support the practice and adopted, instead, the director-led hiring practices of the commercial theatre.

One of Shakespeare‘s performance conventions instituted a sense of ensemble: the jig. As was the practice of the Elizabethan theatre, each play at Shakespeare‘s Globe concludes with a full-company song and dance. Before each show, the entire company assembled on stage and rehearsed the jig. At the end of the show, they performed this jig

242 in front of the live audience. The jig brought the whole cast together, even those actors who did not have scenes together, to reaffirm their commitment to the performance and each other. This ―authentic‖ convention of Shakespeare‘s theatre had a practical value in maintaining cohesion in the ensemble. Many of the actors spoke of the joy of working on the jig. It was also a good McGuffin, as Boyd of the Royal Shakespeare Company said because it kept actors thinking about physical skills rather than their apprehensions.

Shakespeare‘s Globe changed the focus from the development of the ensemble to realization of directors‘ visions. The metropolitan location of the theatre, the limited length of the contracts, and the unique performance conventions allowed Shakespeare‘s

Globe to attract top actors to the company. The improved quality of the actors and theatrical reviews increased the professional satisfaction of the actors. In rehearsal, the cohesion of the ensemble was dependent on the director‘s mentality. In performance, the conventions of Shakespeare‘s Globe encouraged actors to rely on each other to negotiate the audience‘s reactions. Combined with the jig, the conventions of Shakespeare‘s theatre helped actors derive greater satisfaction from their performances together, even though many of the management practices resembled the commercial theatre.

243

Chapter 7: The American Shakespeare Center

Legacy and Continuity

In 1988 Dr. Ralph Cohen and a group of students from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA founded the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express, the company that would become the American Shakespeare Center in 2005. On tours throughout

America, the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express produced Shakespeare‘s plays using the conventions of the early modern English theatre. The rigorous academic mission to discover and use conventions of the early modern theatre prioritized those conventions over individual artistic visions. Actors and directors did not reject staging practices that did not already fit in with their artistic sensibilities but experimented with scholars‘ interpretations of the performance conventions of early modern England, including extensive actor doubling, the use of a bare stage, and rapid verse speaking. These conventions enlivened Shakespeare‘s plays as well as those of his contemporaries. In the

2011-2012 season, the company produced eight of Shakespeare‘s plays,314 as well as

Beaumont and Fletcher‘s Philaster or Love Lies a-Bleeding, Middleton‘s A Mad World

My Masters, Marlowe‘s Dido Queen of Carthage, John Ford‘s Tis Pity She’s a Whore and James Goldman‘s The Lion in Winter. The commitment to a repertory of early modern plays and conditions of early modern performance inspired contemporary actors

314 Much Ado about Nothing; Richard III; The Winter's Tale; A Midsummer Night's Dream; The Merchant of Venice; The Two Gentlemen of Verona; Cymbeline; King John. 244 to form a strong ensemble, to train performance skills, and to develop efficient rehearsal methods.

The company was originally founded to experiment with the post-modern application of the performance conventions of the early modern period. These

―experiments‖ in reviving Shakespeare‘s plays conditions proved to be popular with audiences and earned the approbation of the scholarly community. After the tours of the mid-Atlantic region in 1988 and the 1989 the company presented Julius Caesar at the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America 1990. The enthusiastic response that the company received by scholars, especially Stephen Booth, ensured the success of future tours to academic institutions and theatre festivals throughout the USA.

―I first saw the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express perform in Washington, D.C., in July of

1991,‖ Booth wrote, ―I haven‘t thought the same since about Shakespeare or the theatre.‖315 By lighting the audience and actors alike, playing live music, reducing the running time of the shows, and using direct audience address, the company revitalized performances conventions of the contemporary theatre that used design elements like lights, sets, and sound effects that added to the running time of the plays. By going old, the theatre became new again.

The company‘s founding premise was that the plays of the Elizabethan and

Jacobean era are theatrically viable if performed with the staging conventions used in their original performances. Historical accounts about performance as well as explicit and embedded stage directions in the plays of the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline periods established the company‘s stagecraft. Every show at The American Shakespeare Center

315 Stephen Booth, ―The Shenandoah Shakespeare Express,‖ Shakespeare Quarterly 43, no. 4 (1992): 476- 83. 245 featured a bare stage316 and universal lighting (i.e. actors and audience members shared the same pool of light). Because the chorus in Romeo and Juliet asks the audience to attend to the ―two hours traffic of our stage,‖317 Cohen attempted to produce shows with running times of no more than two hours with ―brisk pacing‖ and the ―continuous flow of dramatic action.‖318 Like Shakespeare‘s acting company, American Shakespeare Center actors often played several roles in each play. This doubling practice allowed audiences to admire an actor‘s ability to play so many characters in a single evening, and challenged actors to create these different characters. Finally, the company took the inspiration of the music offered at the original Blackfrairs playhouse before the shows and during act breaks319 to add musical interludes. All of these conditions provided a framework in which twelve actors produced the plays of Shakespeare by directing the audience‘s imagination with words rather creating a visual illusion.

The reason this style became successful, according to artistic director Jim Warren, was because it directly challenged cinematic performance styles. ―There is more of a future,‖ Warren argued, ―in theatre engaging audiences than in representational movies.‖320 Because universal lighting and the presence of audience members on the stage allowed actors to incorporate audience reactions into the play, Warren referred to their performance as ―improv with a script.‖321 The lack of a unifying directorial vision suited the plays of Shakespeare that were episodic, and often contradictory in tone and

316 Large props, such as thrones, tombs, tables, have been used, but each of these large props has been brought on and removed by actors. 317 Romeo and Juliet, prologue, 12. 318 ―Shakespeare‘s Staging Conditions.‖ Theatre Program for 2012 Actors‘ Renaissance Season (The American Shakespeare Center: Staunton, VA, 2011), 10. 319 In the early modern Blackfrairs playhouse, the act breaks allowed assistants to trim the candle wicks in the chandeliers. 320 Jim Warren, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Staunton, VA, August 1, 2011. 321 Warren, interview. 246 subject matter. The lack of illusory design and the emphasis on actor-audience interaction created a sense of community between the actors and viewers which could not be established between film actors and their audiences.322

Due to budget constraints, from 2008-2011, Warren was the sole director of the plays for both the resident and touring troupes. Warren‘s directing aesthetic and actor- hiring preferences reflected his experience as an actor/director in the inaugural 1988 production of Richard III. Because so many practices of the early modern English theatre succeeded with modern audiences, he was willing to try staging conventions brought to light by new scholarship.323 To make the company succeed, he preferred to re-hire actors who had worked with the company before that were willing to take on extra responsibilities in rehearsal, education, and tour management. This was most clear to the actors of the touring troupe. They assumed additional duties such as driving and servicing the vans, doing the laundry, moving their costumes and equipment into and out of each venue, and so on.

Similarly, the rehearsal periods were short and required that actors did much of their preparation before rehearsals began. Each actor wrote out paraphrases of all their lines and completed the written scansion of their lines before the first rehearsal. During the first week of rehearsals, the actors blocked the entire show without the aid of a director, a practice that approximated Elizabethan rehearsals. The actors then performed the full play for the director in a ―Renaissance run,‖ after which more in-depth rehearsals began. Actors, therefore, had to learn how to work together quickly. The re-hiring of

322 Warren, interview. 323 Warren, interview. However, research in lighting effects, hanging the stage with black fabric for a tragedy, the use of rushes, the design of the trap, and the use of the heavens had not been adapted to common practice either due to budget constraints or dissonance with his artistic vision. 247 many of the same actors, especially in the resident ensemble, made rehearsals more efficient. The actors who stayed, however, were the ones who enjoyed the ability to have a large amount of input into the creation of the show.324 The performance conventions and rehearsal autonomy offered actors a performance experience unlike any of the other theatre companies. The efficient actors capable of performing several roles in each play helped to keep the company‘s payroll manageable and the production calendar full. Most actors in the resident ensemble remarked that they were happy to continue working with the company for as long as the directors wanted them.

The American Shakespeare Center also maintained strong links to their research mission. In 2001, the American Shakespeare Center built the world‘s only

Shakespearean indoor theatre: the Blackfrairs Playhouse.325 In that same year, the company partnered with Mary Baldwin College to establish an interdisciplinary masters degree in Shakespeare in Performance. Therefore, the company had a performance space and scholars who supervised MFA theses about the staging and performing conventions of the early modern theatre. These students also staged lesser-known plays both in readings and performances. However, the actors and directors of the American

Shakespeare Center often used only the practices that simplified rehearsals, informed character research, or illuminated the plays rather than practices that were historically authentic.

Practicality and historicity met, however, during the Actor‘s Renaissance Season.

Each spring actors worked in styles of rehearsal and performance that Tiffany Stern

324 Jay McClure, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Staunton, VA, August 1, 2011. 325 Shakespeare‘s Globe, in 2012, had planned to open an indoor playhouse that would expand their production calendar year-round. Likewise, the American Shakespeare Center has had plans to build a Globe theatre, based on the 1613 reconstruction of the original Globe after it had burnt down. 248 outlined in her two books: Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan and Making

Shakespeare: from Stage to Page. The actors used parts (or cue scripts) that contained only their lines and cues. Actors worked without a director and each day they decided the rehearsal schedule by consensus. They performed a rotating repertory of five plays.

Rehearsals were as short as three days and as long as three weeks. They often rehearsed a show during the day but performed a different show during the evening. The rarity of this experience attracted actors, and it increased the quality of the performers. Ralph

Cohen noted the historical pressures trained actors because of their difficulty, as he said:

―The more impossible the task, the better the work.‖326 The pressures of the early modern theatre were the small cast size, lack of design elements, short rehearsals, incomplete scripts, and the maintenance of a group of veteran actors, but these conventions fostered the training, ensemble, and performance conditions that made the theatre popular for actors, scholars, and audiences alike.

Stages and Stagecraft

The necessities of touring and the dedication to the conventions of the early modern theatre encouraged minimal design elements at the American Shakespeare

Center. For the touring ensemble, props, sets, costumes, and actors fit into just two vans.

As they toured colleges and communities throughout the United States, they set up a

―portable discovery space,‖ a curtained structure that allowed for entrances, revelations

(as with the discovery of Hermione‘s statue in The Winter’s Tale) and blocking of explicit stage directions (as with Polonius who hides behind the arras in Hamlet).

326 Ralph Cohen, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Staunton, VA, July 28, 2011. 249 Additional furniture was often built with rehearsal blocks. Costumes indicated status and wealth of whatever time period inspired the costumer or director. Because the dedication to Shakespeare‘s original staging practices influenced these conventions, when the company built the Blackfriars Playhouse in 2001, they maintained an aesthetic similar to that of the touring ensemble. The historically inspired theatre had little storage space and no means for the creation or use of scenic design.327 Due to the inability of the theatre to create spectacular effects, the actors had to prompt the audience‘s imagination with their words and actions to create the settings of the plays.

Figure 33: The Blackfriars Playhouse 2009, photo courtesy of The American Shakespeare Center, photo by Lauren D. Rodgers.

327 The attic of the theatre serves as storage for all props, costumes, and large props. The basement has a small room for swords and hardware. 250 The Staunton Blackfriars, inspired by the playhouse built by James Burbage in

1598 (Figure 33), had a total of approximately three hundred and twenty seats in the pit and in the galleries that wrapped around the stage. No audience member sat further than thirty feet from the center of the stage. The proximity of the audience members encouraged the actors to speak and interact physically with them. This intimacy was further enhanced by excellent acoustics. Actors were audible even when speaking in a low, conversational tone. The original Blackfriars had windows and candles for light.

The Staunton Blackfrairs used a series of Fresnel lights pointed at the ceiling and electric chandeliers to create a general light wash. The directors did not use their dimming function for special effects. The marble-painted frons was the set for every play that could be augmented through the use of banners and ropes or the addition of tables, chairs, and thrones. Shakespeare‘s texts and the direct communication between actor and audience drew audiences into the plays rather than scenic spectacle.

The American Shakespeare Center relied chiefly on the actors and their costumes to communicate to the audience the place and mood of the shows. Without sets, the scenes changed as swiftly as thought. Instead of a pause after each scene, actors overlapped entrances and exits and were expected to speak as soon as they appeared. The actors set the scenes with the conveniently placed verbal cues such as ―Well, this is the forest of Arden.‖328 The appearance of props such as lanterns and torches, as well as the actors‘ physical reactions, directed the audience to imagine nighttime (Figure 34). The actors assumed physical postures and reactions appropriate to their imagined given circumstances, e.g. the storm in King Lear, in the fully lit playhouse. The greater

328 As You Like It, 2.4.12 251 necessity for the audience‘s imagination to create the storm, several actors and directors argued, allowed them to identify with the characters to a greater degree. One audience member watching the storm of King Lear in 2008 said she felt a cold chill watching the scene and assumed a door had been left open to the cold weather outside. Only her imagination, not an actual temperature drop, made this reaction possible. Character costumes, such as monks, soldiers, or whores set scenes in monasteries, battlefields, or brothels. Because the full lighting increased audience attention to the appearance and physicality of the actor, the actors communicated quick shifts of location that were required by the episodic plays.

Figure 34: The Blackfriars Playhouse, Much Ado About Nothing, 2012, Dogberry using a lantern to indicate a nighttime scene, courtesy of The American Shakespeare Center, photo by Tommy Thompson.

252 Actors and directors used these conventions of the early modern playhouse not to revive early modern performance but to allow direct communication between modern actors and audiences. At the Blackfriars some audience members sat on the stage, and the actors often interacted with them by flirting with them, giving them high-fives, or hiding among them during the scenes. The actor-audience conventions allowed improvisation. Additionally, actors expanded their small ensemble by naming audience members as characters within the scene. For example, in the 2011 Henry V the actor playing Henry V did not have enough nobles on stage for all the names he had to list in the St. Crispin‘s Day speech. While other theatres had cast extras, at the Blackfriars the actors used the audience as extras. This rapport between actors and audience arose from both necessity and historical accuracy. ―Accuracy‖ remained only in the architecture and staging conventions of the theatre.

As audiences walked into the theatre, they stepped into seventeenth-century playhouse made entirely of Virginia oak. Unlike the Globe, the audience members were not greeted by recorders and drums playing original or historic songs but by actors playing acoustic guitars and singing modern pop songs. The lack of sound equipment eliminated the possibility of a voice-over greeting, so two actors, before each show, explained the conditions of performance to be used, solicited donations, and reminded audiences to silence their phones. These pre-show speeches often reflected the clowning or musical training of the company. For instance, Miriam Donald and John Harrell created ―Miriam‘s Pre-show Song‖ that detailed all of the information in ―state-of-the-art country tones‖ in the 2005 Actor‘s Renaissance Season, and in the 2008 Love’s Labour’s

Lost, John Harrell in pidgin French with comic gestures and J.P. Scheidler ―translated‖

253 the pre-show message to the audience. The company often performed one more thematically appropriate song (such as ―Tainted Love‖ for A Winter’s Tale) before transitioning, seamlessly, into the first lines of the show. Ralph Cohen emphasized music as a ―trans-temporal‖ way of communicating with the audience.329 Because

Shakespeare‘s text had been perceived as an obstacle to the audience‘s enjoyment, Cohen introduced audiences to the company by using familiar music and actors who spoke in their own language before assuming the language of Shakespeare. The actors‘ familiarity with Shakespeare‘s language allowed them to deliver lines in conversational tones which made Shakespeare‘s plays sound as modern as the music they played.

The constraints of an historical space and the commitment to early modern

English staging practices made the design of the shows similar. As Cohen stated: ―if we buy a prop, we‘re going to use it.‖330 During the first ten years of the Blackfriars‘ existence, the company purchased or built large props, such as thrones, tables and chairs, and a dais. These props were used in many plays to suggest the locale of the scene.

Instead of building a set for each show, many of the above-mentioned props were used in multiple shows. Similarly, the costumes were often recycled for new use in each season.

These practices reflected those of Shakespeare‘s company, and kept the focus of the audience on the words and the actions of the actors.

The actors and directors had the sole duty to make the play clear and interesting to their audience, even when reviving little-known plays by Ben Jonson or Thomas

Middleton. Some of these lesser-known plays attracted as many audience members per night as some of Shakespeare‘s lesser-known plays. For instance, in 2011, the average

329 Ralph Cohen, interview by Andrew Blasenak, Staunton, VA, July 28, 2011. 330 Cohen, interview. 254 attendance for Marston‘s The Malcontent and the anonymously-written Look About You nearly equaled the average attendance for Measure for Measure. Likewise, the average attendance for Middleton‘s A Trick to Catch the Old One matched the average attendance for Henry VI, part 3. The performance experience, as much as the content of the plays, attracted the audience to these obscure plays. Reviewers like Peter Marks of the

Washington Post commented little about the qualities of the individual shows but the quality of the experience ―that is both serious-minded and exuberant.‖331 After watching the repertory of three plays in spring of 2012, Marks concluded ―While the intensity of satisfaction varies from show to show, the cumulative takeaway is an admiration for the careful treatment of text and the liveliness of the results.‖332 The ―lively‖ performance conventions and actors put the early modern theatre on display equally with the talents of individual artists.

Ralph Cohen described the American Shakespeare Center as a text-based theatre company.333 The performances proved whether Shakespeare‘s ideas and words, rather than contemporary theatrical design, were worthy of production. The enthusiastic audience response, and the continued interest of the satisfied actors, suggested that

Shakespeare‘s words and ideas were, indeed, still relevant.

331 Peter Marks, ―In Shenandoah Valley, a Shakespeare tradition has taken root,‖ Washington Post, April 27, 2012, accessed September 19, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/in-shenandoah- valley-a-shakespeare-tradition-has-taken-root/2012/04/26/gIQAPbTzlT_story.html. 332 Peter Marks, ―In Shenandoah Valley.‖ 333 Cohen, interview. 255 Actor Training and Coaching

Professional actor training was not a focus for the American Shakespeare Center.

Gradually, the actors were challenged to develop performance skills for the conventions of the early modern playhouse. At the Blackfriars, the actors developed many of the skills learned by actors at Shakespeare‘s Globe: actor-audience interaction, quick pace, and attention to rhetorical clarity and intention so as to keep the audiences engaged in the play. Additionally, the practice of heavy character doubling and the rotating repertory of plays led the actors to develop a greater diversity of skills with a wider variety of roles.

The company did not hire coaches but encouraged actors in the company to support their fellow actors. Actor René Thornton Jr. was the ―resident voice coach.‖

However, because the rehearsals were brief, actors rarely consulted him. Coaching often happened according to individual skills. For example, actor Alison Glenzer had a great deal of training in Alexander technique. Some actors sought her out for help to deal with the physical rigors of performance. Due to the lack of coaches, the actors turned to each other for advice and their support strengthened not only skills but the coherence of ensemble.

Mary Baldwin College students studied how the early modern conventions of the

Blackfriars Playhouse influenced rehearsal and performance. The Master of Letters degree combined historical research of Shakespeare‘s staging conventions and practical experimentation with those conventions. The presentations and theses these students produced sometimes informed the practices of actors and directors of the American

Shakespeare Center. Some of the Mary Baldwin College MFA acting students also received the challenges and benefits of performing in the Actors‘ Renaissance Season.

256 Mary Baldwin College also offered classes, such as stage combat, to the American

Shakespeare Center actors.

In 2011, the American Shakespeare Center offered the Professional Training

Program. Colleen Kelly, the former head of actor training at the Alabama Shakespeare

Festival, led the three-week workshop for theatre professionals. They learned how the conditions of early modern performance led to practical vocal, physical, and textual choices during rehearsal at the American Shakespeare Center. Actors learned to recognize embedded stage directions and to use them in blocking and character choices.

Kelly and the other instructors also taught the use of rehearsal techniques like paraphrasing the full text of the play to create greater understanding and specificity for each word. Cohen taught textual skills like scansion and rhetoric which were used in the beginning of the rehearsal period. Actors also taught workshops explaining the way in which the Blackfriars influenced physical characterization, stage movement, and audience contact. For these types of workshops, the company put together its shared experience on the stage and transformed it into a training method.

These classes and workshops benefited both the actors and their students. The actors, as teachers, had to clarify what they had learned from their performances for themselves as well as for their students. Their workshops at the American Shakespeare

Center, allowed them to reflect on these matters in a way the hectic rehearsals and performances rarely made possible.

Training at the American Shakespeare Center was not a way to recruit new company members. It was not like the training at the Birmingham Conservatory that fostered new talent into the company. At the American Shakespeare Center, there was no

257 audition to get into the training program. Participants paid for tuition and housing, as they did at Shakespeare & Company. This meant that they were selling the experience their company had gained over the years by providing access to expert teachers who understood the type of performances required for the Blackfriars stage. Shakespeare &

Company worked from technique development into rehearsal and performance. The

American Shakespeare Center worked from rehearsal and performance practices into developed techniques.

Ensemble Acting

The American Shakespeare Center had an unofficial tiered hiring policy. Most new actors joined the company as part of the touring ensemble. In the 2011-12 year-long touring ensemble, seven out of eleven actors were first-time employees. Several of the actors of the separate resident ensemble were once members of the touring ensemble who proved their performance skills and interest in the company mission. In the resident ensemble for the 2011 summer and fall seasons, only two out of thirteen actors were new to the company. The twelve actors of the spring 2012 Actors‘ Renaissance Season had all previously worked with the theatre, and they had each performed, on average, in thirty-seven productions at the American Shakespeare Center. As actors at the American

Shakespeare Center mastered the conventions of the early modern theatre, they received more performance opportunities. These hiring practices contributed to building stronger personal bonds and more economical rehearsal practices than those of commercial theatres.

258 Because Ralph Cohen valued the primacy of the text, and Jim Warren valued the primacy of actor-audience interaction, the American Shakespeare Center looked for actors who wanted the challenge and the responsibility to block the play with their fellow theatre artists before meeting with a director. Actors earned respect by arriving with their roles prepared and memorized. Actors learned to support their fellow actors staging ideas as they rehearsed the Renaissance Run in the first week of rehearsal. The actors had to learn how to work together in a very short period of time. The Ren Run did not allow time for the actors to discuss various interpretations of each action in the play. The actors usually followed whoever had the clearest idea of how to stage each scene. With no director present, the actors who had the most lines had the responsibility to lead. Those with fewer lines had the responsibility to follow and offer their support. By working in this way, the actors were allowed to make risky choices. The time pressure on these actors resembled the time pressure on Shakespeare‘s actors that required preparation and encouraged the bonding of an ensemble.

Each actor earned respect from the quality of his or her preparation before rehearsals began. Individual preparation made their short rehearsal periods smooth and productive. The American Shakespeare Center made actors paraphrase every word of their text, since the act of paraphrasing ensured that actors knew exactly what they were saying, and the director corrected any misinterpretations. With this preparation, the veteran actors showed the new actors how to give and take focus in order to direct the audience‘s attention without the aid of lighting. This performance dynamic also extended to the give-and-take of the rehearsal process as actors had to learn how to ask for help fulfilling their ideas and how to give support when other actors requested it. The

259 ensemble coalesced around the enormity of the workload and the need for each actor to make positive contributions to staging the plays in a simple and direct way.

The Actor‘s Renaissance Season was fully committed to Elizabethan rehearsal practices, and it increased the workload and necessary collaboration of the Renaissance

Runs. A group of well-trained actors was necessary if they were to rehearse without a director on a repertory of five plays. The Actors‘ Renaissance Season forced actors to become reliant only on each other for input, feedback, and assistance with everything from blocking to costumes. The actors often had more challenging and equitable casting opportunities when the twelve of them performed in all of the plays. Because the entire season would not be possible without the full commitment of all the actors, actors either had to rise to the task or the entire season would fail. Although the process was never conflict-free, the satisfaction that the actors felt for having completed an entire season was a career-changing experience.

The hectic production schedule of the Actors‘ Renaissance Season provided little time for disagreement or for discussing controversial interpretations of the play. The first play in the season, often a well-known play by Shakespeare that many of the actors had done before, was rehearsed for as little as three days before opening night. This first show (Much Ado About Nothing in 2012) depended on what the actors had prepared independently before the rehearsals began. The rehearsal time was spent solving questions of entrances, exits, songs, dances, fights, etc. The first show had the benefit of having the longest run. Therefore, the actors planned to develop the show by responding to audience feedback. Much Ado About Nothing opened on 7 January 2012 after three rehearsals and a preview. The short rehearsals improved the company‘s finances. The

260 show was running and making money during the first week of the actors‘ contracts.

Management avoided the financial loss typically associated with rehearsals.

While the first play was in performance five times a week (from Thursday through Sunday), rehearsals began for the other shows. Richard III opened on 20 January

2012 after eight days of rehearsals and one preview. Two weeks later, on 3 February

2012 Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding was added to the rotating repertory. With three shows up, the rehearsal schedule expanded to three weeks for A Mad World My Masters

(24 February 2012) and Dido, Queen of Carthage (16 March 2012). As soon as all the plays in the season were rehearsed, the company added performances on Wednesdays.

This kind of production calendar was beyond the pressures of the commercial theatre. Because so many actors had done several seasons of the Actors‘ Renaissance

Season, they had developed a working relationship that allowed them to communicate quickly and efficiently. When they got stuck on a staging problem, others offered solutions, but only insomuch as they felt comfortable to do so. One actor noted that he only felt free to offer advice to other actors after experiencing three Actors‘ Renaissance

Seasons. Actors missed having an outside eye to watch the composition of the scenes, so all actors shared this responsibility, and, when asked, provided feedback. In a way, the company had twelve directors instead of one.

The adherence to the early modern practice of using ―parts‖ (or cue scripts) further bonded the actors out of necessity as well as (or in spite of) choice. Each actor received only his/her lines and an approximately three-word cue. For instance, Hamlet‘s

―part‖ contained only his full lines and three-word cues (Figure 35). Before rehearsals began, actors did not know for how long other actors spoke before they did. Therefore,

261 for at least the first rehearsal, actors had to pay close attention to the words and actions of all the other characters so that they could help each other stage the scene. In order for

―parts‖ to be useful, actors had to be prepared with a clear interpretation of their roles, but flexible enough to adapt to each other. Without knowledge of the other characters‘ lines, actors make choices based only on the changes in verse, rhetoric, tone, or intention in their own part. For instance, Hamlet speaks short pithy lines in the beginning of his part

(Figure 35). The actor, therefore, would come to rehearsal prepared to support other actors‘ blocking. However, when the actor playing Hamlet prepares the longer speech,

―Seems madam,‖ she or he must be prepared to initiate the blocking of the scene.

The ―part‖ focused an actor‘s preparation onto a single, relatively short document.

An actor had to create clear acting intentions to prompt the other actors‘ and to find embedded stage directions to help block the scenes. When actors arrived to rehearse, off- book, they were also flexible enough to help other actors with their interpretations. Of course, sometimes actors had unclear or conflicting interpretations of scenes, and they had to stop rehearsing and discuss the action of the scene and their character relationships. The actors all preferred, however, to try choices in action rather than discussion.

The actors with the largest ―parts‖ often had the responsibility of becoming the main ―director‖ of the scene. The lead actor in a scene was responsible for guiding the other actors. Of course, the actors who were led had to be willing to follow and later assume leadership themselves when they had a sizable speech. Lead actors also changed between main plot and subplot and between plays. Many actors learnt to take

262 responsibility for scenes and direct each other. This responsibility and shared workload helped actors earn each other‘s respect when they made the shows successful.

[entrance cue] ______most conveniently.

Scene 1.2. Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants

[64 lines spoken, ending with the cue] ______Hamlet, and my son,

A little more than kin, and less than kind. [1 line spoken]______hang on you?

Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the sun. [6 lines spoken]______nature to eternity.

Ay, madam, it is common. [2 lines spoken]______particular with thee?

Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.' 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly: these indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play: But I have that within which passeth show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe. [33 lines spoken ]______not to Wittenberg.

I shall in all my best obey you, madam. [8 lines spoken]______Come, away.

O that this too too solid flesh would melt (etc.) Figure 35: Part (Cue Script) for Hamlet, amended with [notes] marking the number of missing lines between each cue.

263 In the earlier seasons, lead actors tried to become director-like and influence the other actors‘ interpretations according to their vision of the show. When this happened, the cohesiveness and efficiency of the group broke down. Therefore, the actors realized that their key job was to produce the play, not to discuss the play. The success of the season depended on the quality of the plays and the enthusiasm of the actors and audiences. These rehearsal practices also appealed to disjointed interpretations of early modern plays which countered the directorial practice of presenting a play as a complete, coherent fictional world. Because plays at the Blackfriars use a bare stage defined by verbal cues, the division of the play according to individual interpretation provided a vitality and energy to the actors who sold their choices to an audience who did or did not follow their interpretation. Failure was always dangerously close.

The excitement and danger of this way of working appeared in Tyler Moss‘s interpretation of Corvino in the 2008 production of Ben Jonson‘s Volpone. He played his role according to what was written, i.e., an abusive, money-grubbing husband willing to pimp his wife to win Volpone‘s estate. Moss did not assume that he was in a comedy, so he was able to threaten other characters and his wife to a disturbing degree. In his scenes,

Corvino‘s vice extended well beyond the acceptable foibles of humanity expected in a comedy and became a harrowing depiction of the depravity of a man who sought the fortune of a dying man. When actors came to rehearsals with such an unexpected interpretation of their ―parts,‖ they surprised the other actors and gave them plenty of material to fuel their reactions. They proved themselves to be good collaborators with much to offer to the ensemble and the audience. Those who enjoyed this way of working

264 and brought to rehearsal strong choices such as these were often invited back each year to continue to experiment with this way of working.

Just as the Globe‘s jig call brought all actors together, musical interludes allowed the America Shakespeare Center actors to collaborate on a skill that also required leading, supporting, and listening. Instead of separate musicians, the actors played live music before the show, at intermission, and as the text of a play demanded. In addition to being a key way to address the audience as they walked into the theatre, the music allowed actors to learn about each other as they played and collaborated. Their ability to play and listen to each other in the music extended to their ability to play and listen to each other on stage. The time spent playing music was also a good McGuffin to get actors working together on a project that was often fun and helped actors develop musical skills as they learned new songs, vocal styles, and instruments.

The performance and rehearsal conventions of the American Shakespeare Center, as derived from Shakespeare‘s own conventions fostered the cohesiveness of the ensemble. Actors bonded over the difficulty of the task and earned respect through the success of the season. The actors with the largest roles or longest tenure in the company exercised more sway over the direction of the shows, but no actor had a controlling interest in the plays. The actors who played mostly supporting roles had less input, but the small size of the company meant that no one could afford to alienate a fellow actor.

Each of the twelve actors was necessary. With this great responsibility, came great power. But, that power was shared.

265 Rehearsal Practices

The dedication to Shakespeare‘s staging practices334 and budget constraints made the American Shakespeare Center‘s short rehearsals dependent on actor preparation. The rehearsal process focused intensely on the staging of difficult scenes with many characters and physical activity, such as dances, fights, masques, and large group scenes.

The rehearsals typically lasted between two and three weeks. Therefore, the success of a show was highly dependent on the actors‘ ability to bring in clear choices and create the show with minimal direction.

From 26 July through 2 August 2011 The American Shakespeare Center had two ensembles rehearsing shows. The touring ensemble, which had assembled on 11 July

2011 finished the second of two dress rehearsals for A Winter’s Tale on 28 July. On 29

July, the touring ensemble began the three-weeks of eight-hour rehearsals (including two dress rehearsals) for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The separate resident ensemble finished mounting the third show, Hamlet, which added to the present repertory of The

Tempest and The Importance of Being Earnest. On 26 July, the resident ensemble began rehearsing Henry V, which rehearsed for about twenty hours per week for five weeks.

Both companies had similar amounts of rehearsal, and the company had set working practices, including Renaissance runs, scansion, and paraphrasing. The veteran actors of the resident ensemble, however, showed a greater ability to make blocking and artistic decisions with their fellow actors.

334 Once called ―original staging practices,‖ ―Shakespeare‘s staging practices‖ refers to the practice of imitating, as close as scholarly possible, the conditions of Shakespeare‘s theatre in actor-audience relationship, rehearsal time, and text use. For further information, see Weingust, Don. Acting from Shakespeare's First Folio: Theory, Text and Performance. New York: Routledge, 2007. 266 The rehearsals for A Midsummer Night’s Dream reflected the working practices that the company had developed for actors who were just learning the performance conditions of the American Shakespeare Center. For the first day of rehearsal, in two four-hour sessions, the acting company prepared the Renaissance Run without the input of a director. Unlike the Actors‘ Renaissance Season, actors had the benefit of the full script with the entrance and exit locations marked. Most of the actors were well off book since they were facing such a short rehearsal period. The cast comprised mostly actors new to the company and three actors who had worked with the company before.

To prepare the Renaissance Run, the actors listed all the scenes of the play on a whiteboard according to the number of actors in each scene. They prioritized rehearsals according to the scenes that had the most people. Scenes with fewer actors rehearsed simultaneously when actors were available. Actors not in rehearsal pulled costume pieces and assembled plots. Because many actors were working simultaneously, the play was staged quickly.

Vital to the success of a show was the presence of experienced actors. For instance, Rick Blunt, who played Bottom, had a good sense of where the embedded stage directions were in the script. For instance, when he said, ―masters, spread yourselves,‖ he asked the other actors to help him make stage action that reinforced the meaning of the line. This led the actors to become a clump at the beginning of the scene and then spread out at Bottom‘s command. In order for this to work, the actors had to remain willing to go along with each other‘s ideas and support them. The time constraints meant that actors often did not debate their choices, but followed the actors who had a clear physical choice that was supported by the text.

267 Sometimes differing interpretations or uncertainty slowed down the process. For instance, when the First Fairy met Puck, the actor playing Puck tried to use magical gestures to control First Fairy to which she did not respond. She expressed doubt that his character would have power over her, but the veteran actor who played Puck enthusiastically pleaded ―say ‗yes‘ to me!‖ Because the actor playing First Fairy did not have a different idea, the actor playing Puck persuaded her to react to his magic and to take on some of her own. Since the creative process under pressure was about getting to a solution, not the ―right‖ solution, the company developed the ethos that said ―your something is better than my nothing,‖ meaning that actors must support each other‘s ideas unless they had a better idea. As a result, actors tried choices physically rather than debating them intellectually. In an eight-hour rehearsal to stage the entire play, there was no time to conceptualize, only to stage.

Getting a scene staged in as short amount of time as possible was key to this style of working. In the Henry V Ren Run preparation, the veteran actors joked about an actor‘s idea which was, in their opinion, an ―artistic‖ choice rather than a ―practical‖ choice. The practical choices were useful starting points for the director. Kate

Powers,335 who met the cast for the first time at the Midsummer Ren Run, was able to see the actors‘ interpretations before she gave any of her interpretation of the play. She also saw which scenes needed additional rehearsal. The rehearsal process, therefore, was not dedicated to finding the meaning of the play but to clarifying and finalizing the actions and character relationships the actors had prepared.

335 Due to budget constraints, the artistic director, Jim Warren, had been directing nearly all of the shows of the previous seasons, thus adding more continuity to the working styles. 268 The touring ensemble‘s next rehearsals worked through the play scene by scene.

The actors would read through the scene on their feet and emphasized trochees, spondees, pyrrhic and other unusual verse structures. After the scene, the actors sat with the full cast and read their paraphrased version of the scene. The actors, in their preparation, provided a word-for-word paraphrase for their lines. For instance, Romeo‘s line ―What light through yonder window breaks‖ could be paraphrased to ―which illumination from that far away fenestration emits.‖ The actors generally enjoyed the ridiculousness of some word choices. Skilled actors listened to and repeated other actor‘s paraphrases. For instance, one actor paraphrased ―eyes‖ as ―peepers,‖ and other actors echoed this choice by changing their paraphrases of ―eyes‖ to ―peepers‖ in order to mark that the characters were using each other‘s language.

Paraphrasing and scansion readings were developed to make sure all actors understood exactly what they were saying and that they had sensitivity to the verse and could, possibly, make choices based on elements in their text: verse, diction, and embedded stage directions. The actors who put their choices in action during rehearsals were often the same actors who were rehired in future seasons. Throughout this rehearsal, the director asked questions of the actors to get them more specific about the given circumstances of the play and their character relationships. Since Jim Warren, in addition to director Kate Powers, was present for many of these beginning rehearsals, he was able to provide information on the house preference for the pronunciation of certain words and scansion of diphthongs and triphthongs. Warren served as a reference point for the actors and the director, but tried not to intrude in the rehearsal process.

269 Nearly all of the actors in the resident ensemble had rehearsed and performed in an Actors‘ Renaissance Season. The efficiency and confidence that they had built with the company allowed the director, Ralph Cohen, to let them produce much of the play on their own. The entire first week of rehearsals approximated the conditions of the Actors‘

Renaissance Season. Cohen benefitted from the ensemble of actors who had worked together on the previous plays of the tetralogy: Richard II (2008), Henry IV, part 1

(2009), and Henry IV, part 2 (2010). Therefore, the actors brought with them an understanding of the play, their characters, as well as their fellow actors.

The resident ensemble was self-sufficient. Each morning the ensemble sat together to schedule the scenes to be rehearsed and the time needed for each scene.

When actors were not called for this rehearsal, they were often working with their scene partners in other rehearsal studios or working on music for the show, and/or finding props and costumes for the Ren Run. This structure gave the actors the freedom to know which scenes were to be rehearsed and the responsibility to fill the rest of their rehearsal time with tasks that helped the run of the show.

Even though the company had five rehearsals to prepare the Ren Run, they still worked at a fast pace with great cooperation. For scenes requiring sound cues such as trumpet calls, an actor/musician prepared it without being asked. When blocking scenes, the actors used the embedded stage directions and encouraged each other by giving permission to pursue blocking impulses. For instance, during the siege of Harfleur,

Miriam Donald, who played the boy, encouraged the imposing long-time company member James Keegen (Fluellen) to toss people to the ―breach‖ (i.e., the ―discovery space‖). This direction not only gave her fellow actor permission to make physical

270 contact, but also supported Keegan‘s expressed impulse to hurl the ―dogs‖ back into the fight. So, Keegan determined an action based in the text that he had, then came to the rehearsal with a clear intention and asked his fellow actors for help with his character‘s blocking. They agreed and the scene received a clear, physical action that reinforced the words. This, in turn, helped Miriam motivate her hiding amongst the audience to get away from the ferocious Fluellen. Because of the complex blocking that had developed, the actors asked the ensemble for fifteen more minutes of stage time. Their request was granted. In the absence of a director, Miriam, whose character watched much of the scene after she hid, was able to give direction to her fellow actors in order to increase the pace and urgency of the battle scene.

Actors also offered each other moral supported. After a scene where Fluellen confounded Macmorris, James Keegan asked Patrick Midgley, a three-season veteran,

―Was I frustrating you with that scene?‖ Patrick assured him that he was not. Because the scene concerned the contention between the soldiers of different nations, the actors made choices that irritated or intimidated the other characters. This same dynamic was usually not welcome between actors in rehearsal, so this moment of check-in and support was vital. Similarly, lead actors often spent much of their time directing other characters to support their scenes. The actor playing Henry V had rarely been the focus of so many scenes during rehearsals for previous shows. The other actors kept asking him what he wanted them to do in rehearsal and resisted giving blocking notes to him. During breaks actors went over to him and patted his back and reminded him that he was taking on a huge role. They promised to offer him any support they could.

271 This dynamic also appeared in the Actors‘ Renaissance Season. When Ben Curns was preparing the role of Hamlet in the 2007 Actors‘ Renaissance Season, fellow long- term company actor René Thornton Jr. asked him if he needed time to work on the soliloquies. Curns did not realize that he was missing rehearsal time since soliloquies did not involve other people to stage them. Thornton demanded time for Curns to work on some of the most famous speeches in the English language. Because the attention in rehearsal was constantly focused on helping other actors, the actors rarely had time to consider what they needed for themselves. The support of the eleven other actors became as vital to the process as paraphrasing or scansion.

In order to maintain an ethos of mutual support, the twelve actors often asked questions of each other about the best way to stage the play. Actors often requested a sound cue or blocking choice by beginning ―I wonder if there can‘t be…‖ or ―what happens if…‖ Actors did not tell each other what to do, but asked if anyone else wanted to add a new element to the scene or to rework one that was difficult or unclear. They also offered feedback on acting choices, as when Henry V after the parley to the governor of Harfleur decided to take on a limp. John Harrell, long-term company actor, commented that it was a nice humanizing detail to come after such a ferocious speech.

Therefore, the actors had responsibility to give feedback and to ask questions that led to the staging of the play, even though they did not always have to agree.

The rough staging in rehearsal remained unpolished up to and through performances. The soliloquies and two-person scenes, sometimes, resisted setting the blocking until the performance, so that they could incorporate the audience‘s reactions.

Most actors noted that once a show opened, they still saw room to continue altering the

272 character and staging choices. Instead of setting the show as a fixed product to be consumed, the show remained an event that reacted to the needs and reactions of the audience and actors alike in each performance.

The design of the play used a bare stage, costumed actors, and minimal props.

The focus of the performances remained on the actor and their interpretation of the text of their roles. One reviewer summarized the appeal of this aesthetic: ―what ultimately made this performance so commanding was that this Henry V was played the way Shakespeare wrote it.‖336 The ―way Shakespeare wrote it‖ was dependent on an understanding of the

Elizabethan theatre as one focused on language, imagination, and a direct relationship between audience and actors. The reviewer‘s analysis of the chorus explained:

In a theatre like the Blackfriars, limited to the staging conditions of Shakespeare‘s

time—no sets and no electronic lighting or sound effects—Chorus was more than

an allegory. He was our special effect, enjoining us to use our own imaginations

to provide the settings and atmosphere.

Because the theatre successfully marketed itself as the place to see Shakespeare as the way his company would have done it, they were able to change the expectations of the audiences. Instead of spectacle, Cohen offered an interpretation of the play dependent on the actors‘ clarity and relationship with the audience.

In performance, actors used their text playfully. For instance, Rene Thornton Jr delivered Captain Jamy‘s line: ―It sall be vary gud, gud, faith, gud captains bath, and I sall quite you with gud leve, as I may pick occasion. That sall I, marry‖337 in an

336 Eric Minton. ―The Legend of Hal, Part Three.‖ Shakesepareances.com. October 12, 2011. Accessed July 31, 2012. http://shakespeareances.com/willpower/onstage/Henry_V-06-ASC11.html. 337 Henry V, 3.3.43-45. 273 incomprehensibly thick brogue which prompted quizzical looks from the fellow cast members. Likewise, Allison Glenzer, as the French lady Alice, interpreted Princess

Catharine‘s French as ―de tongues of de mans is be full of deceits‖ but pronounced deceits as ―de-sheets,‖ creating a seemingly unintentional scatological pun that stopped the show with continuous audience laughter. The performance and rehearsal focused on the verbal cues for actors, audience, and characters alike, supporting a text-based interpretation of Shakespeare‘s theatre. Because the American Shakespeare Center relied on the actors and the cleverness with their text to amuse audience rather than scenic spectacle, rehearsals achieved more collaboration with the actors both in dialogue with the director and in the initial preparation by the ensemble.

274

Chapter 8: Epilogue

The reciprocal relationship between understandings of Shakespeare‘s original theatre and the demands of modern performance and company management in the six theatre companies in this dissertation revealed a greater preference to meet the demands of the current audience than deference to honor Shakespeare‘s original theatre. Each company originally made changes to theatre design, stagecraft, acting techniques, and company management, based to some degree on Shakespeare‘s original theatre, in hopes of revitalizing the performance of Shakespeare‘s plays for their audiences. The marketing rhetoric used to justify these changes often reflected a preference to perform

Shakespeare ―as written‖ or ―as originally performed.‖ Some critics, like W.B. Worthen, argued that this rhetoric lessened the creative innovation of the theatre artists because they saw ―performance less as a means of constituting meaning than as a means of realizing it.‖338 But the actors and directors of these companies refashioned

Shakespeare‘s original theatre only so far as it served their own aesthetic. The underlying assumptions of how to ―realize‖ the meaning of a text, therefore, were linked with modern and postmodern trends in theatre practice. Most actors, directors, and designers interviewed for this dissertation held little interest in or knowledge of

Shakespeare‘s original theatre. Instead, actors and directors expressed enthusiasm for

338 W. B. Worthen, Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), 208. 275 Shakespeare‘s language and the ability to speak directly to audience members. The historical justification for making changes to the stagecraft and company management served the goals of these theatre artists who wished to make the theatrical event more interactive than movies of plays using proscenium conventions. The stagecraft and language of Shakespeare‘s past created possibilities, not constrictions, for the present and future theatre artists.

In 2011, few critics or arts funding organizations viewed these six companies‘ dedication to Shakespeare‘s plays and stages as generative of possibilities for the future of theatre. In order to warrant public support, each of the theatres proved that

Shakespeare was only part of a larger theatrical or educational mission. The six companies often produced new plays and cast actors from diverse backgrounds to overcome the challenge of Shakespeare‘s limited repertory of thirty-seven plays and mostly white, middle-age male characters. The revitalization of Shakespeare‘s plays, though praised by scholars and popular with audiences, did not warrant equal respect among the critics. With these major challenges, these six theatre companies found ways to remain relevant beyond their initial dedication to Shakespeare. The demand of the audience and funders dictated how each theatre used their Shakespearean inspiration.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival used Shakespeare‘s plays and theatre as a foundation to initiate innovations in stagecraft and repertory. This company confronted the limitations of Shakespeare‘s plays, however, by addressing issues of American identity. The Elizabethan stage allowed Bowmer to produce Shakespeare‘s plays according to the vision of Ben Iden Payne, but when the Bowmer theatre was built in

1970, it emphasized the ways in which the actors and audience shared the same space.

276 This emphasis reflected the trends of the regional theatre movement and the theatre-in- the-round which had become popular in the 1960s in the United States of America.

Shakespeare‘s limited repertory led the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to commission new works, which were ―Shakespearean‖ in scope, produced by nationally prominent playwrights and directors. The loose criteria of a generalized ―Shakespeare‖ inspiration allowed a wide interpretation that justified nearly any approach, from hip hop in Party

People to fantasy storytelling in Mary Zimmerman‘s The White Snake. Just as the new plays diversified the repertory, the diverse actors fulfilled Bill Rauch‘s goal of representing the rich cultural heritage of the United States. Even with the introduction of more new actors to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the company‘s commitment to the skill development and personal satisfaction of the actors helped it compete for acting talent. Bill Rauch‘s focus on the maintenance of a diverse American company and repertory, helped fulfill their aspirations to become a nationally relevant theatre despite their geographic isolation.

The Stratford Shakespeare Festival began with Tyrone Guthrie‘s mission to using open stages in an effort to revitalize the staging of Shakespeare‘s plays. Sixty years later,

Des McAnuff focused on improving the quality of the directors and the designers that were hired in order to sustain this Canadian theatrical institution. McAnuff and other directors appealed to audiences often with a greater degree of spectacle than directors at the other theatres in this dissertation. McAnuff was able to reach a broader audience with his visually resplendent productions of Shakespeare‘s plays by translating them to film and using more cinematic editing and cinematography than typical theatrical recordings.

Canonical modern plays, musicals, and new Canadian plays complemented the repertory

277 to provide a wide range of theatrical experiences. The training programs educated young actors to be the next generation of top quality Canadian actors. The Stratford Shakespeare

Festival through its repertory, training, and distribution practices became a national theatre, not just a Shakespeare festival.

The Royal Shakespeare Company shared similar budgetary and design resources as the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, but Michael Boyd used Shakespeare‘s plays and thrust stages to revitalize the acting profession by adopting rehearsal, staging, training, and hiring practices of a smaller, fringe theatre. Boyd‘s thirty-month contracts for actors sought to give them the stability to develop their acting skills and learn to work as an ensemble. In a way, he mirrored the practices of the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre, and he hoped to change the expectations of English actors and directors. The change he hoped to bring about was not fully realized because actors and directors did not necessarily change their professional expectations or aesthetic preconceptions when they joined the

Royal Shakespeare Company. Nonetheless, Boyd opened up new possibilities for actors, directors, and their audiences through the redesign of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and his commitment to collaborative rehearsals and performances.

Shakespeare & Company used Shakespeare‘s plays and stagecraft to develop new acting and rehearsal techniques. The plays of Shakespeare rewarded both the emotional depth of the American acting tradition and the technical virtuosity of the

English acting tradition. Through thirty-four years of workshops, these techniques reached thousands of professional actors. The impact of the company was even more pronounced in the thirty-four years of educational workshops that introduced

Shakespeare‘s plays and theatre to over one million elementary, middle, and high-school

278 students. The combination of dedicated teachers and dedicated company members developed techniques and working philosophies that made Shakespeare relevant to actors and audiences. Moreover, the dedication of these company members, and the satisfaction they found in the artistic practices of the company, inspired the use of artist-managers.

The inspiration actors found in the work made them more willing to take on these additional duties. In both technique and management, Shakespeare & Company provided new models for actors, directors and educators.

Shakespeare‘s Globe began as a joint theatrical and historical enterprise. Under

Dominic Dromgoole‘s artistic direction the emphasis shifted from reviving Shakespeare‘s stagecraft and design practices to hiring directors who provided diverse methods for using Shakespeare‘s stage. The stage and surrounding architecture remained Elizabethan, but the directors were given freedom to add and alter the space as they saw fit. These directors‘ shows, however, received more positive critical reviews than the earlier historically inspired performances. The emphasis shifted from the building‘s history to focus solely upon the actor-audience interaction during performance. Many credited this attention to the audience as a revolution in actor training which led to the popularity of one of the finest stage actors in the world: Mark Rylance. The performance dynamic, though undeniably connected with Shakespeare, influenced actors‘ techniques and audience expectations.

Of all the companies, The American Shakespeare Center, which focused on staging research and researching stagecraft, maintained the strongest link to the past. The time and design constraints of Shakespeare‘s original staging practices necessitated imaginative stagecraft and verbal acuity. The practices derived from Shakespeare‘s

279 rehearsal practices provided new strategies to stage plays and to build strong actor ensembles. The conventions established at the American Shakespeare Center inspired the working practices of theatre companies founded by former actors and students of The American Shakespeare Center. 339 These new theatre companies did not have the benefit of the reimagined Blackfriars Playhouse, but the specificity of word and action necessitated by a bare stage and interactive audience translated to other venues.

The above six theatre companies expanded their missions to meet the demands of the theatre industry in the USA, England, and Canada, as explained in each of the sub- sections in this dissertation. The six companies used Shakespeare‘s plays to inspire stagecraft, management, and actor training. Through the dedication to revitalizing

Shakespeare, these companies attempted to revitalize the theatre industry. Although each company maintained many years of successful productions, they are analyzed here only according to the criteria of the research questions. The final section, ―suggestions for further research,‖ raises questions that are raised through the description of the practices of each of these companies that could lead to a fuller understanding of how

Shakespeare‘s plays continue to influence, and be influenced by, the practices of the professional theatre.

Legacy and Continuity

The first major investigative question in this dissertation was as follows: ―did the re-staging of Shakespeare's plays in six ‗non-profit‘ theatre companies introduce new

339 Theatre companies inspired or influenced by the American Shakespeare Center included The Maryland Shakespeare Festival, The Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company in Grand Haven, MI, and The Shakespeare Forum in New York City. 280 stagecraft and managerial strategies?‖ For most companies, the Elizabethan-inspired stages urged changes to stagecraft and managerial strategies, particularly during the early years of each company. As these six companies hired more personnel to produce more shows, they often adopted the casting, stagecraft, and management practices of the commercial theatre. Their dedication to productions of Shakespeare‘s plays built up their reputations and resources. In turn, their need to maintain this reputation and accommodate larger audiences led to the hiring of directors and actors who did not necessarily embrace the managerial strategies or stagecraft of the Elizabethan-inspired theatre.

In 2011, companies like the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Oregon

Shakespeare Festival, and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival each produced seasons of at least twelve plays from various theatrical traditions. The directors that were hired rarely shared the theatre‘s dedication to Shakespeare‘s plays on Elizabethan-inspired stages.

Therefore, their stagecraft practices often followed modern and postmodern trends in directing that sometimes suited the Elizabethan-inspired stages for Shakespeare‘s plays, but rarely did they reinvent their stagecraft practices to take full advantage of the

Elizabethan-inspired stages.

The logistics of managing a large repertory of plays required separate administrative personnel. At the founding of these companies, actors often assumed administrative and artistic duties that required of them a greater personal investment in the company. When possible, actors gladly delegated these responsibilities to administrative personnel so that they could focus solely on their performances. This delegation of duties created stakeholders who had nothing to do with rehearsals. In turn,

281 conflict arose between the managers whose responsibility was to make the theatre financially successful and the actors and directors who required artistic freedom to change the practices of the commercial theatre based on their dedication to Shakespeare‘s plays on Elizabethan-inspired stages. While Richard Monette of the Stratford

Shakespeare Festival chaffed at the conflict between financial concerns and artistic morals, Shakespeare & Company, and to a lesser degree Oregon Shakespeare Festival, often avoided such conflict by incorporating actors into the management decisions of the company.

Beyond Shakespeare‘s thirty-six plays, the theatre management of these six companies often expanded the repertory to include a broader selection of plays. New plays distanced these companies from the harsh criticism that they were only ―museum theatre.‖ The fear of being called ―museum theatre‖ forced each company to assert its contemporary relevance rather than its historical affiliations in the selection of its repertory. The Royal Shakespeare Company and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival justified their large government subsidies by reflecting the interests and values of the entire country in new play commissions and casting practices. Bill Rauch at The Oregon

Shakespeare Festival produced nearly as many world premiers as Shakespearean plays on their Elizabethan-inspired stages. Because Shakespeare‘s plays and stages only implicitly fostered innovation in these companies, the commitment to new plays explicitly showed the company fostering new playwrights and performance techniques.

Each company began with a season that featured a large percentage of

Shakespeare‘s plays, but in 2011, their repertories were much more diverse. Oregon

Shakespeare Festival‘s 1935 season featured only The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth

282 Night, but in 2011 their season of thirteen plays included four plays by Shakespeare. In

1953, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival also started with two of Shakespeare‘s plays:

Richard III and All’s Well that Ends Well. In 2011, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival produced a twelve-play season featuring four plays by Shakespeare. The Royal

Shakespeare Company in 1961 produced twelve plays, seven of which were

Shakespeare‘s, and in the 2011-12 season, the Royal Shakespeare Company produced seventeen plays, six of which were Shakespeare‘s (seven if Cardenio was to be counted) and one play by Phillip Massinger, The City Madam. Shakespeare & Company‘s inaugural 1978 season featured A Midsummer Night’s Dream and later Three Voices of

Edith Wharton. In 2011 Shakespeare & Company produced a sixteen-play season that included three of Shakespeare‘s plays. Shakespeare‘s Globe produced Henry V and The

Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare as well as Beaumont and Fletcher‘s The Maid’s Tragedy and Thomas Middleton‘s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside in the 1997 opening season. In the nine-play 2011 season, four of Shakespeare‘s plays and Doctor Faustus were featured.

Finally, the American Shakespeare Center began as Shenandoah Shakespeare Express in

1988 with one Shakespeare play, Richard III, and in 2011 they produced sixteen plays including eight by Shakespeare, one by Marlowe, and three by Jacobean playwrights.

Due to cost limitations, most non-musical plays produced in the commercial theatre featured a small number of actors. However, these six theatre companies hired large numbers of actors, offering playwrights the opportunity to write large-cast shows.

Playwrights had the benefit of knowing the actors who would play their roles, the theatres in which they would be performed, and the regular audiences of these six companies.

Playwright Bill Cain took advantage of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival‘s ensemble

283 principles and actors as the basis for the character relationships of Shakespeare‘s company in his play Equivocation. Paul Menzer‘s The Brats of Clarence satirized the actors and staging conventions of the American Shakespeare Center for an audience who had grown familiar with both over years of repeat visits. The limitations provided by the known actors, theatres, and audiences fostered the creativity of playwrights.

Because new plays were financially risky, these six theatre companies added canonical modern plays and musicals to their repertories. Due to the minimal demands for scenic effects and the emphasis on clever lyrics, the musicals of Gilbert and Sullivan were popular at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

To appeal to student audiences, companies produced adaptations of canonical novels, like

Oregon Shakespeare Festival‘s To Kill a Mockingbird (2011) and Shakespeare &

Company‘s The Hound of the Baskervilles (2011). The Royal Shakespeare Company added epic plays to their repertory such as Marat/Sade (2011) and The Life of Galileo

(2012). These plays relied on their past reputation to appeal to audiences, and they often balanced, financially and aesthetically, new works and Shakespeare‘s plays. Although these six theatre companies kept Shakespeare‘s plays at the core of their repertory, they produced a variety of plays to appeal to a general theatre audience.

Shakespeare‘s Globe and the American Shakespeare Center expanded their repertory with plays written by Shakespeare‘s contemporaries: chiefly Christopher

Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton. The Globe had no annual government subsidy, and The American Shakespeare Center received little government support. They remained committed to rediscovering the stagecraft and rehabilitating the plays of the

Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline eras. Dominic Dromgoole, however, committed to

284 producing new plays that used the performance conventions practiced at the Globe including the visible audience, verbally defined locations on a bare stage, and extensive actor doubling. In this way, Shakespeare‘s stages and stagecraft inspired playwrights, actors, directors, and designers to change their practice to suit the stages.

The dedication to Shakespeare‘s plays also challenged the casting practices of these theatre companies. Shakespeare‘s characters reflected the mostly adult, white, male demographics of the Lord Chamberlain‘s Men. Contemporary theatre practice, however, valued race and gender diversity. Therefore, theatre companies often adopted policies of cross-gender and race-neutral casting. Cross-gender casting often highlighted principle actresses in leading male roles. Seana McKenna played Richard III as a man at The

Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Vilma Silva at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival played

Julius Caesar as a woman. More often, companies reversed Shakespeare‘s practice of casting boys as women by casting women as boys as did the Oregon Shakespeare

Festival‘s Love’s Labour’s Lost, where Emily Sophia Knapp played Armado‘s page,

Moth,340 and Robin Goodrin Nordli played Boyet.341 Cross-gender casting also allowed a small acting company to perform many plays in a season. The four actresses in the

American Shakespeare Center‘s Actors‘ Renaissance Season played all the female roles and thirteen additional male roles.342 Because cross-gender casting was a practical

340 Moth was also played by an eleven-year-old girl, Abigail Winter-Culliford, in The Stratford Shakespeare Festival‘s 2008 production and a pregnant woman, Doreen Bechtol, in the American Shakespeare Center‘s 2007 production 341 Boyet is not usually considered a boy part, but he shares the clever language and ability to undercut or mock characters of higher status generally shared by boy characters. 342 These practical solutions contrast greatly with the conceptual experiments with single-gender companies in Shakespeare‘s Globe 2003 season with an all-female Taming of the Shrew and all-male Twelfth Night. See: Shand, G. B. ―Guying the Guys and Girling The Shrew: (Post)Feminist Fun at Shakespeare's Globe.‖ A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance. Eds B. Hodgdon and W. B. Worthen. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2007. 285 solution to the problem of Shakespeare‘s limited roles for women, many theatre artists did not think of the practice as radical or worthy of note, even though much of the press surrounding cross-gender performance reinforced the novelty of the casting.343

Racial and regional diversity were equally desirable among the six companies.

The World Shakespeare Festival in 2012 invited theatre companies from around the world to perform at Shakespeare‘s Globe and in Stratford-upon-Avon to represent

Shakespeare as a world theatre artist rather than a relic of English imperialism. Within each of the six theatre companies, actors of all races and ethnicities were welcome. Just as women who played men asked audiences not to read their gender, actors from different racial backgrounds made the same demands for their performances. Bill Rauch altered this trend by asking the actors and audience to discover the meaning of the Shakespeare‘s plays in a specific cultural context. By setting productions in places like Iraq (2012

Troilus and Cressida) and Southern California (2011 Measure for Measure),344 Rauch used Shakespeare‘s plays to highlight, rather than erase, the cultural heritage of the actors.

The staging, repertory, and casting practices reflected the directors‘ and actors‘ anxiety about Shakespeare‘s cultural authority. Rather than recreating the theatrical past, these six companies addressed the theatrical needs of the present. Therefore, the influence of Shakespeare‘s plays was diminished as soon as the vision of the new artistic directors

343 Actors often commented that gender made no difference to the character since the words and actions of the character were more important than any essential concept of gender. Reviewers often either praised the daring casting of the company to feature a woman in a major role or expressed regret that the casting of a woman in a major role did not inspire new romantic possibilities in the play. 344 This is a delicate balance to strike, however, since setting a play in a setting like Southern California for the 2011 Measure for Measure could essentialize or stereotype the actors. In order to counteract this danger, he encouraged actor input in the process and set the tone of the rehearsal room that made the actors feel as if they were allowed to challenge him without suffering repercussions. 286 redefined the mission. The American Shakespeare Center, however, made the most drastic changes to the stagecraft and management styles through their adoption of the

Actors‘ Renaissance Season. By committing fully to the rehearsal conditions of

Shakespeare‘s original troupe, they discovered a new way of producing a season of plays efficiently and imaginatively. Because they were successful with plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries alike, the Actors‘ Renaissance Season proved that the stagecraft and rehearsal styles they practiced were artistically and financially viable, even though they were far different from the practices of the commercial theatre.

Stages and Stagecraft

The second major investigative question in this dissertation was as follows: ―to what degree did those directors who re-staged Shakespeare's plays in six ‗non-profit‘ theatre companies successfully integrate the audience in the performance?‖ Each of these theatre companies used a stage inspired by one of Shakespeare‘s original theatres for the purpose of integrating the audience in the performance. The director‘s preference, more than the dictates of the architecture, determined the extent to which the audience was integrated in the performance. For the directors and artistic directors who were interested in a direct actor-audience relationship, the Elizabethan-inspired stage helped integrate the audience in the performance. Directors who were hired based on their visually stunning stagecraft integrated the audience indirectly, if at all.

The Elizabethan-inspired stages encouraged but did not dictate stagecraft.

Because the audience members surrounded the stage on three sides and could see each other, directors and actors from the six theatre companies claimed that the audience was

287 integrated in the performance. Actors in each of the six companies remarked that they felt a greater intimacy with the audience. The Globe and the Blackfriars playhouses, however, lit actors and audience alike. In the shared pool of light, actors could expand their focus from the stage to include the audience‘s reactions in the show. Other companies used lighting effects and scenic spectacle to focus the audience‘s attention on the stage rather than each other. Actors in these companies sometimes used direct audience address, but the fact that the audience was not lit kept attention focused on the stage rather than the integration of the actors with their audience.

Integrating the audience into the show did not have a significant effect on critical reception. Critics typically commented solely on actor performances, directorial interpretations, and design. Shakespeare‘s Globe enjoyed near-capacity crowds throughout its existence while suffering poor critical reviews. The reason for the Globe‘s popularity among international tour groups was often attributed to the fetish for the building and the ―original‖ Shakespeare. However, Globe actors and directors often credited the integration of audience reactions in performance as the reason for the theatre‘s popularity. Audiences at The American Shakespeare Center tended to be enthusiastic but small. Reviews from the Washington Post often praised the company‘s approach to Shakespeare‘s plays and integration of the audience. Because the

Washington Post printed only two reviews in the twelve years of the company‘s existence, they had little effect in drawing attention to the company or praising the quality of individual shows.

Critical response was equivocal when directors in a single company took different approaches to integrating the audience in performance. On the redesigned Royal

288 Shakespeare Theatre, Michael Boyd attempted to integrate the audience, but director

Rupert Goold did not integrate the audience in performance. Michael Boyd repeatedly stated the importance of making the theatrical event a communal experience. Rupert

Goold had received praise in other plays for his ―eye-boggling technical effects.‖345

Boyd used a mostly-bare stage, and actors often used direct audience address. Goold‘s actors rarely used direct address and competed for attention against the lush visual accouterments of a casino and a live band of a dozen musicians. Both shows received positive, but unenthusiastic, reviews. The integration of the audience did not make a clear difference to the traditional criteria of review. In short, the Elizabethan-inspired stages needed a commitment from directors and actors to integrate the audience into the performance, even though such a dynamic did not guarantee better critical responses.

Shakespeare‘s Globe and the Blackfriars Playhouse were often successful in incorporating the audience because they shared a common pool of light, and directors highlighted the ability of actors to speak to and interact with the audience. Because these two theatres aimed to recapture the spirit of Shakespeare‘s original performance, they were most likely to integrate the audience. Directors at Shakespeare & Company, however, equally emphasized the interaction of actors and audience members. The actors used the entire theatre, not only the stage, for the play, including frequent excursions into the audience area which was lit by ambient light from the stage. Even though

Shakespeare & Company did not have a full theatre inspired by Shakespeare, the

345 Ben Brantley, ―Theater Review: Macbeth, ‗Something Wicked This Way Comes,‖ New York Times, February 15, 2008, accessed September 1, 2012, http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/theater/reviews/15macb.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.2reta eht 289 company aesthetic was most effective in the incorporation of the audience in nearly all of their productions.

Actor Training and Coaching

The third major investigative question in this dissertation was as follows: ―how important was the coaching of actors in six ‗non-profit‘ theatre companies to stimulate rewarding rehearsals, quality performances, and actor loyalty to the company?‖ Coaches were highly important to providing a rewarding rehearsal experience for young actors, which in turn increased the actors‘ loyalty to the company. Established actors, however, rarely used coaches unless they had developed a prior working relationship with a specific member of the coaching staff. Coaches did not markedly improve performances, but they helped actors address the technical demands of Shakespeare‘s texts and the

Elizabethan-inspired stages. By addressing these challenges, coaches gave actors confidence in their performances and tools for role preparation, which young actors found rewarding. The quality of each actor‘s preparation and the clarity of each director‘s vision, however, were more important in the popular and critical success of a show.

Coaches helped young actors adjust to working in a Shakespeare company. The fame of the cast, the reputation of the theatre company, and Shakespeare‘s plays often intimidated even experienced actors. Young actors often had small roles, so they did not receive much attention from directors. Coaches gave young actors someone to turn to for advice and performance techniques in order to gain confidence. Actor Muzz Khan described a crisis of confidence that echoed actors‘ rehearsal experiences in each of the six companies:

290 The general public opinion is that actors, particularly those performing for the

likes of the RSC (et al), are all über-confident in their abilities; that they surely

CAN'T be full of self-doubt or suffer from a crisis of confidence. Regardless of

the length of the CV – we all go through [a crisis of confidence]. It's all a part of

the process and that's what goes into creating a piece of art.346

Because coaches offered one-on-one attention, they helped assuage these fears, or at least they reminded actors that the crisis of confidence was a normal part of the process.

Coaches and training programs also built the actors‘ loyalty and gratitude to the company. Large theatre companies like the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Stratford

Shakespeare Festival, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival had the resources to dedicate to training programs. These programs often mirrored the long-established tradition of

European state theatres that incorporated training programs into the artistic mission of the company. They also had more than enough quality actors to fulfill their casting needs each season. The coaching experiences made young actors doubly grateful to the company, partly for the excitement of working with generations of top actors, and partly for the quality of the coaching experience. The individual attention to the craft of acting from coaches, directors, and fellow actors often encouraged young actors to see the theatre as their parent company that launched their career. Artistic directors at these large companies expressed a preference for actors to leave the company and to return later in their careers. By leaving the company, these actors took their impressive training with

346 Muzz Khan, ―Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway,‖ RSC Whispers from the Wings (blog), July 16, 2012, accessed September 1, 2012, http://www.rsc.org.uk/explore/blogs/whispers-from-the-wings/feel-the-fear- and-do-it-anyway. 291 them to other theatre companies. Their absence allowed the directors to hire new actors, and thus they perpetuated a larger network of quality actors for casting.

Coaches did not have positive reactions from all actors. Actors sometimes worried that working with a coach diminished their status in the company, even though coaches and directors denied such impressions. Actors sometimes complained that the coaches attempted to contradict the director in coaching sessions by providing ―subliminal direction.‖ Instead of building confidence, these sessions added to frustration, especially with actors accustomed to a single, authoritative directorial voice. Most actors accustomed to the practices of the commercial theatre preferred a single director‘s voice, so that they knew exactly what was expected of them, especially in rehearsals held near the opening of the show. The coaches, then, were often useful in early preparation and in maintaining technical proficiency in dress rehearsals. Any reach outside of these strictly defined roles was a conflict most coaches actively avoided.

Coaches were particularly effective in increasing the confidence of actors by adapting actors‘ current acting techniques to the texts of Shakespeare. Coaches like John

Barton, Cicely Berry, and Scott Kaiser adapted understandings of Shakespeare‘s rhetoric and verse structures to inform actors with prior training in Stanislavsky-based naturalistic acting. Coaches, therefore, aimed to make actors comfortable and confident with

Shakespeare‘s language rather than attempting to recreate systems of Elizabethan performance. However, few coaches were able to institute a company-wide standard for verse speaking or text analysis, as was once a goal of Peter Hall at the founding of the

Royal Shakespeare Company.

292 Instead of teaching a new system for performing Shakespeare‘s plays, coaches addressed individual needs of specific roles, speeches, and lines according to what the actor desired. This attention to the individual mirrored the missions of these six companies to make Shakespeare accessible to everyone. At the basis of techniques like

Kristin Linklater‘s, and the missions of education programs like The Royal Shakespeare

Company‘s Stand Up For Shakespeare, individuals were encouraged to make a personal connection to the words of Shakespeare, rather than to his identity as a cultural authority.

Instead of a playwright with works to be understood, Shakespeare became an idea to be discovered. This individualized approach was particularly important in order to maintain the benefits of a diverse acting company. Most directors argued that the strength of diversity was in the ability of actors to have conflicting opinions and for the best idea to win. Training, therefore, gave actors tools for expression of their artistic interpretation rather than a system of ―correct‖ movement, speech, and text analysis.

Audiences often served as coaches at Shakespeare‘s Globe and The American

Shakespeare Center. Because actors directly responded to the audience in performance, their assumptions of character reflected postmodern conceptions of ―character.‖ Rather than a unified psychological concept, actors diminished the value of internal consistency for the pluralistic reactions to their words and actions. As Mark Rylance described of his own experience:

As Artistic Director of Shakespeare‘s Globe I had imagined I would learn a lot

about Shakespeare‘s acting, and I did, but I learnt more about Shakespeare‘s

audience. And along the way it was they who taught me how to play

293 Shakespeare. They would find something funny or tragic long before I sensed the

deep wit or grief operating in a line.347

The Globe and Blackfrairs playhouses encouraged actors to challenge Stanislavsky-based naturalism and learn improvisational performance techniques that were flexible to audience responses. Each performance, then, became a coaching experience that taught the actors about the text and stages of Shakespeare.

Of all the theatre companies, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival was the most successful in using training resources to stimulate rewarding rehearsals, quality performances, and actor loyalty to the company. Company policy invited coaches to all rehearsals. Scott Kaiser was solely dedicated to developing the playing range and technical abilities of actors in the company. The actors‘ professional and artistic ambitions were considered in many levels of the company, from training to future employment. This managerial and material consideration often increased actors‘ loyalty to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, regardless of the geographical and professional drawbacks. The structure of the training resources, without comparing the quality of the coaches and their interactions with actors, provided the most successful model for reaching the goals stated in the research question.

Ensemble Acting

The fourth major investigative question in this dissertation was as follows: ―was

‗ensemble acting‘ in six ‗non-profit‘ theatre companies detrimental to the professional

347 Mark Rylance, ―Purple Sprouting,‖ quoted in The Guthrie Thrust Stage: A Living Legacy, Association of British Theatre Technicians: 2011, published on the occasion of the 2011 Prague Quadrennial of Scenography and Theatre Architecture, 20. 294 and emotional well-being of the actors?‖ In general, the dedication to ensemble acting increased the emotional well-being of the actors who were comforted by the ability to work with some of the same actors and directors in consecutive seasons. Ensemble acting, however, could be detrimental to the professional well-being of the actors because actors were often required to perform some roles that did not correspond to their level of talent and experience. Because actors in these six companies performed in two or more plays in a season, they sometimes enjoyed having a mixture of large and small roles to play, including roles that they would not typically play in other commercial theatres.

When roles were distributed evenly, ensemble acting was beneficial to the emotional and professional well-being of the entire company, but when roles were not evenly distributed, ensemble acting became merely a philosophy rather than a necessity as actors‘ professional and emotional well-being suffered.

The dedication to ensemble acting was an idealistic remnant of the 1960s regional theatre movement in the United States and the fringe theatres of the United Kingdom.

These movements attempted to imitate the practices of companies like the Moscow Art

Theatre and the Group Theatre which maintained a steady group of actors for many years. In 2011 these six companies were some of the few companies who still attempted to challenge the enervating and maddening practices of the entertainment industry through a dedication to ensemble.

At the founding of these six companies, the dedication to Shakespeare often created a consistency of style and a unified commitment from the actors to the mission of revitalizing Shakespeare‘s plays in performance. As these theatre companies grew to include several acting companies and the plays of many playwrights, the unity of purpose

295 and style became diffused. Artistic directors valued cooperation and equality in rehearsals and gave actors financial stability through longer contracts. When directors cast actors to make the best shows rather than the best opportunities for ensemble, the limitation of casting opportunities and the unequal distribution of roles among the company created friction among the ensemble. In 2011 the conflict between the ensemble ideal and the realities of the commercial theatre led to the breakdown of ensemble acting in several large companies.

Many actors joined the six Shakespeare companies despite their agents‘ warnings because they believed that they would have rewarding and challenging rehearsal and performance experiences. Each actor who joined one of these six companies shared, to some degree, the sacrifice of time away from pursuing other opportunities in film, television, or other professional theatres. Rewarding training, rehearsal, and performance experiences, therefore, had to offset this loss. The emotional well-being of the actors needed to be balanced against the sacrifice of professional well-being or else actors would not do their best work for the company or return for future seasons.

The best way to ensure that actors received professional and emotional support was, ironically, to offer them extremely difficult tasks that required the support of fellow actors, coaches, and directors. The tightest ensembles appeared in the companies asked to do the most difficult tasks, such as the eight-play Histories Cycle348 at the Royal

Shakespeare Company performed for two years or the five-play Actors‘ Renaissance

348 The Histories Cycle was uniquely suited among Shakespeare‘s plays to feature an ensemble cast. Unlike other plays by Shakespeare that focus chiefly on one or two characters, the histories focus on warring families who love, fight, and die with frequency. Therefore, the distribution of lines, and the necessity for doubling is much more extensive than within a typical repertory. For these reasons, both Michael Boyd and Peter Hall used the history plays as a means of establishing ensemble principles in the Royal Shakespeare Company. 296 Season at the American Shakespeare Center performed in three months. Because actors in these ensembles had more responsibilities in design, staging, and interpretation, they turned to each other for support and advice more often than in rehearsals for single shows. Actors developed equal status by leading and following in rehearsals. In scenes where they played large roles, they gained respect by leading the blocking of the scene with clear character choices and movement. In scenes with smaller roles, they gave respect to their fellow actors as they supported their blocking and character choices. The willingness to undertake such imposing tasks was only endemic to the types of actors who enjoyed having additional input and responsibility. Therefore, actors chose ensembles as much as ensembles chose actors. The best ensembles got the best work out of their actors because they loved the company, rather than feared unemployment.

The limitations of a short rehearsal period, extensive doubling, and the lack of a single director, made actors at The American Shakespeare Center assume the responsibility for the show and contribute the extraordinary effort to make the shows successful. These actors experienced significant stress levels throughout the process, but they were happy with their ability to play many roles, to work with a supportive company of actors, and to premier plays not produced for hundreds of years. Since they were all committed to the mission of reviving the early modern plays and stagecraft, they had a unity of purpose that rewarded them emotionally while the numerous roles added to their résumé rewarded them professionally. Therefore, by adhering to the supposed rehearsal practices of the Elizabethan theatre, the American Shakespeare Center achieved the strongest ensemble of any of the theatre companies in this dissertation.

297 Shakespeare companies with larger numbers of actors and more rehearsal time often had less equality established among the actors. Actors in large companies were more likely to be cast according to their talent level: famous or more experienced actors played larger roles while less experienced actors played smaller roles. Because the rehearsal period was long enough for experienced actors to play two or more large roles, directors were able to cast their own shows as strongly as possible without consideration to the well-being of the actors who may be overworked by the large roles or underworked by the small roles. Actors were also cast according to their specialization: lover, fighter, clown, or father/mother. This focus required rewarding rehearsal and performance experiences to maintain the actors‘ emotional well-being. Even though young actors often played less-substantial roles, the ability to work with a major company provided networking opportunities with fellow actors and directors that helped their professional well-being.

In rehearsal, directors used the collaborative principle of ensemble to benefit from the actors‘ years of experience with the plays and stages of the theatre company.

Directors were more likely to seek input from experienced actors who prepared clear character and staging choices before rehearsal. Directors like Michael Boyd, Tim

Crouch, and Bill Rauch were dedicated to having collaborative rehearsals, which actors often called ―democratic.‖ These directors encouraged all actors, whether playing a lead or a lady in waiting, to offer ideas in the search for the ―best‖ idea concerning the staging and interpretation of the play. The quality and experience of the actors made the collaborative methods beneficial to the production as well as the emotional well-being of the actors who felt that their artistic voice mattered.

298 Actors often contrasted these collaborative rehearsal practices with those of the entertainment industry. In television, film, and short-run plays they often were expected only to prepare their role and ―deliver the goods‖ on the day of performance. The collaborative rehearsal allowed them to take more of a director‘s interpretive role. Actors who enjoyed the responsibility and respect of collaborative rehearsals were more likely to forgo higher-paying contracts to spend more seasons with the company. Other actors, especially ones new to a collaborative company, simply saw rehearsal as a game in which they tried to make the director happy. The collaborative rehearsal, to them, was bothersome since they preferred that the director tell them exactly what she or he wanted, as was the case with the rest of the entertainment industry. The collaborative rehearsal, therefore, rewarded the emotional well-being of actors who envisioned theatre according to the principles of ensembles but frustrated those actors whose expectations reflected the commercial theatre.

Rehearsal Practices

The case studies of rehearsal focused on the way directors, actors, designers, and coaches interact. They do not attempt to show what rehearsal practices lead to the best shows. Many actors remarked that a good rehearsal does not necessarily a good show make. Torturous rehearsals have yielded great shows, and pleasant rehearsals have made flops, but the converse has been equally true. Therefore, the case studies show the correlation between the rehearsal practices of the director and the performance dynamic the actors use with the audience.

The fifth major investigative question in this dissertation was as follows: ―to what

299 degree were rehearsal patterns in six non-profit theatre companies influenced by the relationship established between actor and audiences during performance?‖ Throughout the companies, the level of collaboration between director and actors in rehearsal directly corresponded to the level of collaboration between actor and audience in performance.

Directors who used few scenic effects, like Tim Crouch and Ralph Cohen, concentrated rehearsal on the clarity of the text to be communicated through dialogue with the actors.

The lack of scenic effects gave actors the freedom to change blocking choices in each performance. These directors also encouraged actors to lead the rehearsals, either through improvisations or staging the scenes themselves. These rehearsal methods helped ensure that actors had sufficient ownership of the plays so as to accommodate the audience‘s responses in the shows. Because actors improvised in rehearsal, they were able to improvise in performance.

Directors who used large scenic effects, like Des McAnuff and Rupert Goold, often spent more rehearsal time creating scenic effects for the audience to view. The spectacle, though often popular with audiences, limited both audience interaction and time dedicated to discussion with actors to prepare for an interactive audience. The precision of the transitions as well as the set and lighting designs required actors to repeat their blocking the same way each show. These rehearsals often had a collaborative ethos, especially among the designers, choreographers, coaches, composers, and dramaturgs.

These supporting roles decreased the actors‘ workloads, but they decreased the actors‘ ability to change the show in response to the audience each performance.

300 Epilogue

William Poel‘s process of re-discovery of the conventions of the Elizabethan theatre opened up new possibilities for the production of Shakespeare‘s plays. By continuously investigating Shakespeare‘s plays and the conventions for the Elizabethan- inspired stages, directors and actors in these six companies were able to challenge the stagecraft and company management practices prevalent in the entertainment industry from 1895 to 2012. Using Shakespeare‘s plays as the source of innovation, however, limited the relevance of these companies to the professional theatre since they appeared to have a narrow focus on a single playwright. Only by expanding the use of their stage, the repertory of plays, or their management practices were these six theatre companies able to prove that they were not concerned in providing ―museum‖ pieces. Although most actors and directors in Shakespeare companies claimed that Shakespeare‘s plays were

―universal,‖ they only became so through careful hiring practices, clever direction, and the emphasis in performance on the present audience, rather the historical past.

No company would dedicate its mission to Shakespeare‘s plays and original theatre if quality productions of Shakespeare‘s plays were common. Only when the commercial theatre companies of the twentieth century failed to ensure quality productions of Shakespeare‘s plays did this niche market become a source of innovation.

These companies dedicated to Shakespeare‘s plays expanded their missions to borrow the best elements of the commercial theatre while attempting to remedy its failures and frustrations. By claiming to recreate Shakespeare‘s original theatre, these theatres legitimated changes to theatrical practices that defied the common sense of the entertainment industry and individual directors. By claiming that naturalistic acting

301 techniques alone did not serve the plays of Shakespeare, teachers had to discover new techniques for the performance of Shakespeare‘s plays. By running the plays in repertory, these companies required hiring and management practices that challenged the commercial theatre. Conversely, by claiming that the audiences demanded spectacular staging to enjoy the plays of Shakespeare, directors legitimated their current scenic practices regardless of textual demands. Because all theatre artists could claim

Shakespeare as their own, they were able to prove the validity of their performance practices by their ability to succeed with Shakespeare‘s plays.

Questions for Further Research

The six companies in this dissertation provided six examples of how theatre artists used historical inspirations to challenge the stagecraft and company management practices of the commercial theatre. The purpose of this dissertation was to describe how these six companies used Shakespeare‘s original theatre for inspiration; therefore, it left unanswered several questions pertaining to why Shakespeare was chosen as the inspiration or what other reasons these companies had for the adoption of their stagecraft and management practices. Below are questions raised by each of the sections that could yield a more complete understanding of the role of Shakespeare‘s plays and Elizabethan- inspired stages in the modern theatre.

The sections entitled ―Legacy and Continuity‖ show how each company used

Shakespeare‘s plays and theatre as an inspiration in their founding years and in 2011-

2012. These sections did not seek to explain why Shakespeare was the playwright chosen for these inspirations. Could other playwrights as fruitfully inspire festivals of

302 plays that would allow a greater diversity in stagecraft, mission, and company management? Would these theatres have as great a fear of producing ―museum theatre‖ as those that produce Shakespeare‘s plays? The Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake,

Ontario provides one model for comparison on a large scale, but other festivals dedicated to other playwrights tend to be significantly smaller with shorter runs of the plays. What, then, is the artistic and financial value of producing Shakespeare? Are Shakespeare‘s plays and theatre a significant enough departure from the commercial theatre to warrant such specialized attention?

Many theatre artists interviewed described his plays as containing ―universal‖ themes and situations, but they all are confined, to some degree, to producing the same thirty-seven plays at the heart of their repertory. As these companies expand their repertories to include musicals, modern plays, and devised new plays, why do they insist on keeping Shakespeare‘s name in their title? What is the worth of the name of

Shakespeare to the theatre companies that allows them to draw in audiences even when less than half their repertory is dedicated to Shakespeare‘s plays? For instance, the

Stratford Shakespeare Festival used the simpler name ―The Stratford Festival‖ throughout much of its history in order to highlight the diversity of their repertory. Should other theatres follow suit and remove Shakespeare from their names if they are, in fact, dedicated to a diverse range of plays and theatrical traditions?

Through the ―Stages and Stagecraft‖ sections of this dissertation, the tendency of theatre artists was to adapt Shakespeare‘s plays and playhouses to their current interests in stagecraft. Although Shakespeare‘s original theatres inspired several of the stages, are the Globe, the Rose, and the Blackfriars‘ playhouses the optimal settings for

303 Shakespeare‘s plays? Do some plays, such as the ―drum and trumpet‖ plays requiring battles, benefit from the outdoor playhouse? Do the later plays, like The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest, benefit from performance in the more intimate indoor playhouse?

Moreover, most theatre companies in this dissertation had several theatres in which they produced the plays of Shakespeare. For how long does a dedication to Shakespeare‘s original theatre, therefore, last? Why do theatre companies shy away from the anathema of ―museum theatre,‖ and for what, exactly, is ―museum theatre‖ a shibboleth?

The other major issue raised in the sections on stagecraft is the rising phenomenon of increasing access to the theatre and Shakespeare‘s plays through the video recording of the play and the presentation of these films in cinemas, and later in video. To what degree do the demands and styles of cinema influence the staging of the plays? Or, does the necessity to translate a stage performance to film encourage innovations in cinematic styles that allow the interactive quality of theatrical performance appear in film? What are the strategies filmmakers have used to make a live performance appear lively on film?

The sections on ―Actor Training and Coaching‖ reveal some individual qualitative accounts of the actors‘ satisfaction, or lack thereof, derived from the training resources and coaches. But, to what extent does the training contribute to the quality of the shows?

Moreover, how well do coaches serve the needs of the entire company? Many people praise the coaches, but because the actors often assimilate their work, the real effect of their efforts is difficult to measure.

Because the current trend in actor training is to adapt techniques to the individual actor, can any theatre company truly innovate performance techniques for acting in

304 Shakespeare‘s plays? Would a system of performance be a desirable thing for a company, as was championed by earlier theatre artists like Peter Hall and William Ball, or would it only reduce the value of hiring a diverse company of actors with diverse training backgrounds? Several directors complained of the difficulty of trying to find a common vocabulary and ways of working with actors of different training. Are the coaches and training programs capable of alleviating these difficulties? Further, how do these coaches avoid duplicating or contradicting a director‘s work?

Shakespeare‘s plays inspired some stagecraft techniques to followed postmodern trends in performance, but did they inspire postmodern approaches to the actors‘ technique? For instance, actors who had to adapt to audience responses in their performances developed ―characters‖ that could change each night, based on audience responses. What companies are dedicated to redefining performance in post-modern ways, and how do coaches and training programs prepare them, if at all? Finally, does the presence of coaches in these companies indicate a failure of training programs to prepare actors for employment in the theatre?

The conflict of ideals and realities of ―Ensemble Acting‖ raised several questions.

First, are the practices of the commercial theatre, i.e. hiring actors, directors, and designers for one show at a time, more or less effective at producing top-quality performances than ensembles of actors producing a repertory of plays? Second, what are the best hiring practices for directors who desire a collaborative rehearsal room?

Contingent to this question is whether the collaborative rehearsal room is the most efficient way of producing a top-quality show. Third, does a dedication to ensemble actually provide substantial non-financial benefits to the entire acting company? If so,

305 what are they, and can they be replicated with any group of actors? As rehearsal times in most companies have shortened, does the maintenance of an ensemble make rehearsals more efficient and successful at producing quality shows over many years of productions, not just in one season? Finally, are the plays of Shakespeare conducive to an ensemble of actors, or are they better served by hiring star actors to play the leading roles? The dedication to Shakespeare and ensemble seem to be at odds in many cases, but much more detailed research would be needed to describe where ensemble succeeds and where it fails for the production of plays in the economic climate of the twenty-first century.

The case studies of rehearsal at the four companies did not aim to reveal generalizable principles, but they showed the diversity of approach used for

Shakespeare‘s plays. In a field dominated by individual director and actor preference, are there models of rehearsal that are best for making the plays of Shakespeare understandable and entertaining? What rehearsal practices best prepare actors to incorporate audience responses into their performances directly? Finally, should rehearsals for the plays of Shakespeare differ from rehearsals of plays by other playwrights? If so, how? Few academic studies examine rehearsal because it is difficult to establish a cause and effect of the techniques used and dynamics between the actors and the director and the actors and each other. However, as more and more directors cease to treat the rehearsal room as a sacred, private space, they offer the chance for study and comparison. Is it possible to bring directors and their techniques into useful dialogue in a field habitually kept private and individual rather than public and methodical?

306

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317

Appendix A

Interview Questions

The questions in this appendix were the prepared for interviews with artistic directors, actors, coaches, and education and administrative personnel. The conduct of the interviews focused on these questions but often allows time for further detail and explanation of the artistic and managerial practices of the theatre. Not all interviewees answered all questions, but the most frequently answered questions (at least 80% respondent) are marked with an *.

Questions for Artistic Directors

1) *How has your background as (director/new play developer/community outreach,

etc.) influenced the way you work at the (name of theatre company)?

2) *How does the (name of theatre company) influence the present art of theatre in

terms either of audience expectation or actor/director approach?

3) *What are the benefits of the current rehearsal structure?

4) *What are the drawbacks in the current rehearsal structure?

5) What, do you believe, is the key to the success of shows at the (name of theatre

company)?

6) How do you envision Shakespeare‘s original theatre? How does that vision

influence how you run the company?

318 Questions for Artistic Directors, continued

7) What training is necessary for actors in the company? What training does the

(name of theatre company) provide actors (either in or out of rehearsal)?

8) What are the qualities of your ideal company member? What do you do to keep

such company members?

Questions for Actors

1. *What originally attracted you to (name of theatre company)? What keeps you

coming back?

2. *What have you found valuable about the rehearsal methods at (name of theatre

company)?

3. *What have been some of the challenges of the rehearsal methods at (name of

theatre company)?

4. *How have you used coaches (voice, text, movement) in the rehearsal process?

5. *What's the most important thing for me to understand about the (name of theatre

company)?

6. How does your time at the (name of theatre company) fit in with your career

plan?

7. What experiences/resources at the (name of theatre company) have helped your

growth as an actor?

Questions for Coaches

1. *How is rehearsal going/how was rehearsal for this show/season? What are the

benefits and drawbacks of the current structure?

2. *What is your role in training the (name of theatre company)?

319 Questions for Coaches, continued

3. *What is your role in rehearsal?

4. What, do you think, is the optimum use of your talents in the company?

5. What is the most important thing for me to understand about the (name of theatre

company)?

Questions for Education Directors

1) *What is the role of the education department in relation to the vision of the

company?

2) *How does the educational focus of the company impact the productions?

3) *What opportunities does it allow for actors/directors/audiences?

4) *What impact do you hope for your theatre company to make?

320

Appendix B

Founding Mission Statements/Articles of Incorporation.

This appendix contains the earliest available documents that state each theatre company‘s mission and/or values. This information is not freely available from companies in England because, due section 11 of the Charities Commission statement, governing documents are considered intellectual property rights and cannot, therefore, be re-printed without expressed consent. The regulation states:

In providing copies of the governing documents, annual reports, accounts, and

extracts from the Register the Commission is not making these available for re-

use. The issue of re-use is a matter for the person owning the intellectual property

rights. In the case of governing documents, annual reports, and accounts this will

usually be the charity concerned. The issue of re-use with regard to the Register is

a matter for [the Office of Public Sector Information].349

Therefore, other statements of the artistic mission of these companies, where possible, have been included.

349 ―Charity Commission policy on provision of electronic copies of publicly available information.‖ Charity Commission. http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/About_us/About_charities/copyrightreg.aspx Accessed November 14, 2012. 321 Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Articles of Incorporation, Collection Number M0008 Board of Directors Records, 1937- 2010. Oregon Shakespeare Festival Archives.

322

323

324 Stratford Shakespeare Festival

Letters Patent, courtesy of The Stratford Shakespeare Festival Archives

325

326

327

328

329

330 Royal Shakespeare Company

No original mission statement or articles of incorporation/association available.

Peter Hall lists his ambitions for the company in a three-part interview, ―Theatre for Me‖ the Sunday Telegraph, 17 July 1966, 24 July 1966, and 31 July 1966. The book The

Royal Shakespeare Company: The Peter Hall Years, by David Addenbrooke (London:

William Kimber, 1974) cites these sources.

331 Shakespeare & Company

The following statement of Mission, Vision and Values was provided by

Shakespeare & Company. As of publication, earlier documents could not be obtained.

Mission Statement

Founded in 1978, Shakespeare & Company aspires to create a theatre of unprecedented excellence rooted in the classical ideals of inquiry, balance and harmony; a company that performs as the Elizabethans did — in love with poetry, physical prowess and the mysteries of the universe. With a core of over 150 artists, the company performs

Shakespeare, generating opportunities for collaboration between actors, directors and designers of all races, nationalities and backgrounds. Shakespeare & Company provides original, in-depth, classical training and performance methods. Shakespeare & Company also develops and produces new plays of social and political significance. Shakespeare &

Company‘s education programs inspire a new generation of students and scholars to discover the resonance of Shakespeare‘s truths in the everyday world, demonstrating the influence that classical theatre can have within a community.

Statement of Vision

To create a theatre of unprecedented excellence rooted in the Elizabethan ideals of inquiry, balance, and harmony, performing as the Elizabethans did; in love with poetry, physical prowess, and the mysteries of the universe. To establish a theatre company which, by its commitment to the creative impulse, is a revolutionary force in society, which connects the truths of the past to the challenges and possibilities of today, which finds its source in the performance of Shakespeare‘s plays, and reaches the widest possible audience through training and education as well as performance.

332 A Statement of Values that Unite Us

Under all Shakespeare‘s plays are three vital questions:

 What does it mean to be alive?

 How should we act?

 What must I do?

By making the performance and exploration of Shakespeare‘s plays the center of our lives, it follows as the night does the day that we must ask ourselves these questions in all our actions. The plays themselves demand that we take ourselves out into the social and political fields, making connections between the arts and humanities, arts and government, arts and business, arts and education, arts and spirituality.

Shakespeare & Company is made up of activities in the following areas:

 Performance

 Training

 Education

 Management

 Academia/Research

 Development/Entrepreneurism

 Architecture

 Landscaping

 Gardening

Shakespeare & Company is generated out of the classical principles present in the experience of performing and producing Shakespeare‘s plays. These classical principles are the foundation upon which all programs and activities are built.

333 By classical, we mean: ―the highest truths told in a universally accessible form which have an impact that is healing for the individual and society.‖

The ethic and aesthetic of the following commonly-held values and beliefs identify and unify this Company. These values and beliefs help to align us with classical principles:

 We believe that the creative impulse is essential to the human soul, and that the

Arts are the most realized expression of this impulse.

 We believe that the ultimate pursuit and practice of Art creates values that are

compassionate and humane.

 The symbiosis of performance, training, education, and management creates a

clarity and deepening of experience critical to a healthy company and enhances

the creative impulse.

 We believe that participating in the community where we live both enriches our

lives and the quality of our work. We strive to be good neighbors.

 We value a society in which peoples of all races and ethnicity live with mutual

respect, generosity, interest in, and commitment to the greater good of all. We

continually strive to have this value reflected in the makeup of our Company.

 While working for an arts organization is a privilege and has its own rewards, we

believe that our employees should receive competitive wages and secure benefits.

 We believe in a mentoring model that both educates and transmits values, and that

this model is essential to the health of this Company as well as society.

 We value open and honest communication and strive to implement it on every

level, even when it is difficult or unpleasant. 334  We value the exercise of wit and humor to leaven our interactions with ourselves

and others. We believe in playfulness and grace in all our actions.

 We value the pursuit of excellence, and work to feel pride and pleasure in all of

our endeavors.

335 Shakespeare‘s Globe

Excerpt from email to author regarding the availability of articles of incorporation/association:

―The information which was given to you in my absence is correct: we can't send you copies of the documentation we have, as most of it is contained in correspondence - there was no official mission statement - to which we don't own copyright. This material is only available for consultation at the archives. Rebecca's list of recommendations is a good one; if you need more formal documentation, you could look at the entry for the

Shakespeare's Globe Trust in the Charities Commission register, accessible online at http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/ (The trust is registered as a charity rather than a limited company, hence no articles of incorporation are required to be registered under

British law).

Ruth Frendo

Archivist, Shakespeare's Globe

Shakespeares Library Shakespeare's Globe Library & Archive

In absence of articles of incorporation, Farah Karim-Cooper, head of research at

Shakespeare‘s Globe, pointed to the Draft Artistic Policy (from a file labeled ―Artistic

Committee Correspondence‖ and ―Ten Commandments for the New Globe‖ by Alan

Dessen found in Appendices to Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment.350

350 Christine Carson and Farah Karim-Cooper, eds, Shakespeare’s Globe: A Theatrical Experiment, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2008). 336 A Draft of Artistic Policy—1988

The policy of every company is circumscribed by the physical plant it operates and the income it receives. Some willingly add to their constraints (the English National

Opera sings only in English, for example), so the chosen constraints of the Globe project, plus the expectations of its public and its backers, must be reflected in its policy:

1. The purpose of the project is to present the plays of Shakespeare in the building

for which he wrote many of them.

2. At least one play each season should be presented as authentically as possible.

3. The repertoire should include plays by other writers and of other periods.

4. No production should alter or damage the fabric of the building.

5. The audience-actor relationship created by these sixteenth-century conditions

should be explored.

6. Natural light should be the rule. Artificial light, if needed at night, should be

general enough to cover both players and spectators.

7. No modern sound amplification should be used.

8. The experience and discoveries of the Globe should be recorded and transmitted

by all modern methods.

Ten Commandments for the New Globe by Alan Dessen, 1990

1. Thou shalt sidestep modern editions (and the entire eclectic editorial tradition

since the eighteenth century) and rather mount any experiments on the basis of the

relevant quarto and Folio scripts.

337 2. Thou shalt honour and respect the original stage directions as precious evidence

(as opposed to the casual treatment often given these signals by modern editors),

including where such signals are positioned in the original printed editions.

3. Thou shalt not retreat from (apparent) anomalies in the early printed editions but

shalt be open to the possibility that what may seem strange to us today may in

turn provide a window into what was distinctive or taken for granted then.

4. Thou shalt strain mightily to transcend, as to the be-all and the end-all in the

interpretive process, various manifestations of ‗realism‘ (whether psychological,

geographical, or narrative).

5. Thou shalt start afresh in the new Globe with as few preconceptions as possible

about the aside, the soliloquy, and the other forms of direct address to (and eye

contact with) the audience (and rethink which speeches are asides and how they

should be signaled).

6. Thou shalt reject as a false god variable lighting (or any equivalent) and all the

anachronistic thinking it inevitably (and sometimes disastrously) brings with it.

Only the rare theatrical professional can resist the siren call of variable lighting if

it is available in any form.

7. Though shalt avoid as another false god Designer‘s Theatre or Director‘s Theatre

and all the ‗concept‘ thinking that goes with it and instead explore the

Elizabethan/Jacobean sense of design (e.g., their rationale for costumes and

properties).

8. Thou shalt eschew intervals-intermissions so as to eliminate the anachronistic

single fifteen-minute break that changes the rhythm and dynamics of

338 performance. Without such breaks, seeing a play at the new Globe will be a

different experience from seeing a play elsewhere in London (and the added

momentum-continuity will help the standees).

9. Thou shalt never forget the watchword of the faith enunciated in the choric

speeches of Henry V (e.g. ‗piece out our imperfections with your thoughts‘ or

‗eke out our performance with your mind‘) and therefore always keep in mind the

pivotal role of the playgoer‘s imagination in the unspoken contract assumed

between the original players and their audience.

10. Above all else, thou shalt trust the scripts (and, as a corollary, the actors and

playgoers), for the surviving scripts (as reflected, however accurately or

inaccurately, in the early printed editions) are our only evidence. These scripts

(not scholarly formulations, directorial concepts, or actorly ingenuity) must

therefore drive or control all experiments or tests. Without sufficient trust in these

documents, the process will be tainted.

339

The American Shakespeare Center

Excerpt from 1993 NEH Grant Application for Shenandoah Shakespeare Express.

340

341

342

Earliest Mission Statement for Shenandoah Shakespeare, courtesy of Ralph Alan Cohen

In 2004, the Mission Statement was established as:

―Shenandoah Shakespeare—through its performances, its theatres, its exhibitions, and its educational programs—seeks to make Shakespeare, the joys of theatre and language, and the communal experience of the Renaissance stage accessible to all. By re-creating

Renaissance conditions of performance, Shenandoah Shakespeare explores its repertory of plays for a better understanding of these great works and of the human theatrical enterprise past, present, and future.‖

343