{"id":15432,"date":"2016-12-09T12:22:19","date_gmt":"2016-12-09T17:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2016\/12\/09\/15432.html"},"modified":"2024-01-19T11:36:54","modified_gmt":"2024-01-19T16:36:54","slug":"polonius-production-diary-tabl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2016\/12\/09\/polonius-production-diary-tabl\/","title":{"rendered":"Polonius Production Diary: table talk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We are doing multiple table readings of our script, cutting as we go. It’s interesting—as I’ve said most amateur productions I’ve been associated with skimp on table talk, choosing to use limited time up on foot. The last show I was in (a Twelfth Night<\/cite>, if you’ve joined us recently) did some table talk after blocking the show, which was interesting. We are planning four table rehearsals over two weeks, just reading through the play and talking. It’s interesting, although since I am done an hour before everyone else, I will have to restrain my dead self from gobbling snacks.\n

Mostly we’ve had questions, rather than answers, at this stage, which is excellent. We are trying things out, seeing how they work. Our Gertrude is unsure how to deal with the post-closet scenes, where she appears to mostly trust Claudius again. Her interaction with Laertes doesn’t seem to reflect concern that he is threatening to, oh, for instance, murder her child. Gertrude is definitely tricky, and I think easier (in a sense) in a version that focuses on the plot as primarily political rather than psychological. The solution of simply playing each scene as written without worry overmuch about consistency would not, I think, be satisfying. Well, anyway.\n

I leaned, this time, toward portraying Polonius in a harsher, angrier key. I don’t think I’ll stick to that. It would play (My recollection is that is how Richard Briers played it in the Branagh film) but I don’t think it helps tell the Hamlet story as well as a more loving, bewildered reading. I do think that this play is, more than some others, focused on telling the story of one character, and that we who are playing supporting parts need to support that story rather than tell our own. Not that we don’t (or can’t) have consistent and interesting characters, just that the choices we make with those characters should (again, in my opinion) be consistent with Hamlet’s story and not distract from it.\n

So, f’r’ex—to go back to Gertrude, it’s a legitimate choice from Gertrude’s point of view that after her husband’s death, a cynical and loveless marriage alliance with the new king is her son’s path to the throne. Or, even, that she was complicit in the removal of the old king, her husband, either to allow her to marry her lover, his brother, or to serve other purposes of the actor’s own invention. One could imagine a sharp-eyed Gertrude signing Claudius’ name to the Norway letter while he amiably drinks himself insensible in I,ii and later giving the nod to a henchman to whack Ophelia before coming in and giving that oh-so-practiced speech about the willow that grows aslant the brook. A Gertrude that would have real reason to fear Hamlet, and real reason to fear old Hamlet’s ghost. A Gertrude that Claudius was afraid of, enough to set his mind to a subtle plot to assassinate Hamlet without her noticing. Such a Gertrude might be consistent with the text (allowing for deliberate lies, of course), fascinating to watch and totally distracting from the Hamlet story.\n

One of the acting books I read, probably the Practical Handbook<\/a>, talked about working within the givens<\/i> of a part. Those givens may be things like the gender, age, time frame, setting, occupation, language, costume and possibly physical appearance—whatever the playwright has told you about the character, possibly coupled with whatever the director has decided. Within those restrictions, the actor has a wide latitude to decide on motivations, relationships, pace, movement and other aspects of character creation. I have come to think that we should include with the givens the characters purpose within the story. This is far from universally accepted, but I find it helpful. Is the character the antagonist, the advisor, the sidekick… Polonius is in some sense Fifth Business, but rather than having some important message to deliver, his place in the story is essentially to heighten everybody’s tension until he is killed, and then his death wrecks everyone’s plans, either directly or indirectly. There’s a fair amount of latitude to work with, but those are the primary things that I think Polonius is for<\/i>. Well, and comic relief, too—I don’t think it would be right to decide to make Polonius not funny. So three things, really: get the laughs that are in the script, heighten the tensions between the characters, and get killed.\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger knows his place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[209],"tags":[216,217],"class_list":["post-15432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theeyater","tag-polonius","tag-shakespeare"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15432"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16253,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15432\/revisions\/16253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}