Shakespeare Camp for the Uninitiated

Last week, I finished M. L. Rio’s If We Were Villains, a novel about a group of theatre students in their fourth year of a drama program at an exclusive arts college. Their curriculum consists of all-Shakespeare, all the time, and by the beginning of their senior year at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, they are both a well-trained theatre troupe and a close-knit group of friends (or, in some cases, frenemies). Things look promising at the beginning of their senior year, and at the start, I was almost envious of their situation, their ability to focus and train in exactly what they love best with a group of like-minded fellows at a small, idyllic-sounding Midwestern campus.

Actually, Dellecher is not at all unlike Pacifica Graduate Institute, where I studied mythology and Jungian psychology, and I can attest that my program had some of the same idyllic qualities—a beautiful natural setting, a program with a particular focus, and a tight campus community, though PGI is in SoCal and has a definite California vibe rather than the strict regimented intensity of Dellecher as described in the novel. Of course, even in paradise, real life goes on; in the midst of trying out for roles and navigating romantic entanglements and friendships, Dellecher’s seven seniors are looking forward to auditions and professional careers once they graduate. They seem on track to accomplish that and are on top of the world at the beginning of the term.

As you would expect, there’s plenty of interpersonal drama and competitiveness among these students. Some of the tensions that already exist intensify as one of their professors focuses on having each student identify and expose his or her greatest strength and greatest weakness to the group in an acting workshop. Sounds fairly harmless, right? I don’t know if this method is common in acting circles; I suppose it makes sense in terms of having actors get in touch with their own motivations, aspirations, and fears so that they can become better actors, but it’s also fairly brutal because it strips away their defenses. In any event, it marks the beginning of the end of the Dellecher idyll as it leads to psychotic breaks among the students. Instead of merely playing their roles, the actors can no longer quite contain what they are meant to be enacting, and Shakespeare’s rivalries, jealousies, and murderous impulses (which are really their own) spill off the stage and into their lives.

Jungians often discuss a technique called active imagination, which is a way of getting in touch with the contents of your unconscious to spur creativity and personal growth through the use of symbols, images, meditation, and other tools. It can be very beneficial but also, perhaps, destructive, if you’re not on solid emotional ground to begin with. To me, being immersed in the myth traditions of cultures around the world for several years of study was one long exercise in active imagination that was tremendously freeing as far stimulating the imagination goes. To me, it’s difficult to think of anything more beneficial for a writer or an artist. In the case of the Dellecher students, all of the wide world as presented by Shakespeare—while deeply beloved as a discipline—has been largely academic until the lines between role-playing and real life are breached. Once the students’ emotions begin to interact in a serious way with the roles they are playing, life begins to imitate art, and real-life tragedy is not far away.

Jung believed that the type of growth people strive for with analysis and active imagination often takes place naturally in the second half of life as people reach a stage in which their undeveloped capabilities, dormant in the first half of life, begin to make themselves felt. It’s generally a very positive thing. The Dellecher students in the novel, of course, are barely out of their teens and not really equipped to deal with so much emotional flooding, especially in the same context as substance abuse and tentative sexual exploration. Previously unimaginable events overtake the students as rivalries and resentments spill into violence and collective guilt.

At the beginning of the novel, I thought that of all the subject disciplines taught at Dellecher, theatre seemed the most rewarding because it has the potential to teach practitioners so much about psychology and human nature. This is true, I think, but as the plot in If We Were Villains unfolds, the downside to all this exploration of the psyche becomes apparent. If Richard, who has always been something of a bully, can become a full-on murderous sociopath, then James, previously the “good guy,” and Alexander, who has always been ready with “bad boy” behavior, can also cross over to the dark side once murderous impulses find a channel to the surface via a staging of Macbeth or Julius Caesar.

Obviously, this isn’t a common occurrence, and you can probably attend your community’s Shakespeare in the Park performances in relative safety this summer (if you were worried about it). Nevertheless, the dynamic the novel describes of unconscious impulses spilling out uncontrolled once they’re no longer contained is accurate, I believe. A witches’ brew of dark emotions in the plays of Shakespeare, a bit of unlicensed therapy from a teacher a little too oblivious to the dangers of probing complexes and insecurities, and a group of talented but still immature students struggling with all the usual problems of young adulthood—what could go wrong? Probably a lot.

Shakespeare and Alice

I once read a novel called Mythago Wood in which a forest was a sort of otherworldly zone from which mythical figures occasionally emerged into the everyday realm. The main character saw this happening and kept trying to cross the barrier that kept ordinary humans out of the mythical space, which turned out to be a tough go. The idea of the forest as a sort of zone of the unconscious is a familiar one to most of us, so the existence of a patch of woods next to our local arboretum may help explain why walking there is often such an imaginative exercise.

Then, too, I've seen a number of Shakespeare plays produced in the arboretum in the past, which probably helps explain my penchant for peopling the park with his characters. I once had the idea that it would be fun to have a free-roaming theatre company enact scenes in various parts of the park instead of on a fixed stage, so that playgoers would stroll from one scene to another. Since the idea occurred to me, there's been no looking back. I'm sure this would entail a lot of logistical headaches, but just think how much fun it would be.

You might stage the beginning of A Midsummer Night's Dream in the parking lot to represent Athens, then move the bulk of the action to the park itself, with lovers, fairies, and rustics continually stumbling onto one another under the trees. Think how magical it would be on a summer's night to eavesdrop on the fleeing lovers in one leafy corner of the park and overhear Titania quarreling with Oberon in another, as the fireflies winked and the moon rose over the trees. I've been living with this idea for so long that I sometimes stage scenes in my head when I'm walking, picturing the mortals waking up in this particular grove, Puck flitting about behind that oak over there, and the rustics enacting Pyramus and Thisby using that low wall as a prop.

And why stop with A Midsummer Night's Dream? There's an open grassy area in back where I occasionally imagine Richard III stumbling about, calling out for a horse. That quiet corner with the arbor would do admirably for Friar Lawrence's cell, while the gazebo works for Juliet's balcony and bedroom. A patch of hilltop trees sheltering a shaded path translates in my mind into the gloomy corridors of Macbeth's castle, and over there, behind the hedge, is Ophelia's pond. That bowl-shaped meadow is plenty big enough to represent Agincourt and the meeting of Henry's army with the French. The garden, with its series of outdoor rooms, is the perfect spot for staging Much Ado About Nothing, while Julius Caesar could meet his murderers on that narrow walled court down by the roses.

Probably, the nature of the park itself--an open space of trees and fields shaped by human hands and filled with paths--situated next to a small but thickly wooded forest--contributes to my tendency to see it as a stage. It's part nature and part human and has, as a place set apart for no purpose other than leisure, a bit of a liminal feel. Your mind wanders as your eye roams over broad vistas punctuated with many intimate spaces, and there are numerous ways to explore aside from staying on the main path. Paths into and out of the woods provide access to a deeper imaginative realm. It's a writer's and an artist's dream.

The park tends to be well populated these days (see my post "Is That Really Necessary?") and much noisier than it used to be. It strikes me that the increased noise works to decrease the park's liminal qualities, making it harder to imagine Athens, Rome, Verona, or the English countryside. It's more of a neighborhood circus many days than a "thin place," but if you cultivate mental self-containment, it's still possible to have stolen moments of reverie, which gives walking there a sort of fitful charm.

I often encounter rabbits in and around the park, which takes me in a different but related direction, making me think of Alice drowsing on her river bank on a summer day--a subtle reminder that the world of the imagination is never far away, if indeed, there is really any distance at all. (Alternately, it's a reminder that any time spent in a public space these days, from the park to the shopping mall to social media, carries the possibility of falling down a rabbit hole--but let's accentuate the positive.) With the busy outside world surrounding the arboretum on all sides, the park still manages at times to fill the important function of providing room for imagination and untrammeled thought. For that, I thank it.

Shadows and Mirrors

I saw an article online a while ago that, in honor of Shakespeare's birthday, listed his Top Ten insults. Apparently, there's a tradition of doing this every year, since I found similar lists in various publications from years past. That started me thinking about what Shakespeare means to me and whether I could compile a list of my own--Favorite Shakespearean Moments, or something like that.

I remember someone saying to me once that she wondered if people pretended to like Shakespeare more than they do because it seemed to be expected of them. Maybe that happens sometimes, but I think the Shakespearean allure is very real and due to a variety of factors, including the fun of costume drama, the power of his language (which sometimes catches people unaware), and the appeal of his sense of humor.

I can recall many hours spent in a local park on warm summer nights as the annual Shakespeare festival played to a large audience of people of all ages. Gathered together in the humid dark, with trees framing the stage and crickets trilling in the background, everyone seemed to fall into the spirit of things, willingly entering Shakespeare's world for an evening, despite the time, distance, and nuances of language separating us from him. These evenings were always festive; even children seemed to respond to the pratfalls and physical comedy though they may not necessarily have understood the plots.

As with many people, the first Shakespeare play I ever read was Romeo and Juliet, which I still enjoy. Of the other tragedies, I like Hamlet best; of the comedies, it's hard to pick just one, but maybe A Midsummer Night's Dream would do for a favorite. In high school, I once had to memorize and recite Hamlet's soliloquy, and, on another occasion, enact the witches' scene from Macbeth, along with three other students and a cooking pot borrowed from my mother (dressed in black crepe to stand in for the cauldron).

I was entranced by Kenneth Branagh's film of Henry V and captivated by a filmed version of The Tempest from Stratford, Ontario, that starred Christopher Plummer. (To date, I haven't seen a version of The Tempest that I didn't like.) I finally appreciated Othello when Mr. Branagh's Iago reminded me of some Machiavellian workplace politics I had experienced, and A Midsummer Night's Dream ended up in my dissertation when I remembered that mazes are mentioned in the play, giving my fourth chapter a welcome buoyancy.

But my favorite Shakespearean moment is the evening I spent watching a production of Much Ado About Nothing on a London stage years ago. I'd probably read the play but had never seen it performed, and that production remains for me the most magical Shakespearean experience of all. The play starred Derek Jacobi, and, I believe, Sinead Cusack, as Benedick and Beatrice. What made the production memorable was the staging, the brilliant use of a deceptively simple set of angled mirrors on a dark stage, lit from the front, so that all the action took place in a circumscribed area, a pool of light in a sea of black. The characters appeared out of darkness, enacted their scenes in front of the mirrors, and disappeared into shadows, so that the entire proceeding seemed to take place at night, giving an urgency, intimacy, and hectic, dreamlike quality to the quarrels, jests, complications, and ultimate reconciliation of the lovers. The acting was outstanding, and the characters, in contrast to the dimness and confusion of their reflected images, seemed very much alive.

If I could recommend only one Shakespearean production, this would be it. I see myself, wide-eyed and probably open-mouthed, 25 years old, sitting in that darkened theater, the same girl who had recited "To be or not to be" word for word and played a somewhat clueless Macbeth (my main dramatic contribution to that scene being, quite honestly, the soup pot). This may have been the first time I actually got it, the first time I entered Shakespeare emotionally. Every now and then, I can still see Beatrice, still feel the sadness beneath her witty one-liners and her yearning for authenticity in the midst of so much surface show. The happy ending was all the more poignant for complications narrowly averted, and I feel certain everyone left the theater happy that night.

Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare, and thanks for the memories.

Prospero Drowns His Books

I was watching a Stratford Shakespeare Festival production of The Tempest, with Christopher Plummer, the other night and was having a little trouble hearing all the dialogue. Rather than turn the sound up, I decided to let it be and follow the events instead of the words. It was rather enjoyable just to be carried along by the story instead of hanging on every syllable. I don't know if that isn't the best approach in any case; academic habits of analysis can sometimes get in the way of simple enjoyment.

It occurred to me that I was trying to watch the play with "beginner's mind," and I started wondering what it would have been like to see it as a child. There are so many fairy tale elements in the plot that I think I would have loved The Tempest, without understanding all the nuances, if I had seen it as a little girl. What else should a play with a magician, an enchanted island full of invisible voices, castaways, airy spirits, talking monsters, a violent storm, true love, comedy, and the righting of wrongs be except charming?

There is a way in which searching for meanings and parsing phrases can actually get in the way of understanding, and to me this play is proof of that. I think Shakespeare wanted above all to enchant, to be Prospero, to exert his powers of creation to make a new world, or possibly just remake the old one. We're meant to fall under the island's spell, to dwell for a while with incantations, sorcery, and inexplicable happenings, to feel ourselves out of our usual element. The initial storm, which deposits the seafarers from the kingdoms of Milan and Naples onto Prospero's island, is a portal to a different world, and it pulls in playgoers, too.

The plot is simple and appeals strongly to the love of a happy ending and sense of justice restored. Prospero, the wronged ruler, stranded for a dozen years on the island with his daughter, has used the time to perfect his knowledge of magic. He seizes the chance to bring his enemies within his reach by calling up a storm that brings their ship to his island. They are punished as much by the strange, uncanny air of the place (which almost brings them to madness) as by the fear of being castaways, although the violent storm and near drownings give way to a less dire, if initially befuddling, fate.

What child hasn't fantasized about the magical ability to control his surroundings and shape things to his liking? Prospero can actually do it, in an unusually potent display of what psychologists might call "agency" that more than makes up for his prior helplessness in the face of wrong. Prospero's ultimate purpose, despite the fear and confusion he creates, is benign: it's the restoration of his own rights and reconciliation with his adversaries. His daughter Miranda falls in love with the son of the King of Naples, setting the seal on the theme of restoration and healing. The King, who had feared his son drowned, finds that he is still alive when Prospero, like a stage magician pulling back a curtain, suddenly reveals the two lovers playing chess together. Everything that had seemed wrong, after a satisfying amount of confusion and trouble, comes right again.

As a child, it wouldn't have bothered me perhaps, but it does occur to me now that a few hours of torment isn't really the equivalent of twelve years of confinement. The events following the shipwreck take place in less than an afternoon, though of course, it's a magical three hours, which could very well seem longer. My better nature tells me we're meant to think that the experience was so bewildering that to have continued it much beyond that would have been cruel . . . Ariel seems to think so, at any rate.

Prospero also makes it plain that he is finished with magic once his ends have been accomplished: "This rough magic, I here abjure." Ariel is freed from Prospero's service, Prospero drowns his books, and there is a sad sense of something numinous passing. Should Prospero really have to give up the knowledge that saved him and become like other men once more? And yet again, maybe it's for the best. It would be unwise and dangerous to continually be calling up the powers of air, light, and storm to correct every little problem that might arise in the future. There are supposed to be laws for that.

It's a wonderful play, wise and affecting, and I wish I had seen it when I was young. It would have been lovely to have seen it just for itself without study or preconceived notions. Somehow Shakespeare has become high-brow and lofty, and one is often taught to believe that a lot of scholarship is required to make sense of it. This play simply overturns those notions.

Bottom's Dream

I've been thinking about A Midsummer Night's Dream for several days. I don't know why I started thinking about it, except that maybe I was anticipating summer. I love spring, but in my mind's eye, paradise is summer. It smells like newly mown grass, with a dollop of suntan lotion, and it tastes like sweet iced tea and homemade ice cream. There might even be fairies, feuding lovers, and mischief afoot by moonlight.

It didn't feel like summer when I got up this morning. Thunderstorms cleared the air Friday night (and made for great sleeping weather), and yesterday was bright and pleasant . . . but a feeling of winter persisted. Certainly, we had a long winter here, of which most everyone complained, and it hung on for a long time. Maybe the cold and rainy weather earlier this week was too reminiscent of the gray season we had trouble shaking off.

This afternoon, I hauled my copy of Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meanings over 5,000 Years down to the cafe, where I planned to finish the chapter I was struggling with yesterday. As soon as I walked outside, the warmth hit me -- no longer the balminess of spring, but a palpable, pleasant heat, like a day in June. I got in the car and searched for the right music. That's when the first good thing happened. I've been sad about the station I found recently that played such great music until they changed their format. By some miracle, it was back today to the way it had been . . . Percy Sledge was singing when I tuned in. Maybe things weren't so bad after all.

Then, another miracle. I was driving down the street when suddenly it happened, just like that: Something about the intense blue of the sky and the angle of light, and boom, I passed through an invisible portal from winter to summer. Some combination of Motown, sunlight, my summer sandals, and the leisurely afternoon ahead, and I popped right out of Lapland and onto the beach.

At the cafe, I sat by the window and despite the distractions of the passing scene and the uptempo jazz they were playing, managed to concentrate on my book and get deeper into it than I've been able to for the last couple of weeks.

I then remembered that the summer movie series is getting ready to start downtown, so I swung by to get a calendar. This Wednesday, the season opener: Raiders of the Lost Ark, a summer movie if there ever was one. When I got home, I was feeling playful, so while the water was boiling for a pitcher of tea, I opened my Pelican Shakespeare to A Midsummer Night's Dream, flipped through the pages, and let my finger fall at random. When I opened my eyes, my finger was on this passage, a speech of Oberon's to Titania:

How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania,
Glance at my credit with Hippolyta, 
Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?
Didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night
From Perigenia, whom he ravished?
And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,
With Ariadne, and Antiopa?

I had forgotten all about the connection of the play to Theseus, whose impending marriage to Hippolyta is the springboard for the plot. Ariadne, the Minotaur, and the labyrinth are all mentioned in the notes. It was a nice bit of synchronicity to be reminded of all this, and it might even be important for my research.

This play is my favorite of Shakespeare's comedies, the lightest, dreamiest, most summery one of all. My imagination has been reaching for summer. When things veer too much toward Hamlet, it's time for some fun in the woods, where things come out all right in the end, and what seemed like tragedy is revealed by a sudden sleight of hand to be comedy instead. As for Puck, I think he's been hanging around for quite some time anyway.