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.