Season Two: Week 37

Put but money in (our) purse.

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Tuesday / March 5 / 2019
Written by Emma

A harbinger of spring (hopefully), the men were in a rather sunny mood. Our agenda included two important items of business: we needed to select a play for next season, as well as run through as much of the show as possible without stopping.

The selection of next year’s play was a collaborative process—a hallmark of SIP. After some preliminary discourse, the ensemble seemed to have narrowed down the choices to a tragedy, Julius Caesar, and a comedy, As You Like It. The men thoughtfully weighed the pros and cons of each of these options. “It keeps up the energy of the troupe to do comedy,” one veteran member stated in favor of As You Like It. “But,” another member chimed in, “for a men’s compound, a lot of people would want to see Julius Caesar.” After a few more minutes of Comedy vs. Tragedy deliberation, one man posed the question: “What’s the difference between comedies and tragedies? If you’re doing a great play, what’s the difference?” Building on this thought, another member added, “From a personal perspective as an artist, if people like my work, they’ll come back and see it regardless.” When all had spoken their piece, the decision was left up to a vote. Final tallies found As You Like It in the lead, making it the official play for the men’s ensemble’s 2019-20 season!

With next season’s fate decided, we moved on to the first run through (well, run-as-much-as-we-can-through) of Lear. Within the first few lines of dialogue, the massive amounts of work that the ensemble had done in my absence was evident. For the next hour and a half, I sat captivated.

I was asked to take notes on areas that I felt could use improvement and/or clarification. Upon reviewing what I had written, it would appear that my comments were actually overwhelmingly laudatory. Since my last observation, each and every character had grown in depth and complexity. Our Goneril and Regan, who, during my last visit, were dipping their toes into villainy, had come alive with a cool venom as they rained false praise on Lear in Act I, Scene 1. In the same scene, our Lear demonstrated an impressive range of emotion that wasn’t there a few weeks ago. During the banishment of Kent, Lear deftly entwined anger and sorrow, landing in quiet desperation on the line, “Kent, on thy life, no more.” Aaaand, cue the goosebumps!

Other highlights of the run-through include: Gloucester’s slow emotional and physical transition from esteemed nobleman to haggard outcast, the way Edmund was able to convey manipulativeness while still soliciting sympathy, and Edgar’s fearless dive into his Poor Tom persona, which included covering his face in his long hair and adopting a slight accent. Our Fool, who is new to the role, proved himself to be a natural. He carried himself from scene to scene with a slightly hunched back, his hands held to his chest, in a way that felt very Wormtongue from The Lord of The Rings. However, unlike Wormtongue, our fool maintained a very subtle air of levity as he delivered his lines—perfect, coming from a Fool in the midst of a tragedy. The overall impact was, according to my notes, “on point.”

After stopping only a handful of times to fix urgent hiccups, we concluded the run-through (about ⅔ of the way through the play) with a few minutes left and briefly discussed how it felt: what worked, what didn’t, and thoughts for moving forward.

Friday / March 8 / 2019
Written by Coffey

With the 90-minute time limit on everyone’s mind, most of our check-in was devoted to how we’re planning to make cuts to the script, a process that proved to be a delicate and involved one to some of the men. “I’m very sensitive about cutting my scenes,” our Lear said, “ ‘cuz I’ve gone through the Arden several times trying to cut my lines.” To others, the process was solely in the interest of time: “It wasn’t really about certain lines,” our Albany said, “There’s a certain value to everyone’s lines.” Regardless of which lines the men chose to cut, one man advised that everyone “get with the person you’re in a scene with and let them know if the cues have changed.”

Matt suggested that, in addition to cutting unnecessary lines, the men could start trying to bring more of a sense of urgency with them on stage. This would help transitions between scenes to speed up, cues to be picked up more readily, and the overall time of our run-throughs to shorten. Another man added that offstage distractions have been cutting into our time: “Side distractions are frustrating. Critique-wise, I think everyone is doing an awesome job. We got 75% of the play done in an hour and a half. Let’s focus on getting that last 25% and help each other out.”

Ending check-in on that encouraging note, we decided to warm up by playing a game of “Wah”. We stood in a circle, loudly wah-ing at each other and striking coordinated poses until someone missed their cue and was eliminated. This went on until we had two players left standing (Matt being one of them).

We began our rehearsal where we left off, going from Edgar and Gloucester’s reunion in Act IV, scene 1, to the play’s finale. The run had its setbacks. Entrances were still pretty chunky, the minor roles, as well as Edmund and Oswald (who were absent), were taken on by whoever had a free moment, and everyone was still a bit shaky on the blocking—pretty normal setbacks for a run at this point in the season. The men are beginning the hard process of moving their focus from character building and scene work to the show as a whole. As they continued that transition today, it gave us an opportunity to see how strong their characterization and in-scene work has become. Gloucester, after being horribly abused by Regan and Cornwall, wasn’t wilting or muted about his hopelessness and lost faith in the world, but enraged by it. “O you mighty gods! This world I do renounce, and, in your sights,/ Shake patiently my great affliction off,” was not a plea, but a loud declaration punctuated with his balled fists—something I’ve never scene a Gloucester do.

Gloucester wasn’t the only one showing a surprising streak of anger. Cordelia, when we circled back to rehearse Act I, scene 1, responded to Lear’s vitriolic, “Better thou / Hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better,” by charging Lear, threatening to push him. I read just as much hurt in this action as I would have if Cordelia shrank back and burst into tears. A moment of laughter came during I.i as well, when Gloucester entered in the middle of Lear and Cordelia’s confrontation and sat down very slowly, unsure if he was intruding, and deeply uncomfortable. Amidst the chaos of trying to go straight through the show, these strong, unique choices were energizing and carried the men through. Even Goneril, who is typically reserved onstage, let loose during the final scene, his look of terror fully convincing me that Goneril’s world was falling apart.

We finished the play with a runtime of 2 ½ hours - not bad at all for an early run through! Wrinkles still remain as they would in any show, but a note from Emma really sums up the feeling with which we all left the gym: “However weary, anxious, or frustrated you may be feeling at this point in the season, you’re doing spectacular work, and it shows.”

Season Two: Week 36

If money go before, all ways do lie open.

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Tuesday / February 26 / 2018
Written by Matt

This is a week of guests, and today’s was especially exciting! For the first time at Parnall, we brought in friend of SIP and super-talented photographer Chuk Nowak. A couple of years ago, Chuk filmed this mini-doc about our program. But that was before our men’s ensemble was even conceived of, and so we were especially happy to have him at Parnall today to capture some of the amazing work these guys are doing!

Check-in ran slightly long, as we worked through some interpersonal issues, but the ensemble is often at its strongest when wrestling with these sorts of challenges. A member of our Parnall program since its inception brought it to a close, saying that everyone is important to the functioning of SIP, and everyone is somewhere in the process of changing himself. “You got to bring to the table what you got to bring to the table,” he said. “We owe it to ourselves to be understanding because of all that we have in common--and that’s Shakespeare!”

Today’s main business was finishing the blocking of the final scene. Before we got too far, our Goneril repeated his kneecap-slide into Edmund from last week. He stopped and looked up at Frannie, saying he didn’t think the slide would work. “I feel like the slide takes away” from the moment, he said. “I think you’re wearing a skirt, and you will pull it right off if you do that,” said Frannie. This led to a brief sidebar with Regan and Goneril about how to move in a skirt.

Even our first run of the scene was pretty good. “We were feeding off each other,” noted one of the guys. “I’m not sure how it felt, “ added another, “but it looked so awesome.”

“How do we build on this?” asked Frannie.

“More emotion!” said Lear.

“Sweeping the floor!” added Goneril, who was lying “dead” on the ground.

While one of the guys got a broom to sweep, Frannie challenged our Lear to maintain the connection with Cordelia. In the final moments of the scene, he had stood up from his youngest daughter’s body to speak directly to the others in the room. “You’re letting him off the hook,” she said. One of the guys backed her up, saying, “It’s way more powerful with you down with her.”

Another one of the guys explained why: “It’s a king’s words,” he said, “but a father’s motive.”

Our Lear was reluctant to run the scene again. “I just don’t think I can get into it,” he said. “I don’t know if I can get where I need to be with my emotions.” Eventually, he agreed to give it another shot, even if he was just walking through it without giving it his all...

Maybe he should halfass it more often! The second run was a success from the beginning. The urgency of each actor’s performance was markedly better at the top of the scene, and it only increased as we progressed. Albany, who had been excellent in the first run (he listens to the other actors so well), was magnificent, fully embodying his character’s fast-shifting anger, shock, and disbelief. The moments were poignant, sharply defined, and effective. But after Edmund’s mortal wounding, the guys took it up a notch. Goneril turned snake-like when confronted with her scheming by Albany, slithering away on “the laws are mine, not thine.” As the brothers reconciled, Edmund (a stand-in) grasped Edgar’s arm as he said, “the wheel has come full circle.”

But it was Lear who gave the show-stopping performance. He raged and howled, his deep voice fully resonant for the first time this season. Tears trickled down his face as he focused intensely on Cordelia’s body, dying with his arm across his daughter.

When we were done, everyone took a second to breathe before looking around. It was clear that something special had happened. There were some notes given and comments made, but mostly we were in awe of the performance that had just happened.

Our Edgar reflected after the scene about his character. “He has nobility,” he said, “but it doesn’t mean crap to him.” Edgar, he said, “is more interested in being a person, not in ‘being’ a title. He might be a little bit of a playboy, like his father. … He’s trying to push off everything on his brother. That’s why he’s not in the first scene.”

Speaking of the first scene of the play, which we haven’t touched in almost two months, we had just enough time to run it. Fresh from the success of the final scene, everyone brought the same energy to the first one! The new folks slid right into their roles as Cordelia and Burgundy, and everyone was working hard to make the story’s setup as clear as possible. An absolute highlight was the scene’s final beat, when Regan and Goneril exchanged a catty look, then slithered over to their hapless sister, surrounding her as they pestered her with commentary. It was funny and chilling, and it perfectly displayed their roles.

Today was a success for many reasons: we finally finished blocking the play, Chuk took some amazing pictures of the guys at work… and, most of all, that performance of the final scene was not only a work of enormous commitment and integrity--it was a moment of genuine artistic achievement, which is never our goal with SIP, but which speaks to the creativity, work ethic, and bravery of this group of men.

Friday / March 1 / 2018
Written by Frannie

One of the highlights of each season of SIP is when we learn fight choreography for the show! There have been times in the past when I’ve taken the lead on this (I can manage some VERY basic fencing and hand-to-hand combat), but in recent years we’ve been extremely fortunate to have brought a bona fide stage combat choreographer onto the team! His name is Patrick Hanley, he’s also facilitated at Parnall and in youth workshops, he’s amazing, and everyone should hire him all the time for everything. That’s what I have to say about that.

Anyway, I spend a lot of time thanking my lucky stars (much to Edmund’s chagrin, I’m sure—fa, sol, la, mi...) for Patrick, and today was no exception. After a quick check in, the group divided up as each fight was choreographed, with great care and efficiency, while those who weren’t fighting took measurements for costumes, ran lines, looked for cuts to the text, or helped out in one area or another.

It was classic SIP to a tee. What could have been chaos somehow wasn’t; even though there was a lot going on, each person was wholly focused on whatever their task was at any given moment. Even people who generally don’t get along worked beautifully together, and the fights turned out amazing—or so I’m told; I spent the whole session doing textwork with folks.

Unfortunately, this made for a very short blog. I hope we get some really good photos of these fights in performance!

Season Two: Week 35

For saying so, there’s gold.

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Tuesday / February 19 / 2019
Written by Matt

During check in, one of our members asked whether we wanted to add new people to the ensemble for this 6-week home stretch. As always, this suggestion initiated a discussion. One of our veterans asked why we’d be adding people this late in the game, but a couple of the guys listed all the arguments on the side of adding folks. A few others jumped in, so that one man stopped everyone to get an accounting of the arguments on the other side. There was a short silence afterwards before Frannie suggested that if we wanted to take a few people, we should be clear with them that there are only small parts left and backstage work. “If new people are really serious about doing it, they’ll get it and get something out of it,” said one of the guys, and that was that.

We’ve been wanting to work on the final scene for a while now, but our Regan was missing--off doing something else, wearing one of his several hats! As people discussed what to do, our Lear barrelled forward, not wanting to lose momentum. He asked one of the guys who only has a small part in the scene to read in for Regan. When the man started to protest that he was already a messenger, Lear cut him off to say, “So, is that a yes?” And we were off!

Still, Lear had some trouble getting into the scene. We had worked the first beat a week and a half ago, but the scene’s emotional intensity is challenging, even in those earliest moments. We soldiered on, stopping shortly before the entrance of Edgar.

Mostly, the guys expressed some dismay at how distant they felt from the scene. “It’s like: ‘Love!’ and ‘Hip Hop!’ and ‘Shakespeare!’” said Albany a little cryptically, “I want it to be smooth! Like: BAM!” he stepped snappily at Regan, “BAM!” he stepped intimidatingly at Edmund. “But it didn’t work out that way.” Of everyone, our temporary Regan had the biggest epiphany: asked what was going on with Regan, he mused, “I feel like her self-editing software is failing.”

Frannie, as she had a week and a half ago, offered to step in to help the scene along with director-style blocking. We don’t usually do this, but it can help in terms of efficiency--and also as a way to free up the actors to do their work more deeply. We always ask permission and encourage ensemble members to pipe up if they have questions, suggestions, or better ideas. At this point in the season, we have a pretty good sense of the story we are all trying to tell, and everyone seems to feel very comfortable speaking up to prod, challenge, and suggest. And as squeamish as jumping in to direct makes us, Lear put us at ease: “When you did it last time,” he said, “I think you did it justice.”

So, we reset at the top of the scene and talked it through. Frannie directed Albany, Goneril, and Regan, and Lear asked for my help with some lines that were giving him trouble. “How can we make Albany nastier?” asked Frannie, and worked with our Albany to plant his feet and hold his ground. As we reset, our Edmund reminded Albany to “put some stank on it!”

Well, that seemed to do it! When revealing Goneril’s treachery, Albany heaved her at Edmund, as if to say, “Go on, take her,” but with a desperate sadness underlying the anger. I got chills.

We talked through Edgar’s entrance, too. We meet in the chapel on Tuesdays, so our playing space was a bit foreshortened, but we still tried to rough out the blocking. Actually, the compressed space helped with the main challenge: maintaining enough space between Edgar and Edmund for the tension to build before the fight. Edmund reflected on his emotional state, saying, “I don’t know who he is. I don’t know what he’s here for. My ego is popping!”

We marked the fight--Patrick Hanley, intrepid fight choreographer, sometime facilitator, and frienemy of the program, will be here next week to get the fight set--and Edmund died off to the side of the stage. Unprompted, Goneril rushed in and slid on his knees, exclaiming, “Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy?!” It was hilarious, but the laughter stopped the rehearsal dead, so we had to make him do it again (“But… these are my good pants!” he protested). His energy was amazing!

Our Albany was struggling a bit to focus his anger at Goneril on his powerful line: “Shut your mouth, dame, or with this paper shall I stop it!” It is such a forceful, direct line, and it needs the right delivery to land its full weight. Frannie helped him find the right energy, and Albany took the note and ran with it! He couldn’t resist adding a little wink to the end of his next line. “Read thine own evil,” he spat. “Yeeyuh!”

Then, since this scene does not let up, Edgar went in to make amends with his brother. Our Edgar started with some edge in his voice, directing the words about their father’s demise as a cutting final curse. His delivery was effective… but totally contrary to the text, and many of the words seemed not to fit as he used them to attack Edmund.

When we went back to recap that beat, Frannie talked to Edgar about using the words in the text to find Edgar’s emotional state, and one of the veterans wondered aloud whether we shouldn’t move the whole action of the scene upstage a bit, reminding us that some audience members in our Othello performance had trouble connecting with moments that occurred too far downstage.

In the final moments before we broke for the day, our Edmund noted, after we shifted him slightly, that the place he dies is also the place he stopped to assert his authority over Lear and Cordelia when they entered at the top of the scene. During the final run, Edgar lost the edge in his voice, and connected with Edmund, grabbing his arm. Hearing of their father’s fate, Edmund’s chest heaved with sobs. It was a great base for working through the rest of the scene on Friday!

Friday / February 22 / 2019
Written by Coffey

Today we built a scene while destroying a set.

But first things first.

Check-in was all about the future. Frannie reminded the group that we all need to start thinking about what we’ll be doing next season, the men discussed plans for finishing the gorgeous backdrop for the show, and Frannie shared that she’s acquired tops hats and flight goggles, contributing to the show’s steampunk theme.

I started rehearsal by leading the men in a vocal warmup. In this warmup, called “Oz”, the actor goes through the different vocal resonators in the body by embodying the Cowardly Lion (deep chest voice), the Wizard (chest voice), the Wicked Witch of the West (nasal resonators), and Dorothy (head voice). I was worried that the men might not take to this warmup, as it requires a lot of silliness. The guys, however, dove right in, bellowing “I AM OZ, THE GREAT AND POWERFUL,” and even screeching “Surrender, Dorothy!” while riding imaginary brooms. Silliness accomplished and voices warmed, we turned our focus to King Lear’s harrowing finale.

Occasionally in Shakespeare’s tragedies, the scenes in which everything is falling apart for the characters are the scenes which require the most structure and careful blocking. We definitely felt this today while working on Act V, scene 3. Lear and Cordelia are imprisoned, Edgar and Edmund confront each other and come to blows, and Regan and Goneril’s deeds finally catch up to them, all in a matter of fifteen minutes. Choreographing chaos began with just that—chaos. Five deaths in one long sequence is a lot, so we kept it simple and started with Edmund. After receiving a fatal wound from his brother Edgar (in disguise), he falls to the ground and confronts the havoc he has wrought. After getting Edmund to fall a little further upstage so we could hear and see him, we were treated to a glimpse of how well-developed his character has become. As Edgar revealed his true identity to his dying brother, Edmund threw his head back and gave a breathless, bitter laugh. Our Edmund was aware of the almost too-poetic justice being enacted and, true to form, laughed in its face. It was a dark moment but an impactful one to watch.

The next challenge in this chaotic finale was getting “dead bodies” on and off stage. While dragging Regan and Goneril in on large canvas sheets seemed like our best option, several set pieces still stood in the way of actors moving on and off stage with bodies in tow. After some ideas were thrown around, Frannie’s face lit up. She ran onto the stage and kicked the set pieces out of the way, knocking them out of place. It seemed to click with everyone - everything is falling out of place. Lear’s world is disintegrating—why not show that in a literal sense by letting the scenery fall apart along with the scene?

The last section of the sequence, Lear’s devastating entrance with Cordelia, is a huge moment, and it was clear that the actors were feeling a little intimidated about handling the scene’s weight. Emotional weight, yes, but also the weight of the actors themselves. Our Lear and Cordelia had a hard time figuring out how to bear Cordelia onto the stage, to the point that the scene almost started several times, but was stopped by those two busting into nervous laughter, shaking their heads, and heading right back off stage. Finally they figured out the best way to do it.

The entrance did start to get smooth enough for the men to continue the scene. Lear entered with the dead Cordelia, practically shaking the gym with his cries of grief. As Lear knelt down by his daughter’s body, he appeared to create a natural center to the scene as the other actors slowly but seamlessly gathered and knelt around the grieving father. The bewilderment at the scene’s end was palpable. After it ended, Lear reflected on his performance, admitting that there was “too much thinking”, but shared a beautiful take on the scene, rooted in the battle flag image he discovered during the Chekhov exercises we’ve done in the past: “[My battle flag] is just one little scrap, with one bright little spot. And that’s Cordelia.”

We closed our rehearsal, satisfied with the headway we made on this difficult scene and excited to see what more it has in store for us.

Season Two: Week 34

Once more unto the link, dear friends, once more!

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Tuesday / February 15 / 2019
Written by Coffey

We started our day with a new Fool and an old joke. During our check in, an ensemble member shared that the actor playing the Fool would no longer be joining us. Thankfully, one of our newest members volunteered to play the part, declaring that he was “80% willing to play the role, and 20% wanting it.”

After welcoming our new Fool to the cast, one man brought to the table the issue of “Dilly Dilly”. For those of you following along at home, “Dilly Dilly” is a phrase from a commercial that the men’s ensemble has successfully worked into every show they’ve done. The man who introduced the topic suggested that we put the phrase in Cornwall’s “Fetch forth the stocks!” in Act 2, scene 2. Matt reminded the group that this particular scene is an important point in the story and asked if they really wanted to put a punchline there, as it could put some of the story at risk. Another man agreed with Matt, adding, “Lear feels to me like a really heavy play.” He then asked if there were any points with a little levity, where “Dilly Dilly” wouldn’t seem so out of place. Our Lear brought up that it might fit in with Lear’s revelry at Goneril’s house. While we didn’t reach a decision, “Dilly Dilly”’s biggest proponent let us know that he didn’t care where the phrase went, as long as it was in the show.

Tabling that for the time being, we went on to play another round of “Mirrors”, the game Frannie brought back from her visit with The Actor’s Gang Prison Project (to get the rules of the game, see the blog from Week 33). This second go at the game had great energy and flow. One man and I agreed that the level of comfort and connection in the room had improved since last week. Even the ensemble members who hadn’t been with us for the game before dived right in and seemed to be having fun. “Without an ounce of rhythm in my body, I was in the flow!” exclaimed one man who was playing the game for the first time today. Another man observed that, during the game, “When a person picked up on the energy first and the movements second, they were a lot more successful with the transition.” Some of the guys struggled with the game. “I couldn’t get out of my head! I was stuck!” one man said. Another man shared that his “fear of dancing” was holding him back: “It was completely awkward the whole time. I’m not a dancer.” Maria, who we were lucky enough to have with us this Friday, said, “I have a hard time getting out of my head, but I felt like I had really great energy!”

For the next few minutes I led the men in Chekhov’s “Stick, Ball, Veil” exercise. This was new for some of them and hadn’t been revisited in a while for the rest, so I was interested to see how it would land at this point in our process. To give an outline of this exercise to those who don’t know it, I’ll use a section of Frannie’s blog post from Week 23:

“The idea here is that the quality of your movement changes depending on where you imagine your energy to be centered. If your entire body is one unit centered in your head, for example, you’ll move differently than if centered in your chest, or in your left hip, or your nose, or even somewhere outside of your physical body. (I know, it’s weird if you haven’t done it yourself, but bear with me!) We focused on the three main centers and their accompanying images:

THINKING: centered in the head / the image is a stick

WILLING: centered in the pelvis / the image is a ball

FEELING: centered in the chest / the image is a veil”

Using this framework, the men explored each center by holding and developing the corresponding images in their mind and then observing the effect of those images on their physicality. After spending about five minutes with each center and image, the men reflected on their experiences. Those who had done the exercise before compared this experience with the last one, noting times when they felt consistently comfortable or when they had consistent challenges. “This time around, I was able to project my imagination outward,” one man said. Our Goneril discovered that the veil was the hardest image to get into, while another man said that he learned the complete opposite was true for himself. One man’s veil image was a jellyfish, while another man’s was a tattered battle flag. One man, this second time around, found a strong connection to his image for the willing center: “I was really in that space, being a pinball.”

For those in the group doing the exercise for the first time, there was a broad mix of reactions. One man, who had done similar exercises for years, said, “For an energy manipulation exercise, this was the first time I really grasped it.” Another man asked, “Why do we do this? What are we supposed to get out of it?” Several men raised their hands to answer. “It’s about muscle memory,” one man said, “It’s about getting in the zone.” Another man added, “It’s about body language.” Then the men began to share the aspects of the exercise they found most helpful. “You have to be in the moment. You can’t really be affected by the outside environment,” one man said. Another man shared that he found the outside environment distracting, and was more comfortable when he “partnered up” with another ensemble member. One man shared that “For me personally, the exercise doesn’t help me get into character, but it helps me have a point of reference in talking to others about their characters.”

The conversation then turned to the exercise as it could apply to the characters in the play. “I was looking for aspects of it to apply to Burgundy,” our Burgundy said, “He’s this big personality, this ball stuck in a stick-like body. He’s not a veil… He’s just looking to cut a deal… There’s nothing ‘veil’ about Burgundy.” Matt reminded him that, when exploring a character, it helps to not use judgmental language when describing them. Our Lear agreed, saying that he used to view his character with judgment. Our Cornwall shared his discovery that his character had a close connection with the image of a walking stick: “Cornwall wants to be responsible for something,” he said.

For today’s scene work, our Goneril and Oswald asked that we take a look at Act 1, scene 3, which they had been working on outside of sessions. The scene is short and simple: Goneril grills Oswald about her father’s antics and orders him to act rudely towards him and his servants. While the scene is short, the two actors packed as much as they could into it. The first run saw Oswald running frantically back and forth across the stage as Goneril incessantly summoned him with a bell (in this case, a tambourine). “I thought there was a little too much of that,” one man in the audience said, pointing to the tambourine. “Too much schtick.”

Going into the second run of the scene, I suggested that Goneril wait to use the tambourine until she really needed it to get Oswald’s attention. While it was messy at first, Oswald and Goneril eventually slowed down, letting us see them react to each other. Goneril jangled her tambourine no more than four times. “That worked better,” one man said. Another man was particularly amused by Goneril’s facial reactions to Oswald: “You were at first like, ‘Why are you still standing here?’ And then you were like, ‘Why are you going away?’”

The third run of the scene (which our Lear insisted we do: “You don’t get out of three times! Three times is a charm!”) was comical magic. Goneril used the tambourine to keep Oswald on eggshells throughout the entire scene and added the punchline of a gloriously cold look towards Oswald right at the scene’s close. Their fine-tuned chemistry brought out hearty laughs from the audience. Lear was absolutely right - the third time was the charm!

Today was a day for stepping out of comfort zones. Whether it was overcoming a fear of dancing or getting out from behind a tambourine prop, many of the guys took a chance and stretched their imaginations just a little bit further, something I witness them doing at every session.

Season Two: Week 33

“Costumes and props and a set, oh my!”

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Tuesday / February 5 / 2019
Written by Matt

To start out today’s session, our Edmund revealed that he had been inspired by the back-and-forth between Lear and Gloucester. He wrote a letter of his own, this one to his brother, Edgar. “It’s a message in a bottle,” he said, before turning directly to Edgar and reading it.

“I know not when or how this missive shall find you,” it began. “Oh, Edgar, I pray you not damn me into the abyss for my endeavors… You know my heart has not always been so dark and unpure.” He went on to describe how his nature had never been “rogueish,” that he envied and admired his brother. “I pray you never have to live with the insidious ire and ever-growing contempt towards your own people as I have had to shoulder,” he wrote. “It’s a ravenous disdain that’s brought me to this precipice of blind indignation and nefarious insanity.”

Then the letter turned to rage. “Edmund the base, they call me. ...EDMUND THE BASE!!! … I shall have had enough!!!” He recounted his childhood, watching his father abandon his mother to ruin. “I am more than what’s perceived of me,” he wrote.

In the end, he created a heartbreaking image of Edmund trying to acquire the trappings of legitimacy as a child. “I have such fond memories of following & mimicking you when you weren’t looking. Dressing in your finest attire and returning to your library while you and Father were away. … Just imagining what it must feel like to be wholly accepted, to be… legitimate. Cursed word that I so fervently long for!!! NO!! No longer will I spend my hours residing in your shadows. Fare thee well, brother, the time for me to act quickly approaches. Godspeed, Edmund.”

Everyone was stunned by the force of the letter. “I don’t know how your story matched up exactly with mine,” said our Gloucester, who explained that he also imagined his character leaving his illegitimate son with his mother as a young child, as well as many other details that he hadn’t shared with us yet. These guys have a mind-meld going on!

Our Lear had a funny look on his face as he processed the letter. “Now I gotta write another letter.” Our Edmund said that he felt a release as he wrote. “He’s overwhelmed,” he said of his character. “The sense of desperation, I can relate to.” Lear said, “I bet that felt good.” Edmund replied, “It felt amazing.”

Our Edgar checked in about his experience of hearing the letter. He said he felt bad for his character’s actions. “[Edgar] is legitimate, but he doesn’t think that’s all that important,” he said. “He doesn’t want to ‘own’ it, but he’s living the life” of legitimacy.

For the rest of check-in, we talked about color schemes, eventually deciding to table that discussion to another time. When these guys start thinking symbolically, it gets intricate and involved quickly!

We did the Ring, and then Frannie checked in about her trip to California. I won’t go into all of the details here, but the guys were really excited to hear about all that she learned in her time with The Actor’s Gang Prison Project and Marin Shakespeare Company’s prison program. (Many thanks to Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the Anton Art Center for the mini-grant that made that happen!)

Some of the guys reflected afterwards about what SIP means to them. “For me,” said one, “it was the ability to delve into a part of myself that I didn’t know was there.” He continued, “By exploring our identity here, we’re expanding our humanity.”

With our remaining time (the letter and the California check-in took up a lot of our session, but it was good!), we worked Act V, scene i, in which Edmund plays Regan and Goneril off each other in front of Albany. As usual, our Regan and Goneril were both super-funny and on-point. The scene is comedic, and they played up the humor. Regan said that the sisters are “playing a perpetual chess game.”

The scene is so short we were able run it a few times, pausing after the sisters exited before continuing on to Edgar’s entrance. He hands Albany a note explaining the situation with Edmund. As Albany stood alone onstage, several people felt that the scene needed more urgency. “It’s like, ‘Yo, man, they rolling up right now!’” said one of the guys. “Even just in prison,” our Edgar said, explaining his hesitation, “if I know someone has a good heart, it can be a risk to go up and speak to them if you know they’re being conspired against.”

The other part that needed a little extra something was Edmund’s monologue, in which he puzzles out what to do with Regan and Goneril--will he “take” both or one or neither? He was having a little trouble connecting, and Frannie suggested that he bring the audience in on his situation. As he spoke, she vocally reacted to his questions and statements, and that did the trick. Edmund’s words came out with the clarity and force they needed, and one of the guys got so excited that he threw his hat across the room in jubilation!

Friday / February 8 / 2019
Written by Frannie

After our usual check-in, we circled up to play a game I learned from The Actors’ Gang Prison Project called “Mirrors.” In this exercise, one person comes to the center of the circle, moving and vocalizing until, organically, they arrive at something that “feels right” and then turn it into something rhythmic and repetitive. They move toward someone else in the circle, who mirrors exactly what they’re doing; the two then switch places, and the cycle repeats till everyone has been in the center.

It’s a game that sounds absolutely terrible because you just KNOW how vulnerable it’s going to make you feel, but when I told them how beloved it is in this other program, everyone decided to give it a go. It was definitely a little herky-jerky—new games usually are—but we had a lot of fun and reflected quite a bit on it afterward.

“I didn’t think it was gonna be so hard to come up with your own,” said one man, explaining that he hadn’t had a problem mirroring another person, but when it was his turn, “I found myself rushing to get out of the middle… That was intense. I did like that.” He turned to the man to whom he’d given his movement, saying he was grateful to him for taking his place! That man responded by thanking him for choosing a movement that was easy to replicate. “I was worried someone was gonna ask me to do some sort of ballet or tap maneuver,” he said, and a few others said they’d been conscious of that. “I had to consider somebody else’s situation with my movement,” said one person. We took good care of each other during this game.

“Each person demonstrated our own flash of personality… It’s like changing your inner man,” said one man. “[In theatre], you’re not only up on stage with your character, you’re up there with other characters. And you gotta feed off that energy.” A man who was in The Tempest last spring said, “That was one thing I learned about doing plays. [In one scene], we got messed up on our lines, but we knew we could make people understand, because we were in it together.” Another man nodded, “That was fun. Doing that was like being on stage. Doing that before a play would be awesome.”

“I felt vulnerable, and I loved it!” gushed another man. “I felt supported [when someone was mirroring me], but when we went quiet, I felt vulnerable. I noticed that the more I got into that rhythm of my own, it was like I turned myself inside out.” He said that the interplay between all of us reminded him that he “wasn’t alone.” Another man agreed, saying that his first instinct had been to run for the door. I asked him what had stopped him, and he said, “I knew someone would come and catch me!” Then he got a little more serious and said that, really, once he’d forced himself to stay in the circle for awhile, seeing other people let go made him feel calm, and he was able to participate after all.

We moved on to scene work, picking up at V.ii, a brief scene in which Edgar and Gloucester enter, Edgar ascertains that Cordelia’s army is retreating and she and Lear are prisoners, and father and son exit in haste. On that exit, Edgar surprised us by picking up Gloucester in his arms like a child and carrying him off. There was whooping from the usual suspects in the audience. Someone asked the actors how they’d decided on that approach to the exit, and Edgar replied, “It’s a serious scene, obviously... I figured, what would I do if I had a grandfather and there was a fire… We ain’t got no time! What do you do? You pick him up and you get out.”

Gloucester said he felt like he’d rushed. “I should have fed off of his energy more and put it into my voice,” he said. “I was thinking about how to be sick instead of just being sick.” Another man agreed, saying both the energy and the language are important: “You build the climax up to where [Cordelia and Lear] come in as prisoners.”

We talked, too, about the challenge of Edgar seeing the retreat happen offstage. After some discussion, we decided to ruminate on how sound effects could help tell the story. We’ve got some great options in the gym at Parnall, and, luckily, a couple of ensemble members who work with the equipment on a regular basis, so… stay tuned!

We ran the scene again, and the actors made spot-on adjustments so we could hear and understand the words without losing urgency. “YES!” two men exclaimed afterward, as the rest of us applauded. Edgar said he’d been worried that carrying Gloucester off would be funny, but the consensus was that it’s not—it’s actually perfect, and incredibly moving. This is the last time we see Gloucester, and the image of his being carried like an infant by his son completes the arc he’s been on throughout the play: to “second childishness” in Shakespeare’s words, and “a reverse parent” in an ensemble member’s. “You guys have got that down,” said one man admiringly. “That pisses me off. That’s ridiculous. Fantastic.”

Next up was V.iii, and the first thing I noticed was that our Cordelia was off book! He has terrible stage fright, and his delivery was understandably halting and muted. One of the guys, excited and eager to hear Cordelia’s voice (which can be quite powerful) exclaimed, “Rage! Blow!” (our new code for “project your voice!”). Unfortunately, it threw Cordelia off. We paused the scene so he could re-center himself, and the man who’d given the note apologized, saying he hadn’t thought it through. “He does need to project more,” I said, “but he’s just gotten the courage to get on stage, and he’s somehow off book already… Give him some time. He’ll get there.” Another man nodded, saying that he’s been working with Cordelia a lot and is excited by the progress he’s making.

We restarted and got through this first unit, but the actors felt “disconnected”—no one quite knew how to stage the scene. We were running out of time, and a few people had expressed concern about how long this part of the process is taking, so I asked if I could go ahead and block the scene, for efficiency’s sake—and asked everyone to speak up if they had better ideas as I went. No one objected—they even seemed a little excited—and I sprang into action, confirming that I understood each actor’s interpretation of their character in the scene and explaining the blocking from there.

We gave the scene another go, and it worked pretty well! After talking it through briefly, it was time to go. This was exactly the kind of day we needed: productive, reflective, and dominated by a sense of togetherness.