What's that all about? Shrew edition

A few have been curious about some of the choices made in our production of The Taming of the Shrew, and after talking to a few folks I thought it might actually make for an interesting blog post to talk about a few of these things.

Perhaps it helps contextualize our approach, or explain what we were after. This is not at all to say that the choices were meant to inspire a cogent, solid recognition of what it was all about. Quite the contrary, actually. The intent was specifically for these choices to provoke thought and questions, create tensions and ambiguity, allow spaces for discourse, and to privilege the body and action - all of which can be lost in approaching Shakespeare.

Why the bare room?
The theater for Shrew has been stripped down of all of the curtains that typically separate front of house from our very tiny backstage area. We have also chose to not have a backdrop, only archways that give a skeletal frame of one on the back line of the set. Combined with the lack of curtains, this means that the audience can plainly see everything that happens backstage - actors preparing, dressing, getting ready for an entrance and so on. We also chose not to face the front of the elevated platforms with soft or hard materials, giving yet another glimpse atypical (deconstructed, to be more to the point) of what people expect from theater.

These choices were all rooted in Bertolt Brecht's notion of epic theater (later what he called dialectical theater). A type of performance that Brecht described as one where one may keep their hat on and smoke a cigar - in other words a thinking person's theater. By stripping away artifice and illusion, Brecht believed you could make more of a true impact with your work above simply manipulating people's minds and emotions. This was in reaction to Brecht's contemporaries like Stanislavski, who stressed naturalism. Theater often also privileges spectacle (think of all the big budget musicals and shows that rely on so much visual gimmickry), which Brecht looked to work counter to. Brecht believed all of these elements of the theater in his day just encouraged sheer escapism. I tend to agree, and think we're still in some ways trapped in that mode.

It was also in small part a matter of practicality as we wanted to place audience on three sides of the set (what we refer to in the biz as 3/4 thrust), and by ditching backstage space and curtains we had more room to get the set and seating in. We also thought it might just be an interesting arrangement for the audience to see what it's like back there, and believed that after a few minutes people who adjust and "tune out" a majority of the backstage business.

This also became my solution to the problem of how to clearly delineate the action of Shrew as a play within a play. The original script for Shrew has an induction, where a drunk has a trick played on him and is presented with this play - The Taming of the Shrew - as a parable of sorts. Most people cut the induction, but then you lose that aspect of the show. Between our staging and the silliness that mounts in Act V with even the projections making commentary about the actual actors in the show, not their characters, helps us position this clearly.

So, is the choice potentially distracting? Of course, and that's sort of the intent. It most likely only even stands out to us because we are generally taught that we are not supposed/allowed to see backstage.

I do not believe that this style works for all plays, and those who have been seeing our shows for a while know that Shawn Paonessa and I used this approach for Embedded. The politics of that play and nature of our production lent themselves to that sort of staging, and I believe the gender politics in Shrew do the same.

The style of performance

We also chose to use the style known as commedia dell'arte for character inspiration. The commedia was an extremely broad, bawdy, physical performance style that has influenced more of what goes into modern physical comedy than it gets credit for. The style of Shrew just on the page is clearly influenced by the characters and storylines of this form. Here as some examples of who was based on whom:

Grumio = Arlechino (think Bugs Bunny style clown)

Curtis = Zanni (think big dumb oaf, pal to the main clown)

Gremio = Il Pantalone (the lecherous rich old man)

Hortensio = Il Dottore (foppish smarty pants, often a rival of the Pantalone for the love of a young lady)

Bianca and Lucentio = The Inamorata (the young lovers)

Baptista actually came from a French melodrama stock known as the Good Father.

Each of these stock characters have a physical frame, a way of holding themselves, that audiences instantly recognized. We can still see traces of this with braggart characters with their chest all puffed out, legs wide apart seemingly kicking enemies out of their way as they walk or in the old man, spine crumpled over shuffling along with his cane. This was (and is) theatrical shorthand. One look and you knew who they were. The style also prized physicality over other elements of production. Often these performances took place outdoors among crowds, or in places where the audience and performers didn't necessarily speak the same language. This over the top physical style allowed audiences to follow along even if they couldn't hear or speak the language.

Shakespeare can be considered almost a foreign language. Even with all the references in the script that were cut in fear a modern audience had no chance of getting them (not to mention to help us get the length down) - we were aware that not every word was going to land or resonate with every audience member no matter how hard we tried. Not all of our audience members are Shakespearean scholars, nor do they have infinite patience, so once again the choice was made to prize this physical style in an effort to help our audiences follow along while still stressing the importance of clarity to the actors.

At their cores Kate and Petruchio were inspired by stocks, though not played physically to the extremity that the other actors were - and those inspirations came in the way of Il Capitano and Columbine. Kate and Petruchio were by design to be less and less of a stock character as the play progresses. These kindred spirits are just not really as much a part of the world they inhabit and have found comfort in one another.

These stocks were in some cases played to an absurd extreme, to a grotesque extent. This once again goes back to my desire for an epic, or dialectic, performance. Let's take this ancient text and play the material to an extreme, while showing our main couple more modern, reasonable, as equals. Instead of Kate and Petrchio being these outlandish extremes, those around them seem to make them look almost normal in comparison.

These are not all things that can be explained in a program note or during a curtain speech - nor do they even want to be approached that way. If we made you think at all - be it about this particular text or our modern world - I think we did our jobs. Sometimes the lingering question in an audience member's mind after a performance is the desired effect.

It is always difficult to do something old a new way. I gave up on trying to make everyone happy all the time long ago. I believe in the power of live performance, of the possibilities in seeing what new messages may lurk in old works or at the very least showing old things in new ways. As artists we cannot shun innovation, experimentation and risk-taking for the sure or safe thing. I am grateful to have such gifted and dedicated artists around me willing to go for a ride like this.

We are also really fortunate to have such a great community that supports our work, that appreciates our philosophy and our efforts. You certainly do make it easier for us be able to do our thing.

And we can't thank you enough for that.

First part of DJ's Shrew paper

Here is the first part of the paper I wrote on my plans for this production of The Taming of the Shrew for my Sexuality and Communication PhD seminar at USF. If anyone is genuinely interested in reading more, let me know and I will be happy to keep posting it up here in pieces, or just email you a pdf of the whole thing. This paper is still in-process. After the production closes I intend on taking another pass at it, adding sections for "results" and final reflections, and then it will be sent off for publication consideration.

Introduction

I believe it is important to take on serious subjects through humor while not diminishing the importance of what’s at stake. Comedy is perhaps the most powerful form of performance in regard to its efficiency at gaining cultural access to otherwise impenetrable topics, as may be evidenced in the copious amounts of satire and humor today in just about every medium of our popular culture. This summer I will direct a production of Shakespeare’s contested comedy The Taming of the Shrew, and it is imperative to me that this production avoid reinforcing old ideologies and that it instead serve as a site for dialogue (between artists, among an audience, between artists and audience) and to offer representations of equality within male-female relationships. For this to occur successfully it will be critical that I remain reflexively aware of my own male privilege during the process, to allow myself to work not only “vulnerably” (Behar 1996) but “in anguish.” (Bar-On 1991) I will strive to work in an egalitarian, collaborative capacity and actively look for the spaces in the margins, in silences, and in the ambiguous to tell a story that is relevant, progressive and entertaining.

This paper charts a course of action for an interpretation of The Taming of the Shrew, often considered to be a misogynistic play that reifies patriarchal gender norms, that disrupts and subverts norms of male-female relationships. My intention is that by play’s end we find ourselves in a position of mutuality, particularly in the relationship between Kate and Petruchio. This proposed transformation will be accomplished through edits, staging, the collaborative process, and through community engagement.

Greater than just this case study, I argue that not enough work is generated from the position of theorist-practitioner engaged professionally with artists and a community. Scholarship in this area tends to come from many disciplinary positions, and yet I have not located serious scholarship that bridges these gaps and works from a first-person, how-to position. I believe that scholarship would be greatly enriched if we had more studies that move from theoretical and conceptual beginnings through a final analysis of impact on the community that performance is capable of. I hope that this study proves valuable for those in a similar position and is the beginning of a new way of approaching performance scholarship.

History and Background

What follows in this section is a basic plot synopsis, what influenced Shrew’s plot, how it in turn influenced later work, as well a few notes regarding Shakespeare’s comedies as related to this project.

The main plot of Shrew centers on a brash bachelor arriving in Padua to "wive it wealthily" (I.ii.72) (Shakespeare 1972) who quickly meets his match in a feisty firebrand whom he attempts to “tame” for profit. Shrew was not only wildly popular in its day, but has since inspired stage variations such as The Taming of a Shrew, The Tamer Tamed, A Woman Killed With Kindness, and Kate and Petruchio. (Belsey 1985; Evans 1985; Thompson 2001; Werner 2001) It has also inspired modern adaptations for stage and screen including the Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate, the high school-based film adaptation 10 Things I Hate About You, and the award-winning adaptation from an episode of the 1980s TV series Moonlighting. The origin of the story can be traced from Suppositi by Ludovico Ariosto back through various commedia dell’arte scenari from the 1500s all the way back to the ancient plays of Plautus and Terrence, where Shakespeare often turned for inspiration.

Shakespeare is arguably the most influential and produced playwright in the world, and his comedies as a block remain the most popular of his work. Marianne Novy suggests in Love's Argument that Shakespeare’s comedies symbolically resolve the conflicts between patriarchy and mutuality as well as emotion and control. In the case of Shrew the patriarchy and control is clear in Baptista’s insistence that his younger daughter Bianca not marry until the indomitable Kate has taken a husband, in the lack of agency Kate has in regards to an arranged marriage, and finally how she is treated by Petruchio (while simultaneously abandoned by her father) after it. Novy suggests that issues of patriarchy are typically resolvable in any of Shakespeare’s comedies, even the problematic ones, where it is always possible to come to an ending that stresses mutuality. However, when only using the text for Shrew it appears to be the exception to this claim. (Novy 1984)

From a certain feminist perspective, Shakespeare’s comedies never have "happy endings" in that they re-affirm traditional gender roles. These scripts in performance may however be used to momentarily unfix those same systems and examine the gaps and contradictions which may potentially create new meanings. (Belsey 1985) Lorraine Helms claims the comedies are the best site for subversion in Shakespeare due to portions of text that can serve to privilege a gendered character in our current world where that same opportunity did not likely exist in another era. (Helms 1990; Helms 1994) With Shakespeare’s comedies being so open-door in nature, they may serve as a strong site for a sort of Derridean deconstruction that can appear on one hand a harmless celebration of the play, but may also serve as a subversive political reaction. (Evans 1985)

Shrew’s play-within-a-play performance style is heavily rooted in the Italian tradition of commedia dell’arte - a broad, often bawdy physical style that was a popular form of entertainment across Europe in the 1500s. We may easily draw the parallels between Shakespeare’s characters and the commedia stocks that would have been familiar to an Elizabethan audience. Petruchio mirrors the braggart Capitano, his friend Hortensio is in the style the pedant Dottore, young lovers Bianca and Lucentio represent the Innamorata, Gremio the lecherous old Pantalone.

Kate does not not initially appear to us as faithful a stock as the others, but is still identifiable in the servant stock Soubrette. Soubrette is described as “fresh and frisky,” enjoying gameplay and having “free” morals, an incredible wit and who often functions as a counterpoint to the servant clown Arrlechino. Soubrette is always smarter than those around her and is typically responsible for saving the day in a given scenari, even if she isn’t credited for it. (Ducharte 1966)

My point here is to show that the “battle” between Kate and Petruchio was one that the Elizabethan audience “knew” culturally through the stocks employed. These archetypes are still recognizable and used today, turn on any sitcom and we will find them, a testament to their strength. We may even argue that the character stock that comes closest to what we find in the character of Kate suggests that she was intended to be much more than just a powerless object for us to laugh through her domestication.

What follows is a review of the present literature on the play which covers the inherent ideology, the issue of meaning-making in Shakespeare, and subverting Shakespearean text.