Thanks, Doc. Ha, I hadn't realized I was referring to them as "kids"-I
think I was feeling the old in my soul looking at Coriolanus, and seeing
the young in theirs performing it. If that makes sense.
:) Oh yeah, I did get pretty beat up as Grumio... maybe that's why I
learned so much!
On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 10:39 PM, James Ayres <jayres(a)cvctx.com> wrote:
Great letter, Casey. Thanks. I'm pleased that the
posts of Michael, Mike,
Jerald, and myself, have generated this much interest and produced very
special insights. I think the older Winedale "kids" ('70-2000) will, for
sure, appreciate, as I do, your personal address, how you connect with the
play and Martius. You have certainly come a long way from Grumio in '03.
(beaten there also). By the way, I was amused that you refer to the '12
class as "kids." So you are 30 now?
Like you, I did marvel at the energy and pace of the play. That spirit
was evident in all three plays, I thought (although I wonder about the
gratuitous moments). It seemed to me that the "kid" who played Coriolanus
gave everything he could to the character, the conflict, left everything on
the stage, a noble effort. I thanked him for that after the play. But I
saw nothing heroic or tragic. Instead something like the struggling you
mention, the blind spot, the trapped, confused, angry, seeking release.
And maybe that is what the play is about.
Right on with Jonson, but remember he's writing humour comedy. Characters
do not develop much at all there. They sort of bounce off one another. But
the plays are great fun. MWW is Sh's "humour" comedy.
Now if we can turn our attention to Pericles.................
Doc
On Aug 6, 2012, at 5:09 PM, Casey Caldwell wrote:
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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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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