Showcase & case study: I don't know, if I will be able to complete 17 pages "scene-by-scene" commentary and the pages on all characters. Plus, the set and etc. And this time we do not do anything "virtual"... Well, there is a screen for the shadow theatre (images).
They are getting less and less dressed through the show: Costumes
How sad -- I don't have the time to fix even HamletDreams pages! No time for Hamlet2002... Not even for DL! Not even for my notes to the actors (we met three times during the Spring break).
I didn't get used to the format -- what is this page? Director's notes? Notes for production meetings? Thoughts? Notes for rehearsals, for actors?
Shadow Theatre: Transitions between scenes
1-2: Kiss and Mother
2-3: Spying
3-4: Servant drinks
4-5:
5-6:
6-7:
7-8:
8-9: Valmont's
Intermission
10-11:
11-12:
12-13:
13-14:
14-15:
15-16:
16-17/18: Death of Tourvel
Check the story in images, through characters (first and final images).
... It seems wrong to call desire a theme of Dangerous Liaisons; it would probably be make more sense to call it a driving force, or maybe, the only possible explanation for why anyone would act that way. Desire is not only the motivating force in Dangerous Liaisons, it is itself the most desired commodity. In a society where people live in such luxury that they can want for nothing, the very act of wanting something makes that commodity become valuable.
DiGaetani: Stephen Frears directed the film version of Liaisons, no?
Hampton: Yes. There was a rival version by Milos Forman, who saw the play several times and contacted me. He invited me to dinner at some restaurant in the West End and then didn't show up. Clearly between the time of issuing the invitation and conceiving of his film, he decided to bypass me altogether and do his own version of the novel. I think he believed that that would kill our version, but in fact by a series of strange chances we managed to make it, and we managed to get it out first.
DiGaetani: And you did a better job.
Hampton: We did a better job, and we spent a third of the money. And we made twenty times the money he did. So in fact it was a satisfactory outcome all round.
DiGaetani: Not for him.
Hampton: No, not for him. But I'm grateful in the long run, because if his film was his conception of the book, then we could never have worked together on it. I've actually written more movies than plays, and the problem is always the weakness of the writer's position.
[ from intro ]
Three kind of director's notes I have: before the production, during, and after the show is over.
Notebook
Albert Camus: "The history and tragedy of our era really
begins with Sade... our times have... blended in a curious manner his
dream of a universal republic and his technique of degradation."
I hope by doing it, I will find the forms of the "cyber-notation" for this open rehearsals (production) process. What pages are a must, which are not needed, what is missing and etc. The rutine exchange of messages is at Method & Realism Forum -- no need to dublicate it. But what is the system for the webnotes, which will become an archive after the show is over -- and should be useful for research?
I will try a different arrangment for the next production.
"Dangerous Liaisons," based on the 1782 Choderlos de Laclos novel "Les Liaisons Dangereuses"... Letters. Books on stage (De Sade, Bible...), papers.
Set just prior to the French Revolution, "Dangerous Liaisons" is about sex as gamesmanship...
Don Juans: list (Sound -- Don Giovanni). French --
http://readroom.ipl.org/cgi/i/ipl/ipl.books-idx.pl?type=entry&id=1117
The Legend of Don Juan -- http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~tacit/hell/djplot.html
...lovemaking -- like most things -- is a matter of technique, preparation, will.
Chevalier Danceny -- who is he? Ran from France at the end. Youth and promice is gone (same with Cecile).
What began as an delicious amusement deepens into a tragedy. The passion, for us and for them, comes as a surprise. For them it's cataclysmic; for us, it's divine... So there was another face under the created social identity?
I do not want to make a new page "concept" and will spread my directing notes over Title and Intro pages.
I didn't cut the text, but I have to find the way to superimpose the visuals over endless dialogues...
April 18, 2002 -- preview!
Summary
The End of the Classical Era. Closing Christianity, which ended in sexuality (no more Adfam-Eve bond, no more one flesh, but one soul?). Self-erotism, the play -- reaction to the centuries of the denial of the power of body. Here is the madness of flesh in De Sade.
Suicide of the West. From that time it's only men, not man.
Questions
I won't get the sentuality game from my American actors; the set, directing must do the acting for them.
Notes
Beautiful can't be wrong. Anything beautiful. Flower, body... It's blessed. It could be USED for wrong and evil purposes, like everything powerful.
[ I didn't have the time for music files and did it myself at the last moment = wrong! try the Don Juan XXI sounds (above, samples) ]
new = 2006: Godot
theatre theory * 
