ASC Theatre Camp and the Four Little Words:

Camper:   Um, excuse me? I think I may have a spondee?

Asst. Director:   Spondee? Spondee? Really? That sounds serious; you should put something on that.

C:   Ha, ha! I see what you did there.

AD:   What, my using your question to create epizeuxis?

C:   Epizeuxis? Epizeuxis?

AD:   See, I totally just got you to turn 'epizeuxis' into an epizeuxis. 

C:   Epizeuxis, epischmooxis!

AD:   Well, now that is not epizeuxis, epizeuxis is an immediate repeat, epishmooxis indeed! Now, how do we feel about epanorthosis?

C:   Bless you.

AD:   Nice one. But what I was going to say –

C:   Don't start, I know what epizeuxis and epanorthosis mean, I'm just choosing to ignore you.

AD:   Touché.

C:   Now seriously, if I do have a spondee what do I do with the rest of it?

AD:   Well, I hear that if you slap a pyrrhic on a spondee it will clear the whole thing up in a matter of days. But, careful, now, that could just be an old wives tale.

From the 2012 ASC Theatre Camp Production of A King and No King.
Photo Courtesy Pat Jarrett.

C:   Funny...O, you mean...hey, that might actually work.

AD:   Why don't you try it several ways and see which you think is best and go with that.

C:   But I want to get it right.

AD:   I can't write you a prescription – 'Take two trochees and call me in the morning.' It's your performance, so, you look at the clues, you try them out, and you then decide. Make it yours – that's what makes it right

C:   I'm not used to that.

AD:   Welcome to camp! Give yourself a chance. I think you'll find you have all the tools you need and that if you do your homework, commit to your choices, and believe in yourself, you'll be great.

C:   Okay. I mean, thanks. I mean...so, you're not going to tell me?

AD:   You are going to tell you. You are smart, funny, talented...by the time the show opens you will know that you are smart and funny and talented and will also be bold and confident and brilliant. And that, my friend, is...

C:   My cue to go try it?

AD:   Well, I was going to say 'polysyndeton'. But, yeah, go try it, try 'em all! You can totally do this.

C:   Okay, I'll give it a try!

That exchange is not, in fact, regarding treatment of an infectious disease, but about how to pronounce a line of verse. And, it is a typical back and forth between student and staff here at the ASC Theatre Camp for teens. Yes, we do spend a lot of quality time learning rhetoric, scansion, and other terrifying things. Yes, we design our curriculum with the goal of helping students explore language in a way that will help them to do better in their English classes, their AP tests, their college applications, and their performance skills. And it, in fact, does do all of that. But that is not the primary objective of our work here at the ASC Theatre Camp. 

I like to kick off each session by introducing students and families to what I believe are the four hardest words for students to say in any of Shakespeare's texts and reassure them that by the end of camp they will be able to say all four. They are, in ascending order: o, alas, alack, and I. Why, are these the most difficult to say you ask? Well, try them. You, yes, you, try them – it's way more fun than you might imagine and not at all embarrassing. Really.

You can do it, just start with 'O.' Try to say the full word, don't swallow it, really pronounce the whole thing. Let's do it together: 'O.' Now try: 'O for a muse of fire'. Now try it out loud. Don't shorten that 'O.' Really say it like you mean it. See, that was a bit embarrassing at first, but, once you stopped worrying about the embarrassing feeling it was a cake walk. Nicely done. 

If you survived that, and I'm sure you did, try 'alas.' It's okay if that one feels a bit silly when you start, just try it again. Remember now, out loud, do them all out loud.  'Alas.' Now try: 'Alas, how fiery and sharp he looks.'  It's much easier if you really say 'alas' before you go on to the rest of the sentence. It's counter-intuitive, I know, but it works, so resist your inclination to pretend it isn't there.  Also, that one happens to be from a comedy, so really make a big deal of it, for comedic effect. It's okay to feel silly here since you are, in fact, trying to be silly.  'Alas, how fiery and sharp he looks.' Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! That was great. And I'm totally laughing with you, not at you, because, after all, you made it funny. Well played. You may have noticed that if you just go for it you feel a lot less silly because you are trying to be silly and then you sound downright serious and everyone will respect you for it. Neat trick, huh? Good job!

From the 2012 ASC Theatre Camp
Production of Henry VI, Part 1.Photo Courtesy Pat Jarrett.

Now, moving on to the really ridiculous one. Try 'alack.' Don't forget the 'ck' sound at the end there. It's more important than you might think, as it gives you the chance to separate that word from what comes after it. So, try it again, 'alack.'  It's one of those words you say when something has really given you pause, so take the time to allow the realization to set in as you say: 'Alack the day'. If any line is going to make you look around and see if anyone is listening, it's that one. It tends to make everyone a bit self-conscious. But, let's just work through it together, and soon you will be glad you committed to it fully. 'Alack the day.' Now try the whole line: 'She's dead, deceased, she's dead, alack the day.' You can't quit the exercise now! Just trust me, we'll go there together. The only way to deliver that line and not feel like a real jerk is to completely give yourself over to it. Just embrace that word 'alack' like it is your life line – because it is. It is what keeps you tethered to the audience. If you skipped quickly over that 'alack,' the audience would not see your character realize how the world has changed for her forever. You see, here, you are the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. You've discovered that Juliet is 'dead' and have told her mother and now, on this line, have told her father. After 'alack the day,' the Nurse does not successfully connect with another onstage character until Juliet's parents, Paris, and the Friar have exited. Then she has one line to the musicians, and you never see her again. The Nurse goes down her own rabbit hole of despair, and if the actor wants the audience to journey down that hole with her, it happens through the way she communicates 'alack the day.' So, spew all of the vitriol you can at Juliet's dad by telling him three times of her demise, remind him of the part he played in her death, then really take in what it means for you, the Nurse, that she is gone. 'Alack the day' is the gate that holds back the flood of lamentation that follows, so hold on to every word as you say them. 'She's dead, deceased, she's dead, alack the day'. See, now you don't feel silly at all. Now you feel like a character that has the power to fully connect with the audience and have them journey with you. Well done.

Now, those three little words originally appeared daunting, but turned out to be very powerful when you wrapped yourself fully around them. What made them daunting was that you don't typically use them on a daily basis. So why would the word 'I' be clustered with those three? Most people use that one every day. Well, let's just try it in a line: 'Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I.' Here is a moment where you have to open yourself up to the audience in a vulnerable and honest way, and Shakespeare makes sure that you do because the line is constructed without a single contraction. You can't cheat and say 'I'm.' You have to say 'I am' and 'am I.' Now, when was the last time you yourself said the word 'I' in a vulnerable and honest way without a contraction? Exactly. Imagine for a moment that you are in an educational system that has to teach to the test. There is a right answer – your teacher, your school, your school district all get paid based on your ability to get that answer right. Imagine that you are living in a world where the expectations are incredibly high. Media bombards you every minute of the day to remind you what you are supposed to do, to be, to become. Imagine that you are somewhere between 13 and 18 years of age. Now, to that whole quiet room of actual people who are staring at you, waiting for an answer, and yes, the lights are on so you can see them all waiting, please say, 'Hello, I am' and then say your name. When was the last time you did that? No cheating – when did you really do it, with no contractions, no shortening or speeding up of words, no apologetically dipping of your head. You can't hide the word 'I' by speeding into the contracted 'm.' You have to say the whole word 'I,' then say 'am'. Try it now, out loud, 'Hello, I am' and then your name. Yep. That's that difficult one. Try: 'Now, I am alone.' Welcome to life as a typical teenager. 

Here at the ASC Theatre Camp our number one priority is helping our students embrace the remarkable person that each one of them already is. We do it through collaborative work. We ask them everyday to teach their peers, to learn from one another, and to become comfortable with the idea that world holds endless possibilities for each of them. By exploring the rhetorical devices that are in every line of text, the students gain confidence in their ability to structure their own arguments in order to engage with anyone they meet in any situation. They analyze literature better and, as a result, write better essays that are well-worded, concise, and critical. They learn to ask why. They learn to explore many choices and that the one they choose is right because they chose it. They learn that each song, each dance, each scene is always better when they fully participate in it. They learn that their fellows rely on them and that they are necessary. In performance they are vulnerable and honest and brave. They learn that the world is a better place with them in it. But, most importantly, here at ASC Theatre Camp, they learn to say the word 'I,' to play the very best role in the world, that of being themselves and reveling in the performance every single day. And they are brilliant at it. 

To learn more about attending Theatre Camp or having our Educational Residency team come to your school, please follow this link: http://www.americanshakespearecenter.com/v.php?pg=76 

'A Midsummer Night's Dream' Study Guide Now Available

The ASC Study Guide for A Midsummer Night's Dream is now available on our website. And, I promise you, this one's a lot of fun. Midsummer has so much potential for playing, and I think we've found some ways to really bring that to life in classrooms.

Here is a ten-page preview. The Study Guide contains the following activities:

• The Basics: Getting your students on their feet, working with iambic pentameter, paraphrasing, exploring rhetoric, and turning your classroom into an early modern stage. These sections include, for your benefit, the first 100 lines of text, already marked-up, to use as a model in the classroom.
  
• Line Assignments: A way to give your students ownership over a small section of text, which they will use in further language-based activities and staging explorations.
• Metrical Magic: Examines the performance clues provided by the shifts between normal iambic pentameter and the unusual trochaic tetrameter, the rhythm of spellcasting. The moments when a speaker transitions from one form to the other provide the basis for performance choices. Does the unusual meter call for music? A different physicality? How can actors emphasize the mysticism of what's going on in those moments?
  
• Staging Challenges: Titania's Bower explores the opportunities presented by the early modern stage. When Titania falls asleep on stage, where can she be placed? She can't be too much in the way of what's going on, but she also needs to be close enough for Oberon to ensorcel her and for Bottom to wake her. Students will experiment with different options and determine which they think is most effective.
  
• Perspectives: Courtship Rituals examines the social context of the romantic troubles in the play. How would Shakespeare's audience have perceived Egeus's ruthless inflexibility and Hermia's defiance? What implications of pre-contracted betrothals are in the play?
  
• Staging Challenges: Actors Playing Actors. The well-meant shenanigans of the Mechanicals can illuminate some potential clues about Shakespeare's own theatrical world. In this activity, your students will first explore the rehearsal process that Quince, Bottom, and the rest display, and then will prepare their own production of 'Pyramus and Thisbe'. We expect the result to be far more mirthful than tragical.
  
• Perspectives: Fairies explores the changing nature of the fae in literature, from its darker origins in English folklore to the benign transformation effected by the Victorians and Disney. Students will choose a source as inspiration for costume design in their vision of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
  
• Textual Variants: Examines a curious difference in speech prefixes between the Quarto and Folio versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream (which I discussed in my last post).
  
• Creative writing exercises based on the play, involving imitating Pyramus's questionable poetry or giving relationship advice to one of the lovers
  
• A guide to producing a 1-hour version of the play in your classroom

If you would like to purchase a downloadable copy of the study guide for A Midsummer Night's Dream, or any of our other available titles, please visit our website. Next up on the slate: Henry V.

Scansion Discoveries

I have begun work in earnest on the ASC Study Guides for the 2011-2012 artistic year. One of my first projects has been formulating our "Basics" section, the building-block skills of exploring Shakespeare: scansion, paraphrasing, rhetoric, using the stage, and using the audience.

As part of this process, and in conjunction with ASC Education's intention to develop Unit Plans for teachers to follow, I'm preparing the first 100 lines out of each play as an example of the Basics for the teachers. I just completed the scansion for all six of the plays I'm building Study Guides for this summer -- Hamlet, Henry V, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III, and Much Ado about Nothing, from our upcoming artistic year, plus Julius Caesar as a bonus. Doing these small blocks of text has reminded me why scansion is so important. It illuminates so many subtleties that could easily pass a reader or an actor by otherwise, and many of those distinctions give actors choices and opportunities to work with.

The first scene of Julius Caesar volleys between verse and prose, as Flavius and Murellus chastise the plebeians who have decked out for Caesar's triumph. The interesting bits of scansion here are subtle, but crucial. Some telling pronouns fall into stressed positions -- Murellus and Flavius stress "you" and "thou" more than is typical, indicating their accusatory tone. These instances could also give an actor the opportunity to single out an audience member: "Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft / Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements." The first 100 lines bleed over into 1.2, and the oddity I noticed there is something that I can't tell if it's intentional or not, but either way, it amused me: Caesar uses an awful lot of caesuras (mid-line breaks). This doesn't seem to be any key character indication, and I haven't scanned enough of the play to know if the trend continues past the first few lines of 1.2, but, if this was intentional on Shakespeare's part, I think it's a pretty cute joke.

The most interesting thing about the first 100 lines of Hamlet, at least from a metrical perspective, are the number of shared and short lines. In many places, characters -- particularly Barnardo and Marcellus -- share lines, especially when discussing the Ghost or questioning Horatio. In some instances, the split occurs mid-foot, which indicates that the second speaker's line really has to follow rapidly upon the first's. In other places, the shared lines, put together, form an alexandrine -- a 12-syllable line -- which could indicate some overlap in speech. These lines have to come quickly, and that, in turn, creates the sense of panic, right on the edge of hysteria, that the watchmen experience when the Ghost appears. In contrast, in other parts of the scene, some lines fall short, indicating the potential for a pause. These irregularities seem to work with the darkness of the scene, allowing space for the watchmen to confirm identities when someone new enters. The other significant short lines fall around the Ghost's entrance and exit, which makes me wonder if those breaks leave room for the trap opening, or for some special effect.

Henry V opens not with a scene, but with a prologue. The speech is a little trochee-heavy, but other than that, there's not much irregular about it. The scansion does bring out some sly little delivery indications, however. Consider the following lines:

But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France?

The stressed "this" interests me because it places such immediacy on the physical space in which the actor delivers these lines -- all the more intriguing when you consider that Henry V was probably the first play performed at the Globe. In the new building, reconstructed from the stolen framework of the Theatre, Shakespeare puts the stage itself foremost in his audience's mind during this prologue. I also like the stressed "can," which puts such strong emphasis on that question. An actor could do a lot with that little stressed "can" -- it could be a real concern, with the actor looking to the audience for support, or it could be cheeky, a tease. The prologue is full of these little gems, and they're particularly great when performing Henry V in an early modern space. The words call attention to the inherent qualities of the space and the staging conditions, giving the prologue a layer of meaning which loses force in a production that relies on elaborate sets and lighting designs. I don't have as much to say about the 1.1 portion of the first 100 lines, except that Canterbury's lines require some really odd elisions in order to scan something resembling normally. I would be interested to see if this remains true in his infamous “Salic law” speech in 1.2.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the first thing I noticed is that while Egeus retains regular meter while he's talking to or about Demetrius, his scansion suddenly goes wild whenever he has to talk to or about Lysander. Hermia, meanwhile, is the only character who remains perfectly regular throughout the scene (or, at least, throughout the first 100 lines). Her father is threatening her with death, the ruling Duke is telling her her only other option is a nunnery, her boyfriend is about three seconds away from engaging in fisticuffs with her father's favored suitor, and yet Hermia remains completely composed. Those are both great clues for actors. Something about Lysander, clearly, just rubs Egeus the wrong way, to the point that he can no longer control his speech patterns. As for Hermia, it gives the actress a great choice to make -- Is she just so sure of herself that she can remain entirely unflustered, or is she so scared that she's gone numb, and can only allow herself to express emotion once her father, Demetrius, and Theseus have left the stage?

The scene as a whole also has a higher than usual percentage of stressed pronouns, in a way that focuses a lot of attention on possession, particularly of Hermia, but also of love, desire, and rights. Egeus can't stress enough times that Hermia is his property: "As she | is mine, I may dispose of her" ... "And what is mine my love shall render him. / And she is mine, and all my right of her / I do estate unto Demetrius." Lysander and Demetrius throw some stressed "him"s and "his"es around as they jockey for the Duke's favor, while Hermia stresses her right to full knowledge of her circumstances, and ultimately, her right to make her own decision, whatever the consequences: "But I beseech your grace that I may know / The worst that may befall me in this case, / If I refuse to wed Demetrius." The high number of stressed pronouns in the scene subtly underscores the interpersonal conflicts driving the plot.

In the opening of Richard III, the only thing that seems regular is the irregularity. Richard's verse halts and limps as much as he does -- or is it just that he disdains the proper way of speaking as much as everything else? His most frequent variants seem to be feminine endings, alexandrines (6-foot lines), and oddly-placed trochees -- as though, while telling us that he is “deformed, unfinished... scarce half made up,” he compensates by cramming his lines full of extra syllables. Many lines have more than one irregularity, as in “Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here Clarence comes,” which piles a spondee, a mid-line trochee, and a caesura together. There are also many lines with ambiguities, that could easily scan more than one way. Bardweb’s analysis and mine, for example, disagree on several points, largely because I try to stick to the iambs wherever possible, and they’re a bit free with the pyrrhics. Even with conservative application, however, there are still far more pyrrhic-spondee combinations and more mid-line trochees than seem usual. I’ve also never wished I believed in medial stresses as much as when working with this speech. The discrepancies, though, leave room for choice, depending on what an actor wants to emphasis in performance. The opening of this play is definitely one of those moments when there is no single right answer, just myriad possibilities.

As for Much Ado about Nothing -- Well, its first 100 lines are in prose, like most of the play, so I didn't have any scanning to do there. That doesn't mean I won't have plenty to get into with the other Basics, though, so Much Ado fans (like myself) have plenty to look forward to as my work continues.