Shakespeare With Heart 2015: The Tempest (circus themed)

As a professionally trained actor and graduate of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, I have performed onstage dozens of times both in New York and in Central Florida. But the most rewarding experience I’ve ever had onstage was a decade ago when I participated in Orlando Shakes Shakespeare With Heart camp as a high school student.

It was my first experience with Orlando Shakes and ended up being the very reason I am back working for them as a volunteer today. There is something truly special about working in a judgment-free environment—especially when you are teenager and still shaping yourself as a person.

Shakespeare With Heart 2015: The Tempest (circus themed)

Shakespeare With Heart is a production camp that allows high school students with and without special needs to work alongside each other to put on incredible Shakespearean performances. Whether you are a high school student looking to sharpen your skills over the summer or a parent looking for enriching activities for your younger children, I highly recommend the exceptional summer programs at Orlando Shakes.

Summer is an opportunity for children of all ages to leave the stresses of the school year behind and focus on play. It also gives parents an opportunity to choose activities for their children that are both fun and educational. Orlando Shakes provides a wide array of summer camps that give children of all ages the chance to learn and play in a safe, fun, and stress-free environment.

“Orlando Shakespeare Theater Summer Camps teach real world problem solving skills through rehearsal and performance,” said Anne Hering, Director of Education at Orlando Shakes. “Whether it’s a one week, Pre K to first grade camp or a Production Camp of Much Ado About Nothing, young actors blossom under the guidance of professional theatre artists. We hope to see you under the lights this summer!”

Shakespeare With Heart 2015: The Tempest (circus themed)

Registration for Orlando Shakes 2016 Summer Camps is available now! For more information or to sign up, please visit www.orlandoshakes.org or contact or call 407-447-1700 ext. 254.

Shakespearely yours,
Lyndsey Elizabeth, Orlando Shakes Marketing Volunteer

Lyndsey Elizabeth is a Marketing Volunteer at Orlando Shakespeare Theater and 2011 graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. She is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s Degree in Art and Anthropology with a Minor in Mass Communication. She is also a visual artist, and has sold and exhibited her paintings for almost a decade.

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Shakespeare First Folio discovered on Scottish island

A copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio, one of the most sought-after books in the world, has been discovered in a stately home on a Scottish island. Click to read more.

What Twitter, Shakespeare, and monkeys have in common
Twitter and Shakespeare’s Globe Theater have partnered to prove the infinite monkey theorem, which states that monkeys infinitely typing at random could eventually re-create the complete works of William Shakespeare. Click to read more.

Heuristic Shakespeare: Ian McKellen’s new app offers a fresh take on the Bard’s plays
Ian McKellen launches new iPad app that gives readers a new way to experience the bard’s plays. Click to read more.

What It’s Like to Perform Shakespeare in Prison
One of the most well-known prisons in America is using Shakespeare to rehabilitate its inmates. Click to read more.

Identify the location of Vanya’s Gnome and be entered to win two tickets to Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike and a 2016-2017 Season Subscription!

The Garden Gnome from the Vanya set will be traveling around town with week. Identify his location by commenting on the picture on Orlando Shakes Facebook Page to be entered into a contest to win two tickets to Vanya and a 2016-2017 Season Subscription.

Here are the rules:

• One new Vanya Garden Gnome picture (a close up picture) will be posted to Orlando Shakes Facebook page Monday (April 4, 2016) through Thursday (April 7, 2016).
• Contest participants have 24 hours to guess the Gnome’s location by commenting on the post. After 24 hours the Gnome’s location will be revealed in another picture.
• Each participant who guesses the Gnome’s location correctly will be entered into a drawing for two free tickets to Vanya.
• The winner of the day’s free tickets to Vanya will be posted on Facebook with the location picture.
• Four Gnome location pictures will be posted throughout the week (April 4-7, 2016), which means four different people can win two free pairs of tickets to Vanya!
• Everyone who comments (regardless of guessing the Gnome’s location correctly) will be entered into a drawing at the end of the week for an Orlando Shakes 2016-2017 Season Subscription! Comment every day a new photo is posted and your name will be entered into 2016-2017 Season Subscription drawing four times.
• The winner of the 2016-2017 Season Subscription will be announced with the location of the final Gnome picture on April 7, 2016.

Example of Vanya’s Roaming Gnome Facebook Post:

Photo features Benjamin Boucvalt (Spike), Philip Nolen (Vanya), Carol Halstead (Masha), and Anne Hering (Sonia).

Orlando Shakes will be opening Christopher Durang’s newest play, “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” (Vanya) this April. The Tony Award-winning comedy is a humorous adaptation of themes found in Anton Chekhov’s work. While you don’t need to have read Chekhov to enjoy the production, a little familiarity with the legendary Russian playwright will add to the fun.

Anton Chekhov was born in Russia in 1860. His young life was anything but pleasant. His physically abusive father was declared bankrupt in 1876, but despite the family living in poverty, Chekhov managed to pay his way through school and gain admittance to the First Moscow State Medical University. Working as a medical doctor paid some of the family’s bills, but not enough, so Chekhov looked to writing as a supplement to his income. Sometimes writing under pseudonyms such as “Man without a Spleen,” Chekhov’s satirical writing style gained both popularity and criticism—the latter of which motivated the writer to pursue more artistically ambitious projects.

Photo features Philip Nolen (Vanya), Anne Hering (Sonia), Carol Halstead (Masha), and Benjamin Boucvalt (Spike).

Anton Chekhov’s writing developed into a modern, realistic, tragicomic style that was more often than not too ahead of its time. His first show flopped, and while he had much more success working with Konstantin Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theater, Chekhov still felt his work was being widely misunderstood. Many theater professionals, including Stanislavsky himself, simply felt that there was no humor to be found in tragedy. But haven’t we all cried tears of joy? Even in our darkest hours, haven’t we all laughed at the absurdity of life itself?

One-hundred and eight years after Chekhov’s death, one dark and absurd comic genius is shedding new light on Chekhov’s acute understanding of the human condition. Vanya is the critically acclaimed brainchild of Christopher Durang, a longtime admirer of Anton Chekhov’s work. Reminiscent of Chekhov’s Three Sisters and The Seagull, Durang’s Vanya explores the lives of three siblings living up to their Chekhovian namesakes.

Mixing Chekhov sensibilities with modern cringe-worthy flair, Vanya, Sonia, Masha, and Spike is a show that you don’t want to miss! Tickets are available online or by calling the Box Office at (407) 447-1700 ext. 1.

Shakespearely yours,
Lyndsey Elizabeth, Orlando Shakes Marketing Volunteer

Lyndsey Elizabeth is a Marketing Volunteer at Orlando Shakespeare Theater and 2011 graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. She is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s Degree in Art and Anthropology with a Minor in Mass Communication. She is also a visual artist, and has sold and exhibited her paintings for almost a decade.

Greg Thornton, Dameka Hayes, Brad Frost, Gracie Winchester, and cast. Photo by Tony Firriolo.

Invoking a particular emotion onstage can be challenging to do with spoken words alone. Sometimes you need to strike a chord or two, which is where New York composer Daniel Levy comes in.

An award-winning composer and musician, as well as a graduate of Miami University and NYU Tisch, Daniel Levy has produced over 40 scores for film and stage. For Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s current production of The Tempest, Daniel worked alongside director Anne Hering to create a beautifully provocative original score for the play.

Orlando Shakes marketing department recently sat down with Daniel to learn more about his enchanting musical work on The Tempest:

Daniel Levy

OST: Can you provide a brief explanation of how you went about creating original music for Orlando Shakes production of The Tempest?

DL: Director Anne Hering explained her vision for the play—what Prospero’s journey was and what the themes or energies were that she wanted to emphasize or explore. Then we invent ways that music can affect or enhance the energy flow in the play, or the flow of information. Text is one form of information. Music is another. Music also has a certain effect on how we perceive time, space, and movement, so there are often these aspects to address too.

OST: What particular challenges did you face while creating original music for Orlando Shakes production of The Tempest?

DL: Coming into the project, I developed some very negative feelings about the main character, Prospero. He seemed to me to be a kind of self-important bully, pushing people around, scaring them, toying with them, making innocent Ferdinand think his own father was dead—kind of a mean, nasty old fart. Then when I saw and heard our own Greg Thornton’s Prospero, I had a new understanding. I liked him again. I understood where Anne and Greg were taking that character and felt good about helping them get there.

OST: What is unique or exciting about the music you created for Orlando Shakes production of The Tempest?

DL: On one level I hope that no one notices it or feels that it is by itself exciting or important. If the music is serving the play, you’ll just engage more with the play and not notice the music so much. That said, I am very happy with the MASQUE score that we concocted and how very beautifully the cast sings it. It gave me a thrill every time I heard it in rehearsals, and I am hoping the audience is elevated and moved in that moment too—as Prospero gives an extravagant and loving gift to his only daughter, a Follies-type show with Goddesses, music, dance.

Daniel Levy

The other element that I think is exciting is the fact Orlando Shakes commissioned an original score for the production. This shows a dedication to high production values that I appreciate—that’s exciting! Many scores for plays are cobbled together from various pre-recorded sources. This score is written specifically for THIS production, and is unified in its thematic materials the way a film score is unified (we’re working a small number of themes and ideas for maximum effectiveness). The music is both a design element as well as a new original text built to compliment the Shakespeare text, and if we do it right it lifts everything up bit, energizes the world.

OST: What did it feel like trying to create original music that would correlate with the world’s most famous wordsmith’s (Shakespeare’s) script?

DL: There are six or seven songs in The Tempest: drinking songs, mourning songs, spooky songs, celebration songs. When the Bard and his composer collaborated, there was some back and forth about the way the music and lyrics worked together. Since we are now Bard-less, I feel free to edit the text a bit to help make the music land, without damaging the meaning or the poetry. Because I collaborate frequently with lyricists as a co-lyricist (for operas and musicals), I feel pretty confident that I am honoring the original lyrics’ intent.

Book your tickets for The Tempest and here Daniel Levy’s original scores live on stage! Tickets are available online or by calling the Box Office at (407) 447-1700 ext. 1.

John P. Keller as Pericles and Kimmi Johnson as the Goddess Diana. Photo by Tony Firriolo.

The following blog post is the fourth installment from actor John P. Keller, taking on the lead role of Pericles in Orlando Shakes upcoming modern verse production, of his documentation of the controversial project to translate Shakespeare into contemporary modern English.   

The Translation, Adaptation, or Re-Writing of Shakespeare’s and Ellen McLaughlin’s Pericles. Part III

The Writer’s Equation and The Actors’ Math. 

Part of the joy of acting heightened language is that it is not colloquial, modern, or simplistic. My grad school voice teacher passed on the idea that Shakespeare is: “crazy shit, happening to incredibly articulate people.” Modern Shakespeare actors do not apologize for the complex language—the antique-ness of it, is its value. You are given permission to live as large as life itself in the ways that ancient language allows. As fellow Pericles actor Richard Watson puts it “What we do is not brain surgery or rocket science, but it is oddly complex.”

There is joy for an actor to speak true Shakespeare lines like:

Prithee, speak.
Falseness cannot come from thee, for thou look’st
Modest as Justice and thou seem’st a palace
For the crowned Truth to dwell in. I will believe thee
And make my senses credit thy relation
To points that seem impossible.

Shakespeare’s language may not flow on the page to modern eyes. However, actors get to prove themselves worthy of these plays by using their bodies, breath, and active minds to live out the text for modern ears. When a modern ear hears an ancient piece of literature and understands the action of the play, they delight in their own intelligence, emotion, and creativity. The challenge then to the modern playwright is to find a way to replace or adjust indiscernible words and structures while still keeping the magical voyage of an elevated sentence. This is because at the end of the day the “PlayOn!” project is not creating contemporary plays, but adjusting classical text for contemporary ears. The success and failure of that concept is yet to be determined.

This may create a new equation for the writers, but the work of the actor doesn’t change much. The math actors use to make the text active and clear is: scansion, alliteration, rhyme, enjambment, repetition, antithesis, comparison, lists, and capitalization.

John P. Keller as Pericles. Photo by Tony Firriolo.

Actors have spent time, energy, and passion to learn the complex equations to make the play work. However, if we believe that this equation is inherently challenging and filled with obstacles, we would have to admit that sometimes those obstacles are too hard to overcome. The obtuse text in essence fails us as performable in contemporary culture. No matter how hard we actors work to keep this conclusion from being made, we have to allow the possibility that a text adjustment might make the play better.

Ellen McLaughlin laid out her process for contemporizing the language of Pericles in her Keynote delivered at Orlando Shakes PlayFest this past fall. It should be very clear that the plot and essence of the play have not changed, mainly because the “PlayOn! project forbids it. She sets her work “re-writing” as having more to do with audience understandability. While we actors might like to think ourselves invincible in our ability to make anything make sense as long as we ourselves have a sense of the meaning, I have to wonder if we—and our audiences—may benefit by some dramaturgical aid.

Above I gave some examples of the flow of the Wilkins vs. Shakespeare. Below I attempt a comparison of the 17^th Century (Shakespeare/Wilkins) text and the 21^st Century (McLaughlin) text. The lens I am using is an actor lens—looking for the text that makes the most actable moment onstage. In all the examples the original text as published by the Arden appears column left and the new text based on our Orlando Shakes performance script is on the right.

Here is an excerpt from the first scene where Pericles responds to the villainous Antiochus:

In the following example, Pericles relays the danger of Antiochus to his trusted confidant Helicanus:

Here Pericles is affirming his trust in Helicanus and expressing his concerns over Antiochus.

This is the finale of the same scene. As an actor I cannot help but appreciate the adjusted text—its ability to share the essence of the moment and create a flow of thought that leaves no room for confusion in the listeners mind:

Believing that Shakespeare’s Pericles was co-authored with Wilkin’s who probably wrote the above—and personally believing Shakespeare to be the stronger writer—I completely value the rewritten text above as an improvement. That early speech, if indeed written by Wilkins, doesn’t favor understandability. The re-write doesn’t just make the language fit contemporary understanding, but makes the flow better for the action of the play. Another example:

I find it hard to present examples of lines or changes I mourn because the truth is much hasn’t changed. I mourn the loss of any change in that I love the original text, but so does everyone involved in the process. The playwright has gone a long way to keep either the exact wordings of or the essence of many of the truisms. Bellow is a particularly fun alliterative line from the Pericles/Helicanus scene. There is a delight in saying Shakespeare’s text, which loses a little something in the re-write. While I do agree the new line better fits modern speech it still hurts to lose it:

In PART IV, I will explore some of the changes and alterations made because of the rehearsal process.

Yours,
John P. Keller

John P. Keller is a New York based Actor as well as the Director of Education and Community Outreach for coLAB Arts in New Jersey, an organization that links artists with social advocacy and non-profit organizations to develop transformative new work with communities. He has taught at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers, the Rutgers School of Social Work, and at Westminster College of the Arts, Rider University. 

Lisa Wolpe is the Founding Producing Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company and has been working on cross-gender performance since the 1980’s. Since the Company’s creation in 1993, Lisa Wolpe has played more of the Bard’s male roles than any woman in history, and always to superlative reviews. An activist as well as a celebrated actress and director, Wolpe’s work speaks toward liberation from the “gender box” of expectations.

Lisa Wolpe will be bringing her groundbreaking solo show, Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender to Orlando Shakes on Sunday, February 28th, 2016 at 7:30 PM. In preparation for this upcoming production, Lisa Wolpe sat down with Orlando Shakes volunteer Lyndsey Elizabeth for a candid interview about her unique theater style.

OST: Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender is performed in a new and groundbreaking style of theater. What kind of preparation went into creating the show?

LW: I spent about five years building what looks like a very simple, one-hour show. I wrote a 133 page thesis for an MFA I earned in Interdisciplinary Art, unpacking my process, which I completed in 2007. I was looking at why I felt such satisfaction in crossing gender onstage, and where that came from in my life experience. After that, it was a slow approach to performing the story I wanted to tell without all of the trappings of a traditional play. At one point this solo show was 2.5 hours long, including 150 slides, some basic costume changes, lots of tips on how to cross gender, and forays into topics including mystical wisdom, sacred geometry, the authorship debate, and the work of my all-female Shakespeare Company. In the last year or two, I have pared the show down to under an hour, in order to tour it internationally, and I decided to make it much simpler and shorter and rely mostly on personal stories from my own life to contextualize why I love to play Shakespeare. Along the way I have of course directed dozens of Shakespeare productions and taught many actors Shakespearean performance techniques, so my insights have continued to grow, but at this point I am not changing the text, and the performance is very simple—no costumes, no set, no special lights—just me and this story I want to tell, which is basically about how I came to understand and love my father so much more—by playing the male roles in Shakespeare.

Lisa Wolpe as Hamlet. Photo by Kevin Sprauge (Shakespeare in LA)

OST: Do you feel that all actors inherently possess both masculine and feminine energy?

LW: I do feel that gender is no longer viewed as a male/female binary, and that most young people (to their own great relief!) accept a much wider gender spectrum of identity onstage and in the world than I’ve seen in my lifetime—one that is mutable, stageable, and performative to some extent—as is the answer to their own chosen personal gender labels. Obviously, some people are drawn to challenge the expectations of gender behavior more strongly than others, and some people have more shape-shifting skills than others, but it is encouraging that more people feel free to explore outside of “the box”, and liberate their internal terrain.

OST: Why is it important for theater to be diverse and inclusive?

LW: Our country is demographically very diverse, and yet our theaters are not all reflective of that diversity. Many of us are working fervently to challenge the white-male-dominated system that has perpetuated an exclusivity that does not favor our actual population and the stories that we (the people) may want to see, play, or present. I am excited to see the progress we have all made together in these past twenty-five years.

OST: When Shakespeare’s works were originally performed, all roles were played by men. Was this an important factor to you when you founded the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company in 1993?

LW: Yes, although gender-bending is trending now, it was seen as a gimmick when I was first working on cross-gender performance in the late 1980’s. Thankfully, it is quite a different field now for non-white actors, and for female actors, at least in the current practice of casting Shakespeare plays more consciously and diversely. But it has to be said that women have played great male roles like Hamlet for hundreds of years, and it really isn’t new or “gimmicky” at all.

OST: What was the very first male role that you played in a production? How was this moment pivotal to the rest of your career?

LW: I played Lear in an all-female production in, I think, 1989—that was terrific—having so many words to express so many thoughts and feelings. I played Henry V with Kristin Linklater’s all-female Company of Women soon after that. And then I played Romeo in my own production of Romeo and Juliet as the inaugural production of Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company in 1993, and that was great—directing myself was the final step in freeing myself from other people’s expectations of what my “ideal man” would be onstage—I was finally free to create my own cross-gender aesthetic onstage.

OST: In addition to your work as an actor, you are also a highly acclaimed director and teacher. What is the most rewarding part, as a master of your craft, to be able to do this type of work with other professional actors and students?

LW: I always love teaching the work to hungry young actors eager to begin to understand the writing and make magic onstage.

Watch Lisa Wolpe as Iago (Othello) at the LA Women’s Shakespeare Company, 2008:

See Lisa Wolpe’s revolutionary theater style live on stage at Orlando Shakes on February 28^, 2016. Tickets for Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender are available online or by calling the Box Office at (407) 447-1700 ext. 1.

Shakespearely yours,
Lyndsey Elizabeth, Orlando Shakes Marketing Volunteer

John P. Keller as Pericles. Photo by Luke Evans.

The following blog post is the third installment from actor John P. Keller, taking on the lead role of Pericles in Orlando Shakes upcoming modern verse production, of his documentation of the controversial project to translate Shakespeare into contemporary modern English.  

The Translation, Adaptation, or Re-Writing of Shakespeare’s and Ellen McLaughlin’s Pericles. Part II

John P. Keller

It’s ok we are not re-writing Shakespeare we are re-writing… “Wilkins?”

Pericles is my favorite Shakespeare play. Perhaps my actor ego plays into that—always believing I would make a good Pericles (the jury is still out, we don’t open for another few weeks). Perhaps it’s because I love a great action adventure in all forms and this play—and maybe Cymbeline—are the closest Shakespeare comes to an Odyssean epic. This play also has one of the most superbly crafted scenes in all of Shakespeare, the dangerous and redemptive Act V boat scene—a superbly crafted moment of unknown identities which surprises with the continual ebb and flow of possible resolution and furthered conflict.

It is a common scholarly belief, based on empirical data, that Shakespeare is not the primary author of Pericles. It is probable that George Wilkins, sometime around 1607 or 1608, wrote the first two to three acts. His novel with the published titled “The Painful Adventures of Pericles, Prince of Tyre” contains whole passages of mirrored text. Most theater companies that produce Shakespeare’s Pericles Prince of Tyre usually contend with the performative hurdle of a play that is written in two pretty distinct voices. The differences in text and poetic flow found throughout the production as well as the challenges of vast changes in geographies and a bountiful cast of colorful characters makes Pericles a very challenging play to produce.

In my first article, I discussed how many artists responded to the initial announcement of the translation project with a mix of disbelief and disgust. However, if the conversation lasts more than that momentary outburst, it works its way around to discussing which plays might actually benefit with some dramaturgical aid. Shakespeare’s full body of work accounts for 39 plays, but, most of us have only heard of around a dozen or so—and probably only 3-5 are widely known in pop-culture. We can assume the success of these well known plays derive from the beauty of the poetry, the fantastical quality of the story telling, and reverberating psychological truisms. So what about the play’s outside of this revered circle? Well, Pericles is one of these outsider plays.

Shakespeare’s Pericles is magical, it is epic, and it also has some incredible pathos. However, in many ways it trips over itself. Performing the original text requires a lot of “figuring out” to create a sense of flow and understandability to the language and the plot. A common refrain during text work of Shakespeare’s Pericles was not feeling Shakespeare’s familiar poetic flow. His “voice” is specifically absent in the first two and a half acts.

John P. Keller as Pericles. Photo by Luke Evans.

The following is an example of Wilkins’ dense language in Act I Sc. 2 of Pericles:

Let none disturb us.
Why should this change of thoughts,
The sad companion, dull-eyed melancholy,
Be my so used a guest as not an hour
In the day’s glorious walk or peaceful night,
The tomb where grief should sleep can breed me quiet?
…
Then it is thus: the passions of the mind,
That have their first conception by misdred,
Have after-nourishment and life by care;
And what was first but fear what might be done
Grows elder now, and cares it be not done.

Reading these passages gives me the impression of a writer attempting to mimic Shakespeare.

It is generally agreed in our rehearsal room at Orlando Shakes that you could sense the moment when Shakespeare takes control of the text in Act III, Sc. 2 of Pericles. Cerimon speaks the words:

She is alive! Behold
Her eyelids, cases to those heavenly jewels
Which Pericles hath lost, begin to part
Their fringes of bright gold. The diamonds
Of a most praised water doth appear,
To make the world twice rich. Live, and make
Us weep to hear your fate, fair creature,
Rare as you seem to be.

It’s as if Shakespeare threw Wilkins out of the writer’s chair and said “oh just let me do it!”

Later in the play there are some speeches, that as an actor, seem so much more discernible, emotionally present, and quite frankly actable. Like this speech from Act V, Sc. 1:

I am great with woe, and shall deliver weeping.
My dearest wife was like this maid, and such a one
My daughter might have been. My queen’s square brows,
Her stature to an inch, as wand-like straight,
As silver-voiced, her eyes as jewel-like
And cased as richly, in pace another Juno;
Who starves the ears she feeds and makes them hungry
The more she gives them speech.

The idea that Pericles had two originating authors birthed some new gnawing questions relating to our current controversial dilemma about authorship and re-writes: What makes text work or not work performatively? What textual tools can be adjusted to make the actor profit better in their work?

In PART III, I will discuss the actor’s process of bringing the text to life and highlight compressions between the original and McLaughlin texts.

Yours,
John P. Keller

John P. Keller is a New York based Actor as well as the Director of Education and Community Outreach for coLAB Arts in New Jersey, an organization that links artists with social advocacy and non-profit organizations to develop transformative new work with communities. He has taught at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers, the Rutgers School of Social Work, and at Westminster College of the Arts, Rider University. 

First day of rehearsal for Orlando Shakes production of “The Adventures of Pericles”

The following blog post is the second installment from actor John P. Keller, taking on the lead role of Pericles in Orlando Shakes upcoming modern verse production, of his documentation of the controversial project to translate Shakespeare into contemporary modern English.  

The Translation, Adaptation, or Re-Writing of Shakespeare’s  and Ellen McLaughlin’s Pericles

John P. Keller

First Impressions
The first day of rehearsal is a lot like taking your dog for a visit to the local dog park. The metaphor works if you include things like the anticipation of a new place, the excitement of an active play date with some old friends, and the sniffing out of some new faces (or, well… y’know). Then there is that moment—when someone pulls out the tennis ball. Everyone sits on baited breath, attentive—waiting for the game to begin. It’s not altogether dissimilar with the distribution of the show script and the first group read. It’s an act of ceremony.

Once everyone has gone around and said their names and the roles they will attempt to play (I say that with reverence not cynicism), it is the job of the actor who utters the first printed lines to take the play from theoretical to actual, to set a six week rehearsal marathon into motion.

This was how we all began the first day of rehearsal for Orlando Shakes production of The Adventures of Pericles.

Then began a slow series of revelations.

We are working on a revered ancient text…kind of…

We are working on a new play…kind of…

We are working alongside a beloved 400 year old master playwright…kind of…

We are working on something altogether familiar and altogether different…yes.

We are here in a room with a living breathing playwright with her own hopes, fears, opinions, goals, hesitations, and confidences… most definitely.

When working on Shakespeare, I typically find ceremony in the work. William Shakespeare—to actors of Shakespeare’s plays—believe him to be alive in the text. He gives us direction through poetry, enjambed lines, and punctuation. He is both enlightening and utterly frustrating—not to mention annoyingly cajoling and eerily silent.

This last of Shakespeare’s greatest attributes (his death 400 years ago) means that as an actor you can whine about him as much as you like without hurting his feelings. “What was he thinking—drinking—when he wrote this?!”

But when you have a living playwright in the room…not so much.

The Living Playwright
Ellen McLaughlin is not an imposing figure. She sits at the table with a MacBook and peeks around the room from behind a cup of coffee. Anyone who might not have been aware of her work prior to the first rehearsal may not have picked her out at all. She introduced herself on the first day simply as “the playwright, with some help from Shakespeare.” The joke landed well, as it sarcastically underlined many questions not yet answered about this process. Is this an adaptation, a translation, or plain and simply an entirely new play? It’s this question that underlines the tension amongst the actors—to put it bluntly, we are curious about these “writers” who are going to come in here and “translate” our good friend Will’s work.

First read-throughs have a range of emotional context. First, as I mentioned before comes the sniffing out. Second, the anxiety of having to read aloud your part for the first time in a room full of respected peers (hoping to hell you don’t make a fool of yourself). Lastly comes the laying out of the production process: what will the costumes and set look like, what will the sound design be reminiscent of, and will stage management have brewed enough coffee to last the length rehearsal? This usually plays out very quickly on the first or certainly by the second day of work.

The Arden Shakespeare edition (left) compared to Ellen McLaughlin’s script. 

It is common practice at Orlando Shakes to do a two-fold table work process. After the initial read of the performance script, we investigate the script before worrying about staging. We start by going back and reading the unedited first folio. This process allows the director and performer to see what parts of the script have been cut, what plot points have been abbreviated or lost, what characters have been combined, and what were the original punctuations and spellings before Arden got their hands on it. This process allows us to understand the full range of assets the script has to offer. The actor can then mine the literature for an active meaning to bring the play to life.

Once the full scene has been read in the folio, we go back and speak aloud our own paraphrased version of the text (sound familiar). We as actors put into our own vernacular what we think the character is saying. We then solicit feedback from everyone at the table about what all the translational possibilities might be. It is a process that holds a simple truth: the best idea in the room can come from anywhere and it is always better to favor the sharing of ideas than the stroking of ego.

Once the folio and paraphrasing process has been completed, we then go back and re-read the scene from the show script—and reap the rewards of all our detailed mining.

Perhaps this process—and processes like it used at theaters everywhere—has lead to this next step of creating a paraphrased/translated/modern language adaptation project. Basically, if the actors and artists do this anyway to find the play, why can’t the audience just participate in the same process by hearing the play spoken in modern language?

When working on a new play, particularly a world premier, it is common to have the playwright in the rehearsal room as part of the process. The advantages are very real. You have a primary source who can answer questions in real time. They can help you understand concepts or rationales behind plot points and their reasons for word choice.

The process of questions from the actors is also beneficial for the playwrights. In a first production they are typically still finalizing their script. If the play is successful it will be produced many times, and the future of the work depends on it being able to stand alone with out the need for constant explanation or rationalization from the playwright. It becomes a thing that lives beyond the person who created it.

Now imagine that having a playwright and a director in a room is like having two parents who are organizing a family vacation—the actors are the kids. Usually responsibilities are divided up before departure. You are in charge of food and I will organize transportation. However every once in a while mom may disagree with dad for taking that right turn. Or dad my criticize mom’s decision to feed the kids fast food. Those are the moments when the kids (actors) get very quiet and just sit back and watch and listen, waiting to see who wins. Now imagine sometimes the kids just don’t want to do what they are told.

Ellen McLaughlin, playwright, and Jim Helsinger, director. Photo by Lisa Wolpe. 

Fortunately in this process we have two pretty well organized and complimentary parents. Ellen understands Jim’s need to have a clear streamlined production that will meet the artistic needs of the theater. And Jim knows that Ellen has given much care to creating a script that meets the modern language needs of the project. It’s easy to go on an adventure when the guides are having fun. Likewise the room of actors—while sometimes resistant—are a pretty fun group to travel with.

In PART II, I will get into a little more detail about some of the questions, speed bumps, and “ah-ha” moments that are coming up in the process.

Yours,
John P. Keller

John P. Keller is a New York based Actor as well as the Director of Education and Community Outreach for coLAB Arts in New Jersey, an organization that links artists with social advocacy and non-profit organizations to develop transformative new work with communities. He has taught at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers, the Rutgers School of Social Work, and at Westminster College of the Arts, Rider University. 

In light of this controversial undertaking, John P. Keller, New York based actor taking on the lead role of Pericles in Orlando Shakes upcoming modern production, offered to document his involvement in the project in a series of blog posts.

John P. Keller

I landed in this room a bit by accident. The kind of accidental series of events that lead a pre-med student to drift out of the science library and into the theater department green room at a small liberal arts college. Truthfully, I think if it were not for the green room I never would have found the theater in the first place. Perhaps I should not admit this, but my love of the theater did not begin as a particular desire to be on stage, but rather the magnetic pull towards the people of the theater.

Artists tend to talk a lot. Conversations—perhaps contrary to popular belief—are not restricted to any particular discipline, philosophical mandate, or body politic. The theater (or perhaps more literally, in my initial experience, the green room) was where the sociologists, psychologists and anthropologists, the historians, the literary geniuses, the scientists, the serious scholars, and the drifting goofballs met to discuss Rumi, Descartes, Shakespeare, Locke, Einstein, Mr. Rodgers, Big Bird, and Parker and Stone—all while exchanging recipes and fart jokes. It was this great sense of gathering that always gave me—the communal conversation—the seriousness of purpose without the over seriousness of self.

Recently, a hot topic lit up green rooms and theater gatherings across the country. The announcement by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival that they would commission 36 living playwrights and dramaturges to translate 39 of the bard’s plays into contemporary English.

Upon the announcement, the green rooms exploded—for actors are nothing if not people with something to say. The discussion was pretty lopsided, with those who had a skeptical look on the project taking the lead:

“How can you translate something INTO English that already IS in English!?” was a pretty common refrain.

Prior to this announcement, Orlando Shakes announced that their annual season would include a production of Shakespeare’s Pericles.

In September 2015 during Orlando Shakes’ Annual PlayFest, the esteemed playwright Ellen McLaughlin presented a keynote speech that outlined her role as one of the commissioned playwrights for the “Play on!” translation project. In the days following, Orlando Shakes announced they would present a fully staged world premier production of McLaughlin’s new script in place of their originally announced Shakespeare’s Pericles.

Suddenly, Orlando Shakes virtual Green Room light up.

Text exchange between John P. Keller and Richard Watson.

I have to be completely honest. When this project was first announced, I fell on the side of the indignant. I mean, why would this kind of project even be a considered? And by such reputable keepers of the Shakespeare legacy as the Oregon and Orlando Shakespeare Theaters?

Is this project trying to mute Shakespeare’s English? Especially considering so much of our contemporary lexicon is already inspired by the words and metaphors originated by Shakespeare himself!

As a sometime teacher of Shakespeare, I also had to ask, “if this project is a success, would it become an obstacle to inspire students to care about the original text?” And perhaps even more to my immediate concerns, “how can I expect a contemporary playwright to create a new text that is both different and reverent to Shakespeare as well as active and fun to perform?”

While these questions bounced around in my head, I set to reading the blog posts, the Facebook comments, and even the scathing editorial by James Shapiro in the New York Times—who called the project a “disturbing precedent.”

After a few weeks into this, I realized something: people get really upset—violently upset—over the silliest things.

I started to feel like this project, even the artists involved, where being maligned for seeing any value in what is in essence a national literary geek-fest. I should also clearly state that the contemporary writers involved are not your average “Joe’s/Jane’s”. These are accomplished writers and scholars of diverse backgrounds and styles. They are willingly stepping up and taking on a challenge. A challenge that, hopefully, will get more people talking about Shakespeare—even if just for a moment in their busy lives.

In the weeks leading up to the start of rehearsals at Orlando Shakes, I weighed a lot of questions on my mind, which could all be summed up as one big question, “What do I think of this whole thing?”

This question is a relevant one, as I signed up to play Pericles in Orlando Shakes originally announced production of Shakespeare’s text. Asking myself the question for a few weeks while reading all the opinions (defenses and detractions), I realized I couldn’t decide how I felt about it. The simplest position I could state over these last few anticipatory weeks was the philosophy of, “don’t knock it until you try it.”

After receiving my first draft of McLaughlin’s script, I approached Orlando Shakes about compiling a series of blog articles that might give insiders a view of the process from the actors’ perspective. Over the next several weeks, I will attempt to write a series of articles that will be more journal entry than scholarly critique. I am less interested in trying to convince anyone who might be reading this to feel one way or the other. Rather, I am hoping to compile some of the best questions and conclusions from the beehive green room.

Orlando Shakes Pericles Rehearsal Studio

The project that Orlando Shakes is embarking on has already garnered some attention. While that attention and energy can be fun for an actor, it does little for the practical everyday work of rehearsal. Much has been, and will continue to be, written on this project by individuals with far more intellectual prowess and experience than I have. However, few will actually get to experience what will happen in the room while rehearsing and staging this piece of “controversy.”

In the rehearsal room, the green room, the halls, and (dare I say it) the watering holes in and around Orlando Shakes, a group of 25 or so playmakers will step into a space and negotiate things like poetry, scansion, metaphors, and movement. We will engage in that debate from a place of love and care for a playwright long dead, but still present in our creative lives. The question remains, whether our work will succeed in breathing new life into a 400 year old play, or damage the very identity of what we loved about Shakespeare in the first place.

So…Play on!

Shakespearely Yours,
John P. Keller

John P. Keller is a New York based Actor as well as the Director of Education and Community Outreach for coLAB Arts in New Jersey, an organization that links artists with social advocacy and non-profit organizations to develop transformative new work with communities. He has taught at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers, the Rutgers School of Social Work, and at Westminster College of the Arts, Rider University.