Some thoughts (eventually) on Shakespeare

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Last night I was at the first rehearsal for Every Brilliant Thing — I am now working with Alexis Colon Ortiz on the show, a gifted improv actor who has somehow never done a scripted show — and after we did a readthrough I tried to explain my thoughts on what I have perceived to be the layers of the character/presentation he would have to deal with.

Our man Bill

I explained that in As You Like It, our heroine Rosalind has disguised herself as a boy named Ganymede to run away into the woods with her cousin/best friend Celia. Almost immediately she encounters Orlando, the young man with whom she instantly fell in love in Act I scene 1. As Ganymede, she chides Orlando for being a lovesick ninny and offers to “cure” him. All he has to do is come see Ganymede every day, and he (Ganymede) will pretend to be the quirky, capricious Rosalind, thus freeing Orlando from his infatuation.

Here’s how I blogged about it back in 2020:

Mariel [the actress playing Rosalind] has to juggle three different personae (presented here from the top down)

  • /Rosalind/

  • Ganymede

  • Rosalind

  • Robert [playing Orlando] (it finally dawned on me) has two:

    • /Orlando/

    • Orlando

Confused? It’s easy. As far as Orlando understands what’s going on, he and Ganymede are pretending to be /Orlando/ and /Rosalind/. He doesn’t know that the teenage boy he’s fast becoming friends with is Rosalind underneath. And it dawned on me last night that it’s the Orlando–Ganymede relationship that is the core of the scene. We have to see Orlando falling in love (and not in a creepy way, you perverts) with this boy, so that when he finally understands who Ganymede really is, he groks what a great girl he’s fallen in love with.

So my goal was for us to untangle who’s speaking at any given word. We started by sitting in a circle and reading through the scene, using ridiculously different pitch levels to distinguish who’s talking. We were not trying to “rehearse”; exploration and decision-making were the goal, much like our Lessac and Vocal Sequence exercises.

We did that a couple of times, discussing, wondering, exploring. Then I had them stand up, facing each other. Any Orlando–Ganymede lines were spoken facing the other person. Any /Orlando/–/Rosalind/ lines were spoken facing the audience. Rosalind lines were spoken facing the audience, but with a step forward “out” of the scene. (The ridiculous pitches were still a thing.)

What does this have to do with Every Brilliant Thing? Our nameless narrator, it seems to me, has similar levels of performative personality:

  • His current self, retelling the story

    • Lightly joking at times

    • Deadly serious at times

  • His past selves, sometimes unreliable

The shifts between these are like sudden changes in the lighting, and I think the more we can make them click the better the show will be.

I honestly started writing a post about what a thrill and a challenge and a joy it is to work on Shakespeare’s stuff, but it got out of hand as I teed up the intro. Oh well, I can return to the subject on Monday.

In the meantime, what Brilliant Thing would you add to the list of Brilliant Things? Go here to help us out — we need a couple of thousand items! (The show is Sep 12–14, at Southern Arc Dance Center. Tickets available here.)

A reminder that Lacuna Group will host an information session about William Blake’s Inn on Sunday, August 25, 2:00–4:00 p.m., at Southern Arc Dance. We will run through the music, discuss the collaborative approach we intend to use to design the show, and answer questions about the whole shebang.