I have a theory, which probably derives from Harold Bloom, that we are directed in the course of our work as theater artists in the English-speaking world by the first Shakespeare play we ever saw. (If it was Bloom’s theory, it would expand to include all people, theater artists or otherwise.)
I tested this theory on two of my Convergence colleagues. Sure enough, we all had different answers – Robert had seen HAMLET first, which is remarkable. (I’ve never seen a live production of HAMLET.) Tony saw ROMEO & JULIET.
The very first Shakespeare I saw was MIDSUMMER, at the Theatricum outdoors. I remember these things from it:
- Puck swinging in on a rope from an enormous oak tree. The element of surprise. The feeling that the stage was alive with actors, that anyone might jump out of any crevice. That the ground, the hills, the walls were exploding with language.
- “But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so.”
- the lovers running through the twisted paths of a Topanga Canyon hill.
- the fairies saying “And I. ” “And I.” “And I.” (A chorus?)
- Bottom’s mask of a donkey’s head.
- The Mechanicals. “O kiss me through the hole of this vile wall.”
- laughing so hard that my face hurt.
- “If we shadows have offended” – the fantastic power embodied in that one actor, who was carrying all the threads of the play lightly in his mouth.
- Rhyme.
MIDSUMMER is about magic and love and language games, and I think I could even argue that it’s a landscape of imitation – between people and semihuman god-things, people and animals. Imitation being, of course, the founding principle of the improvised chorus. And it’s set in Athens, too. Which takes me back to the Greeks.
So I can derive all of my influences from it. I think I derive the other half from the film of “The Little Mermaid,” especially the fish-choruses.
SOS will be hosting an informal poll in the comments of this post. Let us (er, me) know what the first Shakespeare you ever saw was. What do you remember of it? Do you think it shaped the direction of your work, or relationship to literature, or theater? If so, how? If not, Harold wants to talk to you.
February 22, 2008 at 8:37 am
posted @ 12:36AM Friday Feb. 22. Pay NO attention to the cocamamie time stamp this site posts.
I um, was in Shakespeare before I ever saw any. I was in NYC in 1978 when I received a call from Kiki Smith (no not THAT Kiki Smith) who was the chair of the Thea. Dept. @ Smith College in N’hampton Ma. Was I interested in playing Theseus & Oberon for Kenny McBain of the RSC? Oh yes and there was $$, I’d be a visiting artist. I’d only ever read bits of R & J and Othello. He had wanted to have a pair of black actors in the leads but the woman who he’d wanted to have play Titania & Hippolyta, begged off since it was her senior year and thesis time etc.
I was simply stunned by the texture of the words. The alliterations, the similes, the assonance, dissonance, metaphor and the bawdy humor of the man! How was it possible to write this well, page after page?
The production was on an all white set with ungeled lights. Some audience members complained of retina burn afterwards. It was a 500 seat proscenium house with continental seating and a steep rake to the house. They were close and it was, FANTASTIC! I remember being bewitched by the world of the play. Thrilled that I was doing Theseus & Oberon and distressed that Mr. McBain was functionally incompetent as a stage director. He came from TV and how he EVER got into the RSC is beyond me. he could direct traffic, sure but offer any insight to a 26 yo doing his first Shakespeare not to mention the frickin male LEAD? uh uh.
Then Tina Packer ~hiss~ of Shakespeare and Co. Who was one of the catylysts behind this whole thing, told me I would be reprising the roles come summer at their brand new home in Lennox Ma. Alas, Tina forgot her promise in a week’s time and the first Shakespeare I saw was The production of Midsummer I had just finished doing with someone else playing MY part. It was enjoyable enough, he wasn’t very good, which both hurt and made me feel better.
I love this play. I love the magic, the evil, the manipulations and machinations. I’ve done it 3 times now and will do it again if offered.
Was that too much?
February 22, 2008 at 5:39 pm
The first Shakespeare that I remember seeing live was also at the Theatricum, but it was The Tempest. It doesn’t seem to have made a huge impression on me — I can only remember a few fragments: Prospero on the balcony, directing the storm; Ariel’s “full fathom five” speech, dancing around the mazed Ferdinand; Caliban jumping out of the trap.
Perhaps this just means I’m out of Bloom’s domain. On the other hand, I never had so much fun backstage as when, years later in college, I got to help with the set design for another Tempest…
February 22, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Like Phil, I realized I was IN Shakespeare before I ever saw it performed live. I did productions of Midsummer and Twelfth Night, of which I could share numerous experiences… Twelfth Night in the 70s, complete with disco dancing = tres cool when you’re 15
The first Shakespeare I ever saw on stage was Midsummer (what else?) at Stratford my senior year of high school. I remember being absolutely awed at the physical possibilities of the show – there was so much movement it made my head spin… if I remember correctly, that was the year they had some of the fairies on trapeezes. From an actor standpoint it amazed me that the man who played Oberon six times a week was also performing as Dracula (a singing one at that) in another theatre four times a week… and that in a lesser capacity this was true of practically every actor in the show.
And, like Phil, I have since been involved in two other Midsummer productions and seen it several times performed and would do it again at a moment’s notice.
If I had to express how this show has shaped me as an artist/theatregoer… well, as an artist it’s like my bread and butter show. It’s what I know and can turn to when everything else seems overwhelming and strange. It’s theatrical comfort food. As a theatregoer, seeing this show is what made me fall in love with Stratford – the level of production and talent and ingenuity just keeps me coming back. It’s not the most powerful show I’ve seen there (Lear with Christopher Plummer) or the most fun (As You Like It with music by BNL) or even the most memorable (The Scottish Play with him who has been dubbed MacSexy), but like many first times it’s unforgettable.
February 23, 2008 at 1:54 am
OMG! I lied, well, I forgot. I actually saw an execreable production, (the first act) of The Tempest but my date and I were so utterly appalled at what was going on onstage that we literally ran from the theatre before the first act concluded. I blocked it completely until I read Bree’s post which mentioned Tempest.
That is all
February 24, 2008 at 5:11 am
Well, based on this (highly unscientific) data sample, I think I should revise my theory – we are not all shaped by artists by our reactions to our first Shakespeare, but rather by our reactions to our first MIDSUMMER or TEMPEST, the two most performed of his plays (I think)
I was sort of hoping more folks would have seen, I don’t know, RICHARD II or MEASURE FOR MEASURE first, but no one takes kids to those shows.
What we see in MIDSUMMER or TEMPEST – that’s our Shakespeare. That’s where we start our relationship with his work, and (according to Bloom) with our lives as a whole.
I still think it’s a fun question to ask, because in trying to reconstruct WHAT we remember of that first MIDSUMMER or TEMPEST, we put our fingers on the elements that are most important to us now.
And I find it very interesting that both Bree and Phil were IN shakespeare before they saw it.
February 26, 2008 at 4:00 pm
I just remembered that I saw RICHARD III at some point in junior high — Mom took me — and it made a huge impression on me at the time. I’d read the first scene ahead of time (the one where Richard talks Lady Anne into marrying him) and I did not believe any woman would fall for that. Then I saw it acted, and it worked. Blew me away completely.
(Why are the titles of plays put in all caps instead of italics?)
February 26, 2008 at 6:02 pm
That’s a great anecdote, Zack. Bloom actually argues that Shakespeare is better read than performed, because the performers mess it up for us – your story proves otherwise.
Plays are scores. You can read them, but they come alive in the mouths of the performers.
I wonder if that experience left you with an appreciation for the value of argument, rhetoric, etc., in the hands of the powerful. (I’m still trying to prove my original theory.)
I’ve only ever seen that scene done as an isolated scene, in class. Would love to see that play.
That convention is one I picked up from my old boss. It conforms to no style guide but it is easier to read online, in emails, etc. – lets the eye jump straight to the play title. After 2 years of typing it that way for him, I have adapted it myself.
February 26, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Bloom thinks that? Bloom needs to get out more often.
I’m honestly not sure what that experience left me with. My memory of it is all tangled up with the memory of doing a report on the play for English class (I think this is why Mom took me). I took a revisionist tone and argued that Shakespeare had smeared the historical Richard unfairly.
My current appreciation for the value of argument and rhetoric derives from teaching experience more than anything else. My role as a TA has so often been to say exactly the same thing that the professor said in lecture, but with better rhetoric.
February 26, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Hmph, there doesn’t seem to be anything in between too little and too much inter-paragraph spacing on this thing.
Would you like me to repost your theory and question on my LiveJournal, for additional audience?
February 26, 2008 at 6:57 pm
See, your response to Richard’s use of rhetoric was…more rhetoric
Yes, absolutely, repost if you think anyone would be interested. I’d love to hear.
February 27, 2008 at 5:27 am
My first was the Zeffirelli film of Romeo & Juliet in 1968 or 69. My entire highschool freshman class walked downtown to the Sprague theatre in Elkhorn Wisconsin. It was the first and if memory serves (it frequently does not) the only Shakespeare we studied. I loved it, but confess that the only memory is of seeing the flash of Olivia Hussey’s boobs. The first stage production was a history play performed by the National Shakespeare Company on the campus of UW-Whitewater. I can’t recall the play, but the actors had all taken an animal as a key to their charactors. I remember the monkey.
February 27, 2008 at 7:12 am
posted @ 11:00PM Tuesday, Feb. 26 2008
Wait, Bloom says actors mess it up for us? K, Mr. Bloom is a pinhead. Mr. William Shakespeare’s plays are designed to be HEARD! He lived in an age when the majority of people gained information aurally. He did not write for the intelligentsia. He in fact did not publish his plays. When you did a play of his you were given your ‘roll’ which was a scroll of your part with only the last line of your cues. This was partly to ensure that no one could steal the complete play and make money off of his work. Academics give me a pain.
February 27, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I have to find the exact Bloom quote for you, Phil. It’ll enrage you further.
Weston, you could do worse than start with Zeffirelli, and that is a very memorable moment
I think that your reaction to both Olivia and the monkey highlights a tendency, later to be brought to great heights in your own performances, to look for the absurd, shocking, comic moments. But I may be stretching it.
I can’t imagine what was going on with the monkey, but you have me curious.
I guess my other question for you, Weston, was if that first Shakespeare wasn’t what drove you into theater and/or shaped you as an actor, then what was?
February 28, 2008 at 6:09 pm
I heartily agree with Phil… while I read a good deal of Shakespeare before ever seeing it on stage(or being in it), it really has to be experienced to be fully appreciated, because that’s what it was meant for. I understood MacBeth on an academic and literary level, but I never really ‘got’ it until I saw it performed on stage by living, breathing, thinking, feeling actors.
Academics can analyze text from here to eternity (and I’m sure they will continue to), but if all the focus is purely on the reading of Shakespeare and literary criticism and historical context, their analyses will forever be incomplete.
Also, randomly, there’s a quote about doing Shakespeare that I absolutely love which was spoken by Charleton Heston (shocker, I know). Knowing Heston to be an enormous lover of Shakespeare an interviewer once asked him simply: Why Shakespeare?
Heston replied: Because you never quite get it right.
March 2, 2008 at 5:51 pm
I think Bloom is pretty alone in being willing to say this kind of thing out loud, and stand by it – it’s not a popular opinion – but not alone in thinking it, deep down.
I agree with both of you, that I never “get” Shakespeare more than when seeing the plays performed – but then again, I am, like both of you, already committed to theater.
Some scholars feel, in a less extreme version than Bloom, that there are a bunch of complexities in the plays that can’t be expressed in the performance version alone. I suppose if that is true (and I don’t believe it is – I just think, as Heston says, it’s pretty hard to get all of them) it makes it even more extraordinary that they were first intended only for performance, and never to be read.
March 2, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Zack posted this on his LJ blog and there are interesting comments, from folks who aren’t in theater as a profession. Also an interesting thread about people who saw non-traditional interpretations first.