Troilus & Cressida (dance choreography)

Rehearsal, "Troilus & Cressida"

Every full-length Shakespeare production I have ever directed begins with a tableau, in which the participants all cross the stage and in some fashion introduce their characters.

Going all the way back to Romeo & Juliet at Guerrilla Theater Co., I had created a “reverse curtain call” in which Romeo stalks across the stage before dawn, followed by all other characters beginning the day, greeting each other (or giving a side eye) before two servants begin the street fight, all the the tune of “Come Out and Play” by the Offspring.

The tradition continued with Hamlet, as the Players enter, stopping to try on the various costumes they will eventually wear over the course of the evening, playing all of the supporting characters (see below.)


However, I also tried to choreograph the dumb show the Players present for the court, as a preface to The Murder of Gonzago. For those who are not familiar, in Shakespeare's time a "dumb show" was a silent, pantomimed abridgment of the full-length play that is about to follow. When Hamlet presents a play for the King and Queen, the text describes this particular dumb show. Most modern productions of Hamlet cut the pantomime, I had my reasons to keep it in though I cannot remember what they were.

In any event, I was doing horribly, trying to create it. It all looked stagy and pointless. Brian, who was playing Claudius, suggested I ask Pandora, who was (among other characters) the Player King, if she might ask her husband to come in and help us out.

I had only just met Pandora. I did not know who her husband was and said so. Brian told me she was married to David Shimotakahara. Then I said I didn’t know who that was.

Okay. Okay? I know little about dance. David Shimotakahara was at that time already a world famous dancer and performer. He had also recently established GroundWorks, which celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year.

So, anyway, David choreographed my dumb show. From that moment on, I have never again attempted to choreograph anything, not dance nor fighting, without an expert. If I could, I would ask someone to come in and do the directing for me.


Henry VIII for CleveShakes also started with a reverse curtain call, and included a dance sequence, choreographed by Sarah Clare, to represent the dying Queen Katherine’s hallucination of the king’s future wives (see above.) Timon of Athens also included dancing for the curtain call, staged by company member Amanda Trompak, because I couldn’t find an appropriate place for dancing anywhere else in that play.

This year we’re trying something new. For the opening of Troilus & Cressida, Catherine Anderson and Leilani Barrett have created a reverse curtain call which is an actual dumb show! If you pay close attention -- or even better, attend more than once -- you will notice that all the major events of the story to follow are represented in the choreography on this three-minute piece!

The centerpiece of the play, however, is a romantic tango between the titular lovers, all created by Anderson and Barrett, and featuring Brinden Harvey (Troilus) and Hannah Woodside (Cressida).


Cleveland Shakespeare Festival presents "Troilus & Cressida" opening June 15, 2018.

The Great Globe Itself: Choreography

Rehearsals for The Great Globe Itself began in earnest last Wednesday. For three nights we met in our rehearsal room, and sat and read and talked. Actually, they did a lot of reading, and I did a lot of talking. But we all sat, looking at books and pictures, sharing stories and tackling several interesting English dialects – OP, Midwestern American, and a few modern of British.

Chuck, our dialect coach, worked one-on-one with each guy while the rest of us kept reading and studying. I threw so much stuff into this script, I have been anxious about how it would be handled by the actors, any actors. By the end of Friday night I was pretty confident that things were on track.

It’s weird, for several years now rehearsals for the outreach tour began in mid-January, with performances commencing the second full week of February. For years we have had a performance on Valentine’s Day -- we auspiciously opened Double Heart on Valentine’s Day itself. Yet we had yesterday off. If we had our traditional schedule, today we would have held our first Sunday afternoon show for an audience braving temperatures below 0° to attend this hot show. I am very glad we pushed the production back a few weeks this year.

Friday evening we took a little field trip … downstairs. I took our gentlemen into the only theater in Northeast Ohio that approximates the conditions of performance present in the Globe Theatre: the Hanna. Safety regulations prohibited our men from standing or working on the thrust stage, but they did have the chance to stand in the house and gaze up into the galleries, and to take in the stage as an Elizabethan audience member might, from all sides, from in the historic boxes.

Tonight, choreography! I have such vivid, happy memories of the dances Carli created for Double Heart. Critics in New York commented upon James’s and Emily’s dance together … sure, I wrote some good lines, but the dancing was how audiences believed they had fallen in love.

The men in Globe, they are not dancing to fall in love. They have work to do, their characters have work to do. Their characters are actors, preparing for a performance, and warming up. That is one of the pieces.

The other piece Carli has prepared is inspired by the curtain call dance, or “jig” which would have been expected from Shakespeare’s audience. If his text is to be believed (or rather, if you are to expect the opinions of certain of the Bard’s characters to be his own opinions) then Shakespeare hated concluding his performances with dancing. But what are you gonna do? The groundlings expect a jig and by gar, we're gonna give them one.

Double Heart: Dance Call

 Soldiers, we!

Tonight was a big, exciting night! There were racks of costumes waiting for us, and we tried on everything. Also, too: this show is a romance, yes it is. And that means dancing. Choreographer Carli Taylor-Miluk arrived and we spent the night merrily learning folk dance moves and creating our the saturnalia gay to celebrate the soldiers, or what have you, does there really need to be a reason for a party?


"Double Heart (The Courtship of Beatrice and Benedick)" is available from YouthPLAYS.

As You Like It: Choreography

I should write an essay about the grand history of Henry VIII (All Is True) and how our modern adaptation is a legitimate continuation in a grand, historical tradition of political pageantry. And maybe, eventually, I will.

But right now I am sitting the courtyard outside Coventry Elementary watching CSF actors dancing a Virginia Reel to the recording of a song composed and performed by area high school students. This isn’t for Henry VIII. These actors, most of whom are in the company of Henry VIII, have simultaneously been rehearsing As You Like It, which opens the following weekend. Same choreographer as for the Queen’s Vision, only a much happier dance.

So cute!

Meanwhile, in the auditorium, actors are working with director Dana Hart on scenework. The doors are open, the breeze comes through, the sound of music and laughter -- and birds -- from the courtyard floats through. The mood is casual, cheerful. The space is buzzing with activity, focused, professional activity, but cool. These are good reasons to rehearse summer, outdoor theater. Sometimes I forget to notice.

Cleveland Shakespeare Festival presents "As You Like It", opening Jun 22.

Henry VIII: Choreography

The Famous History of the Life of King Henry VIII - Act IV, Scene 2

The vision. Enter, solemnly tripping one after another, six personages, clad in white robes, wearing on their heads garlands of bays, and golden vizards on their faces; branches of bays or palm in their hands. 

They first congee unto Katherine, then dance; and, at certain changes, the first two hold a spare garland over her head; at which the other four make reverent curtsies; 

Then the two that held the garland deliver the same to the other next two, who observe the same order in their changes, and holding the garland over her head: which done, they deliver the same garland to the last two, who likewise observe the same order: 

At which, as it were by inspiration, she makes in her sleep signs of rejoicing, and holdeth up her hands to heaven: and so in their dancing vanish, carrying the garland with them.

~ SPOILERS ~

Just prior to her death, the Queen Katherine -- now divorced, living under the title "Queen Dowager" -- has this vision of six women, presumably of the Six Wives of Henry VIII.

The Vision of Queen Katherine

Henry Fuseli, 1781

What does it signify? Katherine calls these ladies "a blessed troop":

Whose bright faces / Cast thousand beams upon me, like the sun?  

They promised me eternal happiness / And brought me garlands 

Which I feel / I am not worthy yet to wear.

They are kind, welcoming figures, heralding her to her final reward. Not adversaries. Not even Anne Boleyn. After all, who has the power in this situation? The King, who breaks with the Catholic Church to get what he wants.

The wives of King Henry VIII had an obligation -- not to him, but to England. To provide a male heir. So went these women's work. A procession of women, one of whom was seriously mourned by the King, only she who died in the process of birthing the only son who lived into childhood.

Denied her rightful place as Queen, an honor she treated as her vocation, Katherine is comforted by the women who will follow in her footsteps. It is one of two accurate visions of the future presented in this play. For our purposes, I desired Katherine to be of the six, not apart, not merely watching. She plays herself in this vision.

The Queen's Vision - a rehearsal

Choreographer Sarah Claire joined us this evening, and in two hours staged a remarkably large part of what will be a four-minute dance. The pieces come together. We open in two weeks.