Session Three: Week 32

Tuesday  

We were very productive today! Since most of the group members were delayed in arriving, we began with Act I Scene III, for which only the Nurse was present. Jamie and I stood in as Juliet and Lady Capulet until those participants arrived. The Nurse has memorized her lines in this scene, and by the time we had worked through it several times, her character began to take shape as well. Lady Capulet is mostly off book, too, as is Juliet. Between the work that Lady Capulet did last week, and the work the Nurse did today, plus Juliet finding creative ways to interact in the scene (like mouthing certain lines along with the Nurse like she’s heard them a million times), it’s really taking off.

Our Romeo and Benvolio returned today, assuring us that they are committed and will be present whenever work does not conflict from now on. We are all quite relieved!

We then moved on to Act I Scene V, the “party” scene. We needed to plug in Jamie, who is our Tybalt now. We also needed to do some detail work on blocking; for example, when should there be dancing, and when is it distracting? Should people stay on stage or exit? We talked through these decisions as a group and came up with some good solutions.

Finally, we decided to begin work on Act III Scene I, which we haven’t really touched since it involves so many people. But today we had everyone present except the Prince, so we went for it. After one read through, we got on our feet, and, with improvised sword play, the scene went beautifully. Matt and Jamie committed fully to their parts, (as did I when filling in for the Prince) which intensified things for everyone else on stage. We all played off of each other, and the scene was riveting and emotional. It was actually so exciting that, for the first time ever, none of us realized we were out of time until our program coordinator came to get us!

This is food for thought going forward: I have been resistant to casting facilitators in the play until absolutely necessary, but the women really enjoy having us on stage with them. Because we have more performance experience than most women in the group, we are able to give them more to play off of in a shorter amount of time. That being said, I’m a big proponent of process over product, and part of the process has been that the inmates are empowered by taking ownership of the process as well as the product. But it seems like that same level of ownership could be achieved with facilitators in the cast. I know that it works in other programs.

It’s something that I’ll definitely be discussing with the group, because this is a decision that needs to be made by the ensemble.

Thursday

Our Paris was present today, and, since she is absent more than any of us would like due to mandatory conflicts, we decided to make sure we worked some of her scenes today! We began with Act I Scene II, and our work actually got pretty technical. The group decided that it would be best for Capulet and Paris to enter through the house, play the scene while walking downstage of the curtain (and even on the floor), and exiting through the door stage right. How to make this work became a sticking point. We knew that we wanted Capulet to go up a level or two so that he would be a head above Paris, but then that seemed to force Paris to upstage herself (turning her face completely away from the audience). We ran the scene a few times, identifying places for them to start and stop, both vocally and physically, and we found a way for Capulet to step up only one level to make things easier on Paris. We will need to keep working on it, but it’s getting there. The group effort was wonderful to be a part of.

We then worked the scene in which the Nurse finds Romeo in the street, since our Nurse has memorized those lines and wanted to work it on its feet. As we adjusted her blocking slightly and her character began to sink in a bit more, she found that the lines were leaving her head. She began to be frustrated, but I assured her that this is a very normal part of the process – of course the lines take a step back when the character takes a step forward. She decided to leave the scene alone for the day and come back to it later.

We then moved to Act IV Scene I, and we spent some time here debating what is going on with Juliet in the scene. How polite does she have to be? How surprised is she that Paris is there? It’s difficult, having cut so much from the scene, to truly know Shakespeare’s intent at this point, so our Juliet is going to experiment until something feels right. I’m also going to bring in an uncut version of the scene for her to look at. Ultimately, though, it will be her choice, and Paris and the Friar (that’s me!) will play off of whatever she decides.

From here, we kept going with the next couple of scenes to see how our transitions would work – would Juliet have time to do the exit from one scene and the entrance to the next that we wanted? We also found that we needed to make a few more minor cuts to combine the two scenes that follow – otherwise we would have a really strange transition.

This brought up a point – that we don’t have all of our entrances and exits set in stone, nor have we established all of the places in which we want to use the curtain. “We should run the whole play on Tuesday,” someone said, and she was met with unanimous agreement. So that’s the plan: everyone is going to make her best effort to arrive on time so that we can get through the whole play. Anything that isn’t figured out at this point will be improvised, and we will make a comprehensive to-do list to spur our work going forward.

I am incredibly thrilled that they not only had the idea to do a “work-through” three weeks from our first performance, but that we are in a place where we can actually do it. We were never able to run The Tempest all the way through prior to performing it – we ran each “half” of the play once, and that was it. It’s a testament to this ensemble’s dedication, enthusiasm, and desire not just to accomplish their goal, but to do it well. They are driven, they have ownership of what they are doing, and they are doing excellent work.

Session Three: Week 31

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Tuesday

We were made aware today that our Romeo and Benvolio (who were not present) are feeling overwhelmed by the number of lines they have, and are less than enthusiastic right now about performing with the group. After some discussion, the conclusion the group reached is that the most important thing is to keep the ensemble intact through the end of the session if at all possible. To this end, we decided to cut as much as we possibly could from Romeo’s and Benvolio’s dialogue, and to see what of our own material could be cut as well. We did this as a gesture of compassion and encouragement to those who are feeling shaky, and we lightened our own loads as we went.

This was actually a very interesting exercise in doggedly pursuing an objective. Our goal was to make the challenge more palatable and keep all of our group members while avoiding cuts that would make our story filled with holes. Some of the cuts we made were fairly painful, but the debate always came back to, “Yes, we love this. Yes, it’s beautiful. But do we need it in performance to tell the story?” If the answer was no, we cut it (other than what has already been memorized).

As we progressed, we became more and more ruthless. We cut entire scenes and minor characters! There was less debate and more humor – less nervousness and more determination. We are stronger for having gone through this together, our play is more concise, and there is almost nothing left that is not absolutely necessary. We remarked multiple times about how, as much as we love many of the things that were cut, it’s incredible how solid the play is even when it’s been sliced and diced.

We cut 21 pages from our script during this two-hour session. We are hopeful that this will encourage everyone to stick with the group through the end of June. I think it’s important to note, again, that no one yet has brought up canceling the performances. Performing is their goal, and we are determined to find a way to meet that goal, come what may.

Thursday

Although our Romeo and Benvolio were missing again today (at least one of them had a mandatory conflict), two women who see them outside of the group said they were receptive to the new cuts, so I hope we will see them again on Tuesday.

We moved forward anyway, beginning with Act II Scene IV and V. Though we were missing the male characters from the first scene, our intention was to give the Nurse some time and figure out the staging. We determined that we would close the curtain toward the beginning of the scene, allowing Juliet to be in place at the top of the next scene. We ran the two scenes in a row several times. Before running them a second time, we talked about the characters’ objectives in the scenes and the different tactics they use, especially Juliet and the Nurse in their scene. That one really took off – it is beginning to become truly believable, and those two set a goal to memorize it to perform for the group on Tuesday. Setting these incremental goals periodically has proven to be really helpful, and I hope we can incorporate more of that next session.

We then worked on Act I Scene III without the Nurse, who had to leave, to give some time to Lady Capulet and Juliet. This is a complicated scene for Lady Capulet, and it led to a pretty heavy conversation about an issue at the heart of the play, to which I had never given much thought in the past: the women’s’ actions and reactions in this play are largely rooted in their lack of agency. Lady Capulet is cowed by an abusive husband, to whom she was married and by whom she had a child far too young. Her relationship with Juliet is fraught, and it’s difficult for her to even bring up the subject of marriage. When she does, she frames the question as if Juliet has a choice, but we find out later that she really doesn’t. And Lady Capulet probably knows that from the beginning, so why even say the things she says?

Our conclusion: sometimes, even in a dire situation, you have to find a way to put a good spin on bad news. We likened this to when several of the women learned of the legal consequences they faced: “Seven years is a whole lot better than 37.” One of the women noted that she heard the bad news with a positive spin from a man in her life who had spoken to her lawyer before she had, “of course, because that’s my life.” This led us back to the beginning of our conversation.

When we ran the scene again, Lady Capulet’s experience of the scene was deeper and more truthful. She still has some work to do, but the scene has begun to sink in for her. We were all very excited about the work she had done.

Session Three: Week 30

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Tuesday

Written by Molly

Since they had seen the 1960s film version of Romeo and Juliet the previous Tuesday, the women had taken some time to mull over the film before meeting for this session. They were able to think critically about what they wanted to adopt from the movie and what they preferred to do differently. After briefly going through the Paris, Friar Laurence and Juliet scene in order to give the woman playing Paris more time on stage, the women wanted to try to tackle the last scene of the play, which hasn’t been touched too much so far.

They were torn about whether or not to cut out the first part of the scene, where Paris confronts Romeo, as that scene is not in the film and is a popular cut for many productions. Some seemed to find the scene unnecessary and forgettable (as one woman put it, “Paris dies?!”) The women are always eager to trim down scenes in order to make them more manageable, but they are also always considerate of the person playing the part. After some discussion, we decided to cut a little bit but leave the majority of the scene. The scene helps to flesh out Paris’s character and make the Romeo and Juliet love story narrative less neat and more complex, showing the other people directly affected by their actions. The women playing Juliet liked the detail that Paris was bringing flowers to Juliet’s grave and was reluctant to take it out. Furthermore, the women realized that some aspects of the beginning of the scene were important, as there needs to be a reason for the characters to gather at the tomb at the end of the play.

We still struggle a bit with poor attendance, which makes it difficult to work some scenes that need rehearsal. It would be ideal to have everyone there, but the specific circumstances of trying to do drama in a prison make that very difficult if not impossible. Still, the women who are there are driven and enthusiastic, and there are women who cannot come all the time who are still very serious about Shakespeare. The women seem a little anxious about being able to pull this off at the end of June. But it is clear to me that they are motivated and work hard on their parts, and I have no doubt that they’ll be able to put on a good show! They clearly know more of the play than they think they do, and if they just keep working at it, they should be able to create a product that will make them all proud.

We also welcomed Jamie, a new volunteer, to the group. She will definitely be a welcome addition!

Thursday

Today we worked on Act IV Scenes III and V, in which Juliet takes the potion and is found “dead.” We have made many cuts to these scenes, and we kept cutting, finding what we needed to tell the story and make things work for our characters, and what was superfluous.

Our staging felt “crowded” at first, but we realized that it worked in terms of the inherent competition between the Nurse and Lady Capulet, and the chaos of finding Juliet unresponsive. As I have been cast as Friar Laurence, I took a bit of a backseat in “directing” the scene, and the women solved all of the problems we encountered with Sarah’s guidance. They have a deep grasp of the emotional impact such a discovery would have on their characters, and they had no qualms about diving right in.

We were initially hesitant to use the curtain at all, as the we all feel that it may disrupt the flow of the play and give the audience an opportunity to lose focus, but we decided as a group to close the curtain at the end of this scene – otherwise, it will be awkward getting Juliet off stage. Someone came up with the wonderful idea, then, to play the next scene, in which Balthasar tells Romeo of Juliet’s death, in front of the curtain. This will solve both our problem of exiting and of losing focus in one fell swoop.

Another wonderful idea that one of the women had was for Tybalt to actually roam the auditorium at the end of Juliet’s monologue, thus giving her a boost in her vision of Tybalt’s ghost seeking Romeo, and her decision to drink the potion. It is an eerie way to stage this, and effective for the actress.

The deeper we get into our process, the more creative the women become, and the more empowered they are to make this play their own. Ruthlessly cutting lines and parts of scenes that we do not need, while perhaps not scholarly, is completely in keeping with our goal of simply telling a story – our version of this story as written by Shakespeare. Putting a ghost in the audience is a fabulous solution to a very difficult passage, and using the curtain to keep the story going rather than simply relying on it to mask a scene change is likewise a decision rooted in the ensemble’s understanding of this play.

And all of these decisions are being made as a group – one of the women smiled and said, “I love this group,” as we unanimously agreed to cut a large part of one of the scenes while keeping the pieces of it that are meaningful to individual actors.

Session Three: Week 29

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We spent this week watching the 1968 film version of Romeo & Juliet. I had been opposed to watching the film early on in our process, since that tends to give people an idea of how characters “should” be played, and we wanted to find our own interpretations. But the majority still wanted to watch it at this point, so we did.

It turns out that this was actually a really good point in the process to do this. The women all a deep enough understanding of the play and their characters to resist the temptation to “copy” the actors in the film, while pulling some good ideas from this adaptation. The woman playing the Nurse, for instance, said she had some different ideas about her character. She likes some of her ideas better than what she saw, but certain scenes seem to work better with another interpretation. She’s mulling it over.

At times the film felt a bit like a sing-along, with one or more of us speaking lines at the same time as the actors on screen. That was fun, and it became even more apparent how well the group knows the play.

We got into a discussion after we finished the film about which character bears the most responsibility. One woman feels that the parents bear the most blame, since the feud originates with them. Others feel that the burden lies on Friar Laurence – the marriage and subsequent events could not have happened without him, and he repeatedly takes a less than direct route to try to achieve a goal. “Why didn’t he deliver the note himself if it was so important?” one woman asked. That said, none of his conspiracies happen without the feud in the first place. “How the most impulsive people ever all found each other is beyond me,” said one woman. We talked a bit about mob mentality as well, and how the smallest argument can blow up into a huge conflict (i.e., the fight between Tybalt and Mercutio).

We also were very interested in the cuts that we had made vs. the cuts in the film. While some of the cuts in the film adaptation are not ones we feel we can make, since our storytelling medium is so different, there are other cuts that we actually liked. We all realized that the scene between Capulet, Paris, and Lady Capulet is not really necessary. Those of us who were present have no qualms about cutting it, but since the women playing two of those roles were at other programs, we are waiting to make the final decision until we discuss it with them.

All in all, we were all glad that we came to this compromise of watching the film midway through our process. The women agreed with me that, had we watched it very early on, it would have hampered their creativity, but they also proved to me that it can be a useful tool once we are solid in our own unique interpretation of the play.

Session Three: Week 28

Tuesday  

Although tonight we had very light attendance (this is a recurring issue that we are working on addressing, believe me!), some very deep work was done by the women who were present.

I had a chat with the woman playing Lady Capulet about her character just after we walked in. She identifies deeply with Lady Capulet – this woman comes from a family where “expressing affection is expressing weakness,” and, having grown up in that environment, she has struggled to be affectionate with her own child while working against that conditioning. She does not feel that she has always been successful, and she feels that struggle in Lady Capulet as well. Complicating matters for Lady Capulet is a lack of agency – no matter how she might feel about Juliet’s situation, she will always capitulate to her husband for fear of abuse, as this participant discovered in a prior rehearsal.

We also had a good discussion about avoiding emotional “substitution” and instead drawing on past experiences to inform our acting without reliving trauma. We discussed “as if” situations (i.e., it’s as if my own child had been killed when Tybalt dies) and ways of making things physical instead of intellectual (i.e., when I went through this awful experience, I was disoriented, like a zombie – drawing on that, I will imagine that I am moving through fog in this scene). While drawing parallels between Shakespeare’s work and our own lives is important to the work we do, re-opening painful wounds for the sake of acting is dangerous, and we must take care when we revisit those experiences while telling this story.

After talking for quite awhile, we gave Lady Capulet an opportunity to try some different things with the scene just after Tybalt and Mercutio are killed. Clearly she’s upset – but what does she do physically with those emotions? We determined that she should not get in the Prince’s face when demanding justice – it worked better when she stayed on the ground. Being rooted in the language is beginning to do the work for the actress in this scene.

We then worked on Juliet’s “Gallop apace…” monologue, which has been cut down quite a bit for the sake of time and not overwhelming the participant. She does not like the first part of this piece, but she gave Dominique a chance to “make a case” for it. After Dominique explained the poetry a bit, the importance of its tone at this point in the play and for Juliet, the participant tried it. It began to work better for her, but when it really took off was when I took her script, sat behind her, and read each line softly to her, allowing her to “drop in” to the text without having to read it. Although I couldn’t see her face, her voice was much more connected, and those who were in the audience were very excited about what they both saw and heard. The participant is now more enthusiastic about the piece, to the extent that she is going to take a look at the previous version of the script to see if she wants to put back in anything that we’ve cut.

Thursday

After Sarah led a great exercise about objectives and tactics, we worked on the first scene of the play. We finalized some cuts, eliminating three out of four parents from the scene so that Lady Capulet and Capulet can double as Abraham and Sampson. Our Balthasar is still with us, and I have been cast as Gregory. With that, we worked the scene for pacing and tone. The Prince is making great progress, becoming more imposing, slowing down, increasing the power she has on stage. The scene is beginning to work very well. We just need to choreograph our fight with the foam swords!

We then moved to Act V Scene I, in which Balthasar tells Romeo that Juliet is dead, and Romeo goes to the Apothecary. Our Balthasar has some stage fright, but she is determined to get past it. Her interpretation of the scene is that Balthasar does not want to give Romeo this news, but he has to. As such, she found that it works to avoid eye contact with him until he gets upset. Romeo got to a point today where she has begun to truly feel the loss and desperation, although she needs to dig deeper to motivate Balathasar’s lines about her. She has begun to vocalize without words, which is a big step for any actor – we tend to be very intimidated by our own voices when they are on the primal side, and it’s exciting to watch her progress.

We finished up the day by solidifying that Matthew will play Mercutio, I will play Friar Laurence, and our new volunteer (who will join the group next week!) will take on some of the more minor roles. It seemed like a relief to everyone to know who will be playing those roles. Now I’ve got some lines to memorize!