Two weeks ago I had the privilege of
assisting with the Love’s Labour’s Lost rehearsal
process. Love’s Labour’s is the first
of three productions—the second is Twelfth
Night and the third The Duchess of
Malfi—which the 2012/13 Tempt Me Further touring troupe will put on the
road from this fall through the spring. Their tour, like all tours at the ASC,
culminates in a period of residency at the Blackfriars Playhouse from mid-April
to mid-June next year.
Working with the touring troupe was an inspiring experience. From Rick
Blunt’s Armado to Patrick Earl’s Berowne, these elven actors are skilled at
making bold character choices, discovering the strength and clarity of those
choices in rehearsal, and listening to their creative
instinct to strengthen and clarify those choices even further. The troupe, therefore, possesses the free-flowing ingenuity necessary to bring
Shakespeare’s colorful characters to life, and counterbalances those impulses
with two clear, editorial eyes. The first of these eyes is the inner eye of the
actor—his or her natural instinct to adjust a moment to improve its
effectiveness. But the second, larger eye watching over the production is that
of director Jim Warren.
Jim Warren has the ability both to deepen
and to simplify each individual moment rehearsed
before him on the stage. His attention to detail—from choreographing the
movement of the four ladies’ parasols to match the mood of the scene, to
carefully choosing each moment that the Forester should hock a loogie into his
spit cup—made one of Shakespeare’s wordiest plays an effective and hilarious production.
While in less capable hands, the sheer verbosity of Love’s Labour’s Lost could have been whitewashed into triviality, Jim Warren directs Shakespeare
as one would assemble a jigsaw puzzle, discovering each individual piece, however minute rotating it, moving it, and finally slotting it into
the exact necessary place. This process repeated meticulously with each new piece until the jigsaw was complete, creating a beautiful
picture.
In the midst of this creativity, I held book for the actors to call “Prithee” (the ASC’s equivalent of calling
“Line”). Despite my small contribution to the process, however, I always felt a
part of this beautiful picture. I will never forget what Jim told the whole
group on the first day of rehearsal: “We all have different jobs to do for this show,” he said, “but we are all
important. Never before has this group of people been brought together to put
on this production, and it will never happen again. Each person is essential
for the group to exist. So let us always respect one another’s work and be
grateful of this opportunity ahead of us.” Truer words to live and work by I
have rarely heard.
Lee Ann Hoover, Education and Dramaturgy Intern
