377 Days - Blog #12 - exit, pursued by a bear (or the third play I saw this weekend)

So tonight’s play is Shakespeare.

If you know anything about me, this is my kind of theater.  And yet… as much as I always say I want to go… I don’t actually see a lot of the local live Shakespeare lately.  I spend my money to drive to Boston to watch every NT Live recording… but I haven’t made a concentrated effort to go out and support the genre I love the most.

And this is bad.  Because:

1 When I get back to directing, Shakespeare is going to be something I choose.  I’m courting bad karma.

2. I’m friends with people who like Shakespeare.  So… basically, I’m not supporting my friends.  In fact, I feel very badly that I missed two productions of As You Like It this spring and the chance to see the different takes on the story, but also applaud my friends.  I could make excuses – like I was sick (and I was – you know the kind where you can’t stop coughing) or I had family stuff or work stuff… but I need to start making making time for Shakespeare a priority.
 

So that’s what I’ve done tonight.

I will pause for a second and say that one thing that keeps me away is … well, Shakespeare is kind of a religion.  I mean that on a whole bunch of levels.  But for this purpose, I mean to say rather like that other revered ancient book, people who love Shakespeare tend to latch onto what something is supposed to mean or be or feel with a very tight grip.  If it isn’t just so, it is wrong.  Actually, I mean WRONG.  The fundamentalism of the marriage to the text drives me as batty as any arbitrary quote from Leviticus.   And yet, I know the battiness comes from that nagging inner critic who echoes in my own brain.  

So tonight, I’m happy to put into practice an attitude that will put her pretentious nagging at bay.

The play was The Winter’s Tale performed by the Worcester Shakespeare Company.  I have seen a few other productions by this group.  I think the last one was Hamlet (which I also saw on or around my birthday) when they still performed in Worcester proper at Green Hill Park.  When I was rehearsing Crimes of the Heart at the Singh, they were performing Othello.  I remember watching a scene or two from the balcony… but I confess I didn’t go see the show.  (This is a negative I will indulge – I don’t pay for productions of Othello where the Moor is white.)  But that aside, I very much appreciate what this group has done over the last several summers to bring productions of my favorite genre of theater to Central Mass.

This summer they are producing two plays – one indoor and one outdoor.  The latter is my absolute favorite, The Merry Wives of Windsor, of which I hope to write in a week or two.  The former is the one I saw tonight, The Winter’s Tale.  In spite of my adoration of Shakespeare, I confess I didn’t remember much about this play.  I get it confused with All’s Well That Ends Well – for what reason, I have no idea.  I also associate it with one of my favorite theater movies, the unsung quirky brilliance of A Midwinter’s Tale.

But then, of course, I saw the mention of a bear in the program… and then I remembered.  Oh yeah, this is the ‘exit, pursued by a bear’ play.

I embraced my rusty memory, though… because it is a good test to my apprehension of Shakespeare.  There are some plays (like the other one they are performing) that I can quote line for line… and thus I know it.  This one I had to sit and see it like an audience member for whom Shakespeare isn’t a religion… and it was a good reminder.  The first scenes are a slow wind up and then eventually it all starts to make sense.  Although, I think this cast did a good job of acting to tell the story with their expression and movement so my brain adjustment to Elizabethan English didn’t take too long.  There was the irrational jealousy of Leontes and the comedy of Autolycus and the romance of Perdita and Florizel to help me understand without words.

Anyway, I could get really nerdy here, but that will make this a way too long blog.  So here are three things upon which I will focus.

1. This had dance.  If you’ve read my last two blogs, you’ll notice a theme.  I like dance.  I think it adds happiness to a show, to a party, to a show about a party, to an ordinary moment when you just need to feel a lift up.  So throwing it into this play which is a weird complicated time jump and has some heavy jealousy stuff and bears eating people is definitely a good thing.

2. The music for that dance… the music in general… my poor friend had to listen to me geek out at intermission.  They used music from the movie Orlando.  Now here – I’m going to go on a slight tangent.  I saw that movie… almost twenty years ago.  I think I remember watching it on my futon in my South Barre apartment and swooning over Billy Zane’s five minutes.  It led me to read the book, which is probably my favorite of Virginia Woolf.  But the movie was a weird thing in the 90’s. I liked it.  Enough that when I was on a Higgins outreach in Kittery, ME and we stopped at some random outlet selling soundtracks of obscure movies, I scooped up that cassette tape… that I played over and over and over.  Mostly because it had this pavanne which was perfect for the fantasy novel/series that I’ve been writing since high school and imagining a medieval dinner theater.  

 

 I think my multiple rewinds and playing of that particular song is what finally broke the tape.  It has yet to appear on iTunes (and I just checked again.  Bollocks.)  Anyway, they used the Pavanne as a closing… but also pretty much every other piece from the entire soundtrack.  If anyone else in the audience tonight recognized it, I need to have a cup of coffee with them and discuss how my film professor in England was obsessed with Sally Potter, the director of the film and composer of the score.

Anyway, that was probably way more than you needed to know.  But theater and enjoying it is very much about how we connect the random details of our own lives to a story.  And if we can sew into our experience of a play the threads of delight from other parts of our life – like, say, those months in London where I was taking a film class or dreaming up scenes of Leora and Brentain… well, I’m obviously going to enjoy the play a whole lot more.

3.  Back to #3.  I liked how they arranged the theater.  I’ve performed at the Singh and seen several shows in that space.  They reconfigured the stage so it was a three quarter thrust and put all the seating on the floor.  It made a much more intimate watching, complementing the staging of the actors as they wandered into the audience and pulled some reluctant viewers into the scene as a way to break up the longer speeches.  But such a thing also granted my favorite part of Shakespeare plays a better chance.  I like to watch the background.  Partly because I’ve been that actor.  Partly because you understand the words so much more by looking at the person who is listening to it.  I sat on the stage right side and really enjoyed my view of things.

And now, I do have some personal connection to the cast, so there is some of that sentimental cheering.

One friend joined the company this summer as a member of the ensemble.  That meant she got to be in the dance scenes… my favorites.  We’ve had few conversations about Shakespeare, so I know this is one of her loves… and knowing she got to be in this play and those delightful scenes increased my mirth.

Secondly, one of my college professors was in this production.  This delights me on many levels.  Firstly, because it is an instance where my Boston-ish life collides with my Worcester life.  I like when the two meet.  But more significantly, she directed the first Shakespeare in which I was on the stage - the aforementioned favorite, The Merry Wives of Windsor.  She gave me the freedom not just to love the language but to play with it and find the fun as well as the depth and sorrow.  She made it real.  Since then, Shakespeare has been such an important part of my life and something for which I will be truly grateful.  I loved seeing her get to be on the stage and play a part, just as she directed me all those not really too many years ago.  

It was a good night.  It was a good play.  And yes, I think you should go see this.  Not just because it’s Shakespeare and I think the more you see it, the less you fear it.  Because this is a good group, who produces a good show.  And, just like I said about those musicals earlier this weekend, you will have fun.

Check out the info at the Worcester Shakespeare Company website.  It’s worth noting that if you see one and keep your ticket, they will deduct $10 from the cost of the other.  Do it.

And by the way, yes, I have been listening to the Pavanne on repeat pretty much the entirety of my writing this.