MUCH ADO BLOG: In Performance

Dennis Spielman of Uncovering Oklahoma interviews director, Tyler Woods on Much Ado About Nothing for Reduxion Theatre Company

How do you describe Much Ado About Nothing to those unfamiliar with the story?

It is a love story with two story lines: one is of young love, folly and redemption; the other is a comedy of two stubborn people brought together, despite themselves, to discover the wonder of love. Throw in some clowns and some great music and you’ve got a terrific Shakespearean comedy!

Why 1964 Sicily and how was the script updated for that time period?

In Shakespeare’s script, this story is set in Messina (a seaport in Sicily), just after a war. We have set it in the early 1960s, to reflect a similar climate – historically, the time just after mafia wars that affected the area. This made sense to us, because Shakespeare wrote of a fictional conflict that split families, similar to these historic conflicts in the mid-century. As for the language, we NEVER change or update Shakespeare’s language. We are Shakespeare purists. We may envision his stories in different time periods, or, on occasion, different places, but we never make changes to the text. And aside from the odd pronoun (“she” for “he” in some cases), we NEVER change a letter. This is very important to us. The text is our main inspiration. It is our starting place. We take this principle a step further in this production, by performing the script uncut. It is very rare to see the full text of Much Ado About Nothing in performance, as many directors cut it down for time. However, we felt it was important to bring the whole script to the stage. Specifically, we perform Shakespeare’s Quarto version of the script, as edited by Arden. Scholars and Shakespeare nerds will tell you there are some slight differences from the Folio version of the script, which is more typically performed.

Why should one see it?

Reduxion performs vibrant, fast-paced, yet accessible classical theatre. People often assume that we update the language, because we pride ourselves on clarity in storytelling. We don’t, of course, but we DO appreciate the compliment. We believe seeing a show should be enjoyable and thought-provoking. Audiences from this show are raving! This show, in particular, is full of fun, dance, bright costumes, lots of music and colorful characters. Parents are bringing their children, who are learning that Shakespeare is not boring, dreary and ancient, but energetic, fun and exciting!

What was the most challenging aspect you had in the production?

We have only 9 performers in this play. There are lots of characters, so almost all actors play multiple roles. We do this quite often at Reduxion, but the quick changes in this show are particularly challenging. To emphasize the truth of the time period, costume designer, Lloyd Cracknell, provided very beautiful, very detailed costume stories for each character. Some actors have to exit as one character and enter as another. With these costumes, that is no easy trick. The cast also plays a lot of live music throughout the show. They are challenged to not only conquer their demanding roles, but to also provide the music for the show, as well.

Talk about the gender-bending the actors do for the show.

Shakespeare LOVED gender-bending and so do we. One actress in the show plays a young woman, an old man, and an evil villain. One actor plays one plotting villain and one lovely lady. In Shakespeare’s day, all of these roles would be played by men, but he experimented a lot within the format. Inspired by this, we also experiment with cross-gender casting, using actors who love challenges and embrace the fun of this convention. Audience response has been through the roof.

How did you grow as a director while working on this show?

I learned how to be inventive with transitions, experiment further with the incorporation of live music to evoke both the time period and story, I went further than ever before in breaking the fourth wall and audience interaction; and with the cast, I innovated the use of the same space for several different locales and times of day; all of this without traditional set changes or stage lighting. We are very lo-tech, because Shakespeare was. We instead, learned to use props and decor to evoke our locales – we represent an outdoor picnic, an orchard in the morning, a bedroom, an evening party, a wedding, a bathroom and several more all without wheeling on big set pieces or changes in lighting.

What advice would you share to other directors looking to put on Much Ado?

I would tell them to stay true to the language. Don’t make changes based on what you think an audience will understand. If your actors know what they are saying, so will the audience. What scenes do the actors enjoy? I hope all of them. I think they love the party scene and many of the musical moments in the show.

Any other comments?

Much Ado About Nothing plays through Feb 25th. Check Reduxiontheatre.com for details and to order tickets. Don’t wait until the last minute, seating is limited!

ACTOR BLOG: Emotional Fire

Here we go again…

It’s election time and as a young man, I was adamant about my political beliefs; I was young, I was right, and I could tell you why. I wanted a Gore-Lieberman tattoo across my entire chest, and the only person who could convince me not to was my girlfriend, or rather, I was convinced by what she swore to withhold. (Don’t worry, we henna’d one on instead…) Today, while I still have interests in the political world, I can openly listen to someone about the candidate they hope to vote for without becoming enraged or without belittling their choice. I am reminded of William Blake’s Songs of Experience, we all grow older and leave behind that emotional ‘fire.’ Much Ado About Nothing let’s us visit that fire again. And here I am. Back at Reduxion. Trying to make sense of all these words.

Another adventure into the dreaded words of the high school English Literature class, and what is it I have learned? I think the greatest thing is the humanity of the characters in these stories; that the reason the stories have spoken and will continue to speak to us for centuries is the ease with which we recognize our own selves in these stories. On our first day of tablework for Much Ado, we discovered how similar we are to our characters–whether by clowning around in locker-room fashion, or by empathizing with a spurned lover. Falling in love so completely that you cannot wait a week to be married, and being so betrayed by your own daughter that, for a brief moment, death seems to be the only cure for your pain. Heightened emotions, to be sure, but parts of yourself that you have repressed or even forgotten.

But it’s fun to remember the days when you HAD to be convinced NOT to get a Gore-Lieberman tattoo. It’s fun to remember the first heated kisses of the person you longed for. It’s refreshing to know that other people have had days as bleak as those you have had, and therein lies the fun in doing, and–with any luck–watching this show. Underneath the frightening and scary words is a layer of elegant and witty wordplay. And under THAT layer, is humanity. The layer of humanity that is equal for noble or serf, for royalty or commoner or slave. Then, under that layer, there’s dirty jokes.

Jeffrey Burleson, Actor

Much Ado About Nothing

reduxiontheatre.com

MUCH ADO BLOG: Valentine’s Date Night

REDUXION REDEFINES VALENTINE’S DATE NIGHT: Theatre Groups Offers Fun, Unique Night Life Experience in Oklahoma City

Reduxion Theatre Company's cast of Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare 2012

OKLAHOMA CITY (January 17, 2012) – This February, new energy is brought to the classic Valentine’s Date-Night by Oklahoma City’s fastest growing Theatre Company: Reduxion Theatre (RTC).

RTC received much attention and positive reviews in 2011 with the opening of their intimate new venue, The Broadway Theater in OKC. Critically acclaimed productions of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet and the American classic Hair, the American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, drew more than 2,000 fans to RTC at 1613 North Broadway Avenue near Automobile Alley and downtown.

“We love romantic stories and audiences love seeing them,” said Tyler Woods, RTC Artistic Director and Much Ado About Nothing director. “We push boundaries and challenge people on an emotional level, and we hope to make a name for ourselves as producers of plays that people enjoy sharing with a loved one.”

This season, RTC gets back to its roots by revisiting some of their first productions as a company. RTC continues their successful, “Original Sins” season with the romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, which was the first show independently produced by Artistic Director, Tyler Woods, in 2000. Woods directs this hilarious, touching and fast-paced romance with the same love and care he gave the first time around, on the show that started it all!

“Although we are considered a young company, this journey has taken many years,” said Woods. “From that first independent production in 2000, to this season, our fourth residential season in Oklahoma City, and the second year in our own performance venue – we must honor our growth and the support of the Oklahoma City community in fostering our development for over a decade.”

RTC welcomes patrons to another decade of growth this year. Each RTC opening night is celebrated with a unique after-party, gaining popularity as a distinctive Oklahoma City social event. The opening night of Much Ado About Nothing, Feb. 9th, will be immediately followed by a Sicilian-style gala, featuring food, drink and fun for attendees for no extra charge. Food is sponsored by Café Nova.

A romantic “Couple’s Package” is offered on the Friday and Saturday performances, February 10th and 11th, before Valentine’s Day, and includes preshow champagne and couple’s cupcakes at intermission. “We want to offer couples a fun and romantic alternative or addition to their Valentine’s plans on this romantic weekend,” said Managing Director, Erin Woods, “An entertaining evening of live theatre provides a memorable, romantic experience.”

The show opens Feb. 9th and runs through Feb. 25th on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m., with a special Sunday Matinee, Feb. 19th at 2 p.m.

Tickets are $17 for adults and $13 for students, seniors and military with I.D. A free parking lot is adjacent to the theater. Additional street parking is available. Tickets are available for purchase online at reduxiontheatre.com or at the door, before each performance.

About Reduxion Theatre Company: Reduxion’s performance venue, the Broadway Theater, is located at 1613 North Broadway Avenue, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73103. For more details, directions or to order tickets visit reduxiontheatre.com.

Reduxion Theatre Company is a non-profit corporation with a mission to professionally produce both classical and contemporary theater, enriching Oklahoma’s cultural, educational and economic climate, attracting artists and audiences from around the world.

MUCH ADO BLOG: character study

Reduxion’s Much Ado About Nothing set in 1963 Sicily explores the exploding sexuality as well as the misogyny of the time and place. For actor inspiration, director Tyler Woods, puts forth some fun visual inspiration of the characters that make up this world.

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Reduxion Theatre Company performs at 1613 North Broadway Ave in Oklahoma City. To order tickets http://reduxiontheatre.com/index.html

MUCH ADO BLOG: 1st Rehearsal

Rehearsals began for Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing at the Broadway Theater yesterday. We started out our year with a little prose and a little hos.

David Fletcher-Hall             Leonato/Conrade

Erin Woods                          Beatrice

Ian Clinton                         Borachio/Ursula

Jeff Burleson                    Antonio/Dogberry/Friar

Kathryn Spurr                   Hero/2nd Watch

Kyle Gossett                      Claudio/George Seacole

Rachael Barry                  Don John/Margaret/Balthasar/Verges

Sam Bearer                      Don Pedro/Sexton

Tim Berg                          Benedick

Tyler Woods                    Director

Lloyd Cracknell              Costume Design

 

HAMLET BLOG: Pre-show Lecture

Reduxion Theatre Company presents

Dr. Jame Yoch of University of Oklahoma

Pre-show lecture Saturday, Nov 12 at 7:30 pm

Kronborg Castle which appears in Shakespeare as Elsinore Castle

Hamlet, Notes for Reduxion Theatre Company by Dr. James Yoch, University of Oklahoma Background: 12th-century Icelandic saga about Amleth, who revenges the assassination of his father by killing the murderer, his father’s brother, Feng. The story includes models for Ophelia, Gertrude, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Polonius under the ominous theme “goodness is not safe even from those of a man’ s own house.”

Length: 3766 lines (66.3 blank verse, 5.7 rhyme, 28.0 prose). 27 parts. Shakespeare’ s longest play (by about 150 lines) and by far longest lead—Hamlet has 1422 lines, about 400 more than the next longest part. One of many contradictions in a play famous for “Brevity is the soul of wit.’

Vladimir Nabokov’s observation, “Fancy is fertile only when it is futile,” gives a key for exploring this play of theatrical pretendings that include characters who professionally perform roles on stage, “ By indirection find direction out,” and are actually mad or “but mad north-north-by northwest.” Into the ruthless symmetries of design—three young males in relation to their legacy from older men, two women abused, a dramatic play and a play at swords both with deadly results, invocations of Alexander and Julius Caesar—drop in comic passages and coloratura descriptions that disrupt patterns and open the story to radical new dimensions. Hamlet comes to resemble the jester Yorick, and Elsinore takes on the character of Troy on the edge of ruin.

Competitive imaginations structure this play in which opponents attempt to outfigure each other like Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Batman and the Joker, Autobots and Decepticons of The Transformers, and Will Schuester and Sue Sylvester on Glee.

In Elizabethan performances, the running time of the play was probably about 2 and ½ hours at 65 lines per minute which barely ended before the rigorous London curfew; in his 1996 movie, Kenneth Branagh directed a production using all the lines, and it lasted at the pace of modern English four hours and three minutes. Most performances, even in Shakespeare’s time, cut some or many lines.

Tampering with the play becomes a common practice, and by 1623 three versions of the text with some notable differences were in print. Later variations include the early nineteenth-century Hamlet Travestie: With Burlesque Annotations, the similarly 2006 spirited romp, Hamlet, the Artist Formerly Known as Prince of Denmark, and last summer’s performance in Avignon where amidst political despair for modern times, the hero’s most memorable dying line is, “At least I left a good-looking corpse.”

Photos above Kronborg Castle / Elsinore Castle. Drawing above right 1627-1628 showing the Kronborg Castle at Elsinore where the Sound Toll was levied on shipping.

More serious, the part of Ophelia (in Shakespeare’s versions of the story a mere 114 lines, not even 1/12th of Hamlet’s role) becomes increasingly important through the centuries. By 1868 in Amboise Thomas’s opera Hamlet, Ophelia is the only lead performer in Act 4. The rest is chorus. Her role expands, too, in the 2007 Chinese movie version Prince of the Himalayas that uses only 500 lines from Shakespeare’s text and ends with Hamlet and Ophelia’s child taking over Denmark.

From the beginning, the play celebrates flexibility—in multiple dimensions of puns, in disguises, in tricks, seemings of many sorts, especially in the hero who dares to enter the battlefield of his soul in soliloquies boldly facing enemies and dangers within himself. Fittingly for his funeral, “Four captains/ Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage” and he merits “The soldiers’ music and the rite of war.”

Finally, modern Hamlets carry on his role in unexpected places. Vladislav Surkov, a member of Vladimir Putin’s court in Russia, has “a soft, smooth face, something demonic.” He has written a best-selling novel, Almost Zero, which he both admits to and denies writing. “Its most interesting parts come when the author moves away from social satire to the inner world of his protagonist. Egor is described as a ‘vulgar Hamlet’ who can see through the superficiality of his age, but is unable to have real feeling for anyone or anything . . . talking to others in false voices to fish out whatever he needed.” (London Review of Books, 20 October 2011). ©James J. Yoch

HAMLET POST: Before the Play Begins

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Study Guide

Prince Hamlet, our hero, is the son of Old Hamlet and Gertrude, the King and Queen of Denmark. Upon the sudden death of his father, Hamlet returns home from school at Wittenberg, to the castle of the royal family, Elsinore. Upon arrival, Hamlet finds that his uncle, brother to Old Hamlet, Claudius, has married Hamlet’s mother, and taken the crown, becoming the new king of Denmark.

Tyler Woods and Rob Gallavan in RTC's Hamlet

Prior to the play, Hamlet’s father, Old Hamlet, killed the Norwegian king, Fortinbras, in a combat in which Denmark captured many lands from Norway. Now motivated by the death of his father, the young Prince of Norway, also named Fortinbras, whose uncle is also now king, marches with the intent to avenge his own father’s death and recapture the lands his father lost to Old Hamlet. During the play, King Claudius sends diplomats to Norway to communicate with the current Norwegian king about young Fortinbras. In Act Four, Hamlet crosses paths with Prince Fortinbras, who is on his way to invade neighboring Poland in an effort to gain more land.

Polonius, top advisor to the king of Denmark, has two children, Laertes and Ophelia. Laertes has returned home to Denmark from school in France for the coronation of King Claudius. In the first act of the play, Laertes makes a formal request to return to France that is granted by the king. Ophelia is romantically involved with Prince Hamlet, and in Act One is warned by both her brother and father to end the relationship, fearing that the grieving prince does not have honorable intentions. During Act Two, Polonius announces that he believes that Hamlet’s mad behavior has been caused by a romantic dispute with Ophelia.

Horatio, Hamlet’s good friend and school companion, has also returned to Elsinore. Horatio is approached by castle guards to witness a ghostly sight they have seen twice during the night watch. In the first act, Horatio is able to confirm for the guardsmen that the specter indeed resembles the former king, Old Hamlet. Horatio believes the appearance of the ghost is an omen of battles to come with Young Fortibras and all things ‘Rotten’ in the state of Denmark.