Beginning with Bravery

Note: This is a cross-posting from Paul Holmquist’s “Neverwhat?” blog, chronicling his research for directing our spring MainStage production of Neverwhere.

Beginning with Bravery

On a personal note, I have been enjoying this researching and information gathering and the whole evaluation process like a warm blanket. It is an indulgence, in my experience, to really incubate these ideas and notions theoretically without having to make any real decisions. Without any pressure to PRODUCE RESULTS, the experience of sitting with the material and investigating sources of further inspiration without committing to them is a delightful notion. Like bathing in the creative flow of possibility, irresponsibly and childlike.

The time has come for that process to have some closure and for realization of the ideas to become manifest. I enter it with a bittersweet heart. Now all the ideas of this baby’s realization must become guidance, authority, structure and technical actuality. The reality of our medium and the technology available at our level of budget and space must be dealt with.

I’ve taken the time in the past week to enjoy some other manifestations of similar creative works. From Hell, Beowulf (thanks again, Neil), and Alice in Wonderland come to mind. I’m also this close to finishing Watership Down. There is an element of steeping myself in these epic works that speaks true to the process of creating theatre to me and I’m compelled to share it with you.

Any journey in our life, planned or sprung upon us, involves a deeply personal confrontation with the inherent truth of the self. We must look within, face our utmost limits of fear and identity, before we can complete our quest. All quest stories, from Frodo to Luke Skywalker to Harry Potter echo this. Neverwhere is no exception. Epics or quest tales evoke our innate sentiance to see ourselves and judge our own actions, our own decisions that brought us here and confront our moving forward and realizing our true potential. Therapeutic technique is based in this notion as well. We dig in the dirt of our past to figure out how to grow and be whole, we seek a holistic identity coupling the forbidden wounds of our past with the ideals of our present. And we become something indelibly, singularly, personal and present.

This journey takes great imagination, reflection, honesty, wit and resilience. Our natural leneancy and laziness hopes to say NO, I wont go there, I know myself well enough thank you. It takes a huge amount of bravery to confront your reality and say this is not what I want, this does not fit me, I am SOMETHING ELSE.

Richard is helplessly thrown into this process, he doesn’t enter willingly. He is tossed asea in this fantasy left and right. Coming to a crisis of identity in The Ordeal, he finds he does have the strength to be Himself in The World. He actually does have enough self value to Go On. It is this strength that changes him in action, from this point forward he acts more bravely, becomes a Warrior instead of a Follower, finds his gumption and his resolve. He screws his courage to the sticking place only by discovering there is a sticking place and a courage to work with.

After arriving back in London, the current status quo doesn’t seem to fit. Ultimately, there is a lie present. He is faking something that isn’t true to his knowledge of himself. It doesn’t matter what other people think he should be, he knows better. He knows he is The Warrior. He believes his greater power. And he goes back to seek it.

Simply put, the experience of actor, designer, and director in a theatrical production is a similar process. There are preformed ideas of what will be. There are realities to confront. There is a strength of resolve that must be honored. There is a bargaining process. And then there is a belief that makes everything else is unimportant.

I am here. Now. I am committed to this beauty of Truth, I am an embodiment of Honesty, I face my limitations with bravery because I am a Warrior. And I fight for Trust, Truth and the Story. My purpose is greater than me, I am humbled and at the same time exaulted by it. We are one in the same. And we are inpenetrable. The Truth will stand even if I perish in the attempt to exemplify it. Without me, where will the Truth be told?

We are always questing. I think of this process being an expression of that quest. It will be deeply personal, honorable and truthful and scary. It should be. Such demons must be present to be dealt with or we aren’t doing our jobs.

Lifeline needs your help

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED! Enter the Floating Market…

Lifeline is seeking volunteers to work at our 2010 Annual Benefit: Neil Gaiman’s Floating Market on April 19, 2010 the Chicago Cultural Center. We are recreating the Floating Market as conceived by Neil Gaiman is his bestselling book, Neverwhere. There will be food, drink, belly dancers, fire dancers, a wheel of destiny, fortune tellers, and musicians playing found instruments.

We are looking for technical people to help with set-up and break-down and performers to work the event.

Technical: Set up will run from 1:30–6:30pm and will encompass load in and set up of the market. Break down will run from 10:00–11:30pm and will encompass break down and load out at the Cultural Center. All set-up and break-down volunteers will be able to attend the Benefit free of charge.

Performers: Performers will be required from 5:30–10:00pm. You must dress up as a character from the Neverwhere world (e.g. Rat Speakers, Velvets, Sewer Folk, Salvation Army Restoration fops, Junk Yard warriors, etc) and work an assigned area (silent auction tables, entertainment areas, roaming) in character and interact with patrons. We will provide guidelines but you will be responsible for creating your own costume. Performers will be given one complimentary ticket to Lifeline’s production of Neverwhere.

There will be a mandatory meeting for all volunteers on Sunday, April 18th at 3:00 PM.

All inquiries about this opportunity should be sent to allison@lifelinetheatre.com. Please indicate how you would like to help out. First come, first served. Spots are limited.

The Director’s Cut

Note: This is a cross-posting from Paul Holmquist’s “Neverwhat?” blog, chronicling his research for directing our spring MainStage production of Neverwhere.

The Director’s Cut

Last night Rob and I got to see Neil Gaiman in the flesh, thanks to a cousin of a friend snagging some extra tickets for the annual Naperville Reads event, featuring Neil this year. We arrived with our copies of NEVERWHERE in tow, in case there would be a book signing, and just soaked in the ambiance of the pre-event buzz building around us.

Probably close to 450 - 500 people were packing in the Waubonsie Valley High School auditorium. I was lamenting to Rob that we should have postcards and banners promoting the show everywhere - so many avid and adoring fans of Gaiman’s work right here and NONE of them, at least MOST of them, have no idea that they could see a flesh and blood NEVERWHERE not an hour’s drive away. Maybe Gaiman would mention it himself? There was a Q&A as part of the meeting, how could we gracefully promote ourselves?

Once the man came out and got to the podium, a spell was cast and any thought of marketing to this gathering of the faithful went furthest from my mind. He is so charming and present and his sense of humor so warm and inviting, I just settled back to enjoy the art on display. He read a chapter from Stardust which was a delightful revisiting, having worked on a stage adaptation of it back in 2005 as a movement coach. He then read a chapter from Anansi Boys, the one that begins with the incredible layers of describing Fat Charley’s epic hangover, and the audience was rapt.

And then the lights came up and Neil did a half hour of Q&A. The line was long quickly so I just sat and watched. Someone asked about the process of writing NEVERWHERE, and while it isn’t news (Neil has written and been interviewed about this a lot) it is interesting to see how even 15 years later, the pain and frustration of writing the TV series is still very powerful for him.

How about that? The director’s cut.

His book will always be definitive, of course. We are making a theatrical adaptation of his book not because we think the source needs any improving or we want to re-imagine his story in any way but because we love the story and want to bring it to physical life. We want to play in that world, say those words, believe in that storytelling power to transport us outside of our known into the new. We respect the work, respect his process and in OUR process we do have to cut and change things.

We cannot have a giant boar set loose in the theatre, so we have to find a creative solution to making the boar feel right, feel like Neil wants us to feel when we read his words. What we can’t achieve in pure details that our imagination conjures up when reading Neil’s work, we will evoke and inspire our audience to create with us.

Neil ended with a reading of his poem Instructions, which will be published with new artwork by Charles Vess later this Spring. I wanted to record it but it is so beautiful and magical I just wanted to listen. It is an invitation to living creatively and courageously. Here is a clip I found of him reading it elsewhere… enjoy.

Lamia and the Velvets

Note: This is a cross-posting from Paul Holmquist’s “Neverwhat?” blog, chronicling his research for directing our spring MainStage production of Neverwhere. This post is by Maren Robinson, our production dramaturg.

Lamia and the Velvets

It seems like the interest in vampires and their role in popular culture returns cyclically. There was a recent Op Ed piece in the New York Times about the current popularity of vampires and their history written by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan that is well worth reading.

I actually read Dracula for the first time just a few years ago and was surprised and delighted both by the style of the novel and the characterizations. The Count is suave but as a vampire he does not seem at all sensual which seems to be an innovation of the films or a return to the Polidori story. He is more often described as a sated, fattened tick. If anything Dracula seems more like commentary on old fattened ruling classes being thwarted by a rising middle class (a doctor, a lawyer, a professor and a clever woman). However, there are also in the novel the women, first those Harker encounters while staying with the Count, and then Lucy, they do seem both sensual and dangerous, and no doubt an argument could be made about the threat of women’s changing social roles in Dracula but I have already digressed far enough.

In Neverwhere, the Velvets, particularly Lamia, have more in common with these women than the new vampire craze. It is also ambiguous whether they are vampires in the traditional sense at all since Lamia speaks of being cold and it is more the stealing of warmth, breath and life rather than blood. They are more reflective of a temptation, a desire to be flattered and any good hero has to face temptation. This is why Richard is easily beguiled both by his willingness to still expect good from others and by the temptation to feel like he is capable and has some measure of control, especially after having gone through the ordeal and having been so lost in London below. He wants to assert himself and a Lamia makes him feel like that is possible. Alternately, it does not seem like they are intrinsically evil, they are more like alluring carnivorous plants that are designed to attract what they need to live but that it has as much to do with the victim as the victimizer.

Since I can’t resist thinking about names, Lamia is a minor demigod in Greek mythology with a tangled story. One of many of Zeus’s seductions her children were taken by an angry Hera and she went mad and began killing (ore eating) other children. As punishment she was turned into a snake (or a half-snake and in some versions)and cursed with second sight but unable to close her eyes. Among her children are the monster Scylla but sometimes other monsters as well.

She was a popular subject for the Preraphaelite painters (see the paintings by Herbert Draper above and John William Waterhouse to the left) and she makes an appearance as a snake turned into a human woman in a poem Lamia by John Keats, although in this case a young man falls in love with a snake who has been turned into a woman and is stricken when he discovers her true identity.

Later the name was made plural, Lamiae, and they become more of a type of female witch, vampire or succubus and work their way into folk tales often as a dangerous person a hero must encounter for information but overcome.

There may be an interesting Anglo-Saxon counterpoint in Grendel’s Mother, who attacks after the death of Grendel and must be overcome by the hero Beowulf and by that account the any powerful or sensual women with ambiguous motives in Arthurian legends would fit as well.

The name Velvets for the group, type of creature that they are, is very evocative. I admit the first time I heard it the Byron poem popped into my head, “She walks in beauty like the night. . .“

I would hate to minimize Lamia in Neverwhere to a mere type. The complexity and variety of these representations means the actress playing Lamia will have a lot of room for interpretation. Interestingly, the production has double casting so the same actress will be playing both Jessica and Lamia which will allow for some interesting resonances in thinking about Richard’s relationship to women.

A glimpse into fight choreography

Note: This is a cross-posting from Paul Holmquist’s “Neverwhat?” blog, chronicling his research for directing our spring MainStage production of Neverwhere. This post is by Richard Gilbert, one of the members of R&D Choreography (with David Bareford), our fight designers for the show.

A glimpse into fight choreography

A long while back, I got a call from Paul, the director. “We’re doing an adaptation of Neverwhere. Rob is adapting, I am directing. It is going to be a while, and we can’t talk about it publicly until we get some details worked out, but would you guys be interested in designing the violence?” OK, I am making up pretty much everything after the word Neverwhere. Because, you see, I didn’t really hear anything after that over the screaming “YES!!!” that was trying to escape my brain. I hope that’s what he said, because I did, of course, say yes. And I didn’t tell anyone for a few days. Well, except my fiance, who I swore to secrecy. She tried to make it clear that she was more excited for me than jealous. With remarkable success, considering.

So that went on for a while. I reread the book. I got the first draft of the script and read that a few time through. And then David and I started talking about the design. There is so much to consider for this, and it ranges pretty widely. And of course it interfaces with the other design elements - weapons are also props, so decisions about what someone fights with says a lot about who they are. Blood - it is so intrinsic to the story (”lovely, wet blood, Mr. C”) but it does funny things on stage - it can overshadow an important moment, or it can reinforce it beautifully as it drips quietly from a nostril. But costumes are the most likely to be affected by blood. Lights, Set, Puppets and Projections - all of these are interdependent with the violence.

How the actors move will influence those decisions, but then once choreography is designed that will come back around and inform some of the actors’ choices. So we start out asking the questions and waiting to see what sticks. Are the bodyguards’ ‘knacks’ magic? How do Croup and Vandemar move so quickly without appearing to rush in the live theatre? If we figure that one out, how do we apply it in their fights? Hunter’s weapons should be simple, because she is practical. Or they should be ornate, each one a trophy from some distant land where she killed a great beast. Vandemar is a big guy - he needs a big knife. Or wait, maybe a tiny little knife? I can see him explaining, “People think its how big the knife is that matters. It’s not.” The spear….ok, the spear is a big deal. It appears relatively briefly, and it is in exactly one fight…but it is a powerful artifact, so it should look cool… Oh, right…that one big fight. The one with the beast. How do we make that look cool and scary? It was already scaring me - I couldn’t bear it if it looked weak and goofy in the end, and my favorite seat in the house is going to be six feet from the beast’s death!

At the first couple production meetings we saw so much beautiful thinking from every corner, and that started shaping decisions. We brought a big bag of weapons to the second meeting and looked at what various choices would mean. Some of it is obvious - the quarterstaff fight with Brother Sable is a quarterstaff fight. But Hunter’s staff should be a little different - maybe shorter (which will give us more room in tight quarters, and will also mean a more oriental style than Sable’s European stick fighting).

Here was an interesting evolution: for the bodyguard fight we were seeing machetes - I love the shower of sparks, and the ferocious brutality of a machete. On the other hand, the fop should, by all rights, have a smallsword. On the other other hand, as much fun as the fight in Rob Roy is, I don’t want the fight to be about the superiority of one weapon style over another, but rather of one fighter over another - so I want the weapons to match. Paul solved that problem - he loved our WWI bayonet. It looks and could be held like a smallsword…and it is definitely a wicked shiv… but if has the meat to stand up to a machete blow for slashing blow! So there, that does that. But wait - every choice informs other choices…and look what we just did. The Fop has this Bayonet that he thinks of as a sword, but when the fighting starts, he abandons his 18th century stance and starts hacking away… so the foppishness comes across as a thin veneer. Lets see what the actor does with that!

Well, enough for now - so many things to work out!

Welcome, Meredith!

Lifeline welcomes new intern Meredith Crilly, who will be with us full-time until early May.  Meredith hails from Knoxville, Tennessee and is a junior Theatre and Art double-major at Dordt College in Iowa.  She comes to us through the Chicago Semester program which places students from rural colleges in semester-long internships in Chicago, providing a supported urban experience and exposure to the career of their choice.

Meredith is pursuing a career in costume design and will be assisting Christine Pascual on The Blue Shadow and Elizabeth Wislar on Neverwhere.  She is also working in our box office and on numerous other Lifeline projects.  In fact, when you’re next at Lifeline you’ll see evidence of Meredith’s activities — she has realized our long-ago plan to refurbish the lobby!   Last week Erica handed Meredith the bag of fabric that we’ve been holding onto for the past three years and Meredith whipped out a box office curtain and re-upholstered the long bench cushion right by our entranceway.  Snazzy!

A decade-long journey nears an end (and a beginning)

Note: This is a cross-posting from Paul Holmquist’s “Neverwhat?” blog, chronicling his research for directing our spring MainStage production of Neverwhere. This post is by Robert Kauzlaric, adaptor of the piece.

A decade-long journey nears an end (and a beginning)

There’s so much to discuss about this project, and Paul and Maren have already done an amazing job of that here. As the adaptor of the show, there are load of things on my mind I’m hoping to blather about on this blog, in particular: the rewards and challenges of working with such well-known and well-loved material – what do you cut? what do you keep? how do you stay true to the story while transposing it to a new medium with an entirely different set of restrictions/challenges/etc. But before I attempt to open that can of discussion-worms, I thought it might be appropriate to share a little background on how I arrived at this point.

It was over 10 years ago that a friend first handed me a copy of Neverwhere with an off-hand, “This seems like it’d be right up your alley.” Indeed it was. I devoured it in a couple of days. Then I read it again. I had to put it away for a while out of necessity, but it kept churning in the back of my mind for months. I couldn’t get the insane notion out of my head that it would make for an amazing piece of theater… I just couldn’t figure out what company would be willing to tackle it, much less let me adapt it for them.

Then, in early 2000, I saw Lifeline’s production of The Two Towers (the first MainStage show I ever saw here) and knew I’d found a place that would be insane enough to do it. And that they’d do it right: with love and respect for the source; with love and respect of the audience; with heart, humor, danger, and passion. Later that year, I was cast in The Silver Chair, and I got my first exposure to the Lifeline process, from an early reading of the script, through auditions, rehearsals, tech, and production… and I knew it was exactly the kind of process in which I would like to see it develop.

So, without any reason to suspect that my secret plan (known only to me) to have my hypothetical adaptation of Neverwhere get produced at Lifeline would, in a million years, actually, possibly, maybe, ever happen… I got right to work on my script. I had no idea if rights were available. I had no serious hope that anyone would actually produce it. But that didn’t really matter to me. I was feeling wildly optimistic. Not even a beating from Mr. Vandemar could have stopped me.

I finished my first draft and sent it off to some close friends who were willing to give me feedback and help me wrap my head around what I’d gotten myself into. Several months later, draft two was read aloud by a circle of friends, and I got more valuable feedback. Rinse and repeat with draft three. I’m so indebted to those friends of nearly a decade ago (circa 2001) who helped to nurture this project even when it didn’t have a hope of ever getting produced (except in my mind). Some of those friends have since moved away from Chicago, but their influence is still felt by me every time I pore through the script. (Thanks to Chris, John, Dan, Gail, Cath, Tom, Matt, Mark, Mark, Elise, and everyone I’m forgetting.)

Then I sent the script around to some director friends, and some companies I had closer relationships with at the time. The feedback was positive, but I heard a lot of, “This is cool, but seems a bit impossible. Good luck getting it produced!” Heartache ensued. The script idled on my computer as I turned my attention to other projects for a while.

In 2002, I attended one of Mr. Gaiman’s readings on the American Gods tour and was blown away by the sheer awesomeness of the experience (if you haven’t seen him read his own work yet, DO SO). I got my book signed, shook his hand, chatted with him ever-so-briefly, and wondered if my dream of adapting Neverwhere would ever happen.

In 2003, nursing a broken leg, I finally found DVD copies of the original BBC miniseries and devoured all six hours and all of the commentary. Trapped on my sofa with a full leg cast and my cats for company, I lost myself in London Below once more and began, admittedly, to mourn my dream of adapting the piece for the stage. The possibility seemed such an unattainable long-shot at that point. Perhaps the painkillers were making me excessively maudlin, but I started to fear my secret little dream would never be realized.

But by early 2005, I had appeared in six productions at Lifeline, and had finally established an actual ongoing relationship with the ensemble. The time was right to formally submit the script to the theatre. My hopes were high. I got feedback from more friends about the script. I re-edited the script. I sent off the script. And waited.

And waited.

Finally, as it turns out, the rights weren’t available. And, in any event, the timing wasn’t right for the ensemble to get behind it. The company only knew me as an actor. I hadn’t made a strong enough push to establish myself as a writer in their eyes. Nor (in retrospect), had I truly attempted to convey the full extend of my excitement about the project to them. I was hugely disappointed at the time, but I get it now.

Later that year, I was honored to be asked to join the company and got my first direct exposure to the script-selection process from the “inside.” About a year later, I got my first writing opportunity with the company: a KidSeries musical adaptation of The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! Time passed. Paul and I tackled The Island of Dr. Moreau. I dove into the world of Oscar Wilde with The Picture of Dorian Gray. And by mid-2008 or so (if I have my timing correct), I re-introduced the company to my Neverwhere idea and by this time there was interest, trust and solid support. And in Paul, I had the perfect director-partner committed to seeing the project through with me. All we needed was to get the rights.

And then last year, they came through.

And there was celebration.

So, in January of 2009, nearly 10 years after I first started working on my script, I dove back in. We held a reading with the ensemble and with their invaluable feedback, a brand new draft emerged. This past summer, we cast the show. In early December, we held another reading with the cast and ensemble, and brought the production team in on the discussions. Again, everyone’s insights were invaluable. And Paul and I met repeatedly for a month to discuss character, direction, tone, theme, style and all that other great theatre-type stuff.

Now, here I sit in February of 2010, a mere two weeks away from the beginning of the rehearsal process. We’ve got an amazing cast and design team, all geeked to the gills about working on such wonderful source material. The long, SOLITARY portion of my journey is over as the project now gets placed in the capable hands of a massive TEAM of people, all working to tell the story, hone the production, and realize the theatrical vision of the piece.

And I, for one, couldn’t be more excited to see how it all turns out.

Character Study: Hunter

Note: This is a cross-posting from Paul Holmquist’s “Neverwhat?” blog, chronicling his research for directing our spring MainStage production of Neverwhere. This post is by Maren Robinson, our production dramaturg.

Character Study: Hunter

I wanted to pause and explain the brief character studies that I am posting. When you read a book you take the characters as they are written. When an actor brings a character to life on stage there is additional material that may help the actor create a convincing portrayal of a character that is not on the page. If a character is a historical figure then there are biographical accounts to help a character construct a role but when the character is fictional it is more complicated.

In the case of the characters in Neverwhere, Paul and I have been discussing the fairy tale or mythological figures that inform the some of the characters as source materials for the actors.

Hunter: The name itself is shows the simplicity of early naming. In which person was defined by a job such as Miller, Smith, Wright would have referred to the miller the smith and the wheelwright or cartwright. (Hammmersmith, another character in Neverwhere is similarly named and as Hunter is a hunter he is indeed a metal smith).

In addition to the simplicity of her name Hunter feels ancient and her motivations seem very primal, taciturn and therefore mysterious. She has excellent mythological predecessors the Greek/Roman goddess Diana/Artemis, a virgin dedicated to the hunt. The Diana of Anet by Goujon is shown above.

The Amazons, known more as warriors than hunters but recognized for their fierceness in battle and apocryphally for cutting off one breast to make it easier to string their arrows. Penthesilea and Hippolyta are perhaps the best known of the Amazons the former having been involved in the Trojan War and the later appears in the labors of Hercules and later revived by Shakespeare as a character in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

There is also an early Briton analog in the warrior queen Boudicca (sometimes written as Boadicea) who led a rebellion against Roman occupiers. The Anglo-Saxons had a belief in the fundamental danger of nature and an afterlife that consisted mostly in the praise and after-singing of the people who still lived and would sing of your great deeds. Pictured above is a statue by Thomas Thorncroft of the warrior queen which is, appropriately, in London. Which seems to fit with Hunter’s valuing most highly her deeds.

That she is hunting the beast of London also evokes various mythological references. In the Mabinogion (I know I keep referring to this it really is a fantastic source - sorry) Culhwch kills a boar as one of the tasks he must fulfill to win his bride Olwen. Hercules kills the Erymanthian Boar. A unique twist on on the boar in mythology is the Norse goddess Freya, who is sometime portrayed riding the boar, Hildisvini, into battle rather than attacking the creature. This is not to say the beast of London is necessarily meant to be a boar but to give just a few examples of the monsters that must be killed by a hero or the relationship of a beast to some sort of immortality. The beast leads me to the reluctant hero Richard Mayhew but I will save him for another day.

What’s in a Name? The Marquis de Carabas

Note: This is a cross-posting from Paul Holmquist’s “Neverwhat?” blog, chronicling his research for directing our spring MainStage production of Neverwhere. This post is by Maren Robinson, our production dramaturg.

What’s in a Name? The Marquis de Carabas

This is the first in a series of posts on the characters of Neverwhere. In early emails with Paul, the director and Rob, the adapter, we discussed how the name the Marquis de Carabas appears in the Charles Perrault fairy tale Le Maistre Chat or Le Chat Botte known to us as Puss in Boots. Briefly, in the story, the third son of a miller that, being a third son, his only inheritance is a cat. The cat however is no ordinary cat and through various ruses passes off the third son as the fictional Marquis de Carabas and helps him successfully wed the King’s daughter.

The story in the Andrew Lang translation in English is available at Project Gutenberg here.
The original French version is here.

What interests me about the resonances of using the same name for the Marquis in Neverwhere is that he has all the elements of self made man and the ambiguous morality of self advancement that is actually more like Puss in Boots than his namesake (not to mention his nine lives and cat-like moves). Perrault wrote his stories in the 17th century and they show the era’s value for courtly appearance and behavior as well as unabashed social climbing. The story is also remarkably more complex than other children’s stories. Rather than clearly good and evil figures the cat and his methods of trickery, flattery and out right lying is serving his master well.

It is a fairy tale but it is also much more like real life and given the competing motives of some of Door’s companions in London below it seems appropriate to invoke a more complicated and morally ambiguous fairy tale. The descriptions of the Marquis’ dress and behavior (like other characters who seem to come from a variety of time periods) seem more like the 17th or 18th century. Also the history of the Marquis is obscure and his title could easily not be his own. If there is anyone who has learned to manage in London below through a mixture of flattery, cunning and hidden dangerous skills it would be the Marquis.

Note: there is another Gaiman short story about the Marquis. I have not picked it up yet but hope to add it to the list of character materials soon.

Dislocation, Magic Places and Non Magical Reporting

Note: This is a cross-posting from Paul Holmquist’s “Neverwhat?” blog, chronicling his research for directing our spring MainStage production of Neverwhere. This post is by Maren Robinson, our production dramaturg.

Dislocation, Magic Places and Non Magical Reporting

There are moments in the rehearsal of a play where an actor will simply stop to make sure they understand what a word means in a particular context. Unlike when you are reading a book and speed by a word you sort of know without pausing to lug out the dictionary, it becomes much more important to know what those words might mean when an actor must interpret them on stage for an audience.

I have been thinking about the title, Neverwhere. It is a place, a new adverb, a coinage and yet because we are familiar with both never and where we have an intuitive sense of what it means. To not be in a place. implies a dislocation in both time and space. But this is stronger than the no in nowhere is never as it it has never been. The other half of the word is also ambiguous. Where is an adverb used for questions. It is not neverthere but neverwhere. Where implies uncertainty.

This is further complicated by the way language develops. I looked up neverwhere in the Oxford English Dictionary. (A wondrous multi volume dictionary which gives not only definitions but also etymologies and usage in sentences from various time periods, I highly recommend perusing it.). There was a time between about 1400-1500 that neverwhere or rather newer whare or newyr quhar or neuer where was used interchangeably with nowhere. Of course where and there and that and what were all sort of interchangeable for a time. My favorite example being from the circa 1580 Towneley Plays “If thou com agane to nyght, look I se the neuer in syght, neuer where in my land.” (Roughly “If thou come again tonight, look I see thee never in sight and neverwhere in my land.”) This jives well with the ambiguous time period and social structure of London below.

Door uses the words “fiefdom” and “duchy” and asks Richard to whom he swears allegiance. The social structure of London Below seems to be feudal rather which is just one more incongruity which further displaces Richard.

There is a long history of displacement in fantasy. Of course when looking at the title, Neverwhere. One must also think of J.M. Barrie’s Never Never Land in the Peter Pan books (in which there is a surprising hint of menace for all that the books are children’s classics). The lost boys are lost. They have slipped through the cracks of their London with the real risk of never returning.

Similarly in the Welsh epic the Mabinogion, which feels akin to Arthurian tales, the knights slip in and out of magical realms without realizing it until they encounter a magical person although the shift from ordinary to magic is often signaled by the hero seeing a puzzling event like a sheep crossing the river and changing from black to white and back again.

In Shakespeare, characters often enter a wilderness and encounter the magical and are transformed. The lovers and mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream enter the forest, King Lear wanders in the wilderness, Rosalind flees to the forest of Arden in As You Like It, Prospero and the infant Miranda are shipwrecked on an Island in the Tempest.

These places that are outside the normal social order provide a place for magical encounters and more importantly transformation. Being outside the normal social order allows a character to reflect on that social order and see it with the perspective of an outsider or find that he or she has changed and no longer fits within that social order.

So both the place name and the place itself are dislocating. It is interesting however that the inhabitants of London Below call it London below. Neverwhere is not used as a place name. The place is real to those that inhabit it.

Which brings me to one other meandering thought about fantasy or more specifically the genre often called magical realism. I don’t know whether those who make book classifications identify Gaiman’s work as magical realist but he does share something with magical realist author Gabriel Garcia Marquez- a grounding in journalism.

The magical in Neverwhere is simply reported, in a matter of fact journalistic style. In fact the only person to whom this world is odd is Richard Mayhew so explanations are not forthcoming. It is part of what makes the world so plausible.

We are familiar with slipping into magical worlds and the honest way the events are reported is useful for actors in performance as well who are always in search of authenticity in performance. The world has to be real for the actors and the audience even when it is paint and flats.