An Interesting Thing Happened on the Way to the Economic Downturn

Paul Barnes
Producing Director

Bernard Shaw’s three hour play about heresy, feudalism, and Protestantism, Saint Joan, set new records for single ticket sales at Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. Romeo and Juliet, a play about teen suicide currently nearing the end of its run at Pioneer Theatre Company in Salt Lake City, is posting the strongest sales for a production of a play by Shakespeare in five seasons. Henry IV, Part 1, which deals with dysfunctional father-son relationships and ends with multiple deaths on the battlefield, sold out (Folger Theater) and was the talk of the Washington, DC theatre scene during its six-week run last fall. It may be that I directed these productions, but I harbor no illusions that my direction inspired brisk box office business. I did have wonderful collaborators: designers, actors, craftspeople, and the administrators who selected the plays to begin with and were kind enough to hire me to direct for their theatres, and it’s true that any success in the theatre is the success of many, never one. But I’m clear about one thing: these are terrific scripts; classics, all; challenging for the people bringing them to life and for audiences attending performances; and I guess because in the midst of unceasingly bleak news, any glimpse of light in the ever-darkening tunnel in which we have found ourselves is worth snatching at and clinging to.

Cast of The Taming of the Shrew (2008, dir. Alec Wild)

I actually think the larger lesson is really a familiar reminder. People still like gathering together in darkened spaces where they can hear a great story well told. One need only look to box office statistics from the film industry for verification; while everyone else is in free-fall, movies are posting impressive attendance: 2008 was the American cinema’s strongest year among the last several. (And, yep, movies are still a bargain – less expensive now than, when ticket prices are adjusted for inflation, they were 30 years ago.)

But a three-hour play by Shaw in which a young woman is burned at the stake?? A three-hour play by Shakespeare in which two innocent teenagers kill themselves?? A three-hour history play about usurping kings, mystic Celts, and savage warfare?? Doesn’t seem like comforting background music for the present uncertainty of our lives, but perhaps it speaks to the place of theatre and the arts in society, even in the direst of times. (I remember visiting Bratislava, Czechoslovakia – not long after the Russian invasion, and some time before there was a Czech Republic – and being impressed by the number of people strolling around the town square after sunset. The message seemed to be: “we’re here and we’re not going away.” Maybe that’s what’s happening in theatres and concert halls right now. And at GRSF.)

Scott Neale's design concept for "Love's Labour's Lost" (coming in 2009, directed by Paul Barnes)

We’re about to gather in Winona for our traditional season planning/design weekend meetings, which includes our second-ever “Season Preview” event at the Vision Center at Signatures Restaurant, Sunday afternoon, March 8. In light of upwards of $80,000 in budget cuts this season, we’ve confined our pre-season planning work to on-line SKYPE conferences; lots of emails, trading of jpegs and PDFs; individual cell phone calls; and as much in-person conferring as we’ve been able to manage as the GRSF administrative, technical, and artistic staff meanders about the country, like Shakespearean Bedouins, engaged in whatever full or part time employment keeps us gainfully occupied until we return to Winona. But our 2009 season productions have not been far from our minds, despite distance and other preoccupations, and the excitement and momentum is building steadily to our March planning weekend, to our first day of rehearsal, Tuesday, May 12, and to opening weekend, June 26 – 28.

Without giving too much away in advance, GRSF audiences will be treated to a unique pairing of two wonderful plays. They’ll recognize many returning favorites among the 2008 season acting company, and will again be treated to the design work of

Scott Neale's design concept for "The Tempest" (coming in 2009 directed by Alec Wild)

Meg Weedon (costumes, Macbeth, 2007; The Merchant of Venice, 2008), Scott Neale (sets, 2007 & 2008), and Lonnie Alcaraz (lights, 2008). The plays (Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Tempest, both considered comedies – one early, one late — at least by our now-familiar and familial GRSF Front Porch Speaker Peter Saccio, who returns to the GRSF “Front Porch” Sunday, July 26) will challenge the company to stretch and grow in new directions (and give our audiences the chance to stretch and grow right alongside us). We’ll continue to provide a host of education and community outreach programs and as many special events as we can manage to responsibly include in the schedule (watch for updates about a benefit performance of founding company member Jonathan Gillard Daly’s play, The Daly News, which took Milwaukee by storm last December and January, scheduled for Monday, July 13), and do our best to keep our productions as affordable for playgoers as we can. There will be opportunities for young performers in our Shakespeare for Young Actors workshop (and in Love’s Labour’s Lost itself), for teachers in our annual Directing and Writing and Rhetoric Workshops, for middle and high school students in our “Chill With Will” nights at the theatre, and for those stubborn, anti-Shakespearean hold-outs, at our “Skeptics’ Night” performances. And because we’re playing on Saturday, July 4th, we’ll be grilling brats, and finding unique ways to celebrate America’s independence: music, sparklers, patriotic speeches for all! We want to deliver as full and as memorable a season as we can, given present circumstances.

But back to that darkened room. When I taught high school, I often took my beginning drama students to the football stadium where they squeezed together on the bleachers to watch their classmates perform monologues from Greek drama in the center of the playing field. The challenge was for the actors to invent ways to be seen and heard, and for their auditors to discover what it was like to experience great language and great stories, projected from afar, without the usual barriers of cushioned chairs and arm rests. It wasn’t a darkened room per se; rather, being outdoors, it took that much more focus and concentration to participate in this simplest of lessons. But the students’ close proximity meant they could feel each other breathe. Laughter or the physical reaction we manifest when we experience suspense, violence, pathos, or terror on stage rippled outward among them; they shared a truly communal experience, not terribly different, I imagine, from that of the ancient Greeks attending the first-ever play festivals – or, perhaps, Shakespeare’s “groundlings”, taking a break from their daily grind to gather around the Globe Theatre stage and be among the first to hear his newest plays.

In the darkened room of the WSU PAC mainstage theatre this summer (and in the Black Box Theatre, with our Intern/Acting Apprentice Company project of Shakespeare’s Hamlet), we’ll laugh together, shed a tear together, be penetrated by ravishing language together, and maybe even sing together. We’ll also differ in our opinions together, even when we’ve sat side-by-side at the very same performance. I’m encouraged by what’s happening in cineplexes and some live theatres around the country (notwithstanding the sudden, lamentable, – and cautionary for us — closures of good friends such as Madison Repertory Theatre and the Milwaukee Shakespeare Company, to name only two early casualties of the economic downturn from among legions more, nationwide), and as always, we’ve all been heartened by the messages of encouragement that we receive from supporters in Winona and the region. Though our presence in the city will never please everyone and the value of our work will never be affirmed by all, enough people seem to agree that the city’s desire to become host and home base for a brand new Shakespeare festival has been a good one, challenged as we all are by the need to tighten belts and establish priorities as we do our best to keep our communities vibrant, alive, and solvent.

We’re not out of the woods by any means. We’ve got money to raise, and the list of specific needs – from borrowed vehicles to temporary housing to off-site rehearsal space – grows daily. (Just call or stop by the office; we’ll gladly tell you how you can help!) But perhaps in our darkened room this summer we can provide a bit of optimism or momentary relief from the fear and uncertainty which have us in their grip. Great plays, like great music, architecture, sculpture, painting, dance and all of the arts, lift the human spirit and transport us above the common bound. Perhaps attendance trends reflect our shared and increased need for escape during this harshest of winters. Or maybe these trends, where they’re occurring (for they’re far from universal), help us remember when we gather together to hear a great story well told, that we’re all in this together. And somehow, together, we’ll find our way out.

Cutting Shakespeare

Paul Barnes
Producing Director
Great River Shakespeare Festival

A couple of months ago someone posted a question on the GRSF blog site
wanting to know how we go about cutting Shakespeare’s plays. Directing and travel have prevented me from offering a thoughtful response, so my apologies for seeming to ignore the request. I’ve got enough time now to serve up what I hope will be a helpful answer.

There’s no doubt about it: Shakespeare’s plays are long (Macbeth and The Comedy of Errors being the notable exceptions), and there’s also no doubt that we’re all held hostage to contemporary attention spans, babysitting needs, and various pressures that seem to impose a three-hour limit to any play-going experience these days, Shakespearean or otherwise. Many theatres, in fact, often ask directors to do their best to adhere to a two-and-a-half-hour run time (including intermission, in some cases!), so that audiences are on their way home at what they consider a civilized hour without having had too much demanded of them. The Utah Shakespearean Festival suggests a 2800 maximum line count for its productions, usually guaranteeing that a play will come to its conclusion in two hours and forty-five minutes, including a fifteen minute break.

We’re not that strict at Great River, and several of our 10 main stage season productions to date have clocked in at a robust three-hour playing time (with intermission). But we’re committed to a thorough examination of the text and to building confidence among our audiences that not only can they comfortably endure a “long sit” in the theatre, they are also completely capable of comprehending Shakespeare’s plays, no matter their length, providing we do our work specifically, clearly, and compellingly. We strive for absorbing productions in which people can become fully immersed and blissfully unaware of the passage of time, whatever the particular running length.

At the same time, it has never been our mission to produce the plays in their entirety without cutting a word; therefore, we cut the scripts as judiciously as is required.

Generally speaking, the first things to go are obscure puns that would have amused Elizabethan audiences but that are lost to us now; we often refer to these as “head-scratching” moments. Second up on the cutting block are references to Elizabethan clothing that is no longer fashionable or even known to us (often referred to as the “Elizabethan panty-hose” jokes). Sometimes we need to absorb or combine roles within a script (where doubling an actor isn’t going to do the trick); we’re a small company and most of Shakespeare’s plays require casts larger in number than the ranks at GRSF – and in so doing, some lines that no longer make sense for the character get trimmed away.

As we cut, we pay strict attention to meter and verse so that we honor and keep in tact lines of iambic pentameter whenever possible. Occasionally we change a word for greater clarity, but those instances are pretty rare. We’re committed to the idea that if an actor is specific when he says “My nyas?” (as Romeo does in the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet), an audience will get the gist of what he means, even if they don’t recognize the word. Likewise, we’re committed to honoring scansion, so when Romeo says “Thou detestable maw,” in Act V, Scene iii, the pronunciation of the word “detestable” adheres to the rhythm of the line:
“Thou DETestable maw. . .”, which may fall on the ear oddly, but for an actor is
often a helpful clue to the character’s emotional or psychological state or, more prosaically, an inadvertent revelation of how the Elizabethans might have pronounced the word. Similarly, we’re pretty convinced that Juliet (and Romeo) need all of the syllables in the word “banished” (“ban-i-shed”) in Act III, Scene ii and Act III, Scene iii of the play, when they learn that the Prince has exiled Romeo for his part in Tybalt’s death. Solid gold for an actor – and a director.

Radical or severe cutting of Shakespeare’s plays often results in what I have come to feel is the “Shakespeare Lite” syndrome – i.e., instances in which so much of the play has been cut away that you’ve eliminated not only the actors’
basic foundation, but the audience’s as well. The play seems to go by in a flurry of interesting but not terribly involving or compelling quick scenes, leaving us with the feeling of “what just happened?!” I’ve directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream a number of times (a surprisingly long script, given its popularity and seeming fleetness), and now whenever I go back to my original cuts, because I’ve come to know the play pretty well through repeated excursions, I’ve come to understand what the cut lines were doing there in the first place – how they reinforce, develop, or, in many cases, help an actor (and an audience) get from “Point A” to “Point D”.

We often ask actors to let us know if in cutting their lines (which directors do, before the company arrives for first rehearsal), we have eliminated essential steps in the development of the character they’re playing or in their part of the story; we also ask them to suggest other lines to be cut (in their own parts) when they suggest restoration of cut lines.

I also think that directors are often afraid to dig into dense or complex passages of Shakespeare’s scripts, and when they come up against knotty sections of a text, the easy choice is to simply cut. At Great River we are committed to a closer, deeper examinations of the scripts, and it’s in these instances that we really dig in. It’s why each of our two main stage productions has its own text coach, and it’s why we spend up to the first full week of rehearsal sitting at the table, as we call it, with dictionaries, Variorums, copies of the Folio, glossaries, and various editions of the text (punctuation vary, depending on editor and publisher) pouring over the words, making comparisons, suggesting periods where a comma might have been used, and agreeing upon what is for us the most specific meaning of a word, a phrase, a verse line, a passage, a scene, and ultimately, the entire play. Many times what we agree upon in a first, second, or third reading of the play changes once we’re up on our feet in staging and working rehearsals. It’s also quite common for an actor to suddenly hit upon an entirely new meaning of a word, a line, a phrase, a verbal exchange, etc. during the run of a production. But it’s in this kind of work that the plays come alive for the actors and, as important, for the audience attending the production.

We believe that if you’re a Shakespeare festival, your first commitment is to language above all else, and we continually remind ourselves that Shakespeare’s plays were performed in broad daylight, without benefit of much stage technology, elaborate costuming, or the other technical elements that can so easily become the focus of a production of his plays in our day and age – with the result being that audiences came to hear a story. GRSF playgoers know by now that we’re not hide-bound historians or traditionalists. We’ve set his plays contemporarily as well as in the Renaissance– and in all sorts of periods in between, including those of our own invention. Regardless of setting, however, our initial commitment is to the text and to clear storytelling. We cut when it helps us achieve a dynamic and compelling production, but we also hold our own feet to the fire and always try to examine and commit to the words before getting rid of them.

I don’t believe I’m smarter than Shakespeare. No matter how many times I direct one of his plays, I always learn something new. I don’t think he needs my “help”; rather, I think it’s my job to prepare thoroughly and thoughtfully and then do my best to follow his lead and keep up with the demanding pace he sets. I’ll cut where necessary, but if I can avoid it – and still deliver a riveting production that keeps people in their seats rather than trying to get out of them – that will always be my preference.

What I’ve Learned About Shakespeare, Shaw, and Wilde

Paul Barnes, Producing Director – St. Louis

Saint Joan played its first preview performance last night. Our audience was estimated in the 350 – 400 range (very respectable for an initial preview at Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, with snow flurries outside to boot!), and it was fascinating to watch a large group of people experiencing the production (and, perhaps, the play) for the first time as they leaned forward into the work, listened, and responded.

Saint Joan at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis: GRSF veteran Tarah Flanagan as Joan. (Photo by Jerry Naunheim, Jr.)

Cards on the table? I’m a Shaw novice. This is my second production of one of his plays: last year, I directed Major Barbara at the Clarence Brown Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee. After years of campaigning for Shaw directing assignments (they’re usually reserved for Artistic Directors or directors who already specialize in his plays), I’ve gotten my toes wet. . . well, more accurately, I’ve been neck deep in the “Shaw waters,” as there’s no turning back once the immersion begins. . . Shaw takes no prisoners.

But everything I have learned from directing numerous productions of plays by Shakespeare over a long period of time has served me well with GBS. First, last, and always, it’s all about the words — and an inherent trust that if you don’t get in the way of the words, the words will engage and incite an audience’s imagination.

I don’t think we’re challenged by words in our everyday lives the way Shakespeare and Shaw’s plays challenge us; but the payoff for a director is watching and listening as audiences settle in, gain confidence, and track the playwright’s arguments and points of view.

Saint Joan at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis: GRSF veteran Christopher Gerson as Chaplain John de Stogumber. (Photo by Jerry Naunheim, Jr.)

Overlapping from one scene to the next — never letting the language drop for very long, if at all — has paid off, and keeping things simple, in that GRSF “platform for storytelling” kind of way, rather than distracting our ears by over-stimulating our eyes, are principles upon which I’ve come to rely.

Shaw himself claimed that he surpassed Shakespeare as a playwright, because in his mind, Shakespeare didn’t really deal with ideas or social issues. I would refute that claim by suggesting that they’re two different beasts, linked by virtuosic use of the English language and a commitment to shed light on the human experience. Shakespeare’s insights into the human heart and the human soul emerge in the brilliant array of characters he created in the body of his work; Shaw’s insights into the human condition emerge through the conflict of ideas he let spill onto his stages. (In Major Barbara, for instance, an arms manufacturer has created a utopian Socialist community for his employees. . . the fortune he has made producing weapons of mass destruction has been put to work insuring that the people working for him have nice homes in a peaceful, neatly manicured, benign community, and never have to worry about putting food on the table. It’s a provocative conundrum, to say the least.)

Both playwrights require cutting. . . their plays are long and challenge contemporary attention spans. With Shaw it’s especially tricky; you’re either deleting a stepping stone in the logical development of an argument, or eliminating the “zinger” that gives his plays their wit and provides audiences the opportunity to laugh at human foibles. With Shakespeare, if you eviscerate too much of a scene, the play is reduced to a sort of head-scratching experience in which an audience becomes an observer rather than an engaged participant. With both, the key is to make the language clear and specific so that what is a “long sit” by contemporary standards seems to go by in the blink of an eye. It’s a sort of linguistic magic trick.

I was lucky enough to assemble an accomplished group of actors to tackle Saint Joan. The production features three GRSF “vets”: Tarah Flanagan in the title role; Christopher Gerson plays the fanatical Chaplain John deStogumber, and Jonathan Gillard Daly portrays the Inquisitor, Brother John le Maitre, who represents the Vatican at Joan’s trial for heresy. It’s a large cast (another similarity to plays by Shakespeare), comprised of six students from the Webster University Theatre Conservatory, several local Equity actors from St. Louis, and a passel of actors based in New York City. Robert Mark Morgan (set designer, with whom I collaborated on a production of The Diary of Anne Frank at the Denver Center Theatre Company a year ago), Dottie Marshall (costume designer), and Peter Sargent (lighting designer), and Rusty Wandall (sound designer) have been a stellar team with which to bring the play to life.

My other “first” in the world of directing assignments this fall was the production of The Importance of Being Ernest that I directed at Nevada Conservatory Theatre, the professional theatre wing of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, immediately preceding my St. Louis Shaw experience. This seems to be a year of language plays: next up is Romeo and Juliet at Pioneer Theatre Company in Salt Lake City; after that, it’s Noel Coward’s Hay Fever at my undergraduate alma mater, California State University-Fullerton in Orange County, and my GRSF assignment this summer is the language-surfeited Love’s Labour’s Lost. The success of my “maiden voyage” with Wilde’s well-known comedy, also involved helping the actors shape the language, keeping things simple, resisting the temptation to “farce things up,” trying to stay out of the way of the playwright, and letting the words — and therefore, the wit — shine. Ernest turned out to be an excellent “warm-up” for Joan.

I was a good English student as a child, blessed with excellent teachers who encouraged reading and writing throughout my elementary, junior high, and high school education in Wilton, Connecticut and Palo Alto, California. But it’s been a steady journey as a theatre director to trust that education. . . to believe in the power of words as the foundation of my work — and for me to trust my own intellectual and interpretive gifts to translate these master playwrights’ work from page to stage. Watching last night’s audience here in St. Louis lean forward and listening to their response as the story of the Maid of France unfolded over the 2 hours and 40 minute running time of the production (respectable for this play: GBS himself said it Saint Joan requires a three-and-a-half hour running time), was more than ample reward for the education, the training, and the experience gained through steady employment as a director — and reinforced in me the confidence that if you trust the words, people will listen. And not only will they listen, they’ll be entertained, inspired, challenged, and possibly, even a little changed.

For more information about Paul’s production of “Saint Joan” use this link to visit The Repertory Theater of St. Louis – Ed.

Paul Barnes writes from St. Louis

I’m writing from Saint Louis, where I’m about to head into technical/dress rehearsals of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, featuring GRSF actors Tarah Flanagan (in the title role), Christopher Gerson (as Chaplain John de Stogumber, the man who sends Joan to the bonfire), and Jonathan Gillard Daly (as Brother John LeMaitre, the Inquisitor, who leads Joan’s trial for heresy). It’s a great play and an interesting one to be working on at this particular time in our country’s history, as it grapples with issues of individual genius, religious fanaticism, and torture of political prisoners, all framed within Shaw’s incredible intelligence and wit. Once again, clear evidence that the theatre provides a mirror in which we see our own lives and a complex range of human experience reflected back at us.

Paul Barnes directs Saint Joan at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis

In between rehearsals and celebrating the holidays, I’ve been following news from Winona (and from across the country), and have been sobered by signs of the times: i.e., the decision to defer Gilmore Creek Summer Theatre’s 2009 season, the postponed plans to move the Thompson Dredge to the Minnesota Marine Art Museum site, and the need to put on hold plans for the downtown arts/sports facility. All of these wrenching but prudent decisions make clear the uncertainty of the times, and all of them reflect the need to not get over-extended at a time when battening down the financial hatches is a wise, defensive position of self-preservation.

And they also reflect a loss to the quality of life in Winona (and elsewhere, as communities across the country make similar, painful choices).

As you know, we’re battening down the financial hatches at GRSF while moving forward with plans for 2009.
Our Board has approved a very conservative budget for our sixth season, reflecting at least $80,000 in cuts from previous seasons, and giving us our smallest operating budget since we premiered in 2004. We’ve had ongoing conversations in which we’ve examined every facet of the Festival’s operation, from staffing to play selection, to scheduling, to budgeting. It’s clear to us that people wish to see us succeed and that there are many who will do what they can to insure that we produce a vibrant and successful Season Six, including our Board of Directors.

So I’m writing to thank you for all the votes of support that have come our way in the last several months, and to ask for your continued support. One of the few bright and gleaming lights that appeared on the rather bleak horizon of not-for-profit organizations in the last week or two was the emergency “rescue effort” mounted by supporters of Shakespeare Santa Cruz, a 25-year old festival that performs on campus at the University of California, Santa Cruz in Northern California when the call was issued to raise $300,000 in ten days’ time or see SSC close its doors permanently. Not only did the Festival meet its deadliine, it exceeded its goal by $114,000, insuring that the Festival would be able to continue operations in 2009 and into the future.

We don’t need to raise $300,000 (although it would be nice if we did raise that amount), but we will continue to turn to you, our dedicated supporters, to help meet our financial goals for 2009. If, before the books are closed on 2008, you’ve got a little to spare, please visit our website: www.grsf.org and click on “donate”. In one of my more fevered moments, I estimated that if half of the people who attended plays at the Festival in 2008 (approximately 4,000 playgoers), pledged to give $100 in 4 $25.00 increments between now and June 25, when we open the 2009 season, we’d raise enough to not only close our earnings gap on Season Six, but we’d also be able to bank money for the future. Broken down into bite-size pieces, nothing seems that daunting.

At any rate, thank you for thinking of us — and thank you for taking action. If it’s not possible to donate money, please encourage friends to do so — even friends who may have never attended the Festival (“This is something I’ve come to believe in. Won’t you help?”) — or, consider donating time by becoming a volunteer on behalf of the Festival. With cutbacks in staff, we’ll need your help more than ever. The Friends of Will volunteer wing of GRSF is an incredibly well organized force without which we simply wouldn’t exist. You can sign up at the downtown office at 79 E. Third Street.

As we all face uncertain times and make difficult choices in every aspect of our lives, it is enormously inspiring to know that GRSF has come to matter in your lives. May the challenges of the now unfolding new year continue to bring us together in our quest and our commitment to sustain the quality of our communities and our lives.

Sincerely,
Paul

Paul Barnes
Producing Director
Great River Shakespeare Festival