To expostulate what madness is

Polonius – “to define true madness/What is't but to be nothing else but mad?”

To be mad is to be emotional
in public; merely that. To laugh overmuch,
to weep, to stomp and scream, to exhibit
the poison of deep grief; ancient anger
unexpressed for too too long, that open’d
lies without, too much in the sun. Madness,
the inappropriate expression of
repression; synonymous with anger
for good reason. To be all outwardly
as one feels oneself to be inwardly:
sad, sick, hurt, brutalized, terrified, fucked.
To not care at all about appearance,
to speak sense with tongue unleashed and with voice
out of tune and harsh. To treat this moment,
as ‘twere elsewhere or when because echoes
indoors shake the house and break the windows,
wrench the pipes to rage hectic in the blood,
letting the kettle to the trumpet speak,
letting the poisonous door be unlocked
letting honest ghosts wail and beat the breast
letting one’s own discretion be tutor
letting madness range and stricken deer weep –
thus blowing the world away. What is it
but to live, honestly, in this moment
without trying to seem some other way:
some happier, more peaceful, well-adjusted,
acceptable version of the person
who lies every time he answers, “I’m fine,”
who lives in a constant state of mourning
bereaved and bewildered, lost and alone?
To be mad is to be truly oneself
without concealing what’s grieved and sullied;
and to be sane is to paint on a false face,
making the inside bear the discomfort
others don’t want to be burdened withal
so we can go on pretending all’s well.

This mortal coil

I suppose it’s inevitable that, if you’re going to produce Hamlet, at some point you’re going to have to talk about suicide. Luke and I have been spending a lot of rehearsal hours one-on-one working soliloquies and character, but during one of our sessions we ended up talking about our personal experience with suicide – not the people we know who have ended their lives, but our own thoughts about our own lives and the occasions when we’ve thought about ending ourselves. Obviously, I’m not going to provide particulars, but I will say that it was difficult for both us because you really put yourself on the line when you share thoughts that are that deep and that scary. We talked about the reasons and the times that we’ve thought death would be preferable to continuing to live. We talked about the conversations we’ve had with ourselves at those times and what we said. We talked about alternative ways to do it we’ve considered. We talked about the reasons we didn’t do anything about this most dark longing. And we agreed that the reason we consider suicide at all is that, after all the nasty self talk, it’s simply that there is a part of us that believes we don’t deserve to live. Hamlet speaks a lot of self-hating words in his soliloquies. In the Hecuba soliloquy in particular, Hamlet abuses himself terribly. He says these things about himself to himself: You are a rogue. You are a slave. You are dull. You are pale. You are a coward. You are a villain. You are pigeon-livered. You are an ass. You are a whore. You are a drab. You are a scullion. At its core, the speech is about why he’s not fit to live. It twines Hamlet’s hatred of himself with his reluctance to take his uncle’s life. This is not the only scene in which Hamlet abuses himself, and the “To be or not to be speech” is not only time in the play that he contemplates suicide. It’s clear that he’s thinking about it with almost his very first words. I’ve come to think that Shakespeare knew that most everyone carries inside venomous self hatred that boils into a pus sack that oozes thoughts of suicide. Hamlet is a play with a horrific ending, but many people claim that it’s their personal favorite. People identify with Hamlet on a level that I don’t believe they understand. Probably, they don’t want to understand it – it’s enough to watch an actor say and do the horrible things we seldom admit we say and do to ourselves.

Or not to be

All I have is my work. I don’t have children or a spouse or a house with a sinking foundation to care for. I don’t have funds to manage. I have my work, and it’s my reason for living and for getting up in the morning. My work requires the cooperation of other people. When I am at work on a project, I am focused completely. When I am not at work on a project I am either looking for another project or wishing I was dead. That’s just how my mind works. I suspect it’s how everybody’s mind works and why people fill their lives up with so much to do. Tuesday, I wrote my blog post and then used a factory-made mask as a form to make first a mask out of tape (to see how it would work) and then I mixed up a batch of flour and water, ripped some strips of paper, and laid the first two layers of a paper mache mask. I am trying to save money since we don’t have any. We are using masks for the non-principle characters in the show – partly because some of the actors are playing multiple roles and partly because one of the play’s motifs is that Hamlet suspects everyone of lying all the time. He cannot and does not trust anyone and talks, at one point, about the faces people make for themselves to disguise who they really are. We tried some store-bought masks out at rehearsal last night, and they worked beautifully, but we need a few more. After that, I went over to a friend’s house to post the blog entry, add people to the Facebook event announcing the show, add people to the email list and send them the July newsletter, search to see if the press release had been picked up by anyone, post the results on Facebook, and answer an email from my sister. I don’t have internet at home, so to do anything, I either have to go to a friend’s house or the library. One of my students who waits tables made more money than I did last year. First rehearsal at 1:00 was fight call for Hamlet and Laertes followed by rehearsal for Polonius, Ophelia, and Laertes so that we could work the family dynamic before the run through of Act One that evening. While we were waiting for one of the actors to arrive, I started painting the store-bought masks so they would be dry for rehearsal in the evening and ended up finishing that project while we were working the scenes. It was slow going as not all of the actors are fully off book, but we made some real progress in the relationship between Laertes and Ophelia. There is a two hour break between afternoon and evening rehearsals, so we went for food. When we came back, I worked on the backdrop painting until people started arriving for rehearsal. I hope that someday I’ll live in a world where people want to be where they are and doing what they’re doing. Too often, people seem to me to want to be elsewhere doing elsewhat. Rehearsal time is for rehearsing. I love rehearsing, both as a director and as an actor. Sometimes, often, I feel like I have to push people to do what they came there to do – what they said they wanted to do. In the middle of the work, we’ll suddenly have to stop for some extraneous chat about books, or movies, or tv, or physics, or music. After a break, it’s difficult to get people back to work. Lying around seems to be more exciting and fulfilling. Tuesday, I compared myself to a slave driver while getting people back to work, which comment was not greeted well, but that’s how I feel. When I have to MAKE people focus on the work again and again, I feel like I’m making them do something they don’t want to do. When I have to sit through watching actors flirt with each other during rehearsal or listen to inane conversations that do not relate to the work or watch rehearsal break down because people want to play around, it makes me wonder why they’re there; it makes me wonder why I’m there. We’re doing Hamlet. Even if we squeeze every minute of every rehearsal hour we have and waste no time at all, it still won’t be enough. We finished running Act One Tuesday night, and the actors sat still enough for notes they seemed to resent hearing, and I had the distinct impression that rather than openly accepting the direction, they just let me talk until I was done. After which, guitars came out and they sang a horrid pop song they clearly disdained at the tops of their lungs so that I couldn’t hear myself try to answer a question one of the younger actors asked me. We still had 40 minutes that we could have used to work, but rehearsal was over. They’d run through Act One; their job was done. I did not have it in me to shut them up again, refocus them, and try to accomplish anything. What would have been the point? The scenes where people are solidly off book were excellent, and trying to work the scenes where people do not know their lines would be pointless. Although we’d just had a discussion about lines, clearly no one was interested in using the extra time to memorize. There was nothing for me to do but watch people not care about the work, care more about wasting 40 minutes talking about inane bullshit and plans for the weekend. It made me sad and disappointed, and I didn’t want to be there, so it gave the production the coordinator the key so she could lock up, took out the garbage, and came home, where I put two more layers on the paper mache mask, finished a costume piece I hadn’t been able to finish before because I had to buy some ribbon first, and went to bed where I didn’t sleep well and woke up at 4am. It’s my heart on stage every time. It’s my vision and my risks and my responsibility when people see it and decide if the concept worked, if the language and story were clear, if truth was served and catharsis achieved. But I have to interpret through other people, and when they aren’t as excited about the work as I am, it depresses me. I’m depressed. And now I’m going to go and cut out a dress because these people have to have costumes. If thrift stores didn’t sell sheets so that we could afford fabric, some of them would have to go naked. This isn’t Harry Potter – props and costumes and rooms to rehearse in don’t just magically appear. Hours and hours of work outside of rehearsal have to be put in. Materials have to be paid for. I don’t mind doing it. I like doing it. I just wish the minimal number of hours I spend in rehearsal with actors were as productive as the time I spend alone making things.

First off book day

We are off book as of rehearsal Monday night. Some more than others. The first off book rehearsal is always fairly tedious for me because it can really only be about the lines and how solidly the actors have them down. The first off book rehearsal is sort of like a test where you prove to yourself that you can say the words without a book in your hand, but not a lot of acting gets done. When the lines are foremost in an actor’s thoughts, character is lost. This is why I insist on an early off book date and also why I’m adamant that people not carry scripts even if they’re not solidly off book. You have to throw away the crutch if you’re going to act with confidence. The best scene Monday night was the ghost’s tale of his murder and his current state of suffering in hell. JD has done solid character work on the ghost, is fully off book, and has a vision for the character that aligns with mine. Additionally, he’s handling his page-and-a-half-long monologue like a pro. I hope the less experienced actors watched what he did last night and learned from it. The other scene that presented with something other than the walking, talking dead was the nunnery scene. Luke and Sydney have been off book on it for a couple of weeks, and we’ve been working on finding the right tone, objectives, and resolution. It will be the end of Act One for us in performance, so having it be particularly strong is important. My advice to my actors at this point is this: trust that the lines are there and concentrate on getting what your character needs; trust in the character work you’ve done and the choices that you’ve made; put your focus on the other players instead of yourself; relax and invest in the reality of the play. It sounds simple, but it’s really quite a challenging thing to do. Anyway, that’s what we’ll be working on for the next three weeks until we open.

Some call that a meltdown

First meltdown happened over (surprise, surprise) the schedule. One cannot rehearse a play if the actors are not present, and actors (some actors, anyway) always have other things they’d like to do during the rehearsal process – go out of town, see a concert, perform at an open mic night…. Which is fine and why I ask for conflicts in advance so that I can make a schedule, which takes hours. After spending all of that time, it is quite disconcerting to be informed at rehearsal that someone is not available for a rehearsal for which they are scheduled. Too often, I hear the words, “I told you.” The problem is that actors think because they’ve said words out loud everyone has heard them. I am constantly trying to juggle five tasks at once, so telling me something while I’m not paying full attention to you is tantamount to not telling me. Then, in the midst of trying to make a joke out of my mini-tantrum, one of my actors has to make a snide comment, negating said joke, and righteously pissing me off. I just wanted to go home. Instead, I went into the hallway with my production coordinator for a nice little cry and left my assistant director to work the next scene. Otherwise, everything is going well. Really.

Tears at rehearsal

We begin our third week of rehearsals this afternoon, and everything is going swimmingly. The play is blocked, all of the roles are filled, and the work is coming along apace. The actors are making interesting choices, taking risks, and diving into creating indelible characters. So far, we’ve had both laughter and tears during rehearsal – portents of future excellence. Working out the nunnery scene with Hamlet and Ophelia last week had both me and DeeDee, the production coordinator, in tears, but then the actors broke off in the middle of the scene because, they said, they “weren’t feeling it.” We said, who cares if you’re not feeling it? We’re feeling it. DeeDee and I believe that they stopped because they were too close to something rippingly painful. It was beautiful and terrible. That’s the thing with Hamlet, I think. In order to do it justice, the actors have to go to some dark and painful places. It was the same with Macbeth two years ago. Luckily, there's plenty of humor in the play to offset the more intense scenes. Good on you, Shakespeare.

Casting

Casting was hard, as I knew it would be – not only because it always is, but also because the competition for Hamlet was earnest, and I knew going in that someone was going to be majorly disappointed. I just didn’t know who it would be. The two top contenders (and only fellows with the balls to try for it, BTW) are both excellent young actors, and both have played leading Shakespearean roles before: Luke was Biron in Loves Labors Lost, and Bragg was Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. Both memorized lengthy monologues for the audition, and both had moments of real grace. Neither was “better” than the other. Ultimately, the one not playing Hamlet would be playing Claudius, so the choice really came down to which Hamlet/Claudius configuration made the most sense. I believe we’ve made the best choice for the story we’re looking to tell, and I know that both of these actors will grow significantly as artists from this experience. Before auditions, I combined roles so that I needed seventeen actors to play the 28+ characters, but only eleven actors showed up to read, so I have cut a character and doubled more roles to make a cast of thirteen. I have complete confidence that we will find two actors to fill these nine multiple roles. One would think that kids would be lining up down the block to have the chance to be in a production of Hamlet, but one would be wrong. This makes me sad. Our organization exists in part to help people come to love Shakespeare as much as we all do, but it’s hard to break through that too-difficult-to-understand-it attitude people have. Due to the number of bitty roles the kids are going to have to play, we are pondering the idea of using masks for all of the minor characters. Since everyone in the play is lying and spying, it makes sense that some characters have actual masks while others have only the masks their faces can contrive – masks that are harder to perceive but which are there, as they are on all of us in our everyday lives. We will play with this idea for awhile and see if it’s a keeper. We start with our first table read tomorrow evening. If you know us, here’s the cast list. If you don’t know us, I’m pretty sure you’ll be hearing some of these names again: Luke Tyson (Hamlet); Bragg Hammac (Claudius); Sydney Yeager (Ophelia); Gennifer Lundquist (Polonius, priest); Lila Brustad (Gertrude); Caroline Sullivan (Laertes, player); Grace Trombly (Horatio); Daisy Brustad (Rosa Crantz, Clown 1, Francisco); Hanna Hammac (Gilda Stern, Clown 2, Bernardo); JD Thiemann (Ghost, pirate, player, Fortinbras); Emily Hammac (Marcellus, captain, player, pirate).