Season Eight: Week 8

Tuesday / October 23
Written by Matt

We opened tonight with a surprise! A longtime member who has struggled with crippling stage-fright from the first day recited a monologue--a monologue she had used to audition years ago for Desdemona. She didn’t get the part (“Oh, thank God!” she had exclaimed then), but she got her moment on “stage” tonight in front of a new group of people. “It was nice to finally memorize something and be okay,” she reflected. “We’ve got a really nice ensemble now!”

As she sat down, she did a mock “mic-drop” gesture, then instantly gathered up the pen she had let fall. “I’ve never done that, guys!” she exclaimed.

We moved on to reading Act III, scene iv, which is really an exhausting string of vignettes, involving nearly all of the play’s characters at one time or another. The humor is broad, but getting the most out of it requires a lot of energy and very snappy movement onstage. A couple of veterans and a brand-new member helped us stay on top of the plot and wordplay, and a bunch of new members read aloud enthusiastically. Still, it was a bit of a slog to get through the scene--there’s so much going on, and the humor falls flat when not injected with energy. It felt like an accomplishment when the scene was over.

We tried out a short piece of the scene, notable because it consists entirely of asides, on its feet. Though it consists of fewer than twenty lines, it’s quite a daunting piece of theatre. The asides need to be cleanly delivered, and their recipient (the audience, another character) needs to be perfectly clear for the exchange to make any sense. We tried it a few times, giving each other permission to go further with it (I, as Sir Andrew, wound up hiding underneath a podium), but no one was totally satisfied by the time we were done. The scene wants to work itself out physically, and it was a good reminder that the faster we can get through the play and get familiar with the story and characters, the faster we can find the humor.

A new member who has become an eager participant asked a lot of questions about the process of putting the play up. She asked what we do with people who aren’t actively talking on stage. And she seemed excited by the fact that there were no set staging decisions and few set stage directions. “Wait,” she said, “so do we just make it up?” Frannie replied, “Yeah, basically, as long as it works with the text.” The woman thought for a moment and asked, “Is this the only thing like this?” We responded that all theatre is “like this,” but that Shakespeare is unique in the number of potential options each play provides--and in the quality of the writing. “Now I get why we need so much time with this!” said the woman.

Friday / October 26
Written by Frannie

Today began with one of our new members performing a monologue she’s always loved from Much Ado About Nothing. It was a simple read, serving just to get her on her feet, and, in that, it was successful!

It was tough to get anything going — the energy level was very low, which is something with which we’ve been struggling this whole season. Finally I got everyone to sit in a circle for “the question game”, a perennial favorite in which questions must quickly be asked but not answered, traveling around the circle and allowing no time to think. We had a good time with it, but it didn’t do much for our energy.

We returned to our seats to read. It was a struggle even to get someone to summarize the last scene we read for Lauren, who is only there on Fridays. One woman said she’d been thinking a lot about the plot against Malvolio, and she realized that Maria wants revenge on him for doing exactly what she’s done earlier in the play. “I wonder if she wants to be [Olivia’s] favorite,” she mused. Another woman agreed with the overall idea, saying that Maria likely has some kind of motivation other than the practical joke.

We opened our books to read 4.1, and, again, it was a challenge to get people to read aloud. We stopped periodically to break down the language, and then we decided to get on our feet. Those who did so were mostly people who are always game to perform, and we ran through the scene with gusto, even though it was, of course, messy. Sir Andrew charged headlong into the playing space, and into the fight, with Sir Toby shoving her way through (while holding a “beer”), Sebastian being utterly confused, and me as Fabian revving up the crowd and then sitting to watch and eat popcorn.

When the scene ended, we reflected on what had worked and how we could build on it. We all agreed that Sir Toby’s being “vertically challenged” opposite a taller Sebastian and Sir Andrew was great fodder for comedy. One woman said she saw this scene as continuing the “build of drunkenness,” which led another woman to suggest that Toby take great care not to spill his drink, even while fighting. “She might drop the sword, but not the drink!” laughed one woman, and another said, “I could see him losing an arm and not dropping the drink!”

We went with this idea, plus a few other refinements, for our second attempt at the scene. Sir Toby played the heck out of this deference to her drink (for which she used a travel coffee mug), even stopping the action at a few points to take huge gulps. It was quite funny, and an idea we’ll likely keep. It also gave us a sort of “heads-up” in terms of how we’ll need to cast these roles: they are so physical and prop-heavy that we’ll need to be sure that whoever is cast has the ability and time to get off book well in advance of performances.

Despite the fun of performing this scene, the evening had dragged quite a bit, and I was frustrated. I said to the group, very plainly, that we need to brainstorm some way to bring more energy each evening — to manufacture it if necessary — because, the rest of our work aside, this play simply will not work if we don’t fully commit to its being madcap. We can’t even get past basic staging/concept work if it’s a struggle even to get people to read, let alone to get on their feet. With winter coming, this will only get worse, and we have to stop it in its tracks now before we get so bogged down that the challenge becomes insurmountable.

A few people had deer-in-headlights looks on their faces, while others seemed motivated (and even relieved) by this “ultimatum.” A few people tossed out ideas, but we’ll need to work harder to solve the problem. “If we can’t do this, I don’t know what we do,” I said. “Not Twelfth Night, but I don’t know what. There isn’t really a Plan B.”

“We’ll get it together, Frannie,” said one longtime member. “We’re gonna figure this out.” I hope she’s right. We’ll see how it goes on Tuesday.

Season Eight: Week 7

Tuesday / October 16
Written by Frannie

As we circled up to check in, one woman said she had been reading the play, turning it over in her mind, and had come to the conclusion that “girls should take over this play.” She’s the first to identify “powerful women” as being a major theme in Twelfth Night, and she got no argument from the rest of us. We’re excited to explore it, in addition to everything we’ve already discovered — and everything we haven’t yet!

Check-in was pretty subdued. One of the women, though, shared her excitement about her upcoming GED graduation. She said that she’s been pulled in many directions throughout her life. “This is the first time in my life I’ve actually accomplished something.” The entire ensemble is very proud of her.

I acknowledged the low energy in the room — I was kind of low on energy, myself — and asked if we could stand up for a little bit to play “Impression”, a circle game in which one person says, “I hear [NAME] does a great impression of [FILL IN THE BLANK]”, that person does the impression (whatever that means to them!); the circle claps and cheers, and the request is passed to the next person.

This was low impact, which was needed, and fun, which was also needed! Impressions ranged from Michael Jackson (among other celebrities), to a tennis-ball-being-caught-midair-by-a-dog (“Noooooooo!” screamed the ball), to a cheesecake (who made jazz hands and said, “Cheesecake!”), to “the Shakespeare Holy Ghost” (which was given to the woman who coined the term, though she passed it to another woman, saying “The pressure is real.”). A longtime member, who is well-known for hilarious impressions, arrived just in time for another longtime member to request that she do an impression of our Richard III campaigning for the role. It was, of course, perfect, and, after requesting several more rapid-fire impressions from her, we ended the game with a bit more pep in our step than when we began.

Several people were out of the room for the last few scenes we read, and I asked if someone could sum things up to get them up to speed. No one spoke. I asked again, and everyone just sort of looked around uncomfortably. “I can’t carry this myself, you guys,” I said. (That sounds harsher than it actually was, trust me!) I paused. “Is anybody lost? It’s okay if you are.”

There was another pause as some looked at the floor, and others looked around the circle. Finally, one woman said, “I have no idea what’s going on.”

“Thank you so much for saying that,” I said. After some more conversation, what it came down to was that some ensemble members (particularly those with one or more years of experience) pick up on the language quickly, while others truly need to move more slowly — but haven’t been letting us know. I made sure everyone knew that it’s totally okay to slow down — that, in fact, moving quickly often means we miss things that we wouldn’t at a slower pace — and that, while we can all do a better job of checking in about whether we’re on the same page, it’s impossible to know if no one speaks up.

We decided to take some time to go through the play thus far (up to 3.3), sum up the content of each scene, and break down little bits of text to make sure everyone’s got some clues to help them do it, in the circle and on their own. We still don’t have our No Fear editions, and, though we worked without any published edition for the first five seasons, we are really having a hard time without them. The Ardens are great, but it takes some practice to learn how to use them, and, even then, some learning styles simply don’t allow folks to get what they need — and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m hoping to have come up with a solution by the next time we blog. Stay tuned.

I stepped away for a few minutes with an ensemble member, and when I came back, the circle had arrived at Act I scene iii. “I think this is where Sir Toby comes in,” said Matt. “Sir Toby is, like, a major drunk,” explained one woman. Using the Arden, a scene-by-scene Sparknotes summary that I provided at the beginning of the season, and our memories, we went through the scene’s plot points and characters.

Twelfth Night rests heavy on wordplay, though, and some ensemble members still looked uncomfortable. We needed an “in.” I thumbed through the pages and asked the ensemble what the playwright wants us to take away from the scene (besides Sir Toby being “a major drunk”). “Like, what’s up with Sir Andrew?” I asked. “He’s not very smart,” offered one woman, who, admittedly, is very comfortable with the text. “I see him as kind of a bobblehead,” I mused, “A bobblehead with beautiful hair, of course.” A few people giggled. “Like, right off the bat, what do we get from him?” I asked. When there still wasn’t much of a response, I asked if a few people could read the beat in which Sir Toby introduces Sir Andrew to Maria aloud so we could break it down and get at the humor.

I didn’t take detailed notes because, obviously, I was deeply involved in facilitating all of this. But as we broke down the language and the joke began to take shape, one woman in particular caught my attention. She’s been very quiet, though always attentive, but her whole countenance had changed as soon as we’d begun this part of our work. Leaning forward, book in her hands and eyes making contact with each of us in turn, she launched into a series of detailed contributions to our understanding of the “accost” joke in particular, and she was dead-on. I didn’t call attention to it, but I didn’t need to; I wasn’t the only one who saw what was happening, and the energy began to shift.

After going through the whole beat in detail, we read it aloud again. The moment the reading ended, the woman who’d been first to admit she was lost said, “I get it now!” “AWESOME!” I said. “This is why it’s good to slow down! Always tell us if we need to slow down!”

We moved on to Act I scene iv, again summing up the scene and choosing a short bit to break down. One of our frequent readers volunteered to read Olivia. I took Maria when no one raised a hand — and the woman who’d done the about-face volunteered to read Feste. And she was GREAT. Like, really, really great.

“Was that any different from reading it in your head, or listening to other people read?” I asked her. Beaming, she said, “It’s easier to understand when you put the emotion you want into it.” “Totally,” I said, and then I asked if that was the first time she’d done something like that. It was, and she got major snaps, claps, and encouragement from everyone.

We continued to work through each scene, and, though things dragged here and there, it proved to be a really useful exercise. A couple of fun exchanges:

I.v

Woman A: “I feel like [Olivia’s] playing with [Feste].”
Woman B: “I feel like he’s just running her in circles. My uncle used to do that, and I hated it.”

Regarding Olivia’s sputtering just prior to Viola/Cesario’s exit:

Frannie: “I mean, we’ve all been there, right? You say something dumb, and then when they leave, you’re like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe I said that.’”
Woman C: “Ohhhh, it’s like in Dirty Dancing.” [pause for effect] “I carried a watermelon???”

Moving forward, we decided to review the last couple of scenes on Friday and then structure our reading a little differently. We’ll read the scene (or a large part of a long scene) through, see what we get in general, go back through and break down the language as needed, and then keep going. Everyone agreed that this was a night well-spent, and we’re feeling better about things now.

We lifted the ring back up. As people scattered, putting away chairs and putting on their coats, the woman who’d “sparked” tonight began to walk past me. I caught her eye and said, “That was awesome.” She smiled, said, “Thank you,” and kept going. There are so many “little miracles” (as one longtime member puts it) that happen in SIP, and this is one of my favorite kinds.

Friday / October 19
Written by Frannie

We added new members tonight (probably for the last time this fall) and did some quick intros. As they peeled away to do an orientation with Matt and a returning member, I reminded another member that on Tuesday she’d volunteered to follow up the orientation by summarizing the play for the newbies. “What? No I didn’t!” she said. “You so did,” I said, and others backed me up. “Oh — god, okay. It must have been the meds. But okay,” she joked.

We picked up our review right where we left off, with one of the women reading the Sparknotes summary of 3.2, in which Sir Toby and Fabian convince Sir Andrew to challenge Cesario. “Sir Toby is a pot-stirrer in all aspects,” said a woman who is very comfortable with the text. “Wherever he is, he’s stirring up shenanigans.”

We moved on to 3.3, a scene between Antonio and Sebastian, and got into a bit of a debate. Several women feel that these two are in love, but another woman made a strong case for that love being platonic. As always, I said that there could be more than one “right” interpretation, and I asked her where she found evidence of that in the text. She bristled a bit and said she found it in her own experience. A good friend sitting next to her reiterated the question, saying, “Just ‘cause that’s how you want it to be doesn’t mean that’s how it’s going to be.” They argued back and forth, one drawing from the text and the other refusing to open her book. Another woman remarked quietly to me that she didn’t see much difference between the men’s language and things she and her platonic girlfriends might say to each other, but the rest of the group didn’t hear her. Another woman pointed out some clues in the text that this might be one-sided, and another agreed, saying that Antonio’s language reads a lot like Orsino’s and Olivia’s, while Sebastian’s doesn’t.

In the end, we decided to leave the debate unresolved for the moment. The plan is to read the rest of the play and see if we get a clearer idea of this relationship. We also plan to run all of Antonio’s/Sebastian’s scenes in order to see what that does for us.

We then read the first part of 3.4 (which is very long), in which Malvolio shows up, much to Olivia’s horror, smiling, wearing yellow stockings, cross-gartered, and quoting “her” letter. Once we’d broken it down, there was a lot of laughter — Malvolio is just trying so hard. One woman put her hand down by her knees, saying, “Here’s the level of trying—” She raised that hand above her head, “— here’s Malvolio.”

She then joked that Malvolio should have his own emoji (she also wants one for herself), and I mused that that might be a really funny gag for the show — I wasn’t sure exactly how we’d do it, but what if we incorporated emoji? “Is there a Shakespeare emoji?” one woman asked. “I don’t know, but why can’t we design our own?” I replied. “Gee, I don’t know anyone in this group who has any artistic skill…” I joked; there are a few really talented visual artists in our ensemble.

“I picture an emoji that’s just, like, a giant yellow-stockinged leg,” said one woman, and that sparked an idea in me! “I don’t know how or where we’d use this,” I said, “But I’m envisioning a can-can with Malvolio and some others — like, a line of people in yellow stockings kicking!” Another woman said, “That should be our curtain call!” We all burst out laughing — it’s a brilliant idea! Another woman suggested that there could also be a can-can as part of a fantasy during Malvolio’s letter-reading, and then we started coming up with all sorts of silly ideas — apparently this is going to be a bit of a motif in our performance.

The newbies and Matt returned to the circle, and the woman who’d had the curtain call idea excitedly filled them in. They loved all the ideas, including the ones that continued to pop up right up until we had to leave for the night.

We’ll get back to our reading on Tuesday, armed with these fresh ideas and enthusiasm. I can’t wait for all the great ideas to come.

Season Eight: Week 6

Tuesday / October 9
Written by Frannie

We welcomed two new members to the ensemble tonight. Both of these women signed up for the waiting list after having seen one performance (or more!), so they pretty much knew what they were getting into. [insert smiley face emoji here] Several women made sure they knew they were in a safe space. “I couldn’t ask for a better family,” said one. “What goes on in here stays in here.” Another woman added, “Kinda like Vegas… except it’s Shakespeare.”

We asked the first newbie our traditional three questions, and, though she was clearly nervous to an extent that expressed itself physically, she gave straightforward answers and got a lot of smiles in return. One woman, reacting (I think) to the new member’s anxiety, reassured her loudly and soothingly that her answers were great and we were all glad she was there. The other new member then exuberantly introduced herself, organically covering everything we were going to ask as she did. “Well, you just answered all three questions in one fell swoop!” I joked. Last year’s Macduff gasped, “Oh!” Her whole face lit up. “That’s my line! Remember? All my pretty chickies in one fell swoop!” To say she was tickled is an understatement. I absolutely love when those things happen — it reinforces, for all of us, just how much ownership we have of these plays.

We began our reading with Act II scene v, in which Malvolio finds the letter Maria planted to make him think Olivia is in love with him. There was a little bit of a tussle between two ensemble members who are good friends, and who both, for whatever reason, are very drawn to Malvolio. Eventually one ceded the part to the other, and I made her promise that she’d be on deck to read him next. There was no bad blood here — they “play” bicker all the time — but the former member doesn’t often gravitate to particular characters and did seem a little miffed.

Twelfth Night has turned out to be an interesting play to work on within our usual structure, and without the No Fear editions (which are still en route) — some of the wordplay is complex enough that it can obscure or distract from the larger meaning and/or action of the scene. But there are still plenty of moments that are crystal clear, to varying degrees, for all of us. When we arrived at Malvolio’s reading aloud, “Remember who commended thy yellow stockings and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered…” the longtime ensemble member who was reading the part burst out laughing so hard that she had to pause the reading. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to catch her breath, “I’m just picturing whoever plays Malvolio—” and her own laughter cut her off again.

I’ve been working with this woman for a long time, and she’s always had a gift for getting at least some meaning from any Shakespeare we’ve read, but this is the most effortless text work I’ve seen her do yet. It just clicks for her. The jokes crack her up on first reading, she’s able to sum up scenes in detail without further analysis, and she keeps having all these clear, fully formed staging ideas that are absolutely spot-on. It’s not like she hasn’t been creative in the past — to the contrary, she’s been one of our best problem-solvers — but she’s on another level this year. In fact, I’d been mildly concerned about how few people have been speaking up to summarize and analyze scenes, but as I watched the others react to her obvious delight, I realized that this is (at least partly) because she just gets it, and they’re eager to hear her insight before giving their own. It usually doesn’t work for one person to so “dominate” scene analysis, but in this case I think it’s actually very beneficial to the ensemble. She’s not overpowering the conversation in any way; the rest of us are simply deferring to her position as an elder in the group and, at least for the moment, the person most in tune with the way this play works.

We realized, though, that this scene wasn’t going to make total sense until we put it on its feet, so we expanded our circle and brought over some artificial trees to create the playing space we needed. A few people wanted a particular ensemble member, who has lately come out of her shell, to read Toby. She was hesitant until Kyle volunteered to read Fabian, and they turned out to be a dynamic duo, without question. Another woman, who’s been challenging herself a lot this season, volunteered to read Maria, and I insisted that the woman who’d demurred to read Malvolio earlier do so now.

It took a minute to get going — the woman reading Sir Toby got to the word “niggardly” and burst out laughing. “It doesn’t mean what it sounds like now!” I shouted. Still chuckling, she decided to use the word “mean” in its place. “Take two!” someone shouted, and the scene began again. But our Toby jumped one of Fabian’s lines, everyone got confused, we all cracked up again, and they restarted the scene. “Take three… Action!”

As we made our way through the scene, we had to pause now and then as we found action in the text and looped back to do it. At Toby’s first exclamation during Malvolio’s letter-reading, that ensemble member burst through the artificial trees — with Malvolio directly facing her. It was incredibly funny, but clearly not what the scene called for, so we paused, figured out a solution, and took it back. At one point, when Malvolio had been reading for a while, the three folks hiding behind the trees picked up those trees and slowly moved behind Malvolio to the other side of the playing space. They stayed there for a bit and then started slowly inching toward Malvolio, as if to hear her better. Meanwhile, our Malvolio arrived at the line, “I do not fool myself—” paused, said, “I’m gettin’ tired,” to another huge burst of ensemble laughter, and then kept plugging away.

The scene ended, and we all agreed that, while of course it will need work (and a lot of cutting), the bit with the trees absolutely has to stay. One woman, who was on fire, suggested that those hiding in the trees could throw out lines from Macbeth (in Birnam Wood) and perhaps reprimand each other for getting the plays confused. This led to a brief brainstorm about what else we could throw into the mix in that way; the comedy is so broad and ridiculous in Twelfth Night that it seems like it could stand for us to go a little bonkers with gags like that. The Keeper of the Jokes recorded all of this in our dedicated notebook.

Rather than delve into the next scene, we decided to use the rest of our time for monologues. A longtime ensemble member, who has been frank about identifying with Viola but intrigued by Sir Toby (she is an incredible comedian), said she had chosen one just that day. Or, rather, it had been chosen for her. “I asked the universe to give me the proper character. My girlfriend [who’s been pushing for Viola] was right… I opened the book — I said, ‘I need a good one’ — BOOM. Viola. Then I was like… ‘You bitch.” We all laughed with her. Her reading of the piece was a bit halting because she’d only begun to work with it today, but she clearly understands the piece — and the character — in a way that I’m not sure the rest of us do. I hope she keeps exploring this.

After my glorious fail last week, I promised the ensemble that I’d make it up to them by performing four monologues tonight, and I did. It was a mixed bag for me personally, and reactions were a bit varied as well. I felt best about the first two (Edmund from King Lear; Viola from Twelfth Night), not good about the third (Hermione from The Winter’s Tale), and iffy about the last (Anne from Richard III). My analysis was that I’ve been trying to get a handle on that Hermione monologue for a really long time, and it just never works the way I want it to; I think I’m done with it now, and that’s okay. My being off on that one, though, colored my performance of the last, which was much quieter than I’ve done it before, and even resigned toward the end. It’s something I’d want to explore in a more formal environment; maybe being a bit numb or spent when Richard enters gives the scene an interesting tone. But that’s not what we’re in SIP to do!

My personal thoughts aside, I got some very positive feedback from ensemble members (though I welcomed them to give more pointed critiques in journal entries if they wanted to). I was mostly glad just to have followed through on what I said I would do (and why I said I would do it, I have no idea — I get a little slap-happy sometimes), and equally glad to have had more success than last week. “You are a monologue monster!” said one woman.

Friday / October 12
Written by Matt

Among the several joyous check-ins today was a conversation about Banksy! It came up because of something one of the women had painted on a big plastic mug, but quickly turned to how badass they thought it was that Banksy’s most recent high-profile art piece had sold for $1.4 million and, at the moment of its sale, shredded itself, using a shredder embedded in the frame.

After lowering the ring, we dove into the play. Everyone was pretty tired today, so we focused on reading. We are into Act III now, and we ended up reading the first three scenes. The first went by quickly--everyone seemed to understand, which is huge! Before we started using the No Fear Shakespeare editions, which have contemporary English “translations” on the facing page, we often struggled simply to comprehend the plays even after the first read-through. We now have enough veteran members with deep knowledge of the language that everyone is carried along with them, even though we don’t have No Fear Twelfth Nights yet.

We moved directly on to scene ii. Among the highlights in this ridiculous scene was a returning member giving a perfect rendition of badly mispronounced French. I mentioned that the entire subplot of Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Maria has always struck me as just a bunch of friends sitting in the basement and making up plots. “Sounds like some of my friends at home!” chimed in one of the women, right on cue. Another veteran member has really taken to Maria. She will likely be home before the show, but “if I were here for the play,” she assured us, “I’d be Maria. I’d do it good!” This was a remarkable statement from a woman who could barely be coaxed out on stage as recently as last year--Maria is in at least half a dozen scenes and has dozens of lines.

No one had the energy to walk through this scene on its feet, so we went right into the next one. Scene iii is a dialogue between Sebastian and Antonio--and the second time we have seen them in the play. A number of the women were taken by the intimate language between them. “Wow!” exclaimed one. “Antonio has the hots for Sebastian--clearly!” She imitated Antonio’s imagined low voice: “‘Hey, you go into town. Here’s my purse; buy yourself something nice.’” Everyone laughed.

Another member pushed back gently. “I don’t think it’s nothing funny here… I feel like he landed here and he found this guy, and he has to trust him.” The first woman countered, “But they just met!” The second woman stuck to her understanding. “But if you was on an island,” she said, “and somebody popped up and needed help, and it was just you...how much would it matter to you that you just met?” She went on, talking about how, in Romeo & Juliet (in which she played the nurse five years ago), “people fall in love at first sight. They just see them and decide, that’s what I want.”

Frannie asked about all the love at first sight in Twelfth Night, especially Olivia, who falls in love with Orsino offstage. The same woman came right back with “I thought Olivia was just vulnerable.” Her statement caused a little buzz in the group, as people considered this simple but interesting assessment. “Yeah,” agreed a new member, “she didn’t want to see men for, like, seven years?... After the death of her brother.”

The longtime member who had begun by offering an alternate explanation of Sebastian and Antonio’s intimacy was far from done, though (she warned us that “I feel the [Shakespeare] Holy Ghost coming on!” a reference to an amazing moment last season). “I think sometimes we’re crippled by the No Fear,” she said. She talked about how for years she had felt unable to understand the language of the plays. She even talked about how, when she was in The Tempest, she didn’t fully understand some of the lines until she was saying or hearing them onstage in performance. And she described a moment of laughing aloud at a joke in Twelfth Night while reading it in the original. At that moment, she said, she felt pride in her progress over years of work with Shakespeare in Prison. This moment, familiar to all of us who grow to love Shakespeare, when the words no longer seem like an arcane code that takes tremendous effort to decipher, is a pleasure that we could recognize. But for this woman, it is that and more--her accomplishment is truly staggering, to get to a place where she could laugh aloud to herself while reading a Shakespearean comedy on her bunk. Frannie told her how exciting this was to hear, while at the same time reassuring everyone that there’s nothing wrong with relying on the No Fear—not only does it take time to get as comfortable with the language as she is, there are different learning styles best suited to different versions of the text. It’s been very beneficial to have ensemble members at Parnall reading from two editions, and it will make our work go that much faster at WHV to have someone so fluent in the ensemble. “Congratulations,” said Frannie to her, “you have become a resource!”

At last, a new member who has expressed a lot of anxiety about performing in public read a short monologue from Richard III. Her eyes were glued to the text, but she got through it, and everyone gave her a big round of applause! “That got my heart racing!” she exclaimed. She said that it was the first time she had ever done anything like that. She also shared about wanting to do an angry monologue (which this one certainly was!) because of some anger she feels at her family situation. A monologue felt like a safe place to put that feeling, and she said that she was a little frustrated that she couldn’t channel it more during her performance. “I have the anger,” she said. “But whenever I come into the ensemble, I can’t keep the anger. It all goes away.” Frannie made sure she knew that she’s allowed to express anger in the circle, and the others nodded vigorously, but she said she just didn’t want that. She also described taking steps to ensure that her work at prison would not interfere with this group. “I’m not going to let them take that away from me,” she said emphatically. “This is a space where I feel like myself.”

What was most striking about her words was not the sentiment they expressed--it is always good to hear such positive and affirming things about the program, but many of our members have shared similar feelings--it was how early in her first season she had come to feel this way. Barely six weeks in, she feels like she has found a home. More than anything, this speaks to the open, safe, welcoming culture that is nurtured and sustained by the core members of our ensemble. They have set the tone, and they have made Shakespeare in Prison the sort of ensemble that can enfold and become indispensable in a person’s life in so short a time. This is nothing short of remarkable.

Season Eight: Week 5

Tuesday / October 2

Written by Frannie

Tonight was our monologue-off! Those of us who shared each brought something a little different. During check-in, a longtime member, who’d said she’d be performing something from a show we did years ago, told me she was going to throw me for a loop: she brought in a piece of her own. “I’m excited,” she said. “Being in my element, people being receptive… I was like, ‘I could do a Shakespeare piece,’ but I wanted to do something that hit home for me, and I thought, ‘What better place to do it?” She was definitely excited — I don’t remember what the segue was, but my next note is, “Turns into Oprah with mints.” (“You get a mint! And you get a mint! And YOU get a mint!”)

The first woman to share was last season’s Porter, performing her version of the drunken monologue and scene. If you were reading along then, you probably remember how freeing it was when she rewrote the piece, in keeping with its spirit, but with language that resonated more for her and, honestly, was much funnier. Somehow it had gotten even more hilarious after a few months, and she’s super comfortable with improvising now, too: when med lines were called and a few people had to leave, she called out (in character), “Where y’all going during my play?!” She then shared the process by which she developed the piece with our newbies to encourage them to get creative rather than give up when things are challenging.

Emma, one of our facilitator apprentices, got up to do one of Anne’s monologues from Richard III. She was honest about being kind of nervous, never really having done any theatre — and she was also honest about how excited she was to put a speech on its feet that she’s always loved. A longtime ensemble member stood in as Richard, and Emma launched into the monologue, at one point pausing to say, “Ooooooh, that felt good!” She reflected afterward that she had felt very liberated by diving in, and that “it’s always fun to curse somebody!”. I asked what everyone had gotten from the piece, and one woman said, “You were pissed off because someone got injured, and you want revenge.”

Then a woman, who was pretty closed off last season but has been much more open this year, shared an original poem, warning us first that it was very dark — and it was. And it was good. “How do you feel?” Kyle asked when she’d finished. “Shaky,” she smiled, saying, too, that she was glad she’d shared it. We asked her if she could tell us more about the piece, and she said it was “about the thoughts that take over your mind and hold you captive in a false reality”. We loved it. “It took a lot of nerves for me to share that,” she said.

The woman who played Edward in Richard III got up to perform her big monologue, albeit in its original form rather than as we’d cut it. “You know I’m shy, right?” she grinned. I looked over at Kyle, who was absolutely beaming — we’ve always loved her take on this piece. She went up on lines several times — it’s a long speech, and it’s been a very long time since she’s performed it — but, rather than getting down on herself the way she used to, she simply asked for line and kept going. Her first comment afterward was about not having remembered some of the lines, but, again, the comment wasn’t harsh. We told her that we’d loved it anyway.

The woman who played Margaret in Richard III rose to perform one of that character’s monologues, but without cuts and with “a different take” than when we staged the show. Instead of railing against those around her, as is traditional, she was very quiet with the piece, almost as if talking to herself. This increased the emotional intensity in a way and made us listen more closely to what she was saying. “It’s kind of what I’m going through,” she said afterward. “The first time I did it, she was very vengeful, and, like, ‘I told you so.’ But I look at those words different now.” Another woman said, “I could feel your emotions in it.”

Then the woman who’d been so excited at check-in asked us all to move from our circle into the house so she could use the whole stage for her piece. It took a few minutes for her to get to a place where she was ready, and then she committed wholeheartedly to an original piece that was part spoken word, part song, and part dance. It was fantastic, personal, and brutally honest, bringing several other ensemble members to tears as they related to what she said. When she was finished, she stood backstage with a friend. We couldn’t see her to know what was going on, but we got the feeling that she was upset. Another ensemble member and Kyle went to her. After a few moments, one of the women said, “Should we all go back?” We did, surrounding her with praise, support, and gratitude for what she’d shared. As we did, one of the women suddenly popped out from the door behind her, making us all laugh and feel ready to move on.

Facilitators also shared monologues, fully committed, and with varying degrees of “success”. I had a particularly spectacular fail, as I attempted to do a piece that I’d memorized only the day before, but just couldn’t stay focused due to a really bad headache. That said, the ensemble fully supported and encouraged me, and no one made me feel badly when I gave up and said I’d try again next week. I thanked them for that, and one woman said, “No, you doing that made us all feel a lot better about when we mess up.”

A new ensemble member shared a poem by Yeats that she really likes, throwing her book on the ground in a moment of total commitment to the piece’s passion. It was great! Afterward, she said that her heart was racing, but that she felt good.

Before we left, I handed out a packet of information about Commedia dell’arte, including pictures of the characters, so we can all think a little more about if/how we’d like to draw on that tradition. We’ll see where it goes!

Friday / October 5

Written by Matt

Today was a little bit sparsely attended—by everybody! Frannie was out of town at a conference with a Shakespeare in Prison alumna, and a couple of our regulars in the group were taking a day off to deal with personal issues. Still, a strong core group was present, and we gathered into a tight circle to read some more monologues after check-in.

Unlike the big performances of Tuesday, the readings today were intimate and performed sitting in our circle. They were no less affecting, however, since we were all so close together and listening intently. A new member read a poem that had stuck with her from another program, and she described wanting to read it to the group as an act of solidarity and support. “Us, as females,” she said, “we usually try to bring each other down,” and she commented on how comfortable she felt in the circle of our ensemble, where everybody was there to lift each other up. A bunch of the other women started nodding and saying, “yes, yes,” as she spoke. Another member, who used to be very shy, read a poem she wrote in a different, and very intense, program. As she read, the others murmured their support and agreement. Afterwards, the woman who read said that she wanted to share her poem because she wants the ensemble to know what she’s struggled with and is striving to overcome. She said that she’s trying to embody the mantra of “catch it, check it, change it” that is taught in a number of other programs.

It had been a long time since we had read anything from the play, so one veteran had to bring us up to speed. It helped that the scene we were reading (Act II, scene iii) is silly and high-energy and relatively easy to follow. It also helped that the woman who volunteered to play Feste was fearless about singing the fool’s lines, many of which are delivered in song, culminating in a drunken duet with Sir Toby Belch. We were having so much fun that when our Sir Andrew Aguecheek had to leave, a notoriously shy ensemble member stepped right up to fill in, and helped to ridicule our hilariously self-serious Malvolio, whose lack of amusement gave everyone even more raucous energy. Maria was played by another normally reticent woman, who figured out halfway through the scene that Maria was “a bitchy bartender.” “Oh, okay,” she said with a definitive nod. “I got this!”

After reading the scene through, some members were confused, but our Feste was ready with a detailed explanation of the entire scene, including the plot hatched by Maria against Malvolio—to convince the humorless steward that Olivia is in love with him. This addition to the already complicated love-triangle-or-is-it-a-rhombus had a few members scratching their heads. “We’re gonna need a whole chart,” offered a new member, whereupon the woman next to her opened a notebook page to draw the diagram out as yet another with a firm grasp of the intrigues talked it out. The chart was a mess of arrows and lines—this is a Shakespearean comedy, after all!—but we all felt more confident after seeing it represented visually.

We put the scene up on its feet, which increased the energy level even more. A new member filled in as Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and afterwards said that she preferred reading those lines out while being able to move and interact with others; “it helped to put some feeling behind it,” she said. The woman who played Malvolio, said that she was beginning to identify with his seriousness: “It made me feel kinda powerful,” she said of her entrance into the scene, “like, here are all these kids, and I’m an adult.”

We worked briefly through the next scene before leaving, but agreed that we needed to go back and cover it again with more people and more time—a lot happens, and the love-polygon gets even more complicated as Viola tries to explain her love for Orsino to the clueless man’s own face. What was most exciting about this scene’s first run-through was who volunteered to read. Feste was played by the same veteran, who reprised her singing role. A woman who used to seem super-shy gave an over-the-top reading of Orsino, and a brand-new member volunteered to read Viola, the first time she had read anything in front of the ensemble. It’s always gratifying to see people come into the ensemble, especially now that we have such a strong core group, and find the confidence within themselves—and the support of others—to take their first step into reading Shakespeare aloud in front of the whole group.

Season Eight: Week 4

Tuesday / September 25

Written by Matt

The first order of business today was to add new members! It’s still early in the season, and it will never be easier to jump in than now. The group decided to bring on another five people. “Let’s keep it rolling!” said a veteran of many seasons. Another woman looked around at the rest of the ensemble and asked, “Does anybody else want to quit?” People laughed, but she persisted, “No, seriously! So we know how many.”

The first exercise we played was an improv game called Rant, in which one member of the ensemble begins to “rant” about some subject, approaching it with a single, clear emotion. At some point, another member tags and replaces the person in the center, resuming the “rant” with the same emotion as the first, only more intense. The game continues until someone reaches peak intensity in whatever emotion (anger, fear, happiness, etc.).

First up, the rant was about macaroni and cheese, which was something almost everyone could agree on--mostly on their anger about “fancy” mac and cheese. One woman grew so angry that she threw her own shoe at the ground, and another simply screamed with no words, which ended the scene. During the quick debrief after the round, one member seemed confused. Frannie boiled it down: “Mostly, we’re just screaming at each other.” The woman seemed relieved. “I can do that,” she assured us, and hollered one of her lines from last season at the top of her lungs: “WHAT SIGHTS, MY LORD?”

For the second round, the first member to speak picked a topic a little closer to home for many of the women: parole. Quite unlike the generalized, sometimes cartoonish anger they had expressed about mac and cheese, many of the rants about this subject were personal and eloquent. “They have preconceived notions of who I am. What about my change? What about the part of me that is better than it was?” Other women built on the foundation, echoing the desire to be seen and heard. “They’ve never even met me.” “They don’t know us.” “All they see is a piece of paper.” It’s unusual to delve so deeply (and honestly) into something so personal this early in the season, and we thanked the woman who’d jump started it. This also led to a brief, but solid, conversation of how we want to express emotions that are “true”, rather than those that are “real”; this was a good example because, while everyone appreciated what was being done and expressed, they didn’t feel comfortable actively participating.

We played a few more rounds of Rant, trying out different emotions (like fear, in a Hitchcockian sequence about being afraid of birds).

Then we moved on to the text, and we finally finished Act I. After determining that one of our most expressive members was going completely against type in reading the self-serious Malvolio, we quickly ran through the end of Act I, scene v. A number of our veterans are delighted by Twelfth Night, especially after such a long run of tragedies. “I love it!” exclaimed one woman, “There’s just so much you can do with it!” Another woman agreed: “It mimics life in here a lot,” she said, including the shifting gender roles.

Already, many of the women are thinking about the possibilities for staging the play. “You have to figure out how to deliver to the audience that you are someone pretending to be someone else,” one said of Viola, and she said that this scene felt to her like it was straight out of her class on men and masculinity. When we began Act II, that same woman read Viola’s speech, and she--who has been in the group for a long time and has worked hard to get to this level of comfort and confidence with Shakespeare’s language--relished every syllable of the speech. “I nailed it, Frannie,” she said after she ended. Perhaps inspired by her example, the group decided in the closing moments of the session to have a “monologue-off” on Tuesday, whatever that means. I guess we’ll find out!

Friday / September 28

Written by Frannie

After an extended check-in, it was pretty clear that what we all needed was a chill evening — just to relax and have a little fun together, with no pressure to be productive. That’s perfectly fine sometimes, and, frankly, often turns out to be more productive than trying to force ourselves to “work”. That was definitely the case tonight.

I introduced a fabulous improv game called “Beat Poet”. In this game, one person at a time performs a “beat poem”, the title of which is suggested by the audience and often takes the form of two unrelated concepts. The idea is not to give a good performance, or even a mediocre one — both are totally acceptable, but this game is at its most fun when the poems are downright BAD. There is literally no way to do it wrong. The idea is just to let loose and free associate.

The game lasted far longer than I thought it would, which was exciting. There are always a few women in the ensemble who take to the games immediately, but it can be challenging to get a good number of people to participate. Improv is really, really scary when you’ve been conditioned to constantly doubt your ideas and abilities, to see your mistakes as catastrophic, and to fear messing up to a point of being immobilized. Improv can be truly loaded in a correctional setting.

Three of our vets started us off, committing wholeheartedly to some very, very bad poems: Government and Goldfish (“I just thought about how, when I was growing up, I had goldfish, and they just used to die… Like the government…”), Security Cameras on Mars, and Shrimps and Roses. The group grew increasingly relaxed, and one of our newbies said, “I’ll do it.” Everyone cheered — it’s no small thing to put yourself out there, period, and, since this game is particularly freeform, it requires a lot of trust in the ensemble and willingness to be vulnerable.

Her poem was Big Butts and Little Cars, and it was absolutely dreadful. We loved it. Then one of our vets, whose apparent role this year is to constantly let people know how much we want them to participate, even when they’re hesitant, slyly suggested that one of last season’s witches take a turn. When she hesitated, the vet said, “Do it as a character! Do it as your witch!” That did it: up she stood! The name of her poem was Witches and Chicken Soup, and, after taking a moment, she dove in, lunging and swooping, having a great time. “It was awesome,” she said afterward. “It just took me a minute to get into character.”

Then Matt, Lauren, and I went right in a row, with poems titled Mattitude with Good Hair; Kittens, Kings, and Costumes; and Coffee, Confidence, and a Sucky Play. (Those women know me so well.) Facilitators never hold back, given the opportunity to be silly and/or fail miserably, and all three of us definitely did both. We echoed what those who’d gone before had said: that knowing there was no way to do it wrong was liberating, even though the prospect of improvising a poem was kind of terrifying.

“Who’s next?” one of the women asked, and a newbie said she’d give it a try. This woman has, quietly but doggedly, held firm to her goal of stepping out of her comfort zone as much as possible to see what kind of confidence she can gain. That doesn’t mean that any of this is easy for her; it’s the opposite, and that makes her effort that much more admirable. She struggled with her poem, Mud Pies and Rollerskates, but no one tuned out or offered any criticism. Everyone stayed right with her, encouraging her and offering suggestions and ideas to help her through. This is what strengthens our ensemble: the willingness to buoy the members of our team who are struggling, to take joy in that, and to celebrate them even when others might say that they failed. We know what success truly looks like. It doesn’t always look like “good art”.

And then a returning member, who has never participated in a game before, said, “I’ll do it.”

“WHAT?!?!?!” I whooped, probably throwing something and, I think, stomping my feet (because I cannot be reasonable in moments like this). “OH MY GOD, FOR REAL????” She grinned and stepped into the circle. “Hot Dogs and Poetry!” someone yelled. The woman paused, thought for a moment, and then sharply raised a pointed index finger in front of her face. We shrieked with laughter, absolutely thrilled, and she performed a terrible, terrible poem with determination and a great sense of humor.

We erupted in applause as she sat back down, beaming, with one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen on her face. “What was that like???” I asked (still sort of hyperventilating). “It wasn’t that bad!” she said. “At first I didn’t know what to do, but then when I remembered I couldn’t do it wrong, I kind of relaxed into it. It was kind of freeing.”

The woman who’d gone first took another turn (Caves and Flowers), and then she nudged a longtime member who’d walked in late, dejected and upset about something. She is usually very animated — if she’d been feeling better, she probably would have performed five poems — and she dragged herself to her feet, knowing that forcing herself to do things like this usually makes her feel at least a little better. An ensemble member gave her the title Shattered Glass and Roses, hoping she could use the drama of those images to let out some of her angst, and it seemed to work. “I didn’t feel as melancholy when I was up there,” she said.

And then. And then, and then, and then.

A four-year vet, who, in all that time, has never participated in a game like this (and very, very few besides) said, “Fuck it, I’ll do it.” I shrieked again — I can’t overstate how huge this was — and she entered the circle, clearly nervous but determined to push through it. This woman fought a wicked sword fight in Macbeth, and a returning member shouted, “Swords and Cotton Candy!” She grinned, shook her head, took a deep breath — and plunged to the ground, proceeding to lunge and crawl around the circle while saying words that I so don’t remember because they so didn’t matter, waving an invisible sword all over the place and finally coming to a very dramatic stop. We exploded. “That was amazing!!!” I yelled. “What happened???” With a huge smile, she laughed, “I just really want to be part of the group.” She is — she always has been — but we knew what she meant. “My heart was racing, but you all just seemed to be having so much fun! It was nice to let go.”

We were having such a good time, it didn’t seem like anyone felt like buckling down and doing anything linear, so we sort of stumbled into a “Shakespeare Jam”. One of the women absolutely loves Juliet’s “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep. The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.” A few of us had some fun letting loose vocally on those lines, and then two of last season’s witches did the parts of “Double, double, toil and trouble…” that they remembered off the tops of their heads. Last season’s Macduff read some of her lines from a Complete Works, I performed Richard III’s opening soliloquy (which is stuck in my head forever, apparently), last season’s Macbeth did part of a monologue, and another woman read some of her lines from Macbeth. It was a good warm up for next Tuesday’s “Monologue-Off”, and we left on a cheery, positive note.

As we gathered our things, I made sure to check in with the two vets who’d played for the first time tonight. They were both beaming, and I’m sure I was, too. I’m practically dancing now, as I’m writing. Any breakthrough is exciting, but when that breakthrough has been a year — or four years — in the making, hoo boy. That is something else. What a thrill.