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[sadcypress]

I do love me some scholarly sneers.

As you may have noted, I've been reading Don Weingust's Acting Shakespeare from the First Folio: Theory, Text and Performance. I've reached the section where he talks about Patrick Tucker and the Original Shakespeare Company, who are a group of professional actors who try to mimic the rehearsal processes of

Comments

[the_gentleman]

Wait. They're trying to do Shakespearian plays as they would originally been done, and somebody's saying that's not the right way to do the plays? Do I have that right? That can't be right. Please say that's not right.

[sadcypress]

Well. Kind of, yes. I tracked down the full letter on the internet archive- here's one of the paragraphs that Weingust quotes from:

Nevertheless, I find myself in a difficult position, as I am unconvinced by your theory of original Shakespearean rehearsal and performance techniques. I have heard all three performances and I feel the results of the experiments do not do service to the plays. If the theory is correct, as you claim, in practice it produces a performance of the play which is emotionally shallow and is enjoyed primarily for the mistakes the actors make. Perhaps the quality of the actors preparation is letting the theory down, I don't know. I feel embarrassed for them, whatever the reason.

So, yes and no. It's not that it's not a good way to go, it's that for whatever reason, the performances themselves aren't very good. According to Rylance, and his staff at the Globe, anyway.

[arcadiaego]

Which is all pretty funny considering that's the main criticism leveled at the Globe by the British critical press is that the productions (and the audiences. The critical establishment *really* hate the audiences) are shallow because it's all about fooling about with original practices rather than Proper, Serious, Theatre.

[sadcypress]

Exaaaaaaaaaactly. Can't we all just get along and keep putting boys in skirts? IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK.

[fannishliss]

This is fascinating. Shamefacedly I must admit that I never heard of Weingust or Tucker before! (I'm not technically a Shakespearean scholar, but still *blushes*)

However Tucker's work jibes with two gut instincts I have about the plays --

1 -- that the plays played to the strengths of Shakespeare's troupe of actors
and 2 --- that what we'd now call "improv" would've been a big part of how the plays were fleshed out as works in progress before the first print versions were compiled.

Wouldn't it be especially keen if a group of actors trained to essentially impersonate Shakespeare's troupe -- capitalizing on their known tendencies and typecasting and all that -- and THEN used this technique?

--- or maybe this is completely different than what Tucker was doing ???

[sadcypress]

That's an interesting idea! One of the problems Tucker had, actually, was that he never really found a core group of actors that would be a steady company, which obviously has a big impact on the actors' ability to put together their performances in this way.

Ed Hall's all-male Propeller Theatre Company actually has built something similar- he really DOES have a core company that's been performing together for years, and casting does fall into certain patterns there. I've read interviews where the men talk about how much they rely on that knowledge of each other, and how much it brings to the rehearsal. I have a funny feeling I might suggest Propeller as some sort of back-up topic for my thesis...