Showman/Shaman - Taming of the Shrew

Shrewpost 15: A letter from Kate

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Thu, 03 May 2007 06:59:17 -0700

Dear Ben,

Thanks for bringing me to life, or should I say, banging your head against the shape Will made for me. Whatever I am, I'm not easy. You tried, and in some places you got closer to me than in other places. The fact of your genitals was interesting to me, and I'm not usually in favor of these cross-gender experiments. I'm an opportunity for a woman, so a part of me resents your work on me. God knows there aren't that many chances for women to bang their heads against me. I'm tempted to make a saucy remarked about being banged by a man, but I'll resist.

My greatest problem with what you did with me is that it remained experimental. By that I mean, I kept waiting for you to make a stand, and you didn't. I think you were trying to play it safe, which is hard to do with me. I am, essentially, unsafe - for men, for women, for everyone. You were trying not to offend anyone. But Ben, my reason for being is offense. You can't really bring me to life without offending someone, or at least scaring the hell out of a few people. You found some of my fury in the beginning, especially in the cage. My fury was undermined by the doll in act two - ah well. I was not fond of the doll, I look forward to tormenting a real person in that scene. It's really the only scene in which you see how brutal I've become. But I appreciated how hurt and angry you were at my father.

I liked the wooing scene, I liked how physical was. You found my delight in sparring, competing and winning. How satisfying it was to end up "on top". And you discovered how good if felt to be praised, especially in public. You see, Ben, I have never been praised. I, and women like me everywhere and from all times, are ridiculed when we are seen at all. I represent the "ugly" women, large yet invisible, the ones who cease to exist when a slender, shapely female walks by. Maybe the doll wasn't such a bad idea after all.

This is why I resented it that you lost weight to play me. I understand why you did it. But if you really wanted to know how it is to be me, you should have gained weight, grown a hairy mole on your chin and worn glasses. You know how you self-consciously played with that little fat roll the girdle produced when you sat down backstage? Now imagine the fat exploding like bread dough out from between the top of your pants and the bottom of the girdle. Imagine the awkward glances from people who don't want to be caught staring at you. Imagine the jokes, the loneliness, the humiliation. I had two options: submission and death, or fury and life.

I know, I know - then how could you submit to Petruchio, you're asking, and then promote obedience as the ideal relationship for women to have with their husbands? But this is where you got it right, or at least came close. It's not submission to him, it's something else, something much closer to love, but infused with a letting go. Your focus on exploring humor, absurdity, merriment with him was dead on. What I think you missed (you and him) is the cost of such a letting go: what, exactly, did you both let go of, out there, under the sun/moon, after the word "forward"? I can't tell you what it is (that's my mystery), but I will tell you that it was dear to you and dear to him. A hint: think of the grief/relief the alcoholic feels when finally putting down the drink. Sun/moon. Grief/relief.

And the big speech? Good for you for understanding that it is something spoken at a specific time, at a specific place and for specific people. People forget that when Will conceived me, that speech was an astonishing act of transformation. Imagine again the fat woman with the hairy mole saying that speech. Imagine her, the butt of a thousand jokes, speaking it sincerely and with love. It wasn't only the players on stage at the Globe whose jaws dropped. The comic groteseque was suddenly to be taken seriously! You found my delightful domination of everyone present - even my husband, who thinks I'll say something quaint and obedient, but is knocked over by the 43 lines of eloquence I come up with the spot. Finally I am in complete control, at the center of the party, putting people in their places, celebrating others and speaking a brand new truth which has saved me. The essence of it is this: stop fighting. Yes, yes, yes - the rest of it is objectionable by your standards, so many years in the future, but I am not of your time. I am of a time when human beings had to fit in to a rigid order or there was chaos. That's just the way it was back then. You're all fond of thinking of Will's world as wispy and whimsical, but really, it was frequently appalling, often very violent and women were property (nothing surprising to us about Petruchio's "chattel" speech in act three). More often than not, the streets and alleys of Cheapside were scenes from nightmares. Now think again of that final speech, and you may understand how, in that context, it is a triumphant act for me.

Another thing I liked in your go at it, and this was also part of Will's design: Petruchio never hits me, though I hit him and many others (I can come close to killing Bianca in act two, but never mind). Given the culture of the time, in which women were beaten regularly and publicly, the idea he expresses - that he will "kill a wife with kindness" - was unusual to say the least. That he says it of a big, fat ugly woman who physically attacks anyone who upsets her was more than unusual, it was - to us back then - absurdly comic. Perverse as it may seem to you, the standard response to women like me back then was the boot or the back of the hand. So what I learn from him, and what I communicate in my way in the Big Speech, is that violence doesn't work, but love does. The absurdly comic becomes a pathway to revolutionary love (a love connected to the Gospels, by the way), couched in language acceptable to the time. You both got that, or got close to it, and in doing so, you honored me.

But my favorite time living inside you Ben wasn't in the play at all. It was when you donned that silly dress, put on those ear muffs and danced during your warm up. What strange and extraordinary music you listen to! How I have wanted to dance for all time, and how I wish that Will had put a dance for me his play. How sweet it was to feel your shyness as you started dancing among the other actors warming up, and the stage managers prepping. How wonderful when you stopped caring. Just know Ben, that you were not only dancing for me, and finding the girl inside you who longs for love and light and release the same as the other girls, the smaller ones who seem to attract attention and love without effort, you were dancing for the large and invisible women everywhere, yes even the ones who exist in your time. Maybe I'm not so far away after all.

Take this from me Ben: fighting no, loving yes, dance whenever possible.

Break a leg,

Kate

Shrewpost 14: unexpected magic

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 15:40:06 -0700

Had one of those odd, magical shows today. It's a Saturday matinee and the weather, as if to compensate for the extended winter we've been having, is mighty fine. We thought no one would come this afternoon. I had our babysitter meet me and Griff and Ella at the theatre so they could see the play. I thought there was just enough slapstick and physical comedy to keep them intrigued. Oh - and then Daddy in the dress, pretending to be a girl. So Karen comped them in (thanks Karen!) and I put them in the balcony, where I figure they could leave quietly if the fidgeting got too extreme.

Having my kids watch me perform is always a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I so want to share what I do with them (when it's appropriate). On the other, as a Dad, I am wired to hear every sound they make and amplify it times ten in my head. It's almost as if they're on stage with me. I remember having Sooz bring Ella to see me in a one-man play I did called Heckler. Ella couldn't have been more than a month old (what were we thinking?). Sooz put her in the sling and for the first act all I heard were her tiny little grunts and burps - you know, baby noises. Then, in the second act, Sooz stood in the aisle of this little theatre doing the Mommy dance with Ella in the sling. I'm still surprised I got any of my lines out.

Anyway, with the kids in the balcony, it wasn't a big deal today. But the audience! In the second act, Frank has an aside in act 4 just before Kate's outburst at Petruchio's house. Today, the ladies he spoke to almost answered, and I took a comic pause while he finished up his little tete a tete with them. Then he looked at me surprised and said "Oh, sorry!". Later, in the 4.5., I usually give Tom a comic take on the line "That have been so bedazzled by the (TAKE) sun!" Today, in the pause where the take is, an older woman in the front row said quite audibly, and with good humor, "Oh, whatever!" So I just took her in as the audience roared, and then I slowly shook my finger at her, as in, "Uh, no . . . "

Isn't this the magic of theatre - the irreplaceable live event, the thing that happens only once forever, the suddenly familial bond between actor and audience?

Shrewpost 13: the run begins

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:49:12 -0700

Tuesday, the students mostly slept. There were some gasps when Tom and I kissed, but generally it was anti-climactic.

At the Wed. mat. we were giving away tickets. Depressing.

Friday night we had a raucus house and delivered a sparkling show. Friday night houses are usually dull, peopled with the well-to-do who can afford the pricey weekend tickets. Actors usually enjoy the mid-week evening houses best, when the commoners come, the ones who don't mind going out mid week to see theatre. These folks usally feel engaged. They have made some sacrifice to be with us, financial and otherwise. We feel it and respond. But this past Friday took us by surprise. Maybe this is how things are at The Lantern?

We had two shows Sunday, during the monsoon. Executing the crossover across the roof was like taking on a howling gale. The lights were possessed, and Dael had to improvise cues when a breaker kept blowing, probably because of the water leaking though every crevice in the old building. We were adjusting our blocking, creeping towards the lighted spots, trying to look nonchalant. And some orchestra was rehearsing in the church next to us, so at random moments one could hear an echo of this great Wagnerian swoon coming through the walls. That with the weird light made for a strange show indeed. We were all spent and punchy backstage. Conversation alternated between the gutter and the goofy.

We have dropped into that workman-like relation to the piece that comes around the second week. We own it, warts and all, and we are more relaxed with it. I sense an ease on stage that leads to new discoveries. Mine are coming mostly in the second half, even 4.5. It seems to work best the more Tom and I can connect. A friend said to us afterwards recently that he felt like Petruchio and Kate had this secret joke that made it all make sense, even though he didn't know exactly what the joke was. Yes, that's it in a nutshell. How satisfying when someone gets it unprompted. Other friends have been flattering too. Thank God for them. It's not that what they say is always meaningful in itself. It's more emotional than that. We need the affirmation, the support, the reinforcement.

We're 1 for 3 for reviews. Whatever - I knew this one wasn't getting any raves. At least no one was nasty. One thought the all-male cast was all for naught. Another said the misogyny was unaffected by our efforts. But a third was complementary. I experieinced that curious tension in the dressing room in the days after the reviews. Our strange male reserve acquired a kind of hardened texture to it, as if we were all wearing a layer of lacquer. And of course we were. All performers do. It's our psychic armour, fending off critics, our own doubts and life generally. How amazing that any of us can lose it in time, the lacquer melting off at "places" revealng our tenderness, so that we can step in to the light in front of strangers wide open and ablaze.

Shrewpost 9: Transformation

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:33:11 -0700

4.5 has reared its ugly head again, late in the game. Our journey into laugher was feeling hollow, forced, contrived. I have always felt that pretending to laugh on stage is worse than pretending to cry. But that's just me. Anyway, I expressed my frustration about it during a note session and we went back to work on it last night, after a run-through.

Tom, John (Vincencio), Frank (Hortensio), Ceal and I sat around the ring of the stage and talked about the scene for a bit. Poor Keith had been called back to Whole Foods. We were oddly spaced apart, each of staking out unique positions in the room, not by design but by chance or inclination. It felt like we were satellites circling an invisible sun. I began by asking - again - what everyone thought was happening in the scene. The conversation felt labored and strained, with Ceal quiet and listening. We spoke the scene through from our dispersed positions a couple of times and got nowhere. My frustration grew. We finally had to acknowledge that this was the most major wrenching of the script we were doing. As written, it's a scene about K caving, giving in. We are looking for "the contrivance of least offense" to pull K's transformation into a 21st century context we can all live with. Finally, we landed on a choice involving P having a "tantrum" - or at least sinking into some kind of agonized despair at Kate's refusal "play his game." K sees the effect her choices are having on him, and comforts him. While rehearsing, I looked up from the embrace Tom and I found ourselves in as we worked through this choice and there were tears in Ceal's eyes. "She's learning compassion" she said.

Then, this morning, my Buddhist Mom sent me a Unitarian sermon by Kurt Kuhwald. It's an extraordinary piece called "I am carried by a great wind across the sky" - a quote from a Chippowa song. Late in the sermon, he lists seven "great demands" he has articulated in response to our poor world's dilemmas. The first great demand is Be Loyal and Dedicated to your Transformation. "Get it, a very deep and visceral level, that you do need to change: that you, along with all of us, have been wounded by empire, by parents, by school, by lovers, who didn't know any better. You have been wounded by by your attempts, all these years, to protect yourself from further pain, and to gain some sense of self value. And, along with these truths, you also have the capacity for liberation, both internal and external. Be loyal to yourself in that transformation and in all your efforts to grow. It is our true work." Yeah . . . that's what I want Kate to see, somehow, in the tiny, two-page act 4 scene 5. And, of course, it would be nice for some of that to rub off on me, too.

The other Great Demands?

2. Cultivate Intention, Then Surrender
3. Lean into Obstructions
4. Give.
5. Encourage Curiosity
6. Let Joy Alone
7. Be Patient, Then Dare to Reach Out Boldly at Any Appearance of Light, of Relief, of Compassion.

As far as I can tell, this sermon is not available on line yet.

Is there a connection between our work on 4.5, my dark mood these days and my Mom's email? Yes. It's God. See, I'm a Quaker, so I choose to locate God in the events and confluences of my life. This is deeply informed by what I learned in The Rooms: there are no coincidences. God speaks to me through patterns and poems in my life, and sometimes quite directly through people. That's called ministry, and as a Quaker, I don't confine ministry to pulpits or people in robes. Continuing revelation leads me to sense God hovering in the midst of artists working together, in the electronic transmissions between loved ones and certainly, certainly in the energy emanating from the luminous sun of our play, when we all - actors, designers, director, playwright - are in synch.

My acting is ministry, and as such, I will bring a rehearsal to a grinding halt in order to be sure we are taking responsibility for what we are sending out.

By the way, they're not bike shorts. They're bike . . . tights. They go down to my ankles. Kate's costume is a fluid business still. I had an odd head piece until last night, when the production team took pity on me and scrapped it. But the general consensus is that they want my (balding, crew-cut) head covered with something. Just not sure what yet.

And found this on the web yesterday: that's Sir Lawrence Olivier as - you guessed it - Katarina the Shrew. What company!

Shrewpost 8: Darkness

nospam@example.com (Benjamin Lloyd) — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 12:46:48 -0700

More true confessions. There is such an awesome sorrow in my personal and professional life right now that I feel my darkness bleeding on my fellows in rehearsal. I am like Pig Pen, except that the cloud that follows me around is not made of dust and dirt, but of bitterness and heartbreak; anger and confusion. The particular weather systems that have given birth to this cloud will remain veiled here. I am not interested in psycho-cyber exhibitionism. This is a blog post about my work on the character called Katarina in Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew. But I cannot write honestly about this journey anymore without getting honest about the intense interplay between my life and my work.

This interplay is at the center of the actor's art. The "method-ists" would have us make a temple in which to worship it, fanning the flames with which to cook the connections between our lives and art, making our own psyches into narcissistic offerings to "emotional truth". There has been a backlash of late against psychological realism because of the excesses of some mid-twentieth century teachers. There are many expressions of this backlash: the popularity of the Lecoq school and its descendants, renewed interest in commedia dell'Arte, and a variety of po-mo academic approaches which regard any attention to the emotional lives of characters and actors as irrelevant at best and self-indulgent at worst. Some in this backlash would have us believe that the actor's personal life should be sealed off from the thing he creates, creating a false objectivism more suitable to the hierarchical needs of auteur directors. I love many aspects of this backlash (see my blog posts on the commedia workshop I took with Antonio Fava as evidence), but I am equally mindful that the actor IS the art of acting. What you see on stage - whether it be in Chekhov, Shakespeare or Goldoni - is a creature with a beating heart and a mind full of memories and dreams, a soul full of victory and despair.

The truth, of course, is as Stanislavsky has taught us: somewhere in the middle, and more one way than the other depending on the play at hand. If I know anything about acting, it's this: it resists dogma from all quarters, it is not an art of absolutes, it is eternally malleable and quintessentially personal. It cannot be spoken of meaningfully in generalities. It requires a specific focus which names and defines an event and all the players in it. Thus this blog.

I am a teacher of psychological realism, and so I have a front-row seat from which to observe all the ways my tender young charges navigate the connections they feel between the characters they are working on and the drama of their own lives. To say that an actor's own anguish or joy should not effect her work on a role is to engage in a kind of willfull blindness and aesthetic repression. It reminds me of those brutal Victorian child-rearing pamphlets in which children were beaten into a kind expressionless obedience, and their feelings were regarded as insubordinate nuisances. My work as a teacher of acting - once the class reaches an advanced stage and an atmosphere of trust is established - revolves around helping my students be sensitive to, but not overwhelmed by, the feelings their work unlocks. Sometimes my work is in pushing them towards empathy, drawing more direct lines between their experience and their character's. Sometimes it is in damping down those connections, lest the performance becomes a morass of personal release. And sometimes it is about helping a student face the fear they feel at the journey their character may take them on.

Such is the juncture I stand in with Kate. Perhaps it's not fear I feel exactly. Perhaps it is that I so identify with her raging state at the outset that I resist the transformation our production is attempting. And yet I have described rehearsal several times recently as "my refuge". I am deeply aware of using my journey in this play as an escape, a way to forget for a moment the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I am aware of channelling a feminine rage I am all too familiar with through Kate early on in the play, and of feeling grateful for the relief that channel affords me. I am aware of the way her journey into laughter changes me, lightens me, and how I suddenly find myself chatting and joking with my fellows, after having entered rehearsal in a shroud of gloom. I am aware of a deep tenderness in my kisses with Tom, and I find myself inadvertently hanging on him during breaks. I am aware of the hole he is filling temporarily. Strangely, I am aware of an equitable darkness in him, and some kind of secret sharing of off-stage misery, completely unspoken between us, fueling our connection none the less. Tom too sets himself apart in rehearsal: quiet, mysterious, melancholy.

What else can I do as an actor but bring who I am today into the concoction of influences we call rehearsal? Should I resist the catalytic response my performance has to the dark energy I bring to it? Should I cling to my personal despair and be unmoved by Kate's transformation? Or should I be grateful for the blessings of a creative life, in which the vehicle for my salvation - Katarina Minola - is simultaneously a gift I offer to my community? Is this not a variant of what Grotowski had in mind when watching Cieslak in The Constant Prince: the sacred actor offering himself as a sacrifice?

Okay, so it's a bit hubristic to make that comparison. But I remember when I first read Towards A Poor Theatre about 25 years ago, how that idea leapt out at me as true, and how I felt ashamed of my own spiritual yearning provoked by the idea of the sacred actor. I am ashamed of that yearning no longer. It's the only way this bitch of a life makes any sense to me: as a spiritual calling like the rest, requiring personal sacrifice, devotion to others and service to high ideals.

Perhaps the degree of my identification with Kate can be summed up in an exchange I had recently with a reporter from a gay weekly here in Philadelphia. He was invited by the theatre to interview several cast members for a piece he is writing on our all-male production. "How is it playing a woman?" he asked me, in the first of what I assume will be an endless iteration of that query. "I thought it was going to be a big deal, " I replied, "but it isn't. I don't actually feel like I'm playing a woman. I feel like I'm playing a person: a person in a very tough situation who is transformed by love."

May it be true for me as it is for Kate.