Author Archives: Jason Comerford

“Twelfth Night” Fall 2019 Tour: Entry #2

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Week Two: 5th to 9th of August
By Kaffe Keating

“This is a practice as full of labour as a wise man’s art, for folly that he wisely shows is fit…”
– Viola, Act 3 Scene 1

Restrictions are interesting. It can be frustrating, not being able to fully realise everything that pings into your imagination. ‘They wouldn’t have to worry about this in a normal production!’ you cry. ‘If we had a budget, we’d be fine!’ you wail. ‘If only we had an extra week to do this!’ you whinge to no-one in particular.

It’s the same on every show, but these perceived roadblocks can be looked at in two ways. You can either stop dead on the road you’re on, flummoxed, or continue walking, leaving the path of least resistance and heading into the forest the road would have cut through, the unknown.

It’s week two of rehearsals and we’ve been joined by a guest star Olivia/Maria. We won’t have Claire full-time until week three, due to some commitments she’d made prior to valiantly jumping into the role, so standing in has been the wonderful Jen Higham. Jen’s been on three tours, one of which was a previous production of Twelfth Night, so she’s been an invaluable presence in the room. A prime example of something that initially might seem like a restriction on our process which has immediately become a massive bonus. We began working through the scenes which feature Olivia and Maria, which we’d had to skip last week, and finally the play has started to stitch itself together in front of us.

Umbrellas have become more and more valuable as toys to play with; forming trees to hide behind, swords to ‘fight’ with, and at one point the wheels for a horse and carriage. (I really like the horses but I’m definitely their most vocal advocate – only time can tell if they’ll end up in the glue factory…).

The umbrellas are a prime example of necessity birthing invention. Since we’ve got to fit everything – props, costume, anything remotely resembling a set – into one suitcase, we’re quite limited in what we can use. We need things that are compact, versatile and which can offer lots of different images. As a result we’ve been forced to be really imaginative with what we have and the results are incredibly joyful.

It does make you wonder about big budget theatre, and how having a huge amount of technical capability and money to spend can actually scupper creativity. ‘We need Olivia to enter in a horse and carriage’ – okay, well, let’s just get one. ‘We need some swords’ – bang, there they are. ‘We’re actually bringing in a real box-tree from Hampton Court’. When you’ve got everything at your disposal, there is no need for imaginative solutions to problems and the muscle will inevitably atrophy. This is not to say that all big budget theatre is devoid of creativity — far from it — but in my opinion theatre which enjoys a hefty financial backing is at its most successful when it retains the spirit of whatever it is that forces an actor to turn an umbrella into a toothbrush in front of your eyes.

Since we now have an Olivia/Maria in the room, we’ve been able to look at two scenes in the play which are particularly tricky and long. Act 3, Scene 4 isn’t so much one scene as a collection of about seventeen which all run into each other, and Act 5, Scene 1 is just a mammoth where all the loose ends (or almost all of them at least) are tied up and all the mistaken identities are revealed. These scenes took an entire day each to work through and roughly set, and left everyone pretty knackered in the old brain department.

Our method of working, which continues to serve us well, of muddling through a scene in its entirety once, then again, then again – each time shaping and moulding a bit more – was a bit more grueling with these longer scenes, as it takes ages to get to the stage where everyone can go ‘Whey, we did it!’. However, brain-soupefying as the two and a half days we spent on these scenes were, I feel like we’ve developed some hard-earned stamina which we will surely make use of going forward.

The week rounded out with a stagger-through. You need to walk before you can run, and you need to stagger before you can walk. And stagger we did; props were in the wrong place, people were in the wrong scenes, I definitely said some lines which weren’t anything close to Shakespeare and one of the umbrellas flew from its telescopic handle and across the rehearsal room during one particularly enthusiastic unsheathing of a sword, thankfully no-one was impaled.

But that’s fine. The point of a stagger through is to be rubbish and to have happened. And happen it did. We have a play. It’s messy and mad and surely doesn’t remotely resemble what it will eventually look like when it emerges, undoubtedly resplendent of course, from its chrysalis in Notre Dame. It’s currently a fuzzy, weird looking caterpillar.

But that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be.

“Twelfth Night” Fall 2019 Tour: Entry #1

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Week One: 29th of July to 3rd August
By Kaffe Keating

“I will not give my part in this sport for a pension of thousands to be paid from the Sophy.”
Fabian, Act 2 Scene 5.

One of the best lessons I’ve learnt about acting, especially in theatre, is to approach it like it’s a game. Maybe even a sport, depending on the show.

Games have rules, and some have more than others. Football (or maybe soccer depending on where you’re from) is a sport with relatively few rules, at least compared to rugby; which if you don’t know has bloody loads. Both are great fun to watch and to play and the joy comes from the fact that the players are forced create things within the boundaries of the rules of the game they’re playing. It’s not much fun to watch people playing a game where you don’t know the rules – I’m looking at you, cricket – and equally a game without rules at all, without form, is no fun for anyone. That’s just some people standing around in a field.

Not unlike the feeling on the first day of rehearsals when your task is to create a performance of Twelfth Night without a director…

Luckily, we’ve been provided with a few rules to get us going.

First things first, there are only five of us. The dramatis personae (or ‘cast list’ if you’re not as fancy as me) for Twelfth Night features at least eighteen speaking parts. Thankfully the roles we’ll be playing have been decided already, sparing us from having to fight to the death over who gets to say all the famous bits. Inevitably, there are points where two or even three of one actor’s characters are on stage at the same time, having a full-blown conversation with each other. So there’s that.

We are also required to mark out our playing space, our pitch or court, where we’ll tell the story. The auditoria we’ll be playing once we arrive in the States will vary in size and shape and so we need to maintain a level of consistency. Pitch sizes need to be standardised, after all. When an actor is not in the scene, they’re sat on a chair outside of this space, but still in full view of the audience. So no retreating to the dressing room for a cup of tea and the crossword between soliloquies…

Our props and our costume must all fit into a suitcase. Which will have a weight allowance. That means simplicity and clarity is the name of the game and the doublets, hoes and ruffs will need to be left at home where they belong.

Finally, and most importantly, we’ve got the words of the play. This is what we’re here to serve. Our job is to dig down into what’s written here and bring up what we’ve found to show an audience.

So that’s the beginning of a game then. That’s something to start with.

Unfortunately, the week began with some sad news. Anna Wright, who was set to play our Olivia and Maria, and who had lent those characters such energy and gusto in the read-through back in June, has had to pull out of the show due to health reasons. She’ll be sadly missed but her heroic replacement, seasoned AFTLS veteran Claire Redcliffe, has joined our team as a super sub.

This first week has been all about testing out rules for the game we’re all going to play together. Are they fun? Are they clear? Will an audience be able to learn them quickly enough?

After some slight tentativeness (it’s hard when you’re used to having a director set the tone and tell you what to do), we crack on with the first scene.

Just to see what happens. You know, no pressure. Just try something. ‘Fail better’ and all that.

If you don’t know, Twelfth Night begins with one of those lines that would make it onto a Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits album, no question: ‘If music be the food of love, play on’. Maybe in a slight panic, I offer the possibility that Orsino himself is the one playing the music and grab a guitar to hide behind. I mean, he’s talking about music, right? This yields a suggestion that maybe Orsino fancies himself as a bit of a songwriter himself and that the men of his court, Curio and Valentine, have been corralled into his band. It’s a mad choice, and one that may not survive, but it led to more ideas later on – which is what rehearsal is all about.

We carry on in this fashion, working our way scene by scene through the play, eventually falling into a rhythm with each other.

First, we’d just have a crack at the scene on its feet, with no real idea of performance or worrying too much about an audience. Just hearing it. Seeing what it does. Checking what bit of you it tickles. If you’re in the scene, you’re an actor; if you’re not, you’re a director. The directors would give the actors notes and then we’d try the scene again.

It was like starting with a lump of clay and moulding it a little each time to see what kind of pot it might end up looking like. There’s every chance that you’ll get so far with one design and then chuck it out before it even makes it to the kiln, but the time invested in becoming a better potter is valuable nonetheless.

It’s full on, jumping between roles like this: being an actor one minute, a director the next, then switching to view things as a designer, then as a stage manager and in my case, as the person who made a big statement on the first day by showing up with a guitar under his arm, a composer. ‘Composer’. Honestly. Katherine Newman, our Viola and Sebastian, managed to capture a candid moment where I was ‘recovering my energy,’ shall we say.

But then went on to prove herself that a bit of a lull can happen to the best of us…

We crack on on Monday, figuring out the rules to our game – testing them, improving them, and making sure they’re actually fun.

Can’t wait.

“King Lear” Spring 2019 Tour – Entry #12

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By Jonathan Dryden Taylor

It’s 9am on the morning of our final show in the US and I’m sitting in my hotel room in Wyoming looking out over the stunning Bighorn Mountains and the glorious, endless sky. With five hours to go before we present King Lear to an American audience for the last time (thank you, THANK you, Sheridan College, for scheduling our final show as a matinee- it’s lovely to have an evening to wind down and let go) there’s time to take stock of this extraordinary experience.

It’s impossible to sum up in a few words what I’ve learned over the last eleven weeks, so instead here’s a stream-of-consciousness list of the things I’ll remember.

– ‘Similar but different.’ That’s the phrase that has reverberated around my head for the whole tour. There’s so much about this country that feels like home, but every day there are a hundred little differences to trip you up- whether it’s mundane things like crossing the road (what do you mean, they’re still allowed to turn right?) to the pronunciation of global brands (you’ll never believe how these guys say Pantene/ Persil/ Elvive/ Marriott…) or larger differences such as the position of religion in public life or the availability of weaponry. The genuine delight with which our British accents were greeted, especially outside the big cities, was charming, but always also served as an inadvertent reminder of otherness.

– On that note, the generosity and curiosity of pretty much everyone we met. People in this country, generally speaking, have a natural warmth and friendliness. It’s almost off-putting at first, especially with people in the service industry- ‘is this person really this nice or is it artificial?’ – but once you relax into it, it makes every day easier.

– Man, you people know how to do a catchy jingle. Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic. Liberty Liberty Liberty… Liberty. We are Farmers, dum diddy dum dum dum dum dum. Earworms for life.

– Portion size. I am not a skinny man, but I was regularly surprised, delighted and slightly intimidated by the sheer amount of food placed in front of me. While we’re on food, we need to talk about Cheetos. Back in the UK all we know about them is that they’re used in jokes about a certain politician. But my word, they’re brilliant and awful. They are sort of gross but also I can’t stop eating them. Someone get me some Cheetos.

– Complexity. Brits and Americans tend to assume, I think, that we know all about each other. But this is a much more complicated country than I had ever imagined. Maybe every nation paints itself internationally in primary colours, and you really need to get under the hood to find out what’s really happening. I’m aware of, and enjoying, what a mixed metaphor that was.

-Traveler’s tip- if you spend a lot of time in American hotels, then find an episode of Forensic Files to watch. It’s always on, and there’s something weirdly soothing about finding out how a bad guy was caught because of the way his boot broke a blade of grass.

– The universities. Once you’ve seen an American campus, any other looks half-hearted in comparison. They’re so… campus-y. And I do wish that the system of major and minor degree subjects existed back home. Our university degrees are so specialized- it’s great to see science or psych majors in English or theater classes.

– The sheer unfathomable size of the country. The space. Wyoming, for example, is larger than the entire UK but has the same population as the London Borough where I live (and there are 32 boroughs in London). Admittedly, Wyoming is the most sparsely populated state, but the numbers are still dizzying. It’s changed our attitude to distance, too. The other day Fred decided that the easiest way to sort out a delivery problem with some speakers he had ordered online was to drive to Billings, a round trip of over two hundred miles. The idea of driving, say, from London to Bristol in similar circumstances back home would be absurd, but here it was just… admin.

– The snow. I had to mention the snow. It made a cameo, or a starring, appearance in six of our ten weeks…

I can’t get my head round the idea that I’ll be in my flat in London in 48 hours time. There just remains that one last performance, in the magnificent Whitney Center For The Arts (theatre is in safe hands in this town, though, when we leave- we were privileged to see a rehearsal of Aaron Odom’s production of FIVE WOMEN WEARING THE SAME DRESS with his theater students, which opens next week, and it’s going to be cracking) and then it’s just packing, goodbyes, airports and home.

The next time we speak these lines will be in London, in front of an audience full of family and friends. That will be a more familiar experience, but the wonderful treat of this tour has been to embrace the unfamiliar.

I said in my first blog that King Lear is a play about everything. Thank you, United States of America- you have been everything, too.

“King Lear” Spring 2019 Tour – Entry #11

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By Jonathan Dryden Taylor

Any week where they give you free ice cream is a good week, right?

Ice cream is a big thing in Burlington, Vermont and attention was duly paid with a trip to the factory of – well, let’s not advertise. The factory of that ice cream company named after the two founders. The one that rhymes with men and cherries. They gave us free sample of their S’mores flavor and all was right with the world.

Vermont also, of course, means maple syrup, and our hosts at the Flynn Center kindly showered us with as many mapley items as we could have dreamed of in a very generous parting gift.

The schedule this week was a challenge. As well as our evening shows and classes, there were also a couple of morning matinees for schools. Performing King Lear at 10am is quite a surreal experience, matched only by the experience of sitting down to lunch having already performed King Lear!

The audiences more than made up for it, though. Before we had even left Virginia we had received an email from Flynn asking if it would be possible to add extra seating at the side of the stage, because our evening performances had sold out.

This meant a return to Kansas-style blocking- playing the diagonals- with a touch of South Bend thrown in, as the front-on seating was very wide. Practically speaking, it meant we had to be very conscious of sightlines in two dimensions, because there were more ways of obscuring each other from view than anywhere else we’d been! Add into the mix the fact that the forestage also included a couple of load-bearing pillars, and we had to be very conscious of our surroundings this week!

And not just on stage, either. Consciousness of surroundings is richly rewarded in Burlington, a beautiful town in a beautiful setting. Our company has three water-babies in it, since Fred is from Brighton, Tricia from Liverpool and Richard from Blackpool, so the view over the water of Lake Champlain certainly made them feel at home.

The city is set among stunning forests and mountains, too, so wherever you look there’s something gorgeous to meet the eye. Burlington itself felt more similar to towns back home, too- New England living up to its name?- so there were many reasons why we felt at home.

And we were privileged to be given another reminder of why our job has value in the shape of an audience member who stayed behind to talk to us after one of the shows. Without intruding too much on the private nature of what he told us, we were honoured and touched to learn that our tragedy had helped him to process another. Art isn’t just there to entertain or to challenge or to excite: sometimes it’s there to soothe, or to remind us that we’re not alone.

So- after ten short, long weeks- we embark tomorrow on our final journey as a company, before we all go our separate ways next week. Fred, who has handled the labrythine responsibility of being travel monitor with supreme grace, has crunched the numbers of our epic journey with this play. Seventeen flights, fourteen hire cars, four limo rides, and fifteen thousand three hundred and three miles. Enough to travel half way round the world, and a quarter of the way back.

We’re going to touch down in Wyoming with a lot of miles behind us- and three more attempts at cracking Shakespeare’s hugest tragedy.

“King Lear” Spring 2019 Tour – Entry #10

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By Jonathan Dryden Taylor

A test of technique this week proved to be a real treat. After nine weeks away, eight performance weeks, nine different states, seven theatres (and one prison) and twenty performances, the key number this week was two.

Our first split residency brought us two universities in two different towns, and two very different performance spaces. At Roanoke College, which is actually outside the city of Roanoke, in the charming satellite of Salem (no, not that one…) we performed in one of the largest auditoria of our tour. Not quite Ohio-sized, but still a grandly-proportioned space.

Then a couple of days later we were at Hollins University, situated within the city of Roanoke itself, in a black-box studio theatre which was the smallest room we’ve played so far.

The two spaces demonstrated how adaptable our performance style needs to be, and how this job never allows us to get complacent or settle. The larger space dictates a grander, more projected style. Reactions need to be physical- that old big-house trick of taking a tiny step to indicate surprise because a flicker across your face won’t register at the back of the room, that kind of thing.

In a black box like the one at Hollins, rhetoric necessarily takes a back seat to something intimate. We all enjoyed the opportunity to make this monolith of a play a little more conversational, more naturalistic. The sheer fact of not having to be on voice all the time gave us a chance to examine our characters in a way that isn’t always possible in a larger house. From now on I’d like to alternate every job between a 500 seater and a 50 seater, please! It certainly helps to keep things fresh.

Just to keep us on our toes, the big theatre was in the small village and the little one in the big town. Salem is basically one street, but a gorgeously eclectic one of handsome buildings, thrift shops, small businesses, lively breweries and coffee shops. Roanoke is a bustling, slightly hipsterish city with a fantastic school-of-Gehry art gallery and a laid-back vibe. And both places profit hugely from nature’s art director.

When I was a child, my parents had a 7-inch vinyl record of Laurel and Hardy singing ‘The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine’. (I have no idea why). As we landed at Roanoke Airport, a large sign informed me that we were in the very Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia that give the song its first line. If you’re at all familiar with the song, that line is now reverberating round your head, for which my apologies.

But as well as inspiring songs for 1930s comedians, the Blue Ridge Mountains make a stunning backdrop to this part of the world. There can hardly be two more beautiful campuses in the entire US than Roanoke and Hollins, and most of the week was spent under bright sun and blue skies that enabled us to see them at their best. There’s something instantly uplifting about always having hills and mountains in your peripheral vision- it was one of the highlights of our LA week, too, even though LA and Roanoke could hardly be more different.

You like mountains, do you, Jon? Well, isn’t it lucky that you’re about to fly to Vermont? I’d better stop now. I haven’t worn my snow boots for four weeks and I need to hunt them out…