Celebrating Shakespeare’s birthday in his own town

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

DSC_8799bandThis weekend is the most important of the year for Stratford-upon-Avon. Shakespeare’s life and works are celebrated with a whole range of events, but the most important is the parade which this year takes place on Saturday morning, 20 April, and will bring the centre of town to a standstill. I’ve taken part in it many times, usually accompanying guests from other countries or cultural organisations. It’s great fun because as you walk through the streets down to Holy Trinity Church you get the opportunity to introduce people who may not know much about the town to the story of Shakespeare in Stratford.

DSC03907community processionOver the last couple of years I’ve taken a more practical role, and have become aware of the amount of organisation this event requires from the people of the town whether they are first-aiders, police specials, staff and boys at King Edward’s School, members of the bands, or the people who receive and arrange the flowers in Holy Trinity Church.

Flowers play an important part in this ceremony. Shakespeare loved them, especially spring flowers. In this recent piece Germaine Greer comments on Shakespeare’s love of the spring. One of my favourite quotations from Shakespeare about flowers is also quoted by Greer:
daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength

Perdita, who speaks these lines in The Winter’s Tale, is commenting regretfully that none of the most lovely flowers of the spring are blooming in the height of summer. Shakespeare is almost always an accurate observer of nature, but the winter now just passing has been so severe that the daffodils failed to come out in March, and are only now in full bloom. And the swallows have dared to come at the same time: we saw our first in Stratford just last Sunday, the 14th April.  Migrating all the way from Africa each year they always really signal the arrival of spring.

DSC01355 resizeFor a young girl talking to her lover, Perdita has some surprising thoughts about the inevitability of winter and death. Daffodils come earlier than other signs of spring, and primroses shrivel before the sun warms the land. Florizel is to be strewn with flowers, but “not like a corpse; or if -not to be buried, but quick, and in mine arms”. The Winter’s Tale repeatedly concerns itself with death, rebirth, and the cycles of nature. Shakespeare, famously, is thought to have died on his birthday so it’s even more appropriate that the parade that marks his birthday ends with the decoration of his grave with the flowers of spring, celebrating his achievements and undying influence.

A Chinese dragon from 2012

A Chinese dragon from 2012

The Birthday celebrations are an opportunity for people from around the world to pay their respects to Shakespeare, and there has been an international element to them for many decades. This year Bangladesh, New Zealand, Kenya and Brazil will be among the countries represented, along with people from many local schools, colleges and organisations. One of the joyful things about the parade is that the crowds who watch the procession can also join in.

The USA is the country which above all has helped the development of Stratford, contributing to the building of the theatre, and providing the most constant of visitors to the town. The RSC’s productions of Julius Caesar and the musical Matilda have just opened in New York. Among the groups informally joining the procession will be a group from Boston, the city where on Monday, the city’s own most special day turned from jubilation to tragedy in the blink of an eye. At the end of The Winter’s Tale, wounds are healed but among the rejoicing there is a moment of “joy waded in tears” to remember the dead. While Stratford enjoys its own big day, those taking part will also acknowledge those places in the world suffering grief and devastation.

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Othello, Iago and the search for character

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

The National Theatre’s new production of Othello is beginning its previews this week. Starring Adrian Lester as Othello, the Henry V from a few years ago, and Rory Kinnear as Iago, who has recently played Hamlet, both at the National, it promises to be a terrific production.

During his successful period in charge, Nicholas Hytner has overseen a number of Shakespeares, and he has just written a piece about acting in which he talks about the challenges offered by Shakespeare. Being an actor himself, the author was able to leave questions unanswered, making the actors in his company find their own answer. What, for instance, was Hamlet’s relationship to Ophelia? There are as many answers as there are actors to take the roles.

For Hytner the plays are always incomplete until inhabited by actors.
The desire of literary critics over four centuries to solve Iago as if he were a puzzle seems to me to be missing the point. The solution is the actor. The playwright writes from the premise that the dots can’t be joined on the page, and writes with the confidence of an actor who knows that, if they are any good, his colleagues will do the rest of the job for him.

Michael Attenborough made much the same point when talking to the Shakespeare Club in December about rehearsing Shakespeare. Each actor has to ask themselves why they have been given these words, at this moment: how they connect with his character.

One of the actors Hytner quotes, and an actor who has previously played Iago, is Simon Russell Beale, an actor skilled in joining up the dots provided by Shakespeare. Within the last year Beale has taken one of the most difficult of roles, Timon of Athens, an incomplete role if ever there was one, and in January 2014 he will play King Lear at the National Theatre, directed, as was his Iago, by Sam Mendes. As it happens, as part of the Shakespeare Birthday celebrations in Stratford this week Beale is being awarded the Pragnell Prize which recognises outstanding contributions to Shakespeare.

I’ve recently been reading a new book, Shakespeare’s Sense of Character: On the Page and From the Stage, edited by Yu Jin Ko and Michael W Shurgot. It’s a collection of essays that look at the subject of character, for many years a dirty word in the academic world though not in the theatre. It’s significant, I think, that out of fourteen chapters three are about Iago in Othello.

The first is written by Dan Donohue, whose portrayal of Iago at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2008 was highly praised. His analysis of the process is fascinating. Iago is one of the most difficult roles written by Shakespeare, and is a superb actor himself. As  Donohue puts it:  “For me, the opportunity to play that role would be like studying acting from a master tacher. It would be an opportunity to literally step into Iago’s shoes and to follow in his footsteps. My challenge would be to be as honest in representing Iago as “Honest Iago” appears to the other characters in the play.”

Peter Macon as Othello and Dan Donohue as Iago in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival Production

He examined every phrase, as Hytner and Attenborough suggested:
“Iago must choose each word; he must coin each phrase; and he, himself, must be the architect of his speech. I meticulously pulled apart his text – line by line and word by word – as I asked myself questions about the choices he made in expressing himself through language”.

In the end, he found a way: “I keep in mind what Iago secretly wants, but I play the scene as if I were really trying to help the Moor. With that in mind, I would choose to play – Protect my friend, Othello, from some painful news – rather than playing – Torture the person I want to destroy“.

In his essay Michael Shurgot examines the great temptation scene, Act 3 Scene 3, concentrating on the dangerous section where Iago vividly describes Cassio’s dream. “The striking theatrical paradox of this scene [is that] the more deeply felt and convincingly performed the actor’s impersonation of Iago’s sexual longings, the more incredulous will be Othello’s failure to penetrate Iago’s mask; and the greater the risk that this segment of [the scene] will dissolve into a grotesque parody of Othello’s temptation and fall.”.

Finally Travis Curtwright examines early modern acting styles, looking at Philemon Holland’s translation of Plutarch’s essay on How to discern a flatterer from a friend. A tricky distinction, since as Plutarch points out “there is no difference between them”, at least not outwardly. Plutarch defines the flatterer as an actor: he “carrieth himself like  grave tragedian, and not as a comical and satirical player, and under that visor and habit he counterfeiteth a true friend”.

The book offers a series of different perspectives on the complex relationships, between two of Shakespeare’s most compelling characters. With two superb actors to play Othello and Iago, the production should be one of the year’s most fascinating theatrical events.

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Science versus alchemy

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

Jonathan Hyde as Isaac Newton

The BBC’s series The Genius of Invention carried on, this week with a major documentary on the greatest of scientists, Isaac Newton .

But the documentary revealed a more complicated side to Newton: not just the logical man who made great discoveries about light and gravity, for most of his life he was obsessed with alchemy, with the search for the philosopher’s stone. It’s usually assumed that by the time Newton was born in 1642 alchemy, so popular in the sixteenth century, was in decline. This obsession came to light only in the twentieth century when some of his papers were purchased by the economist John Maynard Keynes. So Newton, rather than being the first of the great scientists could instead be seen as the last magician.

Radio 4’s Point of View this week was on the subject of Science, magic and madness, in which Adam Gopnik compared the methods of the great scientist Galileo Galilei with those of John Dee.

The opera Dr Dee

Galileo was Shakespeare’s exact contemporary, whereas Dee, born in 1527 was on an older generation. Both were interested in the science of planets, their orbits, and the effects of gravity, but whereas Galileo tested his theories, rejecting them when they were proved to be wrong and insisting on logical explanations for problems, Dee relied too heavily on reading other people’s opinions. He believed, of course, in alchemy, and nowadays is mostly remembered for his misguided eccentricity and his belief in the occult rather than for his learning. Nevertheless he had been favoured by Queen Elizabeth, who consulted him and visited him at his home, though he was never given any formal status or regular income. He’s become a more popular figure lately with an opera, Dr Dee, being staged in 2012.

Gopnik pointed out that any kind of advance never takes place in simple stages, and Newton’s fascination with alchemy certainly sits awkwardly with the idea that science leapt forward in the age of the Royal Society under Charles II. The idea of turning lead into gold was so compelling that it took a lot of shifting.

Andrea Sella

One of the speakers at the ShakesSphere talk I attended at the RSC a few weeks ago was Professor Andrea Sella, a chemist who talked about the attempts from the Greeks onwards to answer the question “What is the world made of?” Cinnabar ore contains mercury, which could be extracted by heating. If the magical element mercury could come out of a red rock, what else was possible? What was the connection between yellow rocks and gold? It had been known for centuries that combining the two soft metals copper and tin resulted in the much harder metal bronze.

Professor Sella demonstrated a few delightful magic tricks, showing how easy it was to apparently turn one metal into another. He heated caustic soda and zinc dust, and used it to turn a copper coin silver. Then he heated the coin and it turned gold. Nowadays we know these are only illusions, but who could blame alchemists for thinking it might be possible to turn base metals into gold if they could only find the right combination? Knowing that the brilliant Isaac Newton pursued this idea throughout his life certainly makes it seem a less eccentric idea.

John Dee

Belief in the supernatural thrived in Shakespeare’s time, and has never died out in spite of scientific advances. Shakespeare certainly included his fair share of spirits and ghosts. But it seems unlikely to me that Shakespeare modelled his great magician Prospero on John Dee, a man from a previous age whose actual achievements had been so modest.

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From crumhorns to waterphone: Music for Shakespeare

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

Crumhorns

Shakespeare’s use of music is always a popular subject, but just now it seems to be everywhere.

Shakespeare’s Globe is hosting a conference on Shakespeare, music and performance from 3-5 May, which will include input from major academics as well as performances of a selection of music.

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has just launched an online exhibition on the subject of Shakespeare and Music, including sound and video clips, images from the library, archive and museum collections, and a series of blog articles looking at the subject from different angles.

Ted Watson

And this week the retired RSC musician Ted Watson talked to Stratford’s Shakespeare Club about his years of experience of providing music to accompany the Company’s productions. He arrived in 1966 with a nine-month contract and left forty-two years later.

As well as being a musician in the theatre Watson has a considerable career as a composer, teacher and performer.

Muisicians playing onstage in the RSC’s 1966 production of Henry V

I would guess he’s also something of a frustrated actor since his talk included a bit of dressing up and he acknowledged that he always enjoyed having to get into costume to appear on stage. And no wonder. Playing in the band box of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre must have been a rather disjointed experience for the musicians, being as they were so far from the stage that they could neither see nor hear what was going on.

Shakespeare was always very aware of the importance of music on stage. Dances are usually celebratory, songs can be merry or sad, fanfares mark entrances, but music also provides atmosphere, a sense of wonder, enchantment, threat or fear.

The Merchant of Venice provides several opportunities for atmospheric music, such as the night scene when Jessica and Lorenzo sit outside while music plays:
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears.

“I am never merry when I hear sweet music” says Jessica. “The reason is, your spirits are attentive” replies Lorenzo. The gentle mood, leading up to Portia’s return to her home, is created by the combination of music and poetry.

Earlier in the play Bassanio chooses from the caskets to the accompaniment of a song, and Portia makes the connection between music and atmosphere.
Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,
Fading in music: that the comparison
May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream
And watery death-bed for him. He may win;
And what is music then? Then music is
Even as the flourish when true subjects bow
To a new-crowned monarch: such it is
As are those dulcet sounds in break of day
That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear,
And summon him to marriage.

Elsewhere the physician Cerimon, in Pericles, calls for the “rough and woeful music” of the viol to help revive Thaisa, and most magically in The Winter’s Tale Paulina signals that the statue should come to life with the words:
Music, awake her; strike!
‘Tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach;
Strike all that look upon with marvel. Come!

Ted Watson played a recording of the music for this moment in the 1992 production of The Winter’s Tale, composed by Shaun Davey. It’s a beautiful piece of music in its own right that complemented what was happening on stage perfectly.

Elizabethan musicians

Watson also looked at recordings of the same song, Where the bee sucks, from The Tempest, to show the variety of responses different composers have made. He played an authentically Jacobean version written by Robert Johnson, Guy Woolfenden’s 1978 version, and one written by himself. Robert Johnson composed the original music for Shakespeare’s play, and may have performed at other plays by the King’s Men. As well as working with Shakespeare he was lutenist to both James I and Charles 1 until 1633.

With musicians at the RSC so often being invisible it was particularly rewarding to see and hear Ted demonstrating some of the instruments he’s played from penny whistle, clarinets and saxophones to the crumhorn and the weird waterphone. This strange instrument was much used for Michael Boyd’s History cycle every time a sense of dread and foreboding was needed. You can see and hear one being performed here.

RSC musicians have been required to play in a huge range of styles as well as instruments from original Elizabethan, folk, jazz and classical, and Adrian Lee’s music for The Island Princess required the musicians to turn themselves into a south-east Asian gamelan orchestra.

Watson closed his talk by playing a recording of the song The Warwickshire Lad, words by David Garrick, music by Dibdin, written for the 1769 Garrick Jubilee in Stratford. It was good to be reminded that composers have also celebrated Shakespeare’s love of music by writing in his praise.

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Theatres for Shakespeare

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

CGI of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

What is the ideal theatre, or stage, for Shakespeare? It’s a question that theatre people have been addressing for centuries. Shakespeare didn’t write exclusively for the Globe, and even though it was  purpose-built by Shakespeare’s company in 1599 I don’t suppose it was regarded as perfect. Shakespeare had other spaces in his mind: the indoor Blackfriars, venues like Middle Temple Hall and halls in royal palaces.

Shakespeare’s Globe has always aimed to have an indoor theatre, and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is currently under construction. When it opens in early 2014 it’ll give the opportunity “to investigate indoor theatre practice and to stage Jacobean plays in their intended atmosphere”. Controversially, it will be candlelit. It won’t be an exact replica of the Blackfriars because as with the Globe, nobody has the plans.

It’s interesting to see how much ideas about theatre spaces have changed in recent decades. In 1932 the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre was opened with the hope that it would be the best theatre for Shakespeare in the world.

Attached to the wall just round the corner from the dock doors that allow sets onto the backstage area of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre is a brightly-polished brass plate. It is in part a commemorative plaque for the theatre itself, but when it was in its original location in the wings it was also functional: it controlled the theatre’s state of the art mechanised stage.

The architect and engineers wanted to create an emphatically different atmosphere from existing theatres. The barrier in Victorian theatres was seen to be that elaborate scene changes meant long breaks between scenes and often the rearrangement of the order of scenes. It was in order to create swifter, even seamless changes of scene while retaining the spectacle, that the innovations were made to the SMT’s stage.

There had been experiments, led by William Poel, with simpler staging closer to Shakespeare’s, but the Director Bridges-Adams insisted on having a theatre with a proscenium arch and the potential for elaborate scenery, though it would also allow a range of styles and types of performance. Reading statements from the time of the opening in 1932, it’s apparent that the builders of the theatre were mightily proud of the mechanical achievements of the new building.

Close-up of the brass plate

As shown on the brass plate, the mechanised stage consisted of two parts: the rolling stages and bridges. The rolling stages could be set up, one on each side of the stage, with a different set on each. Each was on wooden sleepers and rolled on rails, powered by electric winches. The Architect and Building News described the effect:
“a complete scene may be set in advance and rolled on in place of the preceding scene, the time being occupied for a complete change being about 25 seconds. Each rolling stage is equipped with traps, and …the two rolling stages may be coupled together to form one continuous stage”.

The plan of the stage area showing rolling stages, lifts and forestage

The two bridges enabled sets the width of the stage to be raised or lowered from below to the stage level or above it. At the back of the stage was hung a massive cyclorama, a plaster surface onto which different colours and effects could be projected, and which could be brought forward 20 feet. And there was a traditional fly tower from which elements of set could be brought down.

But the theatre did not get off to a good start. In her book The Royal Shakespeare Company: a history of ten decades Sally Beauman describes the theatre’s opening as an unremitting disaster, including the mechanised stage. But many of the problems were caused by planning failures rather than the theatre itself. Even on that first day, but not while the press of the world were there to see it (they left at the first interval of Henry IV part 1), the rolling stages scored a success when, joined together, they were used for the coronation procession at the end of Henry IV part 2.

The actors were said to have had difficulty making themselves heard, but later in the season the same actors appeared in a triumphant production of The Merchant of Venice directed by the flamboyant Russian director Theodor Komisarjevsky who used every trick the theatre was capable of. The stage became a star, the scene changes from Venice to Belmont and back again being entertaining in themselves and helping the actors by setting a mood for the scenes.

There were of course difficulties. Technical hitches meant the stages often stuck, though this is not exactly a phenomenon unknown to other theatres. The rolling stages behind the proscenium arch ensured that much of the acting took place upstage, increasing the gap between the actors and audiences. This distance was actually increased by the sizeable forestage.

It couldn’t be said that the audience had been forgotten: the view of the stage was unobstructed, the acoustics had been tested scientifically, and the seats were comfortable. But the control plate in theStratfordtheatre is perhaps a reminder that what the audience really needs is a human connection rather than the latest technical wizardry. Fortunately this is not likely to be an issue in the intimate new theatre, seating only 350, that’s currently being built in London.

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Richard Griffiths, stage actor of many parts

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

Volpone, 1983

One evening last week, at 7.28pm, just before performances were due to begin, all the theatres on Shaftesbury Avenue in London simultaneously dimmed their lights. This traditional tribute to an actor who has recently died is carried out only rarely, but then Richard Griffiths was an actor who was held in unusual respect and affection.

Most people will remember Griffiths from films such as the Harry Potter series, The History Boys, or Withnail and I. But he was also a superb stage actor.

Griffiths got his first major breaks at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1970s. He started off playing small comic roles like Peter in Romeo and Juliet in 1976  but quickly gained attention. After only a year or so he was cast as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and he might have expected to follow this with other rustic comics like Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. 

Ian Charleson, Paul Whitworth, Michael Pennington and Richard Griffiths in Love’s Labour’s Lost, 1978

So when it came to casting Love’s Labour’s Lost he could have been seen as Constable Dull, or Sir Nathaniel: casting him as the King of Navarre was inspired. Griffiths was every inch the awkward king, rather shy, who had somehow managed to persuade his dashing trio of friends to join him in years of monk-like study. Irving Wardle wrote “Richard Griffiths as the King of Navarre…is a tubby, easily embarrassed monarch who is plainly going to ground because he feels more at home with books than people, especially women. As a result, it is unusually enjoyable when the play proves him wrong”. Matching him was the Princess of France, also bespectacled and surrounded by more extrovert friends. For once it was their romance, rather than Berowne and Rosaline’s that was at the play’s centre, giving it real heart.

In London he played a number of non-Shakespeare roles returning to Stratford for two major ones in 1983: Henry VIII and Ben Jonson’s Volpone, in the plays of the same name.

Henry VIII, 1983

In Howard Davies’s Brechtian production, Griffiths’ Henry played against the popular Holbein image, demonstrating that Shakespeare’s king is a more subtle portrayal. Irving Wardle described him as “not the peremptory bull-like aristocrat of legend, but a slow-moving, temperamentally withdrawn figure who at first seems to be at the mercy of stronger surrounding personalities. When he hears evidence, he sits resting his head in his hands; when he arbitrates, he seems to be submitting to forces beyond his control”.

In Volpone, at the RSC’s studio theatre The Other Place, I remember Griffiths playing a character much closer to those he was to take later, manipulating others and putting on an act with a gleam in his eye. Michael Billington described him as “a laid-back grandee who gets a big kick out of impersonation. At the first hint of a visitor, he whips out his make-up box, speckles his face with skin-rash, and lets his right hand go feebly palsied”.

But my strongest memory of Richard Griffiths on stage is his performance in Trevor Nunn’s musical version of The Comedy of Errors which I saw repeatedly in London in 1977, and which was subsequently filmed. The Officer is one of the shortest roles in the play, with only a handful of lines. Nunn and his designer John Napier chose to play on Griffiths’ size to turn this tiny role into something more.

Michael Williams, Mike Gwilym and Richard Griffiths in The Comedy of Errors, 1976

He was made immediately notieceable in his costume as a motorbike outrider complete with comic trousers and a metal pudding-basin of a helmet clamped onto his head. As the confusions of the play multiply the officer is called on to arrest Antipholus of Ephesus. Here, he fixed one handcuff to Antipholus, the other to himself, only to find that he had also bound a folding chair, the source of much physical comedy. When Antipholus was claimed by his wife and the conjuror Doctor Pinch, Griffiths challenged them with the simple line “He’s my prisoner”. Every time I see a production of The Comedy of Errors I always wonder why this line goes for nothing. Griffiths’ mournful delivery made it one of the best jokes of the evening.

For the final scene, when all the errors of the evening are resolved, Griffiths was back. As the Duke’s sidekick he now appeared in full Greek ceremonial dress: short skirt (which had been stiffened into something more like a ballet tutu), white tights, pompoms on his shoes. Without a word he stole the scene, being goosed by a potted plant into which he had inadvertently reversed. And yet he never unbalanced it. The Morning Star called him “clumsily delicate” and Robert Cushman commented that he was “both the victim and the beneficiary of much invention”.

And it was that modest generosity, along with his talent, which might explain why he was so loved both within the profession and by theatregoers. What might not be well known was that Griffiths lived in Stratford-upon-Avon for many years before moving to a nearby village where he generously lent his support to community events.

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Birmingham’s theatre archives and Shakespeare

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

One of the sessions I most enjoyed at the Birmingham REP 100 celebration weekend was Gwendolen Whitaker’s lecture on the Rep’s archives and the stories which they are telling. With my own background in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s archives I’m aware of their potential, though performance archives have often been seen as the Cinderellas of the archive world, probably because entertainment isn’t perceived as a serious part of people’s lives. It’s a false perception: as well as creative people like writers and artists, theatres employ armies of skilled workers to build sets, make costumes and make the theatre run. And audiences only continue to attend theatres because plays, and the live experience, touch them in ways that other kinds of entertainment do not.

Theatre is one of the UK’s greatest success stories, and that of Birmingham Rep is one of the most compelling. The theatre has long had a reputation for innovation and for promoting the work of visual artists.

The workshops at the Old Rep

The REP 100 project seeks to celebrate the history of the Rep by opening up its archives, and involves archivists, curators, scanners and conservators. Thousands of items have been digitised and oral history interviews with people who worked for the Rep or who have been audience members are creating new archive material that helps to bring the other items to life.

Part of my interest in the project stemmed from my own decision taken about a year ago to try to fill in some of the gaps in the theatre history of Stratford-upon-Avon by creating an archive of sound recordings to include the memories of people who have worked with Shakespeare in Stratford or who have vivid memories of Shakespeare in performance. So often the only voices that are heard are those of professional journalists and academics. My last post included clips of a few of these recordings.

Gwendolen is curating the exhibition element of the REP 100 project, and I was delighted to see that although her talk was illustrated by images from the archives it also included sound clips from these interviews, and readings by live actors of the contents of some of the letters in the archives.

Artist’s impression of the Birmingham Rep and Library of Birmingham

The form taken by her talk, and the project itself, is appropriate and timely because the new Library of Birmingham, to be opened in September, will be physically connected to the current Repertory Theatre. Its striking Shakespeare Library room is being re-installed on the top of the building and the Rep archives, which have been kept in the Central Library for many years will now be much more accessible than they have been before, strengthening the link between these two major cultural centres.

To bring material together, four themes have been identified: The Detail’s in the Design, on theatre designs, Drama Queens focusing on the role women have played in the history of the Rep, Station Street to Stratford via Malvern, concentrating on the history of the theatre and the inspirational work of Barry Jackson, and Hidden Histories, in which the behind the scenes staff on whom so much depends get to come centre stage. As Claire Cochrane has put it:

All theatre buildings hide secrets. Theatre depends so much on the power of illusion. Huge effort is taken to disguise the means by which the imagined stage world is created. This is usually achieved through the unglamorous work of many more people than are seen in performance.

Alec McCowen as Hamlet

On the new website you can already search for programmes, photographs and oral history recordings. Shakespeare has always been a strong part of the offer at Birmingham Rep. Among the items available are pages of the prompt book from the 1923 Cymbeline, the first ever modern dress production of Shakespeare, photos of Alec McCowen as Hamlet in 1970 and cast lists for Richard III 1949 and Richard II 1955 in which actors on the way up Alan Badel, Richard Pasco, Donald Pleasance, Bernard Hepton, Eric Porter and Jack May all featured.

It will continue to build during the course of the project, and many activities are planned for the next few months which will hopefully open a new chapter for the culture ofEngland’s second city. There is plenty of scope for new creative partnerships to evolve involving both the theatre and the library.

And if you agree that theatre matters, then join the national campaign My Theatre Matters.

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Memories of Hamlet in performance

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

For about a year I’ve been thinking about recording people’s memories of Shakespeare in performance, and at last I’ve got some results to share.

In April 2012’s Shakespeare Association of America conference I heard paper after paper by Shakespeare scholars and students in which they referred to performances which they’d either seen themselves,  had a conversation with someone who had seen it, or had read a written account. Research depends on the quality of the sources available: prompt books, photographs and reviews, and for modern productions sound or video recordings, yes, but what about the vivid impressions that still exist in the memories of those who saw or worked on productions? Nobody it seemed was capturing them, so I decided that I would have a try.

As a taster I’ve chosen three extracts from recordings I’ve made so far, where people recall a production that was very much of its time, the RSC 1965 David Warner Hamlet directed by Peter Hall.  Just click on the orange arrow to begin the recording, and click again to stop.

First of all, there’s a clip from Carol Malcolmson who attended a Wednesday matinee on a school trip, aged seventeen, having never seen the play before.

The second clip is Bryan Palin, who was already a keen theatregoer. Having failed to get tickets in 1965 he queued for day tickets in 1966.

Finally this is Roger Howells, who was the stage manager on the production in 1965. He attended all the rehearsals, and was involved in all the technical aspects of the performance as well as cueing each performance from a little box just off the stage. He talks about how they turned the director’s idea of how to stage the ghost into reality.

These are only short clips of what was in each case an interview that went on for up to half an hour. I’d like to thank each of the interviewees for taking part in what I hope will develop into a larger project.

My aim is to build up a digital archive of recordings that could be useful to future performance historians as well as researchers in other fields. Why do we remember some details and not others, do we remember the actual event or is our memory changed by talking to people, by reading reviews, or by looking at photographs? When we remember an image captured by a photographer, is it because it was a perfect representation of the moment, or has the image somehow supplanted the memory? Do subsequent events influence how we remember the past? And why do we want to be members of the audience for a live performance, sometimes revisiting it a number of times, rather than just watching a film?

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Shakespeare in cartoons: the story of Bruce Bairnsfather

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

I’m always surprised to find how many links there are between Stratford, Shakespeare and other creative people. Recently I heard from Mark Warby who has provided me with the following information about one of these, the famous First World War cartoonist Bruce Bairnsfather.

Bairnsfather’s family came to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1904 when he was sixteen, moving into the Old Spa House in Bishopton. Bruce was educated at the Army School in Stratford (Trinity College), with a brief spell in the army before going to art school in London. He gained employment as an electrical engineer with Spensers Limited in Stratford, working on the installation of electrical light in the old Memorial Theatre, where he also worked the new switchboard for one of the Festivals. He later wrote about his experiences controlling the lighting for the Benson Company in his autobiography, Wide Canvas.

He took musical and comic roles in amateur dramatics in Stratford and Leamington, and kept his hand in with artistic work, serving on the Shakespeare Festival Decorations Committee in 1907 and designed two of the panels depicting The Seven Ages of Man which were displayed on the Town Hall in Stratford during the Shakespeare Festivals in 1907-10.

On the outbreak of the First World War Bruce Bairnsfather rejoined the Royal Warwickshire and went to France with the 1st Battalion in November 1914. It was in the winter of 1914-15, in trenches near Plugstreet Wood, that he first began to make comic sketches of life at the Front, which proved extremely popular with his fellow combatants in the trenches. In March 1915 he sent one of his drawings off to The Bystander magazine in London. The cartoon, captioned “Where did that one go to?” was published in the magazine on 31 March 1915.  

Bruce served at the Front until being wounded during the Second Battle of Ypres on 25 April 1915, after which he was sent home to convalesce. He was approached by The Bystander for more drawings, and his Fragments from France soon began appearing regularly in the magazine, and were incredibly popular with the men fighting at the Front and their families back home. Almost overnight Bruce Bairnsfather became a household name and was soon one of the most famous cartoonists in the world. Eight collections of his Fragments from France cartoons were published, selling over a million copies. The Bystander also produced a whole range of Bairnsfather merchandise featuring his cartoons including postcards, jigsaws, colour prints, playing cards, calendars and other items.  

The better ‘ole

Bruce Bairnsfather’s popularity during the war years was immense. From 1916 he was attached to the War Office Intelligence Department as an ‘Officer Cartoonist’ and in this capacity toured the French, Italian and American fronts, at the request of the Allied armies.

Bairnsfather’s most famous cartoon is one of these Fragments from France, “Well if you knows of a better ‘ole, go to it” – published on 24 November 1915. Showing two soldiers on the battlefield sheltering in the same shell-hole, the sentiment is never out of date and the image and its catch-phrase is still being borrowed today.  The cartoon was created at the family home in Bishopton.

Old Bill and William Shakespeare

In 1917 Bruce wrote a play The Better ‘Ole, constructing a model theatre at Bishopton to help with designing the sets and working out the story. Also in 1917 he created a special set of cartoons on the theme “Old Bill Through the Ages”. His Old Bill character was depicted in various historical events, in this one being pictured as a neighbour of William Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s fair to assume he got the inspiration for this one from living on the outskirts of the town.

A film of “Old Bill Through the Ages” was made in 1924 based on these cartoons, and Bairnsfather, always keen on acting, appeared briefly in the film himself. Mark Warby describes the film:

Old Bill was played by Syd Walker. The film features a scene in which William Shakespeare appears, played by an actor named Austin Leigh. In the scene, Old Bill is shown as a courtier who is sent to Stratford to fetch Shakespeare, who he finds dictating a sonnet to a room full of typists. Shakespeare shows Old Bill his complete works, some of which are deemed unsuitable for the royal eyes, and Shakespeare, Anne Hathaway and Old Bill travel to court. There Shakespeare gives selected readings from the plays, gradually sending the court to sleep!

Bairnsfather’s family lived in Bishopton until 1921, and in 2005 a plaque commemorating him was unveiled at Victoria Spa Lodge by cartoonist Bill Tidy, MBE, and there is a website dedicated to the cartoonist. www.brucebairnsfather.org.uk . Mark Warby is hoping to mount an exhibition in Stratford-upon-Avon of Bairnsfather’s work, concentrating on his local connections, to coincide with the start of the First World War in 2014. If you have any ideas for potential venues, he would love to hear from you!

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The Hollow Crown: popularising Shakespeare on TV

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Sylvia Morris

Whenever an actor best known for film or TV work is cast to perform in Shakespeare there’s always a debate about whether celebrity casting is a good or a bad thing. Should, in particular, theatres, employ celebrities in an obvious attempt to boost audience numbers, or should they stick to trying to build the careers of more serious but less glamorous stars. It’s a tricky argument which has swung both ways. James McAvoy’s Macbeth is a case in point: I haven’t seen it, but it’s a valid production and McAvoy is a good actor as well as a good-looking one. At the time of David Tennant’s performance of Hamlet Jonathan Miller suggested he had only been given the role because he was currently playing Dr Who on TV, whereas he had been playing increasingly important Shakespeare roles at the RSC since 1996. And Tennant, as anyone who saw his Hamlet will remember, has the rare gift of being able to command a stage to give a memorable performance as well as handling the complexities of Shakespeare’s verse.

It’s perhaps less of an issue with Shakespeare on TV. Using well-known TV actors broadens their range and the programmes pick up a wide range of viewers from Shakespeare-lovers to those who are turning on just to see their favourite actors.  And so it was last year with The Hollow Crown. The decision was made to lead each of the four plays with young actors with a substantial TV and film fanbase, Ben Whishaw and Tom Hiddleston. They were surrounded by other fine actors who are also well known to TV audiences: David Suchet, Patrick Stewart, Julie Walters, Jeremy Irons. On Twitter it was interesting to see how many people tuning in for the stars were surprised to find actors such as David Suchet, universally known for his portrayal of the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, obviously at home in Shakespeare. Many older theatregoers will remember all of the above performed on stage, often in Shakespeare, before they were famous.

It’s actually the same for Messrs Whishaw and Hiddleston. Ben Whishaw made his name playing Hamlet in 2004, and Hiddleston was tipped for stardom while performing in Cheek by Jowl’s production of Cymbeline in 2007. Most actors work in a variety of media, though Simon Russell Beale who played Falstaff in The Hollow Crown is still the darling of theatregoers.

The Hollow Crown did not please everybody: heavily cut, sometimes eccentrically shot, but it’s been extraordinarily successful in bringing Shakespeare’s history plays to a popular audience. I take an interest in how Shakespeare is represented in social media such as Twitter and Facebook, and have been intrigued by the activities of the Twitter fan group for the series @HollowCrownFans , sharing news, information, comments, clips and a refreshing enthusiasm. Sundays are #ShakespeareSunday when followers can post quotations from Shakespeare, sometimes themed. I’ve been finding these really interesting: instead of concentrating solely on the series, quotations from plays throughout the canon, often quite obscure, are posted. Clips from other recordings of Shakespeare’s plays, such as Laurence Olivier’s Henry V, appear. Clearly many are fans of Tom Hiddleston, but at least some of them are also getting the Shakespeare and finding it says something to them. And since when has the actor playing Henry V not been the pin-up of at least part of the audience?

It can’t be a bad thing for people previously unaware of Shakespeare’s work to be watching it, and if the BBC’s aim went beyond ratings to try to encourage an interest in Shakespeare among young people I’d say they’ve succeeded.

But there’s more! @HollowCrownFans are encouraged to join a writing challenge, closing on Easter Monday, and being judged by The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford, no less.

The excitement has been fuelled by the release last autumn of the DVD set of the series, as yet only available for Region 1 machines. The series is to be shown on PBS in the USA, a Region 2 release to follow: some enthusiasts have been so keen they have bought a region 1 machine so they can watch it ahead of the release.

The Hollow Crown has been good news for Shakespeare on TV and it’s great to report that its success has been recognised by scooping some awards: Richard II won the Royal Television Society’s award for Best Single Drama in 2012,  and the Times Breakthrough Award at the South Bank Sky Arts Award ceremony was won by Tom Hiddleston. I highly recommend Tim Minchin’s witty presentation speech and Hiddleston’s acceptance on this clip.

And the series has been nominated in three categories for the BAFTA TV awards due to be announced on 28 April.

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