Ethiopian Shakespeare : SHREW-3 ... u21.us ? Notes : themes, symbols, signs... "World of Shakespeare" SHAKESPEARE pages [menu] COMEDY and Commedia Directors, writers, and, maybe, actors ... NOTES for myself: Oh, Illyria, or Arcadia, are better than Hawaii! I know, I'd been there. Not once. What takes place with you is more interesting, people are more interesting, and, even you are smarter! Go, travel! Read! And write! Send me a postcard!
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Too many words for a good show! And the text is good -- big problem! No room for directing. Shakespeare is everywhere, talking. 5 Acts (transitions), intermission, pre-show -- I have 7 plus musical numbers for 18 people (another 30 min.)! There are three areas to focus: Shakespeare, Comedy, the Genre and Biomechanics. Style and Method. Character Analysis and Scene Study. (Also, see Playscript Analysis class). Read again Mikhail Bakhtin on Carnival! I didn't like the film -- they missed the comedy, and take a note -- three, not four faces on the pix: they missed the plot! For now here is a most recent production review of "The Twelfth Night" on Moscow Stage (from Russian Theatre Discussion List) [and Myrzoev's] 12 Scenes
No. There was no sense of dramatic (thematic) use of music. Shakespeare wrote first operas. Listen to them -- it's all structured: duet, trio, solo... he even wrote the lyrics. What else do you want from a man? Music? The music is there -- the rhythm, metre, tempo... And this is my problem. I do not like to stage opera. Every time I see Shakespeare production -- they sing! Yes, they have no voices and no music, but they treat it very "operatic." They even in positions like music major... The acting? Yes, the lemon on the side. No, there is more there than opera, but the poetic structure is strong... what acting can you do what you have to watch your steps, you have to match the music. It's too bad that all great directors avoid opera. Meyerhold was trained in the Alexandrinka Theatre before the revolution, opera and ballet is the birth place of biomechanics. And his entire theatrical revolution -- it the revolt of director against the given structure (text). Opera is wordy. A lot of words -- and they even make them longer by singing those words. Do not sing Shakespeare, please. Give him a break, he doesn't want another stage reading. He emailed me yesterday, asking to do theatre, not Shakespeare. He was confident that if we will have a good show out of his old script he wrote in one week, Shakespeare will be there anyway. I trust him. Anatoly Summary
Questions Pygmalion 2005 * Shaw * online *
Shakespeare @ amazon
LUL Theatre & 12th Night in Amharic?
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Hot summer, beach towles, ambrellas, sun glasses, scuba diving masks, chorus of Catholic nuns and surfers with their boards, waiters with drinks, drunk locals, life guards, rap, exercise equipment and washing themselves (traps -- real water), drinking a lot, somewhere in Mexico or Carrabians. All speak with all possible accents, the tourists.Split Stage -- two houses of Illyria, Banana Republic. (Narrative is too linear -- it must be told very fast!)
Love Story doesn't have the sex energy of The Taming of the Shrew. This is Rio Carnaval Time -- masks and party costumes. Olivia must be hot and Orsino is a closet bisexual, can't come in the open in the country of machismo.
Who is Feste (Clown, his street name)? Big Lobowsky who lost his US passport? He was there with his small-time rock-band. Is he a "personal" trainer of Olivia? Malvolio is Olivia's British butler, envy that this clown has sex with her. Did he?
Assign nationality to all characters! Orsino and Olivia = latino. Viola, California girl, can't get to US, where she and her brother are wanted as drug dealers (mistaken identity). Here is a good reason for cross-dressing! She puts on a fake German or Italian accent.
Orsino is a local official, made his fortune selling dop to Americans. Briefcases with cash, counting money all the time. Vilentine and Curio his police officers.
Sebastian, the brother, is a surfer-dude.
"Sir" Toby and "Sir" Andrew are ministers of something (the British left the titles for the local administration, still under the British flag and Queen).
"What You Will"? The Feast of Misrule -- 12th Night of Christmas, January 6, in this tropic country is the summer.
Pagan Grand Carnaval, Dyonisia Saturnalia, and the nuns with their Chritmas (chorus) songs! Night scenes.Dyonisia Saturnalia to celebrate the birth of Christ! Illyria is erotic delirium (Mlavolio with the Hustler magazine). Sexual preferences (more later with Wilde) -- Viola is better in place as a man, not as a woman?
Duel? Feast-fight! bad karate-movie. Make fun of this “romance” love-books for women’s market.
Waiters are dressed as matadors. Sombrerors, guitares, romantic music, latino dances...
Religious conflict on this island -- anglican Church and Catholic. History of Illyria. Nuns singing christmas songs. Sound of the ships arriving and leaving the port. I need ocen to be present! But nobody knows where are they exactly (Pinter's touch) and they don't care -- somewhere in the offshore independent country established by the pirates in 17th century.
For of them at the end, orgy, sex-party together. we won’t see... Three hours of foreplay and the audience goes home to do it.
"Created World" is a tricky concept. No period -- but why do they speak in such antiquated manner?
Film crew on stage -- part of the cast. They are shooting news, movie -- documentary? "Sex, drugs and videotapes"!
Biomechanics -- method, not style (see Meyerhold Pages).
Commedia -- very physical, sexual.
Mise-en-scene: over the space of stage, as far away from each other as possible, they scream (so much noise on the beach)! Top and bottom, left and right, diagonals, upstage to downstage.
Dramatic Literature class -- reading LINE-BY-LINE technique.
Bring them together with the Film Directing class for several nights for the CAST.
The last time Mark Vail came into Moscow from his home base at the Ilkhom Theater in Tashkent, he staged a wonderfully quirky version of Musset's "Love Is Not to be Trifled With" at the Mossoviet Theater. That was in 1994. Now, again at the Mossoviet, he has staged an eccentric production of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night, or What You Will."I'll say it up front: This show begins so brilliantly, it would have been almost impossible for it to get better from there. And in truth, after the stunning beginning I was only partially engaged by the subsequent shenanigans connected with the story of the twins Sebastian (Yegor Beroyev) and Viola (Yevgenia Kryukova) losing each other during a shipwreck and then finding each other again. Vail masterfully conquered the large Mossoviet stage, but much of what involved the details of character and action seemed petty or repetitive.
But those early scenes depicting the shipwrecked sailors washing ashore will remain with me a long time.
Maria Rybasova's eclectic set of a tall, columned arch in back and concave ramps at either side leaves the stage itself wide open. On it, with the aid of an enormous blue silk sheet, wind machines blowing from below the forestage and a pair of actors running back and forth with the sheet, Vail created one of the most beautiful ocean surfs I could have hoped to see this side of Hawaii. As each wave receded, it magically left behind a new person stranded on the sands.
Less effective was the actual playing out of the complicated tale of Viola dressing as a boy in order to find employment with the Duke Orsino (Dmitry Shcherbina), and most of all the confusions that arise when Orsino's beloved Olivia (Tatyana Dogileva) falls in love with "Cesario," as the boy-imitating Viola calls herself. Vail envisioned each character in a different style -- for example, Viola the gentle romantic or Olivia the vulgar squawker. Olivia's attendant Maria (Marina Kondratyeva) emerged as an escapee from a mock horror movie or an MTV talk show. At times, the syncopation of styles was entertaining, although more often it impressed me as weirdness for weirdness' sake.
Most at home in the jumble was Alexander Lenkov as the clown-like Sir Toby Belch, Olivia's drunken uncle. His disruptive, irreverent behavior provided countless moments of hard-edged belly laughter that helped keep the 3-hour, 40-minute show more or less in balance.
-- John Freedman, 2.6.99
Spring 2000, Main Stage, Dr. Seeds, designer, Ohio
