What I wrote on the way home.
May. 8th, 2006 05:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelleSomewhere at 38,000 feet, 437 mph (the little screen in the seat in front of me tells me) over Nova Scotia.
I just watched the DVD I bought of a day at The Globe, and I’m so sorry I missed the tour inside the theatre itself. I don’t know if it’s solely the building itself, but I get the impression that everyone involved with the theatre speaks of it with love, and with passion. I’m sorry I missed that. And maybe it’s the herd part of my brain that longs to belong somewhere, and specifically somewhere like that.
I’d love at some point to try acting again. I studied briefly in college—like, for a semester—and was even on stage in a Hungarian (or was it Czech?) festival in Sarasota, doing a play whose name I’ve forgotten, and about which I didn’t tell my friends until the day of. I still don’t know where the wild cheering came from when I took my curtain call. I had fun with the theatre games, and with the pretending. But I despise the auditioning, and the stage fright makes me stupid inside. Oh…I was The Maid in “The Bald Soprano,” and I wore a tiny skirt, a black bustier, and an oxford button-down unbuttoned down. There was far less of me, then, and I was adorable, dammit. And most impressively, I remembered my whole soliloquy every night. And I got to sit on The Fireman’s knee and flirt outrageously. Sigh. Maybe some day.
But The Globe.
No, wait.
Maybe that’s the point. We don’t go to The Globe to be talked at. Any traditional theatre with a proscenium and dark stalls can give us that: the watching the light from the safety of the shadow, intellectually involved, but remote. The Globe is something else. It’s light, everywhere. There is no shadow. With “Coriolanus” last night, there were even ramps out into the audience, and the actors ran up and down, sometimes even jumping into the crowd and making it the plebians of Rome. There was no separation, and from where I was sitting, the audience was every bit as much part of the play as anything on stage. I’m left not so much thinking about what they, the actors, did, as what we all did together.
That’s the point, of course. I mean, yes, Sam Wanamaker’s aim was to bring back Shakespeare’s Globe, but more importantly, it was to bring it back to the people, to educate and engage. It’s not just bringing back the building, it’s bringing back the art, the experience. The communal storytelling that doesn’t just tell you a story, it makes you part of the story. We’re all out in the light, in the action, together. And it’s a live, breathing, up-to-the-minute, cutting-edge kind of theatre, no matter what the language sounds like, because it’s always changing. Everyone involved now is learning as they go, and the give and take between each show and each new audience is going to be different.
It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and there’s nothing wrong with proscenium stages, but I think everyone who loves theatre should experience something like this at least once. Obviously, and despite my somewhat unique Ren experiences before last night, I don’t know that I’m really going to look at Shakespeare the same way again.
I’ll go back next year. And I will absolutely rent a cushion. The seats are very narrow, hard wooden benches, and there’s very little space for your feet or your bag or your umbrella. You’re right up there next to everyone else, though I’d imagine we all smell far better these days. Rude people are, of course, timeless: there was a couple in front of me that talked incessantly until a woman behind me snapped “Shh!” at them furiously. Even then, not long after, I had to tap the girl on the shoulder with my program to get her to shut up. And incredibly, she had a copy of the book on her lap, and didn’t raise her eyes to the stage more than three or four times the entire performance. I’ll be charitable and say, perhaps, she wasn’t a native English speaker, and was there to hear the play aloud, but still. Why would you spend £26 to sit in the gallery and read a book?
I snapped some photos as I was leaving and during the interval, but honestly, photos can’t capture the feel of the place. Thankfully, though, I don’t need a camera for that.
I just watched the DVD I bought of a day at The Globe, and I’m so sorry I missed the tour inside the theatre itself. I don’t know if it’s solely the building itself, but I get the impression that everyone involved with the theatre speaks of it with love, and with passion. I’m sorry I missed that. And maybe it’s the herd part of my brain that longs to belong somewhere, and specifically somewhere like that.
I’d love at some point to try acting again. I studied briefly in college—like, for a semester—and was even on stage in a Hungarian (or was it Czech?) festival in Sarasota, doing a play whose name I’ve forgotten, and about which I didn’t tell my friends until the day of. I still don’t know where the wild cheering came from when I took my curtain call. I had fun with the theatre games, and with the pretending. But I despise the auditioning, and the stage fright makes me stupid inside. Oh…I was The Maid in “The Bald Soprano,” and I wore a tiny skirt, a black bustier, and an oxford button-down unbuttoned down. There was far less of me, then, and I was adorable, dammit. And most impressively, I remembered my whole soliloquy every night. And I got to sit on The Fireman’s knee and flirt outrageously. Sigh. Maybe some day.
But The Globe.
No, wait.
Maybe that’s the point. We don’t go to The Globe to be talked at. Any traditional theatre with a proscenium and dark stalls can give us that: the watching the light from the safety of the shadow, intellectually involved, but remote. The Globe is something else. It’s light, everywhere. There is no shadow. With “Coriolanus” last night, there were even ramps out into the audience, and the actors ran up and down, sometimes even jumping into the crowd and making it the plebians of Rome. There was no separation, and from where I was sitting, the audience was every bit as much part of the play as anything on stage. I’m left not so much thinking about what they, the actors, did, as what we all did together.
That’s the point, of course. I mean, yes, Sam Wanamaker’s aim was to bring back Shakespeare’s Globe, but more importantly, it was to bring it back to the people, to educate and engage. It’s not just bringing back the building, it’s bringing back the art, the experience. The communal storytelling that doesn’t just tell you a story, it makes you part of the story. We’re all out in the light, in the action, together. And it’s a live, breathing, up-to-the-minute, cutting-edge kind of theatre, no matter what the language sounds like, because it’s always changing. Everyone involved now is learning as they go, and the give and take between each show and each new audience is going to be different.
It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and there’s nothing wrong with proscenium stages, but I think everyone who loves theatre should experience something like this at least once. Obviously, and despite my somewhat unique Ren experiences before last night, I don’t know that I’m really going to look at Shakespeare the same way again.
I’ll go back next year. And I will absolutely rent a cushion. The seats are very narrow, hard wooden benches, and there’s very little space for your feet or your bag or your umbrella. You’re right up there next to everyone else, though I’d imagine we all smell far better these days. Rude people are, of course, timeless: there was a couple in front of me that talked incessantly until a woman behind me snapped “Shh!” at them furiously. Even then, not long after, I had to tap the girl on the shoulder with my program to get her to shut up. And incredibly, she had a copy of the book on her lap, and didn’t raise her eyes to the stage more than three or four times the entire performance. I’ll be charitable and say, perhaps, she wasn’t a native English speaker, and was there to hear the play aloud, but still. Why would you spend £26 to sit in the gallery and read a book?
I snapped some photos as I was leaving and during the interval, but honestly, photos can’t capture the feel of the place. Thankfully, though, I don’t need a camera for that.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-08 07:03 am (UTC)Also glad to have you home, safe and sound, Cat Herder!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 03:13 pm (UTC)I'm organising the same trip for next year. You interested? Family-friendly!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-09 10:07 pm (UTC)