I chose
to watch the play within a play in both the live performance and the Rice
performance. Though there were many similarities, watching the play in this
form did raise at least one major question for me. Watching two interpretations
of the same script made me wonder about the research that goes into directing a
Shakespeare play, and how much of the "creative interpretation" just
ends up turning into "recycled humor." As we've discussed in class,
there are thousands of ways to interpret characters. The character information
does not stretch past their names and their positions, and even the additional
guidance of how each of the players are to move is sparse--Shakespeare gives
little more than a prompt to "enter" or "exeunt."
As I
watched Pyramous and Thisbe and the rest of the troupe act out their ridiculous
comedy, I realized that many of the humorous elements were congruent between
both plays. The moon was awkward and constantly bent over and bumping into
whatever character happened to be nearby. Pyramous was portrayed by a man and
spoke in a incredibly high pitched voice. The suicide scenes were equally funny
to watch—each of the characters stabbed themselves multiple times and made a
huge scene over it.
Despite
the fact that these similarities all are in relation to the acting, a written
script dictated none of these actions. Each action was chosen by a director or
was left to the creative interpretation of the actor. It would be interesting
to learn more about the development of Shakespearean directing, and how actors
make their choices. How much overlap is there from play to play? Is the
character and tone of a play something that is inherited and re-preformed? How
much leeway do directors and actors have by way of interpreting their own
rendition of a play? I would love to discuss these things in our class or hear
your thoughts in comments!
Rosemary had posted a comment concerning this scene but her focus was on Helena. She had posted about a movie version in which they made this scene more serious by having Helena not enjoy the jokes within the play and thus changing the entire feel of the play within a play scene. I just thought it was interesting that one change in a character's attitude can change the tone of the scene. It was a very interesting interpretation that Rosemary had brought up.
ReplyDeleteWell there is quite a bit of inference that directors make from the text, I believe. Things like "This lime, rough cast, stone... etc." that Wall says during his speech, or when Peter Quince talks about Thisbe being a man, and tells him to use a high voice. But still, I think you're right in that so many interpretations are similar and not all of those things are textual. It would be an interesting bit of research to see how much of those decisions are recycled.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think that there's a lot of collaboration/influence that exists between well known productions in the Shakespeare sphere, simply because it's natural to imitate something you like/that went well and twist a little bit of it in the process.
ReplyDeleteSarai, I definitely agree that many of the conclusions are drawn from the text, but Rosmary posted a video that I think is another illustration of what I'm talking about. In this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=3&v=1TiNAYpVVr4 Thisbe begins in a very high pitched voice, but soon morphs back into his own, manly voice, which seems to immediately break the comedy.
ReplyDelete