Lost to History

One of the questions I've been fielding a lot through this project is how historically accurate I planned on making this show. Unfortunately, the Romans effectively destroyed any Carthaginian records that could have told us more about Dido at the conclusion of the Third Punic War. The only sources we have that discuss Dido are of Roman or Greek origin, and as Carthage was a major competitor with both the Romans and the Greeks, these sources need to be regarded as something less than Gospel truth.

The chief source of the story of Dido is The Aeneid, an epic poem composed by Vergil (often modernized to "Virgil") sometime between 29 and 19 BC, which followed a several decades long period of civil war that brought an end to the Roman Republic and rise of the Empire. Vergil was attempting to give his people a national epic that connected them to the Trojan War, the source of the Greek epics The Illiad and The Odyssey. This means, however, that The Aeneid is, at least in part, a propaganda piece.

What's fascinated me about this story, though, is the way that Vergil leaves Aeneas in an uncomfortable place. This is when Aeneas goes to the underworld to seek a prophecy from his deceased father, and encounter's Dido's shade. Here's the text from the MIT Classics Archive:

Not far from these Phoenician Dido stood,
Fresh from her wound, her bosom bath'd in blood;
Whom when the Trojan hero hardly knew,
Obscure in shades, and with a doubtful view,
(Doubtful as he who sees, thro' dusky night,
Or thinks he sees, the moon's uncertain light,)
With tears he first approach'd the sullen shade;
And, as his love inspir'd him, thus he said:
"Unhappy queen! then is the common breath
Of rumor true, in your reported death,
And I, alas! the cause? By Heav'n, I vow,
And all the pow'rs that rule the realms below,
Unwilling I forsook your friendly state,
Commanded by the gods, and forc'd by fate-
Those gods, that fate, whose unresisted might
Have sent me to these regions void of light,
Thro' the vast empire of eternal night.
Nor dar'd I to presume, that, press'd with grief,
My flight should urge you to this dire relief.
Stay, stay your steps, and listen to my vows:
'T is the last interview that fate allows!"
In vain he thus attempts her mind to move
With tears, and pray'rs, and late-repenting love.
Disdainfully she look'd; then turning round,
But fix'd her eyes unmov'd upon the ground,
And what he says and swears, regards no more
Than the deaf rocks, when the loud billows roar;
But whirl'd away, to shun his hateful sight,
Hid in the forest and the shades of night;
Then sought Sichaeus thro' the shady grove,
Who answer'd all her cares, and equal'd all her love.

Somehow, that moment of turning away from Aeneas silently and returning to be with her first husband  was very powerful to me, even at the naive age of 17. Granted, Dido is no longer relevant to the story Vergil is telling, but something about me has always smiled at the way that Dido has the chance to offer some olive branch to the epic hero, and does not.

Of course, Vergil was trying to provide a mythological foundation for the Punic Wars, and this may have just been his way of commenting on how hateful the Carthaginians were as opposed to how badly Aeneas had wronged Dido.

Justinus' Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus (book 18) provides a more generous view of Dido (here called Elissa) from a historical perspective. Aeneas has nothing to do with this story precisely because the Trojan War happened in the 11th or 12th century BC, and Carthage was founded sometime between the 8th and 9th centuries BC. If Aeneas ever did come sailing through Tunisia, he would have been too early to witness even the beginnings of the Tyrian colony that would grow to be one of the largest city-states in the Helenistic world.

Ovid's Heroides gives us a letter from Dido to Aeneas, but this falls well within the parameters of the Dido that Vergil gives us in The Aeneid. Subsequent writers and composers have given us their own takes on the story, but historical accuracy, and to a degree, even literary accuracy, is simply not possible.

Of course, once we have recognized what is impossible, we can start to imagine what is possible, and proceed from there using the clues we have to build a structure, and our imaginations to fill in the rest.

The Ballad of Dido - Poster

Hey everyone, check out the poster for our Philadelphia performance! It features our own Rachel Quagliariello.

If you're a business and would like to get your logo on the poster, or sponsor the production in any way, please send an email to [tony (at) badquarto {dot} org]

The Song of the Ancient Queen

While you're enjoying your Valentine's day, we here at Bad Quarto Productions are excited to be getting back into show mode for our new musical The Ballad of Dido, which will perform this April in Philadelphia PA and Staunton VA.

The Ballad of Dido tells the story of Dido, the mythical queen of Carthage, and her love affair with Aeneas, the hero of the Trojan War who would go on to found a kingdom in Italy that eventually became the Roman Empire. Based on Vergil's Aenead, Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage (which is, coincidentally, part of the American Shakespeare Center's Actor's Renaissance Season here in Staunton this Spring), Ovid's Heroides, and other classical sources, The Ballad of Dido recovers the story of the ancient queen told from, for the first time in almost two thousand years, her own point of view.

One of the reasons we know so little about the historical Dido is that the Romans were very thorough in destroying Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War. The only surviving sources of the story of Dido and the early Carthaginians come from Roman and Greek sources, and since the Romans and Greeks competed with Carthage politically and economically, those sources tend to serve propaganda purposes. At a time when female rulers were vilified (Dido was a grandniece of the biblical Jezebel), Dido stands out as an example of a strong female ruler who managed to lead her people to found a new home, and ultimately create one of the most successful city-states of the ancient world.

Which sort of begs the question, why are we telling her story through American roots music? The simplest reason might be because I'm a mandolin player and I like it, but my reasons run deeper than that. Being a mandolin player means playing a lot of folk and bluegrass tunes, and I can't help but notice the overwhelming sense of dispossession in this genre of music. Roots ballads tend to be songs of loss; loss of love, loss of home, and loss of family, and that is the same feeling that the ancient epics The Illiad, The Odyssey, and The Aenead all convey. Each of these is about someone, or an entire race of someones, who have been deprived of their home and loved ones, acknowledge their own impending deaths, and are doing all they can to just keep moving for another day to try to find a better life for themselves and those who they have left.

Roots music is the music of refugees, and in the war torn Mediterranean geopolitical landscape of the 7th and 8th century BC, just about everyone was looking for a safe place from the constant fighting. By and large the music of this period is lost to us, but those folk and bluegrass tunes, so familiar to our ears, capture the spirit of the heroes the Greeks and Romans wrote about two millennia ago. 

We hope you'll join us for our productions of The Ballad of Dido this April, and stay tuned for dates, times, venues, and updates from the cast and crew!

Wrapping The Second Shepherds' Play

With our closing performance at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, I've finally been able to answer the question about what it would be like to perform The Second Shepherds' Play in a church. This one has been on my mind since my first production of it back in 2000, when I noticed that a priest and a few nuns were in attendance.

While we can't say with much certainty when, where, or how The Second Shepherds' Play was performed, we are fairly certain that theatre, along with most of the other liberal arts and sciences, was preserved within the church through the dark ages. Even if it had moved out of doors to Corpus Christi Festival pageant wagons and scaffolds by the early/mid 1400s, I think it quite likely that some tradition of seasonal plays within churches (or church halls) was maintained. While I have no historical or scholarly evidence, I am prepared to offer some sociological evidence:

1) Look at all the Christmas programming we have on television right now. Then remember that they didn't have television in the 1400s. Granted, they also didn't have Christmas (as we know it), but to my mind that only gave the Church (this was before the reformation) more reason to try to tempt the proletariat away from their pagan holiday of choice: Yule. A Christmas pageant at Christmas time gives people something less damnable to focus their energies on.

2) Everyone loves dressing kids up as things and putting them on stage. I've never been able to pull this off, but I was chatting with Kelly about the possibility of bringing 5 or 10 kids into the cast. They could play sheep (giving the shepherds a flock to leave), Mak and Gil's houseful of brood (giving Mak and Gil reason to complain), a choir of angels backing up the one named angel (because... that's why), and they could serve as tha "ass," "ox" and other barnyard animals at the manger (because those animals are described in the text). Granted, this reading is somewhat inspired by my work on Catalyst's production of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever a few years back, but I don't have much difficulty finding textual support for it, and parents always like to see their kids on stage.

So what I'm getting at is that there's still places for us to take Second Shepherds' Play in future years, and judging by the number of kids we had seeking autographs from the cast, and grown-ups who thought we should perform more often during December, we probably will.

Something I take particular joy in was the broad strokes with which Kelly, Ben, Dane, and Jessica painted the shepherds this year. They are clearly written as caricatures of  old-age, middle-age, and youth, and I've never quite managed to find the broad strokes needed within those types to bring the shepherds to the same level as Mak and Gil. The years shepherds (a rapper, a pirate, and Little Bo Peep) were constructed with broad enough strokes that they were very clearly inhabitants of the same fallen work Mak and Gil inhabit, and despite their empathetic rise above their conditions, they still need Christ's promised salvation to be greater than what they are.

I love when I get to learn something new about a play. Especially one I've been working on for so long, and will likely continue to work on for years to come.

Almost there!

Were almost to the weekend and therefore performances!

Because of the lateness of the metaphorical hour, we had to cut a couple of bits because there just wasn't enough time to work them properly. Next year...next year. But the actors are doing a wonderful job and it will still be silly and fun this year!

The singing is beautiful (well most of it). The baby sheep is wooly(ish). And the tennis ball is shined (not at all).

I get to go to Emmanuel Episcopal today to see that space and we'll squeeze in a quick walk through of the space on Saturday morning. Then a final dress run through at Stuart Hall and perform!

Original (Medieval) Staging Conditions

Something new and exciting this year is that the company will perform The Second Shepherds' Play in a church, which sort of makes sense if you keep in mind that churches were where the play would have been originally performed. At the home of the world's only re-creation of the Blackfriars Playhouse.... oh... wait... no.... something isn't right about that first sentence. Like mostly all of it.

The truth is that we know very little about early modern stage-craft, and while the Blackfriars Playhouse is the worlds only re-creation of Shakespeare's original indoor playhouse, a lot more guesswork went into that than most are comfortable thinking about. Keep in mind we have some very detailed paperwork describing the space (Burbage's original lease), and yet we still don't really and for truly know what the theatre looked like.

Of course, we know even less about medieval stagecraft.

While it is possibly true that plays in the medieval period sometimes performed in churches, by the time you get The Second Shepherds' Play (c. 1400-1450), we're pretty sure that the plays were elaborate affairs sponsored by guilds and presented on wagons or scaffolds, or perhaps in front of them, or maybe some combination of both. It's possible these plays were performed as part of a cycle annually, but it's also possible they were performed individually at certain times of the year. Possibly inside guild halls, parish halls, or any building with a hall large enough to accommodate players and an audience.

Based on our touring experience to Philly last year with Merry Devil, really, you don't need that much space at all. Have you ever been to one of those bars/cafes with a small stage for open mic nights? You could probably perform one of these plays there. But I digress....

It's a little bit hard to talk about original medieval staging conditions because even fewer people were literate in the medieval period than in the early modern period, and the first permanent playhouses weren't constructed in London until the 1560s ("The Red Lion," for those who are curious). That means that, at the latest scholarly estimate of composition, The Second Shepherds' Play was written a hundred years before playhouses were permanent structures in the capital of England.

Through the miracle of Google Maps, I can easily show you how far away Wakefield is from London:
View Larger Map

According to Google Maps, that's a two and a half day walk, and that's accounting for paved roads. Lets just say that there's a reason why all those rebellions you read about in Shakespeare started in northern England: it was too far away for the crown to exert much direct authority. By the by, all of those rebellions and insurrections that Shakespeare writes about in his history plays take place during the time period that The Second Shepherds' Play was probably written.

But, again, I digress....

Any playing space the original performance of The Second Shepherds' Play would have used would have been temporary, and while we cannot preclude performance in a church, churches tended to be used more regularly for other things. Likewise with guild halls, or any other indoor or outdoor space. Since plays were basically a trivial form of entertainment for the great unwashed, illiterate masses, no one with the ability to write much about them paid much attention to them.

Essentially, the anonymous monk who wrote The Second Shepherds' Play was writing the medieval equivalent of Cliff Notes.

Of course, we have sophisticated sensibilities, and can appreciate The Second Shepherds' Play as the work of art it truly is.

Yeah....

Anyhow, one of the reasons I'm writing this is that I have been asked to talk a little bit about how our church-performance at Emmanuel Episcopal is reminiscent of the Wakefield Master's original staging conditions, and the truth is that, for all I know, that is 100% true. And for all I know, the Wakefield Master imagined that, someday, someone like me would be able to write this brilliant commentary and share it with the entire world through a magical, glowing rectangle.

Tom Berger, the Shakespeare and Performance Scholar in Residence, has a saying I'm very fond of: "I don't know." I think, in this case, I'm going to have to go with that; with the addendum that I also don't think it necessarily matters as long as we all have a good time.

From one production to another

Since I have some prior experience with The Second Shepherd's Play through another college, I have been asked to blog a bit about the two experiences. I directed a staged reading of the play my sophomore year at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa as part of our Classical Theatre History class.

Once the professor informed me he would like me to direct the reading, the class divided up production duties: those who wanted to act picked their parts, and we chose who would work on costuming, props, publicity, set building, etc. If I remember correctly we used a script from an an anthology of Renaissance and Restoration plays, and kept the original Middle English.

The main struggle we encountered was that of the actors being able to portray what they were saying to the audience. Besides the slight language barrier, the class enjoyed working on the production. The final performance was a riot complete with hair ratting, dirty faces, butt scratching, and a very tall Joseph. I have attached a picture of the cast as well.

I'll be writing again to insert my thoughts on this rehearsal process and how I think the end product will compare and contrast to my first experience.

Jessica, 3rd Shepherd