I don't know you, Casey, but I would love to meet you. I will never look at Coriolanus
in the same way. Eloquent stuff, and I think Ralph saw the play as you did when he made
his film.
All the best, michael b
From: Casey Caldwell [mailto:w.casey.caldwell@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2012 05:09 PM
To: winedale-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <winedale-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Winedale-l] Winedale-l Digest, Vol 23, Issue 10
Hi all,
I've always been too much in awe of all of you to post on this listserv until now,
but I've been following this really interesting discussion of Coriolanus, and having
just seen the Winedale performance as well I feel like I have something to contribute. I
don't think I'm in any small position of informed opinion now at this point in my
life either, so please forgive me those of you I haven't met.
I like Coriolanus the play and I really liked what those kids did with it out at
Winedale, and I think I might be coming at this in a slightly different way than some of
the discussion so far so I wanted to add it to the mix.
As to my first point though, I emphatically would NOT have liked Coriolanus when I was
"younger". What I mean by "younger" is when I was still cradled in the
world of my innocence (a time that extended through college)--and I was very innocent, a
young soul compared to what I have always respected as the much more advanced souls on
this listserv and whom I've spent years admiring and being inspired by. I had to get
out in the world and get pretty beat up a few times (maybe many times) before, for
example, I could even relate to true positive experience of tragedy in a play. I
didn't get it. I appreciated the raw beauty of the poetry in, say, Macbeth, but I was
fundamentally separated from the essential experience of the play in a positive way until,
say, 6 or 7 years ago. The comedies were where it was at for me, though I have loved the
Henry IVs from the beginning (considering the role of Falstaff and his rejection in those
plays, I guess it makes sense put this way).
Part of what I find so compelling now about Coriolanus, and I have to be personal in order
to explain this, is the fact that I can completely relate to the way he feels and I think
it takes a kind of Brechtian honesty and courage on Shakespeare's part to show an
audience, not a heightened or enriched version of how they like to see themselves raised
or fail magnificently, but a real side of themselves they truly do not want to see. But
which we need to. I recently experienced severe burn out from performing all the
time--after an intense run of extremely positive experiences with Shakespeare and
performance, ADing at Winedale, building my own internship from the ground up to work at
the Globe, acting in countless scenes and plays at the Blackfriars in Staunton, directing
shows and staged readings, I felt building up in me what I was surprised to find was an
anger towards my "audience"- the people I felt expected me to keep performing
for them all the time and keep achieving and for whom I felt it was never enough. All of
the great things I had achieved had, paradoxically, led me to be angry, generically, at
those for whom they were achievements. That was of course a side-effect of the burn out,
but around that time I watched Fienne's film and turned back to the play, and I felt
that when I looked into his eyes I saw exactly how I felt looking back at me. A trapped
and angry, shrunken person that I had not been able to admit to myself, for all my
achievements, was there--and I felt so thankful to Shakespeare for having the courage, and
believing in me enough, to show that to me.
I was also born into this world with a severe inability to understand how to connect with
other people (like many of us wonderful nerds), and I think I've always harbored deep
down the fear that I'll never truly be able to overcome that blind spot in my soul.
What I find so sympathetic in Coriolanus, too, is that his tragedy is that of never
overcoming that blind spot (but like a child in man's body, he tries), of never
getting it, what it is that binds all of us to life, the tissue of our living that makes
it worth it, that on which if we leave a trace truly means we lived here (as opposed to
great battles and impressing our mothers). To have achieved so much, and yet to never have
understood that, seems to me to be the height of tragedy in a deeply human and horrifying
way. I think Shakespeare understood too that maybe for man struggling with that kind of
flaw, maybe the only connection he can find for a short time is with his enemy, and that
really in the end he never truly became a man, for all of his achievements, out of the
struggling child. He died his mother's son. And god help me but I fear the same
fate.
As for some of the more technical complaints scholars frequently levy against the play,
I'm also less sympathetic. I think there are plenty of great early modern plays that
do not contain much sign of "inner life" at all- see the entirety of Ben
Jonson's oeuvre, for example. I directed Shoemaker's Holiday for my MFA show at
the Blackfriars, so obviously I love that play, and while Simon Eyre shows some inner
life, the merits of that play (and I do think it's a great early modern play) need to
be sought under rubrics other than those of delving into the subjective depths. Where I
think Shakespeare tops Ben Jonson in this vein, though, is that he could move away from
interiority and still write a tragedy, while Jonson for me was only really successful with
his comedies. I know some of this is a matter of taste, but I thought it was also worth
throwing in. Tis Pity, Revenger's Tragedy, Michaelmas Term, The Knight of the Burning
Pestle, The Alchemist, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, Dido Queen of Carthage, a lot of
what is great in these plays is not what we love in Hamlet, though a lot of what we could
love but miss in Hamlet is expanded upon in these and other plays in the period.
And what I loved about those kids performing Coriolanus out at Winedale, is that they were
honestly, and with ability, preparation, and dedication, facing what in that play, when I
was their age, I was too afraid to face myself--in art, or otherwise. I couldn't have
done what they did, and any time a group of human beings comes together and gives me the
opportunity to admit that to myself through the thick veil of qualifications and scars and
ego I've built up, I'm grateful. A lot of the people on this listserv did that for
me--Winedale changed my life and it was meeting so many of you that taught me to believe I
was capable of more than I believed I was--Doc did that for me in 2003 in the Spring
Class, James did that for me over four summers, a lot of you were at Doc's 70th
birthday party the day I realized I had to devote my life to that patch of ground out
there that could bind people the way I saw all of you were bound, and just after that
James took me into my first summer after I had applied too late after the deadline. And
those kids did it for me with Coriolanus on Saturday night.
(On a side note, I thought that technically their execution was pretty damn good as well,
and had great pace--something I appreciate more and more having lived almost
exclusively-between Winedale, the Blackfriars, and the Globe--in early modern drama for my
daily life for the past four years. I heard a lot of the beautiful, odd language in that
play as well, and bejesus did Robert Faires' daughter embody Volumnia. The young man
that played Coriolanus knew where his enjambments were upon quizzing, so his courage and
generosity with that part extended beyond his work with his classmates on stage to really
knowing the text for himself as well. And something else they picked up on as a merit in
the play- the lack of a real "B plot" means Coriolanus is an opportunity to
drive through that barn like a train. And they did.)
I apologize to those of you I haven't met for sharing something so personal by way of
explanation, but I truly felt I had something unique and contributory to add to this
already rich discussion of the play. In the end, maybe it's too personal to be
applicable for others, but I think Shakespeare's the one that helped me see that very
personal thing (and maybe live with it as well).
I love you guys, and I love Coriolanus too.
Cheers,
Casey Caldwell
On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 9:49 AM, Steele, William B.
<wsteele@lockelord.com<mailto:wsteele@lockelord.com>> wrote:
Fiennes was born for the part. Has he ever smiled in a movie?
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: NYT (Mike Godwin)
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Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2012 00:15:46 -0700
From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic@gmail.com<mailto:mnemonic@gmail.com>>
To: Michael Saenger
<saengerm@southwestern.edu<mailto:saengerm@southwestern.edu>>
Cc: Shakespeare at Winedale 1970-2000 alums
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Subject: Re: [Winedale-l] NYT
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In light of this discussion, I watched Ralph Fiennes's film adaptation of CORIOLANUS
today. Emphasis, of course, on "adaptation" -- the text is radically reduced
from the source. Fiennes does an amazing job as a screen actor of attempting to fill in
the gaps that the text does not fill regarding Coriolanus's -- by my count, he smiles
only at one moment in the whole film, when we first see him with his "sweet
silence" of a wife and his child after his return from routing the Volscians. His
performance doesn't make fix the problem that the text leaves us with -- too little
information about his inner life, what drives him, how he got this way, and what changes
in him. But it is certainly watchable.
What I really liked, though, is Brian Cox's take on Menenius. Here's a good
interview with Cox in the Telegraph that underscores Cox's and Fiennes's
interpretive choices with that role:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/starsandstories/9027156/Brian-Cox-i…
.
--Mike
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