Shake Stonington

Elizabeth Rex: For whom the bell tolls

2011-07-18T10:47:00.001-07:00

By Ann Dunham
Student Blogger

Editor's note: We asked Ann Dunham, a student at Deer Isle-Stoningon High School, to write about her experience of seeing the Opera House Arts productions of Much Ado About Nothing and Elizabeth Rex, which ran in repertory during Shakespeare in Stonington in July. This is part two of her reporting. I like this post because Ann writes about the anticipation of attending a performing art that is taking place within earshot of her regular life. Implicit in her thoughts is the question: When does art begin and end? But she also notes the complex experience of gender. Read Ann's thoughts on Much Ado here.

Every night for about a week, I could hear bells ringing at the Deer Isle-Stonington Historical Society barn just a few hundred feet down the road, and every night I would grow more and more curious, wondering what exactly was going on in that barn. I knew it was Elizabeth Rex, but I wanted to know more.

I hadn’t had high expectations for this play, as I had had for Much Ado, but after seeing them both, I must say Elizabeth Rex was by far my favorite.

Seeing new characters revealed from behind these other characters I had met in Much Ado was so intriguing and sometimes rather amusing. I was thoroughly engaged by these characters because I felt I already knew them as actors on a stage, and now I was going deeper, learning much more about them than I had in the previous play. As complex as most of Shakespeare’s characters are, I thought the Elizabeth Rex characters were even more so, more real, more cryptic.

The role of gender in this play was my favorite theme, and my favorite line was from Queen Elizabeth: "If you will teach me how to be a woman, I will teach you how to be a man." She was speaking to Ned, an actor who played Beatrice in Much Ado, who had had to act as a woman in order to succeed in his acting career. Quite oppositely, Queen Elizabeth had had to put aside her womanly feelings and act as a man in order to successfully rule England. Their relationship throughout the play was incredibly interesting, and at times funny. Their very existence contradicted the common rules of gender, and I found that very intriguing indeed.

A front-row view of MUCH ADO

2011-07-18T10:46:00.000-07:00

By Ann Dunham
Student Blogger

Editor's note: We asked Ann Dunham, a student at Deer Isle-Stoningon High School, to write about her experience of seeing the Opera House Arts productions of Much Ado About Nothing and Elizabeth Rex, which ran in repertory during Shakespeare in Stonington in July. This is part one of her reporting. I like this post because Ann describes both the surrender of imagination that can occur in theater and the anxiety many theatergoers feel when the fourth wall is broken by actors who interact directly and unpredictably with the audience. Read Ann's thoughts on Elizabeth Rex here.

Much Ado About Nothing was a marvelously funny Shakespearean comedy performed at the Stonington Opera House this summer. I had the unique experience of sitting in the front row for the show, and therefore being very close to all of the action.

Because the Opera House is on the smaller side, the actors use every bit of space to perform, including the aisles. As the play began, I was excited to be sitting front and center because I could see every step, every flip of the wig, every fall in a little more detail than most everyone else. I was getting very into the play as the actors pranced through the Opera House as if their characters were very real.

However, as the play went on, I nearly forgot that these characters were only characters, and became quite nervous, because Benedick, a very powerful, unpredictable character, continued to pace back and forth in front of the first row of seats. I worried what he might do. Perhaps he would once again mimic a bull and charge at anyone within range. Perhaps he would decide to involve one of us front-rowers in one of his dramatic speeches. Luckily, nothing of the sort happened, and I lived to see another day.

While Benedick was sitting on the edge of the stage and walking the aisles, I began to peer behind him at some of the other characters. I noticed their gestures, body language and eye rolls which showed Beatrice’s conflicted relationship with Benedick, Hero’s mad love for Claudio, Antonia’s strict loyalty to her brother.

I also, very amusedly, noticed all of the characters hiding in the background, spying on the greater action of the scene. All of my favorite pieces of the play were ones where someone was eavesdropping behind a corner. Not only because their methods of “hiding” were often ridiculous and hysterical, but also because it was so forbidden and mischievous. All of the overhearing caused quite a convoluted plot, which only made the play more amusing.

Shakespeare, art and the wig moment

2011-07-17T07:23:00.000-07:00

Often in a performance, one moment – one gesture, one monologue, one flash of art – catches my attention and lingers in my thoughts long after the show ends. During our public reads of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing this summer at the Stonington Public Library, that "moment" occured when community member and citizen actor Larry Estey read Friar Francis’ monologue about fake-killing Hero so that Claudio can learn a lesson about mourning and love.

In lieu of a recording of Rachel Murdy’s fine performance of the role, here’s a performance of the monologue by an actor in California. He looks like a Friar from the Hood, and like the Unabomber and like Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, but I like the way he animates the language. And I like his dog barking in the background. You can also read the entire scene here.

But back to Estey. He’s a former minister, and his expertise at finding meaning in language was clear as he slowly delivered the Friar’s lines. He wasn’t dramatizing as much as explicating them as he read in a measured, confident style that illuminated the beauty of the cadences and the depth of the ideas. When he was done, our roomful of readers took a collective pause – the effect was striking and penetrating. We knew we had witnessed Estey tapping into a truth, into sentence and solace, as Chaucer called it: the meaning and comfort of art.

A “moment” of a different sort emerged for me during the cast’s performance of the play onstage, and it happened in an unexpected moment: at the curtain call. Craig Baldwin plays two roles in the production – Beatrice (the lead woman) and Borachio (an associate of the play’s bad boy Don John). As Beatrice, Baldwin wears big hair – a wig of blond locks – which he fondles and tosses throughout his performance. As Borachio, he is bald, which is his offstage look, too.

At the curtain call, Baldwin did something that really stunned me: He removed the wig. Not a large gesture, nor one of particular drama. But in that moment, both roles disappeared instantly. It was as if he said: “See? It was all a play. I’m an actor and a man.” It’s not as if we didn’t know all that throughout the performance; there was much made of this point by the creative team throughout the run of the show. But Baldwin’s movements were so elegant and humble in that moment, that the relationship between art and life and the roles we play onstage and off took on new poignancy for me.

Baldwin's action made me think more deeply about Queen Elizabeth I, who wore a wig, and whose Rex-ness was contained in her own body. It's worth noting that Kathleen Turco-Lyon, who plays Queen Elizabeth in both Much Ado and Elizabeth Rex (which ran in repertory with the Shakespeare), shaved her head for the role. It's no wonder (or coincidence) the person Elizabeth connects to the most in Elizabeth Rex is Ned, the Shakespearean actor who plays the women's role and therefore understands the slippery territory of wigs. So the wig is big this year -- in actual architecture and in symbolism. Tracking the wig is like following the crown in Shakespeare's histories. Who wears it wears profound meaning. Taking it off can also be a powerful action.

“The wig removal initially came from me as a sort of tribute to drag performers of a bygone era,” Baldwin later explained to me.

In fact, Baldwin’s thoughts on that moment are worth quoting in full:

It used to be that drag performers would dramatically remove their wig in their curtain call to say: “And all along I was a man!” Some of the famous examples of this can be seen in La Cage aux Folles and Victor/Victoria (which is even more complicated by a woman pretending to be a man playing a woman). It's not done so much any more in drag performance and, in fact, we were worried it might be a little over-the top or “camp” as a gesture. Camp was something we wanted to avoid with the show. I did, however, feel a certain sentimental need (as a gay man myself) to acknowledge the part of this that is a “drag” performance – how it fits into a long history and culture of men playing women. I discussed it with director Cynthia Croot, and she thought we should try it. When we did try it the audience reaction was warm and joyous. It feels like a fun acknowledgement of the cross-gender nature of the performance. As I shave my head bald normally, I think it is particularly visually dramatic in my case to rip off the wig at the end. It always gets a strong reaction. It is not that they don't “know” that I was a man all along. It is that we can all acknowledge together – performer and audience – that something so simple as a wig made the ‘transformation’ of gender possible. It's almost like saying: “What fun we had together pretending that I was a woman!” It is a complicated moment, and almost inexplicable, but it feels satisfying for me and the audience each time, so Cynthia and I decided together to keep it.

I'm grateful they did. We’re at the end of another Shakespeare in Stonington, at the end of our “moment” together with Shakespeare. But if you’re like me, the moment continues. The takeaway for me will be in the ongoing examination between art and life, where we find “ahas” and how they revisit us once we’re back in the real world. The real world? Hmm. Perhaps like gender roles, the difference between life and art may not have as many distinctions as we like to think. It's all very wiggy.

Cynthia Croot: Catalyst, observer, editor

2011-07-08T10:44:00.000-07:00

Cynthia Croot is making her directorial debut at the Stonington Opera House with Much Ado About Nothing, which runs through July 16. Shake Stonington bloghead Alicia Anstead spent a few minutes with Croot on a break from rehearsal to talk about Stonington, directing and Shakespeare.

How has it been directing for theater in the remote setting of Stonington?
It's not Manhattan, which a lot of the actors are used to -- a very instant gratification landscape. Stonington is great for focusing energy and for walking with your work all the time. You go home, and you're still talking to the people you were just in a scene with. You have dinner, and act three comes up. It's a sense of retreat, where you can really concentrate on what you're doing. It's a wonderful space and it's astonishing what has been built here. When a group like this takes root and stays, it's almost like a maypole around which other activity can assemble itself. That's exciting to me to think about community and theater that way.

What interests you about the work at the Stonington Opera House?
You can do anything onstage -- you can read the phone book and it can be riveting. But the essential thing is the intent with which you do something and what you bring to it in terms of want and desire. You can do that on a larger scale with an organization. You can imbue everything that you do with a kind of humanist, democratic, deeply artistic position, committed to independent artists, committed to engaging work and engaging with community members. All of this is built into the foundaiton of the place and it's really inspiring to me.

Why are you director and not an actor or a designer?
I tried acting in college. I was actually pretty good at it. But I was working with student directors, and I thought I knew more than they did, and I wanted to see if I was right. I think I had a hard time taking direction, which is logical for the personality of a director. In a happy accident, my skills led to this. I'm naturally collaborative, naturally good at conflict resolution. I saw the theater as a place where I could build family that builds art.

What is the role of the director?
Primarily an inciter and an editor. You set something in motion based on what you see and observe. You have to be a really cagey observer. The catalyst, the observer and the editor.

What interests you about Shakespeare?
Shakespeare, because we still care about him, is mysterious and god-like to me. He seems to capture both this broad accessible space and the subtle nuances of the human heart in a deeply moving way. I fell in love with him during A Winter's Tale, which I did at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. It's so essential to his plays that to win something you much lose something. But it's not pat or simple. There's a sense of this is how life really is, but rendered in the most poetic way possible. In Much Ado, in particular, I love the idea of the soldiers coming home and they are no longer afraid for their lives any more, but love is a scary thing.

Is Much Ado one of the Shakespeare plays you really love?
It is now. There are a couple I love out of hand: Hamlet and Lear. But I fall in love with each one I do.

Can you work with a text like Much Ado and still make your own imprint, relay your own message?
Sure! What is the "much ado" about? The "much ado" is about love. The cross-gender casting puts us in a space where we ask the audience: Is it possible to consider love divorced from gender and divorced from sexuality -- to see people as people?

This is especially cogent given the changes in the gay marriage laws in New York. We're grappling with this as a country right now.
I didn't enter into this as an interrogation of gay union. But I'm sure that will be on people's minds as they watch.

PHOTO: Cynthia Croot by Alicia Anstead

Much A-dude

2011-07-07T16:57:00.000-07:00

By Linda Nelson
Executive Director of Opera House Arts

"Men should wear tights and tights only."

"It’s very masculine."

"It’s a very specific look."

These are comments overheard last Sunday afternoon during our first costume technical rehearsal for Much Ado About Nothing, which opened June 30 at the Stonington Opera House, and continues through July 16.

For the first time in Opera House Arts' history, we've set our Shakespeare in Stonington production in Elizabethan times and style: which means an (almost) all male cast, with men playing the female roles as well as men playing men -- in tights. Or, to steal a phrase from a cast member: Much a-dude!

It turns out Much Ado, known widely as Shakespeare's most beloved comedy, IS a real dude show. It depicts a male fraternity of soldiers with a lot of male bonding and prank-making afoot but it also fixates on female purity, asking: Really, c'mon guys--what IS that all about?!

"Nothing" (pronounced "noting" in Elizabethan times) was Elizabethan slang for "vagina." Such language and plot devices move Much Ado from mere frothy rom-com into more complex and interesting territories of gender and power.

In Elizabethan times men wore their power, well, on their crotch. Soldiers, much like today's athletes, found tights to be the most effective costume in which to exert themselves. Instead of jock straps, they favored a codpiece: a padded device which (not unlike bum rolls or, more currently, bras) shapes and enhances (or masquerades as) male anatomy for optimal public display.

Thus the men are quite visibly dudes in Much Ado, prancing and dancing, and wearing their semblances of power front and center and looking darn good doing it (or perhaps it's just a welcome breath of fresh air to see male sexuality objectified the way female sexuality perpetually is). This wasn't an avant-garde costuming choice. It's merely historically accurate. And yet in the end all, even the resistant lothario Benedick, are happily married -- moved out of their frat house and into a broader and more inclusive vision of community, a wondrous vision thanks to the extreme acts of magic and trickery required to bring it to life. In this as in all of his comedies, Shakespeare's optimism is ultimately front and center. A hopefulness, perhaps, that we can move beyond war and other obvious displays of sexual and political power to something less polarized. As Friar Francis instructs in his final proclamation: "Let wonder seem familiar."

Or as Benedick concludes: "Man is a giddy thing."

PHOTOS by Linda Nelson, Opera House Arts:
ABOVE: Tim Eliot as Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing
CENTER: Craid Baldwin as Ned/Beatrice and Thomas Piper as Edmund/Benedick in Elizabeth Rex, running in repertory with Much Ado About Nothing.

Thomas Piper: Who do you love?

2011-07-01T04:36:00.000-07:00

This summer's troupe of actors at the Stonington Opera House has a mighty task. Not only do the cast members have to memorize a gajillion lines for Much Ado About Nothing, most of them play several roles -- and are also performing the contemporary play Elizabeth Rex, which opens Thursday, July 7 at the Deer Isle-Stonington Historical Society Barn, and runs in repertory with Much Ado at the Opera House through July 17. That's a lot of brain work.

What does it take to perform several roles on the same night? Thomas Piper plays the lead romantic role of Benedick (think Cary Grant or Clark Gable) and a secondary role as the wacko petty constable Verges (think Jerry Lewis or Marty Feldman). In these two videos, Piper delivers both characters as he answers the Bo Diddley (or for later rockers George Thorogood) question: Who do you love? Piper popped in and out of character within seconds -- just as he does onstage. It's in the eyes, the voice, the shoulders. But it's also in the imagination, a relationship forged by script, actor and audience. The videos are a lesson in the elasticity of an actor's tools -- and our willingness to go with him on an adventure -- even if it lasts less than a minute (the running time of each video).

Friar Francis: How to see the light

2011-06-30T09:32:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite scenes in Much Ado About Nothing, which opens tonight at the Stonington Opera House in Maine, comes rather late in the play -- when Friar Francis devises a plan to save Hero's reputation and to preserve the intended nuptials between her and her beloved Claudio. The friar basically kills off Hero for a while -- much in the same way Friar Lawrence did in Romeo and Juliet but with a much more comedic outcome. Shakespeare wrote R&J first, but the device of a fake death must have lingered in his writer's mind. Friar Francis explores the momentary death idea again, this time without drugs. In a powerful monologue about remorse -- where he knows that in Claudio's "study of imagination" the young lover will feel regret over his loss of Hero -- Friar Francis gives us a moving portrait of how we cope with loss and how we remember those we have wronged yet still love.

Shakespeare's rom-com

2011-06-28T14:59:00.000-07:00

By Alicia Anstead

Where did the romantic-comedy film genre begin? Look no further than Much Ado About Nothing, which Shakespeare scholar Yu Jin Ko, a professor at Wellesley College, calls, at heart, a rom-com. Consider this year's popular film Bridesmaids or classics such as Bringing Up Baby, both of which have themes of wacky love affairs that begin antagonistically and resolve in romance. Sound familiar? Shakespeare's Beatrice and Benedick are a study not only in the age-old chaos of falling in love but they are also characters to whom so many in our of own times are indebted. Ko, who spoke about Measure for Measure last summer, will join me for a free audience-wide post-show discussion, including members of the creative team, after the performance of Much Ado 7 p.m. Friday, July 8 at the Stonington Opera House. Here's a preview of Ko's thoughts on the play.

There's a lot going on in this story. What do you see as the main theme?
I want to heed the warning of the title and not make too much ado about nothing, but it's no secret that one of the Elizabethan meanings of "nothing" is bawdy and refers to a female body part. And that bawdy meaning of "nothing" represents what a woman is to many of the men in this play -- not only an anatomical invitation, but a blank slate that they make make much ado about, shaping and scripting (or "noting," another homonym of "nothing") it in accordance with their desires, anxieties and fantasies. To me, the romance plots in the play turn on whether the men involved make much ado about nothing in this aggressive way or discover alternative ways of treating women.

If you had to compare this play to a contemporary movie, which one would you choose?
There are so many very sweet romances that still have emotional substance. Even soupy ones can reveal something very truthful or insightful about romance and get to you. Maybe it's hard to think of one in particular since the story of Much Ado has become something of a Hollywood formula -- the story of a romance that develops between two strong, funny and engaging characters who can't stand each other at the beginning.

What character do you like best in this play?
How about characters instead? Since they form a pair -- Benedick and Beatrice. They do get set up, but they find their own way to romance -- by having fun, battling, taking a huge risk and rewriting the rules about how men and women relate to each other.

Is Shakespeare really saying that love is "much ado about nothing?" I'm confused!
I know that the Claudio-Hero romance can be compelling and a delight to watch, but for me that is much ado about nothing in the darker sense, while the Benedick-Beatrice romance illustrates what genuine love can be like.

We sometimes think of love as one of the most prevailing themes of literature. And yet I'm not sure I see it as one of Shakespeare's pervasive themes. What do you think?
Romance is at the heart of many of Shakespeare's plays, but I would add, to echo what I think is the sense you have, that with a few notable exceptions (e.g., Antony and Cleopatra and The Winter's Tale), the plays that deal with love tend to show the process of people falling in love and pursuing each other rather than the much longer journey of a relationship. When the plays do dramatize the period after the initial coming together of lovers (e.g., Troilus and Cressida and Othello), it all tends to end in disaster. Still, I think that love -- more broadly defined in its many different manifestations -- remains central to the vision of many of Shakespeare's great plays, like King Lear and Pericles.

PHOTOS:

Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing at the Stonington Opera House. By Linda Nelson/OHA
Professor Yu Jin Ko, guest scholar for this year's Shakespeare post-show conversation on July 8.

Hamlet, Prince of Deer Isle?

2011-06-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

By Ann Dunham
Student Blogger

Millions of people love Shakespeare. Some love the emotions, some the characters, some simply the way he describes the experience of being human. For me, what’s most amazing about Shakespeare’s works is their timelessness. Like a good work of art, Shakespeare's plays express aspects of life that transcend time. Love, revenge, war, and political intrigue are just a few themes found in his work that are applicable to any era. The ideas he expressed were cutting edge for his time, yet because they focus on such universal issues they are still very “in” today.

In my sophomore English class at Deer Isle-Stonington High School, the teacher challenged us to rewrite a few scenes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. A friend and I teamed up with the idea that this play, set in a royal palace in Denmark in the late Middle Ages, could translate very well to 21st century Deer Isle. Instead of living in a beautiful palace, most characters resided in modest houses. Hamlet spent most of his time in a boat house as the son of the most successful lobsterman on the island, while his best friend Horatio transformed from man to seagull. Despite the many changes, the main themes of the play were still communicated. Revenge, death and murder were still there under all of the decorations of setting and time. We even threw in some extra comedy, and the transition was still very believable.

Next time you read one of Shakespeare’s plays, or perhaps when you see Much Ado About Nothing live in rotating performances with the contemporary play Elizabeth Rex June 27-July 16 at the Stonington Opera House, think of how you can relate to the characters, how you can see the actions on stage happening in real life, and how relevant Shakespeare really is to your life.

FMI about performances of Much Ado About Nothing and Elizabeth Rex, please click here.

PHOTO CREDIT: Hamlet (2005) at the Stonington Opera House.

A Chat with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I

2011-06-25T11:03:00.000-07:00

Shake Stonington editor Alicia Anstead caught up with Queen Elizabeth I in Stonington, Maine, where the Virgin Queen is in residence June 30-July 16 for performances of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing at the Stonington Opera House. When Shakespeare himself was just 5 -- according to scholar Stephen Greenblatt's imaginative biography Will in the World -- he may have seen the queen's "traveling playing companies" (much like the one that come to Stonington each summer) and may have been influenced by the performances and later by the "charismatic power of royalty." The following is the queen's view of life on an island much smaller than the one she calls home. She's a classy lady. And she brought some very cool clothes with her. Want to ask Her Majesty a question? Catch up with her on Facebook.

Welcome to Stonington, Queen Elizabeth. How's your stay going so far?
The people are very kind and very, very generous, indeed. They've offered their lodgings, wonderful food -- their baked goods are extraordinary. And their fish is terrific. We would like to have that kind of fish at court every day.

What do you miss most about your home in London?
My dance master and my hundreds of thousands of dresses. But that's small conpared to the hospitality I've experienced in the provinces.

What do you look forward to the most about your stay?
More than anything, I look forward to engaging with Mr. Shakespeare's acting company in the wonderful barn where they are styaing for the night.

Mr. Shakespeare? Tell me about him.
I've seen him over the years and have met him on several occasions. He's an enigma. One never really knows what he's thinking. He gives clues, but he never says the thing itself. That is both wonderfully exciting and terribly frustrating. He's very elusive -- to say the least. But brilliant. It's no surprise to me that he's an Englishman.

I hear he has a new play called Much Ado About Nothing.
He does! And I, in particular, love the character of Beatrice. Her sentiments seem to parallel mine at the moment: She wants to remain independent. There's a song in the play with the line: "Ladies, sigh no more." I like the tune but the sentiment is very exciting to me.

What will you be wearing the night you see the play?
Probably my white gown. The pearls in the gown were given to me by an admirer. I don't think I should say his name. But I have asked the court seamstress to affix them to the gown. It's a brocade.

Anything else, Your Majesty?
I do yearly progresses throughout the land, and I am so glad I chose this place this summer. The climate is fantastic. The food is amazing. And the people are so kind. The men in my court could learn a great deal from the citizens in Stonington.

Excuse me, what does Shakespeare mean to you?

2011-06-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

By Ann Dunham
Student Blogger

What do you think when you hear the word "Shakespeare?" Do you remember the exciting play you saw at the Opera House last summer or the tedious, boring books you had to read in Junior English class? Does Shakespeare instill a sense of terror in you, or one of happiness and fun?

I decided to find out what the residents of Deer Isle and Stonington think about Shakespeare. Feeling quite pessimistic, I predicted most of my interviewees would find Shakespeare a stuffy old man who wrote a few dull plays too many years ago to matter much anymore. I thought I would have to drag answers out of most of the people I questioned; I thought they wouldn't really care about Shakespeare.

My presumptions couldn't have been further from the truth. People weren't apathetic about Shakespeare at all. In fact, everyone had a strong, definite opinion already formed in their heads. A few of my subjects, of course, didn't appreciate Shakespeare, but their reactions were at least fervid and full of feeling.

Below is a sampling of residents who shared their impressions of the Man Himself:

Student: “Powdered wigs, betrayal, shallow characters. Dandies in stockings frolicking around the stage with poison and swooning floozies.”

English Teacher: “Romance, love, Romeo and Juliet.”

Math Teacher: “Hearing 'Shakespeare' strikes fear in my heart. Miserable reading, falling asleep during productions, misery.”

Maid: “Shakespeare fills me with much inspiration. Reading his words of wisdom makes me feel more knowledgeable.”

Stay-at-Home Mom: “It is very difficult to understand. The language is confusing and hard to grasp. I was forced to read it in high school, and I have no desire to read it now.”

Student Actress/Musician: “Fun, comedy, physical theater. It is timeless. It can be interpreted to fit any time period.”

Professional Actress: “A world packed with riches.”

Even if Shakespeare doesn't strike joy in everyone, he does evoke passionate, excited responses and really makes everyone feel something. When I asked "What does Shakespeare mean to you?" I didn't think everybody would have a response. However, much to my pleasant surprise, Shakespeare seems to mean something to a wide variety of people.

Love him or hate him, Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing will be performed June 30-July 16 at the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle.

PHOTOS FROM OPERA HOUSE ARTS PRODUCTIONS:

Top: A Midsummer Night's Dream (2009)

Bottom: As You Like It (2006)

The Summer of My Shakespeare

2011-06-08T05:27:00.001-07:00

Summer is upon us, which means Shakespeare is in the air. If you're new to Shakespeare, or if you've been warned off Shakespeare as too difficult, or if you adore Shakespeare, you've come to the right place. Literally and bloggily. Our particular story is set in fair Stonington where, for more than 10 years, the Stonington Opera House has been creating Shakespeare productions that reach out to audiences in accessible and thought-provoking ways. I'm on record saying so during the years I spent as the Bangor Daily News arts critic. Now as critic-in-residence for the Shakespeare summer productions at OHA, I get to say it all over again in a variety of ways. And I have help. I'm joined this year by two Deer Isle-Stonington High School student bloggers -- Ann Dunham and Sasha Zembrusky -- in an exploration of all things Bard. Our show is Much Ado About Nothing, which is running in repertory with a contemporary play called Elizabeth Rex. (More on that in another post.)

To get started in our Much Ado journey -- and really any Shakespeare play -- you'll find seven steps for a power workout before attending a Shakespeare play Admittedly, I'm a geek when it comes to this topic. So the list may be overkill for some readers. You don't have to do everything on this list. And, most important, you don't have to do anything on this list to have fun at the shows. For me, more is always more. So I offer....more.

1. Read the play. Taking the time to read the actual script can familiarize you with Shakespeare's meter and some of the more obscure language so you're not guessing what every word means when you see the show. You can find these plays ... er ... nearly any place that has books. My favorite print version is The Riverside Shakespeare and the Opera House recommends the Folger Shakespeare Editions. (The Folger Shakespeare Library is also an awesome website.) Last resort, read the Google version or download this comprehensive iPhone app (which begs the question: Will Shakespeare's cell phone: iPhone or Droid?).

2. Read a synopsis of the play. Hey, isn't that cheating? Nope. Any way you can deepen your understanding of the story is fair game. You're not being graded. And it's sometimes fun to do a little background reading or compare your sense of the story to "scholarly" takes such as ... well ... SparkNotes.

3. Cue Sheet! The Stonington Opera House has developed a one-stop "cue sheet" that blends history and contemporary life in an easy-to-read approach to the theatrical works. Who does Queen Elizabeth remind you of? Why would she be called "rex" in one of the plays? What role did art play in her life? How has marriage changed in 400 years? The cue sheet out-geeks me.

4. Watch the movie. My favorite Much Ado is the 1993 version directed by the actor Kenneth Branagh. The arrival of the men on horses (at the 7-minute mark) is a triumph of Branagh's stagey brawn. But there's also Denzel Washington with his sexy winks. And Michael Keaton, who may be the most delightfully worst Shakespeare actor ever, delivering a hilarious performance as a nut-case cop. (Keanu Reeves is also in this version, and he really is the worst Shakespeare actor ever.)

5. Listen up. Our guest scholar and my fellow Shakespeare nerd Yu Jin Ko will be joining us onstage for a post-show discussion the weekend of July 9/10. He and I were recently so consumed with excitement over Shakespeare in the summer, we went on The Callie Crossley Show on WGBH radio in Boston to talk about it. You can listen here to two Shakespirited people talk about The Man and His Art -- and why the heat of the season is a magnet for the plays.

6. Follow Much Ado characters on Facebook. That's right: Queen Elizabeth, Beatrice, Hero, Benedik and Claudio are posting. Duh.

7. Become a citizen actor. Community Reads are where regular community members of all ages and experiences sit around a table and read the play aloud. These free events reveal some of the best interpretations of Shakespeare I've ever encountered. Anyone who wants a role gets a role -- you can even request one! We pause occasionally to talk about a word, history, the plot, echoes in current politics or family life. And often we switch roles. Celeb alert: Sometimes actors drop in to offer a teaser from the production. It's a pressure-free environment -- read or listen, stay for all or part. But the invitation is an open one. This year's reads are 4 p.m. June 21 (a one-day marathon!) at Blue Hill Public Library and 7 p.m. June 27 the Deer Isle Library/4 p.m. June 28 at the Stonington Library.

Bonus tip: Read our blog Shake Stonington to find out what Sasha (center), Ann (right) and I -- and other guest bloggers from the creative team -- are thinking about the play, the process and our community.

Brooklyn beginnings for Stonington's Shakespeare

2011-05-31T11:15:00.000-07:00

By guest blogger and cast member Cherie Mason

At the end of May, I journeyed to New York City to attend the first rehearsals of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and Timothy Findley's Elizabeth Rex, which will be performed in tandem June 30-July 16 at the Stonington Opera House. There are 12 actors in the company. Ten of us plus our stage manager and two directors met in rehearsal space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We sat in a circle and went around introducing ourselves and the parts we were playing. Then began the instructive exercise referred to in theater as "table work."

One of the directors is an Elizabethan scholar, and he gave us a sweeping view of the lineages and customs of the period in which the plays are set. Slowly the characters we were playing began to come alive especially when we set about figuring out possible relationships, for example, between Queen Elizabeth who loved to ride horses and Lady Henslowe's husband who was crushed by a horse. (I play Henslowe in Elizabeth Rex, as well as the gentlewoman Ursula in Much Ado.) We worked at least six hours everyday but the time flew. This grounding in the subtext of the plays will be invaluable to the actors.

Certain behaviors had to be decided on: Would we all speak with broad English accents? "No," said the director. "Keep the New England dialect with softened vowels." (That's like our native island neighbors in Maine!) Then there was the business of men and boys playing women, and actors playing multiple roles, which was the custom in Shakespeare's Globe Theatre of London. Challenging to say the least. I also got a glimpse of the drawings for the marvelous costumes being designed for both productions as well as the set designer's exquisite miniature sets.

It was difficult to have to leave after a week of such stimulating activity. I will rejoin the company members when they arrive mid-June in Stonington to continue rehearsals on site. Much Ado will be performed onstage at the Opera House. Elizabeth Rex will be staged in the beautiful new barn at the Deer Isle-Stonington Historical Society. Coincidentally, that is what Elizabeth Rex calls for as the Queen goes to a barn, after attending Much Ado, where she commands the Lord Chamberlain's Men -- the company for which Shakespeare worked -- to amuse and distract her on the eve of the beheading of her beloved Earl of Essex.

Cherie Mason is a board members of Opera House Arts and a regular performer at the Stonington Opera House. She will appear in both Elizabeth Rex and Much Ado About Nothing this summer.

The Measure of a Memory: Shakespeare (in Stonington) will always be with us

2010-09-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

More than a month has passed since the lights went down on the Stonington Opera House production of "Measure for Measure," and each year I try to reflect on where the play goes once it has been passed from the stage and into our collective memory. Truth is, "Measure for Measure" is not my favorite Shakespeare work. (Don't think less of me for admitting that "Romeo and Juliet" -- perhaps as a symbol of my own longing for youth -- is still at the top of my list.) (Except when "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is at the top of the list; or when "Richard III" is swirling in my thoughts; or maybe when "Macbeth" sneaks into my thoughts; and certainly "The Tempest" is in the mix.)

In any case.

As much as I enjoyed diving into Shakespeare's text this summer, I suspected I'd be done with "Measure for Measure" when it closed. Not true. Although I never made sense of the love liaisons forced at the end of the story, I did come to think more deeply about justice, mercy and forgiveness.

And apparently, I'm not the only one who is seeing these themes echo through Shakespeare's lens at the moment. Our Shake Stonington friend and leading Bard scholar Stephen Greenblatt of Harvard University writes about this summer's Central Park production of "The Merchant of Venice" in The New York Review of Books (Sept. 30, 2010). Although many critics believe "Measure for Measure" is one of Shakespeare's so-called "problem plays," "Merchant" is sometimes also included in that group -- largely because, like "Measure," the comedy is so closely aligned to tragedy that a certain anxiety over form rattles our structural cage.

Greenblatt asserts that the comedic ending of "Merchant" has such "intolerable strains" put on it that it's almost impossible to bring it off successfully. The same is true for "Measure," and I grappled with my own sense of how to read the ending in a story for the Huffington Post -- even as Stonington director Jeffrey Frace accomplished a graceful and nicely ambiguous ending to "Measure" that depended on the nightly mood of actor Stephanie Dodd as Isabella. But Greenblatt's estimation of the NYC production's end echo in my thoughts: "disappointment, betrayal, and recrimination lurk just below the surface." Also true for "Measure." With one exception: the young lovers Claudio and Juliet, who offer some hope for the marriage bed as an equitable one.

In addition to the scholarly insight of Greenblatt's story, I found another resonance from reading his article. As Greenblatt points out, there's much to see about our contemporary life in Shakespeare's works. Namely: the treatment of "the other" -- whether a Jew, a Moor or a couple that gets pregnant out of wedlock.

I suspect the Vienna of "Measure for Measure," with its shifting definitions of justice and forgiveness, will continue to stimulate ideas, as it did again recently when I saw the ArtsEmerson production of "The Laramie Project" at the Cutler-Majestic Theater in Boston. "The other" will always be with us -- in Venice, in Vienna, in Wyoming, in Maine.

And each year Shakespeare in Stonington counters the more pervasive and pernicious sense of "other" by allowing us to come together as a community in the library, in the theater, in media, restaurants and homes to achieve fuller, richer understandings of our inheritance and our responsibilities. The encounter with Shakespeare also allows us to carry these stories in our thoughts and to look to them for guidance. "The quality of mercy is not strained." "Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall." These plays teach us what the Stonington Opera House already knows: "All the world's a stage."

Photo: Tommy Piper as Angelo in "Measure for Measure" at the Stonington Opera House. Credit: Linda Nelson/Opera House Arts

The End Game of "Measure for Measure"

2010-08-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

"Measure for Measure" closes Sunday, Aug. 29, after a two week run at the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle, but I've been thinking about the show since January, when I enrolled in a Shakespeare class taught by Harvard Professor Gordon Teskey. The class was a survey of Shakespeare's works, but students also learned how the events of Shakespeare's life and times shaped his writing. Teskey is a charismatic teacher. Students have organized a Facebook page for him because they love hearing him read Chaucer. I loved hearing him read Shakespeare, too, and there's no mistaking the actor in him, especially because he's one of the most stylishly dressed members of the academy. (The Harvard Crimson fashion columnist wrote a story about him.) This summer, Teskey was teaching in Venice, but he took a few minutes to answer questions about "Measure for Measure" -- a play I find difficult but that he helped me see more powerfully as a story about self sacrifice and as a demonstration of Shakespeare's progressive sense of structure for comedy and tragedy.
Given Teskey's expertise, I wanted him to help us understand more deeply the final scene of the play in which Shakespeare disconcertingly ties up the ends of a comedy that tipped so dangerously toward tragedy. As we continue to investigate this play, Teskey sets us up to consider how we might see the final scene.

Here's Teskey on the final scene of "Measure for Measure":

The most difficult scene technically is the final one. So much happens in it, and there are so many dramatic reversals. The moment when Mariana begs Isabella to kneel with her and beg the Duke to spare Angelo's life -- this when Isabella still thinks Angelo has murdered her brother -- is deeply moving, because Isabella does so. She is at last moved to pity for someone. But so much else occurs in the scene: the unmuffling of the Duke and the humiliation of Lucio as well as of Angelo, the trick with the head of Ragozine, and so on. It is very hard to stage and to keep up the pace, which should be rapid, without confusing the audience. It is thrilling, a little bewildering, funny, emotionally moving, and at the end (perhaps) a little mysterious.

Deconstruction: The Duke + Isabella

2010-08-26T20:34:00.000-07:00

I remember listening to Mr. Fracé refer to each of the characters as having their own unique flaws. While I watched the play a second time, I thought upon how each character could have their own distinct set of flaws but hit on the conclusion that the Duke and Isabella are linked by the same: pride.

The Duke

The Duke’s pride is evident: he wants to be in control. I have heard Dr. Jerome mention that her reasoning for the Duke’s plot incognito was to set up a test of Angelo’s meddle, supposing that, if Angelo were successful, the Duke could transfer power to him. Accepting this view adds dimension to the Duke’s pride: although such a test acknowledges some insecurity, it also [to me] reveals a serious ego – the Duke elevating himself beyond the role of the respected leader to the status of the supreme justice (similar to that which Isabella attempts to invoke upon Angelo). From his position of removal, the Duke could “look down” upon Angelo and his doings in Vienna from an anonymous position of personal power – putting the Duke in control. Furthermore, once things begin going awry he can use this anonymous power to play the meddling Friar – again allowing him the control he requires.

The Duke’s position of leverage and his ego are what lead to the biased scales by which the play weighs one measure for another. Because the Duke manages to keep himself within control (in his own way) throughout most of the play, the outcome of the moral fiasco surrounding Angelo, Claudio and Isabella plays out to the Duke’s design. The Duke is able to obtain his version of justice – which doesn’t seem to answer all offenses with the same level hand one expects. However, the Duke’s arbitrary power and his pride – wanting to see things happen his own way – is what forces the play to resolve as it does.

Isabella

Isabella’s version of pride leads her to self-preservation. Her understandable yet somewhat stubborn rejection of Angelo despite her brother suggests that she places her fallible personal virtue (and virginity) over the life of her kin. This self-importance speaks pride and preservationism. In that vein, the best way to ensure self-preservation is… control. Isabella wants to have mastery of her fate. She eagerly plays ball with the meddling Friar (even though his plot crosses more moral lines than sacrificing her virginity would!) because it feeds her pride and gives her a thrill. Conspiring with the Friar gives her a proxy through which she can control her life and ensure that she didn’t have to sacrifice her precious self. Even though she states “i am led by you,” I suspect she allows herself to be led because it brings her the control she desires.

Isabella and the Duke

The Duke and Isabella’s shared self-importance and need for control are what I think leads the Duke to chose Isabella as his successor. Going back to Dr. Jerome’s view, given that the Duke is seeking to transfer power and that Angelo has failed [miserably], he is now searching for another successor. This is where I see the Duke’s pride return. I think the he wants to see his reign continued by someone like him – an expression of his pride. He sees himself in Isabella and is thus naturally drawn to her. Furthermore, Isabella’s ‘enthusiastic’ participation in his devices (read: she never really mentions any of the serious moral questions he ignores) helps fulfill the Duke’s self-worth, making him more likely to be well-disposed towards her. This could explain his choice at the level of pride. Another explanation could be romance, but I will choose to avoid that.

Furthermore, if one were to return to the Duke’s position as arbiter of justice and chief moralizer, his choice of Isabella to (presumably) continue his reign could strike deep cuts against Angelo at a personal level. The Duke is probably disgusted by Angelo’s transgressions, especially if Angelo is figured to originally been chosen to take over. Therefore, the perfect method of retaliation against Angelo would be for the Duke to award control to Isabella; Angelo having thought himself high in the Duke’s esteem would, although personally destroyed by his undoing, would be further wounded by having his place of esteem handed over to the very one he wronged. I have to argue this because the Duke could have easily transferred power to Escalus, who remained loyal to the Duke and committed no wrongdoing. However, the Duke chooses Isabella. What seems to go further is that choice - Isabella OVER Escalus. Considering the traditional Elizabethan role of the woman as a subordinate, the transfer of power to a female over a (barring age) perfectly eligible male (Escalus) represents an even bigger snub to Angelo – that the Duke would rather see a woman rule than he.

Thus although from my perspective the Duke’s choice of Isabella is primarily driven by his pride (or love?), his choice could even be elevated to a personal measure against Angelo.

It might be “Measure for Measure”, but who measures the Measures?

The Duke.

-Peter

The View from the Moated Grange

2010-08-23T12:49:00.000-07:00

It's a rainy day on Indian Point Road, and it's the first full day off for the acting company of Measure for Measure. We've been running full sprint since we arrived in Stonington, right through our exciting opening weekend of performances. A day of rest feels welcome and well-deserved. Especially a grey day with gentle rain falling. The kind of day that gives your thoughts room to settle. I'm baking a peach and blackberry pie. In a little while I'll walk down the road to enjoy a convivial dinner with the rest of the M4M company.

For now, though, I am looking out the window at the rain, sitting alone in the sweet little house that I call the Moated Grange, in honor of Mariana, one of the five characters I play in Measure for Measure. "I will presently to Saint Luke's," says the Duke to Isabella, "there, at the moated grange, resides this dejected Mariana." For me, my characters always find their ways into my life. Or my life finds its way into my characters. This year in Stonington I find myself playing a girl who is suspended in a kind of tragic limbo: unrequited love and grief and, maybe, hope, foolish or otherwise...A central plot point turns on her history with Angelo. As we head towards our second week of performances I continue to be fascinated by the competing versions of that history woven into Shakespeare's text.

The undisputed facts: five years before the play begins, Mariana and Angelo were engaged; her war hero brother Frederick (her only surviving relative) died at sea in a shipwreck that also claimed her dowry; Angelo then broke off the engagement. There are different versions of why. Tommy Piper (Angelo) and I have an ongoing and lively debate about the Why.

In the Duke's version, Angelo "swallowed his vows whole, pretending in her discoveries of dishonor"--as in, he made up rumors about Mariana as an excuse to get out of marrying her when her dowry was lost--and abandoned her in her deep grief. In Angelo's version, the marriage plans were broken off "partly for that her promised proportions came short of composition, but in chief for that her reputation was disvalued in levity." So who is telling the truth?

Oh, I believe the Duke, here. In both text and action, Mariana is virtuous. She truly loves Angelo and must have believed he loved her: "This is that face, thou cruel Angelo, which once thou swor'st was worth the looking on." Her love for Angelo is past reason, past sense--surely we can sympathize with that. Isn't there redemption to be found in love that true? Isn't that the essence of mercy? That love is forgiveness, and that vengeance is a small weak thing next to the great vastidity of love?

Well, I cite the Beatles. All you need is love.

When I step out of the mindset of Mariana, I know Angelo does some baaad things. I know it. But Mariana has gotten so deep into me that I can't help believing that he deserves forgiveness too. Don't we want Mariana to be happy? Even if she loves not wisely, but too well?

The sky is darkening. The pie is cooling on top of the stove and I'm gazing out the window at the water. Time to walk down the road to dinner.

Mariana bakes pies, and dreams of Angelo.

Stephanie Dodd: "I'm faced with a large decision"

2010-08-23T08:20:00.001-07:00

Abby Bray, a student at Stonington/Deer Isle High School, recently interviewed actor Stephanie Dodd, who plays Isabella in "Measure for Measure" running through Aug. 29 at the Stonington Opera House. "Interviewing some of the cast of 'Measure for Measure' was the first time I'd done a formal interview," says Abby. "After some trial and error, it proved both fun and educational. I learned about the characters on a more personal level, and I also learned what attracts people to Stonington." Dodd is a veteran artist at the Opera House where she performed in last year's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." In this interview, Abby asked Stephanie why we should care about her role. She also asked about working in Stonington compared to working in other locations. Give it a click. Then buy tickets! And check back on the Shake Stonington blog for more of entries about all things Shakespeare.

Phillip Owen: "If I ain't around, nothing good is going to happen"

2010-08-23T07:36:00.001-07:00

Abby Bray, a student at Stonington/Deer Isle High School, recently interviewed actor-composer Phillip Owen, who plays a guard and a messenger -- as well as the onstage music -- in "Measure for Measure" running through Aug. 29 at the Stonington Opera House. "Interviewing some of the cast of 'Measure for Measure' was the first time I'd done a formal interview," says Abby. "After some trial and error, it proved both fun and educational. I learned about the characters on a more personal level, and I also learned what attracts people to Stonington." Owen is a veteran artist at the Opera House where he performed in last year's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." In this interview, Abby asked Phillip -- in character -- why we should care about his role. She also asked about working in Stonington compared to working in other locations. Give it a click. Then buy tickets! And check back on the Shake Stonington blog for more of Abby's interviews with actors.

What would you do if you were Isabella?

2010-08-21T05:16:00.000-07:00

Yu Jin Ko is a Shakespeare scholar at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and our guest conversationalist for the Talk Back after the production of "Measure for Measure" 7 p.m. Saturday Aug. 21 at the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle in Maine. He will be joined onstage by director Jeffrey Frace and Opera House artistic director Judith Jerome to talk about the play, the production and Shakespeare's life and times. Recently, I asked Yu Jin (whose name is pronounced Yoo Gin) to answer three questions. You can read the first here; the second here and the third (Is "Measure for Measure" a love story?) is below. For this one, Yu Jin leaves us with a question. Come to the Talk Back after the show and bring your own questions for our guest speaker! Don't miss out on the fun; buy tickets now!

AA: Is this a love story?

YJK: If it is a love story, it’s a curious love. I would say there is love in it, but – as with mercy and justice – each vision of love is deeply compromised. Juliet, Mariana, they both possess something called love but it comes out in ways that are self-deceiving or in ways that hurt them or that make you question the substance of the feeling. But I gather the question is directed toward the Duke and Isabella and whether love is possible between the two. The play leaves you hanging doesn’t it? Isabella never responds to the Duke’s offer. Is it an offer or is it a demand? What is it when he asks or tells or orders her to be his? I don’t know. What would you do if you were in Isabella’s position?

A compromising situation

2010-08-21T05:05:00.001-07:00

AA: Is this a play about mercy, justice or power?

YJK: The title sets it up to be a simple morality play about the limitations of absolute justice – about dispatching justice measure for measure. So you expect mercy to be the antithesis that wins the day. But everything is so compromised in this play – the vision of absolute justice embodied in Angelo and then the counter weight of mercy that Isabella and the others give voice to. In the end, you can’t say one element wins out over the other.

New "M4M" Photos on Flickr

2010-08-20T11:35:00.000-07:00

New photos from "Measure for Measure" are available here

Pierre-Marc Diennet: "I'm here to live."

2010-08-20T08:15:00.000-07:00

Abby Bray, a student at Stonington/Deer Isle High School, recently interviewed actor Pierre-Marc Diennet, who plays Lucio, a "fantastic," in "Measure for Measure" running through Aug. 29 at the Stonington Opera House. "Interviewing some of the cast of 'Measure for Measure' was the first time I'd done a formal interview," says Abby. "After some trial and error, it proved both fun and educational. I learned about the characters on a more personal level, and I also learned what attracts people to Stonington." Pierre is a veteran artist at the Opera House where he performed "Perdita," a show about his mother. In this interview, Abby asked Pierre -- as Lucio -- why we should care about his character. She also asked about working in Stonington compared to working in other locations. Give it a click. Then buy tickets! And check back on the Shake Stonington blog for more of Abby's interviews with actors. Coming soon!

Who's got the power?

2010-08-19T11:05:00.000-07:00

Yu Jin Ko is a Shakespeare scholar at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and our guest conversationalist for the Talk Back after the production of "Measure for Measure" 7 p.m. Saturday Aug. 21 at the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle in Maine. He will be joined onstage by director Jeffrey Frace and Opera House artistic director Judith Jerome to talk about the play, the production and Shakespeare's life and times. Recently, I asked Yu Jin (whose name is pronounced Yoo Gin) to answer three questions. The first is below; the second is here and the third is here. You can buy tickets to join us Saturday, Aug. 21 (TONIGHT!) after the show. Bring your own questions!

AA: Who is the most powerful person in this play?

YJK: You have so many centers of power and the source of power is so different for each in this play. Harold Bloom [the literary scholar] suggests that the most captivating character in the play is Barnadine, the prisoner who refuses death because he has been out drinking the night before. He presents a kind of irrepressible vitality that escapes the whole moral system of the entire play. He embodies that superfluidity of artistic energy that Shakespeare always displays in his plays. In some sense, he is the most powerful character. But more conventionally, you’d have to choose among Angelo, the Duke and Isabella. For me, it’s Isabella. She might come across to some as prissy and puritanical. But beyond all of that, the value she puts on her chastity, which she values above her brother’s life, is a value that is integral to her sense of self and takes her out of circulation – erotic and commercial – defining Vienna, a very corrupt and sordid society into which the Taliban in the form of Angelo has moved. Curiously, Isabella is the most powerful character because she tries the hardest and with the most force to define herself away from the categories of selfhood available to her.

Melody Bates/Mariana: "I hope folks will understand I am true of heart"

2010-08-18T20:28:00.000-07:00

Abby Bray, a student at Stonington/Deer Isle High School, recently interviewed actor Melody Bates, who plays Mariana (a rejected lover) and other roles in "Measure for Measure" running Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House. "Interviewing some of the cast of 'Measure for Measure' was the first time I'd done a formal interview," says Abby. "After some trial and error, it proved both fun and educational. I learned about the characters on a more personal level, and I also learned what attracts people to Stonington." Melody is a veteran performer at the Opera House where she played Hippolyta/Titania in last year's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." In this interview, Abby asked Melody -- as Mariana -- why we should care about her character. She also asked about working in Stonington compared to working in other locations. Give it a click. Then buy tickets! And check back on the Shake Stonington blog for more of Abby's interviews with actors. Coming soon!

Major and Minor Roles

2010-08-18T17:42:00.000-07:00

I love it that Tesky includes Lucio in his list of the great male roles. Pierre Diennet, a wonderful clown, plays our Lucio, and I watch him finesse his performance with every rehearsal. 'Modernizing' the role is exactly right, though I wouldn't have said it before reading Tesky's comment. In the community read in Brooklin on Monday I tried putting Lucio in my own mouth--and clumsy it was indeed, very unlike what I see Diennet carrying off.

The Duke is the mystery at the center of the play. Why does he skip town, leaving Angelo in charge? I'm with Tesky in seeing him more as a beneficent force, though in the community read Ellen called him a wimp. It was during his reign that the world of Shakespeare's Vienna fell into such supposed moral ruin. Director Frace and this cast portray him rather as ill, failing and searching, testing, perhaps for a possible successor.

But I am very interested in hearing more about how Tesky sees Measure for Measure as a "demonstration of Shakespeare's progressive sense of structure of comedy and tragedy."

And while in a very minor role, I nevertheless live each rehearsal to see Barnadine emerge onstage.

2010-08-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

I'm just back in my office from watching the end of a run of Act I. We're in the middle of tech. It's a blustery day outside, chilly; tourists on the street are in jackets today--but inside the theater the fans onstage turn slowly. The Duke, in dilemma, dribbles cool water down his neck, and the lights are kept dim against the heat. The women wear nothing but their slips. Just saying. O delicious southern Bard.

Why You Should Go to "Measure for Measure": A Top Ten List

2010-08-13T02:51:00.000-07:00

The Stonington Opera House production of Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure" opens on Thursday August 19. If somehow you're still looking for reasons WHY you should attend, look no further. Below are 10 inarguable reasons to go to the show. What's your top reason for wanting to see Shakespeare? And what's your excuse for not going, huh?

Top Ten Reasons You Should Go to "Measure for Measure"

1. You're setting a record. You've seen all 10 years of Shakespeare productions at the Stonington Opera House, and you couldn't bear to miss year 11.

2. Savannah, Georgia is your favorite American city, and you can't afford to go there this year. Director Jeffrey Frace has transformed Shakespeare's Vienna, where the play is set, to 1950s Savannah. Very steamy.

3. You're a cook, and you think "Measure for Measure" might be the next "Top Chef" contender. Turns out, the title of Shakespeare's play is taken from the Bible. It's about measuring mercy, not flour.

4. You heard the play is about "Mercy." "Measure for Measure" IS about mercy but not the TV series "Mercy." Spoiler alert: Taylor Schilling is NOT in the Opera House cast.

5. You're into original music. Lawd alive, are you in the right place! Shakespeare was a music-loving fool, and Phillip Owen's original music has a southern draw and deep heartbeat. He grew up in Texas. (But we won't hold that against him.)

6. You like your Shakespeare wacky. If that's the case, you're in the right place. The Duke is played by a woman. The bawd Mistress Overdone is double cast as the Chief Nun at a cloister. And one of the scenes is almost as creepy as the Swedish film version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." Laskigt!

7. You like cowboy hats and boots. And a rifle. Yep, you read it right. The costume designer has had some fun with this one.

8. Somebody told you Shakespeare was boring and hard to understand (even though it's English). It's poetry, dude. You have to listen. But the Stonington actors understand Performance 101: If you don't speak the language understandably, you get a lot of empty seats. You'll get it. We promise.

9. You want to understand our world today. Shakespeare may have written "Measure for Measure" in 1604, but 406 years later, the lessons about leadership, justice, mercy, love and class rage are still relevant. You got it: If it ain't relevant Shakespeare, we're not doing it!

10. One word: HARMONICAS!!!!

Do You Relate to Shakespeare?

2010-08-13T02:00:00.000-07:00

Guest blogger Abigail Bray lives in Blue Hill (Maine) and is a student at Deer Isle-Stonington High School. She enjoys writing and will be contributing posts occasionally during the run of "Measure for Measure" Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House. She also works at Fisherman's Friend Restaurant, a tasty place to eat dinner before or after the show!

As a sophomore in high school, I found reading “Measure for Measure” for the first time a bit of a struggle. Some of the situations were almost easy to relate to while others were a bit harder. I think we all can agree that there is at least one person in our lives who is strict and stubborn, and who decides to fix whatever situation he or she thinks needs fixing, like Angelo did while the Duke was “out of town.” And at one point or another, we all have to choose between helping someone close to us, or staying true to what we believe in, as Isabella was forced to chose between her virginity and her brother’s life.

Other parts of the play are less easy to relate to. Because things have changed drastically since the 16th century, it is now more common for women to have children out of wedlock. Another situation I cannot relate to is Claudio changing his mind and asking his sister, whom he knows to be very virtuous and chaste, to give up her virginity to save him. It is one thing for Isabella to decide; it’s another to put her in the kind of situation where she feels obligated.

Although “Measure for Measure” isn’t one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, I feel that it helps us compare and contrast the difference in politics and morals of the 16th century with today’s.

Who cares about Shakespeare?

2010-08-10T08:22:00.000-07:00

One of the most frequent comments I hear about Shakespeare is: "Why read his plays?" What does a playwright working 400 years ago have to say to us in the 21st century? The language is difficult, the stories are antiquated, the characters are remote from our tech-driven lives and, frankly, who cares?

I love these questions! And "Measure for Measure," which will be performed Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House, is the perfect play for coming up with answers and addressing these worries and dismissals of the Bard.

Here's the set-up for the story: The Duke of Vienna, seeing that the laws of the land have grown to lax, hands over state duties to his Deputy and goes under cover to watch as his stricter proxy strictly enforces the law. The first person arrested is Claudio, a young gentleman whose fiancee is pregnant. Oops, no pregnancy out of wedlock tolerated! Go straight to jail, Claudio, and prepare to die! But wait: Can Claudio's virgin sister Isabella, who is about to enter a cloister, save her brother's life through pleading with the Deputy? Better yet, will she agree to have sex with the Deputy in exchange for leniency for her brother? And what about the closure of the whore houses in the suburbs? Good for the moral realm, but, ouch, bad for the economy.

O, Vienna, what a tangled web is weaved round your leaders, families and community!

So you think none of this is relevant today? Let's tease out a few themes:

Fall guys who take the rap for leaders.
Women who are forced to negotiate life and death issues with sex trade.
An economy in which the "little guy" (in this case, hookers) gets hurt because of anxieties about the laws, especially concerning the economy. (Hmmm...the word "Arizona" comes to mind.)
And what about the morality of religion: Is a woman's virtue and fundamentalism more important than a man's life?

It's enough to make angels weep.

But instead of weeping, why not join us tonight for a community reading of "Measure for Measure" -- 7 p.m. Tuesday Aug. 10 -- at the Brooksville Free Public Library. We sit around a table and read the play with the help of volunteer citizen actors like you. Come read about "then" and think about "now." Most important, let's see if we can answer the big question: Who cares about Shakespeare?

Taking the "Measure" of Flannery O'Connor

2010-08-07T09:08:00.000-07:00

Several years ago on a visit to Savannah, I came upon Flannery O'Connor's house on Lafayette Square. Her childhood home is now a museum, but that didn't stop me from walking straight up to it and hugging it. Or hugging a corner of it. I've done this with the houses of several writers whose art has deeply influenced the way I see the world. The first time I went to Paris, I walked directly to Gertrude Stein's house and hugged it, too.

But Flannery O'Connor has been in my thoughts these days as I've been reading "Measure for Measure," running Aug. 19-29 as this summer's annual production of Shakespeare at the Stonington Opera House. Director Jeffrey Frace, who played Oberon in last year's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Stonington, has a literary crush on O'Connor and decided to run "Measure" through the filter of her Southern Gothic style and Catholic sensibility. The production reportedly is "dripping kudzu and Spanish moss," according to Linda Nelson, executive director at the Opera House.

Here's what Frace says about O'Connor:

She creates characters and situations that are as real as she can imagine, and then, as events transpire she learns more about them. Often she’s surprised at what transpires. But she is interested in flawed characters, characters suffering from spiritual blindness and in need of grace. Sometimes that moment of grace arrives in this lifetime: often it is accompanied by violence and death. Shakespeare, uncharacteristically, was more merciful on his characters in Measure for Measure. At least they all live. It is a comedy, after all. But there is spiritual blindness a-plenty, and real suffering along the way. And what is at stake is more than the love life of a sympathetic young person or two: it is the health and welfare of a whole community.

Now, for a brief primer on O'Connor:

She was born Mary Flannery O'Connor in Savannah, GA in 1925.
Her work includes novels, short stories and essays.

She studied writing at the famous Iowa Writers' Workshop with the likes of Robert Penn Warren. In her 20s, she was diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease from which her father died when she was a teen. She died at age 39.

She was obsessed with birds.

Her work can be very funny and very creepy.

It's likely her most famous work is "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," a short story about an argumentative southern family that meets a serial killer. You can see the cutting approach to the human condition in this line about the annoying grandmother in the story: "She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

Her work is deeply concerned with redemption -- and the tension between the Christian mission and un-Christian people.

That last part makes O'Connor a perfect fit for "Measure for Measure," which shines a surreal light on the workings of justice -- in the state, the city and in love.

Theatergoers always ask me the best way to prepare for attending a production of Shakespeare, and I encourage them to read the original text. This time, I also invite readers to pick up a copy of Flannery O'Connor's short stories and explore her world, too. She and Shakespeare have much to say to each other.

Best Use of Barbies Ever: Or "Measure for Measure" by 10-inch dolls

2010-07-24T15:20:00.000-07:00

As preparation for the Stonington Opera House production of "Measure for Measure" -- as well as for the library reads in Brooksville, Brooklin, Stonington and Deer Isle -- I'm re-reading the play. But I've also been surfing the internet for more background information on ideas and productions. To me, this is one of the most complicated of Shakespeare's plays, and I confess that I find it problematic -- and not just because scholars consider it one of the Bard's "problem plays" (which is another way of saying the themes don't fit neatly into comedy, nor can the characters be easily categorized as heroes).

We'll dive into the fascinating background and themes of the play later with the help of a few outstanding scholars and directors.

In the meantime, I want to share a clever two-part YouTube version of "Measure for Measure" featuring Barbie dolls (and created as a project for a Shakespeare class). It's corny at first, seeing the dolls, but actually it serves as quite a good synopsis of the play. It strikes me that there are lots of imaginative ways to approach Shakespeare. My own preference is to enter the story through the text. Others, such as director Jeffrey Frace and the actors at the Stonington Opera House, prefer the platform of a stage. And still others like, well, dolls.

And not just Barbie dolls. Last year, when a boy I know saw the Stonington Opera House production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," he went home and re-enacted a segment of the play with an old set of toy horses we keep around the house for kids.

Turns out, Shakespeare has resonance in more than simply our thoughts. We are free to reinterpret his stories as imaginatively as we want -- with dolls, puppets, movies, poems, dances. I encourage you to watch the "Measure for Measure" Part 1 and Part 2 Barbie YouTube videos, and I think you'll also enjoy this 9-year-old boy's interpretation of last year's "Midsummer."

Of course, the next question is: How will you adapt Shakespeare to your own favorite storytelling technique?

Check out more information about the Opera House Arts production of "Measure for Measure" Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House.

Some rise by art

2010-07-15T13:49:00.001-07:00

Put actors onstage together, and you probably can guess what will happen: theater. But what about after hours? Let's say they're sitting around the table eating dinner together after a performance. Are they still acting?

Turns out, the answer is sometimes yes.

In 2006, when the Stonington Opera House cast of "As You Like It" was finished performing in the evening, the members often found themselves sitting around the late-night table together eating dinner and making up characters -- as actors do. They had also been inspired by the sign on a defunct diner -- Conni's Restaurant -- and sometimes shared a romantic vision of what it might be like to leave the big city and make it in a small coastal town on an island.

"Stonington is so beautiful in the way it creates community," said Rachel Murdy, who was in the 2006 production of "As You Like It." "We had a microcosm community in that theater group. We had this ongoing idea that we could buy the restaurant that was for sale and open an avant-garde restaurant. We would live year-round in Stonington and have that kind of life. We dreamed about that, and we felt so strongly about it that when we left Stonington we had a reunion and had lunch together and literally decided to do that: have a restaurant."

And that's when "Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant" was born. The show is an original work of audience interactive cabaret theater that also includes food and drinks. Not dinner theater exactly. But dinner prepared and served by the cast in the midst of an evening of storytelling that swears the avant garde is still alive. Or not. You can read more about the past New York production here and about the current production at Club Oberon in Cambridge, Mass., here.

Right about now, however, you might be thinking: What does "Conni's" have to do with the Opera House Arts production of "Measure for Measure," running Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House? Good question.

The answer is embedded in the Stonington Opera House motto: "Incite art. Create community." Not only did the creators of "Conni's" find their inspiration in Stonington where the opera house is located. But they carried that spirit back to their home bases and kept it alive in far-flung areas. Many of them return in this year's production of "Measure for Measure": Rachel Murdy, Melody Bates, Stephanie Dodd, Peter Richards and Jeffrey Frace (who is directing "Measure"). That means they are rehearsing Shakespeare in New York City and traveling for the next three Sundays (July 18, 25 and Aug. 1) to Cambridge to perform in "Conni's."

Even though these actors are familiar with one another through graduate school at Columbia University and their performances at the Stonington Opera House (and if you've seen their Shakespeare work, then they're familiar to you, too), I like the idea of them working on two shows together this summer. By the time we see them in their Shakespeare characters, they will have presumably formed an even stronger ensemble connection.

As a side note, Murdy was part of the original creative team for "The Donkey Show," which was a hit in New York City years ago and was revived by Diane Paulus, artistic director at American Repertory Theater, at Club Oberon last year. After being in the show originally, Murdy also helped Paulus re-create the show for the Harvard scene. "Donkey Show" is still playing Friday and Saturday nights in Cambridge -- and if you're up for an unusual double header, a Saturday night disco version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (on which "Donkey Show" is based) and Sunday dinner at "Conni's" could be as intoxicating as a double header at Fenway. (Well, for me, anyway.)

But back to our main story. In "Measure," old Escalus warns: "Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall." If the performance connections between Stonington, New York City and Cambridge teach us anything, it is the opposite of a warning. It is a validation: Some rise by art, and some by community gain all.

A Safe Place for All People

2010-05-12T07:12:00.000-07:00

Judy Harrison's story in today's Bangor Daily News is a fine example of how newspapers and other media help us understand the arts as an integral part of community life. Harrison not only connects us with an artist -- Caitlin Shetterly of Portland -- in a clear-sighted exchange. But allows us to see the role of a performing arts organization in a community. The Stonington Opera House is where our Shakespeare work finds its home -- and that's a home for arts, artists, technicians, builders, vendors, volunteers, young people, scholars, vacationers and even critics (such as yours truly). And then there's you. It would be a mistake to say: "We do this ALL for you." I think that's inaccurate. We do it because, as Judy Harrison and Caitlin Shetterly know, the arts are a force that give us meaning -- individually and as a community.

Shakespeare in Stonington is coming soon. Our media team is gearing up this month to meet you here at the Shake Stonington blog site. But don't wait for us. Go see Shetterly's show tonight. And if you can't get to her show, find other arts or be an artist. Either way, your community needs you. Shetterly has it right: The local arts center is a place where we can "all come, experience, live, learn, enjoy, laugh and cry and be human together."

Appalachian hollows and original Shakespeare Dialect

2010-03-28T13:34:00.000-07:00

First, a disclaimer: I grew up in a big Texas family who migrated west from Alabama and Georgia, so dipthonged vowels and otherwise languidly prolonged syllables are music to my ears. Second, the idea that the dialect imported to these shores with early British settlers and nurtured and preserved in Appalachian hollows is closer to Elizabethan English than contemporary standard British is not new. So when Jeffrey Frace suggested that he was thinking of this summer's production of Measure for Measure as 'southern gothic,' I was both intellectually and constitutionally interested. I am currently in New York for auditions and on Wednesday and Thursday we saw upwards of 100 actors interpret what a monologue in a southern gothic style, reminiscent of, say, Flannery O'Connor, might sound like. For the majority it meant dropped r's and a few dipthongs, and otherwise--Shakespeare as usual. But in a small handful, my stars, as my grandmother used to say, with a slightly u-ed tongue, something happened! Rhythms changed, inflections shifted, heat and musk and music arrived in the room. It was a whole new Shakespeare, to my ear--and yet it sounded entirely natural.

More to come on this subject, but there have been several recent experiments with David Crystals Original Pronunciation (OP), which sounds to me a bit like a deep Scottish brogue, but restores they say some of the mysterious unrhymed, to our ears, rhymes in the Bard. Hear a story on it at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4761275. Or check out his website at http://pronouncingshakespeare.com.

Cosmic energy

2010-02-23T06:43:00.001-08:00

I bet you've had this experience: You start reading a book -- say Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" -- and all of a sudden, Jane Austen is everywhere! Scientists discover a new cause of death for the author. PBS goes on an Austen bender. And the Twitterati go hashtag wild with Austen chatter. You thought you were simply catching up on your reading, but actually you were whirling in cosmic coincidence (or a global marketing scheme).

For the last few weeks, I've been focusing my Shakespeare energy on "Measure for Measure." I'm in a class where the discussion is about "Hamlet," but the professor can't stop talking about M4M. And, wouldn't you know, productions of the play have popped up in London , New York and Oregon. (I saw the Theatre for a New Audience production at The Duke on 42nd Street. Favorite actor: Jefferson Mays as the Duke.)

And of course, cosmically speaking, one could easily be led to believe this is all pointing to the rightness of the Stonington Opera House show in August. The dramatic universe is on a roll!

So I'm thinking: OK, people. We're in a M4M moment. The zeitgeist has been named. Dust off your Riverside. Brush up your Shakespeare. The Duke is on his way. In the meantime? Keep an eye out for more M4M sightings.

Is February too early to think about Shakespeare in August?

2010-02-17T07:48:00.000-08:00

By Alicia Anstead

I've been thinking lately about the way the performing arts, and plays in particular, linger in our thoughts long after the curtain goes down. Plays, after all, are completely ephemeral. They happen, and they're gone. Except they're not. Think of the plays you've been to that have stayed with you -- whether because of the play itself (themes of love or death, for instance) or the circumstances in which you saw the play (the friend you were with or the phase you were going through). The poet T. S. Eliot talks about measuring life in coffee spoons. But some of us measure our lives in plays. I do at least.

But that's about what happens during a play or after a play. What about everything that happens before a play? A few weeks ago, Linda Nelson and Judith Jerome announced that Measure for Measure, directed by longtime friend of OHA Jeffrey Frace, is the play for Shakespeare in Stonington this summer. (Mark the dates: August 19-29, 2010.)

I couldn't be happier, in part because the experience starts now. Or rather, it started for me as soon as I heard the news. Immediately I turned to my handy cell-phone app PlayShakespeare.com and downloaded the text. For three days during a conference in New York City, I breathlessly read the play on my phone while riding the train to and from the event. At one point, I was so engrossed I missed my stop and ended up several stations away from my own. Wow, do I love when that happens, even if I'm late for something else.

On this read through, I was struck by the utter strangeness of Measure for Measure. It's called a problem play, but it's more than a problem play. It's a testy exploration of justice, mercy, personal agency and, once again, marriage. (Remember all the messiness about marriage last summer with A Midsummer Night's Dream?! If not, re-visit the blog posts that explore: I do, I don't, I might, I couldn't possibly "aspects" of marriage.) M4M is set in Old Vienna, but the themes of premarital pregnancy, enforcing the letter of the law, a woman's right to her own body and the shiftiness of politicians are all very relevant in the 21st century. Alas.

Thus begins our journey. Seven months before the show, the art has started to work its magic. I'll be checking in from time to time between now and summer with reports, tips and teasers about the play, the production and other related news. In the meantime, I'll be thinking -- and I hope you will be too -- about this question: When does art begin? When does it end? And what happens in the space between?

Trust me

2009-08-07T09:45:00.000-07:00

At a recent outdoor concert by a Cuban hip-hop group, my friend turned to me and said: "This is quite a spectacle to watch." He was referring to the dance component of the concert -- the hip grinds, the slips and slides, the hand gestures. Anyone who has watched MTV or TV dance competitions has become accustomed to seeing this kind of movement. It's part of our everyday world now. Like the way sports are ubiquitous in the media, dance has started to find a place in the mainstream.

And yet, and yet ... I wonder how many people have actually been to a live dance performance on a stage or, in the case of this blog, at a quarry? And how many of us think: Dance? Dance? I don't get dance.

My answer? Yes, you do. Understanding dance is as easy as watching a Cuban hip-hop singer gyrate onstage. You get it. She's sexy. She's groovin'. She feels the music. It makes sense because you're familiar with what she's doing. You've seen it on TV. Or maybe you've even done it at home. (Don't worry; your secret is safe with me.)

"The more you go to dance, the more you see," said Alison Chase, choreographer for Q2: Habitat, which opens this evening and runs through tomorrow at the Settlement Quarry in Stonington. I asked her how she'd like people to "understand" dance -- what skills do they need to "get" it?

"Trust your own responses," she said.

OK, great start. But there's more you can do ahead of time.For instance: You're at a quarry. The title of the piece is Habitat. There's gotta be a clue in there somewhere.

Also, you can spend a few moments reading other blog entries on this site, OR check out Emily Burnham's recent story in the Bangor Daily News.

The point is: You don't have to go in cold. Or you can. You don't have to think about it beforehand. Or you can. You don't have to know the entire history of dance. Or any of it. But it's also OK if you know all of it.

Follow Chase's advice. You'll get it. Pay attention to whatever draws your eye rather than what you think you should be looking at. You'll feel something. Trust me. Then trust yourself.

Well, you can dance

2009-08-03T00:27:00.001-07:00

Switching gears now, kids, because, while I'm not done thinking about Shakespeare, I'm moving on to dance for a while. Last week, the giant choreographer Merce Cunningham died at 90 -- if you don't know him, read the comprehensive New York Times obituary by Alastair Macaulay.

Cunningham's death got me thinking about form in dance. A few years back, Anna Kisselgoff -- another great dance writer -- reprimanded me for reading too much story into a dance work. It's about form and movement, she said, not about your silly story-making. (That's a paraphrase.)

But I'm as devoted to narrative as Kisselgoff and Cunningham are devoted to form. So I was thrilled to hear Q2: Habitat choreographer Alison Chase, at the Stonington Opera House in Maine, describe her two Quarryography works as "narrative spectacles."

For more background on the two-year Quarryography diptych, spend some time surfing the Story at the Quarry blog. More succinctly: Chase is working on her second major site-specific choreography at the Settlement Quarry on Deer Isle. She includes professional dancers, some of whom are from her time with the famous dance troupe Pilobolus, of which she was a co-founder. Many others come from the community.

It's that community part that got me thinking about form. We all know professional dancers are trained. Presumably they can move in ways we find pleasing and thrilling. But Joe Fisherman onstage? I'm sorry; I'm thinking he's not going to be my Dancing-with-the-Stars dream guy.

I'm wrong. Chase filled me in: "Those community-and-professional dynamics allow a wider range so that you get a variety of gestural exploration. Because someone isn't a trained dancer doesn't mean they don't have a range of expression. We're always amazed at the power of simplicity. Once we get rolling, it's exciting to see the exchange between non-dancing adults and trained dancers."

In other words, she's not looking for a perfect plie out of Joe Fisherman. She's looking for an "individual expressive quality." And that information helps her shape the overall piece. She finds a dance move where it's least expected and then uses it. Ah, back to form.

That's perfect for Q2 because, as an event, it's happening in an unexpected place: a quarry. Which is where "narrative spectacle" comes in.

"It's about habitat, about who inhabits that space," said Carol Estey, production manager and the Opera House co-founder whose roots on the island go back to childhood. (She's in the picture here rehearsing with Chase.) The people who will "inhabit" the quarry at the sneak-preview-in-development Aug. 7 and 8, and then again in its premiere in 2010 are going to look a little like you and me -- except for those pro dancers in the group. And it's not just because Chase wants to see the unexpected. It's because she has a story to tell, and some of that story comes from the bodies of local residents.

"People have always wanted to perform," said Estey, who is a trained dancer. "People have always wanted to be in things. They realize now they can be, and they don't have to have as much skill as they have to have commitment and desire. They see the possibility."

Post Shakespeare: Is That All There Is?

2009-07-16T05:38:00.000-07:00

Life is but a dream?

If in dreams we be constantly reinventing and reimagining who we are.

The truly amazing thing about Shakespeare's texts is their capaciousness: like a large soul, the works embody and hint at the mysteries of our human experiences in ways that constantly invite us to reinterpret this literary tradition--the one we call Shakespeare.

Dreams, the classics, jazz, theater, religion--allow me to suggest all are ways we meditate on, explore, and reinvent our human traditions: both as communities and individuals. They provide the shared metaphors for our lives, as well as the practices needed to interpret them.

And when it comes to capaciousness of metaphor--a size and generosity of story which allow reinterpretation over centuries--perhaps the only rivals to Shakespeare's in our western cultures are the Greeks and, yes, the Bible. This weekend's readings in our local Episcopal church were the familiar stories of David and Goliath: when I was very young, we watched a Sunday morning cartoon based on these stories. I've known this story all my life, and every time I hear it I understand it differently--now, for instance, most particularly in the ways we understand the histories of the middle east. And so we tell the same stories, over and over, in different ways: constantly transforming our understandings of who we might be, constantly remaking our worlds--hopefully for the better.

Thus there is no "post-Shakespeare"--in Stonington or elsewhere. Our experiences of wrestling with metaphor, through art and religion, are central to our humanity; and there just aren't enough opportunities or time for this work and pleasure. So we are going to let our ShakeStonington blog live on, and hope you will continue to bring to it your ideas, thoughts, and questions: about Shakespeare, about metaphor, about theater, spirituality, life--because ultimately, in the dream we call our lives, this IS all there is.

Remembrance of Midsummer past

2009-07-12T22:04:00.000-07:00

Where does the performance of a play live once a production closes? This question, which I was considering yesterday at the closing performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Stonington Opera House, has been central to my understanding of the arts because theater, like dance and music, is one of those confusingly ephemeral art forms, at once fleeting and enduring. I wondered: Will this Midsummer last in my memory, in the collective memory of the community?

Increasingly, I've come to value art that asserts itself long after the experience of the art has ended. When it comes to Shakespeare, a handful of productions remain imaginatively for me: the 1995 Broadway production of The Tempest with Patrick Stewart, the 2008 Broadway production of Macbeth (but only because of Stewart's performance), the English all-male Propellor company's Taming of the Shrew at BAM, Wooster Group's post-apocalyptic Hamlet at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY, and John Wulp's As You Like It on Maine's North Haven Island in 1998. (Here's my story on Wulp's production in the Bangor Daily News.) The vision and aesthetic, the purity of performance, the sheer moxie made the works indelible.

This happens less commonly on screen with Shakespeare, but Max Reinhardt's 1935 film version of Midsummer with James Cagney as Bottom gave me as much insight to the character of Bottom as any reading I've done or seen. Bottom's transformation to an ass is a potent moment of self-realization -- bolstered by a Narcissus-like scene in which he looks deeply at his reflection in a pond and, then, achieves ultimate understanding with the ballad of "Bottom's Dream": There is no Bottom, there is no fixed self, only endless possibility. Watch the first four minutes of this clip of James Cagney and you'll see only part of why Reinhardt's movie makes my list. (Other reasons: Golden Age of Hollywood, Mickey Rooney as Puck, Joe E. Brown as Flute, Bronislava Nijinska's modernist choreography, the commitment to beauty in the midst of the Great Depression.)

Will Julia Whitworth's Midsummer make the list? While I suspect her production -- outrightly feminist, defiant of capitulation, fierce in its conception and performance -- will linger in my personal canon, only time can tell. Midsummer has never been my favorite play, but Whitworth -- who had also struggled with the "woo'd" by sword/wed in "another key" marriage contract -- found her own way into the text through the conceit of a forcibly drugged dream of the Amazon warrior Hippolyta. Very gutsy.

I've been struck throughout this run of Midsummer at the number of young people -- from tots to teenagers -- in the audiences at the Stonington Opera House. This defies the more typical older audience demographic nationally. But Shakespeare and Midsummer in particular work an uncanny magic on youth, and I can't help thinking that those young people will be the carriers of durable memories. In Stonington, where Shakespeare is now in the drinking water after a decade of shows, the youngest of theatergoers think about what they see. Morgan, who is 13, explained her take on the Whitworth production this way (and check out the kid in the background, too):

What I value in Whitworth's production is the drive to reach beyond the conventional -- not for art's sake but for understanding, including an ambiguous ending (which allows understanding in multiple directions). It's not clear that Hippolyta will love Theseus at the end -- and the 9-year-old boy who was with me declared that it didn't seem as if the deal would be a particularly good one for the Warrior Woman.

I spoke with several other young people at intermission on Sunday, including two 15-year olds -- Esther who is local and Tobin who is from Rhode Island. Like others who were buzzing with questions at intermission, the girls were deep in Shakespeare's world, enthralled in fandom. You can hear their thoughts in the short video below, but they nailed it for me: Taking risks can pay off -- even the risk of simply going to theater. Is risk-taking enough? Nope. Is liking the show enough, or even all that important? Nope again. I've disliked many a show that I also found meaningful.

What's important is that a long memory gets cast, like a shadow, like a dream. Or as Hippolyta says: "minds transfigur'd" to "great constancy."

And just for fun:

Understanding Shakespeare

2009-07-12T07:22:00.001-07:00

Last night's performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was Opera House Arts' 10th Anniversary Gala production, and the high level of excellence, fun, and magic brought to our theater by director Julia Whitworth & her talented cast was a perfect way to celebrate. This complicated and hysterical production is an excellent reminder that truly satisfying "entertainments" are never simple, but are rather created from layers of meaning and complexity.

This is why Opera House Arts does Shakespeare. The Bard was a master of crafting beautiful language and sophisticated plots around human conflicts which dog each of us to this day--and making us laugh at the whole thing. As Artistic Director Judith Jerome said at Friday night's Talk Back, our job is to constantly reinterpret and wrestle with these universal themes within our own contexts: to keep Shakespeare alive and vigorous--and ourselves as well.

Yet many productions quail at taking on the conflicts and tensions which underlie Shakespeare's comedies; or fail to interpret the richly-layered language in meaningful ways. Thus, modern productions of Shakespeare can all too often fall into the trap of our popular American culture: playing it on the surface. We don't need another sitcom! Listening to several of the Talk Back participants Friday night, I was grateful to have not previously seen productions of "Midsummer" but to have had my first introduction to the play by reading the text. It's difficult for me to believe that any woman, of any generation, can read the first act and not be caught up in the intense male-female tensions which frame this comedy.

Productions, readings, and interpretations that shy away from Shakespeare's conflicts are no doubt why so many young people yawn when they hear the word "Shakespeare," or think of these plays as merely grim school studies rather than the deeply transformative cultural artifacts they might be. Kids minds are hungry for the challenges of seeking multiple ways to address our natural conflicts. This week, I've had many parents express to me how delighted they are that our lively, somewhat dark production has kept their children enthralled from start to finish. In fact one mother told me that her usually extremely restless son said to her, as they exited the theater, "I love Shakespeare." Mission accomplished.

Thanks, Will, for these amazing plays; and thanks to our directors, Julia and Judith, and actors for daring to take them on as we do in Stonington.

It's Shakespeare, Kids!

2009-07-10T12:41:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, I'm taking a 9-year old to see the final performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Stonington Opera House. This morning he and I watched Peter Hall's 1968 movie version -- which I ordered through the Bangor Public Library. From the opening credits, it struck me that Hall and Julia Whitworth have some crossover about the mysteries of this play. Even the setting of Hall's movie looks ever so slightly like Deer Isle. (Check out the granite-like backdrop to the opening credits.)

You can learn more about Hall's movie on IMDB. Love the Hollywood writing credit: Shakespeare. Too bad Will's not a member of the writer's guild, eh? He could live off of summer royalties alone. And for those who love Brit actors and hearing the language in its natural patois, look for Helen Mirren, Judi Dench and Diana Rigg in all their youthful glory. They speak the language perfectly, so it's an excellent place to start learning the rhythms.

An alert for the nudity censors among you: Hall's fairies show a lot of skin (it's the 1960s, after all). This is VERY different from Whitworth's production (although Stonington does get some steam going). But both Whitworth and Hall see the (somewhat rotten) fruits of power plays in love. And the scenes can be as chilling as they are exciting.

Most important: If you're thinking of taking a youngster to the Stonington Midsummer this weekend, help him or her before the show by going over the plot and characters together, talking about the themes and getting familiar with the style of Shakespeare's poetry. (Not a bad habit for adults, too.) Perhaps on the ride to Stonington, pop a DVD into the car player -- perhaps the 1999 movie with an all-star cast including Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer, Calista Flockhart, Christian Bale, Stanley Tucci.

Children have a natural openness to Shakespeare's verse, and I think Whitworth's interpretation, which features four local Island girls, is engaging for young people, too.

Here's the point: Learn Shakespeare early and you have the basis for a lifelong relationship with language, history, beauty. Take your kids to live performance and you engender creativity, elegance and the ability to think imaginatively -- as well as good community participation.

See you Sunday, kids.

PS: Look at the amazing Helen Mirren as Hermia. She was 23 in 1968, when the film came out.

Midsummer Review

2009-07-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

Tragical mirth in MIDSUMMER

2009-07-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

A Midsummer Night’s Dream walks a fine line between comedy and tragedy – and never more so than in Julia Whitworth’s production running through July 12 at Stonington Opera House. Whitworth’s production begins with a haunting drum. Could it be a heartbeat of love? Or a martial call to war?

Then, in the midst of combat between Athenians and Amazons, a soldier and a woman warrior inexplicably kiss in the heat of battle. Is it love? Or a war crime?

Later, nectar from a magic flower makes one person fall in love with his enemy, another fall in love with his beloved’s best friend, and still another fall in love with an ass. So what if it's delivered by hypodermic needle.

From any vantage point, it’s a dark and stormy night on the outskirts of Athens, where Ray Neufeld’s humid, leafy set underscores the tightness of the air, the deepness of the woods – where shadows lurk and fairies work wondrous mischief.

And yet this production has some of the lightest humor imaginable. Three Stooges meet Fred Flintstone. The Marx Brothers. Lucille Ball. Goldie Hawn. Robin Williams. Their spirits are all in the rafters of this production.

In Shakespeare's own words: Very tragical mirth? Merry and tragical? Hot ice?

When I asked Dr. Esther Rauch, a literary scholar and retired vice president of Bangor Theological Seminary, how to think about these wacky contradictions, she said: “I think this play is best read as a kind of a riff on ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ It’s almost exactly a twin play, and they both are based on ‘Pyramus and Thisbe.’ But where ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is very serious, this is a send-up.”

What do Romeo and Juliet have in common with Midsummer’s four young lovers? What is the relationship between laughter and tears? City and country? Athens and Maine? For more, listen to my full conversation with Dr. Rauch or read the transcript.

Better yet: Dr. Rauch and I will discuss all of this – and more – in a talk back after the performance 7 p.m. Friday, July 10 at the Stonington Opera House. Come join us for a conversation about the course of true love and how it never does run smooth, whether you’re laughing or crying.

Painting: William Blake's "Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing" (1785)

Photo: Esther Rauch and Alicia Anstead

Reviewing the situation: MIDSUMMER RAVE IN BDN!

2009-07-07T05:55:00.000-07:00

Check out Judy Harrison's review of A Midsummer Night's Dream in today's Bangor Daily News.

Highlights:

"Considered by many a director to be a madcap romp in fairyland, Shakespeare’s comedy at the Stonington Opera House becomes something more under Whitworth’s direction. This is not glum production."

"The lush, green backdrop full of dark, leafy greens seductively draws the audience into the action onstage."

"The opulence of the kings and queens, be they fairy or mortal, is dazzling."

AND THE CORKER: "While many theater companies in Maine send audiences home with a new appreciation of the Bard’s work, Opera House Arts is the only one that consistently sends them into the foggy night thinking, questioning and rethinking Shakespeare’s canon."

Reviews are such quirky and debatable acts of journalism: consumer guide? critical analysis? a good read? Is the critic part of the arts world? Should she remain aloof? objective? analytical? And what role does the review play in the life of a show or the career of an actor?

All good questions. Judy? Readers? Actors? What's your review of reviewing?

How now?

2009-07-05T22:02:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Shake Stonington! If you were in the audience Sunday July 5, please take a few moments to share your thoughts on the Stonington Opera House production of A Midsummer Night's Dream -- and to read earlier entries on this blog. (Scroll down the right side of the home page and look for June and July entries.)

Please also take a few moments to share the blog with friends. You can do this by email, Twitter, Facebook or knock on doors! When you do, please share info about upcoming performances 7 p.m. Thursday July 9 and Friday July 10, 5 p.m. Saturday July 11, and 2 p.m. Sunday July 12. And you can join critic-in-residence Alicia Anstead and guest scholar Esther Rauch, plus director Julia Whitworth and members of the creative team for a talk back after the performance 7 p.m. Friday July 10.

What fools these mortals be? Naw. We're only fools for Shakespeare.

Getting to the Bottom of Midsummer

2009-07-05T03:16:00.000-07:00

If you think A Midsummer Night's Dream is simply a walk in the woods, joke's on you. Director Julia Whitworth's takes the audience on such an entirely unexpected journey with the show that it's anything but a walk. It's a trip -- beginning with the siege of the Amazons and ending with, well, as a veteran theater critic I'm constitutionally incapable to delivering a spoiler here. Let's just say that if Shakespeare twists notions of love and marriage into a knotty bow, then Whitworth adds swords and shackles.

This is why I can't wait to hear the thoughts of Richard Brucher, a professor of English at the University of Maine -- and guest scholar after the 7 p.m. performance (TONIGHT, JULY 5) of Midsummer at Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle in Maine. He will be in the audience tonight and will join Whitworth and me for an onstage conversation with the audience after the show.

For a preview of his thoughts, you can listen to my interview with Brucher or read the transcript.

We'll be talking about how sexy this production is, and also about Nick Bottom, my favorite character in the play. I think he may be Brucher's favorite character, too, because old Bottom is so genuine. "Shakespeare gives him some wisdom about the unpredictability of love," Brucher said. "But of all the characters he seems to be the most willing and able to accept it when it’s offered to him. Nick Bottom is the only one who gets any sex out in the woods."

And believe me, Titania makes a donkey out of Bully Bottom.

TONIGHT: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, 7 p.m. July 5, Stonington Opera House, Stonington, MAINE.

Photo by Carolyn Caldwell, courtesy Stonington Opera House.

A Disco Donkey Dream

2009-07-01T13:20:00.000-07:00

Diane Paulus is one of the most exciting theater artists in America today. You may have read about her recently in a New York Times article on women directors. Or you may know her as director of the Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of the musical Hair. She is also the artistic director of American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA, where an earlier work of hers The Donkey Show (a collaboration with Randy Weiner) opens in August. Donkey is Paulus' 1999 disco adaptation -- that's right, disco -- of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Like Shakespeare in his own time, Paulus looks back to classic works of theater and opera to make new works for modern audiences. It's a bit like re-mix, but riskier because it's live.

In the case of Donkey, Paulus uses the story of Midsummer, but not the text. It's more Studio 54 than Elizabethan England or Athens. She changes everything to magically tell the same story and a whole new story at the same time. "I am a huge fan of marrying tradition with modern culture," said Paulus earlier this week in a phone conversation. "That’s one of my passions. So to go back to Shakespeare, who in my mind is one of the greatest sources of structure and character and story, and mash that up with some of the elements that we as audience have experienced in not only modern but more specifically in pop culture is a specific interest of mine."

Listen to the podcast of our entire 8-minute chat or read the transcript. Paulus also talks about the themes of Midsummer, the liveliness of theater in Shakespeare's time and her interest in "theater as experience."

That's what Hair is, too: an experience, or as we might have said back in the '60s, a trip. Actors bound into the audience to deliver the "love in" up close and personal. Similarly, in the NYC production of Donkey, anyone who wanted could dance with the actors to bumpin music such as I Love the Night Life and Car Wash. Paulus' ideas for Donkey and for theater are very much in the ballpark with the Community Reads the Stonington Opera House hosted over the last 10 days: Citizen actors giving voice to Shakespeare's poetry and breathing life into his characters -- and to the rompy love stories and family tangles we all face in the theater of our own lives.

In the end, it's all about the "love juice" (as Oberon calls it) that intoxicates us the minute we walk into a place like the Opera House or a Broadway house. It's the work of directors such as Paulus at American Rep and Julia Whitworth at Stonington Opera House to draw us into the dream.

A Midsummer Night Dream opens tonight, July 2, and runs through July 12 at the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle in Maine. The Donkey Show runs Aug. 21-Sept. 26 at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA.

9 Years of OHA Shakespeare

2009-06-30T13:29:00.000-07:00

BDN sees magic in MIDSUMMER

2009-06-30T11:45:00.001-07:00

MAJOR shout out to Emily Burnham, with photographer Gabor Degre, for this awesome story in today's Bangor Daily News.

[BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTO BY GABOR DEGRE]

Come laugh with MIDSUMMER fools!

2009-06-30T10:55:00.000-07:00

Last night's community read was one of those rare and extraordinary experiences of clarity through art-in-numbers. Stonington Public Library hosted an overflow crowd of citizen actors reading the first half of A Midsummer Night's Dream aloud. Some participants didn't want to read (which was fine) and others were shy (also fine). But as the plot unfolded -- with us sometimes stopping to talk about language or scenes -- the readings and readers became funnier and funnier. No kidding: We were laughing out loud. Big laughs, too.

That can mean only one thing: Shakespeare speaks to us.

Last week, when we read the same words at Blue Hill Public Library, the first half of the play felt a little threatening. We were serious and dramatic. And hey, it worked that way, too, because the text is elastic enough to withstand stretching in various directions.

I happen to prefer hilarious.

By the second night of the Blue Hill read, the "actors" took it there, and it was truly funny, especially because one of the readers had a great Brooklyn (NY) accent, and when she read her lines, it brought the play squarely into a U.S. vernacular, and I love, love, love when that happens with Shakespeare.

If last night was a knee-slapper, I can only imagine what tonight will be. The second half of this play is the Three Stooges meet Monty Python. Yuk, yuk, yuk, who knows what'll happen?

Anon: 7 p.m. at the Deer Isle Public Library in the village. Starting at Act 3, scene 2. No need to catch up on the reading if you weren't there last night. Just come. Laugh with us. See what fools these mortals be.

Can't touch this....

2009-06-29T07:45:00.000-07:00

Stonington Opera House is on the cutting edge again. Check out Patricia Cohen's NYT article on women directors in NYC, including Diane Paulus, who just won a Tony for her B'way revival of HAIR (and who will be a guest on on our blog later this week).

Now take a minute to count the talented women working in leadership positions for A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM at the Opera House: director, artistic director, executive director, composer/music director, lighting designer, costume designer.

Right on, Opera House!

And a shout out, too, to the amazing scenic designer...the man on the team.

Does it matter that women are in these roles? Yes, because women have traditionally been underemployed in authoritative positions in the arts.

So kudos to Stonington. Where the women are rockin' the boat.

2009-06-28T19:54:00.000-07:00

We are sitting around our kitchen table at the Ashcroft House on Deer Isle, where half the cast of Midsummer is housed. The rest of the cast and two-thirds of our band have arrived here after a day that included our first full run of the show, unbridled musical antics at the open mic in Blue Hill, and a field of impossible glimmering lights that could as easily have been fairies or stars as fireflies.

The table is covered with empty soup bowls...Stephanie is offering refills of the amazing chicken soup that she and Rebecca made yesterday...drinks in hand, the present company are debating the uses of Shakespeare's text. I'm typing away at the table, enjoying the inside-outside quality of writing while socializing.

Now the talk has moved to great concerts. "I saw Tori Amos in a coffee shop," says Tommy. Stereolab, Lyle Lovett, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Tom Petty, Concrete Blonde, Neil Young by himself in an old theatre with a stage full of about a hundred instruments...It is no wonder that people who speak of music as passionately as these people sitting at our kitchen table are drawn to Shakespeare, where the music of the language and the rhythm of the text add a dimension often wanting in contemporary texts.

Now we're talking about Michael Jackson.

It was exciting to run the whole play today. It is wonderful to be back in Stonington to make another play for this amazing community. And when we come out of a barn that was filled with homemade music into a misty night full of fairy lights flickering like nothing I have ever seen before...well, we're here to make a Midsummer Night's Dream, and live in one, for a few strange and admirable weeks.

But all the stories of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,
And grows to something of great constancy--
But howsoever, strange and admirable

I hope I didn't just misquote my own line.

There is music in the living room now, and Jason tells me the backyard is full of fairies. The kitchen has emptied out. The company has moved into the next act, heading towards the only "free" day between us and an audience. Four nights will quickly steep themselves in days...

National Endowment for the Arts Announces Highlights from 2008 Survey of Public Participation In The Arts

2009-06-28T17:47:00.001-07:00

National Endowment for the Arts Announces Highlights from 2008 Survey of Public Participation In The Arts

Shared via AddThis

Public participation in the arts is the foundation on which live performance, such as Shakespeare in Stonington, is built. I'll also be bold enough to say such participation is a cornerstone of strong democratic communities . . . and certainly, as columnist Thomas Friedman notes in this Sunday's Op-Ed, a key to the innovation Maine and our nation need to jump start now, during this recession.

The attached report from the National Endowment for the Arts, just released on Friday, shows that public participation in the arts is decreasing. Whether we're talking brain research; effective education; or economic innovation, this is a trend which bolds ill for the vitality of American culture--and here in our own little corner of the world, we'd like to do our part in reversing this trend.

YOUR increased participation in the arts is a major reason we have partnered with cultural reporter Alicia Anstead to launch this blog; our "Community Reads" series; and our post-show Talk Backs.

As Alicia (and Theseus) note below, the artistic PROCESS--as well as its final product, the show you see on stage when you buy a ticket--of problem solving and creating can have many positive impacts on our lives and in our communities. Here at OHA, we believe the more opportunities we can offer you to be a participant in the process of creating performance, the greater the benefit these performances bring to you; and the more they therefore strengthen our local communities.

Hope to see you tomorrow at 4 p.m. in Stonington, and Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Deer Isle, for the next round of "community reads" of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"!

Hey you, got a problem?

2009-06-28T08:24:00.000-07:00

Rehearsals are SLLLLLLOOOOOOOWWWWWW moving events. Do a scene. Do it again. Now a third time, but change it, and remember it, and make it real, too. Yesterday at the Stonington Opera House, director Julia Whitworth was working on the scene in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM when the four lovers wake up in the wood after all their jumbles have been resolved. The cast, in a sleepy scrum onstage, worked on the scene three times, then Whitworth thought about it and said: "Can we try Option B now?" So they did, and it worked. At least for the moment.

Last night at a party, the Brooklin (Maine) painter Bill Irvine told me he is headed into new territory with his work, new formal problems he wants to explore and solve.

Seems that all art is problem solving. How to get a brush stroke to look like a cloud or a sail boat. How to get an actor from one side of the stage to the other. How to make comedy and tragedy out of meter.

In MIDSUMMER, Theseus, Duke of Athens, puts it this way:

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

That is to say: The artist takes that which is "airy nothing" and gives it form. Bill Irvine's paintings. Shakespeare's plays. Actors in character.

"For me, the work of problem solving often is the creation of something beautiful," Whitworth said by phone today. "I'm not a director who plans out in my head how everything will look. I like to trust the process and the people I'm in the room with."

Whitworth's small son was in the background dealing with his own problem solving: how to get Mom off the phone and pay attention to him.

All this meticulous, very hard work takes place so that when we walk in a theater, the plot quickens and the only problems left to solve are our own: Do we believe? Does it take us there? Are we deep in the Athenian woods?

Reminds me of Woody Allen, who said in a recent interview that filmmaking distracts him (and us) "from the uncertainty of life, the inevitability of aging and death and death of loved ones; mass killings and starvation, from holocausts — not just man-made carnage, but the existential position you're in."

Theseus says the same thing: "Is there no play to ease the anguish of the torturing hour?"

But, hee-haw folks, let's not go too deep. Remember, this is a play in which Bottom's head is turned into the head of a donkey -- and he's got no problem at all with it.

Original Music, Great Musicians from Home and Away

2009-06-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

Rumor has it (and very good rumor, from the musicians mouths) that the composer and musicians (including local fav Ross Gallagher) and maybe a few actors will be jamming at Tinder Hearth's open mike on Sunday. 5-8 don't be late - visit www.tinderhearth.org to find out more about the venue or just follow direction below - you'll have to translate coming from the Island -

Traveling Directions

From Blue Hill:

Head southwest on Main St/Rt 15/Rt 176 towards Deer Isle. After 5 miles, you’ll reach a “T” intersection. Turn right onto Rt 175/ Rt 176, towards Penobscot. After 3.5 miles, follow Rt 176 when it turns left onto Frank’s Flat Rd. After 1 mile, you’ll reach another “T”
intersection. Welcome to Brooksville! Turn right onto Coastal Rd (Rt 176), and follow this for about 3 miles. You’ll see an elementary school on your left, and then the rd will curve sharply to the left. Tinder Hearth is the first house on the right that is close to the road. It is a white, rambling farm house, with an attached barn, and a blue front door.

From Jennifer via Judith

Most wonderful!

2009-06-26T04:22:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare and summer. The two go together like Poe and Halloween, Dickens and Christmas, Austen and any holiday. Perhaps the most famous U.S. production (outside of the Stonington Opera House, that is) takes place in Central Park each summer. You can read one of my favorite critics -- Charles Isherwood -- writing in the NYT about the new Public Theater production of Twelfth Night here. The aptly named Anne Hathaway stars with opera diva Audra McDonald. Gist of Isherwood's review: "All together now: most wonderful!"

Reading about other productions is a good way to get in the right head space for Stonington's A Midsummer Night's Dream. But keep an eye out for features on the local production in both the Ellsworth American and Bangor Daily News.

Community takes on "Dream"

2009-06-25T08:27:00.000-07:00

Last night's community read at the Blue Hill Public Library was a blast. Midsummer can be tricky to read sitting alone in your apartment, but it's hilarious to read outloud with friends and neighbors, especially when they share your enthusiasm for language and laughter. Judith Jerome, of the Stonington Opera House, and Bob Burke, a carpenter from Sedgwick, were reading Titania and Oberon -- and got a little close in one scene. I especially liked listening to Veronica Young, assistant director at Penobscot East Resource Center, whose British-inflected accent is a little closer to what I imagine Shakespeare's actors to have sounded like. But everyone added a voice to the night, and it made the play sing. We're doing it again tonight, 7 p.m. We'll pick up after Act 3, scene 1 -- but don't worry about reading the earlier acts. I'll give a synopsis and we'll read until we're done. C'mon and join us.
(Out-of-town visitor Peter Katz, of California, took the photos.)

Mawidge is what brings us together

2009-06-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

Here's the love situation in Midsummer: Hipployta is a war bride for Theseus. Hermia has the choice to marry the guy her dad chooses, die or become a nun. Helena finds true love only if her man stays drugged -- an early version of taking lithium, I suppose. And Titania, Queen of the Fairies, is essentially drink-spiked (by her husband, no less) into a night with a guy who has a donkey head. (Not going to explicate that one here.) Except for pandering to Queen Elizabeth, who never married (or rather considered herself betrothed to England), why would Shakespeare make marriage so utterly unappealing?

For one thing, he's working within classical conventions of "lovers." Goes back pretty far -- Ovid's Metamorphoses, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and, big leap, movies such as Princess Bride. One of my favorite scenes from that flick is very Shakespearean actually -- and very much on point for our marriage theme. You can watch it here.

Another way to learn more about marriage Shakespeare style is to listen to an interview I did recently with Stephen Greenblatt, world-class Shakespeare scholar, Harvard professor and author of "Will in the World" and "Cardenio," a "lost" play attributed to the Shake man. (Here's the Greenblatt interview.) Greenblatt told me that "all of Shakespeare's comedies are a little strange -- in fact extremely strange." When I asked him why get married if you're a woman in Shakespeare, he said: "Alicia, if you ask that question too strenuously, no one would get married." People don't get married based on cost-benefit analysis or rationality, he explained. They get married because they are desperately in love.

Wish I'd thought of that.

Why Do We Do It?

2009-06-24T23:27:00.000-07:00

In the past 48 hours I've seen people overcome by internal impulses and paralyzed by intellectual pursuits, while others have been torn by instincts in multiple directions and liberated by an artistic aesthetic years in the honing. While I thoroughly believe it takes time to build a company, it is amazing to me that this ensemble, en masse, met just sixteen days ago.

We're getting there. Someone in an earlier post used the word "Whirlwind", and as I looked around rehearsal this afternoon, no other phrase could better capture the apparent dichotomy of forces at work. People spoke words, taught children, experimented with sounds, hoisted weights, jumped around, argued, laughed, and sang ... and all somehow paid attention to the other groups in an effort to create some sum vastly more powerful than the individual ingredients. It was literally order being applied to chaos, or chaos let loose in the midst of order. Perhaps it's an observer's inability to tell the difference that allows and demands we label it as that "magic" that happens en route to an opening..

And that was only inside the theatre; no doubt similar dances were executed in the office, on the phone, and within vehicles running errands around the area. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when we attempt to do some theatre.

I hope it continues, as this mass of human endeavor, is literally, inspiring. Stonington, more than most places, should know that a high tide floats all boats, and this collective effort asks, better yet, incites me to rise to the occasion. I can only speak for myself, but maybe that's why we do it: what a thrilling challenge.

Will in the World

2009-06-24T21:20:00.000-07:00

Exclusive to Shakespeare in Stonington: with renowned Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt, conducted last week by Alicia Anstead. The man in general, and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in particular.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

We've Got Sound

2009-06-24T20:30:00.000-07:00

In "A Midsummer Night's Dream:" get out your guides to Greek mythology, and stay tuned for podcast interviews by Alicia Anstead with noted Shakespeare scholars Stephen Greenblatt and "our own" Richard Brucher of the University of Maine at Orono. Music from Beth Ann Cole.

Click here to listen to the podcast.

Forest for the Trees, Part 2

2009-06-24T09:38:00.000-07:00

Today, we brought the forest in through the trees.

Too few people get to experience the wild creativity that happens BEHIND the scenes in a theater. With a Scenic Designer, Costume Designer, Technical Director, and tech crew all in residence building out the set and costumes for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” there are so many types of creativity buzzing around the Opera House it could make your head whirl. Today, another wet Wednesday, we fetched a large (15’) log from our woods, and had long discussions as to how to rig it to fly onto the set—as well as how to rig it to ride in on my pickup to the Opera House! Meanwhile, we also fetched and delivered a special type of sewing machine, since our costumer, Jennifer Paar, and her two excellent high school interns, Hannah Avis and Lily Felsenthal, are busy making horned helmets for our fairies; papier mache ass-heads for our “Asshead Ballet;” and minotaur tattoos for everyone. Don’t you wish YOU worked at a theater?! (Photo is from an early costume prototype from the production. Volunteers get to have all this fun, too, so email me if you want to spend some time with this creative whirlwind.)

A COMEDY TONIGHT!

2009-06-24T02:57:00.000-07:00

Last summer at a community reading of MACBETH in Stonington, Maine, one of the participants was moved to tears at the end. As a group of citizens sat around a table and read aloud of Macbeth's demise, she was overcome with emotion. Suddenly, she understood that even monsters have a human side. And more penetrating: She felt Macbeth gave her insight into Saddam Hussein. You can imagine the stunning discussion that arose just as spontaneously as her emotion had. People were in awe of her revelation. People disagreed. But it was Shakespeare at his best: Provoking us all these years later to understand the shocking humanity behind greed, ambition, power and tyranny.

So that's an invitation to join us tonight and tomorrow -- 7 p.m. Wed June 24 and Thurs June 25 -- at the Blue Hill Public Library, where regular -- no, extraordinary -- citizens (like you) will gather to read and revel in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. A comedy this time. I'll be there. Actors will be there. But otherwise it's Shakespeare, his words, your voice and our collective imagination.

O,o,o, that Shakespeherian tango!

2009-06-20T06:49:00.000-07:00

Can't wait to see the choreography of MIDSUMMER. It's such a physical show, I can well imagine the transformation of what director Julia Whitworth calls "tedious" and "fun" blocking to elegant and funny movement by the time the rest of us see it. "Asshead" ballet? Get out!

An exciting heads up from this end. Stay tuned for TWO audio interviews with: one of the world's leading Shakespeare scholars STEPHEN GREENBLATT, who spoke with me from Harvard this week, and another with RICHARD BRUCHER, one of my favorite interpreters of Shakespeare from the University of Maine. They both have big thoughts about The Man, and about MIDSUMMER's take on marriage, sex and what happens in the wood...

Teaser: Who's the only person in the play "getting any" -- as one of the scholar's put it?

News Flash

2009-06-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

We've been building a sequence that has been affectionately dubbed the "Asshead Ballet."
Another name for it: the "Half-Ass Tango."

Good fun. Come check it out!

Forest for the trees?

2009-06-19T21:09:00.000-07:00

This week the work of rehearsal has been all about "blocking" -- that is, figuring out the physical movement onstage. It's slow work -- sometimes tedious, sometimes fun-- and often during the process of working scene by scene, beat by beat, even bit by bit, it's easy to loose sight of the big picture.
Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy, and not just because it observes the generic convention of a marriage (or three) at its end. It has a lot of funny stuff in it -- fights and sight gags, plays on words, etc. But being who I am, I'm interested in the shadow side of this humor as well -- where the laughter of the play covers, just barely, the tensions that lay behind it.
Linda mentioned the penalty named in the first act for defying the patriarchy -- death (or celibacy) for young Hermia, if she does not marry her father's choice. By the end of the play, it all gets worked out, by hook or by crook, through many shenanigans in the forest.
We are working hard to figure out those shenanigans right now, but I'm trying not to forget that darkness of the set up, the stakes that face these characters. The scenes in the woods are all a little crazy, and we are playing with the idea that everyone's ids get a little "blown out" in the dreamscape of the fairy forest.
What happens when they return to civilization, however? How will the excesses of desire, jealousy, and new love, be regulated again? We're not there yet, I'm afraid to say -- so time will have to tell.

MIDSUMMER in Prison

2009-06-18T05:06:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago, I organized a Shakespeare program with disenfranchised single mothers in Upper Manhattan. They were insightful interpreters of Shakespeare -- although sometimes class had to be reshaped because "real life" would stomp forth: Someone would get kicked out of subsidized housing, one of the women had an unexpected abortion, another needed to talk about a visit with her son in prison. Our final event was a Broadway production of ROMEO AND JULIET, and the women offered rich criticism -- they understood the dangers of the hood, the strictness of the law and the compulsions of young love. It was one of the most revealing Shakespeare experiences I've had.

I was reminded of that today reading about a production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM at San Quentin State Prison in California. The inmate-actors have been rehearsing alongside members of Marin Shakespeare Company for months to stage the play for the Big House. A lockdown canceled opening night -- an equipment problem apparently. But even in prison, the show must go on, and it did Monday night. You can read more about it here.

But it got me thinking. Again. What is it about art that speaks to people across all lines? What can we learn about Shakespeare from prisoners? What does Shakespeare say to them?

One answer is embedded in this excerpt from the director's blog: During the rehearsal I, like Hermia, struggle with trying to figure these men out. I can’t do it. Who are they? Are they actors? Are they criminals? What are they thinking? Like Hermia and her struggle to understand Lysander– I cannot read their minds. I can only read the smile on their faces and trust that the words coming out of their mouths are true.

Interesting stuff.

Why Feminists Could Hate Midsummer (but won't in Stonington)

2009-06-16T22:02:00.000-07:00

This is a play that begins with dialogue from Theseus to his captured bride-to be, "Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword,/And won they love doing thee injuries . . ." and goes quickly on to father Egeus citing Athenian custom in regard to his rights to marry off his daughter:

I beg the ancient privilege of Athens,
As she is mine, I may dispose of her,
Which shall be either to this gentleman
Or to her death, according to our law
Immediately provided in that case.

Shakespeare's most beloved comedy, indeed. And the joke is on . . .?

Needless to say, neither our incisively smart director Julia Whitworth (Taming of the Shrew) nor journalist, commentator, and literary scholar Alicia Anstead will let us or Shakespeare's complicated, often-allegorical text off easily on this one; still, it is frustrating that this "masque" hinges on, well, let's for now just call it the "same old, same old" plot devices as our current sitcoms!

Stay tuned to witness how such a well-worn plot can be intelligently unraveled . . .

Truth or Catholicism?

2009-06-16T05:59:00.000-07:00

Now reading Clare Asquith's SHADOWPLAY: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare in which she investigates the plays by looking at the religious rules and undertones of the Reformation, Henry 8, Bloody Mary, the Counter Reformation, QE1 -- and basically says that Shakespeare was on the Catholic side. The "Shakespeare as Catholic" question is not a new one, and while some of my favorite scholars dismiss the Bard's religious beliefs as irrelevant, there isn't a Catholic among us (or at least me) who doesn't feel some sense of triumphalism in this speculation. (It's like when Stephen Colbert makes insider Catholic jokes on late-night television.) Asquith lands Shakespeare squarely into the Protestant-Catholic brawl with A Midsummer Night's Dream, which she sees as exposing his split loyalty -- on the one hand to religion (Cat'lic), on the other to his queen (early WASP). That's why all the light-dark, high-low tension in the play. Dark Oberon (Protestant), light Titania (Catholic). Short Hermia (P), tall Helena (C). And yet, and yet, that wicked cunning Shakespeare is so clever that everyone felt validated by the poetry. And we still do. Bless you, Will.

2009-06-14T18:06:00.001-07:00

I *miss* being in the midst of rehearsals now that I am back in Maine ("Green and cold," Nick, our local bookstore owner remarked, looking thoughtfully out the window--"that ought to be the new Maine license plate slogan."). Multiple projects are pressing, not just one that I can sink down in to. Alicia's post about QE1 referring to herself as "Prince" reminds me of how much I want to do Timothy Findley's "Elizabeth Rex," in rep with "Much Ado About Nothing." Peter Richard's idea and I am thinking 2011.

Reading and discussing the text, however, as Jason fully knows, and as Julia articulates below in her character excercise, is not the only way this company of actors explores the play. Physicality is a hallmark of Shakespeare in Stonington productions, and each rehearsal begins with a Viewpointing session. Here is a quote from the SITI Company website on Viewpointing:

"The Viewpoints is a technique of improvisation that grew out of the post-modern dance world. It was first articulated by choreographer Mary Overlie who broke down the two dominant issues performers deal with - time and space - into six categories. She called her approach, the Six Viewpoints. . . The Viewpoints allows a group of actors to function together spontaneously and intuitively and to generate bold, theatrical work quickly. It develops flexibility, articulation, and strength in movement and makes ensemble playing really possible."

Then, as in the last rehearsal I attended, the actors are asked to create a "composition," in ten or fifteen minutes, using elements of the play, and a varying set of parameters that Julia gives them. Language may or may not be used. As the rehearsal process goes on the Viewpointing itself becomes more and more about the play, physical articulations of relationships and energy.

Then & Now

2009-06-12T10:09:00.000-07:00

Seeing pictures of ourselves in rehearsal, (funny, I don't _look_ Puckish) reminded me of the juicy gap between the play's genesis and what we're now doing with it. Surely Shakespeare would balk in puzzlement at the host of activities we now 'do' with his plays.

Like, reading them, for example. They were, after all, written to be heard, not read. The overwhelming majority of Elizabethan London was illiterate, paper and ink were prohibitively expensive, and the canon wasn't published in an organized format until seven years after his death. The very word 'audience' is echoed in journal entries of the time: "This afternoon I heard a play by a William Shakespeare ...", and stands in stark contrast with our modern habit (as spectators) of 'seeing' a movie. To the Elizabethans, language ('action of the tongue') was the firework display, the CGI, the set change, and the orchestration of entertainment. In a society commonly without books, newspapers, internets, (or blogs!), Today's Play was all of the above, plus an education on religion, the law, history, royalty, gossip, and current events.

It would be quite a feat if our Midsummer qualifies as all of the above to our Stonington _audience_ in twenty short days. But before we panic, we should remember that the original production had far less time to prepare. Contemporaries of Shakespeare's King's Men offered new plays at a furious pace, one year premiering 180 new titles. With just a few days, no Director as we know it, a grab-bag repertoire of dances and fights, and an ensemble that had been through the Wars of the Roses (on stage) together, the 'mounting' of new work must have been bracing. Also, many plays only ran one performance - and failed; as the playwright wasn't paid until the second, if there was a second, the finances must have been bracing, as well. (Well, _that_ hasn't changed!)

There are many elements I won't miss from Midsummer's Elizabethan roots (the audience's smell and their proclivity to throw vegetables, to name just two ... oh, and the plague). But as we embark on day four of rehearsal, I will revel in the luxury of in-depth character study, the collaborative generation of a vocabulary, and the flourishing of an imaginative world as fantastical as a Dream. What could be more Shakespearean than that?

Character Presentations tonight!

2009-06-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

Tonight and tomorrrow are my favorite rehearsals of the rehearsal process -- character night!

After a few days of working on the text, discussing themes, ideas and characters, I always invite the actors to create character presentations based on a set of questions that I assign them. They are encouraged to use a "sky's the limit" approach to their imagination, and they are assured that they will not be held to anything they come up with so early in the process.

And tonight they present their work -- I can't wait.

Here are the fill-in-the-blanks that I assigned them:
My name is ______
I'm from _______
My age is ______
Three things I know about myself from the text are:
Three things I intuit about myself are:
Some ideosyncrasies I have are: (3-5)
Some things I might do during the course of a performance are: (3-5)
My dream is:
My nightmare is:
A shape (in my body) that says everything about my character is:
A way of locomoting is:
Two gestures (behavioral or expressive) that illuminate my character are:
[the last three are demonstrated, rather than spoken]

I can't wait to see what these smart, creative actors come up with !

TOP 10 LIST FOR MIDSUMMER

2009-06-12T03:09:00.001-07:00

TOP 10 thoughts for why I'm digging A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

1. Lovers lose their minds over each other. Relate?
2. In case you think you're special, love apparently has always looked the same. Ergo, the Demetrius/Helena/Lysander/Hermia mash.
3. Try fitting this line into a conversation today: "Methought I was enamored by an ass."
4. Who names their kid Snug? or Snout?
5. If I were Titania, I would SO wear a fabulous tiara.
6. If I were Hippolyta, I would dress like Xena.
7. Bill Bryson -- the Walk in the Woods dude from Iowa -- wrote a book about Shakespeare. No, there's no bear head on the cover.
8. The Folger Shakespeare Library edition calls Bottom an "ass-headed monster." Scholar humor?
9. QE1: Bad makeup. Called herself "prince." Was the "Faerie Queene.' Wait, what century was this?
10. MIDSUMMER is the Elizabethan code word for: Go crazy, people!

Midsummer: romance or nightmare?

2009-06-11T05:09:00.001-07:00

Yowza!

The imagery of the paintings Julia shared in rehearsal (see earlier post) point to the fractured, nightmarish possibilities for Hippolyta and Titania. More typically, we tend to focus on the ethereal qualities of MIDSUMMER (see images here I found online) -- dreams, the magic of the woods, luminism, idealization, youth. And yet even in my own reading this time I'm finding a darker side to the story. Drugged lovers (yikes!), conquered brides (yikes!), patriarchal rule (hmmm). Hardly the romantic view represented by the images above. Of course, Shakespeare is elastic enough to allow for many visions, but I am eager to see where Julia and the cast take us. Julia, can you tell us more about your view of the surrealist image, please?

Am halfway through the 1999 movie version of MIDSUMMER -- with Calista Flockhart, Kevin Kline, Michele Pfeiffer. Stanley Tucci makes for a very corporeal Puck....go figure. American screen actors and Shakespeare are always a tricky mix... More after the show.

2009-06-10T11:19:00.001-07:00

Well, Alicia, if you like slow reading, you would indeed enjoy being around our table...
Julia, here ... director of Midsummer. This is, officially, my first posting on any blog, anywhere. (took me about 10 minutes just to figure out how to initiate a post.) I'm more of a live communication kind of gal.

But, we are off, and it's thrilling to be in the room (and the phone, and the internet) with this magnificent team. For those of you who have followed the nine years of Shakespeare in Stonington, you'll find that there are many new faces in our midst... four new actors, three new musicians, new designers and technical director, and some new young ladies from the community that will be joining us onstage as Titania's fairies. It's exciting and a little frightening to continue to expand our ranks -- it's a short rehearsal period, and to do the kind of ensemble physical work that I love to do (and the OHA audiences have come to expect), we have to move quickly to create a tight artistic and intellectual community. But that sometimes means moving slowly -- very, very slowly when it comes to unpacking a play as dense as Midsummer Night's Dream, or the conceptual framework I'm laying upon it. I'm sure we all are having some panicky moments about wanting to get MOVING, but I'm a firm believer in laying a strong foundation to support a complex work. So that's what we are up to.

One of the ways I like to spark conversation and reflection on a play is to show imagery that has been evocative for me when preparing. Here are two works I shared last night:

The first is a Dali painting, "The Woman with and Egg and a Spear." For me, the surrealist quality of this is important, as is the composition itself. Is this Hippolyta? The second, is the British romantic painter John Edward (I think) Fuselli's "The Nightmare." I love the little hobgoblin sitting on the woman's chest. Is she dying? Is she in ecstasy? What's with the horse (or mare, as the case may be) on the margins of her dream? Is this Titania?

Neither of these is aesthetically related to our production (well, the first, sort of...) but both animate aspects of the play for me in exciting ways. Hope they do so for you as well...

Take it slow!

2009-06-10T09:07:00.000-07:00

One of the great lessons James Wood, the New Yorker book critic, taught me was to READ SLOW. He suggested going over sentences several times for comprehension and deeper understanding. That jewelly advice changed my reading habits forever. Sooooooo, I am not at all surprised that the cast of MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM is taking it slow, extracting meaning and personhood from each word, line, scene, silence, exchange. I suggest we try slowing down. Later this month, when we do our community readings in Blue Hill and Deer Isle, we will surely take breaks to discuss a line, ponder the meaning or try to wrap our minds around Shakespeare's language a bit more fully. Call me a geek, but I love a good slow Shakespeare read.

2009-06-10T05:19:00.000-07:00

On the other hand, Alicia, the 1960s BBC film version of the play (with young, smooth-faced Judi Dench, Diana Riggs, and Helen Mirren playing Titania and the lovers) has Hippolyta in the opening scene simply staring adoringly at Theseus. In most productions the idea that Hippolyta is the defeated Amazon queen, that she is a booty bride, is elided.

There is no better way to study a text, in my view, than to study it as an actor, with the intent, the imperative, to embody the character and given circumstances of the play. Thus the cast is only on page 12 of table work with the script as of last night. Every idea is listened to carefully--and they are all good. Can you see it in the photos I took? We are serious, and laughing alot. I love this seriousness, and laughing, as though theater matters. On the wall of the Siti Company studio where we are working there is a statement of intent that includes the assumption that theater is neccesary to the spiritual revitalization of the world. My guess is that there is not a person in this room who does not believe this.

Of Queens and marriage and fierce women

2009-06-09T04:54:00.000-07:00

How appropriate that rehearsals of MND begin in QUEENS! Reading the text for the first time in a few years -- this time partially influenced by a conversation with director Julia Whitworth -- I've been thinking about the queens in the play. What does it mean to be a queen in Athens and the surrounding wood? And what might Queen Elizabeth I have been thinking as she watched Hippolyta and Titania have their dominion, property and "will" taken from them? Although no one seems to be sure, there's speculation that Shakespeare wrote MND for a wedding. Imagine! In the 1960 production at the Old Vic Theatre in London, Hippolyta appeared in manacles. In our own time, we're still conflicted about what makes a good marriage -- AND even who is allowed to get married. After seeing a production, the unwed QE1 surely must have felt supported in her own decision to remain a "maiden queen." Judith, I like that you describe Hermia and Helena as "wicked fierce." That gives us a parallel duo to consider.

First read-through brunch in the sweet soft air of Queens

2009-06-07T17:16:00.000-07:00

Rebecca and Stephanie, Hermia and Helena, were wicked fierce today; no mild little ingenues these two spitters as they confronted each other over supposed betrayals in the fairy forest. It was an overall fierceness in the cast that most struck me in this first read-through. Puck fierce and chilly and absolutely clear in his detached manipulations; Theseus, with Hippolyta by the hair, so to speak, declaring Hermia's fate if she opposed her father's choice of husband; Titania almost guttural in her passion for Bottom; Bottom so fully full of himself. Lysander just clear (lovely rendering of the language) until his head is muddied by Puck's flower--and then venomous in his rejection of Hermia. I have been reading the play and watching film versions for weeks--never have I heard it so clearly. Already.

Welcome to Shakespeare in Stonington

2009-06-01T13:33:00.000-07:00

Puppets from MacBeth, Summer 2008

Welcome to the blog for the 9th annual Shakespeare in Stonington series. This July “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” will be staged at the historic Stonington Opera House. The annual series places great emphasis on Shakespeare’s language, humor, and the timeless importance of his work. Julia Whitworth (Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, The Tempest) will direct the newest in OHA's series. Stay tuned for more about "A Midsummer Night's Dream."