God's Promises - Act Six

Mark Holtom reading for Esaias...

It's been a long time since I recorded this act, covering the prophet Esaias - as Bale writes it.  This is Act Six of Seven, this prophet being the forerunner to the forerunner John the Baptist, who I've posted previously.
These recordings are very basic, they've been produced largely on the hoof, but they are I hope moderately clear.  Whilst I'm going to get a move on an record the remaining five acts this year, they won't deviate from this template - narration, text.  It's beyond my budget to have a score at this time, and that does limit the effect the words have.  This isn't, as I'd first assumed, the easiest of plays to translate to audio - without music or a visual set of cues, it is quite difficult to keep focus.  But one day I may get around to a more detailed production.
As I say, I hope to have this piece completed over the next few months - I might then create a shorter and more accessible version, to go with this no-frills approach.  Who says we can't be playful?

God's Promises by John Bale - Act Six - Esaias

Narrator - Annie Eddington
God - Robert Crighton
Esaias - Mark Holtom


And below is a player with all the parts recorded so far - at time of posting this includes the Prologue, Act Six and Seven and Epilogue.



God's Promises, like all my audio work, is supported by my patrons - becoming a patron is easy, just go to www.patreon.com/robertcrighton and make a pledge.

God's Promises by John Bale - Act 7

Discussing the play with John the Baptist

In late 2013 I started to record God's Promises but quickly got very behind.  Since those first tentative steps I have upgraded my equipment and, to some degree, feel I want to start all over again.  However, we did record the introduction, the final scene and the closing speech and these are now available to listen - in a rough edit.  There were several textual issues which I don't think we have succeeded in clearing.  Firstly, the text is very dense.  It features a lot of argument, the kind you might expect from a theologian, especially one such as Bale who had the Protestant axe to grind.

The Prologue: Baleus Prolocutor
So, the opening and closing speeches are to be spoken by Bale or someone as him.  (We decided to ignore this in the recording, so that there was at least one female part in the production.  It also meant we could use the same actor to read stage directions without them being confused as another character.)  They are outside the text, the author directly addressing his audience, or perhaps more appropriately, his flock.  Making this Tudor text clear was a challenge and one which, in the short time span available, I don't know has succeeded.  But you may judge for yourself.  Hopefully anyone thinking of reading the play can use the recording to help guide them into the text.

listen to ‘God's Promises - by John Bale. Baleus Procolutor’ on Audioboo

Act Seven:  John the Baptist
We spent a little longer recording the completed scene seven.  The play is a running argument, starting with Adam and ending with John, encountering various Biblical figures along the way.  All argue with God to forgive mankind, and only with John does God relent - though, of course, he has already relented, having already sent Jesus into the world.

Cecil Qadir as John the Baptist

John begins by pleading with God that the worst excesses of man are past - this is a long list of people and names from the Bible, showing up the virtue of many good men.  When God reveals his plan, and that John will be Jesus' messenger to the world, John says he won't be of any use, he is as a child.  God then gifts him a golden tongue (this is a literal stage direction) and he then ends the play with a speech about his mission, ending in a song of praise.  We couldn't think of a way of turning the golden tongue into an audio event and used a narrator, and as we have no budget for music at this time, this is also indicated by the narrator.
Again, as we rehearsed this scene we had a long discussion about clarity.  The final recording is clearer than the opening and closing speeches, as it is a dialogue.  If you read the precis first, I suspect what is being said is clear.  However, out of context, without reading the above, I suspect most people will struggle.
This isn't, I hope, just because of our performances.  I suspect that the text, its very denseness, will always make this play a difficult proposition.  It is, oddly, harder to follow than an earlier play - it is caught between the more rigid rhyming verse of the medieval street theatre and the later public theatre voice.  That doesn't make the play uninteresting, just difficult, and I hope listening will reward your effort.

listen to ‘God's Promises by John Bale - Act 7’ on Audioboo

The Epilogue: Baleus Prolocutor
I find, listening back, that the closing speech is much clearer - but that could just be me.  It's possibly tempered by the fact that I've gone through the play before listening to it and am more attuned - which would also be the case for the audience.  It's a reminder of the message of the play and the importance of the Protestant interpretation of Christianity.

The light of our faith makes this thing evident,
And not the practice of other experiment.

The other being the Catholic interpretation.  This is a polemical work, designed to reference the Catholic drama of the middle ages but retooled for Protestant ears.  This kind of religious propaganda is short lived, lasting from the reformation to the reign of Elizabeth, with both sides of the divide flinging drama of this sort at each other.  It was divisive, dangerous and could not last.  Perhaps the reason why these plays have fallen out of favour is this lack of context.  The play doesn't need to involve inner conflict, because the conflict was off stage, the danger is in the existence of the play, not necessarily in the dramaturgy.  The challenge for a modern producer is to find a way of making these stakes evident.

listen to ‘God's Promises - by John Bale. Baleus Procolutor (Epilogue) ’ on Audioboo

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.