HAMLET BLOG NUMBER 4<\/p>\n
All sorts of developments in the last few days, on and off the AFTLS beaten track: not least is that we\u2019ve opened Hamlet at last and, by God, we\u2019ve done it in the sultry February heat of the Lone Star State, the strange and exotic planet that\u2019s Texas.<\/p>\n
We had an audience pushing 600 on opening night in the Rudder Theatre and a healthy standing ovation. It pushed 700 the second night and a flurry of students that we\u2019d taught during the week came up onto stage for autographs, chats and all smiling \u2013 we felt relieved and that the show had been appreciated \u2013 enjoyed even! – and over a slap-up dinner in Caf\u00e9 Eccel thanks to Kirstin, our Texas A&M producer, she admitted that on the back of the show and audience turnout she\u2019ll be inviting AFTLS back to the university next year. \u201cOnly 3 walkouts, I\u2019m telling ya\u2019 that\u2019s a triumph!\u201d<\/p>\n
Some smaller classes this week, thrown in with the crowd-management variety in the lecture halls, but they were all satisfying. We tried getting the students doing some physical tableaus alongside Gertrude\u2019s \u2018willow\u2019 speech: one person speaks the speech, one molds and one is the clay, and by the end of the class, when prompted, \u2018So, what can you remember now that we\u2019ve taken back the scripts?\u2019 there was a flood of recall and Gertrude\u2019s speech almost entirely reconstituted itself from all the corners of the room! Terry used his \u2018good\/bad angel\u2019 technique for cracking open \u2018To be or not to be\u2019, we had them cantering about with iambic pentameter and had some fun with the Ghost scene as the students experimented with the spatial relationship between Hamlet and the old ghoul to make the scene as dramatic as possible.<\/p>\n
What is hairy, and also very exciting, about this tour is the amount of time we have between shows and hence the job of keeping what\u2019s a very substantial play in performable shape. We worked our way into a crescendo at Notre Dame \u2013 our \u2018final\u2019 week\u2019s rehearsal culminating in the run in front of the faculty. The following day was a tech in Washington Hall and then, tantalizingly, just as you would normally expect to kick off into an opening night, and just as we\u2019d fallen in love with that stage \u2013 we fly off, land and spend several days out of a theatre space and limited to going through the lines in our hotel rooms. Then as opening night suddenly arrives, we have to urgently lift the thing back into the shape it was in when we left off in the course of a single tech session. It\u2019s a most irregular way of performing a play as big as this one \u2013 I think if we\u2019d had a chance to \u2018run it in\u2019, it would be slightly less hairy \u2013 but, hey ho, this way of working brings positive possibilities, too: even as our hair stands on end at the thought of another show the other side of 6 days off (gulp!), we\u2019ll certainly be able to keep it \u2018in the moment\u2019 and, um, as you might say, \u2018fresh\u2019.<\/p>\n
But back to Texas: We like the big sky here and the evening light. We\u2019ve enjoyed floating about in our Mo Fo white tank of a car, our first dally into the massive HEB supermarket, nodding donkeys, Stetsons, the accent, the temperature, some excellent TexMex, hanging out in Austin, driving through the landscape, surviving our first two shows, the military cadet uniforms, their gun-spinning skills on the campus greens, grackles making a right racket in the Austin trees, the Capitol building\u2019s State rooms and staircases, Lone Star beer, horses, cattle\u2026.here\u2019s wishin\u2019 we could head on out to Hill Country, meet some cowboys, head right off the beaten track.\n\t\t