Anonymous Movie Response: Bill Rauch

Columbia Pictures new movie Anonymous has been creating a revived buzz about Shakespeare and the authorship debate.  In response, CSC has asked a few theatre artists and academics to weigh in on the topic. We asked:

1)      What was your first exposure to Shakespeare’s work?

2)      What are your thoughts on who wrote the plays widely attributed to Shakespeare and why?

Response from Bill Rauch*

When I was in seventh grade, I was bussed to see Yale Repertory Theatre's production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. It changed my life, which is part of why I am so passionate about the large student audiences attending our shows here at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In eighth grade, I staged my own adaptation of MIDSUMMER with that year's seventh
graders, my first attempt to direct. Ever since, Shakespeare's work has been at the heart of my artistic life.

I am quite confident that the man from Stratford wrote the plays. I spent twenty years of my career working with low-income rural and urban communities through Cornerstone Theater Company, and so I completely reject the notion that a literary genius cannot come from relatively humble means. It is also very clear from the texts themselves that the plays were written in a deep collaboration with a theater company with an acting company at its heart. It just shouts off the page of every scene that the author did not write at an isolated remove but was creating alongside the actors who originated the roles.

*Bill Rauch currently serves as the Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Rauch graduated from Harvard College, USA, in 1984 where he was a recipient of the Louis Sudler Prize for outstanding graduating artist. He has taught at University of California, Los Angeles, University of Southern California, California State University, Los Angeles and the University of California, Irvine as a Professor of Directing and Community Based Theater. Rauch has directed plays at South Coast Repertory, the Mark Taper Forum, Yale Repertory Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, Lincoln Center Theatre, Arena Stage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival and many others. He co-founded the community-based Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles, where he was artistic director for twenty years, during which time he directed over forty plays.

Anonymous Movie Response: Robert Brustein

Columbia Pictures new movie Anonymous has been creating a revived buzz about Shakespeare and the authorship debate.  In response, CSC has asked a few theatre artists and academics to weigh in on the topic. We asked:

1)      What was your first exposure to Shakespeare’s work?

2)      What are your thoughts on who wrote the plays widely attributed to Shakespeare and why?

Response from Robert Brustein*

I was first exposed to Shakespeare's works by having to memorize his soliloquies in grammar school. Luckily, I managed to see Olivier's Henry V innumerable times at the age of seventeen, which made me realize for the first time that these speeches were spoken by real human beings. Long live great theatrical productions!

The notion that Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, wrote Shakespeare's plays was first attributed to a man appropriately named Thomas Looney. Looney and his lunatic followers have been eager to believe that Oxford wrote Midsummer Night's Dream when he was nine, and was responsible for ten more Shakespeare works after he died out of a conviction that in order to write masterpieces you have to be an aristocrat or a Ph.D. The major proof that William Shakespeare wrote the plays under his name is that (among many other contemporaries) Ben Jonson said he did, and Jonson was the most envious man in England. Surely Jonson would not have loved "the man this side of idolatry" if he was only a poor, ignorant and illiterate player. Attributing Shakespeare's works to other people is a form of grand larceny and should be punished by making the culprit memorize the complete works of Francis Bacon and whatever the Earl of Oxford actually wrote.

*Robert Sanford Brustein is an American theatrical critic, producer, playwright and educator. He founded both Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut and the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he remains a Creative Consultant, and has been the theatre critic for The New Republic since 1959. He comments on politics for the Huffington Post.

Words, Words, Words... An Actor's Journey: Week 10

CSC Apprenticeship---Week Ten!

Closing out the 10-week saga of the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company Apprenticeship was both a relief and a little sad. A relief it was, purely in the physical sense because we had been working so hard for so long. Sad, in the sense that this wonderful creative environment that we learned so much for was ending.

For our final classes together, we had the pleasure of working one on one with Steve Maler in a Master Class on monologues. It was a perfect way to close the program: we were able to implement the techniques and exercises we had learned throughout our program in one final monologue to show Steve. He really took the time with each of us (all 21!) to work as if we were the only person in the class. Really specific to us, really specific to who we are as actors. And he helped us move forward with the pieces.

I chose Lady Macbeth for my final piece. I don't know, maybe I was on a power trip from playing Lady Percy all summer, but I wanted to go powerful, and to delve into the fear, and darkness of the piece.

Words, Words, Words... An Actor's Journey: Weeks 8 & 9

Monday, August 29, 2011

CSC Apprenticeship---Weeks Eight and Nine

Hey guys! So sorry it's taking me so long to turn these posts out. Let's talk about weeks Eight and Nine of the program. This is the time honestly when I was the most exhausted. We had been doing 15 hour days everyday except Mondays, which was the one night a week that I could work, so I would work at a restaurant until 11:30 at the earliest. I am by no means complaining about this at all, just speaking about my experience.

Rehearsals were ending for All's Well That Ends Well and we were opening previews, which was thrilling to say the least! Performing outside to the crowds that came was exhilarating! More on this later!

Weeks seven and eight had us working extra hard in our Voice and Movement classes. We knew that the program was coming to an end, and that we would be needing to fit all the rest of our lessons in the remaining class time we had together.

In Movement, we prepared a "devised" piece, something I have never done before. We began by going through several of Shakespeare's cannon plays and writing down the central themes from them on our white board. Themes like love, betrayal, trickery, insanity, sickness, and jealousy showed up. We then voted on which theme we were most interested in (Trickery) and began to discuss ways to wordlessly depict this theme in a 10-20 minute movement piece for an audience. I was lucky to be elected the "team leader," and I recorded every idea that we threw out there. We used all of our Movement training with Yo-El to create a funhouse and explore Honesty versus Trickery. Our final performance was organic, and inspiring to me. Yo-El has changed my physicality definitely for the better, I feel more connected to my core, and his Breakfast Warm-Up is something that I will be taking with me throughout my career.

Our Voice class had us going through the resonators of the face! This week actually helped me the most in terms of vocal work. I found that the articulators that I normally thought were easy for me to access were not at all. I also found myself a little frustrated that I wasn't "getting it" at first. This probably has a lot to do with my exhaustion, and part to do with me not allowing myself to be opened to the discoveries of the exercises we were doing. Once I realized this, with the help of Christine, I was able to move forward and gain a lot of information about myself as an actor.

In Week Nine, we were fortunate to work closer with some of the actors from All's Well That Ends Well. We worked with Larry Cohen (Lavache in AWTEW) on two days of Improv classes! I had never had someone explain and elaborate on the origins of Improv and the Art of saying YES in improv! Each game we played was that much more fullfilling for the actors and the audience when the improv-ers simply said YES each time and "offer" was made in the scene.

We then worked with Kersti Bryan (Helena) and Olivia D'Ambrosio (Marianna) talking about the business-side of our artistic careers. This was more than helpful. They acted as our mentors, sharing their different experiences in their journeys in the professional world and provided us with invaluable tips and great information about the life of a professional actor in New York City.

Lastly, we worked with Karen MacDonald (The Countess) on any monologue we wanted for an audition workshop. She gave us constructive criticism and helpful tips to ease our audition experiences and to help us prepare for an aspect of acting that will travel with us throughout our careers.

I only wish that we were able to spend more time with these amazingly talented performers and teachers. I think it was a great addition to our program, these master classes and some of my most helpful teaching moments came from the classes, and also in the work we had done with Yo-El and Christine. Saying farewell and acknowledging our amazing experiences at the end of the week was bittersweet, but I know that I have grown so much from them, and I will always be grateful.

Best,

Micah

P.S. Stay tuned for a post on All's Well That Ends Well and the final week of CSC Apprenticeship!

Words, Words, Words... An Actor's Journey: Weeks 6 & 7

Monday, August 15, 2011

Weeks 6 & 7 (CSC Apprenticeship)

Hello all! My apologies for the hiatus. It's been such a wonderfully busy four weeks since I last posted! We just closed a very successful run of All's Well That Ends Well on the Boston Common, and the Apprenticeship is coming to an end next week. But more of that with upcoming posts; on to catching up with what's been going on.

Week six began and we are CLOWNING! Antonio was our instructor for the workshop, and worked tirelessly with us to bring out our inner joy and encourage us to, well, fail. Failure, we learned, is one of the elements that makes a clown funny. We played Master/Servant, an exercise in which there is a clown with power, and a more submissive clown. We discussed the role of power and how it can effect scenes and any approach to a character. We endowed a rolled up newspaper baton with the power of the Master, so whoever held the baton, held the power. We at first improvised gibberish dialogue, then moved to actual dialogue, and finally incorporated the relationship struggle into our scenes for Shakespeare on Love. The week of clowning really opened me up to the art of failure. The clown is putting everything into their objective and we all found that the laughter thrived when the clown accepted the failure or impossibility of being funny onstage and lived in it. Antonio taught us how important it was for us to enjoy the laughter we bring to the audience, as we enjoy the thrill and happiness to being onstage.

In week seven, I was EXTREMELY pleased that we would be spending it working with Noah Tuleja from my home-state of RI! We worked only on hand-to-hand combat, and it was wonderful to get back into it. I am not sure if I have mentioned this before on my blog, but I have a deep love for stage combat; the choreography, the thrill of making an audience gasp in suspense, it's just incredible to me. Noah was fantastic! It was clear that he enjoys the work and also that safety was his first priority. With work on stage fighting, often times the adrenaline kicks in and the choreography can quickly become dangerous if it goes to quickly or is not precise. Noah was great about explaining and showing clearly the steps and the movements that make a fight onstage look believable to the audience. He showed us the basic punches: cross, jab, uppercut, and some slaps, chokes, and kicks. We got to pick our scenes and create our own moves after Noah gave us the first few beats. It was exciting and opened me up to the possibility of becoming a stage combat choreographer someday.

Stay tuned for weeks eight, nine and ten as well as an All's Well post. I've got to get ready for week ten!

All the best,

Micah

Words, Words, Words... An Actor's Journey: Week 5

One of the best things about participating in the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's Apprenticeship program is the Master Classes. We are fortunate to be working with professors from colleges in and around the Boston area such as Emerson, Brandies, Boston University and others as well as successful acting coaches and actors in this area.

Week Four had us working with Anne Gottlieb, a wildly talented acting coach and successful actress in Boston. We worked on the technique of Michael Chekhov, nephew to the celebrated Anton Chekhov. For us, we were basically introduced to this technique. It, in its most basic form, is a psycho-physical approach to acting. The actor, through this practice, applies archetypal, broad human conditions (such as fear, hate, sorrow and love) to the individuality of the actor. The work is based in imagination, rather than personal experiences of the past. It is more physical rather than intellectual. We began by focusing on the rhythmic impulses within us; how they change and their relationships to our emotions. Anne then taught us about our Centers: head, heart and will centers, as well as our Directionals (front, back, right, left and of course up and down --- and how they can symbolize many things such as past, present, and future, heaven/hell, etc). We worked on archetypal gestures such as pushing, pulling, lifting, smashing, and penetrating. These are used through what is called the "inner body" and they can connect to the character's objective when applied to scene work. We began by physically performing the gestures, and then internalizing them, but imagining that we were still doing them. My gestures for Kate in our Henry IV scene was a penetrating sort of poke. After internalizing it, it gave me such an urgency as Kate. The scene took on another layer of intensity that made my skin tingle. It was an amazing experience. 

Anne was such a great teacher. She really pushed us, and was genuinely curious to see where we could take our work. She took the time with each of us, and I could see from the beginning that she was 150% committed to teaching us something that we can take with us. I had dabbled a little in Michael Chekhov technique in college, but had honestly hated it then. This workshop completely changed my perspective! I loved working with this technique and could see it becoming a part of my work as an actor. I intend fully on pursuing further training. Anne's passion carried us through the class and inspired me to continue throwing myself into work like this.

Our fifth Week we worked on the Elizabethan World; studying the Elizabethan people themselves, what their beliefs were and how it effected their perception of alignment, and many other things to introduce us to their world. Sarah Hickler, of Emerson College, was our instructor for this class. She was such a joy to be learning from. Which is perfect because one of her main points was reinforcing Joy in our playing. Something that will stay with me as I continue my career pursuits. She began by explaining how Elizabethans related the alignment of their head, heart and feet with, well, the universe. For them, your feet were planted on the ground, beneath which was Hell, and above the head was heaven. You are suspended, as it were, between the Heavens and Hell and living within the horizontal plain of the world of man. So interesting! We also worked with beautiful images and the sensation of "expanding" beyond the limits of our limbs, and different dances which were groundbreaking for our scenes! We explored a Reverence dance to celebrate Kings and Queens, a Promenade of sorts, as well as a beautiful, prayerful dance celebrating the Moon, Sun and Stars, all while keeping in mind the world in which the Elizabethans inhabited.

My meager post can never fully capture how inspiring these workshops have been. As I said, they are highlights in our time here in the program.

"All's Well That Ends Well" rehearsals are moving forward as we draw nearer to tech and moving out to the Common. And the "Shakespeare On Love" performances have been wonderful, and we continue striving, my scene partner, Will and I to create and deepen our performance. (More on SOL and AWTEW, later).

All the best,
Micah

Words, Words, Words... An Actor's Journey: Weeks 3 and 4

Weeks three and four of the program flew by, and yet, I feel that the start of Week three was eons ago. Week three began with a little less of a rigorous schedule to accommodate for our first week of performing our Shakespeare on Love performance piece. Since there are over twenty of us apprentices, we have split our performances into two teams. We alternate traveling to the parks to perform, giving more opportunity for us to have a great variety of scenes and sonnets for our audiences. 

Watching the other teams first performance in Titus Sparrow Park on the Wednesday of Week three was really inspirational, for me at least. There were a lot of people passing through the park; bringing their children to the playground, having an picnic snack in the lazy afternoon, and some friends hanging out to show support! There were children running around during the scenes, which gave the actors a lot to work with. It was amazing to see how well the smallest children took to the scenes: laughing at the jokes, getting all excited at the twists! It was a joy to see. 

Being outside for our first performance was both exhilarating and slightly limiting. Limiting in that the sound system was non-existent. We chose not to have our mic system set up. Which was fine, we had a limited audience, but I was very conscious of trying to be heard. Most likely, I will need to be able to put it out of my mind for performances, but for the first and second performance (in Week four) I was thinking a lot about that. Henry IV, the scene I am working on, is in a good place, although both my partner and I are interested in making new decisions to (for lack of better words) keep things fresh. This is something we are going to be actively working on this week.

All's Well That Ends Well has been such an experience for me. Understudying Kersti Bryan as Helena is such an honor and I am learning so much just from sitting in on rehearsals! The time put into the words of the play are essential, and as an actor, they clarify the intent. I've never experienced this level of attention to the text and to table work before, and I must say that it makes 100% of a difference. Each actor brings their own ideas as well as the open mind to move our project, the play, forward. As I am working with mostly professional actors and actresses, I am finding it amazing to learn from them and to watch their process bringing these characters to life. Well, off to rehearsal!

Best,
Micah

Words, Words, Words... An Actor's Journey: Week 2

With one Monday, (our day off) I had tried to pack everything I could do into it. And, I didn't allow myself any rest at all. Lesson Learned. While it was a wonderful day of parental visits and Red Sox wins, I really needed to sleep in and calm down off the first week. As it turns out, a six days a week, 9am-5pm summer intensive is just that, an intensive. I found out, actually, I realized and accepted something this week that has always been said to me; that whatever I put into it (the program, acting, life, etc) is exactly what I will get out of it.

Honestly, I did personally struggle the first few days of vocal class. And because I knew I was tired, I excused myself from actually putting in 100% of my effort. My voice was straining in each exercise and I was easily fatigued. But, feeling the energy of my peers and Christine, Yo-El and Antonio, I was able to give myself a [figurative] swift kick in the ass and doubled my efforts. I realized this week that if I feared looking silly or over-exhausting myself, my skills would never grow and hey-wasn't that the reason I signed up for this program in the first place? By Wednesday afternoon (the second day of the second week), I was ready to dive in again!

We began working on the "Breakfast Warm up" in Yo-El's Movement classes which, while aligning the spine nicely, energizes the body and mind. It is also somewhat demanding in that it calls for a lot of core muscle use as well as exercising flexibility and strength in the legs, arms, and torso; key to allowing for a "free, moving body." It also sharpens my focus, which is great especially for the rehearsal for "Shakespeare On Love" (our collected scenes and sonnets show) which opens in week three! The second half of our work week, we delved into creative expression using our bodies to depict our sonnets' arguments through movement. It is amazing how immediately grounded I felt and how seeing the movement pieces of my class mates, made the sonnets all the more clear and precise.

Our Voice class had us working hard to relax our "outer muscles" this week. These include relaxing of the limbs, feet and stomach muscles. We also did a lot of work on alignment, and imaging our core and vocal apparatus. This helped us to locate and visualize where our sound stems from and where it travels through before coming out of the mouth into vibrations of words.

In combining the alignment work in both classes, we set to work on our scenes. Putting them on their feet and beginning to layer them with meaning after we had read the plays out loud with our partners. We did some AMAZING games that really enlivened my scene. The first game we played was to work on our "tennis" (back and forth) with our partners called "No! It's not that, it's this!" in which one tries to convince their partner that they are the right/more important/better one. This adds specificity to the scene and grounds the characters in their objectives. The next game we played was to do our scenes in complete darkness, whilst pseudo-competing with other scenes for the stage. (Anyone could speak their lines when the energy dropped). Next we added a "playground" of mats, chairs, and blocks, and literally played in it like children before starting our scene. It took away the self-consciousness, added newly discovered motives, and kick-started our energies. I found with the Kate/Hotspur scene from Henry IV there are layers of violence, confidence, intelligence, and love fighting with Kate's own fear within her. We were able through this exercise to understand the hurt that was in the relationship, and to explore the deep love that Kate and Hotspur share. It really brought our scene to another level.

As we explored our scenes and sonnets more, six of us also began to prepare for rehearsals for All's Well That Ends Well that begin on Wednesday the 27th.

More soon! Here we come, Week three!!!

All the best,
Micah

Words, Words, Words... An Actor's Journey: Get a Glimpse at the life of a CSC Apprentice!

OH! It's been so long since I have posted! My apologies. After the wedding of my two great friends, some major auditions and the Apprentice program with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company I told you about starting last week (it's amazing) my life has been ridiculous! Here I go...

The meaning of "diving in head first" into work has most certainly changed for me in the first week, which has been one of the most enlivening I've had in theatre in my life! Strangely, I had been apprehensive of the first day in the week that lead up to the 14th of June, first day of class. But with our 'Welcome Speech' uttered by Antonio Ocampo-Guzman, Program Director, and formalities taken care of, we set off to begin PLAY.

One really amazing thing that Antonio brought to our attention this week was the importance of PLAY in theatre.  The entire reason why we act is to have fun, explore and "hold the mirror up to nature" as it were. To reflect on the human condition. With this in mind, we began the first week aligning our bodies and voices to be open to PLAY.

We begin with a warm up that involves moving about the space and creating connections with the space and (more importantly) with each other. This is something I was sure I would have some trouble with (I am always a little awkward and quiet when I first meet people). Maybe it's the sheer adrenaline of starting something new that I love, maybe it's being surrounded by people as passionate as I feel, but I was completely able to allow myself to feel vulnerable and through that I made connections. This is one of the best parts of the warm up, establishing that raw eye contact. Just through that, our group grows closer together with each day. For me, and as it seems most actors, acting is about establishing connections to communicate.

Each teacher: Antonio, Christine Hammel (our voice instructor) and Yo-El Cassell (our dance instructor) works closely together to tie everything we are practicing together and create lessons and rehearsal activities that benefit us and allow for our creative forces to work in a supportive environment.

This week, we discussed the BIG questions like "Why do we even DO theatre nowadays?" (See Hamlet's speech to the players, coming soon!) and paid special attention to our own Self Awareness. (Another thing Antonio brought to our attention is having "Self Awareness," but not allowing yourself to give into "Self-Consciousness" in acting and in life). This self awareness was the focus of our warm ups for the six days of the first week. Being aware of your breathing to be able to speak the line, being aware of your spine to allow a full range of motion, etc. In Christine's Voice and Yo-El's Movement classes we explored and furthered the warm up to connect our breath and to release it to ground us. 

The second part of each day is all rehearsal for our piece "Shakespeare on Love," which we will be performing next week! However, this first week, we work on iambic pentameter and then on building our Sonnet repertoire. (Of course I chose my favorite sonnet). We did several exercises to pull, tweak and shape our sonnets and then presented them, in workshop to the class. The are as dramatically fulfilling as any monologue and are infinitely able to be explored. We were assigned our scenes (mine's Kate and Hotspur from Henry IV, part 1) and told to read the play out loud with our partners before we were to begin work on the scene. (Shakespeare is meant to be heard not read, which is why we need to take it back to the theatre, but that's a soap box to stand on discussion for another post). We begin rehearsal in week two and I cannot wait!

One last bit of exciting news, I will be in the main stage production of All's Well That Ends Well with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company!

Great first week, here's to another!

Best,
Micah