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| "Hear the sentence of your movèd prince." Courtney Brown, Xanthe Tabor, Rich Weiss, Suzanne L. Miller, David Hansen (Mr. Hansen does not appear.) "The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet" Guerrilla Theater Company, 1994 |
By the time I turned thirty, I had performed in only two Shakespearean productions, three if you count a pre-recorded voice-over.
Junior year at Ohio University, I played Friar John in Romeo and Juliet, who has three lines. For the Guerrilla Theater production I directed, I played the prince, but my voice came from on high, as though from a public address system. This meant, of course, that I needed not be present for every performance.
I later learned this conceit was also employed by John Gielgud in the 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet, arriving as the Ghost in the form of a massive shadow in the shape of a helm.
A video recording of the Gielgud/Burton Hamlet was released in the mid-90s, and I spent the summer of 1998 watching that several times and taking notes.
Having decided to direct a Shakespeare, you need to decide what version of the play you wish to see and hear, and then cut the script to fit your conception.
Stealing edits from others provided my primary education. The cuts from our college production of R&J were the basis for my production. We had taken a paperback and spent a rehearsal having the cuts dictated to us as each of us crossed out the lines in pencil, so I had them all, not just the cuts for my one scene but for the entire play.
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| "Mark me." John Gielgud, Richard Burton (Mr. Gielgud does not appear.) Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 1964 |
I had opinions about what additional material I wanted for my production of Hamlet, and what additional lines I wanted to cut, but using this Burton production as a guide gave me great confidence to have something to begin with.
And in the case of Hamlet, who better to steal from than Gielgud? He was his generation’s Dane, surviving audio recordings are a testament to the style, grandeur and pathos he lent to the role, for decades and in numerous productions. It’s a shame we only have a film version of Olivier’s Hamlet and not his.
I watched the 1964 video, making the same cuts as Gielgud made, and in this way learned about which versus a great person of Shakespeare believed were not as necessary as others. Then I cut just a little deeper. Cutting the text is the director’s first pass at directing their actors, before you even know who those actors may be. You can change the motives and intentions of a character by eliminating certain lines of thought and exposition, or what other characters have to say about them.
I was greatly influenced by Pennington’s book to strip away centuries of assumptions about the characters and established tropes of performance. The goal was to focus specifically on the words they say as written on the page, and not the ways they have been said by others in the several productions I had already seen.
Is the Queen correcting the King for getting the names of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wrong, or is she changing the order of address to lend their names equal weight as a form of flattery? Because that is what the King and Queen are trying to do at that moment, convince old friends to betray him.
Does Hamlet know he and Ophelia are being listened to when he asks, “Where is your father?” or is that another way of inquiring, “Where is your keeper?” Because that is in keeping with everything else Hamlet is saying at that moment, you need looking after.
There are motivations for these deliveries which are clear and obvious, and then there are those which try to think a step ahead of the playwright and detract from the matter at hand.
I did entertain the notion of having Hamlet echo one of the King’s lines from the first scene after the stabbing and the poisoning; “So much for him.” This I did not do, though I did have Tommy punch Brian in the face on the line, “Follow my mother.”
Like “Welcome to Earth.” If you know, you know.
And in the case of Hamlet, who better to steal from than Gielgud? He was his generation’s Dane, surviving audio recordings are a testament to the style, grandeur and pathos he lent to the role, for decades and in numerous productions. It’s a shame we only have a film version of Olivier’s Hamlet and not his.
I watched the 1964 video, making the same cuts as Gielgud made, and in this way learned about which versus a great person of Shakespeare believed were not as necessary as others. Then I cut just a little deeper. Cutting the text is the director’s first pass at directing their actors, before you even know who those actors may be. You can change the motives and intentions of a character by eliminating certain lines of thought and exposition, or what other characters have to say about them.
I was greatly influenced by Pennington’s book to strip away centuries of assumptions about the characters and established tropes of performance. The goal was to focus specifically on the words they say as written on the page, and not the ways they have been said by others in the several productions I had already seen.
Is the Queen correcting the King for getting the names of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wrong, or is she changing the order of address to lend their names equal weight as a form of flattery? Because that is what the King and Queen are trying to do at that moment, convince old friends to betray him.
Does Hamlet know he and Ophelia are being listened to when he asks, “Where is your father?” or is that another way of inquiring, “Where is your keeper?” Because that is in keeping with everything else Hamlet is saying at that moment, you need looking after.
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| Alison Garrigan, Tom Cullinan Promotional Photo for "Hamlet" Bad Epitaph Theater Company, 1999 Photo: Anthony Gray |
I did entertain the notion of having Hamlet echo one of the King’s lines from the first scene after the stabbing and the poisoning; “So much for him.” This I did not do, though I did have Tommy punch Brian in the face on the line, “Follow my mother.”
Like “Welcome to Earth.” If you know, you know.
By fall I had my cut. Hamlet might go quite swiftly in three acts, with two intermissions, like this:
- Act One: In which Hamlet goes from "I don't know what to do" (Too, too solid flesh) to "I know what to do!" (The play's the thing.)
- Act Two: In which Hamlet puts on a play, murders the wrong guy, gets exiled to England, and finds he hasn't accomplished anything. (How all occasions do inform against me.)
- Act Three: In which all occasions literally inform against Hamlet and he dies just as he has evolved into a person who might indeed have made a good ruler.
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