Sleep with Perturbations

Hastings (Ryan Meers) blesses Richmond (Philip Eoute)
in rehearsal for the ghost scene.

One of my favorite parts (of many) in Shakespeare's Richard III is the scene in which all of the people Richard has murdered (or had murdered) come to haunt him. King Richard (who is really losing it about now) is on the battlefield in his tent. As he sleeps, the ghosts appear and curse him (listen for the special sound effects/voice reverb) and then proceed to bless Richmond, who lies in his tent elsewhere on the battlefield.

Dr. Ryan Meers, chairperson of the division in which I teach, agreed to take on the role of Lord Hastings. He has developed his character well over the course of the rehearsal process—I love watching the characters grow throughout the rehearsal process. (And I think he's enjoying the whole spook thing a little too much.)

For this production, I decided to outfit the ghosts (there are 8 of them) in exact replicas of the clothing they wore in life—only in soft greys. The effect, some of which we saw for the first time last week, is absolutely stunning. The costume personnel really did some fine work on these pieces. My wife actually gasped when she saw these costumes.

Bold, Quick, Ingenious, Forward, Capable

King Edward IV (Philip Eoute)
& Queen Elizabeth (Anna Brown)

Just time for a quick post with a very blurry picture of King Edward IV (one of Richard's brothers) and his queen. Queen Elizabeth's dress is ruched silver metallic fabric with studded vertical strips and a flowing, gauzy skirt and sleeves. I wish you could see the back—there's a heavy-duty exposed silver zipper. Her hair is amazing, too, an intricate weave that Alicia Carr, our wigmaster dreamed up. Queen Elizabeth's look reminds me of some kind of Victorian steampunk Barbie. Anna pulls the whole thing off quite nicely. It's one of the most fashion fused pieces in the whole show. By "fashion fused," I mean the elements of 15th century, Victorian, and futuristic are each represented in this look.

I wanted to play up the contrasts between characters with this costume. One contrast is of this new queen (who had been a commoner) with the old queen, Mad Margaret, who is dressed very quaintly and a bit frayed around the edges (something that echos her character). Another obvious contrast is Elizabeth with her husband, who appears old-fashioned next to her. Her costume also gives her a sense of strength—again, as compared with those around her. She is edgy, a bit hard, and definitely fashion forward.

Trial of Sharp War

Jason and Daniel volunteered for rain duty.

Jason gestures to the audience.

Last week we did another rain test, our fourth. Two student stagedogs (the workers' term for themselves), Jason Anderson and Daniel Recker volunteered for the soaking. The water coming out of the pipe is warm, so while they were in the "storm," they were comfortable, but afterwards they were quite chilly. Of course, these guys were in street clothes, so I'm imagining that costumed actors will find their clothes uncomfortably heavy.

The rain is starting to look good. The width and depth of the rain on the stage looks convincing.

We are still trying to work out how best to light the rain in order for it to show up for the audience. Side light seems to work much better than top or bottom or front or back, hanging lights high and low from the side of the stage is where we are right now. Tonight we have the actual actors in the rain. That should be interesting. . . . The guy hollering in the video (below) is production manager manager Rod McCarty. He is all over getting the rain effect up and running.

Lights Burn Blue

Behind the curtain at the stage manager's
desk from which he calls the show

Today is all-day dry tech. That's theatrespeak for a technical rehearsal with no actors present. Basically, I sit at the director's desk about mid-way back in the house with the lighting designer (Rich Streeter) and the stage manager (Tim Endean), and together we set levels and timings (how long a sound or light fade will be, where it will come in the script, etc.) for the whole show. Rich (and later sound designer Bob Johansen) comes with his best ideas, and then I tweak/readjust/edit so that the show looks, sounds, and feels the way I think it should.

Richard III: The Terrible Reign is fairly tech-heavy. Lots of exact timings on lights, doors opening and closing, spooky music, clanging, and so on. There is give-and-take and lots of collaboration. It's a ton of stress (the first three scenes today took three hours), but it's the first time the show begins to really look like a show. I love it.

Indirectly Gave Direction

Undergraduate student Anna Brown has really taken hold of the role of Queen Elizabeth, wife of Edward IV, in our production. During the course of the play, poor Queen Elizabeth sees her husband die, two sons killed by Richard, and has to endure Mad Queen Margaret's haranguing about how what goes around comes around. What's worse is that Q.E. finds herself arguing with Richard III about his wooing her daughter, young Elizabeth. (Spoiler Alert: Happily for all, young Elizabeth doesn't marry Richard. But you'll have to come to the play to see whom she does marry. Or look for me to give it away in a future post.) By the way, Q.E. does have a great relationship with her mother-in-law, the Duchess of York.

Directors give notes. It's what we do.

Anna is doing a fantastic job and has a voice perfect for this complex and challenging role. She is also very open to direction. Here I'm giving here feedback and making adjustments to the work she brought to rehearsal that evening. In the background is my assistant, Donna Tillman, and in the way background is John Cox, who heads up the small ensemble of ghoulish guards, morgue workers, henchmen, and soldiers in the story.

Keep up the good work, Anna!

Determined to Prove a Villain

Here's a behind-the-scenes snippet from last week's shoot for the Richard III: The Terrible Reign trailer that went up today. My good friend Philip Eoute directed the taping. He and his crew created a sort of "mini stage" backstage with the lights from IKEA, a spiral staircase sold to us for next-to-nothing by my church, and some great sliding doors. Oh, and lots of fog. I love Richard's clunk, clunk, clunk down the metal stairs in that fabulous boot. This was just a partial take.

Makeup guru Dan Sandy just plain nailed it with this creepy makeup. And Ron's relentless stare is downright chilling. Now if we can just get this all to transfer to stage. (Film is not stage, folks. Do we all get that?)

Here's the link to the actual trailer: http://www.bju.edu/events/fine-arts/cod/richard.php.

Deep-Revolving Witty Buckingham

Design Rule #1: Make your producer look good.

I am very happy to have as part of this year's (might I say epic?) cast the show's producer, Dr. Darren Lawson. You may know that Darren is the Dean of Fine Arts and Communication at Bob Jones University, but did you know that Darren and I shared an apartment in grad school in the 80s? We have that special bond that comes only from having had another apartment mate who occupied our common living room every Saturday afternoon watching WWF. (That's pro wrestling for you unsophisticated folks.) But I digress.

Darren is playing the part of the Duke of Buckingham (Richard III's cousin) in our production. He has been relentless (in a good way) about trying to nail down who his character is and how his character changes throughout the story. 

In real life, as a husband, father (of a Bruin soccer goalie), and dean, Darren wears many hats. I'm so glad he decided to put on Buckingham's hat for this production. 

(No, Barb, I'm not adding an extra hat.)

Made Glorious

One of Richard's costumes has this great golden shoulder guard.

Richard III's opening speech is wonderful example of Shakespeare's command of the blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) poetic form. Here's an example with some paraphrase from me in italics after both couplets.

    Now is the winter of our discontent
    Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

Finally! This horrible patch of tough luck the York family's had
Is turned around because my brother's [with a play on the homonyms sun/son] in control;

    And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
    In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

And all the bad stuff that's happened to us
Is far away and done with.

The speech goes on to explain that even though things are looking up for Richard, he's still not satisfied and will set his brothers Edward and Clarence against each other in order to seize the throne for himself. What a guy. He ends the 41-line speech with the following—

    Dive, thoughts, down to my soul. Here Clarence comes.

And so the story begins. . . .

Look to See a Troublous World

Philip (center) gives instruction
to one of the camera operators.

My good friend Philip Eoute and a team from the video productions department is working on a trailer for the Richard III: The Terrible Reign project. I don't want to give too much away, but they did some filming today, and it is looking exciting—metal stairs, those great IKEA lights (see previous post), a huge sliding door, lots of fog and great camera angles. Can't wait to see the finished product, which may be available for viewing some time next week if all goes well.

Fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands

A box for (stage) drowning?

As mentioned previously, Richard III dispatches with a great many of his relatives and friends during the course of the play. (With friends like that . . . ) One of these is his own brother, Clarence.

History is a bit cloudy on the facts about Clarence's death, but it is generally accepted that he died in the Tower having been sent there for treason against his other brother, Edward IV (of the fabulous House of York boys—Edward, Richard, Clarence). Some historians think Clarence was beheaded, but legend has it that he was drowned in a "malmsey-butt," a huge Elizabethan wine vat.

In Shakespeare's play, Clarence pleads for his life with the two men sent to murder him and just as he talks one out of killing him, the other stabs him. And then drowns him. Just for good measure.

So we needed a contraption that would hold water. Enter this 1940s icebox/cooler, perhaps used to store fish on ice. I bought it sight unseen (well, I saw this image) and drove to outside Commerce, GA, early this morning to pick it up. It's smaller than I'd thought from the picture, but I'm sure Jason Waggoner and Dave Vierow can add wheels, etc., and make tit perfect for our stage purposes. Look for it in Act I, Scene 4.

Visitation of My Friends

Elizabethan stage at OSF

A play's better with good friends

Two weeks ago I traveled out to beautiful Ashland, OR, to benchmark two productions at  Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the oldest Shakespeare festival in America. They've been doing 2-4 Shakespearean plays per year since 1935 with a brief hiatus during World War II. Always ready to combine pleasure with business, my sweet wife, Kim, went along for the 4-day trip.

On Day 1 we took an amazing tour of the OSF facilities—3 theatres, a greenspace, rehearsal spaces, workshops, a bookstore, and a welcome center. Quite a complex. The Elizabethan stage is an open-air theatre. They run the shows rain or shine—sometimes performing in ponchos or street clothes. The audience just endures the rain. There are some plays I would sit through; some I would not.

The company is about 125 members who each perform in 1-3 plays per 10-month season. They are primarily an equity house. Each member must re-audition every year, and the casts are chosen based on the types they need—no loyalties there!

Most interesting take-away for me—the makeup and hair folks give each actor an individual time to show up for wig/makeup. This avoids everyone's coming at one time and sitting around for ages. I'm hoping we can implement something like that.

Our good friends Rick and Suzanne Altizer surprised me (Kim was a cohort in their crime) by arriving on Day 2 of our trip. The four of us saw As You Like It (After 17 runs of that show this summer! See stuff about that one from The Greenville Shakespeare company here.) and Henry V. Wow. I love that play. (I would sit through this one in the rain.)  Here's a line that stood out to me: "When lenity and cruelty vie for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner." Richard III never really got that concept.

Were It Light Enough

We got the biggest (of course)
of the 3 black lights in the picture.

My wife went to Ikea in Atlanta this past weekend and picked up some wonderful hanging lights that I'd seen only in a catalog.

She texted me this picture to let me know that she'd snagged the three I needed for the Richard III: The Terrible Reign production and that they were even better in person. I concurred.

The lights will be used in Scene 2 where Richard woos Lady Anne over the corpse of her husband. Richard normally stops the carried body in the streets, but in our adaptation the audience should get more of a morgue feel.

Exit with the Body

A old gurney—not completely sure what ours will look like

Gotta getta gurney. It's time. We need it. We need to practice hauling bodies around on it. So yesterday my good friend (and resident lighting designer) Rich Streeter (more about him later, I'm sure) stepped up and found one on eBay. He made an offer and the kind gentleman in Ohio accepted, and voila! we have a gurney winging its way toward us. Hurrah.

Sons of Edward

Richard, Duke of York (Shelley Redlinger)
& Edward, Prince of Wales (Katrina Case)

One of the most despicable things Richard does (of many) in Shakespeare's play Richard III is to have his two young nephews, Edward and Richard, imprisoned in the Tower of London and subsequently killed. However,  history is not so definitive on this matter as is our playwright. 

The historical facts seem to be that after Richard, Duke of Gloucester (our bad guy, future King Richard III, and title character), had Queen Elizabeth's (Woodville—a commoner) marriage to his dead brother Edward IV declared illegitimate, Richard then seized the throne. He had the 12-year-old Edward (the heir apparent) sent to the tower where his brother joined him. The two princes disappeared just a month after Richard was crowned, and rumors of the day said that Richard had had the boys murdered.

Shakespeare's play leaves no doubt as to the boys' demise. In our streamlined adaptation, they are brutally killed by a character named Catesby, one of Richard's young thug-lords. Check this guy out:

KING RICHARD. Dar'st thou resolve to kill a friend of mine?
CATESBY. Please you;
    But I had rather kill two enemies.
KING RICHARD. Why, then thou hast it. Two deep enemies,
    Foes to my rest, and my sweet sleep's disturbers,
    Are they that I would have thee deal upon.
    Catesby, I mean those bastards in the Tower.
CATESBY. Let me have open means to come to them,
    And soon I'll rid you from the fear of them.
KING RICHARD. Thou sing'st sweet music.

Siblings: Princess Elizabeth of York (Margaret Stegall)
with Princes Edward & Richard

For our Richard III: The Terrible Reign, I decided to cast college girls as the young princes. Katrina and Shelley are doing a great job learning to act like pre-teen boys. They really are lovely young ladies, but you can't tell it from these pictures! I love the way Edward the prince's fur collar turned out. The boys' costumes have a strong Victorian feel. The simple golden crown leans toward the 15th century though.

The Thrall of Margaret

Beneth Jones as Queen Margaret
with me as pleased costume designer

Detail of Margaret's ruff, bodice, sleeve, & Starbucks

Mad Queen Margaret is one of Shakespeare's most interesting females (not that there are that many). She is the widow of King Henry VI, who has, like so many, been killed off by our title character Richard. Margaret's son Edward was also killed by Richard. (Before you feel too sorry for Margaret, you should know that in the Henry VI plays, Margaret was not only involved in the murder of Richard's younger brother, Rutland, but she also flaunted it by waving a napkin drenched in Rutland's blood in Richard's face.) So Margaret haunts the castle at the mercy of the York family, who she believes destroyed her life. She proceeds to curse a number of characters in the play. At first everyone ignores her rantings as those of a crazy woman and a "hateful, bitter hag," but when the curses start to come true, Richard and others have to pay attention to her. Mad Margaret's big scene in Act I, Scene 3, is emotionally charged and a challenge for any actor.

Beneth Jones is taking on this role, and I'm so excited to be working with her. Get a load of the hair, makeup (thank you, Alicia & Dan), and this incredible costume (thanks, costume room stitchers). I am thrilled with the sparkly, cobwebby material I found in Atlanta and the wonderfully gauzy fabric on the ruff. Margaret's costume is a mix of styles—the ruched sleeves come down over the edge of the hand reminiscent of the 15th century; the high-necked ruff smacks of the Victorian era, and the metal straps and buckles on the bodice seem to be from a future time.