Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Opening Night!

Last night was our final dress rehearsal.  It went very well.  I think the only thing missing is an audience.

Daniel Hobbs took some photos at last night's rehearsal, and so did a student from the State News.  One of Daniel's photos is posted above.  Below is a preview video made by Jennifer Swanchara.

Today is a day full of meetings for me, so I won't really have time to be nervous.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Tech and Dress Rehearsals

We have had a relatively painless tech process; there are not a huge amount of light and sound cues in the show.  Last night was our first run-through with full costume, make-up, and hair.  The costumes really add to the characters.  It was exciting to see what a big step forward the show has taken. 

Here's a picture of the floor and the Arena Theatre columns.  The set was designed by Daniel Hobbs and painted by our scene shop:

In our early design meetings, we talked a lot about rococo style and interior decoration for eighteenth-century French aristocrats.  There are many examples of walls and ceilings that are painted, gilded, and/or hung with tapestries in this period (Here is a video of the Boucher room at the Frick Collection: http://www.frick.org/visit/virtual_tour/boucher_room and this article in French has great pictures of eighteenth-century rooms in the Louvre.)  It would not have been typical to paint a floor in this way, but doing the show in the round means we have no walls! 

Here is a picture of the floor in the scene shop, before it was loaded into the Arena (photo by paint charge Dan Huston):

You can see the putti better in this version.  Putti are the little cherubs that show up almost everywhere in rococo art. 

We have two more dress rehearsals before we open on Friday.  The show is coming together very nicely!

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: A Publicity Photo, Some Acting Exercises, and a Duel

Here is our publicity photo, with Danceny, Merteuil, and Valmont.  Photo by Stephanie Pickard. (L to R: Andy Head, Carolyn Conover, Kirill Sheynerman, all MFA Acting Candidates)

The photo shoot was a lot of fun. These are not their actual costumes, and neither the sofa nor the screen is an actual piece of furniture used in the show.

And here's an excerpt from the press release (a collaborative effort between me and Dave Wendelberger, our department publicist and musical accompanist): "Featuring two graduate students in their culminating thesis roles (Carolyn Conover as La Marquise de Merteuil and Kirill Sheynerman as Le Vicomte de Valmont), Les Liaisons Dangereuses is sure to delight audiences with its manipulative characters who use love and passion in a twisted game designed primarily for their own pleasure. Originally a 1784 novel by Choderlos de Laclos, these iconic characters have inspired multiple screen and stage versions including Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Valmont (1989) and Cruel Intentions (1999). This stage adaptation by Christopher Hampton focuses on the romantic and sexual gamesmanship of the libertines and how they use others as pawns."

I have worked with Carolyn and Kirill this week, as our stage management team and all the undergraduates in the cast are working Haunted Aud, which is an enormous fundraiser that takes over the whole building and turns it into a haunted house experience.  (This year it is a haunted hotel, called "The Hostile.")  This also meant we didn't really have space to rehearse, so we rehearsed in my office.  On Wednesday they sat in armchairs and played the Merteuil/Valmont scenes as an Oscar Wilde play. Kirill said that this helped him figure out where the witty jabs and pokes are.  On Thursday the sat together on the sofa and played the scenes in close proximity to each other. We also went through the play backwards.  Both Carolyn and Kirill felt that this exercise helped to establish an intimate, light-hearted relationship between Merteuil and Valmont at the beginning of the play that is lost by the end of the play. 

Last Sunday we worked on transitions and fight choreography.  I took some pictures, but most of them did not turn out well.  Here's the best one:

One problem we have been having with the duel between Valmont and Danceny is that the script gives no reason for it.  We can assume it is a duel over Cecile, orchestrated by Merteuil.  (Valmont warns Dancency to beware of the Marquise de Merteuil, saying, "in this affair we are both her creatures.")  In the novel, Merteuil shows Cecile's correspondence about Valmont to Danceny, and this is what precipitates the duel.  In the play, Merteuil declares "War" on Valmont, and the duel immediately follows.  Our fight director Zev Steinberg has created some choreography that should help to clarify the characters' investments in the duel.

It was great to dig into the text with Carolyn and Kirill this week, and I'm looking forward to seeing our run-through in the space on Sunday, which is our last time in the Arena before load-in! The show opens two weeks from today.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Transitions

Today's rehearsal is mainly devoted to our transitions.  One ongoing conversation throughout the design process has been about using furniture to distinguish among the various settings of the play.  Many scenes take place in Merteuil's salon or Rosemonde's salon, but there are also scenes in several bedrooms, and in Valmont's and Tourvel's homes.  My position from the beginning has been that I don't want this to be a play about furniture, and I think our scenic designer Daniel Hobbs has been successful in this regard.  Today he is here, and choreographing the scenic transitions.

Actors playing the servants are moving the furniture. The script names four servants: Azolan (Valmont's valet), Julie (Tourvel's maid); Adele (Rosemonde's maid); and Majordomo (Merteuil's majordomo...named only by his title, like most of Karen Walker's staff on Will and Grace).  I have added Victoire, one of Merteuil's maidservants in the novel. In the novel, Merteuil discusses sending Victoire out dressed as a footman to deliver letters.  I was interested in this idea of a drag role, since women in breeches show up frequently in libertine novels and on the stage in eighteenth-century France.  But it looks like we won't have a moment to show this, because all the servants need to be involved in all the transitions.

We will also have music during the transitions; our sound designer is negotiating for rights to use a recording of Rameau.  But if we can't afford that, we are looking into creating midi files of pieces like "Plaisir d'Amour" by Martini.

Our stage management team has done a great job keeping things organized.  The initial spike tape has worn down, so Sarah and Laura did a little bit of re-spiking today.  The floor will have an intricate painted design, so we have talked about trying not to have spike tape on it. But we will see what happens. 
  

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Fragonard and Greuze

Our rehearsals are being interrupted this week by auditions for the Department of Theatre's Spring Productions.  Last night we did some work on intimacy and focus with Merteuil/Valmont, Merteuil/Volanges, and Valmont/Tourvel.  I asked the actors to sit in chairs across from each other and do their scenes without the blocking, but just to connect with their scene partner.  Carolyn Conover (Merteuil) pointed out that this slowed down the pace of the scenes, and really allowed her to think about the language.  One scene between Merteuil and Volanges became much more volatile, and we decided that it makes sense for those cousins to be close cousins who interact like siblings. We also tried a few of the scenes with the actors sitting in chairs back-to-back.  The face-to-face versions tended to make the scenes sexier, while the back-to-back versions made them more theatrical.  It was a fun exercise, and I think the actors all found it useful. It is great to have them off-book, and the show has really been growing now that they don't have scripts in their hands.

I mention some art history in the director's notes, so I thought I might elaborate on that.  In a lot of ways Les Liaisons dangereuses depicts the sexy rococo world of a Fragonard painting.  For example, The Swing:

The usual narrative of this painting is that a clergyman is pushing a woman on the swing while her lover, concealed below, is positioned for the voyeuristic experience of seeing up her dress.  A menacing Cupid looks on, with his finger to his lips.  (I have been referring to this trope as the "shushing Cupid," which isn't really the technical term.)  The play of shadow and light, the tactility of the leaves, and jaunty pink shoe casually flying through the air all contribute to a sense of play combined with danger. 

Another Fragonard painting is The Bolt, which is practically an illustration of what the scene of seduction between Valmont and Cecile might look like:

This was the illustration on the cover of the version of Les Liaisons dangereuses that I read as an undergraduate.  (The cover of the French paperback I'm currently using has an illustration of Valmont writing a letter on Emilie's back.)  Elspeth Williams, our costume designer, used The Bolt as an image of inspiration and placed it on the front cover of the binder where she is keeping her script and renderings and research materials.  Again we see the play of light and shadow, with a sense of touch imbued to the fabric.  The woman's dress merges with the fabric of the bed, which is the clear destination of where the scene is heading. The woman's gestures tend to be understood as pretending to fight off the man's advances.  It is unclear whether her left hand is trying to keep him from locking the door or helping him close the bolt.  This painting raises an issue of consent that is uncomfortable for us today.  The eighteenth century had a far different expectation of what constituted consent.  Both Cecile and Tourvel submit to Valmont, but the "consent" he elicits from them would now leave his actions open to being considered sexual assault.

The sexual dangers and pleasures depicted in these two paintings by Fragonard, which date from the 1770s, contrast with the domestic melodrama of paintings by Greuze from the same period:

In this painting, The Father's Curse (1778), a son is going off to war against his family's wishes. Amy S. Wyngaard has specifically compared the financial situation of the family in this painting with the family helped by Valmont in Les Liaisons dangereuses (Wyngaard, From Savage to Citizen, 2004, pp. 108-109).  Tourvel is moved by the scene of domestic charity staged by Valmont as a spectacle for Tourvel's servant who has been spying on him.  In this sense, I see Tourvel as partaking more in the world of Greuze, while Valmont and Merteuil prefer the world of Fragonard. 

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Director's Note

My director's note is due for the program copy, so I am posting it here:

Director's Note

I first read the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses as a senior in college. I remember discussing the epistolary format, and particularly the narrative positioning of the novel’s two contradictory prefaces.  One preface states that the letters are found objects; the other calls that assertion into question, assessing the contents that follow as “merely a novel.” I also recall intensive analysis of Letter 81, in which the Marquise de Merteuil explains to Valmont how she created herself as a woman who displays vastly different public and private versions of her identity. 

Christopher Hampton’s stage adaptation of the 1784 novel by Choderlos de Laclos mostly dispenses with the epistolary format.  Though the characters discuss writing letters, only a handful of letters are read or written on stage.  Instead, Hampton focuses on romantic and sexual gamesmanship.  The Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil are libertines who use love and passion in a twisted game designed primarily for their own pleasure.  Other characters are generally pawns in their game, but some are players in their own right.

Our production draws on the idea of games in multiple ways.  The designers have incorporated imagery of playing cards, as well as the playful spirit of the rococo.  The actors’ rehearsal process included developing moments of game-play within the scenes.  In addition to metaphors of games that existed in the eighteenth century, such as chess and tennis, we incorporated contemporary games like Hearts, “Mother, May I,” and “Red Light, Green Light.” 

As a significant text of the Enlightenment era, Les Liaisons dangereuses plays on tensions between reason and sentiment, public and private, the classical and the rococo.  The visual art of eighteenth-century France offers an apt point of contrast.  Merteuil and Valmont might best fit into the world of sexual danger represented in paintings by Fragonard (whose The Bolt was the cover art of the paperback version I read in college), while Tourvel finds more affinity with the domestic simplicity of works by Greuze.  Though the story is steeped in the eighteenth century, Hampton’s play uses modern language, encouraging us to think about the destructive qualities of desire as they exist in the world today.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Scene Work and First Run-Through

We had our first run-through on Sunday afternoon. It was exciting to see the shape of the show.  All of the designers were able to be there to watch, and we made a few decisions about how different rooms will look.  Valmont's and Tourvel's residences will be smaller than Rosemonde's and Merteuil's.  This will be accomplished by using less furniture in more concentrated arrangements, and with lighting areas that constrict the size of those rooms.  Our servant characters also took the first step in learning the transitions. It is great to have rehearsal furniture so that we can practice the scene changes, and I'm hoping to add more interaction among the servants at these times.  I'm going to try to find moments for them to pass letters to each other (sent to and from their respective masters), in a nod to the epistolary novel.

Our publicity photo call was yesterday, and it was wonderful to see an idea of what the costumes and make-up will look like on some of the main characters.  We also had fun making jokes about "smizing." America's Next Top Model should really have a photo shoot inspired by eighteenth-century libertines, if they haven't already.

Last night we worked on the scenes between Madame de Merteuil the Volanges family (Madame de Volanges and her daughter Cecile), and we discovered that Madame de Volanges has a tendency to overreact.  If she were playing Hearts, she might be the kind of player who would lead the Queen of Spades after taking her first hearts, thinking her best option is to Shoot the Moon. 

We also worked some of the fight choreography last night, and that led to an interesting parallel in the way Valmont treats Tourvel and Danceny.  He has a moment with each of these characters where he shows mercy.  Though he could take his victory over each of them, he relents.  We're currently staging both of those moments in the same corner of the Arena, which I like.

Tonight we will spend some time on the scenes between Valmont and Emilie, and then trace the Merteuil-Valmont-Tourvel arc.  Those three characters are very much at the core of the story, yet they are only on stage together for a brief moment.  Merteuil's dalliance with Danceny seems to make Valmont jealous, but it is Valmont's relationship with Tourvel that destroys the bond between Valmont and Merteuil. 

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Table Work and Blocking Act I

Tonight we will run our rough blocking of Act I.  We have been moving through Act I by starting around the table to talk through the scenes and then getting up to block them.  One discovery that we made is that the ironic maternal scene between Merteuil and Cecile is echoed by a sincere maternal scene between Rosemonde and Tourvel.  We also realized that the rules Merteuil has set for herself are not much different from the rules Tourvel follows. Merteuil simply follows these rules for her public persona while flouting them in private. 

Hampton's dialogue offers intriguing opportunities for actors.  In one scene between Cecile and Valmont, both characters use the phrase "All right" with various shades of meaning.  Cecile also frequently uses the word "promise," and Valmont willfully twists its definition.

Madame de Rosemonde and Madame de Volanges wrap up their card game

Valmont and Madame de Tourvel ponder their situation

The Marquise de Merteuil counsels Madame de Volanges, soap opera style

I knew that staging this show in the round would lead to a lot of blocking challenges. It's a play about secrets, and an arena stage makes it difficult to hide anything. But we're also having fun adding games into the movement (there's a "Red Light, Green Light" moment between Merteuil and Valmont), and playing with the conventions of soap opera staging.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: First Rehearsal

Our first rehearsal went well. We started off with presentations from the designers.  Our design process began several months ago, and all the designs have gone through revisions and refinements.  I shared the above video with the design team at our first meeting, and I also shared it with the actors last night. It is a computer animation of an eighteenth-century gaming table that transforms for playing card games, chess, and backgammon, or for use as a writing desk.  Certainly the images of games and letter-writing are connected to the play.  As a director, I also find this game table a useful metaphor because so many of the characters are keeping secrets from one another, to be revealed in surprising ways at strategic moments.  

After our designers showed their work, we read through the script.  It was great to hear the scenes out loud, and especially to catch the sexual innuendo in the dialogue.  One of the actors commented that she had watched the film version (the one with Glenn Close and John Malkovich) and didn't find it nearly as funny as the play script.  It's interesting that Christopher Hampton wrote the screenplay for that film and based it on this play. The film restores Merteuil's punishment from the end of the novel, which is absent from the play. 

We are working around some actor conflicts, so we will rehearse tonight but then take a few days off before we start blocking Act I next week.  Tonight's rehearsal will delve into the relationships among Merteuil, Valmont, Cecile, and Danceny.

Here are a couple of photos from last night's read-through:

Les Liaisons Dangereuses: Playing Games

Tonight we start rehearsals for Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Christopher Hampton's adaptation of the 1782 novel by Choderlos de Laclos.  The show provides thesis roles for two of our MFA Acting students, who will play Merteuil and Valmont.  I feel very well-prepared to direct this play.

This summer I traveled to Paris for inspiration, and revisited some places I had been before.  One museum I saw for a second time was the Museum of Playing Cards in Issy-les-Moulineaux.

They have a nifty collection of playing cards from a variety of periods, and the presentation emphasizes the culture of card-playing as well as uses for cards beyond playing games.  Some of the more interesting sets were designed for teaching information about people and places while games were played. 

I also saw several museums that were new to me, including the Musee Nissim de Camondo, which was once the home of a collector who was obsessed with eighteenth-century furniture and had a particular interest in bringing together collections of furnishings that had been separated.  Later, after getting on a tram that was headed in the wrong direction, we decided to check out the Porcelain Museum in Sevres. The luxury of rococo porcelain fits very well with the world of this play.  I was particularly drawn to these two "trompe-l'oeil" pieces:

Possibly these dishes would have been used for serving nuts and asparagus? Or they could just be placed decoratively and then everyone would laugh at the unsuspecting guest who tried to pick up a porcelain walnut. 

The theme of game-playing is quite prevalent in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and these eighteenth-century objects suggest different ways in which game-play was deployed in French culture of the period.  I'm looking forward to beginning our rehearsals, and I think the idea of games will be central to our process.  For Valmont and Merteuil, we have already had some discussion about each of their scenes being a round in a game. Over the course of the play, we will keep track of who is winning and who is losing, and what tactics they use against their opponent.
 

MSU Theatre and Translation Symposium

Last Friday, the MSU Department of Theatre hosted an academic Symposium on Theatre and Translation.  Three MFA students who had taken my graduate seminar on Translation and Adaptation last spring presented research on comparative analysis of translations of plays.  Zev Steinberg's paper focused on the close connection between the language of a speech in Cyrano de Bergerac and choices that might be made by a fight director in choreographing the violence for that scene.  Chris Haug discussed the pitfalls of translating cultural context with regard to Dario Fo's An Accidental Death of an Anarchist.  And Carolyn Conover offered ideas for teaching Strindberg's Miss Julie using translation as an analytical lens. 

Dassia Posner, our keynote speaker, generously discussed connections among the three graduate student papers before offering her own intervention on Vsevelod Meyerhold's cultural re-framing of Carlo Gozzi's The Love of Three Oranges.  Prof. Posner's insightful lecture gave way to a productive conversation about translation in which she drew on her experience working on a "dramaturgical translation" of Chekhov's Three Sisters for Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago.

Prof. Posner's lecture also offered an excellent point of reference for considering our own production of Gozzi's The Serpent Lady.  Our final panel of the day included presentations by the design and production team for the show, including a discussion of the framing device of our chorus of fairies.   

Back to Blogging?

We shall see how long this lasts.  I'm in a place right now where I wanted to revisit my time in Paris. I'm sort of amazed at how much identifying information I included in my posts.  I had taken the blog off of search engines a while back, but I have done some cleanup and editing that may be interesting.  If you see your name in the archives of my blog and want me to remove it, please let me know.

Anyway, I am currently directing my first theatre production since I worked for Caffeine Theatre and I kind of wanted to post my program note online.  I didn't have a place to do it.  It doesn't make sense to use the Caffeine Theatre blog, and our department doesn't have a blog, so I thought I would get my personal blog up and running again.

Here's the program note:

When I was asked to propose a “magical and fantastical” show for this season, I thought of the work of Carlo Gozzi.  As a theatre historian, I knew Gozzi’s plays primarily because of his conflict with the playwright Carlo Goldoni.  While Goldoni favored a more regularized, literary comedy, Gozzi wanted to continue the use of masks and improvisation, telling old stories in old ways.  The Serpent Lady is a commedia dell’arte fairy tale; in many ways this is a play about the magic of theatre. In our production, the story is told by a group of fairies in collaboration with a troupe of actors whose origins in commedia have adapted and changed over time.  Our ensemble draws on a variety of theatrical and literary traditions beyond commedia, including melodrama, Greek tragedy, blason poetry, epic, and myth.  

At its core, The Serpent Lady is a story about how love can conquer not only death, but immortality. Farruscad and Cherestani must place their faith in each other, a lesson that proves more difficult for Farruscad than for Cherestani. Love is initially a force that weakens Farruscad, but he ultimately approaches love in a new way that leads him to greater maturity.Our production is also inevitably about gender, partly because Gozzi is often accused of misogyny.  Casting an ensemble of sixteen women and one man represents an effort to challenge traditional gender roles and to practice resistant reading.

Working with a new translation has allowed us to mine the improvisational spirit of the play, and to bring contemporary humor to a piece that inhabits the world of fairy tales: “Once Upon a Time, in a faraway land...”