By Louise Rachlis
I ran into Richard III director Miles Potter on the sidewalk in Stratford, and told him “I thought your bloody head in a bag was really scary.”
“Thanks a lot,” he said. “We worked really hard on it. We tried all kinds of bags, and then figured there wouldn’t be a bag on hand for recently chopped heads. It’s actually a shirt tied up. We thought that was more realistic.”
I’d thought Richard III was bloody, but it was nothing compared to Titus Andronicus that we saw later in the week. We also had tickets for The Misanthrope, Twelfth Night, the Merry Wives of Windsor, Hosanna, The Homecoming, Camelot and Jesus Christ Superstar.
This year for the first time, we and our friends the Winqvists from Rochester New York decided to go with the Stratford Seminar Society for our annual visit to Stratford - five days, nine plays, plus talks and discussions about them.
Many in the group of 77 were returning members; 15, including a student, and us, were new. We were all assembled on plastic chairs in Knox Presbyterian Church, wearing our dangling name tags and each doing a 15 second introduction of why or how long we’d been coming to the Seminar Society.
The majority of participants are from the U.S. - Illinois, Ohio, Florida, Michigan, New York, and Canadians from London, Ont., B.C., Toronto and only one other from Ottawa.
As an example of the organization, on the way into the hall we each signed our names on thank-you cards for the week’s seminar speakers from the Festival - musical director Rick Fox, actors Stephen Ouimette, Seanna Mckenna and her husband director Miles Potter, and actors Brian Dennehy and Geraint Wyn Davies.
We were cautioned not to be rude and ask about parts of the performance they can’t control, or next year’s season lineup of which they may already know they’re not a part.
The activities began on Monday August 1st, with everyone getting together at Knox Presbyterian Church at 2 p.m. to pick up tickets and other materials such as the schedule for the week.
Then, at 6 p.m., the group gathered at The Parlour Restaurant for dinner included in the seminar fee, and a chance to get to know each other.
Stratford Seminar Society leaders were professors Paula Sperdakos of the University of Toronto and Peter Parolin of University of Wyoming, Kate Stiffler, a teacher from upstate New York, and Susan Girard of University of Toronto.
We began our Stratford Seminar Society plays with The Misanthrope by Moliere; a misanthrope is a person who hates humanity.
Peter told us the characters in The Misanthrope are kissy kissy to your face than then stab you in the back. The hubris of misanthropy is that you need a ton of people to whom you can feel superior as much as you hate them.
Our Tuesday theatre guest was musical director Rick Fox. Always musical, he found he really liked the world of the theatre, “the quintessential collaborative art form.” He likes the interplay of disciplines to create magic on stage. “Every performance is pretty much unique.”
He is responsible for music at the festival across the board; sometimes the plays don’t need original music, just songs from the period or a radio on. Sometimes the music is recorded, sometimes a combination. He enjoys doing revivals of classic musicals with new arrangements.
His work cycle is a big loop. In the fall he’s busy putting people in place for the next season; in January it’s rehearsals and in June it’s casting next season through the summer.
“We have creative freedom here and a collaborative process,” he says, and there are challenges to every show. For instance, he never yearned to do Gilbert and Sullivan, but is enjoying the preliminary work for Pirates of Penzance next season.
Because he does Jesus Christ Superstar this season he talked a lot about Andrew Lloyd Weber, “a control freak about artistic control.” Early on when he had just written Jesus Christ he wasn’t allowed in production and to resolved to have control over that in future. A week after it opened in Stratford, he came and watched it and loved it and called it “the production I always wanted.” Lloyd Weber gave permission for the Stratford production to go elsewhere, to California in the fall and beyond.
As for Shakespeare, “there isn’t a Shakespeare play today that isn’t edited.” Audiences today don’t like four hour productions and minor characters have different relevance at different time periods.
There was much discussion about the volume of productions. Fox said if a rock musical doesn’t “rock your boat” then “it’s a festival, and you can make another choice.” Different volumes are for different audiences.
In a newsletter a few weeks before the seminars, Peter had noted his house seminar on The Merry Wives of Windsor, had special meaning for him since it was the first Shakespeare play he spoke on at the seminars when he joined the group in 1995. He also spoke on speak Shakespeare’s graphic tragedy Titus Andronicus, which has “a wicked sense of humor in addition to its gruesome violence.”
His talk on Titus where “revenge becomes a demented art form” was really useful in understanding the play. The four of us were so sure we wouldn’t like Titus Andronicus that we even tried to trade our tickets. We ended up amazed and delighted at how much we ended up enjoying the play. As disgusting is the violence so does atrocity beget more atrocity today. Nothing in the world has changed.
Meeting the first week in August each year in Stratford, the Society began in the late 1970s with an enthusiastic group of theatregoers. The group meets each morning with an actor or a senior production staff member from the Festival.
Seminar sessions begin at 9:30 a.m. and are completed around noon, Tuesday to Saturday. Then there are plays at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. For breakfast, we and the Winqvists usually ate cereal in our rooms, had sandwiches by the water for a picnic lunch, and dinner at a different Stratford restaurant each night.
The morning seminar sessions are held in the Sunday School room in Knox Presbyterian Church on Ontario Street. Each year, the Seminar Society pins up a large horizontal green cloth to cover over the religious drawing on the blackboard at the front of the room, so we don’t have to look at it every day.
The interviewees sit in Queen Anne chairs beside a small table bearing glasses and a pitcher of water.
On a side table near the front door are bowls of fruit, Timbits, coffee, water and lemonade, and a large box of Greek pastries from a member of the group.
The Stratford Seminar Society offers bursaries to full-time students who wish to attend the seminar program. Any full-time student under the age of 25 at the time of application, with a letter of recommendation from a teacher, is eligible to apply.
Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming was the second play we saw. Beforehand, we learned that “pinteresque means in general usage an awkward pause with something ominous. He is known for his long pauses in dialogue. It’s a strange play taking place in an old house in London where estranged Teddy brings home his wife Ruth to meet his brothers and father six years later.
The Homecoming and Hosanna were in previews, not the final versions. In our discussion we learned that it’s a mistake to look at The Homecoming as realism. It’s surreal, hyper natural. There are all kinds of ways to find meaning in plays, not just tying up loose ends.
Theatre is there to make you feel something. The group felt The Homecoming was a disturbing play, but they liked it. We saw the fourth of eight previews, and actor Stephen Ouimette who played Sam in the play was our Wednesday morning guest. He said it was his first Pinter and “a real real challenge.”
Relaxed in spite of being in the midst of two very different plays, Stephen sat chatting with us, in jeans and sandals, a Tim’s iced coffee at his side, a fedora on his head.
“Repertory is the best,” he says. His two parts are so far apart, but “each informs the other’s play.”
“The beauty of doing Shakespeare is that it is so deep. You can swim around forever and do new things.” He has played the part of Sir Andrew three times and tries to do it differently each time in the “crazy roller coaster ride” that is Twelfth Night.
He says he tries to condense every play into something to embroider on a pillow. For The Homecoming, it’s “men are pigs.”
About 75 or 80 % of acting is “relaxation,” he says, citing a play he was involved in where the cast played volleyball before each performance and no one missed a performance from June to January.
Theatre is like a piece of music, and every character is playing an instrument. “We get a little further every time of the seven previews. We keep discovering more and more.”
A lot of playwrights encourage you to identify with the characters, he says. Pinter doesn’t. “Pinter doesn’t despise these people. He said this play is like a pack of dogs. You smell blood and you come in for the kill; I see this at work all the time.”
Our second play was Hosanna by Michel Tremblay about a drag queen on the Main in Montreal. It was one of my favorites. On a personal level it’s about shedding your outer skin and wanting to live without illusion. It’s also a political play about Quebec separatism and identity.
There was a lively discussion among the group about the value of nudity at the end of the play. Most found it touching and appropriate.
The group loved Richard III. A member from London England said you can’t find something of that standard in London.
It was an extremely knowledgeable group, talking about staging and all aspects of the performances. We saw plays on all the stages in Stratford - the Studio, Tom Patterson, the Avon, and the Festival - and all had their own appeal.
Our Thursday guest artists were Seanna McKenna and her husband director Miles Potter, talking about Richard III and having a woman play him. “Lots of men have played women and it’s funny because the man is lowering himself. It’s a status thing.”
In playing Richard’s deformity, “we wanted the real deal, not a little limp,” she said. “It was practice, experimenting with gates. A lot of Richards have really destroyed their bodies and been unable to finish their runs.”
The finale battle was a dream sequence with the ghosts in slow motion. Miles said it solved the problem of Seanna not being powerful enough after three hours of performance. There was no music during the ghost scene so you could only hear their breathing, he said.
“There are lots of references in the play to “theatre.” “I wanted it to look like a haunted house, with the platforms in the back, the middle third, and the scaffold.”
Neither she nor her director husband read reviews. “I haven’t for 15 years,” she said. “I can’t learn anything from them. It’s all so subjective.”
He has an assistant who tells him what he should be aware of, such as if a character is particularly weak.
“The thing you rely on is word of mouth,” she says. “The Patterson theatre relies on friends telling friends and has a loyal audience.”
Their advice for success in theatre:
She: “My husband taught me, trust your instincts and don’t worry ‘is this right?’ Listen to the quiet voice inside you.”
He: “Take any job that’s offered and do your best. Direct from your own heart.”
She: “When Miles directs, it feels like ‘our Richard.’ Everyone has ownership. It’s respect of everybody there.”
Actor Brian Dennehy declared to our group: “I looked out at you and I’m appalled to have forced you to watch Homecoming.”
“It’s my first experience with Pinter,” he said. “It’s hard stuff. The play is not ever about what you’re seeing on the stage. It’s about power. It’s always hard to play a symbol.”
Pinter was writing in the 1960s, he said, when everything changed. “He was a prophet of that change.”
Theatre is like any kind of art, he said. “An artist’s job is to take life and show you the truth you may have missed when you saw the original object.
“I don’t want to tap dance. I’m too old for that. I want to excavate. I want to make people think.”
As for the challenge of doing several roles at one time, it’s just like training for a race. “You walk out on the stage and let the play happen to you. You’ve done the work. You don’t think about it.”
Our Saturday guest was Geraint Wyn Davies who plays Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor and King Arthur in Camelot. He looked very different from the pudgy Falstaff in a fat suit, so rotund that he has to watch that he doesn’t hurt his back. He said the fat suit has ice packs inside to keep him cool.
He advises young actors, “play all the time as if you’re not miked. Then it will come out right. The sound engineer will turn it down as necessary.” Camelot is “miked”, and Merry Wives is not.
Geraint always tries to respond to audience reaction of a laugh or comment. “We’re on the same team.” As well, “whenever I screw up on stage I acknowledge it; I know, you know. I think it’s better than sweeping it underneath.”
By being part of the Seminar Society, we really felt that we were “on the same team” with the actors. One told us about his upcoming wedding, another answered a cell phone call from his son in the middle of his talk.
We’ve already booked our hotel rooms for next year, and will be signing up for the Seminar Society as soon as the play list is finalized.
As King Richard III says, “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!” I know it has no relevance here, but it’s one of many Shakespearean quotes that had new depth listening to them in their play of origin.
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