Third rehearsal

Oh my. It just keeps getting sillier. And I keep adding props.

I am not a props actor/director. But I keep adding props.

Last night I worked with the three shepherds, played by Ben, Jessica and Dane. As Rachel (Mak/Angel) said, one will be a Little Bo Peep type character, but with combat boots. The other will be a pirate - for the sake of one joke at the end. (I can't resist a good pirate joke - Ok, I can't resist a bad pirate joke.) Last night we also decided to make the first shepherd a rapper. Because, again, for one line. And because we can. It's kind of awesome.

Today, Rachel, Celi, and I took a look at Mak and Gill's moments to establish their relationship and home life. It has been decided Mak has a twirly mustache and Gill is an actress with a soft spot for sheep.

We also looked at the Angel and Mary moments. I've never been able to give this direction before and I'm so proud of it: I told Rachel to turn the awesomeness of what the Angel says up to 11. Once I learned about her opera background, of course, that had to add to the awesome. Celi's Mary was beautiful, sincere, and gave both Rachel and I a chill with it's simplicity. These two moments will be lovely around the ridiculousness that is the rest of the play.

Tony, I hope you don't regret asking me to do this...

Kelly

The director speaks - I mean, writes.

What a curious little play! I'm not much of a passion play person, but if more are like this one, I will become one!

We've started our adventure into the world of these shepherds with a read through and a blocking rehearsal with the shepherds. So far so good! The read through was hysterical - much funnier than what I heard in my head reading it by myself. It completely helps that the talents of Rachel Quagliariello, Celi Oliveto, Dane Leasure, Jessica Shiermeister, and Ben Ratkowski are being facilitated for it! (I think I spelled everyone's names right...)

At this point, the actors ideas are flying fast and furious. This is going to be quite a trip!

First Read-Through

Yesterday evening we had our first read-through of the Second Shepherd’s Play (2SP) for this year. I remembered why I love this show so very much. It may, in fact, be one of my favorite theater things I’ve ever done. Why, you ask? Well…

First there’s the language. I remembered yesterday, hearing the other actors read it for the first time through, that this language is hard. It’s medieval, and the entire show is in verse. It can be hard to understand, and some of the words and phrases don’t really flow off the tongue, at least at first. Last year I had to work really hard on understanding all my lines and communicating the meaning of them, not to mention getting the text in my mouth so I didn’t trip over it. But I was surprised yesterday by how much I remembered, and once you get it in your tongue, it does flow (or at least most of it does). It’s actually a beautifully written play—just in language that is pretty archaic. But I think challenging language is actually more enjoyable and rewarding for both the actors and the audience in the end. (I guess that’s why I like to perform Shakespeare, his contemporaries, and also OPERA. You know, like in Italian. And German. And French.) 

Secondly, I think this is possibly the funniest Christmas play of any kind that I have ever seen or heard about. I realize that’s a pretty bold claim to make, but I’ve rarely laughed so much in 45 minutes of theater. Christmas plays are usually so predictable—everyone knows what’s going to happen. This one is not. For one thing, there is the general absurdity of the entire story (which I summarized in my previous post). It’s just silly. Then there are the anachronisms. Although we are supposed to be in Israel before the birth of Christ, and the shepherds of the title are the ones to whom the angel appeared to announce Jesus’ birth, everyone in the show makes continuous references to Catholicism. As in, hardly a stanza of the play goes by without someone making an exclamation that refers to Jesus’ death, or Mary, or one of the Catholic saints. It’s constant. At one point a shepherd says, “I dreamed we were in England!” (Which is funny, of course, because the shepherds are supposed to be in Palestine, but the play was originally performed in England during Advent.) So it’s not really a play about the shepherds who first greeted Christ. It’s about how the shepherds might have reacted if Christ had been born to medieval England, at least if medieval England were already Catholic when He was born…time machine, anyone? But I wonder whether the Catholic references are deliberately funny anachronisms, or whether references to Mary, Jesus, and the saints were just such a normal part of speech at the time that it only made sense for the shepherds to talk that way. Or maybe general education was really so poor that most people didn’t know enough history to recognize the incongruity of swearing by St. Steven when he wouldn’t exist yet for hundreds of years. I hope our modern audiences will recognize it, but many of the references are so archaic that not many people know them unless they are medieval scholars. 

The third reason I love this play is that it’s really a cartoon. I have a big personality, and I love to overact. This is why I enjoy theater for children: it’s ok to overact. In fact, you pretty much can’t be too ridiculous. This is also true of 2SP. Last year I deliberately modeled my character, Mac, after Wile E. Coyote. In yesterday’s rehearsal I was inspired to add an Evil Villain Laugh…once, twice, thrice, maybe four or five times. I warned Kelly, our director, that I’ll probably keep adding it to more moments in the show until she orders me to stop. We also decided last night that the third and second shepherd will be, respectively, Little Bo Peep and a PIRATE. Yes, that’s right: a Pirate Shepherd. It probably won’t make sense until he says his very last line of the show…then you’ll say, Oh, of course he’s a pirate!. 

Curious yet? I mean, how many times in your life have you seen a Pirate Shepherd robbed by Wile E. Coyote? Maybe Tony will be sorry he’s passed on the torch of directing this show when he sees what a crazy cartoon we’re making of it. But I think it will be a lot of fun, for us and for everyone who comes to see it.

Return to the Second Shepherd's Play

About a year ago, Tony, the heart and mind of Bad Quarto Productions, IM'ed me on facebook and asked me whether I was interested in acting in his upcoming production of the Second Shepherd's Play.

Me: What's it about?

Tony: Complaining about work, complaining about wives, complaining about husbands...

Me: That sounds like real life.

Tony: ...Stealing a sheep, disguising the sheep as a baby, birth of Christ, angelic harmony.

Me: You had me at angelic harmony.

Tony: Oh, and we'll dress you up as a Christmas tree.

Me: Even better.

This year I get to reprise my role as Mak the Sheep-Thief-Turned-Christmas-Tree, and also I will music direct (which I suppose means I'm responsible for making the "angelic harmony" part of the show actually happen). I hope this year to be a little more organized, focused, and simple in our approach to the music. Last year for the pre-show music we tried to do some things that were a little ambitious for the time we had to rehearse and the amount of energy everyone involved in the show usually has at this point in the semester. I have yet to meet with this year's director to discuss her ideas regarding music, but I'm thinking it will be pretty simple and fun...mostly, of course, Christmas carols. Who doesn't love Christmas carols?

"O Tannenbaum, o tannenbaum, how lovely are your branches...."

The Second Shepherds' Play - Cast/Crew/Poster

Hi gang! Now that we've all had way too much turkey, I wanted to share that The Second Shepherds' Play has a new cast, crew, and poster for 2011: 

Rachel Quagliariello as Mak/Angel
Celi Oliveto as Gil/Mary
Ben Ratkowski as Col, the First Shepherd
Dane Leasure as Gib, the Second Shepherd
Jessica Schiermeister as Daw, the Third Shepherd

Directed by Kelly Elliot, with Musical Direction by Rachel Quagliariello

 That's right, sports fans, I won't be at the helm this time. Seeing as how I'm in my last year of graduate studies in Shakespeare and Performance, and that I would like this collaboration to continue as a tradition into the future, I've managed to convince Kelly Elliot to take up the mantle direct the show. I won't lie, it's a little bit weird letting go, but two years in a row is long enough for anyone to direct the same show, and I can't wait to see what Kelly and her cast do with this most excellent piece of medieval pageantry.

If you missed out on last year's fun, here are some pictures that should remind you just how awesome it is to try stealing a sheep, disguising it as your newborn son, sing Christmas songs while doing so, and totally get away with it. 

As much as we like to make fun of Mak and Gil and their mildly hair brained scheme, you have to give them credit, they totally manage to pull it off. The problem is that they pull it off too well, and actually make our three heros feel like massive tools for casting wicked aspersions on a couple that has been "blessed" with a newborn. That's one of the things I've always loved about this show; the good guys are too good to just walk away without trying to make the world a little bit better. 

Anyway, the album I promised: 

The Second Shepherds' Play Returns!

I'm pleased to announce that Bad Quarto will once again perform The Second Shepherds' Play to benefit the Virginia Haiti Collaborative. We will perform at Stuart Hall School on December 10th at 2 PM, and at Emmanuel Episcopal Church as part of their 10:30 AM service on December 11th. Please check back soon for more details!

The Vagina Monologues

You'll have to pardon my lack of recent updates to the blog, while Bad Quarto doesn't have much planned for the stage right now, there are a lot of exciting things happening behind the scenes that will enable us to bring you more awesome shows in the future. That said, we do have an offering coming up this weekend. As part of V-Day 2011, Bad Quarto Productions and the New Directions Center of Staunton, VA will present Eve Ensler's play The Vagina Monologues this Sunday evening from 7:30 to 9 in Staunton's Masonic Building (7-13 W. Beverly St) on the 5th Floor. If you need directions, please visit http://www.badquarto.org.

I know what you're thinking, what does The Vagina Monologues have to do with quartos and the theatre of 1599? Honestly, not a hell of a lot, but the way we're rehearsing it does. Tiffany Stern has posited (in her excellent Making Shakespeare) that the actors of Renaissance London would be left largely to their own devices to learn their roles. They might occasionally meet with a director (Stern uses the term "instructor") to discuss what they were going to do on stage, but would typically only rehearse together once or twice. That's how we're rehearsing Vagina Monologues.

I, for one, am eager to see how this experiment in Shakespeare's original rehearsal conditions plays out. I'll be sure to keep you posted on that and other developments.