As You Like It – Actors’ Blog #5

“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed”
 — Neil Armstrong

NASA's Johnson Space Center

NASA’s Johnson Space Center

This week we escaped the cold weather and basked in the balmy climate of Houston, Texas. Rice University is a regular stop on the tour (both Dan and Jen have been before), so I’d been primed to expect a beautiful campus and great facilities and certainly wasn’t disappointed. The Wellness Center would be the envy of most top health clubs and boasted machines we’d never even seen before. It could almost tempt me to join a gym back home, but somehow I think my local leisure centre might pale in comparison. It was surreal to turn up at the airport in all our Indiana winter gear to be met by Christina in Capri pants and sandals. Our hotel even had an outdoor pool. I was too much of a wuss to try it as it was un-heated, but Rob was hardy enough to give it a go.

We had a great week of classes and the students were bright and game enough to try whatever we threw at them. A highlight for us all was Friday’s lunch and afternoon class with Dennis Hutson who kept us entertained for hours. In fact, I had the pleasure twice as I also attended his Wednesday class…where I was slightly taken aback to discover (after a brief discussion about accents and dialect in performance) not one, but two fellow Brits among the students – one was even a fellow Essex girl!

On Thursday, we had tea at Baker Master House with some other fellow Brits, Rose and Ivo and their gorgeous dogs Bronte and Baker (though Bronte’s cute demeanor masks a true huntswoman’s heart, squirrels beware!) There is a large British ex-pat community in Houston, served by ‘British Isles’ a shop in Rice Village selling British goodies (crunchie bars, tea and Bridgewater china) and run by the Uncle of one of Rob’s good friends from home…who is also friends with Rose and Ivo…the world is small really, but we still crave our home comforts.

I was thinking a lot about our relationship to places and objects on Friday morning when I taught a workshop on A Streetcar Named Desire as part of a module exploring the writing of New Orleans. Rob had been in and done some scene study with the students earlier in the week, so I decided to focus the workshop on the senses and the actors’/characters’ response to objects and place. It was a great and thought-provoking session where we journeyed not only to New Orleans but also France, Vermont, El Salvador, Indiana, and Wyoming.

Then, at the end of the week, we journeyed to the moon. Well, okay, not literally, but via a trip to NASA where Christina had kindly put us in touch with fellow actor H.R., who performs in regular shows at the Center (letting us see what life is like on-board the International Space Station – who knew they recycled urine into drinking water!). H.R., in turn, linked us in with Tour Guide Kevin, who gave us a completely amazing private tour of the Center…which included the chance to sit in Mission Control for the Apollo landings! To sit somewhere so steeped in history and stories was truly awe inspiring; there was the red phone to the pentagon, an ‘abort request’ button, and, perhaps most poignantly, a mirror used onboard Apollo 13 and donated to the Control Center by the astronauts onboard, in recognition of the work done to save their lives.

AFTLS actors in Houston's Johnson Space Center

Clockwise from top left: Jennifer Higham, Joannah Tincey, Dan Winter, and Patrick Miller take over NASA.

We rounded the week off sitting outside (in February!), eating Tex Mex, and drinking a Margarita or two before team As You Like It got ready to head to College Station and Texas A&M.

Over and out.

As You Like It – Actors’ Blog #4

Cast with John and Heidi Rahe_StJoes

Actors with John and Heidi Rahe and other St. Joseph’s College hosts.

 

“Little Cousin Jasper, he
Don’t live in this town, like me,-
He lives ‘way to Rensselaer,
An ‘ist comes to visit here”

— James Whitcomb Riley

This week we visited St Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana and found ourselves made so welcome it felt like we were immediately part of the community. It’s a small college with only a little over a thousand students and a thriving drama programme run by the wonderful John Rahe.

We had a great week getting to know lots of the students and the faculty. It was also terrific to see so many members of the town community at our performances alongside the St Joe’s students. On Friday evening we were invited to join various members of the audience at Embers Bar in town after the performance. They had been offering a special Valentine’s Day trip to see the show that included dinner beforehand and (luckily for us!) some rather tasty desserts as a post-show treat. We met so many people who expressed their delight at being able to come and see some Shakespeare in their hometown.

It was wonderful to see the college as such a centre-point for the community. Saturday morning saw about 30 or so school children in the canteen who were all getting ready for a lesson with some of the college dance troupe before performing that afternoon at the basketball game. Go Pumas! Dan went out to the local middle-school to lead a workshop on Comedy of Errors and Jen got a whole bunch of student teachers dancing to the Ski-Sunday theme tune.

Our Stage Manager for the week, Erin, is a St Joe alumnus who had returned to take excellent care of us. She spoke really eloquently on Friday about how important it is for a community to have a hub, a creative place to meet and how powerful theatre is in creating a space which makes that possible – a place in which to share an experience.

Drama students at St Joe’s have a ritual called ‘Green Room.’ I shan’t give away any trade secrets but, in order to enact it, everybody stands in a circle. As we gathered on Saturday it seemed like such a powerful symbol for what theatre is; gathering people together so that something creative can happen.

Green-Room - St Joes

Actors join in St. Joseph’s backstage tradition – The Green Room.

After the show we all signed our names next to a quote from As You Like It, which has long been on the wall in the St Joe’s Theatre Tech Box.

“All the world’s a Stage,
And all the men and women merely players”
— Jaques, Act 2, Sc 7.

So there we are now, preserved as part of the St Joe’s community… merely players in all sorts of ways, as the Melancholy Jaques says. But the Stage? That remains a place of infinite possibility.

February 19, 2014

As You Like It – Actors’ Blog #3

Actors’ Blog – Week Three

First performances, more snow, farewell South Bend, hello Chicago!

As You Like It is now officially up and running. We opened on Wednesday and it was great to have a run of three shows and finally play with the audience and take them on the journey with us. It’s a source of great excitement and satisfaction to me how each show is so very different as the audience gives it shape. I firmly believe that’s how it should always be; it’s what sets Theatre apart from Film or TV as a storytelling medium. It’s like a chemical reaction each time, but in this work the audience are so active in following all the transitions that it seems to highlight their presence even further. The story is the same each night, and we play the same characters but the audience casts a different light on the journey, so when we’re receptive to them and connect to what they are feeding us, the mood of the play is wildly different.

AFTLS cast of As You Like It

Final dress rehearsal of As You Like It at the University of Notre Dame

I think As You Like It explores this as a play too. We’ve been told, and indeed we’ve all felt from time to time, that it is one of Shakespeare’s ‘harder’ plays. There are long and dense pieces of prose and the balance is definitely tipped towards words rather than action in the traditional sense. But the words are active in themselves, they are the tool by which the characters explore and define who they are. As we’re all playing so many characters (some of whom are also in disguise at various points in the play!), as the set is merely a hat-stand and 8 chairs, the words become even more active as the tools for defining who we are and for engaging the audience with those characters. Everything is heightened.  The risk is, of course, that the audience gets lost and can’t follow who is who, or don’t have the opportunity to invest their empathy in each character because we are constantly switching roles. It’s our job to make sure this doesn’t happen, to find the ‘Touchstone’ (pardon the pun!) for each character that helps us to bring them alive.

One of the other great joys of the job is the chance to get out, meet and work with some of our audience members in the form of workshops. This week we attended classes on everything from Shakespeare, to Opera, to Philosophy. On Thursday, I joined freshman students for a class on J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and the idea of childhood and found this wonderful quote:

“I don’t know whether you have ever seen a map of a person’s mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child’s mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that were all, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island or they are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still….On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles [simple boat]. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more”

As we explored the characters in Peter Pan using these ideas of imagination and memory, it struck me that this description of Neverland as a place of imagination could equally be applied to Arden. There’s a point in the play I’ve always struggled with, a moment where Celia watches her friend grow up, and become a woman (even though she is disguised as a man). I’d always found the loss of that moment difficult to bring to life, but thinking about childhood and memory and watching students faces change as they experienced this themselves really struck a chord with me.

AFTLS actor Jo Tincey takes a selfie in the windy city.

Spot the actor in the “Bean.” Hint: I’m in the middle.

This was our last week in South Bend before hitting the road.  We will miss our wonderful colleagues in the ND Office and look forward to seeing them at various points over the coming weeks and in St. Louis – our final stop. Saturday morning the team caught the South Shore train to Chicago for a two day pit-stop before heading to Rensselaer, IN next week. Jen and I had a wonderful night at Blue Chicago on Saturday – a special shout out must go to Essex (named after the county of my birth because that’s where his father was born!) who gave us such a wonderful show. We saw the wonderful Chicago ‘Bean’, ate wonderful Chicago pizzas and wandered around in (yet more!) snow.  Next stop St. Joseph’s College…reputed to be one of the most haunted colleges in Indiana…yikes.

As You Like It – Actors’ Blog #2

Week 1: snow, freezing temperatures, a “State of Emergency,” the Sword of John Adams and a touch of magic.

We’ve been Vortexed. As we went about our tax and banking business on Monday we were told that the University was being closed for the rest of the day due to an official ‘State of Emergency’ (exciting!).  Any car on the road after 6pm would be subject to a heavy fine, so businesses duly closed as employees struggled to get to work (or arrange how to get home again).  We hot-footed it to the supermarket for supplies (and an impromptu photo) and commenced a 36 hour lock-down in the hotel.

The company prepares for snowmageddon.

Pictured L-R: Robert Mountford, Deb Gasper (Company Manager), Patrick Miller, Ryan Stutzman (Stage Manager), Joannah Tincey and Dan Winter prepare for snowmageddon.

We rehearsed in their Gold Conference room where the carpet is so psychedelic it almost became the 6th actor in our play.

Wednesday we were allowed back into Washington Hall.  After a quick visit to the stage, which will see our opening night this Wednesday (eek!) we made our way up to The Lab to continue rehearsals (without the crazy carpet).  Thursday we ran the play in front of a very kind and generous invited audience that included Grant Mudge, Artistic Director of Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival, who fondly remembers the AFTLS production of As You Like It 25 years ago that inspired him to build a career in the world of Shakespeare ….such is the magic of Arden.

We are still working to fine tune various bits of the play; transitions between scenes and characters, motivations and drivers for scenes and polishing the crazy dance that is 8 couples on stage at once (with only 5 actors to embody them)…hello Act 5, Sc4! Exploring how best to represent the power and presence of the Forest on stage, has also been a focus for us. Jen has been playing around with Rosalind/Ganymede’s connection to the power and magic of Arden.

“Believe then, if you please, that I can do strange things”

Snow and Jennifer Higham

Jennifer Higham in a “State of Emergency.”

Encouraged greatly by Scott:

“Are you magic-ing?  If you’re going to do magic then go for it…make it more magic-y”…

He’s right though, in this work choices have to bold, clear and motivated and when this happens the characters are drawn out and defined by the forest that surrounds them….Arden (not the hotel carpet) becomes the 6th actor in the play.

At the end of a long week of snow and magic-ing (!) came a cast and company meal to Corndance, where many partook of the ‘Sword of John Adams’…as a pescatarian  I merely looked on in wonder (while tucking in to delicious pear and nut ravioli)….and increasing awe as colleagues ploughed their way through.  I did manage the amazing melting chocolate cake for pudding though.

This evening some of us are off to celebrate the Super Bowl with the ever lovely and hospitable Debs Gasper our wonderful company manager.  Somebody will have to explain the rules I think…Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos…and, erm, a ball…or a bowl?

As You Like It – Actors Blog #1

Hello and welcome to the AFTLS As You Like It 2014 blog!

I’m writing this somewhere above the Atlantic, two and a half movies into our flight. I can’t get in to Elysium somehow, mainly because I can’t hear it very well above the engines (stop mumbling Matt Damon). There are now 3 hours 15 min left until we land in Chicago and commence our 11 weeks State-side. We’ve all been warned (a lot) about the freezing weather, so last night was spent packing and re-packing to try and get enough winter clothes into my suitcase without going over the weight limit. I tried to explain this to Mike (a Banker from Chicago) who is sitting next to me on the plane…

“I couldn’t decide how many jumpers to bring” I said. He had no idea what I was referring to and later confessed that he suspected I might be referring to under-wear (so much for British reserve!). I set him right. Jumpers…sweaters…for the record I have packed 4.

View of Greenland out of plane window

Greenland is white…and so is Chicago, South Bend and the rest of the US.

“Let’s away and get our jewels and wealth together” says Celia at the start of her and Rosalind’s journey to Arden. Though later Touchstone says she has ‘no money in her purse’. I’m just mulling these lines over now as I think about packing (!). Does she just take some gold jewellery to the forest I wonder, not any actual currency that will enable her to pay for things?

“I pray you, one of you question yond man, if he for gold will give us any food” she says in Act 2, nearly faint with hunger. Those things that are precious in the court don’t work so well as currency in the forest when she just needs food to live on. But of course she learns on the way. She escapes her father’s ‘rough and envious disposition, buys a sheepcote and defines herself on her own terms.

All the characters that journey to Arden a changed by it. For me, As You Like It is a play about identity and transformation. The forest becomes a sort of blank canvas in which characters re-imagine themselves.

While none of the cast are fleeing tyrannical Dukes, fathers, uncles or brothers (to my knowledge!) we are certainly on a journey; both literally, as we tour the USA, but also metaphorically, with the play itself. When we stated rehearsals on the 30th December we had a blank canvas on which our play has slowly emerged. To a certain extent, this will be true at each performance too. In a play where philosophy and ideas are as important as plot and characters are disguised and transformed, the language becomes all the more integral to the evolving of story.
But that’s enough on philosophy for now…on to a bit of trivia. Can you match the cast member to the essential travel item I wonder…?
Cast of As You Like It essential travel items:
– A sewing kit
– An Ipad
– A bottle of Jameson’s Irish Whisky
– A box of English tea
– A pair of pajamas

(Aaron Update: For those of you wondering, the London actors arrived safely on campus, albeit vortexed. Their first preview went well, and we’re excited to see the first public performance on Wednesday, Feb. 5.)