aud
Member
Sorry guys, had an English assessment and didn't have time to post notes, so here they are as requested:
From the stuff CUT gave us, some people prob. have already
Why a Feminist Lear?
CUT has produced a feminist version of Shakespeare's Lear for a variety of reasons. As a young female director I am very interested in seeing more females on stage, and as a female director who has worked on a lot of Shakespeare, I am fascinated to discover how much my hearing of Shakespeare's text changes when it is played by performers of the opposite gender. I felt that experiencing how much audience's and my own response differed watching a character of a different gender go on the same journey would be a very strong way to examine sexism.
Throughout the process I have been amazed by how differently I have reacted to the play, and this has raised questions in my mind about how not only society but also I perceive women. As well as questions about the sorts of stories that I have been conditioned to find interesting, and indeed the ways that I have been conditioned to interpret a story.
CUT has been producing Shakespeare productions of texts on the HSC syllabus for seven years. For the last three years we had been performing a version of Lear that we called the 'white' version because it was very stylised and stripped back with a white set and white costumes. In question and answer sessions for our previous production of Lear I had begun to feel that due to the way the text is being studied, students and their teachers would appreciate a quite radical production. So when I decided for artistic reasons that I wanted to create a new version instead of remounting the white version, I also decided to embrace the challenge of aiming to create a very radical version, and a feminist version was what I was [sic] the most interested in working on.
Gender swapping a character is also one of the fastest ways to create a new version of that character, and I believe a great way to blow off the cobwebs that have grown quite thickly over most of Shakespeare's works. Also having worked for a number of years on another production of Lear I have personally found it much easier to approach the play with new eyes with out cross cast version.
The Text of Queen Lere
The text of Shakespeare's King Lear has been altered in a number of ways to create our production. All of the characters have been re-named (a list of the new names is overleaf).
The names have all been taken from lesser known Shakespeare plays and have the same number of syllables as the original names, in order to preserve the rhythm of the lines.
The characters have been re-named because we are aiming to create a new version of the play. I didn't want a different sex version of the same characters, rather I wanted new characters who experience the same events. From an English point of view this probably sounds like splitting hairs, but creating a production of the play is different from studying the script.
In the rehearsal room, when the company and I are working on a production, part of our job is to make the characters real. A common question for performers to ask themselves is 'If I was in this characters position, what would I do?' As the director I believed that the performers needed to forget as soon as possible the fact that their characters were originally of the opposite sex, and I believed that constantly hearing them referred to by their original names would make it harder for the performers to create new characters. The actors need to establish a connection with their character that allows them to enact their characters experience in a way that is emotionall connected and I believe that the new names have made it easier for the actors to imagine themselves in the characters position.
The New Names
King Lear - Queen Lere
Earl of Gloucester - Lady Langley
Edmond - Thaisa
Edgar - Phoebe
Gonerill - Eglamour
Regan - Gower
Cordelia - Lucention
Earl of Kent - Earl of Ross
Duke of Albany - Duchess of Salsbury
Duke of Cornwall - Duchess of Pembroke
Oswald - Bagot
Two of the characters have stayed the same sex as Shakespeare's original, the Earl of Kent, and Gonerill's servant Oswald. Oswald has been re-named Bagot and is still a male because we are aiming to create a world where females traditionally have positions of power and as a servant I felt that Oswald should remain a man.
Kent has been re-named Ross and is still a man for rather more complication reasons. Firstly the world we aim to create in Queen Lere is not supposed to be a futuristic feminist utopia. Rather we wanted to create a world that is as complex and has as many shades of grey as our real world, so I felt that it would be better to have some males in positions of power. Shakespeare's original has many shades of grey as far as power goes with the sisters having more power than the majority of Shakespeare's female characters. So, I felt that having a male Ross would be a good idea and make the world of our play more textured.
Both Phoebe (Edgar) and Ross (Kent) disguise themselves in the play in order to save their own lives and still stay near to their loved ones. In our version when Phoebe is disguised as poor Tom she dresses as a man, and I felt that an entertaining stage choice and an interesting parallel to this would be for Ross to be a male who as his disguise dresses as a woman.
I am also interested in a relationship between Queen Lere and Ross that is between a woman and a man. In our production the character of the fool has been ute, so Ross becomes Queen Lere's companion in a way that the character doesn't in productions where the Fool remains.
We cut the fool from our production because I feel that the fool's lines have dates more than other elements of the script. I can analyse them to be comical but I don't think that when spoken on stage in our modern times they are funny. Nor do I think them wise when spoken on stage now. I believe that the concept of a true speaking clown is one that still exists in modern times, but that so many years after their creation the fool's lines come across as obscure and dull. Of course anything can be made funny by throwing in some lewd gestures but I felt this would be out of place in CUT's production.
The text has also been edited in order to make the story as cleare as possible and to make the play move a bit faster. Quite a bit has been edited from the storm scenes and Lere's madness scenes, as well as from the final scene. This kind of editing is a bit of a CUT trademark and is born of the fact the [sic] I get bored fairly quickly if a scene lacks forward momentum and so edit the scripts we work on to make them flow a bit faster.
Mixed Media
CUT's prouction is mixed media, with video images, sound and lighting. 'Queen Lere' has video images because as a company we are interested in mixing technical elements with live performance. I think there is room in Shakespeare's King Lear for video images because the plot is so vast and non-naturalistic. We often use the video images to help tell the story or to create an emotional atmosphere. The video is usually accompanied by sound and together these two elements are a very powerful way to create a mood on stage.
The play has modern music in it because it is not set in any particular time, rather in a pretend time period, so I felt that I could draw from a variety of sources for music. When deciding on music I seek any piece (modern or older) that seem to convey the mood of a scene or evoke a suitable response to the scene from the audience. The music is also used to sustain or build emotion between scenes, and give the audience the impression that the play is moving quickly forwards.
The production has a strong emphasis on physical performance as well as vocal. The cast are a very physically able group, and work closely with CUT's fight director Lawrence Carmichael. Note: He also played Eglamour/Gonerill All of the females in the production will be armed with heavy rapiers and a lot of rehearsal time is put into fights and moments of violence to ensure they are both safe and dramatic. Physicality and placement in space is a very powerful tool in conveying a reading of Shakspeare's text to an audience. The way in which characters interect physically can give the audience a very clear and valuable picture of relationships within the play.
From class
1. In what ways was the performance 'feminist'?
- Women placed in roles of political power and dominance - men deliberately kept subservient even to the point of Oswald - the only servant of substance staying male
- Sympathy for Queen Lere stems from her role as a mother
- Kent has to dress up as a woman to gain a voice
- The costuming of the women - red and black - skirts turned out to reveal more red in times of 'power' - military clothing worn in contrast to the degraded formal attire of the men
2. In what ways was it not a feminist production?
- Women weren't elevated to a 'likeable' status - they seemed simply to be female equivalents of the original characters - so in this sense, the world of QL did not represent any sort of feminist ideal in either character or social organisation
- Kent remained a male, and still had some real strength - particularly at the end
- Use of swords, boots and traditionally male army wear to indicate power - a curious juxtaposition of male and female
3. Why was Cordelia trivialised?
- To take sympathy away from men
- The asides were removed and Cordelia becomes greatly subordinate to Lere in the tragedy
- Since the play had become more about the power relationships between the genders, Cordelia becomes redundant
- Edmond is a more powerful figure
- Queen Lere is a stronger figure and less sympathetic
4. Techniques of interest and the minimalistic set
- Costumes - colours of red for passion and power, white singlet for Cordelia/Lucention, Edmond/Thaisa in black leather
- Mulitmedia featured buildings showing increasing decay, storm scene, letter projected onto rear screen
- Curtain isolates Lere in her madness - also hems her in
- Bare stage allows scope for the audiences interpretation
- Umbrella - symbol of Gloucester/Langley's loyalty - becomes the tool for his/her torment
- Absence of the Fool as he was seen to have no modern equivalent
5. What is really behind the gender swap?
- Ultimately we are left wondering if there is any different - in an age when equality is often associated with sameness
- Demonstrating the possibilites for women
- Draws attention to the male/female power balance
Wow... fingers have never had to work so hard before
From the stuff CUT gave us, some people prob. have already
Why a Feminist Lear?
CUT has produced a feminist version of Shakespeare's Lear for a variety of reasons. As a young female director I am very interested in seeing more females on stage, and as a female director who has worked on a lot of Shakespeare, I am fascinated to discover how much my hearing of Shakespeare's text changes when it is played by performers of the opposite gender. I felt that experiencing how much audience's and my own response differed watching a character of a different gender go on the same journey would be a very strong way to examine sexism.
Throughout the process I have been amazed by how differently I have reacted to the play, and this has raised questions in my mind about how not only society but also I perceive women. As well as questions about the sorts of stories that I have been conditioned to find interesting, and indeed the ways that I have been conditioned to interpret a story.
CUT has been producing Shakespeare productions of texts on the HSC syllabus for seven years. For the last three years we had been performing a version of Lear that we called the 'white' version because it was very stylised and stripped back with a white set and white costumes. In question and answer sessions for our previous production of Lear I had begun to feel that due to the way the text is being studied, students and their teachers would appreciate a quite radical production. So when I decided for artistic reasons that I wanted to create a new version instead of remounting the white version, I also decided to embrace the challenge of aiming to create a very radical version, and a feminist version was what I was [sic] the most interested in working on.
Gender swapping a character is also one of the fastest ways to create a new version of that character, and I believe a great way to blow off the cobwebs that have grown quite thickly over most of Shakespeare's works. Also having worked for a number of years on another production of Lear I have personally found it much easier to approach the play with new eyes with out cross cast version.
The Text of Queen Lere
The text of Shakespeare's King Lear has been altered in a number of ways to create our production. All of the characters have been re-named (a list of the new names is overleaf).
The names have all been taken from lesser known Shakespeare plays and have the same number of syllables as the original names, in order to preserve the rhythm of the lines.
The characters have been re-named because we are aiming to create a new version of the play. I didn't want a different sex version of the same characters, rather I wanted new characters who experience the same events. From an English point of view this probably sounds like splitting hairs, but creating a production of the play is different from studying the script.
In the rehearsal room, when the company and I are working on a production, part of our job is to make the characters real. A common question for performers to ask themselves is 'If I was in this characters position, what would I do?' As the director I believed that the performers needed to forget as soon as possible the fact that their characters were originally of the opposite sex, and I believed that constantly hearing them referred to by their original names would make it harder for the performers to create new characters. The actors need to establish a connection with their character that allows them to enact their characters experience in a way that is emotionall connected and I believe that the new names have made it easier for the actors to imagine themselves in the characters position.
The New Names
King Lear - Queen Lere
Earl of Gloucester - Lady Langley
Edmond - Thaisa
Edgar - Phoebe
Gonerill - Eglamour
Regan - Gower
Cordelia - Lucention
Earl of Kent - Earl of Ross
Duke of Albany - Duchess of Salsbury
Duke of Cornwall - Duchess of Pembroke
Oswald - Bagot
Two of the characters have stayed the same sex as Shakespeare's original, the Earl of Kent, and Gonerill's servant Oswald. Oswald has been re-named Bagot and is still a male because we are aiming to create a world where females traditionally have positions of power and as a servant I felt that Oswald should remain a man.
Kent has been re-named Ross and is still a man for rather more complication reasons. Firstly the world we aim to create in Queen Lere is not supposed to be a futuristic feminist utopia. Rather we wanted to create a world that is as complex and has as many shades of grey as our real world, so I felt that it would be better to have some males in positions of power. Shakespeare's original has many shades of grey as far as power goes with the sisters having more power than the majority of Shakespeare's female characters. So, I felt that having a male Ross would be a good idea and make the world of our play more textured.
Both Phoebe (Edgar) and Ross (Kent) disguise themselves in the play in order to save their own lives and still stay near to their loved ones. In our version when Phoebe is disguised as poor Tom she dresses as a man, and I felt that an entertaining stage choice and an interesting parallel to this would be for Ross to be a male who as his disguise dresses as a woman.
I am also interested in a relationship between Queen Lere and Ross that is between a woman and a man. In our production the character of the fool has been ute, so Ross becomes Queen Lere's companion in a way that the character doesn't in productions where the Fool remains.
We cut the fool from our production because I feel that the fool's lines have dates more than other elements of the script. I can analyse them to be comical but I don't think that when spoken on stage in our modern times they are funny. Nor do I think them wise when spoken on stage now. I believe that the concept of a true speaking clown is one that still exists in modern times, but that so many years after their creation the fool's lines come across as obscure and dull. Of course anything can be made funny by throwing in some lewd gestures but I felt this would be out of place in CUT's production.
The text has also been edited in order to make the story as cleare as possible and to make the play move a bit faster. Quite a bit has been edited from the storm scenes and Lere's madness scenes, as well as from the final scene. This kind of editing is a bit of a CUT trademark and is born of the fact the [sic] I get bored fairly quickly if a scene lacks forward momentum and so edit the scripts we work on to make them flow a bit faster.
Mixed Media
CUT's prouction is mixed media, with video images, sound and lighting. 'Queen Lere' has video images because as a company we are interested in mixing technical elements with live performance. I think there is room in Shakespeare's King Lear for video images because the plot is so vast and non-naturalistic. We often use the video images to help tell the story or to create an emotional atmosphere. The video is usually accompanied by sound and together these two elements are a very powerful way to create a mood on stage.
The play has modern music in it because it is not set in any particular time, rather in a pretend time period, so I felt that I could draw from a variety of sources for music. When deciding on music I seek any piece (modern or older) that seem to convey the mood of a scene or evoke a suitable response to the scene from the audience. The music is also used to sustain or build emotion between scenes, and give the audience the impression that the play is moving quickly forwards.
The production has a strong emphasis on physical performance as well as vocal. The cast are a very physically able group, and work closely with CUT's fight director Lawrence Carmichael. Note: He also played Eglamour/Gonerill All of the females in the production will be armed with heavy rapiers and a lot of rehearsal time is put into fights and moments of violence to ensure they are both safe and dramatic. Physicality and placement in space is a very powerful tool in conveying a reading of Shakspeare's text to an audience. The way in which characters interect physically can give the audience a very clear and valuable picture of relationships within the play.
From class
1. In what ways was the performance 'feminist'?
- Women placed in roles of political power and dominance - men deliberately kept subservient even to the point of Oswald - the only servant of substance staying male
- Sympathy for Queen Lere stems from her role as a mother
- Kent has to dress up as a woman to gain a voice
- The costuming of the women - red and black - skirts turned out to reveal more red in times of 'power' - military clothing worn in contrast to the degraded formal attire of the men
2. In what ways was it not a feminist production?
- Women weren't elevated to a 'likeable' status - they seemed simply to be female equivalents of the original characters - so in this sense, the world of QL did not represent any sort of feminist ideal in either character or social organisation
- Kent remained a male, and still had some real strength - particularly at the end
- Use of swords, boots and traditionally male army wear to indicate power - a curious juxtaposition of male and female
3. Why was Cordelia trivialised?
- To take sympathy away from men
- The asides were removed and Cordelia becomes greatly subordinate to Lere in the tragedy
- Since the play had become more about the power relationships between the genders, Cordelia becomes redundant
- Edmond is a more powerful figure
- Queen Lere is a stronger figure and less sympathetic
4. Techniques of interest and the minimalistic set
- Costumes - colours of red for passion and power, white singlet for Cordelia/Lucention, Edmond/Thaisa in black leather
- Mulitmedia featured buildings showing increasing decay, storm scene, letter projected onto rear screen
- Curtain isolates Lere in her madness - also hems her in
- Bare stage allows scope for the audiences interpretation
- Umbrella - symbol of Gloucester/Langley's loyalty - becomes the tool for his/her torment
- Absence of the Fool as he was seen to have no modern equivalent
5. What is really behind the gender swap?
- Ultimately we are left wondering if there is any different - in an age when equality is often associated with sameness
- Demonstrating the possibilites for women
- Draws attention to the male/female power balance
Wow... fingers have never had to work so hard before
