Farewell, the latter spring!

Well, I’m upstairs in the dressing room, now, listening to the robbery scene over the monitor, as I write this.

I was discussing with my mother-in-law this morning how lovely this cast has been to work with, and how genuinely fond of one another we are. And while I won’t miss the daily question of who will be injured today, I will miss everyone in this cast, dearly.

So:*

Jeff Allin: Thank you for your kind spirit and placid demeanor.

Heather Anderson: Thank you for your heart and perseverance.

Bill Clifford: Thank you for dressing room chat and entertainment.

Todd Denning: Thank you for your badassery, and the Douglas Workout.

Tiersa Ferraro: Thank you for bringing the little ones around. So cute!

Allison Forbes: Thank you for being a rock star.

Brian Gill: Thank you for chili and wine and hanging in.

Nick Harazin: Thank you thank you thank you for the rides. And the Risk, baby! So much fun this time out.

Stacy Hicks: Thank you for that G– D—ed monkey!

Courtney Jones: Thank you for your smile and peace.

Patrick Lawlor: Thank you for letting me shower first.

Matthew Lewis: Thank you for letting me toss you aside like so many potatoes in the battle.

Tim Linn: Thank you for being a super rock star.

Bryce Lord: Thank you for taking me home that first day, with my bike.

Larry O’Dwyer: Thank you for making me want to watch every scene of yours every day, to see what will happen.

Matt Pierce: Thank you for being a super duper rock star.

Paco: Thank you for your consistency and presence.

Tom Reed: Thank you for sharing super-hero stories.

Jake Russo: Thanks for late night talks on the way up to Whitefish Bay.

Eric Schabla: Thank you for laughing at Nick and my impressions of your family.

Chase Stoeger: Thank you for leaving. (just kidding!) No, thank you for being an awesome dressing table buddy, and haberdasher.

Andy Trushinski: Thank you for eating half a loaf of bread.

Jon Wainwright: Thank you for the cookies.

Jeff Withers: Thank you for not irreparably breaking. Also, for being so perfectly you.

Richard Ziman: Thank you for diving in with abandon.

Lesley Stone: Thank you for being a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious rock star.

Nicole Friedman: Thank you for having water and advil and swords and wetnaps at the ready.

Kelsey Lexow: Thank you for rubbing me down with blood every day.

Amanda Schichler: Thank you for rubbing me down with dirt every day.

Darcy Devins: Thank you for putting suspenders on my pants!

Scotty: Thank you for keeping the swords nice and shiny.

Kevin Connelly: Thank you for keeping us lit.

Ola Maslik, Jen Moeller, Josh Schmidt, Kurt Schnabel, Gale Daly: Thank you for making us look and sound fantastic.

Paul Dennhardt: Thank you for the Mort Schlag (even if it was cut!)

Carrie Van Hallgren: Thank you for signing the checks

Jessica Berlin: Thank you for keeping it together, somehow!

Marcy Kearns: Thank you, doll, for great conversation.

Noel Henebury: Thank you for meals and wheels.

Kristin Godfrey: Thank you for asking me to blog in the first place.

Michelle Kitson: Thank you for helping us all get there.

All our volunteers and audiences: Thank you for being there.

Laura Murphy: Thank you for your house.  And food.  And heart.

and three more —

Stephen Fried: Thank you for allowing me to speak your favorite speech in the play.

Paula Suozzi: Thank you. For everything. I actually can’t thank you enough.

Carrie Murphy: Thank you for throwing your lot in with mine. I love you.

I’m on my way to Chicago tonight, and then to Illinois Shakespeare Festival in Normal first thing in the morning, so this is it. Also, a quick shout-out to all my readers and commenters. I had a blast. I hope you did too.

 

-SMITE-

* This is a totally incomplete list of thankable attributes. If it were complete, you’d be reading for days.

“It’s gonna be a bloodbath…”

So, King Henry, Prince Hal, Bardolph, Poins, and Vernon got together at the Manse last night and ordered a pizza, had a beverage or two, and got to the nitty gritty work of taking over the world. If you’ve never played Risk, it’s a turn-based strategy board game, played on a map of the world, divided into territories. The object is to take control of the entire map, by way of attacking neighboring territories. Each turn consists of troop deployment, combat, and fortification. The rules are fairly complex as far as deployment goes, and combat is based on the roll of the dice. Attackers throw red dice and defenders throw white.* Before any of that, though, is the dividing up of the world, where one by one, we place troops in one of the 48 mapped territories, until they’re completely distributed. Then we deploy the rest of our initial troop allotment, fortifying territories based on strategy — Do we want to control a continent early?** Create a smokescreen? Cry Havok?

Australia is the most easily defensible continent, and it is often the site of much contention at first. Jeff Allin, Jake Russo, and Jeff Withers all laid a claim to territories there, and when it became clear that it would be a messy prospect to take the continent, Jeff Withers gave up deploying troops, quipping, “It’s gonna be a bloodbath.” Instead, he concentrated forces in Europe. Jake spread himself out, and Jeff Allin stuck to the east, concentrating on Asia and Australia. Nick took an early stab at South America, and I had made a play for Africa in my initial deployment. Nick was the first to conquer a continent with South America, forcing my hand to attack him in Brazil. This was where it became clear that luck was not on Nick’s side. I had nine armies, and Nick had eight, and by the end of the combat, I had nine armies, and Nick had none. Nor did he hold the continent any longer. I moved into Brazil from West Africa, exclaiming, “that’s the power of the Cote D’Ivoire!” I shortly took control of Africa, and then Jeff Withers started his campaign to take me down. Unfortunately, neither was luck on his side, and his rolls made it much more difficult for him to accomplish his task. He tried to influence other players, though, which worked, and after being weakened by Jeff Allin, I lost Africa to Mr. Withers in a kamikaze-style rout. I immediately turned in my cards for more troops and took Africa right back, destroying most of Withers’ troops in the bargain. By this time Nick and I had entered into an alliance, vowing not to attack one another until our mutual enemies were defeated. Jeff Allin eventually eliminated Jeff Withers, but by this time it was, as can be imagined, pretty late. So he decided to take his leave of the table, and handed his place to Jeff Withers, who used the advantages put in place to eliminate Jake, who had quietly been fortifying his interests in China. Nick had built a little American Empire by now, taking North America and most of South (our alliance prohibited him taking Brazil quite yet). But by this time, Withers was way too powerful. Each time you eliminate an opponent, you get their troop cards, and by the time all was said and done, Withers had amassed a Holy Roman Army the likes of which we had never seen. On one turn, he travelled from Mongolia through Siberia and Kamchatka, across the Bering Strait, through Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Western and Central Europe (now under my sway), Northern Africa, the Middle East, Southern Africa, the Congo, West Africa, into Brazil (now I was eliminated) through the rest of South America, across the Panama canal into Mexico and into the United States where he defeated Nick’s last troops. All the while, we had been discussing how eerie it was that Prince Hal here had taken his father’s slightly failed attempts at Empire and turned them into a model for Warrior-Kings.

It was now 3:30am.

All of this was prefaced by a conversation I had with my wife yesterday afternoon:

“A few of us are going over to Nick’s tonight after the show.”

“Fun! What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to go down to the basement and play Risk, the game of global domination.”

“Yeah… there are a lot of boys in that play.”

 

-SMITE-

* There was some debate last night as to whether the attacker or the defender had the advantage, because the attacker gets three dice, and the defender two, but the defender wins a tie roll.

** Controlling a continent results in a troop bonus at the beginning of your turn.

Only $9.95 plus S+H!

Every night, just before intermission, up in the men’s dressing room, Todd Denning leads the Douglas Workout, a quick upper body tone-inducer.* Todd had started out alone in this enterprise, but after a couple of days, I joined him, then Stacy came aboard a couple of days later, and now, we generally have five or six participants. The workout goes like this:

• 25 pushups
• 15 biceps curls**, each arm
• 15 triceps extensions, over the head
• 15 deltoid raises, front
• 10 biceps curls, each arm
• 10 triceps extensions, over the head
• 10 deltoid raises, front
• 15 pushups
• 25 abdominal crunches
• A lot of cursing the Douglas. A lot.

 

-SMITE-

* If you’ve seen the show, you know what Todd’s arms look like — this is due, in part, to the every-dayness of the Douglas Workout.

** For the weight training section, we each use an industrial orange plastic/steel chair in different positions.

Pick a card, any card.

At this morning’s student matinee, we had an understudy go on. Now, we’ve gotten used to this: Jeff Withers has been recuperating during student matinees of late, and Matt Pierce has been acquitting himself quite nicely in Jeff’s place. However, today, Jeff was in the show for his first student matinee. In fact, the missing party was Heather Lea Anderson (Lady Percy), who was called out of town for a family emergency. Courtney Marie Jones, her understudy, was prepped and ready to go, but who was Courtney’s understudy?* Allison Mary Forbes, recognized by Milwaukee Shakespeare audiences as Perdita in The Winter’s Tale and one of Macbeth’s Witches, was given the script and learned Lady Mortimer’s song and lines, both in Welsh, in two days. They had a put-in rehearsal on Sunday, and performed it today. Nicely done ladies.

On Thursday, we will again give Jeff Withers the morning off, so Mr. Pierce will again be on. It’s unknown if Heather will be able to rejoin us by then, so possibly, Courtney and Allison will both be covering as well. Next week, Chase Stoeger (Prince John) is out, which we have known from the beginning would happen, because he has to go rehearse another play. Chase’s understudy? Matt Pierce. Here’s the wrinkle: in the event that Jeff re-injures himself, and Heather is still away, we go to Plan X — Matt goes in for Jeff, and Tim Linn (who normally plays Mortimer) goes in as Prince John, while Courtney covers Heather and Allison covers Courtney.**

For what it’s worth, Matt Pierce is also my understudy. And Patrick Lawlor’s. We are forbidden to take ill before we close. We are forbidden to leave plastic bubbles before we close. Meanwhile, Stacy Hicks was feeling like the walking dead today, and he doesn’t have an understudy.

 

-SMITE-

* Actor’s Equity requires that all Equity actors be understudied, but there are no rules regarding non-Equity actors. Because smaller regional theater gigs are relatively short runs (4 or 5 weeks), producers usually take a gamble and understudy the Equity actors with non-eqs in the show, and don’t worry about replacing the non-eqs because the likelihood of putting the understudies in is low. 99 times out of ten, this strategy will work. Unless your show is cursed.

** My wife has seen the show twice, and doesn’t plan to see it again. She will make the trip up from Chicago, though, if Plan X goes into effect.

Cinco de Paco

Yesterday was a two show day, and management very gracefully provided a meal for us between performances. It happened to be Michael “Paco” Pocaro’s birthday, as well as Mexican Independence Day, so we termed the celebration Cinco de Paco. In a somewhat bizarre turn, all the food served began with the letter p, to wit: pies with meat, potato chips, pepperoni pizza, pasta salad, pineapple upside down cake, pop, and of course, hot dogs*. I’m not quite sure how to describe the scene. We had taken over the lobby of the theater; there were actors everywhere. And there was entertainment. A belly dancer came in and did her thing. We were busily munching away at the fresh baked pies (steak, curried chicken, or vegetarian) and potato salad, watching young, lovely Jen shimmy and undulate across the floor, clinking finger cymbals and dropping veils. Meanwhile Tiersa’s three small children (so cute!) were running around making people laugh and giggle.

And then came the piñata.

Apparently, Marcy Kearns, our Education Director, had had a piñata in the office, looking for an occasion to explode. Cinco de Paco arrived, and instead of watching the ponies run the Derby, we were outside, in front of the theater, taking whacks at the giant Tiki head hanging from the lamppost.** Chase started up the practice of turning round, head down, five times in a circle before swinging the bat. By the time it was my turn, blood had been drawn from the island god, and there was some candy littering the street. I went round five times. I took a wild swing, missing the piñata entirely, loosing the bat. Had I made contact, perhaps I’d have been as victorious as Tom Reed, who followed me, destroying the thing entirely, pouring prizes all over the sidewalk. I came away with five bags of garden seeds and a package of those weird little capsules that grow into safari animals when placed in a glass of water. And a lot of candy. Mmmmm, candy.

 

-SMITE-

* The p is silent. And missing.

** Courtesy of Tim Linn, who shimmied up that thing like it was his profession.

Not to be expected.

This week is a long one — Wednesday night show, two shows Thursday (10am, 7:30pm), Friday night show, two shows Saturday (2pm, 7:30pm), Sunday matinee. In between the hours of the work week I am learning lines and doing research for three shows for Illinois Shakespeare. I’m trying, as well, to catch up on a little reading, and take advantage of the (finally) spring-like weather here in Milwaukee. All this to say, as you have noticed, I’m slowing down on the entries here at the Milwaukee Shakesblog. As fun and interesting things happen, I’ll continue to post about them, but I’m pretty sure the daily content will cease, and the schedule will be more erratic. You’ll get used to it. It’ll be fun, because you’ll never know when to expect the next post: tomorrow? three days? next week? Ooooohhh, the mystery!*

 

 

* All right, I’m trying to sugar-coat it, sure, and really unsuccessfully, but I feel a little guilty, so, you know, there we are.

Taking notes, again

After a nice couple of days in Chicago, I came back to Milwaukee this afternoon by Megabus. I spent a couple of hours with a cup of tea and my scripts for Illinois Shakespeare, and then went over to the theater for my 5:15 fight call. At my dressing table was a little blue post-it note from our stage manager extraordinaire, Lesley. It read:

Matt D. II, 5

paraphrased line 23:

Their courage with hard labour tame and dull

All I could think was, if by paraphrased you mean hanging on for dear life with nothing to save me from the hell of losing the line but fleeing the stage, or at the very least saying something, anything at all resembling English, then, indeed, I will take that note.

Full Circle

Last night, Brian Gill and I conducted an educational event for the company. A group of women who get together regularly to explore various issues in depth wanted to have a bit of an introduction to and experience with Shakespeare. Since both Brian and I have taught before, Marcy Kearns, our Education director, contacted us about the possibility of doing this workshop.*

Going in, we weren’t sure what to expect. We had prepared to do a bit of introduction, some Q&A, and then do some work on our feet, warming up with some Shakespearean insults (Whoreson, beetle-headed, flap-eared knave!), moving into the grand insult scene from 1 Henry 4, and then if there was time, taking volunteers to look at a scene from next season’s Twelfth Night. As is often the case, things change. After a little introduction to Shakespeare’s theater, we took a little look at the insults, and found that while the ladies were game, they weren’t excited by the idea of actually having to say some lines out loud. So we let the insults begin an extended conversation about Shakespeare, and how the work was never intended to be read, rather played, and just how fun it is to play it. To put the words in your mouth and feel them do their work on your body, and allow that to help you tell a story.

So then, we told some stories from our different experiences with doing Shakespeare — Brian having worked at the rebuilt Globe in London, and myself having worked with Gorilla Rep on the streets of New York City. And surprisingly, our themes were not unlike. Audience members finding ways into Shakespeare based on their own cultural experience, and based on the human connection they made with the actors. I remembered how important it is to acknowledge with a Shakespeare play that the actors and audience are in the same room (or outdoor theater, or park, or street corner, as the case may be) and that that connection between audience and actor is what makes the play happen. We can’t do it by ourselves, and even if we could, why?

It was lovely to see these ladies, most of whom had a slightly antagonistic relationship with our playwright, perk up as the evening went on, and become interested in a new relationship with these plays. We were reclaiming them from the dusty textbooks of youth, and putting them in their rightful place as entertainments. And as that happened, I realized that the whole reason I act in these plays is because I had a similar experience in high school. I had always wanted to be an actor,** and in the eighth grade I played Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet, and enjoyed it, but I didn’t really have much of a focus as far as style or genre was concerned. Enter A. Jeffrey Schoenburg,*** who was an alum of my high school, and came back to direct a Renaissance themed show with the Chamber Singers. As a member of the concert choir, I was relegated to playing a servant, but I learned so much from Jeff about the Elizabethans that I wanted more. That spring, he taught a Saturday Shakespeare workshop as a preparation for a community theater production of The Winter’s Tale he would direct that summer. This is where I got hooked. His enthusiasm and passion really shone through, and he really became a mentor to me. I was cast in that production of Winter’s Tale, did the next year’s madrigal event with choir, and was cast in the fall play as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (a role I have returned to more than once). Over the next couple of years, as Jeff was unable to return to direct for the choir, I took the helm and wrote and directed the madrigal events. In drama class I tried as often as possible to choose Shakespeare scenes and monologues to work on. And eventually, I went to Juilliard to continue my training as an actor of classical theater. Do I owe it all to him? No, but he fanned the spark, and that was enough.

So, as the gig last night ended, and the ladies were thanking us for opening their eyes and ears to Shakespeare, and getting excited about seeing 1 Henry 4 (and seasons beyond), I realized that perhaps, just perhaps, Brian and I, through our enthusiasm and passion and silly stories and expertise, had fanned a spark.

 

-SMITE-

*I’ve done a number of workshops for Milwaukee Shakes before, mainly for schoolchildren, and one or two for colleges. I’ve also done my fair share of teaching Shakespeare for actors. This was my first workshop like this, with a group of non-actors, non-students.

** Mr. Darling in Peter Pan in the third grade laid the foundation. Fagin in Oliver the following year cemented it.

*** Jeff was on staff for the people who run the Renaissance Faires in California, New York, and here in Wisconsin. It turns out that T. Stacy Hicks (I wonder now if that’s a RenFaire thing, the first initial) was also on staff there and knew Jeff, back in the day. It all comes full circle.

Taking notes

I got a note that I had too much blood on my face in the final scene.  I took it, but really, too much blood?  On the face?  Is that even possible?*

-SMITE-

* If the 20 minute shower I have to take after the show is any indication, then the answer is actually yes.  But, man, it is fun to get all bloodied up.

Say the words

We’re nearing that weird place in the run where we are starting to get used to it enough to make it clockwork.* This is the point at which I generally start to panic, because even though it’s live theater, and I’m doing what I love, blah blah blah, there’s the danger of becoming so static that I get bored. There’s a delicate balance between consistency and staying alive and active, and I try very hard in my work to keep that balance, well, balanced.

Steve gave me a great note during our final rehearsal, two hours before we opened. It was to allow myself to really live in the language. To not allow it to get too performed. Again — that delicate balance. Now, I’m the kind of actor who needs an audience, craves an audience, turns my friends and family into an audience at home. So when I get that audience that has paid to see the show, I feel it. And Steve’s note was so helpful because it reminded me what the audience is there to do: listen to the play.** And by living in the language, allowing it to affect me as I say the words, I can let the audience into my thoughts and feelings in a much more real way. If I live in it, they can live in it. I have a speech in the show where I talk about something that absolutely takes my breath away, (I have a couple of speeches like that, actually) and from the beginning of rehearsals — from the moment I read the speech at auditions, actually — I always got the beauty of the language. I also got the intention behind it. But it took that little note — “live in the language” — to remind me of the true possibilities of it. And this is where Shakespeare’s genius starts to really astound me. We don’t know for sure, but we don’t think Shakespeare’s actors were talking about intention and motivation when attacking their characters. They had two weeks to rehearse a new role and were playing five other plays in the afternoons, and didn’t really have what we think of as a director to help them out. What they had was the words. And by really listening to those words, living in them, they were able to tell incredible stories, find their way through the ears into hearts of their audience.

And I just thank my lucky stars that I have the chance to do this every day. Because I really am doing what I love. Blah blah blah be damned.

 

-SMITE-

* Injuries notwithstanding.

** See it, too, sure, but they’re called the audience because of listening… rarely do we call playgoers spectators.