WEEK NINETEEN
Tuesday / May 23 / 2023
Written by Kyle Fisher-Grant
Tonight we welcomed some new participants to the ensemble. Whenever new members are added there can be a feeling of unease; we go to great lengths to establish a sense of safety in the room and new folks, by virtue of being “newbies,” need a few sessions to be brought into that culture. This is inevitable and there is really only one way through—so we got down to business!
The group was very warm and welcoming to the new members as we worked our way through the welcome packet, and existing ensemble members played a leadership role in the onboarding process. I only spoke up in a few key spots; otherwise, the rest of the ensemble led most of the evening, and they had some really wonderful things to say about being members of SIP. One member remarked, “When I first came here, I was dragged here in February. I wasn’t going to meet new people. Now I talk to new people, and it opened me up to talk to new people and new things.” Another great exchange happened between a new member and a few existing members:
“It's a good energy here,” said the new member.
“We LOVE this group,” said an existing member.
“With a passion!” said another.
“And we’re not just doing that because you’re here either,” said yet another member.
Most importantly, at the conclusion of the packet a few ensemble members were eager to perform some of their favorite scenes. We started with the gravedigger scene, which, with their “country accents,” is quickly becoming an ensemble favorite. Next they performed act three, scene three: the back-to-back soliloquies by Claudius and Hamlet. The woman playing Claudius explained to the new members that “there is so much passion. This is what draws me. He wants to repent but he can’t let go of why he did it … I’ve had that moment of prayer about what I want and wondering if they’re just words. This speech made me love this character.”
This brought the evening to a close, and we left feeling like we had really given the new members a good example of just what SIP is all about.
Friday / May 26 / 2023
Written by Kyle Fisher-Grant
Tonight was a very unexpected and interesting night. In addition to welcoming a few more new members to the ensemble, several of our pre-covid “veteran” members rejoined. It was amazing to see them and welcome them back into the group. I wondered what they might think of things because, despite the important philosophical elements of the program having remained as they were, the logistics of this ensemble are quite different as we figure out SIP’s “new normal.” We aren’t working with our pre-covid nine-month season timeline, we’ll be working through the summer without a break, and, although we are definitely going to perform at some point, we don’t yet have a performance on the calendar; these things, in turn, affect our sense of what we “need to get done” during a given session, among other things. It’s not that I thought they would be averse to these changes, nor did I think it would be any kind of struggle; but things are different than they were a few years ago, and the vets will need to do some adjusting. It was just wonderful to see them again, and we all were excited to continue our work.
Most of the night was spent on the three questions, which we try to do within the first couple nights of new members’ joining. I took a few minutes to meet with the veteran members separately for a little re-orientation session, while the rest of the ensemble began to dive into the text. All questions were answered to the best of my ability, and we ended with a challenge to join the new ensemble and meet them where they are. So, in short order, we rejoined the rest of the group and joined them in reading act one, scene one, of Hamlet.
WEEK TWENTY
Tuesday / May 30 / 2023
Written by Kyle Fisher-Grant
Tonight we continued toward our goal of working our way through the play, beginning to end, with the new members. This time, the plan is to spend the majority of our time “on our feet,” meaning acting out the scene rather than reading while seated. If I had to pinpoint the biggest challenge so far for new members, it is developing a knack for blocking and stage movement. As with most beginning actors, there is a tendency to stand in one place and read the lines—essentially, reading the play as we did before, except now while standing.
The other challenge is to learn a sense of theatricality with staging. The natural instinct for the ensemble members, and really anyone I’ve worked with new to theatre, is to stand a realistic distance away from their scene partner and stay there until the end of the scene, similar to how a conversation would occur in real life. We are looking at stage movement in three ways:
Distance from your scene partner reads very differently to the audience, despite its not feeling “natural” to you as an actor.
Blocking is part of the storytelling, and symbolic connections can be made by an actor's placement on stage.
Acting is a full-body experience, and we need to try to exist fully in the space, and fully in our bodies. It’s exciting but difficult to explain without anything to reference; that being said, when they “get it” the effect is electric.
This is largely what we worked on tonight. We inched our way through act one, scene one, and struggled to think our way through how we could stage the story of Hamlet. There were lots of great ideas, most of which centered around the ghost and how he would be presented. It was great to hear the ideas, some of which were fantastical and involved harnesses and flying the ghost in, some of which were as simple as dropping our ideas of what a ghost was (outstretched hands, howling boos, etc.) in favor of what would tell the story best.
Friday / June 2 / 2023
Written by Kyle Fisher-Grant
Every so often in SIP, there comes a time when a game night is in order. They’re impossible to anticipate, and sometimes, like this past Friday, just kind of unfold in real time. We start by acknowledging that the ensemble is feeling a bit blasè on a specific day– today being a hot summer Friday night. We play a game to loosen up a bit, we play for a bit longer than we think, and the members of the group start laughing despite themselves. Next, we ask the question “Do we want to read or play another game?” and before the words hit the air, someone has suggested another game. We play that game and still, we think, we have time to get through a scene. It happens again, and we are playing the next game. The ensemble then gets really into a game, maybe laughing a ton or perhaps getting uncharacteristically competitive. Somewhere in there, a realization sets in that Shakespeare will not be discussed tonight. Maybe we fool ourselves for a bit that that’s not going to be the case, but eventually we settle into the fact that we need to play games, and then we lean into it and keep playing. By eight o’clock our faces hurt from smiling, our sides hurt a bit from laughing, and we put the ring up and decide to really get to work next time.
Friday was such a night—it was well deserved and much needed. Also, with so many new members in the ensemble, it was a great way to bring them into what SIP is all about.
WEEK TWENTY ONE
Tuesday / June 6 / 2023
Written by Kyle Fisher-Grant
We had more new members tonight, just as we have during the last couple of sessions. As I’ve said before, there is always a bit of adjusting that happens when there are new members in the group, and this will most likely continue for a little while longer.
We started the night with a performance from one of our newer members who had been practicing a scene with another member in their unit. They decided to perform act four, scene one, where Laertes witnesses Opehlia’s unraveling. It’s a difficult scene for professionals and amateurs alike, and is typically avoided by the ensemble because Ophelia sings. We always begin by explaining that Ophelia’s singing doesn’t need to be good—it's part of her insanity, and it can even seem more realistic if the singing is not very good. Only one or two members have been willing to try playing Ophelia in this scene, so it was a pleasant surprise when one of our new members gave it a shot. She did a great job and clearly has some background in singing. Everyone applauded. It was a great way to start the evening.
We ended up working on act one, scene one, again, but this time it was led by one of the group’s veterans. She did a great job nudging the ensemble, and we even tried the scene in proscenium, a leap in staging this ensemble hadn’t yet taken. It was exciting for everyone, and immediately a few members became instant “directors.” The conversation continued to revolve around how the ghost was going to be presented and perceived by the other characters. This merited a lot of discussion, and when the deliberation had become extensive we eventually decided to just perform it “wrong” and fix it later. It went great, and, although there were some notes for the actors on how we could stage it more effectively, we ended the scene after one run and moved on for the night. We finished the night with a game requested by a newcomer and left feeling great about our work.
Friday / June 9 / 2023
Written by Kyle Fisher-Grant
Tonight there was a performance by the dance group in the auditorium, so we met in one of the classrooms in the programs building. Being in the classroom always gives a little different feel to the night and makes us work in a bit of a different way, which can be kind of nice, especially when adding new members to the group, as it really eases the pressure of “being on stage.”
We started the night with one ensemble member performing her favorite piece, a Hamlet soliloquy from act two, scene two, that begins, “Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I…” She said she only had the first couple of lines down, so we just worked on what she had, beginning with her focus: was she talking to herself or to the audience? We tried it both ways, and she seemed to like talking to the audience better. As we dug into her character, she stopped and asked, “What is my body saying?” (meaning, is the way she was moving reflective of what the character was saying?) We talked about her shuffling her feet a bit, and seeming too casual to truly reflect what Hamlet is saying about himself and his decisions.
We finished the night with act one, scene two, which introduces Hamlet, Getrude, and Claudius (whom one new member has re-named “Uncle Daddy”). When we work through scenes, members are encouraged to tag in and out when they want to take over the part. Many people got up to perform this way, including two newer members for whom it was their first time performing. We could really see them starting to “get” the Shakespearean language, and starting to dig into SIP.
It was a great night!