Crunch time. Sure we have a few weeks but we also know how a few weeks can go. I’m not too worried. This company is so strong on their own instincts. Trust will win the day.
I’ve been taken aside many times in rehearsal processes by insecure primadonnas. “We just haven’t been given direction” type stuff, usually from people who have but literally can’t cope unless they are told exactly what to do at every stage. One guy called an extra Saturday rehearsal in front of the director. Two others took me to lunch and tried to recruit me into a “we aren’t being told exactly what to do so I’m gonna tell is all what to do” type mafia.
It is mildly comforting to discover, sometimes decades later, that none of the people who have done that – (more than you would think) – have gone on to have robust careers. Why sew dissent? Trust the room. Trust the people. If there’s a chain of command, trust it. Why not?
Sure, art blends badly with obedience. But you have to be a team player in this game. If you make it negative because you haven’t been babysat then you won’t sustain a career, you can’t. Ultimately it has to be about the art in you and not you in the art.
Dammit I love the people I’m working with for that very reason. We are five massive geeks. All of us have learnt how our art works differently and we all respond to it through that personal prism. But… we are all totally focused on making the best show we can make. And as a result it is gonna be a really good shift at As You Like It.
It’s a play about plays. It’s an actor’s play. Every character is playing a part. The word “fool” is seeded throughout, along with the best explanation of satire and what it is for that Shakespeare ever wrote – I’ve quoted it before – The Fool’s Charter. Fool is 0 in the tarot. Fool is the wild card, the one outside the hierarchy, always safe always capable of changing things. There are more fools in this play than any other. Duke Senior, Touchstone, the dead deer, Celia, Jaques all have their motley way. Arguably others too. Shakespeare hammers the word throughout. He’s invested in this. Was it a changing time for his company? I’m not fully on the history of when Kemp gave way to Armin, but Touchstone is certainly Armin and I suspect it must be an early one as the writer is preoccupied with foolery. Suddenly it is a fool that has been a courtier.
I’m loving this. I’m knackered. I am not in an admirable fooling. God you good even.
AlBarclay 