As You Like It: What if Orlando Knew?

I've loved Rosalind since I first read her at fifteen. And yet the play, AS YOU LIKE IT, turned me off. The problem was with Orlando. I never as stupid or vapid as he had to be not to figure out this boy in the forest, Ganymede, was actually the girl he fell in love with at the court, Rosalind. Being in love with Rosalind as I was, how could I see myself in this dolt? I would have figured it out. Now, don't start flinging phrases like the "throes of love" or the "willful suspension of disbelief". If theater is to instruct me on how to live in my world (and how to pick up girls Like Rosalind), I needed a better example than Orlando.

I was stage managing WOMEN OF WILL, PART II, Tina Packer's exploration of the feminine in Shakespeare as represented by the female characters. These three lecture/performances gave Tina the opportunity to discuss some big ideas about Shakespeare and the chance to play all of the leading women in Shakespeare. [Before I say the next bit, I have to say that WOMEN OF WILL was/is brilliant. It has impacted everything I think about Shakespeare. I count myself lucky to have had some hand in the three parts.] In this production of Part Two, Tina and Johnny Lee Davenport played Rosalind and Orlando in a section of Act IV, Scene 1. They were well past being the age of young lovers. While age did not impact Tina's Juliet, Johnny and Tina's maturity deeply undermined the situation of Orlando believing that this Ganymede was not actually Rosalind. The longer this went on, the more ridiculous it became. It cast a foolish light on the whole scene. Finally I wondered: what if he knew?

What if Orlando knew that Ganymede was Rosalind upon their first meeting in the forest?

Part of the greatness of Shakespeare is that every line can hold many meanings. When you speak the text of lesser playwrights, there is usually only one or two ways to say it. Shakespeare can go lots of places. I started hearing Orlando's lines with the thought, he knows. It worked for every line. He can know it is Rosalind and choose to play along. This makes him smarter and not an idiot. He chooses to play her game. The flirtation and getting to know you aspects of the scenes become more heightened and sexy.

[You also avoid the awkward homoerotic foibles of Orlando falling for Ganymede who is a guy, though secretly played by a girl. He likes a girl, but now he is falling for this boy, does he like boys or is it because the boy is playing the girl he loves? It's a good story, but plays as a bit of red herring in any production that does not exclusively want to be about that.]

The question that follows is: If Orlando knows Ganymede is Rosalind, does Rosalind know that Orlando knows? Either right away or at some moment? And, if she knows he knows, does he know she knows he knows? And does she know that he knows she knows?

We tried this with a production of AS YOU LIKE IT I directed. It was the third main production of The Shakespeare Project of Frederick, Maryland, now called the Maryland Shakespeare Festival. We had great fun with this idea. It completely worked in the rehearsal room and added so much to the playing. Outside onstage in the big field I doubt many playgoers could figure out the convention, though it continued to inform the playing. I always wondered how it would play indoors in a more intimate space. We played that he knew Ganymede was Rosalind; she knew he knew; and he knew she knew, though we get it unclear if she knew he knew she knew. This added more fun.

What I liked best about the idea is that it made the play between Rosalind and Orlando smart. This increased the sense that Rosalind had some point in Orlando's lessons. He was learning how to love her rather than be in love with the idea of her. Thereby, it gained some relevance to the play. It seems if he can learn this lesson, he can forgive his brother when threatened by the lion. Also, Duke Frederick can meet the religious man and not attack Duke Senior and the people of the forest. The play can end in love, rather than bloodshed.

Company Town

Los Angeles is a company town. Where Washington, D.C. is all about politics; and New York City is mostly about finance; Los Angeles is about the Entertainment industry. Everyone is in the "industry" or connected to it in some way. The news is about entertainment. The talk is about entertainment. Everyone has some insight and inside information about what's going on.

However, there is one thing different from this company town and others. In other company towns all of the businesses, the government at all levels and the entire community support the work of the company. They all know that when the company thrives, everyone else thrives. There are loyal.

When I lived in Louisville, Kentucky the business of the town was tobacco, booze and horse racing. The drinking, smoking and gambling laws were the most liberal in the country. You don't want to bite the hand that feeds you. Even when the competitive business of health care began to rise in stature, they still took care of their core business. (I loved the irony in the juxtaposition of supporting cigarettes and booze along with supporting health care. Same Coin, two sides)

What surprises me in Los Angeles is that people seemingly hate the industry. Other businesses, the government and the citizenry are not supportive of the entertainment industry. It is visible in many places, but especially when it comes to location filming, film subsidies or building permits. NIMBYism ("Not in my backyard") rules in LA, particularly when it comes to filming and the mechanics of entertainment.

The towns with the highest percentage of people who work and make money in the industry (i.e., Malibu, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Santa Monica) have the most draconian rules against filming. In the past decade, a majority of location and studio filming has run away to other places where it is cheaper mostly due to the conditions being more favorable to filming. These states and communities have welcomed filming for the jobs and revenue that come with it. All the while, Los Angeles is running one of its main industries out of town. And everyone has felt the pain of its leaving.

This makes no sense to me.

I wonder what the causes are. I don't know but I suppose it might be:

• One argument is that those who work in the industry know what havoc filming causes. Since they know it, they don't want it to happen in their neighborhood.
  
• Another reason might be that the industry has done little to lobby for better treatment. In other cities, the steel, auto, tobacco, whatever industries put back in to the community in a large way and into the political campaigns. The entertainment industry does not do this. The industry most equipped to craft its image is a large failure at maintaining a positive and necessary image in this town.
  
• Perhaps, it is because the entertainment industry is not as monolithic. It is made up of many competing companies and parts.
  
• Or it might come down to envy. Everyone in this town is envious of others success.
  

Whatever the reason, one day Los Angeles might wake up and find it is no longer the entertainment leader of the world, but a bit player.

Which Comes First?

It is a chicken or the egg question: Does Technology change the way we see our world? Or, does the way we begin to see our world make way for the invention and adoption of technology?

The last century has seen some major changes in technology and thought. Which came first? or are the changes occurring on a parallel path?

One theory goes that the invention of the typewriter fueled the women's rights movement, helped them get the vote and created the independent working female. In 1910, 90% of typists were women. Typing created paying jobs for women outside of the home. An interesting offshoot of this theory is that women by using their two hands to type rather than one to write began to engage the two hemispheres of their brain. The increasing parity of the "feminine" right side of the brain with the "masculine" feminine side of the brain led to a demand in parity between women and men. [Leonard Shlain writes about this in his book The Alphabet versus the Goddess]

OR, is it because women already possessed a greater communication between the left and right hemispheres of their brain (Women have 10-33% more fibers in the front part of their corpus callosum, the part of the brain that links the two hemispheres.) making them natural early adopters of the two handed typewriter technology?

The invention of the photograph coincided with the advent of realism in visual art. Did seeing photographs help artist to see their landscapes more naturalistically? Or, did the ability to see the world more naturalistically, realistically help to create photographs that were naturalistic. Or, is what we call realism actually what things really look like or have we just trained our eyes to see the world that way when we might have just as likely trained our eyes to see the world like Monet or Van Gogh?

I love my DVR (Digital Video Recorder or TiVo-like device). With it I can watch the TV shows I want when I want. I can pause, rewind and fast-forward television programs. I am the master of time. And the DVR fully expresses my experience of how I think time works. The digital clock on my computer tells me it is 7:19. The hands of my analog clock with a face on it say it is about a quarter after 7. I keep thinking time is not as linear as we are told. The DVR is an expression of that for me. I know that I had this thought about time before I had my DVR. What came first: the experience of time that is non-linear or the technology that expresses it?

When I think of time, I remember that the clock is a modern invention. Time was different for the Medieval Man before the invention, accuracy and proliferation of the clock. [A good read on this is the book Longitude by Dava Sobel] The 20^th century shift from analog time to digital time was also dramatic. As time has become more linear and literal, it is also becoming less exact and more fluid. Quantum Physicists tell us time is circular or simultaneous. It is even perhaps relative on not only the planetary scale but on the human scale.

I was reading this great book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. I'll write about this book another time, but it included a reference to something I had heard before that I don't know what to do with:

The Olmec in Mesoamerica invented the wheel separate from the Sumerians in the Mesopotamia. Toys with wheels and axles have been discovered dating back to 1000 A.D. The circle or wheel was central to their religion and calendar. They used the wheel for other uses. However, they did not make carts or other wheeled objects for hauling. Why not? They made toys like carts. One reason is that they did not have beasts of burdens like oxen or horses to pull the carts. Perhaps it was because their country was wet and boggy so wheeled vehicles would not have been useful. And yet, they didn't even use the wheel to make ceramics or to grind corn. Mann writes: "The only thing more mysterious than failing to invent the wheel would be inventing the wheel and then failing to use it." (Mann, 1492, p.249)

What are our lacunae? (Lacunae, the plural of lacuna which is a gap or missing part, as in a manuscript, series, or logical argument. It's a great word. I had to look it up.) What are we missing? What obvious, in front of our face, thought, idea are we unable to see? What would happen if we discovered this gap? If we could fill this gap?

If we could see how different our world is . . .

If we could invent the technology that would help us to see our world as it really is . . .

Which will come first?

Art & Entertainment – The Macbeth Riots

In American culture, and possibly throughout the modern world, there is a split between art & entertainment. Art seems to be thought-provoking, stylish and of the higher mind. Entertainment is for amusement and escapism, lacking in thought, more low brow. This split is possibly the greatest hurdle to making great art/entertainment. It is at the heart of our challenge in making better entertainment.

I've wondered where this split originated. It is possible that it has always been around. However, when the first professional theatres were built in Elizabethan England, Shakespeare and his contemporaries understood the need to play to both the drunken apprentices standing in the yard along with the nobles sitting on padded chairs in the boxes behind the stage. Shakespeare wrote for the basest part of the human and our highest level of spirit. Good entertainment and high profits demanded it.

If I had to pick a moment when the rift occurred in America, I'd point to the Macbeth Riots of 1849. Whether it was a cause or a result, it is an interesting event.

When I lived in New York, down on 10^th Street between First & Second, I walked through Astor Place every day on the way to the subway. There was a triangular building on the west side of the square with a Starbucks on the first floor. Each day as I walked back and forth to the subway, I mused how it was the perfect place and building for a theatre. For some reason I had a deep connection to that place.

By 1848, the American actor, Edwin Forrest, had risen to be the continent's first acting superstar. He had had success playing across the States and in Europe. Depending on who you asked, he was good or better than the leading English actor of the day Charles Macready. Forrest was known for physical and declamatory style playing the Indian Metamora, the Gladiator Spartacus and Shakespeare's greatest tragic characters. Macready was known for his refined, well spoken, naturalistic performances of the classics. For a time Forrest and Macready were friends until a hiss came from the box Forrest was in during a performance of Hamlet by Macready. After many letters to the newspapers, Forrest finally admitted to the hiss. He wrote that he was enjoying Macready's performance of Hamlet until Macready added a "fancy dance" to the action for which Forrest felt compelled to hiss.

The great feud grew between these actors. It played out in the papers, on the streets, in the playhouses. The feud struck a chord in the fledgling country still straining from its forebear.

In May of 1849, Macready was announced to be playing Macbeth at the Astor Place Opera House in the same week Forrest was to play the role at the Bowery Theatre. The Astor Place Opera House was the venue for the elite and well off of the city. People arrived by carriage with footmen and came dressed in tails and fine gowns. The Bowery Theater was the people theatre. It was a rowdy playhouse filled with the workers in this growing city.

On May 9^th, Macready was shouted from the stage at the Astor Opera House. There was an increased threat of violence if he continued his run. Forrest capitulated and changed his bill for the night of May 10^th to Spartacus. The owners of the Astor Place Opera House and other men of note in the city met with the Mayor and Police Chief demanding that Macready be allowed to play. For what is freedom if a man cannot speak Shakespeare without being hooted from the stage.

On the night of May 10^th police surrounded the Opera House. The crowd formed to see what would happen. As Macready began to perform the crowd inside and outside the theater grew out of control, the militia was called. Shots were fired. By the end of the night at least 25 people lay dead with over 100 wounded. New York City was under martial law, something that would not occur again until Sept. 11, 2001.

While many other factors inflamed the riot, the central cause was how to play Shakespeare. The battle between Art and Entertainment.

Years after I left New York, I learned that the triangular building on the west side of the square with the Starbucks on the first floor sat on the site of the Astor Place Opera House. I've always wondered if it was why I felt so attracted to the place.

 

You can find the full account of the Shakespeare Riot in: The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century America by Nigel Cliff.

An Approach

 

Well, I have a few things I'd like to discuss.

I want the entertainment I experience and create to be better. A simple statement. A complex desire. I've been thinking about it for a long while. Not that I have all or any of the answers, I am interested in hearing what others have to say.

Before I begin exploring what would be better entertainment, let's look at what it means to entertain. According to Webster's, there are two primary definitions that are to amuse and to consider. To amuse is "to occupy in an agreeable or pleasing way" or "to cause to laugh or smile by giving pleasure." To consider is "to think about seriously, to take into account, to regard highly, or to look at thoughtfully, to reflect."

To truly entertain we need to do both. Simultaneously. I love that to amuse includes the idea of diversion. Diverting us from our normal day, taking us out of our lane lines. To amuse also includes laughter and pleasure. Giving consideration allows us to think and reflect. To combine amusement with consideration is to create a combined mental, physical and visceral experience. It is a whole body experience.

When was the last time you had a full body experience of amusement and consideration at an entertainment?

How can we create entertainment experiences that encompass both aspects?

Would this make our entertainment better?