CALIBAN, PROSPERO & THE VOCABULARY OF ENSLAVEMENT

Shakespeare was a racist.  How could he avoid it? He was a white, protestant, European male living at the end of the 16th century, during a rise in global colonization.  He was also a feminist and a progressive, and a humanist, and an advocate for minorities, and cross-dressing, and the conjugal affiliations of fairies and mules. I mean, right?

Myself as “Caliban” with Lawrence Pressman as “Prospero” in THE TEMPEST at Quintessence Theatre Group. Photo by Linda Johnson

Or maybe he was none of these things.  Maybe he was just a writer trying to write successful plays that made money and earned him a decent living, and he was willing to pander to the proclivities of his audience to achieve that end.  Or sometimes to subvert those same proclivities for the same purpose.  I don’t know.  I’ll probably never know. 

Either way, it must be admitted there are plenty of sticky, complicated bits inside that 400-year-old cannon.  Sometimes those complications are intentional.  Sometimes they are the awkward residue of 400-year-old social biases.  I can’t solve all those problems.  I probably can’t even solve one, but I’m going to ponder the problem of Caliban in THE TEMPEST here, anyway.  I’ve just completed a run as the character at Quintessence Theatre Group here in Philadelphia, so it’s been on my mind. 

Now, THE TEMPEST isn’t specifically about colonialism and slavery – it’s much more concerned with revenge and redemption – but it’s also not NOT about colonialism and slavery.  If you’re unfamiliar with the play, Prospero – our protagonist – is the ousted, former duke of Milan who, twelve years before, barely escaped with his life and his daughter on a tiny boat and was shipwrecked on an island in the Mediterranean Sea.  They then survive on that island with the generous aid of that island’s mostly magical, indigenous inhabitants until a boat full of his enemies happens to sail nearby.  Prospero then summons a magical tempest to shipwreck their boat and bring the lot ashore. 

But, wait, did I say the natives of the island give their “generous aid”?  Nope, nope, that ain’t exactly it, is it?  He finds Ariel, a supernatural sprite with impressive magical powers who is painfully spellbound in a tree, and “frees” him… so that in return, Ariel will become Prospero’s indentured servant, obligated to fulfill that office for an indefinite amount of time as Prospero sees fit.  Ariel and Prospero do seem to generally get along and like each other, so I guess,  that’s that.

But if Ariel serves contentedly, Caliban seethes with contempt.  Originally grateful for the neighbors on his island home, and eager to help in exchange for sugar water and the attentions of Prospero’s daughter Miranda, things go south when Caliban’s attentions for Miranda turn sexual.  But instead of simply banishing Caliban from their portion of the island, Prospero instead imprisons him in a rock cave near their camp, and forces him to continue his labors for their well-being; foraging for their food and fresh water and firewood, and any other task for which Caliban’s massive physical strength might seem useful.

And that, of course, is a form of colonialism and slavery. Prospero, indeed, refers to Caliban multiple times as “my slave.”  He and Miranda both do, and they attach negative modifiers to insult him and express their dislike of him.  And that’s the sticky part.  Insulting enslaved persons by way of their enslavement is “punching down” in a really big way.

Some 21st century theatre makers, in an effort to demonstrate more sensitivity, now make the choice to remove the words “slave” and “slavery” from their productions of THE TEMPEST.  Perhaps this is the correct choice.  Among the insults levied by Prospero and Miranda: “Poisonous Slave,” “most lying slave,” and “abhorred slave,” all of which they speak directly to Caliban during his first appearance of the play in Act One, Scene Two.

Now, I strongly advocate trying to address any language that uses otherness, or darkness, or (in this case) slavery as an equation for degradation or undesirability.  For example, during the act three “lover’s quarrel” in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, Lysander howls at Hermia, “Away, you Ethiope!” comparing her to a dark-skinned African as a way of declaring his disgust for her.  Implicit in the comment is that Ethiopians are lesser beings - and it’s presented as a joke.  Not okay.  So, yes, address that problem, and cut the line, or change the word!  (Hot tip: using “artichoke” still scans and probably has a better chance of actually being funny, anyway!)

Caliban’s portrayal in THE TEMPEST, though, is quite different.  His slavery is very real.  It’s literally what he is.  Your production can choose to lean into, or away from, how much he might deserve to be in his condition, but the fact of it is still undeniable.  Caliban is Prospero and Miranda’s indentured servant.  Their Enslaved Person.  Full Stop.

Further, it’s not just incidental background data, it is integral to Caliban’s entire subplot.  He will soon encounter Trinculo and Stephano wandering about the island (having also survived the shipwreck) and immediately enlist them in a plot to overthrow his slave master, Prospero, by murdering him and installing Stephano as the new master of the island.  So, yes, you can remove the word “slave” from the play, but you cannot remove the slavery. 

In total, Prospero and Miranda refer to Caliban as a “Slave” six different times in the play, and five of those are directly to Caliban.  If you want to go that route, six words aren’t hard to change or remove, right?  But consider that the script is also overflowing with other words and phrases which debase Caliban’s humanity and equate him to an lower order of animal. 

Caliban is called a “Monster” 44 times in the text, again with the word often paired with a more degrading modifier (shallow, scurvy, ridiculous, abominable, and more).  He is repeatedly referred to as a dog, then a fish, a moon-calf and a devil.  Even his mother is called his “dam” which is, at its core, an allusion to chickens laying eggs.  And the vast majority of these degrading terms are spoken directly to Caliban. 

Caliban’s actual name is spoken by the other characters nine times in the play, but only once when speaking directly to him, and that is only when Prospero is first ordering Caliban to come out of his hole in act one.  Caliban refers to himself by name on three different occasions.  Two of those self-referrals occur while he is in the presence of Stephano and Trinculo, so they, like Prospero, are certainly aware of what his name actually is, but neither character uses Caliban’s real name even once in the play, and keep in mind they share every moment of their stage time with him.   By contrast, Stephano and Trinculo refer to each other by given name 28 different times.

So, if the de-humanizing and derogatory language is inescapable, and the narrative fact of Caliban’s slavery is unavoidable, then stop and consider who we might be protecting by taking the word “slave” out of Prospero and Miranda’s mouths.  Is it to protect Caliban – and anyone who might feel a generational connection to his enslavement?  Or, does it protect the heroes of our story from shamefully expressing their own classism or racism? 

Thomas Jefferson, the man who wrote the words, “All men are created equal,” owned people.  He fathered children by an enslaved woman who he owned.  These are facts.  Yet, there are conservative elements of our society who are actively working to suppress, or white-wash, these facts.  If those efforts succeed, it only reinforces the propaganda suggesting that racism is not currently a problem in this country.  This is only one example.

So, how do you honor Caliban and the people he might resemble? By erasing a word and possibly obscuring his truth?  Or by allowing his master to speak the quiet part out loud?  By allowing Prospero to be complicated? By allowing the audience to consider that difficult truth? What if that’s what Shakespeare intended in the first place?  OR, maybe he didn’t intend it, but it’s just the complicated residue of his own inherent racism filtering into his text, and what if that in itself deserves to be examined?

Again, I am not suggesting that I know what the correct answer is.  The choice you might make will certainly be affected by multiple factors.  And Shakespeare’s plays are textured with so many truths - whether intentional or inherent - that it is often possible to explore them from any angle you might choose, or not at all.  At the least, take the time to weigh all the options, and make a fully informed choice, because someone later will ask you why, and they’ll be listening very carefully to your reply.

Modulating Absurdity: Attempting to Define the "Rules" of Samuel Beckett

I’ll be honest: Beckett baffles me.

Not so much when I watch his plays. I can totally sit in a theatre and watch Beckett performed and glean meaning, pleasure, sadness, and depth. (Well, expect for ENDGAME. ENDGAME just straight-up baffles me.)  But on the whole, yeah, I can watch me some Beckett.

Playwright Samuel Beckett

BUT:  As a person occasionally (partly) responsible for helping to create those experiences… there I’m afraid I’m at a loss.

Beckett, it is said, works best when you watch his plays without trying to dissect the elements of them; when you allow the sum of the pieces to wash over you as a whole. But when you’re an artist working on creating that whole, it’s your job to dissect the pieces - or at least YOUR piece - and therein awaits a certain abyss.

I’ve recently had the pleasure/dismay of gazing once again into that particular abyss while working on WAITING FOR GODOT at the Quintessence Theatre Group.  My piece to dissect: Pozzo, the narcissistic, slave-owning traveler, who interrupts and visits with the play’s two main characters, Didi and Gogo for a chunk of each act, accompanied by his “menial,” Lucky.

The “absurdist” genre that Beckett wrote in – though, yes, “defined” is possibly more accurate – is a space beyond the familiar rules of our daily existence.  He turns a rather fractured mirror back onto the world, such that if you stand close to the glass you would be able to recognize the gently broken image of yourself, but the larger room (or world) beyond you would be so distorted by the cracks and fissures, that its familiarity would be much harder to seize hold of.  All the pieces would still be there, but scattered and rearranged into something different.  And that distortion is, one assumes, the point.  Beckett  takes a familiar thing that we might take for granted, and sets that familiar thing in an unfamiliar place, which then makes it possible to evaluate all of it in a whole new way.

The principle is easy enough to grasp.  Putting it into practice, though, well…..

As "Pozzo" in WAITING FOR GODOT (photo by Shawn May)

Pozzo, (being my current example), is presented in the text of GODOT with scant few details about his personal history or existence.  We first meet him at the “master” end of a long rope whose “servant” end is tied around Lucky’s neck.  Though Beckett provides great detail about the manner of their entrance - how they are tied, what they are wearing, what they are carrying - he provides no specifics about either man’s physical appearance, where they come from, or quite exactly where they are going.

Further, Pozzo then embarks upon a series of odd behaviors and assertions, which sometimes seem inspired by his exchanges with Didi and Gogo, and sometimes spool out almost randomly, in stream-of-consciousness-like fashion: His cruel treatment of Lucky, his claim that he owns the land Didi and Gogo are waiting upon, his inability to sit down without somehow being invited to do so by someone else, the fact that the objects in his pockets continue to disappear later in the scene, etc., etc., etc…

In short, Pozzo is not “normal”.  No matter how you choose to play it, he simply does odd things in odd ways, and I found it intimidating to consider how to make sense of it all; how to chart a set of choices for my performance.  Where exactly do you drop an anchor and pick a point to work outward from?

Frank X & Johnnie Hobbs Jr. in Quintessence Theatre Group's WAITING FOR GODOT

In the end, I made two decisions:
First, my job as the actor is to focus on the text I am given and to make as many decisions as possible based on the basic information contained therein.  I guess that seems a little obvious, but really, if the playwright is good, everything you really need should already be in the script.  I think that is very much the case with GODOT.

Second: Given the first supposition, I must then trust the director (in this case, Ken Marini) to make all of the larger thematic and aesthetic decisions for the production, including how exactly my character should fit into that.  I just don’t think it’s possible to see the whole effect of a Beckett play from within it.  I think that can only be done from the outside.  So that has to fall on the shoulders of a director, perhaps more so than with any other playwright I’ve worked on.

(Theatre is often described as an actor’s medium, meaning that the actors have a great deal of control over the audience’s experience with the storytelling every night.  It is the movies which are usually identified as the director’s medium where the director really has that control.  But I think that’s mostly true for plays that occur in a familiar setting, with conventional rules.  When it comes to absurdist play’s like Beckett’s – or even, say, a musical, when characters break out into song and dance – then a much larger responsibility for “world-building” and story-telling is returned to the director.)

So, I mined my text to establish certain touchstones to help me localize character choices for Pozzo. 
Standouts included:
1. “I say does that name mean nothing to you?”
2. “I am perhaps not particularly human, but who cares?”
3. “Is everybody ready?  Is everybody looking at me?”
4. “Forget all I said.  I don’t remember exactly what it was, but you may be sure there wasn’t a word of truth in it.”
5. “Bless you, gentlemen, bless you! I have such need of encouragement!”

Those little discoveries were then enhanced by several key observations and suggestions from our director, Ken:
1. Pozzo’s kinship in narcissism to certain modern-day political personalities.
2. The idea that Pozzo and Lucky, perhaps, used to be part of a big traveling circus, for which Pozzo was possibly the Master of Ceremonies/Owner.
3. And finally, (and maybe on something of a whim), Ken suggested that I try taking Pozzo’s semi-famous speech describing the end-of-day twilight and turning it into a song instead, which resulted in the vaudeville-ish, music-hall-style tune I offered during the show each night. 

The result was, I think, a unique and original Pozzo, yet one still very rooted in Beckett’s text.  I cannot and will not claim that I’ve got him “right”, or that we produced the correct result.  I must leave that to those who observed the show as a whole, being first our director, Ken, and then each night’s audience.  I can accept a full range of responses, both positive and negative, to my version of the character. Everyone will have their own sense of taste, and anyone is certainly allowed to disagree with mine (or Ken’s, depending on how you look at it).

I will only argue that we did not get it “wrong”, because for there to be a “wrong” way, there must also be a “right” way, and I think that for a play like GODOT, and a playwright like Beckett, who was notoriously reluctant to explain his characters or his plays any further than what he wrote in the texts themselves, then as long as you are honoring that text, then you are not doing it “wrong”.

Anyhow, as Higgins tells his mother at a key point in PYGMALION: There’s no sense bothering about that now, the thing is done!

A friend pointed out recently that it’s a rather unusual thing for an actor like myself, at a (yes, relatively) young age, to already have performed in two of Beckett’s plays.  It’s something I hadn’t considered, but he is probably right.  Maybe that means I’ll be a little further along towards grasping Beckett’s deeper designs when the next opportunity comes around, whenever that might be.  Maybe I’ll get to that spot where the light gleams for an instant before time really does stop, maybe not, but that’s just how it is on this Beckett of an earth.

Coming Up! - 'IPHIGENIA' and 'HOPE & GRAVITY'

My summer months have been anything but quiet, and my 2017-'18 season continues to get clearer and clearer as it quickly approaches.  

I'm already in the thick of rehearsals for Philadelphia Artists' Collective's fall production of IPHIGENIA AT AULIS, the 2,500 year old Greek tragedy by Euripides. Dan Hodge, one of P.A.C.'s founders, is directing.  I've admired his work in various capacities around the city since I got here, and I'm really happy to finally be spending some time in the same room with him on IPHIGENIA.

The show is being produced in conjunction with FringeArts as apart of the annual Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and will be performed on board the U.S.S. Olympia at the Independence Seaport Museum, underneath the Ben Franklin Bridge.  It's my first Greek play, and I'll be trying my hand (and left foot?) as "Achilles".

--> IPHIGENIA AT AULIS will run from September 7th - 22nd, 2017

ALSO:
I've been cast in 1812 Productions' spring staging of HOPE & GRAVITY, a comedy by Michael Hollinger about the curious ways that nine people's lives intersect when an elevator crashes in an urban high-rise.  Jennifer Childs will direct the five person ensemble, and the show will run at 1812's home, the historic Plays & Players Theatre in Center City.

--> HOPE & GRAVITY will run April 26th - May 20th, 2018

And, yes, I'm still on target to appear at Professor Higgins in Quintessence Theatre Group's holiday production of MY FAIR LADY.  That show will, I'm sure, be right on top of me before I know it.  I am still thrilled and appropriately daunted at the prospect.  I'll soon be growing very re-accustomed to Leigha Kato's very talented face, as she prepares what I'm sure will be a star turn as Eliza Doolittle.

--> MY FAIR LADY will run from November 15th - December 17th, 2017 at the Sedgwick Theater in the Mount Airy Neighborhood of northwest Philly.  

My "Fair" Holiday Plans...

Quintessence Theatre Group, the company I've come to think of as "home" here in Philadelphia, revealed their eighth season this past week.  It's a big, bold line-up of classics, new and old.  

It also includes one big "first" for the company. Quintessence will stage it's first full-fledged musical, and I will be playing a crucial part.  I am pleased to announce that I'm set to appear as Professor Higgins in MY FAIR LADY, directed by Alexander Burns, and running from November 15 - December 17th, 2017.

I think the show fits in very nicely with QTG's usual fare, as the book draws almost exclusively from George Bernard Shaw's PYGMALION, and features some of Lerner and Loewe's most memorable song writing.

In addition to an expanded Family Series, the Quintessence season also includes Eugene O'Neill's LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, Beckett's WAITING FOR GODOT, and a spring repertory of Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR and Henrik Ibsen's THE WILD DUCK.

More details about the coming season, including a spate of guest directors, casting and ticket sales, will soon be available on the company website.

In the meantime, I'm looking forward to stretching a few acting muscles I haven't tested in a few years.  And I'll have more to tell about where else you'll find me in the '17-'18 Philly theatre season very soon! 

LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST and THE BROKEN HEART - Reviews and Photos

We are entering the final week of the "Love and Longing Repertory" at Quintessence Theatre Group, a 17th century double bill, of Shakespeare's LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST and John Ford's THE BROKEN HEART, (both set to close this weekend on April 23rd).

Working in repertory can be a maddening challenge.  You spend weeks in rehearsals, but with two full productions to attend to, both time and focus is split, making the production process feel lean and rushed. This is only more true when working on what some refer to as "true" rep, when the full cast and crew are working on both shows.  Mentally exhausting at times, yes, but once the machine is up and running, and has momentum, it is one of the most satisfying experiences I've had as a performer.  This, now, is the third time I have been a part of the process at Quintessence, and the highs and lows are just as tangible as ever. 

I like to think that the true effect of repertory is best experienced by an audience who sees both shows - perhaps on the same day, if possible - but I'm pleased to say that both LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST and THE BROKEN HEART stand as artistic achievements each on their own merits.  There are only six performances remaining before we close (two of LLL, and four of TBH), and one chance left to see them both, back-to-back, tomorrow, Wednesday the 19th.

Here's is a sample of some reviews and photos to entice you...

"Quintessence artistic director, Alexander Burns, excelled with large-scale classical dram in his first six seasons, but LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST reveals a confident comedic approach exceeding his earlier efforts."
   -Mark Cofta for the Broad Street Review

"The words and wit of Shakespeare are wonderfully, ofttimes wickedly (in the best way) delivered by a superb acting ensemble... All of these warring courtiers of amour vivify the romantic comedy with superb pop and sizzle."
   -Lisa Panzer for DC Metro Theater Arts

"THE BROKEN HEART richly rewards attention paid to it. Quintessence actors skillfully meet the twin challenges of subtleties of dialogue and grotesqueries of action as the present John Ford's exquisite poetry, hot drama, and cold blood."
   -Kathryn Osenlund for phindie

"Best reader among the actors is Gregory Isaac as the insanely jealous Bassanes.  With his beautiful voice and mastery of the poetry, he creates a Bassanes reminiscent of Leontes of 'The Winter's Tale'."
   -John Timpane for the Philadelphia Inquirer

Mattie Hawkinson, Josh Carpenter, and Gregory Isaac in THE BROKEN HEART
Photo by Shawn May

Kristin Devine, Mattie Hawkinson, Dana Kreitz, and Aneesa Neibauer in LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST
Photo by Shawn May

John Williams, and Christopher Garofalo in LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST
Photo by Shawn May

Dana Kreitz, Aneesa Neibauer, and Mattie Hawkinson in THE BROKEN HEART
Photo by Shawn May

Gregory Isaac, Michael Gamache, Daniel Miller, Josh Carpenter, John Basiulis, and Josiah Jacoby in LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST   Photo by Shawn May