Becoming an Artistic Director

For those of you that have been paying attention, you'll note that many things about this blog just recently changed.  It's no longer about me, but about my company.  It will be a home and space for folks both performing in and working on our shows to talk about their experiences.

So, let me get the ball rolling.  Most of what I'm about to tell you you'll be able to find on the website (once I add profiles).  But because of the change in blog focus, it seemed like a good idea to post it here as well.

As the artistic director of this newly minted company, I feel like I should let you know a little of my history with Shakespeare and what drove me to start my own company.

My love affair with Shakespeare began when I was in 8^th grade and a production of MacTragedy (you will never hear me name that show by it’s proper name) toured to our school.  I was so fascinated I begged my mom to go see the full production.  Later, in community college, I took Shakespeare Acting twice because I couldn’t get enough of the language and the scenes and these amazing plays.  Once at my four year university, I was required to take a history of acting class that included a Shakespeare unit.  We were asked to scan a particular sonnet so we could discuss it.  I did the assignment and then proceeded to have a friendly debate with the professor about how a particular irregular line of 11 syllables should be broken up.  Is there a feminine ending, is there a word or words that’s contracted, or is one of the internal feet three beats instead of two?  As we were talking about all this, all the heads in the class turned toward me with the same look on their faces: “How the hell do you know all that?”  With their looks, I realized I had retained absolutely everything I learned in my two previous classes at community college.  

It gave me an idea.  If I retained all the knowledge, I must really love it and I wondered if you could get a Masters in Shakespeare.  So I started researching.  I found a few around the world that interested me, all English and not Theatre based.  I was ok with that, except I wanted to explore the work more onstage and wondered if those programs would afford that opportunity.  After graduating college, I did a summer as the assistant stage manager for the Marin Shakespeare Company.  Their Managing Director told me about a program in Virginia that sounded exactly like what I was looking for.  I did a bit more research, took the GRE, and applied.  Miraculously (and with a little help from some friends in high places), I got in.  

I moved to Staunton, Virginia and spent the next three years at Mary Baldwin College getting an MLitt (Master of Letters) and an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in Shakespeare and Performance.  After graduating, I spent a year working for the American Shakespeare Center as their Playhouse Manager before moving back to California.  Since moving back, my work in theatre has been all stage management, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and start a theatre company.  

The Savage Wilde Traveling Players are dedicated to performing small cast fast paced Shakespeare in parks.  Literally right on the grass.  In a phrase, it is in essence, Flash Mob Shakespeare.  The name comes from my favorite line from my favorite Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet.  In act 5, scene 1, Romeo says “The time and my intents are savage wilde.”  No line better says what that play is about.  But, more on Romeo and Juliet in a future posts I am sure.  

Savage Wilde’s first production will be Much Ado About Nothing with 7 actors.  Most of our venues are still pending, but we will be performing in March and April.  Audition information is now available on our website!

So, I've become an artistic director.  It's scary and daunting and I've never had more fun putting something together in my whole life!  Here's to a "wilde" ride!!!

An Update to get Re-Started

I realized as I was posting on Bad Quarto's blog today that I've neglected my own blog for quite some time.  And I've been involved in some projects too.  Shame on me.  So, here's the update:

Since my last post, I've been involved in 3 projects:

1. Hamlet (for the second time).  This time I played Guildenstern and the Player Queen.  The twist to this project is that I got cast as a last minute replacement and only had a week and a half to prepare before we opened.  Most people thought I was crazy to take on the project, but I wanted to see if I could do it.  Could a learn a show (and Kabuki type mask) in a week and a half?  Lo and behold, I totally did it.  And, I think, managed to turn out a pretty great performance all told.  I have to admit it was a lot of fun getting to jump in that late in the game.  The phrase, "getting tossed into the deep end" just about sums up how it felt.  Everyone else had been on the project for more than a month when I got handed a script.  There as a "well oiled machine" aspect to the whole process that I had to (very quickly) find my place in.  In any case,  lots of fun was had by me.

2. The Queens.  I got tapped to just do the pre-show music.  Around here we do live music before shows and during intermissions.  Normally, this music is performed by the actors.  In this case, the director didn't want to take up his limited rehearsal time with music learning, so I was asked to put together a band.  We called ourselves 4Legit and, I have to say, we rocked.  We got to rehearse completely outside the jurisdiction of normal rehearsals.  In fact, I made our rehearsal schedule and simply informed the director in case he wanted to drop in.  We started rehearsing the music right after the show was cast (in October) and the show didn't perform till mid-February.  So, we had quite a bit of time to get the music in good working order.  We all played various instruments and sang and generally had a lot of wacky fun.  The director couldn't thank us enough and we just kept telling him that he really shouldn't.  He allowed us to dick around and play music and like 3 hours a week.  We should be thanking him.

3. Mucedorus.  I just recently got done directing a staged reading for the American Shakespeare Center.  The goals of their staged reading series are two-fold: 1. Put up plays that have not been seen in a good long while.  2. Get a good look at shows for potential Renaissance seasons to come.  All in all (and I know I've been tooting my own horn quite a bit in this post), this was probably the most successful a staged reading as I've ever seen at the ASC.  The director of mission, Ralph Cohen, could not say enough how great he thought the production was.  What it really came of was getting a great group of people together and casting them in the right parts.

So, that's what I've been up to.  I'm currently directing a staged reading of the First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet.  More on that later.

A theatre practitioner's rant

So... here we are after a bit of a hiatus.  I've been cast as an understudy for a murder mystery dinner theatre (a paid gig) and those shows continue to go well... when I get to do them, which is few and far between I must admit.

Here's the real meat of this post:  why is it that English majors think that they can do my stuff, but they think that I can't do their stuff?!  I never saw this as a problem until I went to school to get an MFA in Shakespeare.  My program excepts folks from both English and Theatre backgrounds.  They take a little time to catch the theatre majors up as far as english skills, but no time to catch the English majors up on Theatre skills.  Seriously?!  When did it become that easy to know all you need to know about theatre?

These English major kids come into this program thinking they know everything because they were in more than a few plays in undergrad.  Well I got news:  there's more to know about theatre than just being in a play!  There are intricacies that you don't even know that you don't know.  And, as much as you think you don't need it, theatre history is important to understanding theatre and acting 1 classes ARE useful and can be very effective and helpful to honing your craft.

Alright... I won't go any further down my rant rabbit hole.  It only gets more mean from there.  Feel free to discuss. :)

Maid's Tragedy - 2 Weeks to Opening

So, I've been lax about posting to this blog since Romeo and Juliet ended.  I'm working out a system to keep up with it a little better, but for now I've got a full time job and two theses to finish and two shows going up.

First, Maid's Tragedy (by Beaumont and Fletcher) is going very well.  We're down to doing run-throughs which is a good thing, but I'm still having some trouble keeping up consistencies with my character.  I'm in a lot of scenes, but never say very much.  I seem to hate my brother, but I have his back starting two thirds of the way through the play.  As of right now, I'm just playing the scenes as they come and it seems to be working, but something still feels off.  We'll see if that sorts itself out over the next two weeks.  I'm crossing my fingers.

The other project I'm "involved" in is the Murder Mystery dinner theatre show that takes place every week up at Massenutten resort.  Involved is in quotes because I'm just the understudy for a couple of characters.  The likelihood that I'll ever actually go on is very small, but it gets me a foot in the door with a company where I can actually get paid to act in shows.  Now, I have no aspirations to be a full time actor, but it is something that I enjoy very much doing on the side. :)

More to come, hopefully in less time than it took to post this.

"I'll kill my horse so I will not fly!"

Performances of Henry VI, part 3 are going very well!  In fact, during their last performance, they got through the whole show without calling "prithee"!!!  I was so proud of all of them.  Is it really weird that I'm so excited to not be needed during performances?  This show came together so well and even though I had absolutely no artistic say what-so-ever, I still get giddy as a school girl when the audience has a huge reaction to something I was just in the room for when the actors came up with it.  I have loved this process and I am so happy that I get to continue working with this company after I graduate.

And now... on to "Maid's Tragedy" rehearsals.  More updates soon!

Henry Invited Dress

I was going to take some time to actually write a real blog entry tonight, but by God I've been at that theatre every day for the past two weeks and I am out of energy.  So, instead of complaining, I will leave you with one parting comment from one of our rehearsals this week:

"It's a good things you've got your murder pants on." -John Harrell

As you can probably tell, despite my extreme exhaustion, this rehearsal process has been a blast. :)

He takes the crown

Today we worked the bit of the play that's in between battles (of which there are several).  Even without the complication of battles, some of today's scenes took quite a bit to get through.  Others, however, flew by and we ended up with some extra chunky breaks in between rehearsal chunks.  Overall, today's rehearsal was a lot about folks talking at each other and much less about running around and stabbing each other than the previous rehearsals have been.  Though, we're going to get to more stabbing tomorrow... which excites me. :)

The title of today's post comes from a scene we worked on today where Edward literally takes the crown right off of Henry's head.  It's a very bold move and they add to it when Hastings punches Henry to keep him from speaking.  Brutal... but effective.

I will say this:  it is very clear that these actors know their way around Shakespeare's history plays.  I don't mean the history itself, but how to stage one effectively.  They know when it's best to leave the stage doors open to aid entrances and how the flow of action works best.  For example, to make battle sounds, they know what types of drum beats work best and when to make them short vs. keeping them going under the action of a scene.  The actors also put a drum backstage for history play purposes to make it easier for folks to reach the drum in time to perform the specific cues.  That way people don't have to be running up and down stairs every time they need to play a drum.  It's brilliant!

Also, because I didn't write after Sunday's rehearsal, all we did at that rehearsal was work out the sound cues for the first half of the play.  Dear God. Battle is noisy!!!  It adds so much to the action to noise in between almost every scene though.  I won't go so far as to say that it makes you feel like you're in the middle of a battle, but it certainly makes the action onstage feel like it's taking place in the middle of a battle.