Homespun Perspectives On The World's Most Sophisticated Playwright

What ho and welcome to this egregious bacchanal-of-a-podcast segment of the audio folio known as the Electric Secrets variety podcast. For those who would act, direct, and design the works of The Bard, and for as many lovers and admirers, this is Rustic Shakespeare, for the which supply, admit this fine pistol of a host, Scott de Leon Smith. Hey, Nonny.

God ye, g-den, gentels and all y'all. Welcome to the inaugural episode of this segment.

We're calling it Rustic Shakespeare, and you can think of it as a classical companion to

the segment called Dedicated to the Craft. 

In this segment, we are going to explore the homespun secrets of classical theatre. Now, I may not be a Rhodes Scholar of Shakespeare. I may not be performing regularly at the National Theatre or at the Globe, but I do have an MFA where I studied Shakespeare for a year, and I got to hone my skills as part of a Shakespeare company in Chicago. I'm the founding member of a Shakespeare company. I act it, I direct it. But most importantly, Shakespeare is for everyone and for all time whether you speak English or you read a translation of Shakespeare, I believe that everyone has the right to read, and interpret, and perform Shakespeare. That's why Shakespeare is still around. That's why we still perform the plays because of their universal qualities, not just in regard to their themes, but the universal humanity of his characters. 

He created characters that were uniquely human, and yet we can apply our own unique qualities as human beings to his characters. It's a paradox that is mind-boggling, but I'm going to talk a lot about it. 

Even here in my humble little studio in North Central Ohio, I can talk about Shakespeare in a meaningful way, and my hope is that this down-to-earth perspective can help you not only understand Shakespeare, but be more courageous in presenting it to an audience, whether it be through acting, directing, or design. So, let's do it already.

Episodes for this segment will focus on speech analysis, considering the great and lesser speeches, their context in terms of the play and the character that's delivering the speech, and how an actor might prepare that speech for an audition or for performance. We'll also take a look at character profiles, the practical background, objectives, and obstacles of a given character with strategies for rehearsal and performance. We'll examine the craft of working with Shakespeare's language and preparing for high-stakes acting in rehearsal. We'll take a look at directing Shakespeare for the 21st century, how to be a leader of a production, how to communicate your ideas effectively with your fellow artists, and how to be a visionary collaborator.

Some episodes will be my professional journal, my chronicle of my personal rehearsal processes and performances in regard to acting and directing Shakespeare, which happens to be the subject of this first episode. I have just started rehearsals for a production of Romeo and Juliet.

I'm playing the role of Lord Capulet, Juliet's father. This is my fourth production of R&J.

I've played in the past, Peter, Mercutio, and Friar Lawrence. Peter is kind of a dumb Capulet that is often a composite of a bunch of different Capulet servants, if you don't have 40 actors to play all the roles. Throughout my rehearsal process, what I plan to do is to talk about how I am developing my character and the things that I'm doing in my process, and also talk to some of my castmates about how they are preparing their roles. And I'm going to talk with the director about her vision as she prepares the cast for performance. 

We might even try some fun exercises with the actors that will give us some insight into how they see who they are portraying. So I will share those things with you in the next two or three episodes through this performance of R&J, and from there, I'll focus on different topics like I listed before, and quite possibly I will add a professional journal for a production of a Twelfth Night in a couple of months.

Have a bard-related inquiry for Scott to address? Or a topic suggestion you'd like opine on the next segment? Well, we hope you'll go once more onto the breach, and drop us an email info@ monstervoxproductions.com.

Okay, at the time of this recording, we have done a lot of table work with Romeo and Juliet, and if you're not familiar with what table work is, it is the process by which everybody gets to know the story and the characters, a first glimpse at what we're about to be rehearsing.

Sometimes, if you're doing Shakespeare in a college theater program, or at a university, you might use your table reads as time to delve into the verse and how it scans and look up all of the words that Shakespeare uses that we don't use anymore, and may have only been used once in the Shakespeare play that it appeared in. But table work is your first opportunity to meet your cast mates, to bounce some general ideas off of your director, talk about the vision, maybe even look at a few designs like the set design or the costume design. But it really is about the text. 

And in a first read-through of Romeo and Juliet, there is always this judgment of the two main characters. It always seems to happen where inevitably someone will make the observation that Romeo and Juliet are just two dumb kids or two dumb teenagers. It's completely valid to make that observation, but just remember, you're making it as a reader. And when an audience sees your performance, you are definitely going to have people, especially people that aren't familiar with the play, judging the characters. Leave the judgment to the audience. 

If I'm directing a play, whether it be Shakespeare or whether it be a cheesy musical, I always advise my actors to avoid external judgment of your characters. You can maybe have one or two judgments at the outset, but then try to let go of those judgments as soon as you can, especially for your own character.

Characters can judge themselves, but they want what they want in the moment. So, if Romeo and Julie are dumb teenagers who fall in love at first sight, and we're sort of taught and conditioned that that's kind of a thing that dumb teenagers do, in the moment they believe that that love is real.

And you, as a person, you must have had a moment in your life where you were completely smitten by someone. When you were a teenager, especially, everyone has had those moments. That's what I mean when I talk about the universal quality of Shakespeare's characters and their humanness.

It is human to fall in love at first sight, whether you believe it or not, you have experienced it at some point. So why not Romeo and Juliet? 

It seems dumb from the outside or to an outside observer, but if you have to play either of those roles, you have to believe it. So as I move forward with my interpretation and my rehearsal of Lord Capulet, if I rely on judgmental interpretations of what he's doing, my performance is not going to be natural. It's not going to be realistic because I'm going to have that actor judgment going on in my head. I have to get rid of that as soon as I possibly can.

And all of this philosophy relates back to what makes Shakespeare the greatest of all English language poets and playwrights, this concept of negative capability, which is the ability of an artist to stand aloof from the work and not take sides. So you can't see heroes and villains.

All you try to see are human beings who are flawed and they are struggling through something together. And sometimes they do good things, sometimes they do bad things, sometimes they are noble, sometimes they are evil. All of those things are in each one of us. So those things are also in these characters because characters are imagined human beings. They're human beings created by the writer. 

So Shakespeare was the best at that. He was the best at not taking sides with his characters. And you might be thinking, well, Scott, the characters will take sides. Absolutely they'll take sides. But you as the actor have to have a greater perspective and understanding of the play itself. So you can rehearse the possibilities of playing that character. 

To my belief, the actors judgment of their character only hamstrings them. 

Think of the character, no matter who the character is, as the hero of the story. 

I remember in the 90s, there used to be journals in an old brick-and-mortar bookstore called Borders Books that ended up going out of business. But they would sell these journals and embossed on the cover of the journal was you are the hero of your own story. That's how you should think of your character.

They're experiencing this play from a first-person point of view. Therefore they are the hero. The decisions that they're making are based on what they want in the moment. To an audience, they might be making the wrong decision. And when you see that as an actor, that's important.

But you have to remember your characters are making decisions in the moment. And they most likely believe, in the moment, that they are making the right decision. More on this as I prepare my role.

Once more what-ho. You are listening to Rustic Shakespeare. Be sure to check out the other segments in the Magnum Opus that is the Electric Secrets variety podcast, including Dedicated to the Craft, revealing the secrets of acting and directing. The Unforgettable Voice where we explore the secrets of vocal performance and the iconic voices of our time. And don't forget comedy's best-kept secret, The Albatross Cafe. A hilarious mock podcast featuring Marty Merman, the Prince of Schleboygen, New Jersey. A non-existent but real-sounding town. 

Hey, how you doing? This is Marty Merman from Schleboygen, New Jersey. Please check out The Albatross Cafe. We have lots of fun talking about stuff like you're doing these podcasts. So we hope you'll subscribe to the podcast and pay us regular visits here at The Albatross Cafe. Now back to Rustic Shakespeare, I guess, with Scott Leon Smith, the CEO of MonsterVox Productions and the host of all these fine programs. Thank you, Scott. 

And yea, stop talking. 

If you are not familiar with Romeo and Juliet, I highly recommend that as you're listening to this segment, you have the Folger Shakespeare Library's website ready for reference. I think they have the most complete and comprehensive synopsis of Shakespeare's plays. They have wonderful notes that can give you context to what's happening. And all the plays are available with commentary, with character analysis, a really good foundation of scholarship for this type of work. 

Now, the scholarship is important. It is important to know the metaphors that Shakespeare is using. He is, this is poetry. This is a lot of iambic pentameter in Romeo and Juliet. So we should analyze the literary aspects of the play. But remember, if we're going to act it, that's a different animal, and it requires a different discipline because you can't act a metaphor. You need something different. And I'll go into that as I'm preparing my role. 

Now, I'm going to just start off with some general thoughts on this first new read of Romeo and Juliet. You're going to hear me talk about in my other segment on the craft of acting Dedicated to the Craft. You're going to hear me talk about reinvesting in the process. Yes, I've done this play three times before, but I'm not going to rest on any preparation that I did in those last three productions. I'm going to go at this fresh. They were 20 years ago anyway, so I need to go at this fresh. And from my first reading, here are some general observations I have about my character, Lord Capulet. 

And what any actor and director can find when reading through this play is clues to people's individual characters through the way they are spoken about by other characters or in contextualizations.

So we are probably familiar that Romeo and Juliet begins with this prologue: “Two households, both alike in dignity in fair Verona, where we lay our scene. From ancient grudge break to new mutiny …”

So that phrase “ancient grudge,” I latched onto that in this read-through. And I thought “ancient grudge,” what does that mean? 

That means that these two families, the Capulets and the Montagues, have been fighting each other for a long, long time. So much so that the grudge is ancient, it's ingrained. The two families are reactive to each other. They instantly hate each other.

So since my character is the head of the Capulets, that must be part of his character, or at least something that I can explore as I'm preparing the character. This ancient grudge between the Capulets and the Montagues lives in my character. So I can speculate that my character is very reactionary, and very quick to temper, especially when it comes to the Montagues. 

Now, moving beyond the prologue into the first scenes where Lord Capulet appears, it's obvious, when you read through his text, he is very reactionary. Sometimes he reacts very violently when things aren't going his way, or when people aren't obeying him. In the text, he is very staccato, direct. He's very loud. There is a very familiar portrayal of Lord Capulet that I think I should at least explore. It's the idea that he drinks a lot. Not so much that he's a drunkard, but that he is an angry drunk.

In Elizabethan times, when Shakespeare wrote this play, I mean, drinking was part of the culture. And this play takes place in Italy, where wine is a huge part of the culture. So there must be something about Capulet because of his temper, because it's so quick, maybe alcohol is part of that. 

Now, my actor voice tells me, don't rest on stereotypes. Right? We want to reinvest in the process. The stereotypical drunk is easy to play. You stumble around, you slur your speech, but that's not enough for a high-stakes character, like Capulet. It's not enough for a Shakespearean character just to be “the drunk.”

In the rest of Shakespeare's works, anytime you see someone who is obviously “a drunk,” there is much more to them than just being a drunk. So my challenge is to not fall into that trap and be stereotypical and flounder about. I have to figure out what is Capulet fighting against when he's drunk. Why does he drink? And I think his control, and controlling his temper, and controlling his ability to be a patriarch, and a good host and a politician, especially during the mask, during the party, when Romeo first meets and falls in love with Juliet and Tibilt, his nephew, sees Romeo and he has to calm Tibilt down. He doesn't do a very good job because he gets even angrier. So I think drink has something to do with that, but I'm not going to fall into the trap of the stereotypical drunk. 

In fact, recently in our table work, I asked the director if she thought that the mourning and the anguish that Capulet feels when he discovers that Juliet is dead. She's sleeping, but he thinks she's dead and his wife and the nurse are weeping and wailing. And it's going to be a very difficult scene to rehearse. I asked the director if she would be willing to explore Capulet’s sorrow as angry sorrow so that there can be some dynamic to the grief. So it's not three people weeping and wailing for five minutes.

Two people are weeping and wailing and Capulet is the angry drunk who often exhibits anger when they're in mourning or when they're distraught. Rage and sadness are very closely linked, I think, for Capulet. And my director agrees, and she's willing to explore that with us when we rehearse that scene. And that is part of the process as well, being a good collaborator and kind of testing the waters to see if your interpretation fits in with the director's vision. And at least making sure that the director is willing to explore that with you. 

The end of this inaugural episode is swiftly approaching. So in the next episode, I'm going to delve into Capulets' text, his speeches, his lines, his scenes. So you can experience the process in more detail. I will share new work and new observations with you. We'll really delve into the character and, as I rehearse, I'll share some recordings of that process as well. 

Once again, I'm Scott. Thank you so much for listening. And please check out the other segments in the Electric Secrets variety podcast, especially Dedicated to the Craft. Again, this is a companion segment to Rustic Shakespeare, and I think you'll get a deeper understanding of the craft and the process if you are listening regularly to both of those segments. 

So I will see you back for the next episode. Until then, good fortune guide thee, and farewell. 

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