Arcata Host Elektra

Besides showcasing local performers in the 20 months since it opened its doors at the old Creamery, the Arcata Playhouse has hosted a number of visiting productions. These not only provide opportunities for North Coast audiences, but also for local theatre artists to see interesting work developed elsewhere, especially from larger theatre centers. And thanks to the California Ensemble Touring Initiative funded by the Irvine Foundation, there may be more such opportunities coming along.

The most recent visitors were the Ghost Road Company of Los Angeles, presenting their new version of a play from the dawn of western drama: “Elektra,” the re-titled and reconceived middle play in the trilogy by Aeschylus known as the Oresteia.

“Aeschylus was the first towering figure of the theatre, the first highly individualized voice,” writes Ronald Harwood, playwright and theatre historian. Aeschylus fought in at least one of the major battles that ensured Greek independence from Persia, and he wrote as Athenian democracy was inventing itself. He competed in the contest for tragedy at the annual Dionysian festival for 15 years before he won. His innovations were remarkable. By reducing the chorus and adding a second actor who talks to the first, he invented what we think of as dialogue, or for that matter, a play. He transformed tragic poetry into tragic drama.

Aeschylus is believed to have written some 90 plays (he won that contest at least 12 times), though only seven plays survive, and scholars don’t agree that even all of these are his. But his greatest achievement—and still one of the great epics of theatre—is the Oresteia.

A 1991 production in New York is described by critic Frank Rich as meticulous, elaborate and very controlled, expressing the vision of its director, Ariane Mnouchkline. Ghost Road’s approach, as members of the company discussed it after their opening performance in Arcata, is pretty much the opposite.

Aeschylus was only the starting point. Though director Katharine Noon also adapted the text, this version was created by the ensemble. They sought to make the story accessible, stripping it down to its “nuts and bolts” and viewing it as basically the story of a family, although a very bloody one. In the first play, King Agamemnon kills his youngest daughter so the gods will grant him fair winds to make war on Troy. When he returns victorious, his wife Clytemnestra retaliates by murdering him. In the second play—the one Ghost Road brought to Arcata—their son Orestes murders his mother.

To re-imagine this in contemporary terms, the ensemble collected photographs and articles, did “free- writing” and improvised scenes, switching characters so that eventually every member of the company had played every part. These workshop sessions were videotaped and transcripts were made, that Noon would incorporate in versions of the script as it evolved.

This version centers on Elektra (played by Alina Phelan), who worships her dead father, Agamemnon, and campaigns for the return of her lost brother, Orestes. She lives in a tent festooned with hand-scrawled signs (“Have you seen Orestes?” “Where’s My Brother?”), and rants on her perpetual radio show, suggesting the hysteria of the Dionysian rites that only slightly predate Greek drama, as well as Rush Limbaugh.

The characters of Clytemnestra and Orestes are more ambiguous and familiar: the career woman mother, the assassin with doubts (Orestes may have been a prototype for Hamlet.) The gorgeous language of Aeschylus (in some English translations at least) is entirely gone, replaced by contemporary dialogue and ritual telegrams, like “Waiting—then things start happening all at once, and all the time.”

The Oresteia is famous for depicting the transition from revenge to justice, and there is a hint of it in Orestes’ brief misgivings in this play, but most of it occurs in the third play. So while the Ghost Road version of the middle play is always involving as theatre, it is incomplete: more intriguing than tragic or transcendent.

The real interest is the stagecraft and the high level of acting by everyone in the company. Phelan and Brian Weir as Hermione had the most lines and were the most memorable, but the other actors also deftly created defined characters. The traveling set emphasized a kind of post-apocalyptic landscape, although Clytemnestra and her cocktail-sipping lady friends seemed affluent enough to remain haughty. There was a generational tension that also made Elektra seem young and rebellious. It could all be taking place in a contemporary city, which is both a strength (contemporary relevance) and a weakness (contemporary cliche.)

Many of the Ghost Road ensemble studied at Cal Arts but one member with them in Arcata was Ronnie Clark, an HSU Theatre graduate, who played Orestes. Ghost Road is adapting all three plays for performance together in L.A. in the spring.

The Winter's Tale

Johanna Hembry and Calder Johnson in HSU's
The Winter's Tale

Tonight at the Van Duzer Theatre on the HSU campus in Arcata, the HSU Theatre, Film and Dance Department opens its production of The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare. I wrote the stuff about it at HSU Stage, and there's an interview with director Rae Robison there that I also conducted and wrote up.

I'll just add some more personal observations about the play. There's a lot about the play that reflects the changing fashions in theatre after the reign of Elizabeth. The court fashion was for the "masque," as created by Indigo Jones, which were elaborate set-pieces in several senses of the word, since the emphasis was on elaborate sets and visual illusions, often with some act of magic or stage trickery involved. In the popular theatre, there was a fashion for more music, and a kind of forerunner to romantic musical comedy. Both fashions are reflected in this play. The final scene with the "statue"--which had already been done as a set piece--is like a masque but for the popular theatre. And there's more music in this play that probably any other Shakespeare.

The show is also typical of Shakespeare in that it takes advantage of the company's actors and the situation. There's a major character who is a trickster and something of a clown, because he had a very good clown in the company. Some theatres were now completely enclosed, and this play was originally shown at both outdoor and indoor venues. Perhaps that has something to do with it starting indoors at a royal court, but in having many scenes in the middle of the play set outdoors, including the famous sheep-shearing scene.

But this was also the next to last play for which Shakespeare claimed sole authorship. Although The Winter's Tale was based on an existing story (and using it was a nice act of revenge against the popular writer who once called Shakespeare an "upstart crow" and accused him of plagiarism--Shakespeare waited until the fellow was dead to steal this story), it also has a quality of Shakespeare's Greatest Hits: there's the jealousy of Othello and the madness of Lear early in the play, and a lot of As You Like It in the middle, with some star-crossed lovers action as in Romeo and Juliet. This play starts as a tragedy, becomes a comedy and ends up with romance and magic. There's mistaken identity as in many plays and even a shipwreck that presages the play he hadn't written yet, The Tempest.

The story is in some ways the journey of Leontes, the king whose jealous violence starts the action--and the conviction he displays when everyone around him is warning him that he's wrong might seem incredible if we hadn't just lived through the presidency of G.W. Bush. But he and his queen, Hermione, disappear for much of the play, and the really central character becomes Perdita, their daughter who we first meet when she is already a young woman. In some ways she's Rosalind (from As You Like It) without the device of being a woman pretending to be a man and therefore permitted to have strong views. She does have strong views--she's got the skepticism of the "working class" shepherds among whom she was raised, and the grace of innate nobility. She's really the most important and most fascinating character. She may also be the voice closest to the playwright's. She deserves a place among Shakespeare's most important female characters.

The differences and relative merits and the places where the either/or break down of court versus countryside, rich versus poor, nature versus artifice, which are present in much of Shakespeare but with particular strength in As You Like It and The Tempest are major concerns in this play.

The Winter's Tale is not much performed these days (though I saw a very good production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival three seasons ago) but it was a very popular play in the performance repertoire in London during and immediately after Shakespeare's lifetime. But I do get the feeling that Shakespeare was seeing theatrical fashion slipping away from the kind of plays he wanted to do, and though he was more than up to adapting in some pretty daring ways with this play, he was getting ready to retire. But not before he revisited some of the key themes and ongoing concerns of his previous work. I think he probably does this more elaborately in The Winter's Tale, before compressing it all in the magic of The Tempest.

The Winter's Tale is legendary also for one stage direction (Exit, pursued by a bear) and for an extreme example of Shakespeare's often shaky references to geography: in this case he gives a seacoast to the landlocked Bohemia. This has led some to feel that the two nations named in the text, Sicilia and Bohemia, are entirely mythical.

Well, mostly maybe, but not entirely. The names of characters in The Winter's Tale are a kind of mishmash, but several are Greek. Leontes, the king of Sicilia, at one point sends to the oracle at Delphi to request Apollo's wisdom on the matter of his wife's alleged infidelity. In fact, there were Greek colonies on Sicilia at the time of the Athenian democracy. The great dramatist Aeschylus made several trips to Sicily, and wrote and produced plays there. In fact, these Greek allusions also suggest the period the play is meant to be set in: the classical Greek age.

The Winter's Tale, More on

1. The HSU production of The Winter's Tale was reviewed--astoundingly--in the Lumberjack, the HSU student newspaper that usually does its best to ignore all theatre, dance and musical events involving HSU students. "Just like in high school, Shakespeare's language got in the way of a good time," the Jack review begins, and soon refers to its "nearly foreign words."  So much for the moron in "more on."  Of course, there are now-obscure words in Shakespeare, but the language in this play is not especially difficult.  There's just a lot of it,  which is one problem modern audiences are likely to have in following it.  It's a good reason to see and hear these plays as many times as possible, for each production can yield a greater appreciation for the words and the language, as well as the plays.

2. Here's my brief review from 2006 of that season's Oregon Shakespeare Festival production, directed by OSF artistic director, Libby Appel:

 It begins with a burst of color, music and motion—that (thanks to the excellent sound system as well as the staging) creates the mood in the audience that’s the mood of the characters as we first see them. The court of the mythical Sicilia is joyful at the reunion of its King with his childhood friend, now King of the equally mythical Bohemia.

 Yet in the midst of revelry a single light flashes on the face of the King as he reveals his paranoid fantasies about his friend and his wife, Queen Hermione. A tragic course is set, with murderous plots, betrayals and death. But this course is broken and even reversed, in part by intervention of the gods, and in part by love.

 This late play has some of the earth-magical qualities of The Tempest, references to the tradition of Greek tragedy, and echoes of many of Shakespeare’s previous plays. This production features powerful performances by Miriam A. Laube as Hermione and William Langan as King Leontes, and performances by the entire cast that make this story crystal clear as well as affecting and funny, played against the apparently simple but highly evocative scenery of Rachel Hauck.

 Also featured is Mark Murphey as the trickster god Autolycus, whose performance delightfully proves that physical comedy can serve a substantive text, both as relief and as integral to the story.

Shakespeare’s plays are timeless partly because they speak in different ways to every time, and in this one I was struck by how those who served this king felt honor-bound to dissuade him from his disastrous course. Too bad they aren’t serving in the non-mythical Washington.

3.  Background on The Winter's Tale that I wrote and posted at HSU Stage:

“All roads lead to Shakespeare… He is the very center of a literary education in our language. When we say drama, we mean Shakespeare and the rest.”

Eric Bentley
In Search of Theater

In 1592, a hack writer called Robert Greene complained in print about a young playwright named Shakespeare. Greene called him an “upstart crow,” and accused him of plagiarism.

Some eighteen years later, with Greene safely dead, Shakespeare appropriated the plot of Greene’s most popular prose romance (“Pandosto”) and transformed it into the stage romance, The Winter’s Tale.

Shakespeare’s title meant a kind of “old wives tale,” a made-up story. Perhaps the country folk of England had a tradition like some Native American tribes, of telling stories around the fire in the winter—stories with fantastic elements, that might be fables and teaching stories as well.

The Winter’s Tale was the last play that claims Shakespeare as sole author, except for one more: The Tempest. Though this play is not frequently performed, it contains some of Shakespeare’s most theatrical moments, including spectacles, song and dance, and the very theatrical ending.

Like The Tempest and the earlier As You Like It, this play examines the contrasts of court and countryside, rich nobles and poor country folk, as well as art and nature, magic and real life. Shakespeare suggests ways in which these opposites can be reconciled, as in the character of Perdita, the daughter of noble birth who is raised by shepherds, and who observes that the same sun shines on palace and cottage alike.

“In this play the human and the natural come together," writes Shakespeare biographer Peter Ackroyd, "in the great ongoing rhythm of life itself.”

“The Winter’s Tale conveys more persuasively than any previous work the sustained illusion that the world of dramatic romance is directly related to the world in which we live. Thus in Leontes Shakespeare embodies a new Everyman figure, the tragic king who can be redeemed in this life through penitence and love and the renewal that time brings.” --Norman Rabkin, "Shakespeare and the Common Understanding"

“The Winter’s Tale communicates a joy new in Shakespeare by suggesting the possibility of grace and innocence in a world which presents every appearance of being able to overthrow them.”--Norman Rabkin: "Shakespeare and the Common Understanding."

Elsewhere: August Wilson in SF

Radio Golf, August Wilson's last play in his 20th century cycle has opened in the Bay Area, produced by TheatreWorks at Mountain View Center of the Performing Arts in Mountain View, through Nov. 2. Some details and a Bay Area chronology of Wilson plays in the SF Chronicle. Hat tip to Jeff D. who spotted this and passed it on.

Noises Off at Ferndale Rep

Michael Frayn is an unusual playwright. He began as a reporter and columnist, and has written several novels and books of philosophy, such as the nearly 500-page tome, The Human Touch, which I’ve actually read (encouraged by the San Francisco Chronicle, which paid me to do so.) Probably his most famous play is Copenhagen, a drama concerning two founders of quantum physics. His most recent plays are biographical and political, and he’s a well-regarded translator of Anton Chekhov.

 Then there are his comedies, one of which was so subtle that lead actor Ian McKellan didn’t realize it was supposed to be funny until opening night, when he heard the audience laughing. Noises Off however is anything but subtle, although Frayn maintains it is philosophical: he writes that it concerns the actors’ fear of facing the unrehearsed world outside the theatre.

 But like another British philosophical playwright—Tom Stoppard—Frayn found that philosophy goes over best on stage when it is expressed by people dashing frantically about, with at least one young lady in her underwear.

Noises Off is generally acknowledged to be his comic masterpiece, and one of the funniest plays in contemporary theatre. I saw the original Broadway version in the 80s, from the back of the 1100 seat Brooks Atkinson Theatre (the last rush ticket I ever bought), which at that distance was like watching a circus of comical ants. So I made sure to sit close to the stage at Ferndale Rep.

 In the first act we see a theatre company in a rushed final rehearsal of a farce called Nothing On. The set—part of a country house replete with the many doors required by farce—is turned around for the second act so the backstage is visible, and the relationships and romantic misalliances set up in the first act result in riotous physical comedy. (It was probably this act that Frayn kept rewriting, to include new business invented by various casts.)

 The stage is turned around again for the third act, for a performance at the end of the tour when the actors’ relationships have devolved further, and the chaos has spilled onto the stage.

 The first act is usually the set-up for the next two, but in the Ferndale production it was genuinely funny. The cast performed the physical comedy of the second act flawlessly, producing the most hilarious moments. The third act had lots of payoffs and comic business but seemed less coherent, which is an odd word to use about chaos.

 Besides accomplishing the physical bits at break-neck speed, the actors also had to quickly sketch characters in the first act, aided by Frayn’s skill in providing most with attitudes and catch phrases to capture their characters. 

The entire cast--Adina Lawson, Bryeon Earle, Sam Cord, Brittany Gonzales, Bill and Gerri Cose, Jim Berry and Daniel Amaral—performed both jobs with skill and conviction. Sam Cord deserves special mention for the most acrobatic stunts. All in all, it’s a high quality production, with a solidly handsome set designed by Gary Franklin (during the two unavoidable but draining intermissions, audience members seemed to like watching it be turned around), and 1980s period costumes (complete with leisure suit) by Christen Condry Whisenhunt.

 Director Renee Grinnell, who did Lend Me A Tenor at NCRT last season, again demonstrates her facility for fast-paced farce. Some of the physical humor involves a telephone cord, a lost contact lens and a plate of sardines. It’s fascinating that in the age of cell phones, disposable lenses and microwaved snacks that this comedy still works.

Also the story involves a style of theatre and a theatrical tradition unfamiliar to most of us here, and largely gone. Even the titles (“Noises Off,” “Nothing On”) are British and theatrical puns. But even without the depth of reference, the basic structure and theatricality of  Noises Off can delight audiences in Humboldt County.  Plus the style of Frayn’s language is familiar—he shares a comedic (and philosophical) lineage with Monty Python, Douglas Adams and Beyond the Fringe.

 Besides, theatre stories have their own charm and wide attraction. People who have participated in theatre may have encountered actors like the earnest Frederick, the pompous but vague Garry, etc., or they recognize the stage culture of endearments and entanglements, and this knockabout will have additional resonance, and even sweetness.

This North Coast Weekend and Coming Attractions

Sanctuary Stage presents its second annual 10 Minute Play-in-a-Day event on Saturday at 7 pm at the Eureka Theater. Beginning Friday night, six playwrights, six directors and up to 18 actors will create a ten minute play from scratch, and these six resulting efforts will hit the stage Saturday.

I participated last year, and wrote about it here. Bob Doran writes about it in the Journal this week--including writing about me writing about it; and Beti Trauth previews the process at the T-S. I'm not involved in it this year--for all the reasons I hinted at at the end of my piece on last year's--but I wish everyone well who is doing it. I still recall it as a good experience, something to do once, although in my case one that hasn't seemed to lead anywhere.

I also note in the Journal a review of the San Francisco production of Tom Stoppard's Rock & Roll; review by Jay Herzog. Lucky he got to see it, is all I've got to say.

Otherwise, The Merry Wives of Windsor continues at North Coast Rep. In the wings: The Michael Frayn comedy Noises Off opens at Ferndale Rep next weekend, and the HSU production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale opens the following week.

R.I.P. Paul Newman

Paul Newman has died at the age of 83. Known
of course for his film roles (my favorites are actually
his later ones, like Absense of Malice, The Verdict
and Nobody's Fool) and his amazing philanthopy,
he was also a stalwart of the American theatre,
notably for taking over the historic Westport Theatre
with his wife, Joanne Woodward. His contributions
to our time in all three areas were exemplary. A life
well lived.

I note also that last month, the English playwright Simon Gray died at the age of 72. Probably best known for Butley,his work was generally so well respected that his frequent director was Harold Pinter.

Elizabethan Sitcom: Merry Wives of Windsor

First the good news: The Merry Wives of Windsor at North Coast Repertory Theatre is skillfully comic.

 With David Hamilton’s fluid direction, an accomplished cast excels at comic invention, and the evening features at least a few moments of comic brilliance.

 Old Falstaff, one of Shakespeare’s most beloved characters from the “Henry” plays, writes love letters to two wealthy wives, who trick him three times. There’s a suspicious husband and other comic and slightly romantic subplots. Nearly everyone in this large cast shines, particularly JM Wilkerson as Falstaff. Janet Waddell as the horny housekeeper is especially memorable, as is Jim Buschmann as the French physician by way of Inspector Clouseau. Pat Hamilton’s costumes are pleasing, and scenic designer Tony Leitch’s set helps make the action believable, even as locations change.

 The only problem—and it’s unlikely to be a problem for everyone—is that it’s one of Shakespeare’s weakest and least characteristic plays. When poet W.H. Auden lectured on all the Shakespeare plays at the New School in New York, he devoted just four sentences to this one, calling it “very dull indeed,” and spent the rest of the class playing a recording of Verdi’s opera based on it. Critic Harold Bloom denies that this is even the same character as in the Henry plays; he calls this version “False Falstaff.”

 Even the legend that Shakespeare wrote this play at the special request of Queen Elizabeth is questionable, although it may have been a good excuse. That it is mostly prose is said to make it more understandable to modern audiences, but the words are actually less comprehensible than in many more “poetic” plays, with lots of topical allusions and jokes that you had to be there to get. (Shakespeare was apparently settling scores with people that this play’s first audience might know.)

The actors speed you through this pretty well, so mostly what remains of the language is pretty dull: apart from puns there’s little verbal wit, and even less depth. So what can a production do? Some have underlined the class differences in the characters, or emphasized Falstaff as a man out of his time as well as past his prime. Or you might do as Hamilton did: assemble an impressive cast, give them plenty of individualized comic business, and turn them loose. He does avoid the cruelty possible in some of the “make fun of the fat guy” bits. Basically this is an Elizabethan sitcom, with some burlesque house emphasis on double entendres and even odd remnants of ethnic humor.

 There were some problems opening night: a few uncertain and inconsistent accents, a few comic bits repeated a few too many times, and a few fine voices too indistinct. At two and a half hours, it’s also pretty long for an episode of “I Love Falstaff.”

But if you accept that the usual depth and levels of Shakespeare are largely missing, and that it’s all pretty predictable, you are likely to enjoy this production for its admirable comic dexterity. And for the laughs: even if it’s mostly sketch humor, a lot of it still works. The best moments were full of subtle actions and reactions between two characters, and those were real treats. There could be even more of them by the time you see it.

This North Coast Weekend

I'm remiss this weekend, what with the drama of the presidential debate, but you still have tonight to see "Elektra" at the Arcata Playhouse. You'll see at minimum some very fine acting by the Ghost Road Company of L.A. I'll be writing about it in my next Journal column, which is scheduled for the week after next. (I'm apparently on a strict every-other-week schedule now, alternating with Art Beat.)

Meanwhile North Coast Rep presents The Merry Wives of Windsor. I review it in the Journal, and both the T-S and ER review it as well.

Elsewhere: Stoppard by the Bay

ACT in SF has opened their production
of Tom Stoppard's play, "Rock & Roll."
The Chronicle reviews it here.

Merry Wives of Windsor

First the good news: The Merry Wives of Windsor at North Coast Repertory Theatre is skillfully comic. With David Hamilton’s fluid direction, an accomplished cast excels at comic invention, and the evening features at least a few moments of comic brilliance.

 Old Falstaff, one of Shakespeare’s most beloved characters from the “Henry” plays, writes love letters to two wealthy wives, who trick him three times. There’s a suspicious husband and other comic and slightly romantic subplots. Nearly everyone in this large cast shines, particularly JM Wilkerson as Falstaff. Janet Waddell as the horny housekeeper is especially notable, as is Jim Buschmann as the French physician by way of Inspector Clouseau.

 Pat Hamilton’s costumes are pleasing, and scenic designer Tony Leitch’s set helps make the action believable, even as locations change.

 The only problem—and it’s unlikely to be a problem for everyone—is that it’s one of Shakespeare’s weakest and least characteristic plays. When poet W.H. Auden lectured on all the Shakespeare plays at the New School in New York, he devoted just four sentences to this one, calling it “very dull indeed,” and spent the rest of the class playing a recording of Verdi’s opera based on it. Critic Harold Bloom denies that this is even the same character as in the Henry plays; he calls this version “False Falstaff.”

 Even the legend that Shakespeare wrote this play at the special request of Queen Elizabeth is questionable, although it may have been a good excuse. That it is mostly prose is said to make it more understandable to modern audiences, but the words are actually less comprehensible than in many more “poetic” plays, with lots of topical allusions and jokes that you had to be there to get. (Shakespeare was apparently settling scores with people that this play’s first audience might know.)

The actors speed you through this pretty well, so mostly what remains of the language is pretty dull: apart from puns there’s little verbal wit, and even less depth. So what can a production do? Some have underlined the class differences in the characters, or emphasized Falstaff as a man out of his time as well as past his prime. Or you might do as Hamilton did: assemble an impressive cast, give them plenty of individualized comic business, and turn them loose. He does avoid the cruelty possible in some of the “make fun of the fat guy” bits.

 Basically this is an Elizabethan sitcom, with some burlesque house emphasis on double entendres and even odd remnants of ethnic humor. There were some problems opening night: a few uncertain and inconsistent accents, a few comic bits repeated a few too many times, and a few fine voices too indistinct. At two and a half hours, it’s also pretty long for an episode of “I Love Falstaff.”

 But if you accept that the usual depth and levels of Shakespeare are largely missing, and that it’s all pretty predictable, you are likely to enjoy this production for its admirable comic dexterity. And for the laughs: even if it’s mostly sketch humor, a lot of it still works. The best moments were full of subtle actions and reactions between two characters, and those were real treats. There could be even more of them by the time you see it.

The Fire-Bringer

HSU does a staged reading of a new play, The Fire-Bringer, Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 PM in the Gist Hall Theatre. Beti Trauth also previews this in Northern Lights.

I emphasize that this is a staged reading, which basically means the cast will carry scripts as they move around the stage. There's also minimal staging, lighting and costumes. This is usually how plays in development are first presented, and though staged readings are rare hereabouts, some of the best theatre I've seen has been in this form. It really emphasizes the script and the interactions of characters. In my past experiences with staged readings, I've often gotten so absorbed in it that I stopped noticing the actors were carrying scripts.

The play is about characters in a small timber town dealing with a forest fire, set in 1942. (Since the Journal's cover story this week was about the fires, you'd think they'd mention this play, but they didn't. I mentioned it in my column, which is all I'm permitted to do, since I do publicity for HSU theatre.)

I'm actually writing this after the first performance, which I understand was SRO. (I was at NCRT; I'll be at Gist on Friday.) There was a lively talk-back in which audience members told their own stories about forest fires, especially from this year. There's another talk-back Friday, and perhaps Saturday.

A sidelight: When Judy GeBauer, playwright of The Fire-Bringer, was in Arcata from Denver last week, she stayed with HSU Theatre, Film & Dance chair Bernadette Cheyne and her husband, scenic designer Ivan Hess. Eventually GeBauer and Hess realized they’d both grown up in Oakland at around the same time, let’s say more than a few years ago. Then that they had gone to the same high school, with the same drama teacher. Then that they were there at the same time. Finally, when Ivan found his high school yearbook, there they were: literally on the same page.

The North Coast News

Arcata Playhouse hosts its periodic local All-Star show, "Club Shampoo" on Friday at 9pm: lots of comedy, music, various forms of theatricals, including Jeff DeMark. 822-1575.

Then there are the events on Saturday celebrating, or at least marking, the 150th anniversary of Arcata's founding. The 9th annual Storytelling by the Sea happens Saturday at Patrick's Point.

This note comes from Ferndale Rep:
The Ferndale Repertory Theatre will hold auditions for Jean Shepherd’s family favorite A Christmas Story on Saturday, Sept. 13 at 3 pm and Sunday, Sept. 14 at 2 pm at the Ferndale Repertory Theatre, 447 Main Street in Ferndale.

Director Vikki Young seeks: 2 men, ages 35-45; 2 women, ages 30-50; 5 boys, ages 6-13; 2 girls, aged 9-13. Prepared auditions pieces are not required. Auditioners will read from the script. Adapted for the stage by Philip Grecian from the popular motion picture, we meet the Parker family and 9-year old Ralphie who receives the ever-present warning, “You’ll shoot your eye out!” when he asks for an official 200-shot Red Ryder Carbine Action Range Model Air Rifle for Christmas.

Production dates are November 29 through December 21 and all rehearsals will be held in Ferndale. For further information, call 786-5483 x 203.

North Coast Rep begins its season next Thursday with The Merry Wives of Windsor. and HSU has a staged reading of a new play, Fire-Bringer, Thursday through Saturday. We're going to have quite a Shakespearian year, with HSU doing The Winter's Tale in October and North Coast Prep planning King Lear.

My Journal column on Donald Lacy's show got bumped for space, and is promised for next week's issue. I may post an expanded version here before then.

Color Struck Strikes The Right Notes

On August 28, 1963 I was one of more than a quarter of a million people in the now-famous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. I was 17, and as magical as that day was, I recall that it was very controversial.

 On August 28, 2008, I watched an African American accepting the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States. But as hopeful and personally satisfying as this historic moment is, the presidential campaign of Barack Obama also exposes undercurrents of residual racism that most white people don’t normally notice.

 Race has been a topic on stage for these 40 years and more, in lots of different ways, employing different styles with different effects. The Lorraine Hansberry family drama of the 1950s stressed universality, evoking empathy. The in-your-face, up-against-the -wall confrontations of the 60s were shocking, which opened eyes but also provoked some defensive white anger. These styles exposed the problem of how to deal honestly with the facts of racism without driving the wedge deeper between the races.

 New strategies emerged in the comedy of Richard Pryor and the plays of August Wilson: using comfortable forms (traditional theatre, stand-up comedy) and showcasing cultural style (music, humor, ways of talking, etc.) but with clear evocation of the costs and realities of racism.

 But over the years, as racial discrimination became less overt and less visible to whites, and pious lip service as well as sincere commitment to color blindness became standard, the realities of racism have receded from public dialogue. The racism playing out in this campaign for instance, is at the “dog whistle” level: frequencies heard and understood only by racists and their victims.

 All of these pose problems and possible strategies for an on-stage attempt to deal with race in 2008, such as Color Struck, a one-person show by Donald Lacy, up from Oakland for a couple of performances last weekend at the Arcata Playhouse (though the show may return to Humboldt in the spring.)

 Lacy has a formidable resume. He’s acted in films by Francis Ford Coppola and Taylor Bickford, and in plays by August Wilson, Brecht and Octavio Solis. He’s directed and written plays, including “The Loudest Scream You’ll Never Hear,” about the Atlanta child murders. He’s written for TV, and he’s a stand-up comic, with appearances on HBO and BET. He’s a radio broadcaster—you can hear him on the web at KPO.com. He’s received accolades for his humanitarian work in the Bay Area, and he’s had what I consider a major dream job: the Voice of the Harlem Globetrotters for a 75-city tour.

 He brings all this experience and all these skills to bear in “Color Struck.” Lacy uses music, dance and projected images to evoke style (hairstyles from the conked 40s, the processed 50s, through the Afro-Sheen 70s to today’s dreds) and shared experience (TV shows, family life) along with his own discoveries of racism and theories about it.  He had the additional problem of being a light-skinned African American, in a black Oakland neighborhood that abutted white San Leandro.

 This personal review touches upon topics like the Black Panthers, Rodney King, OJ and Katrina, as well as black grandmothers, the symbolism of King Kong and the images of black lynchings in the not too distant past.

 The show (directed by Michael Torres, with music and sound by Tommy Shepherd) uses radio to organize the content in a couple of ways. Lacy is introduced at the radio microphone in silhouette, and he seems to change subjects in his monologue according to songs we all hear as if randomly from the radio.

 The strategies of humorous recollection up against pathos and tragedy deftly evoke the human costs of racism, with that quick dose of shock that makes the moment memorable, although (if I understood one person in the Q and A after the show I saw) some white people can still feel attacked.

But older audiences of any race could relate to aspects of common culture now gone (including the kind of middle class factory jobs his parents had: his father at RCA, his mother at Western Electric.) Younger audiences learn history they may never have heard.

 It’s worth celebrating that while our society is getting more diverse, race matters less to young people. But this may also augment an embarrassed but damaging silence on racism that still does exist. Lacy’s show is one of the few opportunities to bring these realities to light, and it does so effectively, while being an entertaining piece of theatre.

This Insubstantial Pageant

That's what Shakespeare called it, but his texts
have remained pretty substantial. The text and
the moment, as in Tony Kushner's "Angels in
America" and its various performances on stage
and screen, demonstrate that the tension between
text and performance is theatre, and is a lot of its
enduring value. See post below.

First Principles: Text and Performance

The proper relationship of the text and the performance is often controversial, and different styles of theatre handle it differently--as do, unfortunately, different actors. But let's take a step back for a moment, and look at it in terms of the questioning of text--written words--by those who like to use spoken words as a stand-in for electronic media.

For instance, classicist James J O'Donnell (quoted in a book I'm reading for review elsewhere, called Distracted, by Maggie Jackson): "Is it not strange that we take the spoken word, the most insubstantial of human creations, and try through textuality to freeze it forever, and again, try to give the frozen words of those who are dead and gone, or at least far absent, control over our own experience of the lived here and now?"

Well, it might be strange if that were even close to true. For starters, while the spoken word has been "insubstantial" in a technical sense, at least until sound recording, the oral tradition of storytelling is hardly insubstantial in the larger sense. Stories that Homer recalled were told for hundreds of years before he wrote them down. Stories in the Native American tradition are still told, in living evidence of how the oral tradition works. (See The Truth About Stories by Thomas King, for evidence.)

But the real smasher of these sentences is performance, even theoretically. Apply what O'Donnell says to music, and you can see the logical problem. Music that is performed once is indeed "insubstantial"--that is, lost forever--unless the notes are written down (or the performance is recorded.) But once it is written down, according to O'Donnell, we are slaves to it forever, as it controls our experience of the here and now. Can't live with it, can't kill it.

It is certainly true that a piece of music, especially when heard repeatedly, and a book, and a play, can in some sense form our experience of the here and now, even beyond the here and now of the actual performance. That's why people associate certain songs with particular experiences, or play particular music to induce certain moods. Our view of the world is shaped in part by what we read, hear and watch--which sometimes means, by art.

The obvious example of how the fixed (the text) combines with the now is performance. Even apart from intepretation that consciously seeks to make a text more relevant to the now, or consciously shapes it for some other purpose, performance, by being in the moment, inevitably brings the text into a new time and place.

It's the best of both worlds. We can have performers, and all the people involved in a production, plus the audience of each particular performance, combine to create something that is alive in the here and now. While we also have the text of Shakespeare's plays, safely preserved, so that others may try to find and present its truth. Note that word: present.

For the here and now is not the last word in wisdom. Nor is the latest medium necessarily the best--compare for instance the books that physically last decades and hundreds of years, and that can be read by anyone who knows the language without assistance more complicated than eyeglasses, versus decaying diskettes and the multiplicity of formats and computer languages that has turned information storage into a gigantic toxic Tower of Babble.

Each generation finds newness in the text of at least some of the dead and gone. Voices from the past may be as important to our present as they are likely to be to the future. Only the arrogant, the deluded and the ignorant of the lessons preserved in some of those texts, would think otherwise.

Just as a given text can transcend its historical time, it may well be useful beyond a particular performance of it. There is an inherent tension between text (often composed in isolation by individuals) and performance (often resulting from the dynamics of many people working as a group), and it is healthy tension, like the tension that holds the structure of a geodesic dome together.

Besides, as a practical matter, while some actors and directors feel constrained by a text, many more actors (in my experience) are hungry for playwrights to give them words to say.

"Hotel Cassiopeia" by Charles Mee at the Court
Theatre in 2006.

Quoth

"People just think that structure is something separate from what they have to say, but the way we structure what we have to say is maybe the most fundamental part of how we see the world. If you think A causes B causes C causes D, then that's what you believe. If you think A causes B causes Purple causes 136 and then shit happens, then that's your structure. It's really a vision of what you think life is and nobody can tell you what that should be."

playwright Charles Mee in The Dramatist (July/August 2008.) His work can be found at charles mee.org.

David Tennant and Patrick Stewart open Hamlet;
David Warner in the classic 1960s Hamlet;
archeologists excavate what is believed to be the
foundation of the 16th century theatre in London
where Shakespeare worked and learned his craft.

Shakespeare in the News

Yes, it's time again for the Shakespeare in the News roundup. Tonight's headline: Dr. Who and Captain Picard Star in Hamlet!
Well, it's true. The Royal Shakespeare production has opened, with David Tennant (Doctor Who on the BBC) as Hamlet, and Patrick Stewart (formerly of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but more recently the prize-winning lead in Macbeth) as both Claudius, Hamlet's stepfather, and the Ghost of his father, the King who Claudius murdered.

"The hype, it seems, was justified," began the Guardian's roundup of the reviews. Michael Billington, the Guardian's critic, one of the most eminent in the UK, wrote (according to this story) that Tennant has no difficulty making the transition from the BBC's Time Lord to Shakespeare's Hamlet, a man "who could be bounded in a nutshell and count himself a king of infinite space". Indeed, Tennant - "active, athletic, immensely engaging" - is one of the funniest Hamlets Billington has ever seen, who goes on to say that, overall, it is "one of the most richly textured, best-acted versions of the play we have seen in years". The only thing that is missing is an insight into Hamlet's philosophical nature, something Billington partly attributes to director Gregory Doran's cuts to Shakespeare's longest play, resulting in some of "the most beautiful lines in all literature" being lost.

This was pretty much the consensus view: Tennant was very good but not (yet) great, and Patrick Stewart was brilliant. Another reviewer wrote that his performance as Claudius was the "strongest, scariest" he'd ever seen, "acting of the highest order." Others also mentioned the cuts in the text as too severe, resulting in more of a revenge drama.

Billington also wrote of Tennant, "He is a fine Hamlet whose virtues, and occasional vices, are inseparable from the production itself...This is a Hamlet of quicksilver intelligence, mimetic vigour and wild humour: one of the funniest I've ever seen. He parodies everyone he talks to, from the prattling Polonius to the verbally ornate Osric. After the play scene, he careers around the court sporting a crown at a tipsy angle. Yet, under the mad capriciousness, Tennant implies a filial rage and impetuous danger: the first half ends with Tennant poised with a dagger over the praying Claudius, crying: "And now I'll do it." Newcomers to the play might well believe he will. Tennant is an active, athletic, immensely engaging Hamlet. If there is any quality I miss, it is the character's philosophical nature, and here he is not helped by the production."

Hamlet is a defining role for an actor. As Canadian actor (and star of the TV series Slings and Arrows) Paul Gross commented, actors are considered pre- or -post Hamlet. It's self-defining even for actors who never get to play the role. In their Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead DVD interviews, both Gary Oldman and Richard Dreyfus are wistful about missing their chances to play Hamlet--both felt even at that time that they were too old. Dreyfus held out some hope for being able to do a radio version, but even that seemed unlikely. Al Pacino (on his DVD called Babblelonia) felt thwarted in doing any Shakespeare when he was young because he was too ethnic.

As for Tennant's good-but-not-great reviews, that could change: not only as this production continues, but as time goes by. I remember after seeing David Warner in the film Morgan! I had high hopes for his Hamlet (1965-67.) It was in England, and I never got a chance to see it, but I was dismayed at how dismissive the reviews were, at least the few I saw. Apparently, the reviews overall were mixed. So I was surprised to see, when reading about this new production, that Warner's Hamlet is now considered so highly. Patrick Stewart calls it the Hamlet of his generation, and Billington rates it in his top ten, of productions from 1958 to 2000. (Stewart later acted with Warner in a revival of Warner's Hamlet, as well as in a notable episode of Next Gen.)

This new production also awakens intense envy of London theatregoers, who had the opportunity to see so many great actors take on this role, and for that matter the others in this play. And thanks in part to the wildly popular Doctor Who, but also to the place that theatre has in UK culture, this production is a real event--inspiring, among other things, in a newspaper feature in which critics, actors and other theatrical celebs muse on their favorite Hamlets. Veteran critic Benedict Nightingale writes that he's seen at least 40.

Readers added their favorites in the comments to this article. Though I've seen Olivier, Branagh, Gibson, etc. in their film Hamlets, the only name actor I saw play the role on stage was Kevin Kline at the Public Theatre, and I wasn't terribly impressed.

My favorite Hamlet was my first, the inaugural production of the new arts center at Knox College, where I was a freshman. A student named Jim Eichelberger played Hamlet, and he was astonishing. He went on to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, was a lead actor at Trinity Rep in Providence before becoming a star of experimental theatre, as Ethyl Eichelberger. He appeared in a production of The Threepenny Opera with Sting in the 80s. But he contracted AIDS, was apparently resistant to drugs of the time, and committed suicide in 1990--in fact, as I see his Wikipedia bio, on this very date, August 12.

Another production I liked a lot was one at the University of Pittsburgh, which had a summer Shakespeare festival, with performances in a kind of round stone castle called the Stephen Foster Memorial--very atmospheric for Shakespeare. A Canadian actor called Richard McMillan played Hamlet (I recognized him a few years ago in a small but substantive role in the movie, The Day After Tomorrow, acting with the great British actor Ian Holm.) I remember that this production started as a kind of postmodern dress Hamlet, but as the action intensified, the actors were all in sober Elizabethan costume. McMillan started out playing Hamlet as a moody young rebel with John Lennon shades, perhaps an echo of David Warner's very 60s hero.

Also associated with the new Hamlet, there was some controversy in England over celebrities possibly overwhelming Shakespearian productions. Director Jonathan Miller was critical (even though he's been known to use famous actors), but Michael Billington defended the Tennant production. It also helps that both Tennant and Stewart were trained and worked in RSC productions. The tradition of going back and forth between theatre and TV and theatre and movies is much more established in England, and Billington finds that a little screen stardom may even improve stage confidence and performance.

But Hamlet isn't the only Shakespeare in the News, not in England, oh no. Here's the breathless beginning to the Guardian story: A shiver of excitement rippled around the theatrical globe as news spread of some grubby red bricks uncovered in a muddy pit off a nondescript street in east London. Sir Ian McKellen will be making his way to New Inn Broadway in Shoreditch, one of many theatre luminaries impatient to see the site where his hero William Shakespeare learned his trade not just as a playwright but an actor.

It's The Theatre (that's what it was called) that's been lost for 400 years. Or anyway, part of its foundation--because the actual theatre was simply dismantled and transported to another location, where it became The Globe. It's believed to be the theatre where Shakespeare first acted, and where his first plays were performed.

Now that the site is known for sure, it can be properly excavated and the dimensions of The Theatre studied. Believed to have been built in 1576, it is where Shakespeare learned his craft. Its foundation was found by archeologists who had clues it might be there, while the site was being cleared for a new building: a new theatre, in fact.