Taming of the Shrew

Okay, true confession time. I'm dieting for this play. Why? Two words: bike shorts. You know, those tight, lycra things that go from mid-thigh to waist. It's what I wear in the play, under the, well, you'll see, won't you? I wondered about my vanity today. Is it unmanly of me to worry about what my ass will look like in bike shorts? Is playing a woman making me think about my body in new and unusual ways? I actually began dieting before I learned about the bike shorts. But playing Kate was the initial motivation. I'm playing a women, I thought, I want to be smaller. Then I'll be all cut and sexy for the spring time. For the record, I've lost eight pounds. Thank you South Beach and YMCA. But would I have dieted if I had been cast as Petruchio? Grumio? Hmmm . . .

It's all women on top in our all-male production of the sexist play: director, stage manager, fight choreographer, literary manager/assistant director and managing director - all female. Maybe if we get attacked from the feminist fringe for one choice or another, we can point to the assembly of women in charge and say "It was their idea!"

I continue to ruminate over the "actor" issue. I mean the "actor" I play as part of the the company of actors who arrive to perform the play. I know we only see "him" for a minute or two - but who is he? And why isn't he me? We explored this choice recently and made some adjustments with the "I want to play Petruchio" conceit. Now, I'm just a sullen, moody actor who has to be massaged into playing Kate. Wait - maybe it is me . . .

Griffen came to rehearsal recently - another childcare snafu - but it was fun to have him. He went backstage exploring and the first thing he asked was, "How do the actors get back and forth?" He couldn't find the crossover right away and was concerned. I was so proud - my little theatre brat. I thought of my time with Fava last summer, and the continual presence of his son Farrucio. I'm glad and grateful to be raising kids in the arts, snafus and all. Later, Griff and I watched The Empire Strikes Back at home, and I thought: if Mark Hamil can act with a big puppet, then by God so can I.

Speaking of Fava, I've seen the tendency in our rehearsals I noticed in his workshop: actors getting really loud and "grabby" when confronted by comic territory they don't get yet. I mean big, noisy acting and the urge to physically touch one's scene partner. Then, the slowing, calming and specifying.

Ceal and I drop into a stripped down, super direct communication style which is both refreshing and challenging. It's challenging because we put each other on the spot so quickly and with no chit chat. Part of it is that we know each other so well and so can dispense with the pleasantries. Part of it, I'm convinced, is that we are both Quakers. Speaking simply and with integrity, you know. We were joking during a break about our mutual habit of taking off-hand intros like "What's new?" literally, and having an awkward pause as we stop and try to formulate honest responses. Part of it too is that Ceal is sick, and she has no extra energy. I'm worried about her.

Over the weekend, and into the beginning of this week, we have been confronting the end of the play and the way K and P's relationship transforms. The key is in 4.5, when K agrees it is the moon which shines so bright in the middle of the day. It was agony trying to make this something other than K caving, K submitting, K losing, K just playing along so they can get to Padua. Initially, I was drawn to the "where two raging fires meet" choice: some kind of enormous fight about the sun being called the moon resulting in a screaming crying tantrum by K, followed by tenderness from P. We worked on this approach for two grueling hours. But finally, I think we realized the danger in trying to torture the text in to something it just isn't. Now, we've arrived at something more true to the play, which has more to to with the "journey into laughter" idea and P's continuous exhortations that K "be merry". You'll just have to come see it to see how this choice turns out . . .

Ironically, the big speech of 5.2 is turning out to be not as much of a worry as 4.5. After some intense homework, I'm finding my way through it, tracing who I feel like she's speaking to, chunk to chunk. By "not as much of a worry", I mean that if, by the time we get to the big speech, we can convince the audience that K and P have a relationship they can respect, or at least be charmed and not offended by, then the big speech won't grate quite so much. It is what it is. There's nothing I can do to hide what she's saying. I'm just trying to make what she's saying make some sense given the world she's living in and the people she's surrounded by.

Tomorrow, we have our first run through. Deep breath.

We rehearsed on stage today, which was a treat. The design is based around a big red circle on the floor (wrestling mat? circus ring?). The other neat feature is the actual proscenium stage. The ring is floor-level, and the audience surrounds you on three sides. On the fourth side, the proscenium stage lifts up about four feet, allowing for grand entrances and attention-grabbing staging. Movable stair units connect the proscenium to the ring.

We worked with our hot, six foot tall fight choreographer, Samantha. In an appropriate gender bending twist, she goes by Sam, but is most un-Samlike. She's just beautiful, and, to top it off, she kicks ass - or she can make it look like she does on stage. She worked with Tom and me on the comic dance in the middle of the wooing scene and then we created the "wrestle" at the end of it. It's literally over the top - very WWF. Today, suddenly, the scene became fun. Tom and I know enough about it that we've started to play it.

We were also stimulated today by a small unannounced audience: Charles, the artistic director, several women whom I took to be Lantern board members, and then the Duchess of Comcast herself, Suzanne Roberts. Ms. Roberts is one of Philadelphia's most generous artistic patrons, and I watched Charles sit next to her and chat quietly while we worked. Apparently, she played Kate many years ago, and even though we'd finished with the wooing scene by the time she arrived, we were quietly instructed by the stage manager to go back and run it one more time for the Duchess. I don't know how she felt about it, but the other ladies giggled a bit. Without a bit of remorse I thought, we're not so far from the King's Men, performing for royal patrons to ensure our very survival.

Had a bit of an epiphany about the final speech. Different parts of it are for different people on the stage: the widow, Bianca and Petruchio. I had been thinking of it as this set piece, delivered to the assembled wedding party. But even though everyone hears it, I think it's quite intimate in places. Began to memorize it. Almost there.

Late last week, I had a child care melt down in the middle of rehearsal. My cell phone vibrated in my pocket mid-scene - it was Ella's day care. During break I listened to the message: Ella had thrown up mid morning. Susan was out of town, and I was locked in till four. During the next break, I had a comic sequence of talking to Susan on the cell phone while the artistic director was waving the office phone at me, which I picked up, only to have the cell phone go off again. Ultimately, our super-sitter was able to pick her up. It turned out she was fine.

Remember when there were no cell phones?

I have extolled the virtues of the citizen actor, but this is the challenge, isn't it? You want a life that has more than your art, sometimes that "more" intrudes.

But on to the shrew.

Walking to rehearsal recently, I thought, Kate is the older sister I always wished I'd had. We could have made each other happy and staved off the other's particular misery. And so begins the work beneath the scansion, beneath the memorization. So begins the complex work of exploring this question: who is this woman to me? And then, following that question into jungle thickets, I find other ones, like: how do I feel about "woman", about femininity, about sexism, about courtship and marriage?

I will leave you dangling now, the public aspect of the blog having a self-censuring effect. But I will tell you this: these are dark pathways for me, moody, hot and tender. The personal energies around them for me now include both ancient wounds, and fresh, stinging jibes. Kate is a wounded woman, and I have been raised by, in love with and at war with wounded women much of my life.

There is an immediate connection I have to her. We finally have a rehearsal hoop skirt for me, and I while I love exploring it, I feel ridiculous in it. So the Ben-as-Kate sensation mirrors Kate's own sensation of being held up to public ridicule early in the play, especially if the initial cage entrance holds. Fiona Shaw, in the article of interviews I keep re-reading, talks about being the only woman in the room frequently in rehearsal, and how that informed many of the choices she made as an actress. I can relate to that sensation of feeling like "the other".

Re-reading that article, I realized that one advantage I have being a man playing Kate is that I don't feel the need to "represent all women" with my choices. How could I? Nor do I feel like I have to navigate some man's thinly veiled sexism in a working relationship, something the actresses talk about having to do frequently with male co-stars or male directors. Juliet Stevenson remarks that she felt her choices sometimes over-compensated for the sexist atmosphere she sensed in the rehearsal room.

These are brilliant actresses in this article - all British. It made me think again about the difference between American and British notions of "actress" (or "actor" for that matter). Certainly there are American actresses as smart and articulate, but I don't think we cultivate those qualities. Perhaps it's a generalization, but I worry "actress" in America leads to American Idol. Compare with Fiona Shaw, who has the confidence to complain about incompetent directors "who cram the area between the text and the performance with 'interpretation' and allow it to masquerade as creativity."

Another actress, Paola Italian Last Name, used a phrase about Katherine which jumped out at me: "the journey into laughter". Yes, this is the journey I want to embark on: out of the darkness of bitterness, grief and anger and into the freedom of humor and lightness, laughter and hope. But enough with these Brits, and back to the murky question I keep dodging: who will Ben's Kate be?

Commedia side-bar: Tranio and Biondello are directly descended from 1st and 2nd zanni. Baptista is a de-fanged Pantalone. Lucentio is the heroic lover, Biancha the Enamorata. Kate? She's a kind of twisted, dark Servetta, and Petruchio a heroicized Capitano.

Finally, today, we came to The Speech. "The speech is your friend, Ben" Ceal said smiling. Still un-memorized, I read it through exploring some of Ceal's staging ideas. I wasn't actually "doing" it. I was reciting it. It's actually a beautifully written and constructed speech, as long as you don't listen to what she's saying. Later, Ceal, Tom and I sat and talked about it.

"The most important idea in it to me, " I said, "is Kate's notion that fighting is wrong, that conflict solves nothing. And it feels like it needs to be something she's saying mostly to, or for, Petruchio." We agreed to devote an hour or two just to the speech later in the week. And I panicked. Next week is the week before tech.

The all-male cast settled around folding tables and read through the play, with two women at the helm: Dael, our stage manager and Ceal our director. I will leave the import of their distinctive and similar Celtic names for someone else to figure out.

We read through it rapidly, something that happens in a cast of relative strangers, as if to leave the fewest possible options for one of our peers to pass a negative judgment on us. It's a trend I regret, and I found myself purposely putting the breaks on and trying to make eye contact, especially with Tom, my big bearish Petruchio. He reminds me of Jeff Daniels, only Tom's a bit more dangerous.

Ceal is choosing to make the all-maleness an overt gesture - no one will be trying to impersonate a woman with some kind of be-wigged gender transformation. She's cut out a bit of the play's prologue and we will be introduced as a contemporary all-male company of players. We are contriving that the "actor" I play isn't thrilled to have to play Kate, even though he knows the role. He wanted to play Petruchio. Whether we'll be able to get that across in the five minutes of prologue we have remains to be seen.

Kate enters in a cage on wheels, pushed on stage by Baptista. I will be dressed in a hoop skirt stripped of fabric, so that the bike shorts I was wearing as "actor" are clearly visible. I will have some kind of corset on, and maybe a bonnet. The other big concept is that Bianca will be, initially, a doll/puppet operated by an actor who later morphs in to an actual, cross-gender Bianca by the end of the play.

During a break I snuggled with Tom, who I know, but not well, from his acting work in the community. He and Ceal were in a production of Tracy Letts' The Man From Nebraska recently. "Let's get used to this, sweetheart!" I said, my face buried in the chest of sweater, which is about where I meet him when we both are standing (a comment on my stature as much as his). One of his lines leapt out at me at the read through. In 3.1 he says something like "To me she's married, and not to my clothes." And throughout I heard for the first time P's emphasis on being attached to what's beneath, and his distain for fashion, customs and manners.

Through the first few day of rehearsal - conducted in the Lantern's dungeon, barely warmed by two massive free-standing kerosene heaters - I noticed the peculiar aspect of the all male cast. Firstly, I miss the girls! There is something absent from our proceedings, a lightness and sparkle that comes from actresses at the outset. We each began doing variations of our alpha male routines, cordial but distant, some of us (like me) sticking to the periphery, testing the waters before diving in. I think too, there is a collective sense of challenge, the knowledge that we're up against a tough one using a broad conceit (all guys) with three weeks and tech to get it together.

Straight off we confronted the doll. In one of those weird life-patterns (as a Quaker I name it God talking), for the second time in six months I find myself playing a woman in a classical play tormenting a doll onstage. This was Louise's great gag in The Imaginary Invalid last fall. Again, someone else will have to tell me what it means. Yesterday, we experimented with me attacking the doll in a variety of ways, with Keith as a kind of on-stage puppeteer playing Bianca's voice. Sometimes I held the doll, sometimes he did. There is something undeniably creepy and brilliant about making Bianca a doll, but it's really hard to act with. Especially if you're trying to unearth the anguish of human relationship while doing so.

Tom and I also had a first go at the wooing scene, stumbling off book, calling for lines, and had our first big smooch at the end of it, which surprised me by how easy it felt. Not that I was feeling "Eww, I have to kiss a guy", but in the back of my mind, there's the thought. I'm actually more concerned about the response we'll get from student matinees when Tom's and my lips meet. Ceal wants us to "wrestle" during the end of the wooing scene, coming out of K's desire to leave and P's preventing her. So Tom and I marked through some silly, awkward grips and pushes today while we barked our way through the scene. I naturally released into him as me, in other words, without worrying much about "being a woman" or "how Kate would do this". It felt freeing, and I realized that it does for Kate too. Finally, a man who can take her!

"OK, I'll just say it:" Ceal said abruptly, "I think Kate wants to be tamed." I think I think so too, but at what price? Ceal gave me some scholarship to read about Shrew. I have such a low tolerance for scholarly writing that most of it I couldn't bear. But there was one article which was a series of interviews with actresses who have played Kate, including Fiona Shaw and Sinead Cusak. These two actresses drew my attention to Kate's silence. There are many scenes she's in where she doesn't say much, and I was instantly attracted to the arc of woman who begins in menacing watchfulness, punctuated by startling outbursts, and finds her poetic voice thought the course of the play, goaded on by an eccentric man she becomes fascinated by. Shaw points out that P takes a big risk at the end: he has no idea what K is going to say. And then out she comes with the infamous speech.

Of that speech the famous actresses had contradictory things to say: Cusak that it could only be depressing, Shaw that it was an act of liberation within boundaries. And my director? After the read through, and after I confessed to the cast my fear of that speech, Ceal put her arm around me and said, "About that speech. I think it's very complicated." Sometimes, early on, it's nice to be get a little confirmation.

Some thoughts on scansion:

There are interesting missing feet in the wooing scene, implying, perhaps, pauses. A friend said to me recently, "Remember, they've never laid eyes on each other until that scene." I imagine stunned, almost deer in the headlights moments. Or is it love at first sight speechlessness?

Kate is brimming with irregularities in the first half of the play: trochees, inverted lines, 4 foot lines, 6 foot lines and a curious anapestic anomaly which repeats in several places in the play. It sounds like this: "What, in the midst of the street?" But she evens out in the second half, and the final speech is almost completely standard. When I showed my scored script to my students, one of them said of the final speech, "She's been tamed by then."

My queasiness has returned. I so dearly wanted to arrive with the lines learned. Ha! Not going to happen. What with family crises and the simple weight of the rest of my life it's just not going to happen. Still, I feel like the lines will come quickly.

In other venues I sing the praises of the citizen actor: one who lives a rich and multi-faceted life in which acting is but one (crucial) part. But this is the down side. When kids have to be picked up from school and classes taught and dishes cleaned, the vain wish to show up memorized becomes first a nagging irritant, then a tired joke.

Rehearsals begin Tuesday.