After a few years of pootling along, we're finally getting around to attacking the work of John Heywood, an early Tudor playwright who created a selection of delightful interludes. Using the opportunity of doing a completely separate live streamed comedy show (Live from the Get In), I'm recording Johan Johan - or A mery play between John Johan the husbande, Tyb his wyfe, and Syr Johan the preest (which is a bit of a mouthful and a bugger to tweet) - in front of a live studio audience.
Here's how it works - the final show will be edited and adapted for audio (the physical comedy doesn't come across well for obvious reasons) but I've been recording all the read through/rehearsals so that there are several recordings of these - including one of the full text, plus actor discussion and general thoughts on performance. All this material will appear on the blog in the next few months.
We've had two full rehearsals so far, with another run to go - and so we've gone into this short interlude in some detail - for the moment here were some of our first impressions.
1. It's pretty rude. I knew the play was about cuckolding, but I'd not appreciated the full weight of the innuendo present of hard phallic objects being vigorously worked in the corner of the room. It's, sadly, something that will be lost in the audio recording, but the live audience will get it.
2. The opening speech has become very difficult to pull off. There's nothing like a long speech to open a play, where the protagonist goes into a lengthy debate as to whether to beat his wife or not, to endear that character to the audience. The joke is that he's obviously never going to actually do it, being too afraid of her, and that he keeps swapping between whether he should or not, what the neighbours will say, would it work etc. In the Tudor world, where the chastising of a wife would be acceptable behaviour, this was probably very funny - to the modern audience, this is, to say the least, problematic. We could argue that because he's never going to do it, there's no harm done - but that doesn't really hold much water and it will be interesting to see how the opening will read to the audience. I couldn't let the audience come in cold to this, so to give the play some context I've got a narrator to set the scene, and have cut the speech down so that the appeal for wife beating doesn't go on too long.
3. Pie making is a complicated business. I'd not appreciated how complicated the business of the pie in the story was. In the play, John John is cheated out of eating supper (a pie) by doing a pointless household chore. But the story of the pie runs through the whole play - from arriving in the house at the start, to the back story of the commissioning and making of said pie prior. The backstory of the making of the pie is used by Sir John the priest to get admittance to John John's house and the eating thereof. I hope we'll make this clear to the audience.
4. Having two characters called John is a bit odd and not very helpful - though not actually a problem.
5. The play is, barring the opening (see above), really rather fun and we expect it to prove genuine laughter.
Assuming that the show I'm yoking this recording session to continues, I'm hoping to follow up the play with more from Heywood, recording versions of all his interludes - with the possible exception of The Play of the Weather, which is a bit too big for me at the moment, and which has been looked at in some detail elsewhere.
From the earliest drama in English, to the closing of the theatres in 1642, there was a hell of a lot of drama produced - and a lot of it wasn't by Shakespeare. Apart from a few noble exceptions these plays are often passed over, ignored or simply unknown. This is a blog about what exists beyond Shakespeare, about the plays, fragmentary and extant, that shaped the theatrical world that shaped our dramatic history.
Tuesday, 30 August 2016
Wednesday, 27 April 2016
Shakespeare - A Complicated Relationship
The Deathday has been and gone. I was in Stamford doing a show about the 'authorship question' and so I missed it. My connection to the events were mostly via my phone with facebook and twitter. The general reaction on my twitter feed was interesting, because most of the people I follow or who follow me have a similar relationship with the bard. For example I tweeted:
"Happy n-day wishes to all the great anonymous writers of early English drama, who never get celebrated because we don't know who they are."
And this was retweeted many, many times and favourited and generally went down well - and many other people posted similar things. I think this shows rather well the complicated relationship we all have with Shakespeare. On the one hand, I do like his work and would happily bite off the hand that offered me a good part in any of his plays (for example, I'm currently in a production of The Tempest). On the other hand, I'm generally disenchanted with the pure mass of Shakespeare now available. In the last three years, from the build up of the last big anniversary to this one, from birth to death, we've had more than one complete works season, several history cycles and countless other productions.
Obviously, I have a bias. This little project is focused on the work prior to Shakespeare, but it is also partly named after him - because I acknowledge that Shakespeare is the marketing buzz word I need to get anyone to take even a moments notice. If I called this the Early Modern Drama Club then... well, I suspect I'd get fewer hits.
I also have to acknowledge that part of the point of my work is to illuminate the work of Shakespeare, to make the references in his work a little less strange, to give the bard some context. Some of the long term projects I would like to get off the ground would be back to back productions of source plays and Shakespeare's rewrites. On a smaller scale, I'm in the process of creating a storytelling show with Rosalynde by Thomas Lodge as text (touring 2017), partly because I think it'll be fun and partly because I'm directing As You Like It next year. Once again, Shakespeare is the excuse for a widening of the repertoire and an exploration of earlier (and contemporary) work. My work is, in a tiny way, part of a general trend in an extended interest in early English drama - there is more on offer and being produced by bigger companies too. But still in comparison with the bard, it seems like meagre scraps
Every so often people look at the mass of Shakespeare on offer and suggest a moratorium. 'Let's not do Shakespeare for a few years,' some wag says. I've suggested this myself. I've also suggested that the government should order the paying of 'royalties' for Shakespeare production - all funds to be used to fund new writing and theatre production - it would balance the field a bit. But, beyond being impossible and counter productive, it isn't really necessary. These trends come in cycles. Once these anniversaries are over, the major players will probably pull back a bit and look for something else - there'll still be a lot of Shakespeare out there, but maybe not quite so all encompassing. And it's in the interest of the big players to open out the repertoire. In basic economic terms, they need to diversify (with the emphasis perhaps on verse) or die.
The major players in the UK, the RSC and the Globe, have already opened up their programming to other writing from the period. Certain contemporaries of Shakespeare get a look in. A mixed season will get a Marlowe, Jew of Malta or Doctor Faustus perhaps, thrown in, or a bit of Jonson, Webster or even Ford. And it's great. I love it. The only problem I have with this is the lack of follow through.
Recently The Globe released in a box set all the DVD's of productions from the past ten years or so. They've all been released separately and many are ones also screened live in cinemas. Of the twenty plays in the box, nineteen were Shakespeare and one was Doctor Faustus by Kit Marlowe. The RSC has been more modest in output, so far. But both the RSC and Globe have produced dozens of plays by other playwrights, in just the last few years, and some of those productions were very well reviewed - so why not distribute them further?
There is a good reason why not and these companies are not run by idiots. They will only market the plays they think will sell. I balk slight at trying to tell the Globe to try harder because they are a purely commercial outfit, but the RSC is heavily subsidised and, more importantly, I think they're missing the long term view of building interest in other writers. The Globe has released half of the Shakespeare canon on DVD, the RSC is working on it. Once they have released the whole canon once, maybe twice, maybe three times, where do they go?
Whilst I agree that a DVD of The Jew of Malta, say, will not sell brilliantly, it gives students and schools (and dare I say it, people generally) the same opportunities to watch rather than just read a play. It could be sold as a two pack with The Merchant of Venice, which is a logical pairing - and something that might interest schools. Mixing Shakespeare with his contemporaries in box sets is a really great way of mixing the interest out a bit, especially if the plays have references to each other.
Part of the reason Shakespeare has exploded in the world is due to film and television. By releasing a play, making it more familiar, you generally make it easier to sell a new production. The text becomes less scary and more familiar, and then productions can explore them further, open them up to a little expansion. (There is a point of overkill, as mentioned above, but you can only reach that after general success.)
We've got Shakespeare, everyone does Shakespeare - if you don't just mix it up a bit, but actively push and sell his contemporaries and predecessors, then you risk a debt spiral of never ending repeats of Hamlet till we all lose the will to live. If we can make these lesser known plays into as popular a ticket as Shakespeare then there's room to programme not just great other drama, but also have good houses for them.
I'm not even asking these companies to do more other work than they're already doing, just to risk showing it to more people than a few hundred a night for a few months. I've wanted to watch all the non Shakespeare plays the Globe and RSC have produced over the last few years - well received productions mostly, but I can't get there. Just one a year. Maybe two. That's all I ask.
Obviously, I would like you to do something from a bit earlier in the canon, but hey, one thing at a time.
"Happy n-day wishes to all the great anonymous writers of early English drama, who never get celebrated because we don't know who they are."
And this was retweeted many, many times and favourited and generally went down well - and many other people posted similar things. I think this shows rather well the complicated relationship we all have with Shakespeare. On the one hand, I do like his work and would happily bite off the hand that offered me a good part in any of his plays (for example, I'm currently in a production of The Tempest). On the other hand, I'm generally disenchanted with the pure mass of Shakespeare now available. In the last three years, from the build up of the last big anniversary to this one, from birth to death, we've had more than one complete works season, several history cycles and countless other productions.
Obviously, I have a bias. This little project is focused on the work prior to Shakespeare, but it is also partly named after him - because I acknowledge that Shakespeare is the marketing buzz word I need to get anyone to take even a moments notice. If I called this the Early Modern Drama Club then... well, I suspect I'd get fewer hits.
I also have to acknowledge that part of the point of my work is to illuminate the work of Shakespeare, to make the references in his work a little less strange, to give the bard some context. Some of the long term projects I would like to get off the ground would be back to back productions of source plays and Shakespeare's rewrites. On a smaller scale, I'm in the process of creating a storytelling show with Rosalynde by Thomas Lodge as text (touring 2017), partly because I think it'll be fun and partly because I'm directing As You Like It next year. Once again, Shakespeare is the excuse for a widening of the repertoire and an exploration of earlier (and contemporary) work. My work is, in a tiny way, part of a general trend in an extended interest in early English drama - there is more on offer and being produced by bigger companies too. But still in comparison with the bard, it seems like meagre scraps
Every so often people look at the mass of Shakespeare on offer and suggest a moratorium. 'Let's not do Shakespeare for a few years,' some wag says. I've suggested this myself. I've also suggested that the government should order the paying of 'royalties' for Shakespeare production - all funds to be used to fund new writing and theatre production - it would balance the field a bit. But, beyond being impossible and counter productive, it isn't really necessary. These trends come in cycles. Once these anniversaries are over, the major players will probably pull back a bit and look for something else - there'll still be a lot of Shakespeare out there, but maybe not quite so all encompassing. And it's in the interest of the big players to open out the repertoire. In basic economic terms, they need to diversify (with the emphasis perhaps on verse) or die.
The major players in the UK, the RSC and the Globe, have already opened up their programming to other writing from the period. Certain contemporaries of Shakespeare get a look in. A mixed season will get a Marlowe, Jew of Malta or Doctor Faustus perhaps, thrown in, or a bit of Jonson, Webster or even Ford. And it's great. I love it. The only problem I have with this is the lack of follow through.
Recently The Globe released in a box set all the DVD's of productions from the past ten years or so. They've all been released separately and many are ones also screened live in cinemas. Of the twenty plays in the box, nineteen were Shakespeare and one was Doctor Faustus by Kit Marlowe. The RSC has been more modest in output, so far. But both the RSC and Globe have produced dozens of plays by other playwrights, in just the last few years, and some of those productions were very well reviewed - so why not distribute them further?
There is a good reason why not and these companies are not run by idiots. They will only market the plays they think will sell. I balk slight at trying to tell the Globe to try harder because they are a purely commercial outfit, but the RSC is heavily subsidised and, more importantly, I think they're missing the long term view of building interest in other writers. The Globe has released half of the Shakespeare canon on DVD, the RSC is working on it. Once they have released the whole canon once, maybe twice, maybe three times, where do they go?
Whilst I agree that a DVD of The Jew of Malta, say, will not sell brilliantly, it gives students and schools (and dare I say it, people generally) the same opportunities to watch rather than just read a play. It could be sold as a two pack with The Merchant of Venice, which is a logical pairing - and something that might interest schools. Mixing Shakespeare with his contemporaries in box sets is a really great way of mixing the interest out a bit, especially if the plays have references to each other.
Part of the reason Shakespeare has exploded in the world is due to film and television. By releasing a play, making it more familiar, you generally make it easier to sell a new production. The text becomes less scary and more familiar, and then productions can explore them further, open them up to a little expansion. (There is a point of overkill, as mentioned above, but you can only reach that after general success.)
We've got Shakespeare, everyone does Shakespeare - if you don't just mix it up a bit, but actively push and sell his contemporaries and predecessors, then you risk a debt spiral of never ending repeats of Hamlet till we all lose the will to live. If we can make these lesser known plays into as popular a ticket as Shakespeare then there's room to programme not just great other drama, but also have good houses for them.
I'm not even asking these companies to do more other work than they're already doing, just to risk showing it to more people than a few hundred a night for a few months. I've wanted to watch all the non Shakespeare plays the Globe and RSC have produced over the last few years - well received productions mostly, but I can't get there. Just one a year. Maybe two. That's all I ask.
Obviously, I would like you to do something from a bit earlier in the canon, but hey, one thing at a time.
Thursday, 10 December 2015
A (Mostly) Towneley Nativity
Merry Christmas Everyone! Here's a little audio gift for you.
Many years ago I organised a little reading of some edited Mystery plays in the bar of the Quay Theatre - it was a heavily edited Nativity sequence, mostly from the Towneley Cycle (including most of the Second Shepherd Play), with an introduction from the Chester Banns. Luckily I recorded the show on a mini disk player, so this very rough audio recording can now be heard. With Christmas coming around again, here's the first half of Medieval Mysteries. The second half, featuring the three Kings and Herod plays, follows below.
Medieval Mysteries - Part One
Narrator and Mak: Robert Crighton
Gabriel and Shepherd: Richard Fawcett
Mary and Gill: Sara Knight
Joseph and Shepherd: David Knight
Other Shepherd: Michael Harding
Medieval Mysteries - Part Two
Narrator and Soldier: Neil Arbon
Herod: Robert Crighton
Nuncius and Mother: Helen Arbon
King and Soldier: Joseph James
King and Mother: Carole Hughes
Medieval Mysteries was edited and produced by Robert Crighton and performed in the bar at the Quay Theatre in December 2006.
Many years ago I organised a little reading of some edited Mystery plays in the bar of the Quay Theatre - it was a heavily edited Nativity sequence, mostly from the Towneley Cycle (including most of the Second Shepherd Play), with an introduction from the Chester Banns. Luckily I recorded the show on a mini disk player, so this very rough audio recording can now be heard. With Christmas coming around again, here's the first half of Medieval Mysteries. The second half, featuring the three Kings and Herod plays, follows below.
Medieval Mysteries - Part One
Narrator and Mak: Robert Crighton
Gabriel and Shepherd: Richard Fawcett
Mary and Gill: Sara Knight
Joseph and Shepherd: David Knight
Other Shepherd: Michael Harding
Medieval Mysteries - Part Two
Narrator and Soldier: Neil Arbon
Herod: Robert Crighton
Nuncius and Mother: Helen Arbon
King and Soldier: Joseph James
King and Mother: Carole Hughes
Medieval Mysteries was edited and produced by Robert Crighton and performed in the bar at the Quay Theatre in December 2006.
Tuesday, 17 November 2015
The Nativity - A Nativity
It's happening - we're doing a Nativity in December. We're calling it The Nativity. Subtle, I know. It's going to feature six complete 'pageants' from the N-Town play, plus a little bit from another.
Our Nativity Line Up -
Annunciation: a short passage
Joseph's Doubts
The Nativity
The Shepherds
The Kings
The Purification
Slaughter of the Innocents
Now there are a lot of other Nativity applicable pageants contained in the N-Town play and they're all very interesting, but the N-Town play is very odd and there are lots of different ways of cutting the cloth. It's all part of a longer term plan, so here's my thinking.
The N-Town play is a compilation - a composite of a number of different sources, edited together into the final manuscript. So, you've got the original pageants, performed individually or in some order from a greater whole, but they've been cut up and rearranged and turned into another play - the N-Town play. It's a bit like we've lost Shakespeare's history plays, but we've got a copy of the Barton/Hall script for The Wars of the Roses - though we don't know whether the text was created to be performed, or as a private document for an individual/family/institution, though most people tend towards for the latter.
The question is then, how do you perform it? Attempt each play individually, putting the additions or cuts to one side and try to get at the original (whatever that means) text, or perform the final form of the play - which it may never have been meant to be?
The long term plan is this - perform sections of the play in some detail in a number of locations around East Anglia (from whence the plays came), recording, archiving and noting the way the text works (or doesn't) in an individual way. We may go back to some plays and perform them with others. The Nativity sequence I've chosen above could be done quite differently, we're sticking to the main thrust of the story in this selection, but we could mix in a number of other plays, perform the Kings and Slaughter as one text, without the addition of Simeon and the Purification in the middle etc. So this isn't The Nativity, as such, in December we'll be performing A The Nativity. We'll possibly perform another very different The Nativity in the future.
Once we've played around with all the texts in an individualistic way, curating the material in different ways, we'll look at a complete staging of the whole play.
To some degree this is a text I am coming back to. I used the Passion Play 1 from N-Town as the primary text for a version of The Passion three years ago. I'm rather looking forward to covering that text again in a more consistent way sometime soon.
Our Nativity Line Up -
Annunciation: a short passage
Joseph's Doubts
The Nativity
The Shepherds
The Kings
The Purification
Slaughter of the Innocents
Now there are a lot of other Nativity applicable pageants contained in the N-Town play and they're all very interesting, but the N-Town play is very odd and there are lots of different ways of cutting the cloth. It's all part of a longer term plan, so here's my thinking.
The N-Town play is a compilation - a composite of a number of different sources, edited together into the final manuscript. So, you've got the original pageants, performed individually or in some order from a greater whole, but they've been cut up and rearranged and turned into another play - the N-Town play. It's a bit like we've lost Shakespeare's history plays, but we've got a copy of the Barton/Hall script for The Wars of the Roses - though we don't know whether the text was created to be performed, or as a private document for an individual/family/institution, though most people tend towards for the latter.
The question is then, how do you perform it? Attempt each play individually, putting the additions or cuts to one side and try to get at the original (whatever that means) text, or perform the final form of the play - which it may never have been meant to be?
The long term plan is this - perform sections of the play in some detail in a number of locations around East Anglia (from whence the plays came), recording, archiving and noting the way the text works (or doesn't) in an individual way. We may go back to some plays and perform them with others. The Nativity sequence I've chosen above could be done quite differently, we're sticking to the main thrust of the story in this selection, but we could mix in a number of other plays, perform the Kings and Slaughter as one text, without the addition of Simeon and the Purification in the middle etc. So this isn't The Nativity, as such, in December we'll be performing A The Nativity. We'll possibly perform another very different The Nativity in the future.
Once we've played around with all the texts in an individualistic way, curating the material in different ways, we'll look at a complete staging of the whole play.
To some degree this is a text I am coming back to. I used the Passion Play 1 from N-Town as the primary text for a version of The Passion three years ago. I'm rather looking forward to covering that text again in a more consistent way sometime soon.
Monday, 23 September 2013
A Few Ground (not really) Rules
The moment you start rehearsing a production (or in our case record one) from any distant epoch, you have to start making decisions. How slavishly do you stick to the text? And, for that matter, which text?
Where the texts are as old as ours the questions mount up.
1. How closely do you stick to older word forms?
I like old words. I like old words that are almost exactly the same as their modern equivalent but are a bit not, as it were. However, I appreciate I'm in a minority here - some people would find slavish following of basically modern words said funny quite annoying. So, there will be a balancing act between keeping the sense of the power of the original words, their rhythms, their purely sonic power, and clarity and understanding. We may get it wrong. Where there are rhymes we will tend to stick to the original...
2. Do you use original spelling to guide pronunciation?
Covers similar ground to above and also overlaps with accent below. Broadly speaking, yes, though we're not here to create recordings of funny voices speaking funny words - we've got to balance the interests of drama and history.
3. Do you update/change names from history?
I've just been recording/editing Act Seven of John Bale's God's Promises, in which John the Baptist lists many characters from the Bible, sometimes with variant spelling to the modern. On the one hand there was something nice about the sound of some changes, others were just unclear. Where it was still clear who he was talking about we left it as writ, where the name was substantially different we allowed a change.
4. What about lines in Latin?
Do you leave them in / leave them and add a translation as repetition in the next line / translate? We can assume that many in the original audiences, as today, would not understand Latin, so should what is clearly an artistic decision be ignored for ease of understanding? In the case of God's Promises I erred on the side of clarity. John the Baptist had a line 'as I am child' which sounded so much better in English - beautiful - that to not use it felt wrong. A later line by God I've removed as it was repeated in English anyway and it sounded wrong - but I may put it back in at a later date. Which brings us to...
5. Do we cut?
Any director likes the option of cutting, but part of the point of this project is to create a resource which has relatively 'clean' recordings of all the words. It isn't difficult to find a recording or production of a Mystery play - it is difficult to find one that hasn't been substantially altered by an author or director. (This isn't a judgement - for example, I love the version of The Mysteries Tony Harrison created in the late seventies/early eighties - but it is substantially his version.) So, occasional minor cuts may happen, but they will be occasional and will be mentioned in any accompanying blog.
6. What about accent?
This shouldn't be tricky for me, as, though not a native or a speaker of the accent, I'm based in Suffolk and East Anglia was a centre for a lot of medieval and Tudor drama - in part compounded by the fact that a couple of collections survived in East Anglia and so survived East Anglian texts. John Bale, who I'm looking at at the moment, was based in Suffolk and there are clues to accent in versions of the text. However, I doubt we're going to have the time, resources or skill-set to comprehensively look at detailed work on accent at this time, so unless the text is incredibly forceful in its accent (the York Cycle for example) we will use an accent/s - but any text where the accent isn't overly defined, we're going to suck it and see.
7. Music.
I'd love to use music throughout these recordings, especially where it is referenced in the text. Two difficulties arise. One. we don't always know what the music was, or precisely how it was orchestrated when we do. Two: at this stage I'm not in a position to commission or pay for music, so where music is indicated it will be referred to in any narration and maybe at a later date we will reedit with a music cue. At the moment I'm focusing on the words.
All these are thoughts and artistic decisions that occur as the work begins. Other questions will arise, other ways of dealing with them will occur, rapid u-turns may happen. There is no reason why any of these recordings will stand on their own, or unaltered. If something hasn't worked, we can go back and do it again. Why not have several different versions of the same text, done differently? And you out there could do your own. I'll post a link, even host it for you if you don't have the facility.
Where the texts are as old as ours the questions mount up.
1. How closely do you stick to older word forms?
I like old words. I like old words that are almost exactly the same as their modern equivalent but are a bit not, as it were. However, I appreciate I'm in a minority here - some people would find slavish following of basically modern words said funny quite annoying. So, there will be a balancing act between keeping the sense of the power of the original words, their rhythms, their purely sonic power, and clarity and understanding. We may get it wrong. Where there are rhymes we will tend to stick to the original...
2. Do you use original spelling to guide pronunciation?
Covers similar ground to above and also overlaps with accent below. Broadly speaking, yes, though we're not here to create recordings of funny voices speaking funny words - we've got to balance the interests of drama and history.
3. Do you update/change names from history?
I've just been recording/editing Act Seven of John Bale's God's Promises, in which John the Baptist lists many characters from the Bible, sometimes with variant spelling to the modern. On the one hand there was something nice about the sound of some changes, others were just unclear. Where it was still clear who he was talking about we left it as writ, where the name was substantially different we allowed a change.
4. What about lines in Latin?
Do you leave them in / leave them and add a translation as repetition in the next line / translate? We can assume that many in the original audiences, as today, would not understand Latin, so should what is clearly an artistic decision be ignored for ease of understanding? In the case of God's Promises I erred on the side of clarity. John the Baptist had a line 'as I am child' which sounded so much better in English - beautiful - that to not use it felt wrong. A later line by God I've removed as it was repeated in English anyway and it sounded wrong - but I may put it back in at a later date. Which brings us to...
5. Do we cut?
Any director likes the option of cutting, but part of the point of this project is to create a resource which has relatively 'clean' recordings of all the words. It isn't difficult to find a recording or production of a Mystery play - it is difficult to find one that hasn't been substantially altered by an author or director. (This isn't a judgement - for example, I love the version of The Mysteries Tony Harrison created in the late seventies/early eighties - but it is substantially his version.) So, occasional minor cuts may happen, but they will be occasional and will be mentioned in any accompanying blog.
6. What about accent?
This shouldn't be tricky for me, as, though not a native or a speaker of the accent, I'm based in Suffolk and East Anglia was a centre for a lot of medieval and Tudor drama - in part compounded by the fact that a couple of collections survived in East Anglia and so survived East Anglian texts. John Bale, who I'm looking at at the moment, was based in Suffolk and there are clues to accent in versions of the text. However, I doubt we're going to have the time, resources or skill-set to comprehensively look at detailed work on accent at this time, so unless the text is incredibly forceful in its accent (the York Cycle for example) we will use an accent/s - but any text where the accent isn't overly defined, we're going to suck it and see.
7. Music.
I'd love to use music throughout these recordings, especially where it is referenced in the text. Two difficulties arise. One. we don't always know what the music was, or precisely how it was orchestrated when we do. Two: at this stage I'm not in a position to commission or pay for music, so where music is indicated it will be referred to in any narration and maybe at a later date we will reedit with a music cue. At the moment I'm focusing on the words.
All these are thoughts and artistic decisions that occur as the work begins. Other questions will arise, other ways of dealing with them will occur, rapid u-turns may happen. There is no reason why any of these recordings will stand on their own, or unaltered. If something hasn't worked, we can go back and do it again. Why not have several different versions of the same text, done differently? And you out there could do your own. I'll post a link, even host it for you if you don't have the facility.
Thursday, 15 August 2013
Our Mission
Beyond Shakespeare there was a lot of stuff going on in the British Isles during the old days. (For arbitrary neatness we have decided that the old days ended in 1642, when the theatres were closed.) Apart from a few noble exceptions these plays are often passed over,
ignored or simply unknown. Much is
simply lost. This is a mouthpiece/online placeholder for the work of the Beyond Shakespeare Company, an holistic theatre company, who specialise in the repertory beyond Shakespeare, about the plays, fragmentary and
extant, that shaped the theatrical world and our dramatic history – it will explore this world through the words and the sounds of those
words. Though these plays do get
performed occasionally, they are often not recorded, they disappear from sight
in a way that Shakespeare does not. So, we are here to create, share, archive, and lobby for recordings of Not Shakespeare. To put Shakespeare in his proper place - IN CONTEXT!
Accompanying these recordings will be additional material, discussion and talks on the plays and anything else that comes to mind at the time. We’ll hopefully be joined by other actors, directors, academics, to help create new recordings and feed your interest. We hope that others will join in, creating their own versions and sharing them for the world to hear - for anyone who’s interested in what isn't Shakespeare.
We're not rejecting Shakespeare totally either. We do love his work, but he is eclipsing. So much so that the only way to draw attention to his predecessors and contemporaries is to conjure up his name. Shakespeare is a colossus, but that doesn’t render his co-workers pygmies. We invoke his name so as to pull other playwrights from underneath his long shadow.
We are unapologetic in recording extracts or spending time on
plays that are very obscure. There are two reasons for this - 1. There is so very little
material surviving from the medieval and early Tudor periods that every scrap
is precious. 2. Other people have or are already doing the obvious Not Shakespeare, so we don't need to. You want a version of Doctor Faustus - try searching on Amazon, that'll get you where you need to go.
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