WEEK TWELVE
Tuesday / April 11 / 2023
Written by KFG
We started the night with one ensemble member speaking about how much the program has meant to her so far. It was a great way to start the evening, and we jumped into the work in short order. We’ve gotten into a good rhythm of starting each evening with performances that the ensemble has been working on in their units.
This evening began with five different performances from the group, including one member who had never performed before. We’ve been encouraging (and sometimes outright goading!) her to perform for a few weeks, and she has had the same answer: “Too much stage fright.” So it was really exciting to see such an active and dedicated member start to explore this aspect of the program. She said, “Believe it or not, I felt pretty good. I was freaked out, but I wanted to stay with it. … The more I read, the better I feel, and I’m breaking out of my shell.” A few ensemble members got a scene up on their feet that they had not yet rehearsed. That may not sound like much, but sometimes it can be very difficult for the ensemble members to even read aloud because of embarrassment. To be on their feet with no rehearsal—just trying a character on for size—was really indicative of the sense of safety we have cultivated.
We continued on with Hamlet and read through Act one, scene four: the big one that everyone in the group has been anxious to read. It’s the scene where Hamlet confronts his mother Gertrude, and is so forceful in his confrontation that the ghost returns to keep Hamlet in check. Additionally, it is the scene in which the first blood of the play is drawn, when Hamlet kills Polonius. The idea of Claudius being the villain of the play because he has killed Hamlet’s father, and now Hamlet killing the father of Laertes and Ophelia, was a big point of discussion. The idea that Hamlet has become the thing he hates loomed large in the group. One person said, “Hamlet is turning Laeretes into Hamlet by killing his father!” Some pointed out that it was an accident: “How many people are here because of being caught in the heat of the moment?” One ensemble member responded, “That’s why I’m here, because of two minutes of my life.” So the scene really seemed to land, and the gravity of Hamlet’s situation was not lost on the ensemble.
Another big point of discussion was the return of the ghost, and why it is that Gertrude cannot see him. The guards and Horatio can all see him in the first scenes of the play, so why is he now invisible to Gertrude? There were a flood of theories and we had a great time picking them apart.
We ended the night with a challenge: to start framing the conversation around what each character wants in each scene. It is one of the big questions in modern acting and immediately seemed to activate the group. In the last 15 min of the night no doubt. “He wants love and acceptance!” said one woman. “He wants Gertrude to know his pain,” said another. Other comments included: “He wants to know if Gertrude was part of the murder”; “She wants to shut him out so she doesn’t have to deal with him”; and “She wants to protect him.” It was like a rapid fire lightning round on a game show—we facilitators could barely write down all the responses, they were coming so fast. It seems like the challenge has been accepted.
Friday / April 14 / 2023
Tonight was another great night in the ensemble. The check-ins have all been very thoughtful and vulnerable, and the group's cohesion is apparent during those first fifteen minutes. Afterward, we jumped right into reading the play, and tonight's selection seemed to fly by. There were several small scenes that ran back-to-back, so it seemed like we were able to just knock down several scenes in one go. We were also able to get most of them up on their feet, and because of their brevity and straightforwardness we were able to play with the staging of the scenes without getting too far into the weeds.
A favorite of the group’s was Act Four, scene three, where Hamlet is flippantly defiant to his uncle. “That felt great! I love being cocky!” said the actor who played Hamlet. Another remarked, “Claudius is next. We all know worms eat dead bodies, and so you’re next.” The night’s selection ended with Hamlet’s encounter with Fortinbras—most of the ensemble had to remember who Fortinbras even was and how he related to the story. “Hamlet is so wishy-washy,” one woman said. “This guy Fortinbras is doing it right!”
We finished the night playing Hitchhiker, a historical favorite of the group. As always, it did not disappoint, and we were able to finish the evening with some much needed silliness. At least seventy five percent of the group participated in this improv game, and one hundred percent were laughing along with us.
WEEK FIFTEEN
Written by Kyle Fisher-Grant
Tuesday / April 25 / 2023
We began the night with a request to play an improv game, which made for a nice change and a great way to start. The ensemble have not been too interested in the improv games so far this year, so they have tended to happen at the end of the evening with whatever time is left, if we play them at all!
Tonight, there was a specific request to play a game we played earlier in the season when we had a very light attendance night, so it wasn’t really clear who knew the game already. The game was Dr.-Know-It-All, the crux of which is that each member of a three-person team can only say one word at a time to give (sometimes nonsensical) answers to questions from the group. There were a lot of hiccups at first, but we muddled our way through the game and were all having a great time. We then tried the game in Spanish, as a few of our members only speak Spanish. It was a lot of fun trying to get everyone on the same page, and my face hurt from smiling by the end of the game.
After we finished the game we started reading Act Four, scene five. It’s a very consequential scene for a number of reasons, mainly because we learn that Ophelia, (Hamlet’s love interest), in the wake of her father’s death at the Hamlet’s hands, has gone mad. Unlike some of the madness earlier in the play, Ophelia is completely divorced from reality, and it is clear that she is past the point of return.
The main focus of the conversation though was not on Ophelia’s insanity, but on Gertrude’s initial refusal to see Ophelia. We spent almost no time discussing why we thought Ophelia had gone insane, which typically is the main attraction of the scene, but on a few lines from Gertrude. “Gertrude is responsible for Polonius’ death because she asked him to spy, so she probably feels guilty,” said one member. Another said, “She has to feel some kind of responsibility for the things going on in the castle!” Still another said, “She thinks this is happening because of Ophelia,” on account of Ophelia’s participation in the previous spying, “No one wants to be responsible for anything that is happening. She’s heartless—only concerned with protecting Hamlet!” Another added “[All] the indirectness is responsible for all the bad things in the play.”
In the second half of the scene, Ophelia’s brother Laertes returns and wants revenge on the person who killed his father. This is the opposite of Hamlet’s response to King Hamlet’s murder, and the ensemble really enjoyed seeing a character who was ready to take action. One woman said, “[Laertes] is taking charge, and I can feel it! This is how I would feel about my dad. He’s all business. I can feel the anger.” Another member pointed out, “The irony is that Claudius is still controlling everything and staying on top.”
We were all pretty excited to get the scene up on its feet; the ensemble is starting to develop a bit more understanding of acting technique. The ideas of staying in character when you don’t have lines, of reacting and responding to what the other characters are saying, of committing to the character fully, all are slowly being developed. Until now, it has been more about just getting up on your feet and reading aloud, and that has been more than enough of a challenge for many ensemble members. It feels like we are transitioning to another phase, where we are “leveling up” as a group. One member really demonstrated this by playing Laertes and going down on her knees, really committing to the role. Then she backed off and made a joke. We talked about this afterwards, about how just as she was right at the edge, she immediately laid off the character. It was right at the end of the night, so the ensemble agreed that we would talk more about this on Friday, and that we’d continue to work towards a deeper connection to the text.
Friday
Tonight felt like a real breakthrough, in that we worked within a new structure, with a level of personal challenge from the ensemble as a whole to which only a few had really committed before. We decided to revisit Tuesday’s scene, which was the ideal for taking a deep dive. Each character has quite a bit to do, but there is not the extra layer of wordplay that occurs in so many other scenes. It’s easy to get in the weeds a bit with double meanings and philosophical musings, but in this scene each character’s objective is unique, dynamic, and their “want” is very high-stakes. There are also a lot of characters, so everyone in the ensemble was able to have a part in the scene.
We decided to work this like a rehearsal of sorts, where we set the stage ahead of time, and went beat to beat, stopping where we didn’t feel like the scene was working. Right away, our Ophelia had difficulties committing to the madness. We talked about different ways she could imagine it, and how there was a definite detachment from what the other characters are concerned with and thinking. She said, “I feel like I have the whole stage, and I don’t know what to do with it!” We also talked about how she started goofing around when she started feeling nervous, and that the nervous feeling comes from vulnerability, which is where the acting starts happening; that it is like a car that won’t start, and she is pulling the key right as the engine is about to turn over. She smiled really big and said she’s excited to give this a try. She also added that it was hard to do with a book in hand, and that she wants to work on it over the weekend for Tuesday night.
The group as a whole was engaged during this time, throwing out lots of supportive comments and snaps while we stumbled through the scene. Each character went through a similar treatment: we asked what they wanted, where they were going, and we would stop when the movement seemed off or the commitment seemed to wane. Our Laertes had to address the subtle movements and non-movements of her character. There was the immortal director’s note in every theatre in the last hundred years: “If you want to move, then move!” We talked about what that looks like, the way children do a dance when they need to use the bathroom: if you have to go then go! Don’t stay in one place and dance around the fact that your character wants to move, just do it and do it completely.
It was a really fun night, and the whole ensemble was abuzz with excitement. One member said, “I’m super pumped. I don’t know how I’m supposed to go to bed now!”
WEEK SIXTEEN
Written by Kyle Fisher-Grant
Tuesday / May 2 / 2023
Some ensemble members are really starting to take ownership of some of the roles in the play. One woman feels a particular affinity for Laertes and reads for that role every chance she can get. She started the night by asking, “At the end of my scene, am I appalled by Ophelia?” We weren’t talking about that scene at that moment, she just brought it up, knowing we would know that she meant Laertes' big confrontational scene, and that she would be playing Laertes.
We continued moving forward with the play. In the first part of Act Four, scene seven, King Claudius convinces (and, arguably, manipulates) Laertes into taking his revenge on Hamlet covertly, which requires complicated plans and lots of poison. There was a lot of discussion about how much, or to what degree, Laertes is actually being manipulated. “He was already to go. Laertes was ready to kill—he didn’t get manipulated,” said one woman. Another counted that it’s not that he’s being manipulated to take his revenge, but how he’s taking it. “Now he’s the poisoner” instead of doing it in the light of day, she said.
A few weeks ago, one member pointed out that all the bad things in the play stem from indirectness, and now she pointed out that Laertes is moving from a direct to an indirect mindset in his approach to the task at hand. The first instinct in the group was to reproach Claudius for his manipulation, and there was some identification with being manipulated by “a Claudius” in their life.
One ensemble member went in another direction: “I’ve been manipulative like that. Everything that came out of my mouth was a lie… I learned everything on the streets. You think you’re living up to some expectations, but you’re dying a little everyday.” And suddenly the group moved to a place where we were discussing our identification with Claudius, our identification with Hamlet, and what we imagined Hamlet’s identification with Claudius would be. There was a lot of good natured debate, in the middle of which one ensemble member said, “This is what I love about this group, we can all disagree!” There were lots of head nods and vocal agreements. She went on to say, “I don’t have to be a badass when someone scuffs my shoes. I can be normal. I can be me.” Another member said, “I only stayed for my girlfriend [who was in the group], but now it’s something I want to be involved with. I want to get involved with the theatre. It’s part of my parole plan. I’d have picked on you in high school, and now I’m one of you guys!”
Friday / May 5 / 2023
It's a real joy to work with a text so familiar to me with ensemble members who are reading it for the first time while in session. The twists and turns are felt in real-time, and it can be hard to remember that everyone is not familiar with Hamlet. In tonight's scene, (the second half of Act Four, scene seven) we discover that Ophelia, Hamlet’s love interest, has died by drowning. This is reported in great detail by Gertrude, and it was the ensemble’s general interpretation that Gertrude was a witness, but cared little for Ophelia and felt nothing about her death. “She just watched her go down,” said one person. “I felt she’s all monotone,” said another. One member countered, “We don’t know Gertrude saw this. How I hear this is more like someone recounted this to her, or maybe Gertrude saw it from far away and couldn’t get to her.”
We talked more about the episode in the text, and it was pointed out that Gertrude never actually says that she cares nothing for Ophelia; furthermore, she never says anything about feeling loving towards her, either. So, textually speaking, one interpretation was as valid as the other, and we asked if the ensemble member playing Gertrude, (Another member of the ensemble who has something of a monopoly on a character) would try it again with the interpretation that she was heartbroken about Opehlia’s death.
She read the passage with this different interpretation and earned loud applause from the ensemble. We talked about how we felt about it now, and even gained the slightest of concessions from our Gertrude that the reading was still textually adherent. We even managed to get a few more dissenters from the ensemble. “It changed my mind!” said one. “It was more sincere. She was broken down,” said another. We finished the discussion with the decision going to the actor playing the role. It’s exciting to see the ensemble beginning to think about how they would interpret a given character, and it’s a joy to see that kind of empowerment take hold.