28
May

Rehearsal blog -day 16 (24.5.2013)

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We began by looking at the trick by which Oppression manages to get Common Thift to take his place in the stocks.  Once again, the theme of rehearsals, ensuring that the actors stuck to the regular meter and rhyme of the verse, proved key to the scene.   The dialogue was thus run repeatedly until the rhythm began to ‘stick’, and then the action was mapped on top of this.

We had moved into a massive hall at the Pearce Institute and were able to mark it up to show exactly how big the platea, the field, and the various loci of the playing space were.   The actors began the afternoon by exploring this space.  They then read from the opening of the parliament through to the reading of the acts – to get a sense of how this whole section is going to work.  We worked through the characters’ response to the new laws, with Greg saying that the members of the parliament should be waiting to hear whether what they’ve asked for will happen, so that they have to be engaged in an “active listening” during Diligence’s proclamations. The third law about setting the lands in feu seems to be the really radical one, although many are years ahead of their time – such as priests being able to marry, and nunneries being abolished.  The rest of the afternoon was devoted to staging the parliament.

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27
May

Rehearsal blog – day 15 (23.5.2013)

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We began the day by looking at the relationship between Diligence, Rex and Folly at the end of the play and considered whether Folly was known to the court.  Perhaps Folly, given his centrality to Scottish political discourse (shown by his privileged place in the architecture of Stirling, and the craftsmanship devoted to this particular Stirling Head) is the final piece of the jigsaw of Rex’s court.  Gregory Thompson noted how Folly’s sermon repeats and inverts the two ‘legitimate’ sermons the audience has just witnessed taking place in parliament.

When Folly calls all King’s ‘fools’, is this a moment at which he goes too far, or is Diligence playing the straight man by saying  Folly has gone mad at this point – creating the space for the king himself to decide whether this is the case or not.  This will be heightened in performance by having Folly whisper some of his criticisms of political power to Diligence, only to have Rex urge the fool to speak to him as well.  Perhaps the weak king seems to have learnt how to be a true Renaissance monarch by the end of the play.

We looked at the hanging sections in the afternoon, and found that once again, paramount was the rhythm – they are the tides on which meaning is carried. It is notable that when a part of the text doesn’t ring true aurally for the actors, it is usually a problem with editing or anglicising and that the ears of the company are able to detect it.

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23
May

Rehearsal blog – day 14 (22.5.2013)

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We concentrated today on one of the key reforming moments of the play – the expulsion of the prelates from the Parliament. In the morning we examined the scene when the prelates are stripped and leave the Parliament humiliated. In the afternoon we went back to the earlier moment when the clergy are asked by Divine Correction and the Scribe to account for their behaviour as officeholders and are then confronted by the Doctor’s sermon. Although when I read the play I had simply seen the prelates as collective in rehearsal what became clear was how different Lyndsay makes them. Spirituality, Tom McGovern, is very clearly the leader. He is the one who raises the legitimate question concerning Parliament’s and the King’s right to reform the clergy. But he also seems entirely unaware that his behaviour as a Bishop is unacceptable. Peter Kenny and Michael Daviot, Abbott and Parson, share Spirituality’s sense of wronged innocent. The Parson’s response to the Doctor’s sermon, as rehearsed by Michael, came over as a perfect piece of Lyndsay comic satire. When the Doctor condemns sins like Pride and Lechery the Parson argues that they can’t be sins since if they were, ‘We men of Kirk wald never use them.’

Finally yesterday we got the first look at Divine Corrections costume, and in particular, his wings. They were magnificent; however, if we have a really windy day we might see Tam Dean Burn soaring off over the walls of Linlithgow Palace.

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22
May

Rehearsal blog – day 13 (21.5.2013)

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In the morning we looked at the opening of the parliament, and there was lots of discussion about the extent of the political discord John the Commonwealth invokes when he enters the parliament.

Peter Kenny (playing the Pardoner and the Abbot) bought up how the word ‘murmel’ (Merchant, ‘How we shall slaik the great murmel?’ and Temporality, ‘to save us frae murmel’) is used in the play to signify social discontent.  The problem or ‘murmel’ is dealt with to some extent by absorbing John into the parliament and making him the fourth estate, but the actor Gerda Stevenson pointed out that there is also something very puritanical and extreme about John the Commonweal’s suggested reforms.  Tom Betteridge said that John’s presence has been produced by the failure of the Commonwealth, and Greg Walker added that there is an anxiety about the forces that have been unleashed by his appearance, and how wide-reaching and oppressive the reforms he suggests might be.

John’s speech at lines 2605-2619 took quite some unpacking to work out exactly who the targets of his censure are – is it the entertainers he is getting at or noble excess? In fact it took all morning to work through lines 2347-3115, paraphrasing them into the vernacular.  After lunch we worked through the actual text.  This is a really key part of the text; the meat of the disagreement, arguably the heart of the play.

We staged the estates gangand backwart into parliament and John’s louping of the stank, and it was great to see these inherently theatrical moments on their feet for the first time having thought about them on the page for so many months.  The backwards motion of the estates results in their bumping into each other, making a point about the realm’s disorder as much as it heightens the comedy.

We discovered that the staging of this section would be dependent on whether we saw the audience as part of the parliament or whether we see them as excluded from it.  This is an important production choice. The actors explored some of the confines of our recreative staging; their inclination to use all the space and address the audience as much as possible was in tension with a political space that is exclusive and accessible only to few.

We finished the day by looking at how Oppression, Falsehood and Deceit get put in the stocks.  Again the inside/outside of the parliament was one of the features that needed attention.  In fact the spatial vocabulary of political space took precedence all day, giving the opportunity to take some great pictures!

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21
May

Rehearsal blog – day 10 (17.5.2013)

Firstly we looked at the end of Part One 1785-193, and noted the proximity of the divine and the earthy in the words of Diligence – particularly towards the end of the section, where the official nature of his herald role is subverted when he commands the women in the audience to use the toilet during the break.

Much of this section is in the prosodic form we identified yesterday in the dialogue between Suiter/Suiter’s wife/Pardoner which we have started to call ‘Lyndsay ballad’ – consisting of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter with 1 line of iambic trimeter in a six-line stanza of aabccb rhyme scheme.  It’s interesting because this means that it is not therefore denotative of class (being spoken by Rex and Divine Correction in this scene) but must serve some other dramaturgical or dramatic function.  When the dialogue shifts into iambic pentameter, as Good Counsel’s does in this scene – it has the effect, as the actor Gerda Stevenson said, of an operatic “aria” – it heightens the dramatic stakes.

After lunch, we rehearsed the entrance of the Pauper and the sections between him and the Pardoner in the Interval play, which presented a number of challenges in terms of both the verse-speaking and the staging.  The day ended with a music call for the female Vices, during which Fund-Jonet was directed to “collect” men in the audience through her song.

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20
May

Rehearsal blog – day 9 (16.5.2013)

Lots of important discoveries today so a rather long blog…The_reformed_court

Today we worked on the first entrance of Divine Correction. What was interesting was the extent to which Tam Dean Burn’s entry created a whole new atmosphere within the world of the play. Good Counsel, Gerda Stevenson, Chastity, Cara Kelly, and Verity, Alison Peebles, had all tried to reform Rex Humanitus and had failed. Suddenly Divine Correction changed the dynamic. We spent a considerable amount of time on Divine Correction’s provocative question – What is a King? And his equally radical answer – Nought but an officer. Discussing this line in the context of a performance brought home to me quite how potentially dangerous and subversive the question is since what Lyndsay was doing here is asking a heterogeneous audience of people in Cupar and Edinburgh to reflect on the nature of kingship

It was interesting discussing with the actors and directors the nature of Lyndsay’s politics. It was a reminder at how impoverished, in some ways, modern political discourse is since during the discussion one was constantly tempted to separate moral, economic and social issues. Of course in Lyndsay’s world such a separation would have been meaningless, indeed it would have represented the worst behaviour of, as Lyndsay saw it, the clergy. Ane Satyre is concerned with the idea of a commonweal founded on equity where everyone lives within their bounds. In these terms it embodies a very similar approach to politics as that articulated in the C Text of Piers Ploughman. At one level this is a conservative model of politics since it looks back to a mythical golden age where the classes or estates each knew and respected the boundaries of appropriate behaviour. But it could also form the basis of a radical critique of society and in particular those in power. After all Divine Correction’s agenda is a restorative one but is it articulated through radical language and there is a constant sense that those who transgress against the social bond, disregard-less of status or position will be punished.

In the afternoon, we looked at the rooting out of Sensualitie from the realm of Scotland and it was really striking to see female figures of virtuous rule on-stage alongside Divine Correction.

There was a discussion of the unusual word ‘consociable’ – the term used to describe the relationship that the King is now to have with Verity, Chastity and Good Counsel – and its emphasis on ‘society’ as a result of having allegories embodied on the stage, figuring the relationship between king and virtue as interpersonal.   The same is true of the moment when Sensualitie gets absorbed into the Church, in our staging through being pulled onto Spirituality’s knee and pawed by the Abbot.

But the really interesting part was seeing the staging of Rex’s acceptance of Divine Correction’s Counsel and the departing of Sensualitie form the court.  As it is being performed, Rex listens to Divine Correction only as a secondary effect of Sensualitie leaving him, rather than from making a positive choice to do so.  The moment really strengthens the version of Rex we are building as a weak and easily-led King.  As the actor James Mackenzie said to me, he only listens to Correction because he realises he is “alone and Divine Correction is the only person who seems to be offering him any counsel” rather than through his recognition of God’s emissary’s authority.

The final call was with the Pardoner to look at the section where he divorces the Suiter from his wife during the ‘Interlude’ (what we call the ‘Interval play’).  The strong rhythm of this section was quickly identified, and the fact that all of the dialogue is divided into six-line stanzas, largely lines of iambic tetrameter followed by a line of iambic trimeter.  There are clear moments of flying in the piece, and the verse lets it build up to the arse-kissing divorce ritual.  It took quite some time to find the right rhythm and pacing of this section of verse and Greg Thompson noted the paradox of some of the most common characters in the whole play having some of the most technical prosody.

We also had the amazing realization today that we will be opening the play on the same day as the play was performed in 1552 – June 7th!!  It must be serendipity.

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18
May

Rehearsal blog – day 8 (15.5.2013)

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In the morning, we looked at lines 1200-1287 – Chastity’s entrance.  Much of this action will make use of the ‘field’, both Diligence and Chastity are very mobile in this area during this section.  Indeed Diligence’s command of the whole domain of the round is noteworthy, as the research team had predicted.  The fact that the Three Estates can be found in the acting space throughout Part One also became clearer , which says something important about the kind of political universe that Lyndsay dramatizes and how integrated it is. At some point Temporality and the Merchants will need to be secreted in our VIP area.

In the afternoon, we looked at the stocking of Chastity and it was particularly interesting to see the opposition between Chastity and Sensualitie played out in dramatic space.  Today was also a day of costume fitting – above is Sensualitie trying out her wonderful costume.

At the end of the day, we looked at the section where Chastity is welcomed by the craftsmen, only to be chased away by their wives (ll 1287-1395) – a comic turn but with the serious point that Chastity may be found among Scotland’s lower orders, if not its elite.  Verity’s argument that subjects will follow the example set by their king shows that Sensualitie has not yet had the trickle-down effect she predicts.   Once again Lyndsay’s egalitarianism is demonstrated by the fact that the ability to recognise the beauty and virtue of Scotland is given to the Scottish working class…though not of course their ‘wickit wives’.

We also had the amazing realization that we will be opening the play on the same day as the play was performed in 1552 – June 7th.  It must be serendipity.

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17
May

Community: Cupar Banns rehearsals

Hi all

We have our final day of rehearsals for the Cupar Bans today. Its beautiful in Govan.

Plan for the day is to do a dress rehearsal in about an hour then head off to Falkirk to have  mark out the areas we are playing on Sunday!

Here are a few pics!

Carrie

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17
May

Rehearsal blog – day 7 (14.5.2013)

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Lots more work on the Vices today. In the afternoon the company looked at the part of the play where the Spirituality enter and Verity is hurled into the stocks 1077-1178.  The implication in the text is that the Spirituality are on-stage throughout the first a thousand lines because the stage direction before their first speech reads ‘Here they [the Vices] come to the Spirituality’ (1096 sd).  However, in our version the audience will see the men of the kirk for the first time as they enter on this stage direction, and are met by the Vices on what we call the punishment stage (the quarter to 12 stage of the round).   This is certainly a scene where the in-the-round staging comes to the fore as Verity will make a journey almost the entire way around the encircling walkway from the time of her entry to her imprisonment.

The need to combine action and words in order to keep a long show moving along at pace is becoming obvious.  However a moment will be taken to create a tableau during Verity’s speech in the stocks of the Spirituality gives the Vices their reward for putting her there, which really helps to focus the juxtaposition between her words and the churches’ deeds.  Greg Thompson also set up a convention whereby every time someone says a prayer or is sincere about religion, the Spirituality “get a slight migraine”.

We then looked at the Vices’ exit 1516-1579.  The fact this starts on the punishment stage but that the Vices move away from it nicely materializes their avoidance of retribution in the first half of the play.

If you’re coming to the production look out for Deceit’s stabbing out of  Falset’s eye –it’s going to be quite a moment!

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16
May

Community: The Cupar Banns

We started rehearsing the Cupar Bans( which is something like a touring ‘trailer’ for the Satire of the Three Estates) on Monday!

Monday saw us sat in the snug at the Scotia Bar doing several read throughs of the text in an aim to get our heads around the language …and meaning. It is so bawdy! We Love it! Later, we moved up to GTAC rehearsal studio in Govan to start piecing it together.

Over the past couple of days there has been a laughter that could give you a “a right wet sark” especially at Neville Millers gyrating seduction of Bes, Barry Walker’s pomposity as Findlaw and Calum Beaton and Floss Ross as Bessy and the Auld Man wrangling over the lock of a chastity belt . I don’t want to even think where those keys have been!

Yesterday we rehearsed outside at Linithgow Market Square which really brought it home how this short but sweet piece may have been received 500 years ago. several locals hung about to have a gander at what was going on which produced a few good conversations about the upcoming production of Three Estates. Inevitably we got soaked and moved into Linlithgow Palace where we spent the last hour rehearsing in the Grand Hall. That was quite something. To hear the language and work with the actors in a space Lindsey’s work had played seemed to bring a special energy to the final run of the day.

We have a couple of clips from yesterday which we will post in the morning!

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