3 Mills, Grumman & Paterson…

…Passion in Pieces: a Shakesperger sufferer’s review of the last week.

To get to 3 Mills in East London, (where the Thames tidal waters have ebbed and flowed for centuries) from Primrose Hill in North London, (a hilly vantage point overseeing London City), is a pleasant commute at 8am whether in weekday crush or weekend alternative service. If passion lies at journey’s end.

The week long, 2 zone Oyster card allows travel underground in a tube from Chalk Farm to Bank, where you switch to the Hammersmith line alighting refreshed at Bromley on Bow.

A short walk past Tesco’s (Iconic British supermarket) brings you to the bridge over the tidal water that fed England’s oldest tidal Mills. The swans have been bobbing up and down on it for centuries.

Nowadays it’s a studio complex for TV Film and Musicals. You approach the security gate through a cobbled lane and all week some set builders were slowly recreating a turn of the 20thC burnt-out betting-shop. It was a process we observed arriving at 9:30 and leaving anywhere between 6-8pm, whilst on our way to embattle ourselves in our own processes.

We few, we lucky few, nine actors (6 boys and 3 girls) varying in age and experience re-approaching the plays of 2 gents and Makkers chiefly, through the First Folio, specifying Act 2: Scenes 2-4. At least that was the original plan.

First day as you can imagine we got to know and started to grow together. The morning was spent doing games, lots of fun games, that demand listening and spatial awareness and contact with your fellow player. There are photos here of our stick walking game.

And in the afternoon we toyed with extracts from Macbeth: ‘I have done the deed’ to ‘a foolish thought’ (act 2 sc 2) and from Hamlet ‘Who’s there?’ to ‘Well good night’ (act 1 sc 1), which showed everyone capable of the task of acting.

The second day we did our sonnets guided by Ben. OK we, some of us, indulged in tears in our sonnet session, but they were honest tears. And as I often say, ‘Catharsis is our business.’

Just like the tears of Launce over his dog, which was the prose piece I wanted to work on. I had sonnet 81 btw. The others chosen were sonnets 153, two times 116, a 130, 98, 29, and 2 others I shame facedly don’t remember.

Dan our director took over from Ben introducing metrical structure and close text analysis. Complete turn around from the emo-fest of the sonnet discoveries. Suddenly we were discussing stress in Folio lines.

Counting syllables. Deciding if the last syllable was stressed or unstressed. Assigning +1’s or +2’s with a circle for stressed, without for unstressed. Alternatively the line could be short, as in -4 or -6. Then what do you do with the pause? Maybe the line is joined to the next person’s line to make up a regular verse line?

If you’ve never encountered close textual analysis (and there is no safe-text with Sh) and the terminology that goes with it it can be confusing, as Jazz our youngest member was finding out.

SO didactic moment, with dum being stressed, let’s review here:
iambic = da dum
trochee = dum da
spondee = dum dum
phyrric = da da
anapest = da da dum
dactylic = dum da da

Dan then assigned roles and we all thought to be playing them on day 6. At least the program told us so. The speed we were working and the connections we were making made me think anyway it’d be a piece o’ piss. As much so I told Ben that night when he was reviewing the day.

Fuelled by the necessary smoke and alcohol the question of ELizabethan actors supposedly prodigious memories and lightning speed at putting on new plays was struggled with.

I believe human nature hasn’t changed that much and don’t believe in this magical overnight learning of say Othello and staging it with actors only knowing three words of the line before they speak. Blocking and prop handling alone requires some form of rehearsal.

For example there was a system of fines in place for Elizabethan actors for being late or showing up drunk. Ergo thesps just like their modern counterparts. The human urge to get blottoed is relevant to history. The idealistic cant of religion and politics dealing with the body politic is the stuff of stuffed shirts; like Polonius precepts to Laertes.

The third day we set to the scenes in earnest, en masse, en groupe. Don’t believe the reading? Get in and do it better. Show us how we might do it. The group mind quickly starts to work together and readings were found and discoveries made, without all the business being added which is irrelevant to the text.

Business is often clearly meant to stroke the performers ego in some unconscious way. The added breaths and sighs that need to colour the word instead of start the action. The emo-wash of lurv when talking of love. Or the antithetical laughter when direst cruelty’s being talked of. All from the purpose of playing.

Processes never run how you want them to. A plan is good, preparation is essential, both were seemingly in place, at least all the pieces were. Any process, like the building of the set, takes teamwork to accomplish. Each has their role, each must do their work to the orders given.

BTW the chief set builder and set designer isn’t normally considered a genius by the crew. They do their job and get paid for it. Their own individual passion for set building is subordinate to the process. It is unspoken except among set buidlers who presumably understand the heart-ache and back-break their job entails.

But actors are not set builders. Our craft lay locked in lines published in a Folio in 1623. We were attempting to find out if there is a truth and honesty of delivery that lies hidden within the metrical structure. Not a fixed methodical unearthing of a definitive reading, but places where the actor reading those words had space for choices, be they physical, emotional, or psychological.

Day 4 we worked on Launce’s speech for about 3 hours in our by now trusted forum method. Finally cracking it’s weird syntax and punctuation. SH’s early experimentation with metre is no less intriguing than his later verse. Julia and Proteus were next, the SIlvia, Valentine, Speed and Thurio scene followed. And the day ended with the Porter speech from Makkers.

Day 5 The shit hit the fan when Ben realised the whole process going to the dogs with actors focusing on lines and worrying about costumes for the next day’s performance.

Day 6 back on track afternoon day before. who knows what speech may be done? Audience wandered and participated in our close analysis of each other’s speehes. Michael Dobson a costume maker another sh thesp who’d auditioned for Hamlet that week. The RED camera. The recordings of speeches and sonnets.

The camera crew following us the entire time. The diary cam. The process ended. The maroccan restaurant and a 237 pound bill. Buying Don receiving Ian WIlson and the ginger twat behind me on the plane. Followed home by a Ginge. Wanted to spaff him.

Finally I must mention two books that accompanied my process. Don Paterson’s Reading Sh’s Sonnets. Donny Donny Donny we so need to talk… Feckin brilliantly combative book. Very Scottish, very refreshing, like Iron Bru burps, or salt and vinegar sniffed from a bag of chips. (Scottish chips from a cormer chippy, big bag o spuds in your paw) Like sherry and blue cheese are his explanations of his craft, poetry and the actual writing of it.

Don is by admission not an Oxfordian, which made him a perfect antidote to the other book, Sh & the Rigidniks. Bobby G’s sparring partners have let their bile on him for some 10 years now and Bob has a self-developed psychology when looking at their arguments. Whereas the only blood in Don’s book drips from the Sonnets, in Bob’s it’s coagulate gore of a thousand internet battles in heatedly contested forums. Playing virtual assassination and annihilation with the Anti-Sh zombies who haunt them.

I’m reading Don’s book like he wrote it, so I’m not finished yet. I now own a copy and gave Ben back his advance copy’s ownership The get to it any moment I can in any state I’m in ethos is how Don, and me too, imagines Sh worked on his sonnets. Btw as Don reminds us Sh’s time was his own in which to suffer, if his sonnets are indeed autobiographical and his own.

Don takes them as poems written by a poet. Therefore ripe for his criticism, because after all who reads them but him, a fellow poet . And Shakespeare is the only gay in the village and obviously queer as folk.Tthough Don to his credit has gay friends and also mates he wouldn’t dream of writing 126 love sonnets to.

Let us acknowledge in Don’s defence, he knows from practical experience; the spark of inspiration, the felicitous phrase sent from above, the sheer solipsism of the task and most importantly the tricks of the trade.

Don assumes the mantle of Will’s historically distant colleague and the poor beleaguered sonnet is scorned and mocked in argument, tenor, and vehicle.

He poo-poos scholars and acdemics and equally praises them if he thinks they have done right or kinda agree with him. He’s an equal opportunity hater, dourie rather.

And he’s not just confined to Sh. His knowledge of poetry far outwieghs my own. But there is no reason to be dismayed at his attitude. Don claims it as his own; admitting it in his introduction’s concluding sentences.

Don sparked new levels of debate between Ben and I each evening after the process. He was my’ let off steam’ pipe for better or for worse. Only Shakesperger’s actors will talk Sh after performing his words all day. Precious comes to mind. (I see my love and syndrome).

This last week I’ve been laughing out loud, rotflmao, giggling, gasping, even hmmm-ing at things learned and hawing ‘see i told ya’s’ when we on occasion agreed. (Sonnet 145, 153 and 154. 3 second rule, golden ratio, numerical ingrained punnery in ordering. light touch for reading stresses) to name some of our overlapping convictions.

But a real review of Don requires an own post, when it were done. Still got that Sh Secret novel dealing with the North American Frontier Sh going on somewhere.

Bob Grumman’s excellent book outlines the Rigidnik (his word) Anti-Stratfordian view and highlights evidence for Sh wet supposedly sane minds admit, and the arguments against the same.Then the Anit-Sh claims and counter claims are dealt with in the same manner. Each listed, combatted and commented upon. It too deserves it’s own post, and a fair reading of all its argument, so peace. This is vanity press at its best.