Session Three: Weeks 13 and 14

Unfortunately, this very cold and snowy January has caused us to miss several sessions! Here are updates from the two most recent meetings of the group.  

Week Thirteen

After missing another day due to weather, we convened ready to cast the show. We came at it in the same way that I normally would as a director, although of course this was a group effort: We went through all of the characters and listed every person in the group who might be a good fit for each of them. We narrowed it down from there, checking in with individuals to be sure that they felt good about playing whatever role was being discussed.

This took about an hour and a half, but there was no real conflict to speak of. Any time something came up – two people very interested in the same role, for example – a member of the group would speak up with some insight or an opinion, and we would resolve the issue together. The cast list we ended up with fits the group very well, although there are some holes which we will strive to fill with new members. The process went through with a focus on the group as a whole, not just individuals, and with a lot of respect. We were all pretty pleased.

Week Fourteen

Written by Matthew

At last, the reading is done!

We had an unexpectedly short day on Tuesday because of a lockdown.  An ambulance needed to enter the prison grounds, which stopped all activity for about an hour.  Guests and prisoners were asked to stay where they were.

By the time the prison gave the “all clear” and everyone was through security, less than an hour remained in our program time.

The participants—a core group of eight or so was present—had already warmed up and begun reading the long final scene of the play.  They read through the scene without stopping or commenting.  Upon finishing the scene, they immediately focused on two questions: why does no one react strongly to Friar Lawrence’s confession, and who is to blame?  The women found that Friar Lawrence bears significant responsibility for bungling the operation, though the families, of course, started the whole thing.

Most excitingly, a few women who do not usually volunteer to read were given major parts, and the group was extremely complimentary about their reading.  Perhaps for this reason, a participant who has demurred every time she’s offered a significant role volunteered—with some prodding—to play Friar Lawrence when we acted out the scene.  She played the part beautifully, and everyone agreed it was a big step forward for her.

On its feet, the scene proved challenging.  The women decided only to read from Romeo’s entrance into the Capulet crypt to Juliet’s suicide, but even that section was difficult to stage.  An onlooker observed that Romeo doesn’t recognize Juliet’s betrothed, Paris, until he’s already dead.  This makes Romeo’s violent reaction to his presence puzzling.  The woman reading Juliet pointed out that Juliet doesn’t notice the bodies of Paris and Romeo—dead at her feet—until the friar points the bodies out, which makes choosing a place for Romeo and Paris to die challenging.

Still, they were determined to get it right and, when they encountered a problem, the participants often decided to backtrack a bit and fix it rather than plowing ahead.  Each challenge started a good conversation about the effect of blocking on the dramatic impact of the performance.

After running through part of the scene, it was already time to leave.  We closed up the auditorium and trudged back to our units and homes.

Session Three: Week 12

Thursday  

After a longer-than-anticipated hiatus due to our lovely Michigan weather, the group reconvened today eager to get to the next phase of the process. The consensus was that, while they enjoy reading through a scene and then putting it on its feet, they have a pretty good handle on the language now and want to just read the rest of the play, only staging things they don’t understand (if anything), and then cast it and begin working toward their performance.

So we read through the remainder of the play, up until the final scene, which is lengthy. Below are some notes I took from our brief discussions of these scenes, all of which were straightforward enough that no one felt the need to put them on their feet at this point.

Act III, Scene iii

• One woman said she “loves this scene,” and most of the others agreed. They feel that it is a clear and dramatic turning point for all of the characters in it.

Act III, Scene iv

• Capulet seems to live in his own world, doing whatever he wants. This is exemplified by his desire to hasten the wedding of Juliet and Paris, despite the family’s grief over the loss of Tybalt.

Act III, Scene v

• As we read this scene aloud, there were repeated vocal reactions to Capulet’s abusive language. The things he says to Juliet especially, but also to his wife and the Nurse, are crystal clear even hundreds of years later. No need for interpretation here.
   
• The women discussed that Capulet goes from zero to sixty in his rage.
   
• There was also a discussion about Juliet’s situation – she is a cloistered, naïve teenager, so how can we understand her actions in that context as she’s abandoned by all three of her “parental units” within minutes?

Act IV, Scene i

• Why does the Friar choose such a complicated plan? Why not just take Juliet to Mantua? Or send a message to Romeo immediately telling him what’s going on? Why all the secrecy and plotting?
   
• Why doesn’t Juliet just leave? The women believe that, beyond her being sheltered and inexperienced, Capulet is very powerful and has eyes everywhere, like a modern day Mafia boss.

Act IV, Scenes ii and iii

• The grief of the characters is very obvious here, but the women were confused about the extent to which people who show little care for Juliet previously would be grieving now. This is definitely going to merit further exploration once we’re cast, since there are some clues in the text, but many of the women aren’t buying that the Capulets actually love their daughter.
   
• One woman pointed out that the Friar downplays the tragedy and seems to rush everyone to bury Juliet as quickly as possible to keep his plan in motion.

Act V, Scene i

• We discussed Romeo’s assertion that money is poison, and that the Apothecary commits a crime to abate his poverty, and not because he is inherently a criminal.

The plan now is to cast the play at our next meeting and begin to stage it from there. The women asked for a detailed “rehearsal schedule,” which I’ve made, always with the caveat that we know we’ll have to be flexible. Everyone is very excited to get on with it!

Session Three: Week 11

Tuesday  

We welcomed some new members to the group today. A couple of them said that they weren’t completely sure they would stay, but were willing to try it out. That’s good enough for us! We’ll see how it goes.

After orientation, introductions and warm ups, we sat in a circle to read and discuss Act III Scene II, in which the Nurse tells Juliet of Tybalt’s death and Romeo’s banishment. This scene is remarkably straightforward, and the women immediately understood and identified with the grief and anger expressed by both characters. They noted that in the opening monologue, “Gallop apace…”, Juliet doesn’t seem scared – she is bold and excited: a teenager! They also brought up how she doesn’t completely lose her grip even in her grief: she tries to rationalize how she is feeling, compartmentalize and take control, although she is conflicted.

In trying to get at the emotion in the scene, I led the group through an exercise in which we read some of the lines together, pausing for breath at each punctuation. The two sections we read were:

Nurse:

There's no trust, No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured, All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers. These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old. Shame come to Romeo!

... and...

Juliet:

But with a rear-ward following Tybalt's death, 'Romeo is banished,' to speak that word, Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet, All slain, all dead. 'Romeo is banished!' There is no end, no limit, measure, bound, In that word's death; no words can that woe sound.

“Does that feel familiar?” I asked. “What is going on here?” And the answer came back resoundingly: they are sobbing. This is one of my favorite aspects of Shakespeare – when the text alone, spoken aloud, tells you exactly what is happening in the scene. Many of the women were excited by this – their eyes lit up, especially those new to the group, as this is a prime example of Shakespeare being accessible to everyone, no matter what your background is.

Today was the last day for one of our longtime members, the woman who played Prospero in The Tempest. She was granted parole and will be going home soon. We said goodbye and thanked her for everything she has brought to the group. She likewise thanked us, saying that Shakespeare was one of the things that got her through her time in prison. We will miss having her in the group, as she’s been a wonderful leader and support for everyone, but we are thrilled for her as she takes this huge step.

Thursday

Most of our new members were back today, willing to give it another shot. We were very pleased to welcome them back!

After warm ups and a game, we decided to work more with Act III Scene II, since all we did on Tuesday was to read it. We reviewed the scene, and then pairs of women volunteered to try it on its feet.

The first pair gave a reading that was well informed, but lacking much physicality. Even so, they were moved by the experience and made discoveries. The woman playing Juliet, who was on stage for the first time in her life, remarked that “you can’t help but become Juliet.” She had gotten goosebumps. The woman reading the Nurse deeply felt the character’s conflict in terms of where her loyalties lie. We gave them some constructive criticism and suggestions for how to progress in the scene – what they could do physically, what to focus on – and the scene improved dramatically.

The next pair had a very intense experience. It was also the first time on stage for both of these women. The Nurse was very nervous at first, so nervous that she couldn’t help but smile even as she delivered the line, “He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s dead!” Juliet, however, dove in, her voice shaking with emotion, her body sinking into a chair. She was so moving, in fact, that the Nurse forgot her inhibitions and focused on her scene partner. She then did something with the scene that the facilitators (all trained actresses/directors/teachers) had never seen before. When she said the lines...

There's no trust, No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured, All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers. These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old. Shame come to Romeo!

… She put her hand on Juliet’s shoulder, saying it very softly and with the clear objective of comforting her. It worked beautifully. The entire group was deeply moved by their performance and enthusiastic about this first effort.

Two of our other newbies performed as well, but unfortunately we ran out of time before we could give them solid constructive criticism. Even so, today’s experience was positive enough that all of the new members voiced enthusiasm and a desire to stick with the group.

We will not be meeting for the next couple of weeks because of the holidays, so the group set a goal of reading the rest of the play individually, even if they don’t understand all of it, to speed our progress when we come back. Everyone is eager to cast the play and begin working toward performance!

Session Three: Week 10

Tuesday  

We were able to follow through on our plan today, performing the fight for members of the group who weren’t at the last session. The woman who played Romeo on Thursday was not present today, so a woman who had watched and coached the scene took her place. The woman who had played Benvolio suddenly felt awkward, so I took over that part. It’s always been an important aspect of the group that we don’t force people to perform if they’re truly uncomfortable, so I didn’t mind subbing in.

The scene still worked remarkably well. The people who were not there on Thursday, including Matt and Molly, talked about how good the pacing was and how clear most of the relationships were. They were also very impressed by the ability of the woman who played Romeo to jump in, which was due to her being physically present and paying close attention last time.

We moved on to analyze the rest of this scene. A major discussion took place surrounding Benvolio’s monologue, as some of the women felt that he was throwing Romeo under the bus. It turned out that nearly everyone had a different interpretation here for why he tells the story the way he does. Is he telling it in a truly impartial way to the Prince? Not really. Is he guilty that he didn’t get more involved? Is he defending himself from punishment? I honestly have never given that much thought to this piece, and that’s part of what I love about working with Shakespeare with these women – they each have such a unique perspective on the material and are so willing to share and discuss.

Thursday

There was some conflict at the end of the last session, and we spent the beginning of this one touching base to make sure that we are able to move forward as a group and be just as strong as ever. All of the women had constructive input and are confident that the group will continue to thrive.

We reviewed the “party scene” today for clarification’s sake. The dynamics in this scene are incredibly important and definitely merited another look. We talked about the anger expressed by Tybalt and Capulet and the possibilities for where it comes from and how it surfaces. We worked on Romeo’s worship of Juliet the moment he sees her, and then we talked a lot about the Nurse. How does she always seem to know what’s going on? The group settled on that she is a snoop and loves drama. The woman reading the Nurse further speculated that she could be drunk in this scene. Working with that, we found a lot of comedy and further justification for the knowledge she has throughout the scene.

We ran the scene with no stops, and it worked very well. Today was a good day for regrouping, refocusing, and continuing to explore.

Session Three: Week 9

Tuesday  

We explored the next two scenes today – Act II Scenes V and VI. We worked on finding the physicality and energy in these scenes that worked best, finding. We found, for instance, that the more frantic Juliet is to get information, and the more slow-paced the Nurse is in giving it, the funnier the scene is. Likewise, we explored the physicality of the scene in which Romeo and Juliet meet with the Friar, having a good laugh as the woman reading the Friar struggled to keep those reading Romeo and Juliet apart. The group realized that this play truly will work best on its feet if everyone has her lines memorized – where doing The Tempest as more of a staged reading was all right, this play is so much more physical that the scripts are really going to get in the way.

One of the women mentioned that what really gets her about this play is how many opportunities various people have to say, “Stop! This is a bad idea!” But nobody does. We talked a bit about that aspect of the play – the realization that things may go wrong and the abdication of responsibility. It’s a theme that resonates with many in the group, and we will continue to explore it further.

We set a goal to get through our initial reading/analysis of the play by Christmas and to cast it just after the holiday. This will give us a nice, long time to work on it and for people to begin line memorization long before the performance, which we hope will be in July.

Thursday

Though attendance was light today, we determined that we cannot spend Thursdays always reviewing, at least not with the deadline we set ourselves last time. We decided to work the first part of Act III Scene I, the fight scene, and that we would get it to a point where the women present today could perform it for the rest of the group on Tuesday, eliminating the need to spend another entire meeting reading and analyzing it.

This proved to be a lot of fun, and very interesting, exciting work. This scene is my personal favorite in the play, and after today, I don’t think I’ll be the only one. Since the scene is pretty straightforward in terms of the language, we got it on its feet quickly and worked as a team to figure out blocking that suits the language. While this was slow work at first as we worked through the necessary action of the scene and where people need to be on stage to make things work, our pace increased as things became more clear and we all became increasingly excited.

Things really picked up as the women reading Tybalt and Mercutio instinctively began to circle each other at Tybalt’s line, “What wouldst thou have with me?” We trusted that instinct and expanded on it to determine that they needed to make a circle that needs to be close to 360 degrees if not exactly, since none of us would ever have a street fight with the enemy’s gang at our backs. When we began to struggle with the climax of the fight, when Mercutio is stabbed under Romeo’s arm, one of the women jumped up to help the performers according to her vision of how this would work. The rest of the scene came together very quickly.

The women who are new to the group were surprised that this very brief scene took us so long to block, but taking our time was definitely worth it. We had a lot of laughs along the way and left feeling inspired and excited to show the rest of the group what we’ve accomplished on Tuesday.