{"id":729,"date":"2015-07-16T17:34:59","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T21:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/?p=729"},"modified":"2019-03-14T10:30:28","modified_gmt":"2019-03-14T14:30:28","slug":"broetry-in-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/broetry-in-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Bro-etry in Poetry (by Andrew S. Hughes)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"From<\/a>

From left, Xavier Bleuel, Anthony Murphy, Quint Mediate and Damian Leverett perform a ballet scene Thursday, July 9, 2015, during rehearsal outside the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center for the upcoming Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival’s Young Company production of “Love’s Labor’s Lost.” SBT Photo\/GREG SWIERCZ<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Love's<\/a>

Xavier Bleuel sings as musicians play behind him in this scene from the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival\u2019s Young Company production of \u201cLove\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost\u201d that opens Sunday in Valparaiso and travels to area outdoor venues through Aug. 24. SBT Photo\/GREG SWIERCZ<\/p><\/div>\n

\"From<\/a>

From left, Xavier Blevel, Anthony Murphy, Quint Mediate and Damian Leverett perform a ballet scene Thursday, July 9, 2015, during rehearsal outside the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center for the upcoming Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival’s Young Company production of “Love’s Labor’s Lost.” SBT Photo\/GREG SWIERCZ<\/p><\/div>\n

It shouldn\u2019t count as a spoiler to reveal Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost<\/em><\/a> doesn\u2019t end with one or more marriages.\u00a0The play’s title means, after all, love’s labor is lost.\u00a0And in that respect, the play, this year\u2019s Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival<\/a> Young Company production, is unique among William Shakespeare\u2019s comedies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn all of his other plays about wooing, it ends with the men getting the women,\u201d director West Hyler<\/a> says. \u201cIt\u2019s a war of wooing in which the men are conquerors.\u201d
\nHere, the men still see themselves as warriors, but Hyler thinks the play\u2019s nontraditional ending fits perfectly with its main characters.\u00a0\u201cThese lovers are immature,\u201d he says. \u201cYou cannot love until you have grown up. What happens at the end of the play is they grow up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hyler, who joined NDSF last year to direct the Young Company\u2019s production of The Merry Wives of Windsor<\/em>, has staged nine productions of Jersey Boys<\/em> on five continents, directed circuses and has a background in classical theater, an interest that drew him to work with NDSF and the Young Company. The troupe consists of about 20 students from around the country who audition to take classes, produce their own play that they perform in area parks, and be cast and crew members for NDSF\u2019s main stage production, which is The Winter\u2019s Tale<\/em><\/a> this year.<\/p>\n

Fittingly for a Young Company production, scholarly pursuits set the plot in motion in Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost<\/em>, which scholars believe Shakespeare wrote in 1595 or \u201996; they know it was performed in 1597.\u00a0The play takes place at the court of Ferdinand of Navarre, where the king and three of his noblemen \u2014 Berowne, Longaville and Dumaine \u2014 have taken an oath to forswear women and other pleasures to devote themselves to three years of study in an effort to make the court a renowned academy.\u00a0The Princess of France, however, arrives with three noblewomen \u2014 Rosaline, Maria and Katherine \u2014 and the men all fall in love with the ladies.<\/p>\n

\"Abigail<\/a>

Abigail Schnell and Xavier Bleuel rehearse a scene for the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival\u2019s Young Company production of \u201cLove\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost\u201d that opens Sunday in Valparaiso and plays at area outdoor venues through Aug. 24. SBT Photo\/GREG SWIERCZ<\/p><\/div>\n

To Hyler, the play has a \u201ccollegiate feel,\u201d so he\u2019s updated it to the 1890s and set it at a fictional Midwestern university, the University of Navarre, with the women coming from a sister school in Quebec.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think of it as the Smith girls go to Harvard,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought it was a great choice (for the Young Company), because it takes place in this fraternal bond of the boys and this sisterhood of the women. I recognized it was more or less a college romance\u2026 Loves grow very quickly, the love reaches a fever pitch quickly, and it fades quickly.\u201d
\nThe men\u2019s oath, however, restricts them from courting the women in an overt manner.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a boy thing to do,\u201d Hyler says, \u201cto keep an oath despite all intelligence to the contrary.\u201d
\nAt the July 8 Beyond the Stage: Explore Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost<\/em><\/a> program, the four actors who play the king and his noblemen performed Act IV, Sc. 3, which the cast and crew have nicknamed \u201cBro-etry in Poetry\u201d because it depicts each of the male suitors reciting a sonnet he\u2019s written about the object of his attraction, with each of them thinking he\u2019s alone and undetected by the others.\u00a0The scene has a brilliant energy and hilarious joy to it while demonstrating how precisely Shakespeare\u2019s words and the student\u2019s performances make each of the men distinct characters.\u00a0\u201cOn this one, it moves very, very fast, almost like a runaway train,\u201d Hyler says about the play as a whole, but he could just as easily be referring that scene in particular. \u201cThe language is incredibly rich in this. It\u2019s full of witty repartee, almost like a Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Director<\/a>

Director West Hyler, center, speaks to actor Quint Mediate during a rehearsal outside for this year\u2019s Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival\u2019s Young Company production of \u201cLove\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost.” SBT Photo\/GREG SWIERCZ<\/p><\/div>\n

Between scenes, Hyler has selected several works by 19th-century French composer Jacques Offenbach<\/a> for the students to perform on violin, viola, trumpet, guitar and other instruments.\u00a0\u201cIt allows the world to be set,\u201d he says, and for the audience \u201cto slow down at times to think about what you\u2019ve seen and sort of have a palate cleanser before the next course in this feast of language.\u201d\u00a0The music serves as a transition, but \u201calso to advance the plot,\u201d Hyler says. \u201cIt\u2019s diegetic; in other words, it\u2019s being played as if it\u2019s inside this world.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the play’s world also has reality as part of it. At the end, the princess learns her father has died, and she and her court prepare to return to France. The women tell the men they\u2019ll have to wait one year to prove their love for them is true before they will marry Ferdinand and his friends.\u00a0\u201cIt brings the reality of adulthood and responsibility and mortality into the world,\u201d Hyler says about the unusual ending.\u00a0\u201cWhen a parent dies, you inherit the mantle of responsibility,\u201d he says. \u201cWhile your parents are alive, you sort of have a ticket to be irresponsible\u2026 They don\u2019t win the labor they have put forward in the pursuit of love, but they have shed some of their immaturity.\u201d<\/p>\n

— by Andrew S. Hughes for the South Bend Tribune<\/a> (July 16, 2015)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It shouldn\u2019t count as a spoiler to reveal Love\u2019s Labor\u2019s Lost doesn\u2019t end with one or more marriages.\u00a0The play’s title means, after all, love’s labor is lost.\u00a0And in that respect, the play, this year\u2019s Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival Young Company … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1086,"featured_media":738,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[360079,360078,47488],"tags":[67539,67540,67543,67537,67534,67541,88,67546,67542,67538,67527,47495],"class_list":["post-729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-loves-labours-lost-ndsf-2015","category-ndsf-2015","category-notre-dame-shakespeare-festival","tag-andrew-s-hughes","tag-andy-hughes","tag-jacques-offenbach","tag-loves-labours-lost","tag-loves-labors-lost","tag-noel-coward","tag-notre-dame","tag-notre-dame-shakespeare-festival","tag-oscar-wilde","tag-south-bend-tribune","tag-west-hyler","tag-young-company"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1411,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions\/1411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}