Alice said she would wait till the wee hours of the morning.... go for
it.... remember how well the Actors from London perform seemingly
extemporaneously... The one thing that has been bothering me is the
arrival for the "weekend" people... that is usually the day we are
feverishly trying to tie things together....
Your idea is indeed creative... Do it.... Alice will
understand...
Anon Sweet Mak!.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2010 12:12 AM
Subject: [Weeklong-l] pop a top...
again....
Uh-oh, it's past midnight in New York, but I'll slip this one
under Alice's door...
Thinking back to what Jayne and Kathy wrote about
all the things that can happen in a pub (such as wrestling), and Bob's images
of people suddenly grabbing tablecloths, and what Maggie says about things
bursting out of frameworks -- what a chain of thoughts and ideas!
-- it occurs to me that something really wild and uproarious like the
AYL wrestling scene (1.2 middle) would be wonderful to hurl ourselves into --
tables and benches being shoved back, everyone whipping into an improvised
scene full of characters. Doc opened our eyes in '84 to all the
possibilities for ritual and performance surrounding that spectacle.
Also occurs to me that in such a setting some of the other kinds
of writing we've talked about (Borges, Eliot, the sonnets) could be spoken,
leapt into after a scene, by someone who just looked up from her/his mug of
small beer up on the balcony. Someone who sensed it was the right
moment for those words. And then someone else could pick up the second
paragraph....
Mary mentioned the original RSC Nicholas Nickleby
recently (look for it on Netflix etc., if you've never watched it -- amazing
and beautiful) -- the company members were all onstage the whole time, playing
a role, then watching, listening, then breaking into Dickens' narrative
without missing a beat, from way up on a balcony, or while putting away a
table, and this would flow from player to player, sometimes by phrases,
sometimes by sentences or longer sections. It had many of the
elements Gail described in the Cheek by Jowl performance, that same delight in
returning to the most pared-down, truthful storytelling possible, the joy in
playing.
Finally, another great thing about the everyone-onstage,
improvised-costumes approach is that none of us have to miss anyone else's
scenes. We're all (everyone there for the reunion performance) in the
same space together the whole time.
cs
Clayton
Stromberger
Outreach Coordinator
UT Shakespeare at Winedale
College
of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Austin
www.shakespeare-winedale.org
cell:
512-228-1055/ office:
512-471-4726
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