The Name of Action

I have been thinking about Shakespeare, isolation, and…consummation.

Richard II, alone in his cell, knowing he’s going to die.

“but whate’er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing.”

Richard III, waking from a nightmare, realizing he is alone with himself, a murderer. (“I am I.”)

“Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? myself? there’s none else by:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself!”

Hermione, alone, falsely accused and tormented by the one she loved more than anyone else.

“Sir, spare your threats:
The bug which you would fright me with I seek.
To me can life be no commodity:
The crown and comfort of my life, your favor,
I do give lost; for I do feel it gone,
But know not how it went….
Tell me what blessings I have here alive,
That I should fear to die? Therefore proceed.
But yet hear this: mistake me not; no life,
I prize it not a straw…”

And then Hamlet, most dangerous of all, alone with Shakespeare’s grief. We see many things in the play––things that are clear to him, too––which might have caused Hamlet to lose his mirth. But he says he doesn’t know why he has lost it. He refuses to name it.

“I have of late––but
wherefore I know not––lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.”

And earlier he says:

“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!”

But the great moment, and the most lonely, is “To be or not to be.” I have spent the last few years steeped in Plato and Aristotle. One of the great pleasures of this has been the realization as I read them that Shakespeare was reading them around the time he wrote Hamlet. (Both philosophers, for example, play with “to be” and “not to be” at length. Plato even says that for “to be” and “not to be” to be, they must be the same thing.) But I am back to my original belief that it is Aristotle’s “to be” that Shakespeare is unraveling here. I say “unraveling” because there does seem to be some playful malevolence coming from the master playwright directed toward the master philosopher.

(By the way, for me, there are no two more important and astonishing minds than Shakespeare and Aristotle. In that order. Shakespeare was the most Aristotelian of the writers. So much so that he knew better than to take “Poetics” too seriously.)

Anyway, for Aristotle the purpose of our being––of our “to be”––is to be happy. This is no light thing. It was no light thing for Shakespeare either, and it is Hamlet’s greatest problem. (Remember, it is by no means clear that the terrible events of the play are the actual or original causes of Hamlet’s grief.) So in the famous soliloquy, he lists some of the the things––the “outrageous fortune”––that get in the way of having a life worth living. He even gives us the image of lying there, grunting and sweating, as a “weary life” has its way with us.

Now, as it happens, that “outrageous fortune,” that bad luck, is Aristotle’s greatest problem. For Aristotle, it is the uncontrollable turns of fortune that are the biggest impediments to sustaining happiness.

But Aristotle was ultimately an optimist. He believed that the happiest people know how to use turns of fortune, even terrible turns. And the key thing to understand for Aristotle is that happiness is action. “To be” happy is to act. (Don’t get me started on how wonderful this is in a play that, in many ways, is about acting in the theatrical sense. “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.”) But, yes, again, for Aristotle happiness is action.

It is no coincidence that Hamlet’s great meditation on mortality ends with the words “and lose the name of action.” The key to happiness, action, is lost through the “pale cast of thought.” And what does Shakespeare make that action? Suicide. Suicide is the action that brings happiness.

“To die. To sleep.
No more. And by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to––’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d.”

It’s also worth pointing out here, that Shakespeare brings Plato back in this moment by making Aristotle’s “action” the key to life and death at the same time. “To be” and “not to be” become one.

Anyway… Tomorrow is Easter. Cordelia is a symbol of resurrection, right? And what does Lear say to her? He says the saddest words ever written:

“Thou’lt come no more.
Never, never, never, never, never.”

Hedda Gabler and the name of action

2017 Theatrical Report

THE CHERRY ORCHARD
by Anton Chekhov

This was our first Waterford play of the year. It’s the third Chekhov play we’ve done at Waterford, the other two being The Seagull and Uncle Vanya. If you teach high school theater and you get Chekhov, do Chekhov plays. These productions have been some of the best we’ve done, and our audiences have loved them. (Photos by Dusty Heuston)

~

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
Adapted for the stage by Javen Tanner
Directed by Tara Tanner

I somehow managed to get begrudging permission from the Sendak estate to write and produce a stage version of this classic children’s book for our Lower School play this year. Tara directed it, and it was great fun. Unfortunately, part of the deal was that I cannot produce my script again. (Photos by Heather Mortenson)

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BLACK COMEDY
by Peter Shaffer

I love a good farce, and Black Comedy is one of the best. It takes meticulous work to get a farce right, and my students were fantastic. (Photos by Dusty Heuston and Mindy Reynolds)

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DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS
by Eugene O’Neill

Our first Sting & Honey production this year was one I’ve long wanted to do. It was the first play to be produced in the new Regent Street theater, the black box at the Eccles in downtown Salt Lake City. The Regent Street is Sting & Honey’s new home. I loved this cast. They created so many beautiful, brutal, and heartbreaking moments. Desire is truly one of the great American tragedies. (Photos by Samantha Kofford)

~

TIMON OF ATHENS
by William Shakespeare

Timon of Athens is another play I’ve long wanted to do. I was so proud of this production. We reversed the genders of many of the characters, including our Timon. Fifty four roles were covered by fourteen actors, and the play was crystal clear. I was particularly pleased with the way Timon kept her bite, but never lost her emotional connection to the audience. (Photos by Heather Mortenson)

~

THIS BIRD OF DAWNING
Created by Javen Tanner

This was our ninth year and our tenth performance of Sting & Honey’s Nativity. My daughter played Mary this year, and that made it special indeed. The show received yet another rave review. I’m so grateful to all who have made this an annual tradition. (Photos by Kylee Reynolds)

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NEXT UP: Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard. Happy New Year.

Nothing in This World is Terrible

Image by Ommay

I just finished a book on the difficulties in educational reform. On the last page, the author quotes H.G. Wells writing to Joseph Conrad:

You don’t care for humanity, but think they are to be improved. I love humanity, but know they are not.

The quote was given not in the context of defeatism, but of hope. Understanding this is essential to everything, frankly, but certainly to art-making.

Artists are always talking about “humanity” or “the people” or “change for the greater good.” But when engaged in a conversation on the subject, it becomes clear that many of them love only their abstractions and despise actual people. It becomes clear that at the heart of the pedantic placement of symbols on their coexist stickers is the desire for those symbols to disappear. “The people” might be beyond reproach, but actual people, it seems, are in constant need of the artist’s wisdom, help, and correction.

But not for serious artists. Serious artists know they are not teachers, but learners. People––actual people with all their flaws and flares––call up a deep love in the serious artist. Unserious artists approach their audiences with trite socio-political prescriptions and “things to think about.” Serious artists approach their audiences with awe and wonder.

I have said before that great writers rarely write characters they don’t like, and never write characters they don’t love.

Look at Waiting for Godot. I have actually listened to someone tell me with a straight face that the play should be boring (actual word used) and sober, so that the audience will really think about what it’s saying. That is some serious Brechtian BS, and it would be a big surprise to Beckett, who packed the play full of hilarious jokes and antics, and whose one comment on the meaning of the play was that it’s about hope. And it is. In the midst of all the despair, these two clowns show up every single day. Beckett knew there is nothing more beautiful than that. Godot was written right after World War II. He needed those clowns to show him how hope persists.

It reminds me of a moment in War and Peace when Tolstoy writes of Pierre, who has been starved and beaten as a prisoner of war, and who has been marched toward his execution, that “he had learned still another new, consolatory truth: that nothing in this world is terrible.”

It sounds hyperbolic, but it’s a sentiment expressed in various ways by many who have survived the worst of humanity’s atrocities. I don’t know if it’s true––I’ve never been put to that kind of suffering––but I want to understand Pierre. And whether it’s true or not is beside the point. In War and Peace, Tolstoy is not trying to teach us that nothing in this world is terrible. Rather, he wants to learn how people come to that seemingly counter-intuitive conclusion. How do they arrive at that kind of hope in the midst of that kind of suffering? Tolstoy isn’t suggesting we should all be like Pierre. No. Tolstoy is in awe of Pierre.

Our love of humanity is meaningless unless we love the actual people that make up humanity––the actual individuals. Characters made up of the ideals of ideologues are empty and false. Characters made up of the love we have for our audiences become real to our audiences.

I’ll conclude with some Seamus Heaney, from his poem After Liberation.

…to have lived through and now be free to give
Utterance, body and soul–to wake and know
Every time that it’s gone and gone for good, the thing
That nearly broke you–

Is worth it all, the five years on the rack,
The fighting back, the being resigned, and not
One of the unborn will appreciate
Freedom like this ever.

…Omnipresent, imperturbable
Is the life that death springs from.
And complaint is wrong, the slightest complaint at all,
Now that the rye crop waves beside the ruins.

Clearing the Sill of the World

Creating art is the process of surprising yourself. And when that happens, when your creation surprises you by what it becomes––by what it was able to become because you stopped trying to control it––there are few things more exhilarating. The same is true of children––of themselves and their creations. I was not prepared for the profundity of my children becoming artists.

The Writer, by Justin Harris

The Writer

.

In her room at the prow of the house

Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,

My daughter is writing a story.

.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing

From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys

Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

.

Young as she is, the stuff

Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:

I wish her a lucky passage.

.

But now it is she who pauses,

As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.

A stillness greatens, in which

.

The whole house seems to be thinking,

And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor

Of strokes, and again is silent.

.

I remember the dazed starling

Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;

How we stole in, lifted a sash

.

And retreated, not to affright it;

And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,

We watched the sleek, wild, dark

.

And iridescent creature

Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove

To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

.

And wait then, humped and bloody,

For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits

Rose when, suddenly sure,

.

It lifted off from a chair-back,

Beating a smooth course for the right window

And clearing the sill of the world.

.

It is always a matter, my darling,

Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish

What I wished you before, but harder.

.

––Richard Wilbur

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2016 Theatrical Report

 

*

THIS YEAR we celebrated 400 years of Shakespeare, and so I directed two Shakespeare plays and one play about Shakespeare. The year was peculiar in that it included three plays I wrote and one I created (This Bird). The remaining play was a Euripides.

At Waterford, we did the first three plays of the year on a beautiful stage built by Dan Whiting. Dan also painted the stage for Twelfth Night and Robin Hood. The mural was painted by Jason Sulivan. The stage was repainted by Madeline Ashton for Iphigenia in Aulis.

*

TWELFTH NIGHT
by Shakespeare (Waterford, February)

I love this play. This production was hilarious, and the music was beautiful. Twelfth Night and Hamlet mark Shakespeare’s shift from the heart clown to the brain clown. (He brings the heart clown back near the end of his career.) Feste and Sir Andrew are clowns, but they are not Kempe’s type. Sir Toby Belch seems like a character in the shape of Kempe, but lacking his heart––having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. Falstaff has an intelligence not seen in the earlier Kempe clowns, and yet Shakespeare manages to keep Kempe’s heart the driving force of the character. But there’s no denying that Falstaff was a kind of evolving clown. I wonder if this evolution was what made Kempe leave the company. Sir Toby is a great character, but I think, given the chance, Kempe would have refused to play him. (Photos by Dusty Heuston.)

*

ROBIN HOOD
by Javen Tanner. Directed by Tara Tanner (Waterford, May)

Tara wanted to stage the Robin Hood story, but she couldn’t find a script she liked. She asked if I would write one, and it turned out to be a great project. These annual Lower School plays at Waterford have been wonderful experiences for us over the past ten years. (Photos by Heather Mortenson.)

*

IPHIGENIA IN AULIS
by Euripides (Waterford, May)

Along with Alcestis and The Cyclops, Iphigenia in Aulis is one of my favorite ancient Greek plays. You can read some of my thoughts about this play here. (Photos by Dusty Heuston.)

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SLEEPING BEAUTY’S DREAM
by Javen Tanner (Sting & Honey, July)

I feel like I’ve written a lot about this one. You can read my original post about writing the play here. It was first performed as a Waterford play, and then we produced a staged reading of it. It was always intended to be a play performed by adults for children and adults. It was lovely to see that happen this year. The cast was spectacular. Hopefully Sting & Honey will be able to produce more theater for young audiences. (Photos by Samantha Kofford Photography.)

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THE KING’S MEN
by Javen Tanner (Sting & Honey, September – October)

About a year ago, I had the idea for this play: Shakespeare’s company––men who play women––played by women, Shakespeare’s relationship with Anne and Susanna, and an appearance of the ghost of Queen Elizabeth. It turned into something I’m so proud of. I loved working with the women of the cast. It is the first of three plays about Shakespeare. (Photos by Jason Hermansen.)

*

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
by Shakespeare (Waterford, November)

Another great Shakespeare play. As I’ve watched productions of Merchant over the years, I’ve noticed directors have a hard time accepting the play as a comedy. Not only is it a comedy in the truest sense, it is at times incredibly silly. Most of the characters match up with Commedia stock characters. But the play is also heartwrenching and brutal. Shakespeare realized that laughter opens an audience to feeling tragedy in a deeper way. And Merchant is also a tragedy in the truest sense, meaning there is a sacrifice required. We see the same thing happen with Chekhov and Beckett: so many boring, “deep” productions of plays that are meant to make you laugh heartily so that you can feel deeply. With these plays, you cannot feel the extent of the tragedy without the commitment to the comedy. This Merchant of Venice was silly and heartbreaking, and I was very proud of it. (Photos by Dusty Heuston.)

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THIS BIRD OF DAWNING
by Javen Tanner (Sting & Honey, December)

This was our ninth year with this piece. I still love it so much. This photo is from last year. New photos coming soon. (Samantha Kofford Photography)

*

HAPPY NEW YEAR, folks. The Cherry Orchard starts rehearsals next week.

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Iphigenia and The Opposition of Mars

I’ve been thinking about Mars for the past few months. Not the planet, though. I’ve been thinking about the god (Ares, to be more specific).

I’ve just closed a production of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis. One of the things I love about the play is that it subverts any reductive position you try to take on war. And unlike the traditional war play that focuses only on the men in charge who send our youth into battle, Iphigenia turns our focus to the youth themselves who heed the call and willingly offer their lives.

Is that a good thing? It’s a complicated question. Any thinking person has to be grateful that at certain points in history these young people have done just that. Was it right for Iphigenia? That depends on one’s cultural sense of honor. For Falstaff, probably not. But for Iphigenia, maybe so. Again, it’s complicated. For me it’s clear that there are times when tyranny must be fought, and we owe a great debt to the men and women who do the actual fighting.

So where is Ares in all of this? For most of my life I’ve thought of Ares as a quick-tempered, belligerent warmonger––the way he is portrayed in pop culture. But in working on Iphigenia, I’ve found something different.

I decided to have two choruses in the play. The first chorus was the one in the script, a chorus of women of Chalcis. I added the second chorus, a chorus of Greek soldiers. The main function of the second chorus was to be a visual representation of how Agamemnon allows the massive Greek army to get into his head and fill him with fear. But at one point in my production, this second chorus chanted Homer’s Hymn to Ares.

The Ares of the hymn is brave and ready, but he is also wise and slow to battle. He is a martial artist. His philosophy is peace, and so he understands when the rare occasion arises that peace can only be won through war.

Ares is indeed a god who teaches courage and preparation when it’s time to fight. He is a protector, an ally of order. (Tyranny may be orderly, but it is itself disorder.) However, for the most part, Ares is a god who understands war so well that he is able to steer his supplicants away from its horrors.

It’s appropriate then that last night, after I had locked up the theater, and as I walked to my car, I was thinking about how Ares, the god of war, could also be called a god of peace––that, in a sense, his nature is in opposition to his stewardship. Then I looked up and saw what they call the opposition of Mars, brilliant and “supremely strong.”

HYMN to ARES

Supremely strong Ares,
golden-helmeted chariot-rider,
tough-hearted, shield carrying
guardian of cities,
bronze in armour, brave of hand,
the tireless, spear-sharp
rampart of Olympos,
father of war-winning victory,
the ally of Themis.

You are a tyrant to the rebellious,
a leader to the most just,
you carry the staff of manhood,
you whirl your disc of bright fire across the sky
among the seven tracks of the constellations
where blazing horses bear you forever
beyond the third orbit.

Hear me, helper of mortals,
whose gift is the courage of youth.
From high above, shine down upon our lives
your gentle light and your warrior’s power,
so I may drive away bitter cowardice from my head
and subdue my soul’s beguiling impulse,
so I may restrain the shrill rage in my heart
which excites me to charge
into the chilling din of battle.

Rather, blessed god, give me the courage
to stand my ground within the safe laws of peace,
shunning hostility and hatred
and the fate of a violent death.

–Homer (translated by Jules Cashford)

William Shakespeare: 400 Years of Life After Death

 

This morning, I admit, I feel more like Duke Senior than Hamlet. I enjoy my weekly ritual of yard work, the quiet, the smell of water on the garden soil. Like the Duke, I find “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, / Sermons in stones, and good in everything. / I would not change it.”

I’m glad the celebration in which I took part happened yesterday. I’m glad today––the actual day––is restful and contemplative.

As I read about the various celebrations happening throughout the world, I feel very connected. I see myself in others’ love for and dedication to the truly astonishing plays and poems of this un-universitied actor from Stratford on Avon.

I know the jealous and the ignorant have long thrown around words like “bardolotry,” but these people have not really looked at the work––not deeply. There is nothing in the world like the body of work written by William Shakespeare. I spend as much of my free time as possible reading poems, plays, and novels, and so I know excellent writing abounds. And I also know that one thing that ties so many of the great writers together is the way they often quote or talk about Shakespeare. He looms. Four hundred years after his death, he still looms.

Right now I am directing Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, and I have not been surprised to find a phrase here or a line there that is clearly influenced by Shakespeare. I see this often in English translations of ancient works. In this way, Shakespeare continues to improve stories that came before him. I can’t help but think he is somewhere smiling about that.

Hamlet, 2012

Perhaps the most thrilling part of this celebration is to see the way Shakespeare is already alive in another generation. I love to see my children and my students fall in love with him as they play his characters. I love to see his words in their mouths like flames on their tongues. Though they do not yet fully comprehend the flame, the pleasurable burn of it will likely never be quelled.

Appropriately, this entire year has been set apart by Shakespeare lovers as a year of celebration. I will add my voice this fall with the first of three plays about Shakespeare, The King’s Men. (The other two are called Sycorax and Kempe.) The King’s Men will be my small offering, my mask on the Dionysian altar.

Four hundred years ago today, the man who wrote the greatest meditation on death set out for that undiscovered country. The shakey signature on his will leads me to believe that he knew it was coming. I wonder: as he contemplated death, did he perhaps consider revising some of Hamlet’s words? Or did he think them through and decide they still rang true?

*

To be or not to be––that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep––
No more––and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to––’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep––
To sleep, perchance to dream. Aye, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the poor man’s contumely,
The pangs of disprized love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Mooing for Barta Heiner

photo credit: arts.byu.edu

In the past couple of weeks I’ve seen many expressing their love for Barta Heiner, who is retiring from the BYU Theater Department this year. I want to add my voice to theirs.

Last week I saw her perform the lead role in Mother Courage and Her Children. Her performance was excellent, full of power, grace, and––most of all––that Barta connectedness. I was proud to be one of her children.

Barta taught us about acting in the traditional ways, yes, but she also taught us about acting simply by talking about acting. She taught us to be connected by really connecting while talking to us about connecting. She taught us about accessing emotional truth by accessing emotional truth while talking about emotional truth.

After one class with Barta you knew you were working with not just a great teacher, but a real artist.

Barta was an example of graciousness and tolerance, without ever wavering in her personal convictions. She was always kind, and yet she could swiftly and firmly cut through the bs that is common to young actors. In one rehearsal she told me my technique was exactly as it was supposed to be, and to stop it. “It’s only the soul that matters now,” she said. This remains one of the most important lessons I have ever learned.

Barta is also great fun. When I was a senior at BYU, I was playing Lopakhin in a production of The Cherry Orchard, directed by Barta. Barta and Chekhov: I thought I had arrived. I so wanted to do well and impress her. (I still want to do well and impress her.) As we were working one day, I was having trouble connecting my blocking with my acting. She listened to my concern and then asked, “Do you feel like you want to move?”

Now, in case you aren’t familiar with The Cherry Orchard, near the beginning of the play Lopakhin walks in on a conversation between Varya and Anya, and, feeling awkward, lets out a moo and then exits. So when Barta asked if I wanted to move, what I heard was “Do you feel like you want to moo?”

I was surprised by the question. But I thought, well, he does moo earlier on: maybe that’s just his thing. Again, I really wanted to do a good job for Barta, so I took her question about mooing very seriously. Sweat began to form on my forehead as I tried to figure out how mooing would solve the problem I had posed. Barta, meanwhile, was looking at me as if to ask, “Was it really that difficult a question?”

Finally I said, with more than a little desperation, “You want me to moo?” Barta burst out laughing. “MOVE! I said does it make you want to MOVE!” We have laughed at this memory many times since.

But I would have done it. I would have mooed for her. I still would. Anytime. I am so blessed and fortunate to have been taught by a master. I love her so much. I look forward to witnessing her next performance.

Where My Bones Shall Be Thrown

We closed a production of Twelfth Night last night. And today its excellent songs linger in its wake: O Mistress Mine, Come Away Death, and The Wind and the Rain. When we talk about Shakespeare, we usually talk about his plays and poems. But his lyrics are rarely discussed.

Shakespeare was an excellent lyricist. That might seem like a given, since he was such a good poet, but in Shakespeare’s time, as in ours, the poem and the song were not the same thing. Great lyricists are often middling poets and great poets middling lyricists.

In times like ours and Shakespeare’s, to be both a poet and a lyricist, one must understand that a poem is the voice against silence and the lyric is the voice against percussion and/or tone. You choose different words when you are placing the voice against silence––the solitary voice is the music. The words have to work in a different way than they do when you place them against percussion or tone.

And while it is true that specific music affects word choice, it’s also true that the fact that there is music at all affects word choice. So Shakespeare’s songs continue to work even though they are given different music for different productions.

Come Away Death

Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.

My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown:

A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there!

–Shakespeare

https://vimeo.com/69895419#

2015 Theatrical Report

It was another great year of theater. Thanks to all who helped make it happen.

OUR TOWN

I finally directed my first production of the great American play. It was a beautiful experience. Daily Life. Love and Marriage. Death and Dying. Saints and Poets.

MARY ROSE

I loved this lesser-known ghost story from J.M. Barrie. It is dramatic, comedic, and genuinely spooky.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

I had the privilege of directing this show for Pinnacle Acting Company. It was great fun. We did the play in Commedia masks. I’ll see about getting production photos from Pinnacle, but here are a couple of great pics of my Dromios.

The Comedy of Errors

Dromios

ENGLAND TRIP

Tara and I took a group of our theater students to England this summer. It was a wonderful trip. We spent half our time in Stratford, and the other half in London. We saw ten plays. (Production photos are from The Royal Shakespeare Company, The Royal National Theatre, The Bear Pit, Shakespeare’s Globe, Wyndham’s Theatre, and Regents Park Open Air Theatre.)

King John: Astonishing

The Beaux’ Stratagem: Excellent

Blithe Spirit: Very bad

American Buffalo: Excellent

Othello: Mediocre

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: Incredible

The Merchant of Venice: Excellent

The Jew of Malta: Absolutely perfect

The Seagull: A disgrace

Love’s Sacrifice: Excellent

SLEEPING BEAUTY’S DREAM: A STAGED READING

Sting & Honey produced a staged reading of my play Sleeping Beauty’s Dream, as a fundraiser. It was hosted by the inimitable Valentiners. A great day. We will be staging the play July of 2016. It will be our first annual theater for young audiences piece.

THIS BIRD OF DAWNING SINGETH ALL NIGHT LONG
created and directed by Javen Tanner

This was our eighth year performing this Nativity. It continues to “thrill, silence, and still me.” (photos: Samantha Kofford Photography)

TWELFTH NIGHT starts next week. Happy new year.