The Tempest: Director’s Notebook
Some visual inspiration for our upcoming journey.
The Unexpected Tempest within The Tempest Last night was our first rehearsal for The Tempest, not counting our cast read-through several weeks ago . . . and oh how much has changed since that point. I debated writing about the unexpected issues of the past two weeks because I like to focus on the positives and joys of making theatre. But then again, these recent challenges have been a part of this process and I want to share my experiences openly, particularly with my students.
Making theatre is a process manufacturing certainty where there is none. You start with nothing tangible. An empty space. An idea. Anything can happen! And as utterly thrilling as that prospect can be, in the end, you don’t want anything to happen. You want a very specific thing to happen and you follow a process to get there. From the outset, directors are met with a constant onslaught of challenges and decisions. Choosing a play, casting the play, considering a concept, working with designers, coaching actors . . . all of it comes with uncertainty as the process moves on and the production gradually takes shape.
As per usual, our first decision of which play to produce did not come easily. Each year we start thinking of Bard in the Quad knowing only two things: it’s going to be in the Quad and it’s going to be Bard. After that, we factor in dozens of other considerations - which shows haven’t we done, who is in our casting pool, what would “work” in that space, what would our audiences be interested in, what are we interested in . . . conversations go round and round as questions are answered:
We can’t do Romeo and Juliet this year, the MU will be under construction so we won’t be able to do the steps. (Same for Hamlet or Antony and Cleopatra and other tragic titles.)
No one will buy tickets for Measure for Measure.
We just did Midsummer.
I was knocking around the idea for The Tempest for a few seasons, but the biggest factor in tabling it for a different year was the lack of a Prospero.
You don’t do Merry Wives or Henry IV without a Falstaff. You don’t do Hamlet without a Hamlet. You don’t do King Lear without a King Lear. (You see where I’m going with this.) Working at a University provides many wonderful opportunities to work with young, talented, and energetic actors. But, no matter how eager and gifted they may be, I don’t feel right about casting a 22 year old in the role of King Lear. Same goes for Prospero.
I stubbornly didn’t want to commit to taking on The Tempest without an actor who had a little bit of life experience to add to the mix. And the search for some local talent began. It’s not that there is nobody. It’s finding the right somebody. It’s finding a person in the right age-range who will stand up and enthusiastically say: “Yes! I am excited to take on this monster role in the middle of the summer in an unforgiving exposed outdoor space. I am eager to run around on the concrete with a bunch of sweaty undergraduates for two months.” It’s a great role. But Bard is a beast.
I contacted several actors I have worked with before that seemed right and eventually got a “yes” from a fellow instructor at OSU. He was not the most experienced “Shakespeare actor” but a confident performer with kindness and stage presence and I was on board to work with him to make the role memorable. We had our first read-through! Everything was in place.
And then two weeks before rehearsals were set to start he unceremoniously backed out via email. Needless to say, I was not pleased.
I was flooded with the nightmarish flashbacks from the past two seasons when I had to replace four actors each time. It’s frustrating to say the least. And this particular show was no easy fix. Before this actor had agreed to take on the role, I was ready to commit to a different show. By the time I was forced to widen my search for a suitable replacement, contacting people I knew and/or had worked with from Portland to Eugene . . . most were already committed to other summer projects. I was losing sleep to solve the problem. I thought through dozens of scenarios - rewriting what I had, re-casting the remaining thirteen players into a different show - all the while time slipped away and I needed to make a decision so that everyone involved could move forward. I kept telling Matt, “I just need to ask one more person and then I’ll figure it out.” There was interest. And there was even momentary commitment from a couple of fantastic actors, but upon reflection they remembered a summer trip or other commitment that would prevent them from joining.
Finally, I told Matt (again). “I’m going to ask one more person.”
He was skeptical.
I remembered Jen, an acquaintance of mine who had moved back to Corvallis last year. She has done Bard before, will be directing for us in our upcoming season, and is very funny. I threw around some various ideas about where to put her and where to move other cast members around and decided the cleanest and least disruptive course of action would be to put Jen in Matt’s role of Antonio and move Matt into Prospero. I resisted moving Matt into the role for so long mostly because he is such a gifted physical performer and I loved the ideas I had of he and Kyle working together as the villainous royals. But, unfortunately, that was no longer an option.
Kyle and Jen at our first blocking rehearsal.
What I lost in Matt and Kyle’s chemistry, I gained in a new relationship. Kyle’s tall and lean golden-retriever to Jen’s short and salty Siamese cat. They will be funny and inventive together and I’m really looking forward to developing this dastardly duo.
But there remains a new question: Absent the natural wisdom and depth of experience that comes from a man twenty-years older than Matt . . . who is Prospero? While Prospero doesn’t have to be anything in particular, he can’t just be anything. He is at once a clever trickster enjoying the power and ability to rule over this mysterious island and a father concerned with the future of his daughter over his own desires. Our conversations about the character began last night and will continue through the weeks. We will discover this new person together and I’m excited about that, of course. Matt is my partner in life and, so often, in creative collaboration. I had assumed he would play this role eventually in his life on stage . . . I just figured it would be a couple of decades from now. We will now move through these uncertain waters together, bidding farewell to the wizened and world-weary Prospero I thought I knew, and preparing the encounter this Prospero.
More writing to come this week about our conceptual background and our early rehearsals.
