A Little Help?

If you happen to find yourself near a park where some kind of ballgame is being playing, and the ball gets loose and lands near you, chances are someone will yell, "a little help?" For whatever reason that seems to be the ball yard translation for "Can you throw my ball back to me please, since you're standing there?"

It's easy enough to do, so I venture to say most people do it. I would, and have. It doesn't ruin my day, and it lets the folks get on with their game quicker. It's a nice thing to do.

Sometimes I think audience members for classical shows, such as those of Shakespeare, may be thinking, "a little help?" when they don't follow what's going on. At least those who are not tuned into Shakespearean language and such.

That is of course assuming that they come to see the show in the first place, and haven't dismissed it right away as soon as they hear it is Shakespeare. (Or Greek Tragedy, or something of that kind.)

I feel that audiences may get more out of such plays if productions were willing to give them "a little help".

For this point, I'll stay with Shakespeare. (But it could apply to any classical theatre, so long as it's in the public domain.) I've been reading Shakespeare for years, and I still have trouble with some passages. That's the nature of his language, and how removed it is from our own in some ways. So when I think of someone who has never read it or seen it performed, I have no problem seeing why they would be reluctant to do so. I applaud people who say, "Sure, I'll try it anyway," but I can't blame those who feel intimidated by not knowing what the characters are saying, or what exactly is happening. It can be tricky. 

Yet I think Shakespeare has much to offer, both young and old alike. So if by doing a few unconventional things within the production of a Shakespeare play we can convince, say 30% of those who previously refused to watch to give it a try, why shouldn't we do that? A little help.

Actually, some productions do in fact do this, to a degree. Especially productions for younger audiences. (Though to me, when such productions eliminate all of Shakespeare's actual words, it defeats the purpose to somewhat.) But there are also shorter productions. Workshops. Handouts to explain the scenes. You can even of course go online and look into the play before you go see it. Numerous ways to see what is going on in a Shakespeare play you might not otherwise understand.

Reasonable, but problematic for me in a few ways. To begin with, not everybody wants to invest in a workshop before a play, or a talk-back afterwards. Theatre is suffering from dwindling attendance as it is. If our goal is to get people back into theaters to enjoy productions of Shakespeare and other such classical plays, I don't think we should expect people to spend even more time at the theatre.

As for handouts, they can be useful, but how many average theatre goers can either memorize the entire thing before the curtain comes up, or find a way to read it in the dark during the performance without distracting everyone around them? It needs to be as little work as possible if audiences not familiar with such works are to embrace the notion of actually watching and enjoying a performance.

One possible solution? (And I imagine somebody somewhere has done this, but I'd like to see more of it.) Have a host. A chorus of sorts, if you will. (Which Shakespeare himself did, to a degree, in Henry V.) A Meta-Character. Perform The Merchant of Venice as a full, regular production, but  before each act, (or even before key scenes) have this Meta-Character speak to the audience in modern language in order to guide them into what is about to happen, or to remind them of where they are in the story. 

I don't mean to bring up the lights every half-hour and clear the actors off the stage to make room for some pompous stuffed shirt to come out and deliver a verbal Cliff Notes Lecture. I mean come up with creative ways to create a character within the action but not directly affected by it, to move in and out of the story as needed to make sure the audience is still hanging in there. (Sort of like Arthur Miller did with Alfieri in A View From A Bridge.) Let this Meta-Character establish a relationship with the audience at the start, and let him reappear to tidy things up a bit for those not as used to the language. He doesn't have to explain every word of every line, he merely needs to keep the boat sailing. Just make sure everyone knows he himself isn't a Shakespearean creation. 

And let his lines be brief, but memorable. Suited to the mood of the piece, but removed enough from it so that the audience still feels they are not left alone to fend for themselves. Let him know more than the audience does, but also allow him to discover things and reflect on them as they happen.

It doesn't have to happen for every production. I still want to see conventional Shakespeare performed. But I have more experience with it, and can enjoy it more than less experienced people. Have a "Shakespeare for Rookies" production once in a while, with this Meta-Character. Bill it as a more accessible version, and try to get more people to come. (Especially on the community level.) Then, surprise, what the audiences see is still 95% a standard Shakespeare play. By the end they may not even feel they need Meta-Character.

And that's when they become willing to go to a more conventional production.

I've shared this idea with a few people before, and their reactions are usually negative. Though my views on this seem to be unpopular if not controversial, I'll respond to a few common complaints about this approach.

-It will take people out of the story. 

Why does it have to take people out of the story? Perhaps for people already in love with and familiar with what is happening, there may the briefest of speed bumps. But if what those who already know the play would call a speed bump should make certain things less confusing to a newbie, would that not tend to keep them in the story, instead of zoning out of it, waiting for intermission? Or worse, just leaving? Besides, if you put a little time and thought into it, you can come up with ways for this to be interesting in its own right. You're an artist. Think of something.

-It's too much extra work.

So suddenly doing good theatre is supposed to be free of hard work? I don't know many actors who would refuse to work harder on a scene if they knew that the reaction from the audience would be twice as positive. This bit of extra work would, I strongly believe, allow more audiences to enjoy more of the play.

-It insults the intelligence of the audience.

Sometimes I think actors, playwrights and directors that are in love with their own vision, no matter how complex, tend to convince themselves that audiences are sure to "get it" if they are only left alone, and we don't insult their intelligence. The problem here is that if people actually don't understand what we are trying to do after all, we are forced to conclude that they must be unintelligent, and not that what we are doing needs work. But here is a newsflash: Intelligent people can also find Shakespeare confusing. I already mentioned that sometimes I myself do. 

Plus there are all kinds of intelligence, none of which bestows upon someone an instant knowledge without study of some kind. Take those do-it-yourself pottery mills, where you go in and make your wife a vase with her name on it for your anniversary. Is it an insult to your intelligence when the people who run those places explain how the wheels and the clay and the other equipment work? Are you stupid because you have to be shown the first few times? Or is that merely learning something new, and eventually being able to do it on your own, if you so choose? Why can't Shakespeare be approached in the same way? To assume it cannot be, and that audiences will forever be ruined to "pure" Shakespeare if these ideas are adopted is the greater insult to intelligence. 

This leads into a similar complaint:

-When performed well, any audience will be able to understand Shakespeare's language. There is no need for help.

I will concede that those who are trained and have practiced performing Shakespeare will be able to deliver a good portion of his lines in such a way that many will be able to sense the emotion and the motivation, and infer the rest from context. That's true with any play. But some rely so much on the perfect recitation of the meter and lines to produce clarity that it borders on a religion. As though Shakespeare's work were not writing, but a mystical spell which, when cast properly, removes all barriers in everyone that hears it, thus magically making its purpose obvious. No matter that the guy in Row G, Seat 114 has never read or listened to a word of Shakespeare in his life. Get the meter exactly correct, and he will instantly get it.

The "Open Sesame" of the theatre world.

The truth is, Shakespeare has endured for centuries because it is powerful and usually beautifully written. But people have also grown up hating it, and it is losing ground as time goes on. I don't think it will ever die. Still, need not hobble around, begging for younger people, or non-scholars, or those with shorter attention spans to love it if we could rid ourselves of this fallacy that well performed Shakespeare will always equate to well-understood Shakespeare. If all people truly understood it when it was performed well, do you think there would be so much aversion to it today? I don't. 

Besides, I'd rather keep the general spirit of the piece, with a bit of an aid for newcomers, than keep every word exactly as is, but resort to stunts. I think this happens quite a bit among the "purists" of the language. They keep the words and structure the same, but add antics and side shows in order to make it "more accessible" to modern audiences. (See here.) If greater accessibility is the goal, why does it matter what sort of device is employed?

This next response is one of the most common, but perhaps the least defensible in my view:

-It's arrogant/inappropriate to edit Shakespeare.

This is to laugh. Shakespeare himself sliced and diced work all the time. That of others, and that of himself. His contemporaries did so. Speeches or even whole new scenes were added to productions of old plays just to fit in with the specific event for which they were being performed. Other scenes would be cut from plays for the same purpose. That was Elizabethan playwrighting. 

Yet forget Shakespeare's own time. Look at today. A full length Hamlet takes about four and a half hours to perform, depending on a few things. Professional companies edit that play. The histories have been staged with guns and tanks. That's quite an edit, even if you keep all of the words the same. Olivier himself edited the words, and not just for his movies. The point being that the Bard's work gets edited. Added to. Subtracted from. Adapted. Re-imagined. Does any of that prevent "purist" productions from ever taking place again for those who want them? Does doing any of that take away from the majesty of the original work? Or does it enhance it, and make people sit up and realize there may be something there more worth exploring than they originally thought?

A little help. That's all I think it would take to win a few more fans to classical plays and stories. They recieve it when they read the plays in certain volumes, via footnotes and such. Why not when they come to see them? Obviously, having this Meta-Character in a production is not going to convince a hoard of new people to come see Shakespeare. It won't make everyone everywhere fall suddenly in love with Antigone. But is it really any less troublesome than assuming that if we do nothing at all and let everything be exactly as it is, the classics will come into their own again, and the public will embrace them? That hasn't exactly worked so far, and to continue on that track I fear will allow the continued disintegration of the public's interest in these beautiful, important, human works. And that would be a tragedy I'd need no help in understanding.

Bored with Boards

There are several large and well known online gathering places for community theatre enthusiasts such as myself. Message boards. Blogs. But I confess that I am not a part of any of them.

I have tried to be more than once at various points over the years. I may even try to be so again in the future, but I might now. I just cannot "get into" such online communities, even though I know that I should.

I am uncertain why it never seems to take. You'd think with all of the potential benefits of connecting with other actors like myself in other theatres around the country I would jump at the chance. And as I mentioned a few times before, I have. But after a short time it loses its appeal.

Maybe it is just the nature of message boards in general, but I tend to find the same situation in any theatre board I visit. The politics. The less than warm welcome new people receive. The dead threads that leave an open ended question unanswered for months sitting on the same forum right next to a post about something frivolous and irrelevant getting 156 responses and counting. A need to sell one's presence or one's concern before the tribe before any amount of attention is paid to what you say. It's maddening and deflating. If I wanted to bring up a subject and have nobody take an interest in it, I would just hang out in person with 80% of the people I know.

Perhaps such boards tend to attract mostly mainstream thinking. A "hotbed for the conventional" to coin a phrase. And while I am not one to push envelopes or challenge the status quo just for the sake of doing it, my ideas for acting, directing, publicizing and any number of other theatre related topics trend towards unconventional. You would think that artists, performers, and directors would be excited by such a challenge to the norm. And perhaps some are. Yet when I do express an opinion contrary to the standard acting or theatre practice, message board users have tended to respond with silence or with indignation.

Or perhaps I have just not found the right message board for community theatre.

In the end, I know that I need a fresh set of ears for some of my experiences. My theories. My ideas. I work with some talented, wonderful people in my local community theatre circle, but they are the same people over and over most times. The experiences are usually good ones around here, but at the same time I long for a different view from different people. Others who do love theatre, and know what they are talking about, but wouldn't have the slightest notion as to the politics of Theatre A in this town, or the nature of the casting preferences that are obvious in Theatre B. People who can talk of the nature of the craft and enjoyment of same, instead of gravitating towards local personality conflicts and specific tendencies of any given board of directors. I think we all benefit from new perspectives like that.

Any suggestions for such places for discussion online would be appreciated, though keep in mind I have visited the biggest three message boards already so far. Though not for years. Maybe I need to give them a try again.

Ex Nihilo

A church down the street from me was having an indoor yard sale the other day. The have plans to leave the building once their new facility is built nearby, so I imagine that is why. I had never been inside the building before, so out of curiosity, (more than my need for mismatched plates and coffee mugs) I went in.

The predictable collection of out of style clothes, ugly brick-a-brack, obscure book titles and stuffed animals was laid out in what I imagine is their soon to be abandoned social hall. Which interested me more than any of the stuff for sale.

For you see, there was a small stage at the end of this long room. Not simply a glorified platform but an actual stage. Proscenium arch, curtain, and what appeared to be a small backstage area, with access from another room. (The curtains were partially closed so it was hard to be certain.) My rough guess is that it was 20 feet wide maybe.

There was no permanent seating, so it I assume when the stage is used, if it ever is, it would be a folding chair sort of situation. Depending on how they were arranged, I figured you could probably seat between 80 and 100 people in the place, with room for an aisle.

Obviously I will not be able to buy this building when the congregation vacates it. Yet that didn't stop my from visualizing how much theatre could be done in this venue. Not all shows, of course. You wouldn't easily fit a production of South Pacific in there. But any number of smaller, intimate plays could find a home there. Especially those with minimal sets and scene changes. Minimalist plays, like the ones I like. Shakespeare could be done easily in this diminutive performance space. Theatre is begging to be performed here.

Not that a building has to even have a literal stage to be ideal for theatre. Literally right next door to this church is an long abandoned large storefront with huge windows that I have often envisioned as a potential site for minimalist productions as well. Down the block from that is yet another such abandoned building, complete with a raised floor that is even more suitable for the same purpose. (Brunswick, Maryland is a hopelessly dead city, in case you didn't already determine that.)

The point is, it all got me thinking again about how ubiquitous live theatre can be with the right amount of involvement and interest. This church's social hall had no special lighting, no flies, no cat walk. Yet it was just waiting for theatre. Same with the other buildings I mentioned. Theatre can be done just about anywhere so long as it is dry and safe for actors and audience. One doesn't have to look far to find all kinds of non-theater venues converts into theatres. Your town may have one. Either a permanent set up, or something that has been adapted for theatrical purposes for the length of a festival or a single weekend.

I am not a fan of performing outside, but many are, and if you are one such person, you literally have almost the whole world at your disposal for a stage. Fields. Hills. Clearings in the woods. (Just get proper permission of course!)

None of this is to suggest that I personally would want to perform Hamlet in any random location. I admit I enjoy the comforts of an actual stage, dressing room, and backstage. Yet the possibility that Hamlet, or King Lear, or Greek tragedy, or, if you have money to pay royalties for it, plays like Waiting for Godot can be performed anywhere there is room for an audience to sit fascinates and excites me. Theatre truly can be brought forth out of nothing. Ex nihilo.

As versatile as the live theatre experience can be, I wonder why it is not done more often. Is it that the modern digital age moves too fast to enjoy live theatre? That the society of iPhones and Google Reader just doesn't have the attention span to appreciate a play, even if for just a few nights at the local empty former Safeway that nobody else is using?

Is it geography? Are certain areas and cities less likely to embrace it than others? Perhaps this sort of "vagrancy theatre" happen quite often where you live.

Or are people not comfortable with the idea of watching a play in an empty warehouse? Or is it just prohibitively expensive to rent an empty building for a few weeks? That could be it too. I am not sure. I have never done it.

Whatever the reasons, it is unfortunate that it doesn't happen as often as I think it could. But then again, outside of my area, perhaps it does happen a lot more often.

Theatre is, or at least can be, almost everywhere, and I find that fascinating. Though I myself would not enjoy performing everywhere, (I am very much not a fan of the Shakespeare on Subway cars thing I have been reading about), I would perform in any of the venues on this very street that I mentioned. Furthermore I would attend a play someone else was putting on in such a venue.

Ex Nihilo. Out of nothing. That is what theatre can be.

Only the Lonely

A one-person show, or perhaps more accurately in this context, a "monodrama", is something I have wanted to try on stage for a while. Scores of examples abound, from Chekov's one-act, On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco, to the full length Give 'Em Hell, Harry! by Samuel Gallu. There are also collections such as Neil LaBute's Bash, which consists of several one acts, some of which have only one character.

I even have a few ideas in my own head for this type of show.

I have never attended such a presentation, and I don't know if it would be better to see one before trying it myself, or seeing it first before watching one. Certainly performing one myself would forever instill in me a greater appreciation for any one else who took it on.

Understand that it isn't ego which feed my desire to appear on stage alone. Nor is it a disdain for other actors. A performance of this variety would be twice as hard in some ways as any other show. Not just because all of the lines go to one person, and that person has no recourse from other actors should the stumble. But also because 100% of the time must the attention of the audience is completely on you.

In a standard show, a person has some break not only from their lines, but from the symbolic spotlight. If they are in the background for a scene, they of course should always be in character, because someone at some point could be looking at them. Yet even so the majority of the attention, expectations, and scrutiny are on others who at the time are the focus of the scene.

One doesn't get such a break with a one person show.

It's the same for an audience. Any variety in the experience must come from one actor, and the parts of the story he is telling at any given time. It is a delicate balance in a one person show to prevent the audience from being bored with you. For if they are tired of the one person in the show for even a moment, the entire production has failed.

This type of play does have its advantages, however, not the least of which is the great challenge to one's skills as an actor. If one can pull of such a show, that says a great deal about one's talents. And one will come out of the experience a stronger actor, almost no matter what happens.

Plus, 100% of the pacing and control would be in a single actor's hands. No adjustments to the decisions, mistakes or presence of another actor (of whatever talents) would have to be made during the course of the show or a scene. If I were the star of a one man show, I would only have to answer to me. Despite the extra "dangers" and work of such a situation, that freedom does hold a certain appeal for me, I must confess.

Without any figures and studies to back it up, my observation has been that community theatres rarely if ever produce such shows. Could it be that companies fear the talent pools are too small in a community to find an amateur with the chops to pull it off? Or do the think that patrons of a community theatre expect a more traditional, or at least larger experience than can be offered by a one person show? My guess is that both these fears, and others explain the lack of monodramas at the community level.

Yet I hold out hope that one day I shall be cast in a local theatre's one show experiment, should anybody offer it. Or perhaps I can commit such a show to memory, and seek a chance to do a special presentation outside of a theatre's season. The same is possible if I write my own and pitch it. It would be more difficult to get the chance where I am, on the community level, but I don't count it out.

Have you ever performed in a one person show? Have you even seen one at the community level? If so I'd like to hear you stories.