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(a)lockelord.com>wrote;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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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2012 00:15:46 -0700
From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic(a)gmail.com>
To: Michael Saenger <saengerm(a)southwestern.edu>
Cc: Shakespeare at Winedale 1970-2000 alums
<winedale-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
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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