Pride and Prejudice and Rehearsals

We are off to a good start with Pride and Prejudice rehearsals. (I'm directing Joseph Hanreddy and J.R. Sullivan's adaptation at MSU.) It has been a fun week of character work and blocking. So far it's like having an in-depth seminar on Austen's novel, with each character's position represented by an expert on that character (the actor playing the role).

On Monday we had a design salon. Our designers usually do presentations for the cast, but the lighting designer suggested that it might be more productive to have each designer set up an area to discuss their designs with smaller groups of cast members. This went well, and was a good start for the aesthetic of the show.  After our design salon, I met with the actors playing Elizabeth and Jane Bennet, Caroline and Charles Bingley, and Mr. Darcy. It was great to be able to talk through the relationships among these characters, and especially to try to empathize with Caroline. It would be easy to play her as a nasty snob, especially in this adaptation. But the student who is playing the role has a great interest in why Caroline does the things she does.

I happened upon Janet Aylmer's book Darcy's Story in a used bookstore after I knew I would be directing this play, and I gave that book to the actor playing Mr. Darcy, who is finding it very useful.

We spent Tuesday evening with the Bennet family, exploring the dynamics of the five sisters and their parents. By happenstance, the actors arranged themselves around the table so that Kitty, Lydia and Mary were closer to Mrs. Bennet, while Jane and Elizabeth were closer to Mr. Bennet. Their physical position mirrored the family dynamics as I see them.

Wednesday we arranged a series of "visits" so that supporting actors could talk about their roles. The first set of visits involved family relationships as they exist at the beginning of the play, while the second grouping considered post-marriage relationships. In round one, Mr. Collins visited with Mr. Bennet, Mrs. Bennet, and Mary; Elizabeth and Jane visited with the Lucas family; Kitty and Lydia chatted up the military officers, along with Mr. Bingley; Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her daughter Anne visited Pemberley (with Mrs. Reynolds representing the Darcy family, as our Darcy and Georgiana were excused for the evening). The second round of visits involved Elizabeth and the Gardiners visiting Pemberley; Jane spending time with Bingley; the rest of the Bennet family discussing in the company of Lydia and Wickham; and the Lucas/Collins/de Bourgh group exploring their feelings about the marriage of Charlotte and Mr. Collins.

After these visits, each actor introduced their character(s); many of the introductions garnered laughter. The Hanreddy/Sullivan script pushes some characters in comedic directions. For instance, this adaptation sets up the Gardiners as a lovey-dovey couple. (When I told them they should be "schmoopie," the whole room stared blankly.)  The actors then explored social relationships through movement. I eventually asked them to link up with their families and neighbors. Then they joined together as marriages happen in the play, and we ended up with a closed circle.

Last night we started blocking. I knew the transitions were fast, and I've been saying that to the designers. But it took staging them to realize how fast they really are. The script moves swiftly from scene to scene and from place to place, generally without fanfare and sometimes without providing an obvious way for characters who have been onstage to exit.

This is by far the largest show I have directed, and it's the first time in a long time that I've worked in a proscenium space. So I've been a little nervous heading into rehearsals. But now that we have most of the first week under our belts, things are getting much more exciting.

The December Project

The December Project Publicity Photo by Kellyn Uhl

Today was the closing performance of The December Project, a devised piece conceived and developed by Kellyn Uhl. I worked as the dramaturg on this project. I wanted to share a little bit about it, including the Dramaturgy Notes I wrote for the program, and a sample scene.

Program Notes

Scholars in various fields are theorizing what it means to be post-human. As we integrate technology into our bodies and lives via smartphone, Bluetooth, and Fitbit, many contend that we are on the road to becoming cyborgs. In an outward direction, the term “anthropocene” refers to changes in geology brought about through human behavior.    

The December Project is a devised work that began with questions and discussion, sharing of short performances, and grounding in the movement vocabulary known as Viewpoints. After several workshops in September, our main research question emerged: “What does it take to break down the separation caused by dehumanization?” Our efforts to answer this question led to a goal of feeling authentic connection through art. Eventually the cast developed a group of characters who have come together to seek that kind of connection.

What you are about to see is a series of ensemble-created vignettes responding mostly to the role played by technology in our everyday lives. Developed through writing and improvisation, sculpted through dance, and incorporating multidisciplinary artistic perspectives, The December Project aims to offer hope in the technological winter of social media.  

Sample Scene

Almost everyone involved with the show did some writing that was staged, with the addition of choreography. Here is a scene idea that I wrote, which was staged in the show in a heavily revised version. At the post-show discussion on Thursday, I said that the scene was "unrecognizable" from what I wrote, but actually the first seven lines were the same. 
 

Characters announce their facebook profile filters/images with text. The words rearrange and overlap as in facebook feed. There should be a rhythm to this, and multiple points of view. The overall effect should include some conflict, but ultimately these are disparate ideas coexisting.

Rainbow Filter

Black Lives Matter

I Stand with Planned Parenthood

Jesus Saves

Feel the Bern

Please don’t take away our guns

Spartan Selfie

M Go Blue

Thank you for Obamacare

That’s 9 [there were 9 performers in the show; the scene was ultimately done by four]. These could be repeated, or new things added, or the actors could come up with something completely different.

[In the final version, the 4 performers joined hands and formed a ring, then rotated out of the ring into a straight line. At the end of this vignette, they took a bow. This was all done over a crunchy/hippie musical underscoring.]

Trailer

Finally, here is a short preview video that was created for the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne_eFaBaVBI 

Conference Trip

This weekend I attended the Western Society for French History conference (WSFH). It was my first time at “the Western,” and I enjoyed it very much.  I decided to go to this conference instead of ASTR (American Society for Theatre Research) partly because it was closer to home and partly because it forced me to work on a project that I should be preparing to publish as an article. I presented on eighteenth-century Parisian brothel plays, with a specific focus on the relationship between prostitutes and police as represented in three plays. My panel was called “Arresting Exchanges: Constructing Identity in Police Archives.” It was a bit chaotic to start because the program indicated that we had been assigned to the same room as a different panel (on Algeria). But everyone worked efficiently to straighten out the mix-up, and we ended up with a good audience. The audience included a leading expert on elite prostitution in eighteenth-century Paris. I was citing her work in the paper, but had not met her before. So I was a little nervous. But she was very encouraging. It was especially productive to meet with historians’ resistance to using plays as historical sources. This helped me to figure out where not to send this essay, and reminded me that I do belong in Theatre Studies.

One funny thing about this conference was the etiquette around language. People kept asking permission to speak in French, or apologizing for speaking French even when their paper titles were in French in the program. I went to one panel where two speakers presented in French (with requisite apologies), and then the commenter spoke in English, and apologized for speaking in English. The same dance happened during the Q&A, with the speakers asking permission to respond in French to questions that had been asked in English. It was all very polite, but it felt a little unnecessary. 

Almost every panel I attended featured a commentary at the end, usually by a senior scholar. These were always generous and rigorous, offering lots of positive feedback as well as questions for further exploration. And the papers were generally engaging and well-presented. It was great to think about things specific to social and cultural history in the eighteenth century, and I was reminded of several texts (mainly libertine novels) that will be of interest for other projects