 |
 |
 | |
Interested in coming to see Neverwhere, but you’re from out of town?
Spend the night downtown at the luxury Hotel Allegro Chicago, a Kimpton Hotel.
Lifeline Theatre has negotiated a special $109 rate (Thu-Sun, some blackout dates apply) for anyone who buys tickets to Neverwhere.
Availability is limited!
Call the Lifeline box office today at 773-761-4477 for details.
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.
When I started my reread of Neverwhere a couple weeks ago. I noticed the quotes Gaiman gives the reader at the beginning of the novel and thought it might be worth thinking about them a bit.
“I have never been to St. John’s Wood. I dare not. I should be afraid of the innumerable night of fir trees, afraid to come upon a blood red cup and the beating of the wings of an eagle.”
The first quote is from G.K. Chesterton’s The Napoleon of Notting Hill. Which is a brilliant choice to allude to. Chesterton’s novels blend the fantastical and the real in fascinating and disturbing ways, and although he was writing at the turn of the last century, I am always stunned by how modern Chesterton’s books feel. The Napoleon of Notting Hill takes place in a future London (1984) that is much like the London of 1904, when it was written, but it is just a bit off. By agreement and lack of interest the England, which seems to have amassed more empire in the intervening years, now choice a king by alphabetical drawing. There are many analogous interests in the story. The people of London seem to have become entrenched in the ordinary, accepting of their class system and social roles. Clerk Auberon Quin is made king, and being of a whimsical (and possibly mad) nature starts requiring the provosts of the various districts of London to dress in obscure and antiquated ways. As king he also makes up some fairly fantastical histories related to London place names.
The relationship to a fantastical London in which the place names are tied to different histories than we might expect is clear. I think there is more. I confess I am a fan of Chesterton but had not read The Napoleon of Notting Hill, I am about half way through now. I have long reading history with especially The Man Who was Thursday but also The Man Who Knew Too Much and even Father Brown. It struck me how often Chesterton uses the word nightmare. Both Chesterton’s worlds and Gaiman’s worlds take on a nightmare-like quality in the true sense of a dream the feels real but in which normal things are displaced, distorted or somehow menacing. Both also freely mix humor with societal or personal events that are much more terrifying like say anarchists or murder. Both writers unapologetically take you to that place that is familiar and frightening and fantastic without explaining or making things easy for the reader which, I think, is a mark of respect for the reader, not to explain too much.
The second quote is the 14th century Lyke Wake Dirge from north Yorkshire
If ever thou gavest hosen or shoon
Then every night and all
Sit thou down and put them on
And Christ receive thy soul
This aye night, this aye night
Every night and all
Fire and fleet and candlelight
And Christ receive thy soul
If ever though gavest meat or drink
Then every night and all
The fire shall never make thee shrink
And Christ receive thy soul
The portions of the dirge, or funeral hymn, that Gaiman quotes all refer to the acts of charity that one might have done while living which in the last stanza protects one from the fire (presumably the fires of hell). Lyke is a dead body and wake is the watch that would be held for the deceased. Hosen are stockings and Shoon is an archaic plural of shoes. Fleet can be a small stream but I also saw a variation on the dirge that seemed to substitute hearth or home for fleet. Sleet is sometimes substituted for fleet which is an old form a salt that may have to do with early funeral rituals. The refrain with firelight and home contrasts with the judgment meted out to those who were not generous in life. It fits nicely with Richard’s act of kindness that starts everything for him.
Another reference Gaiman has mentioned in interviews is a children’s game with a map of London. I suspect it might be Scotland Yard. Where a group of detectives chases the criminal Mr. X through London using the bus, the underground and taxis (why Scotland Yard does not get its own vehicles is never explained.) What is splendid about the game is how much time you have to look at the map of London with all its place names. Before I had visited London I had played the board game and spent time staring at the map, not just trying to win but as if it might give me understanding of London when I should finally visit (it didn’t). Nightmare, dirge, game, it is somehow right that they should all fit together.
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.
So a couple of weeks ago Paul emailed me about how Neverwhere was like The Wizard of Oz but turned on its head a bit. Richard wants to get home but Door sounds like Dorothy. What are the roles of Hunter and the Marquis in that party if you want to extend the comparisonI agreed but replied that Neverwhere is also like many other fairy tale quest narratives. However last week I did another reread of the book before first rehearsal and it struck me that twice Gaiman invokes the Wizard of Oz. Lamia makes fun of Hunter and Richard and Door as being like the Wizard of Oz, when they are on their way to meet Islington so Door can avenge her family and Richard can get his life back. So Gaiman both invokes the Wizard of Oz and mocks it at the same time. This is a darker fantasy than the Wizard of Oz. The revelations about Islington are much darker than discovering the Wizard is just a man behind a curtain.
Of course the story makes it clear that Door is just Door. It is not short for Doreen or Dorothy. If anything Door, because of her ability is like the physical doors in other fairy tales, the door to the wardrobe, the hole in the ground. So many fairy tales start with some sort of entrance. Of course, the old woman warns him to beware of doors.
Door’s whole family are “openers” and their skills allow them to find and open doors and locks. The names of the family are all portal names. Door, Arch, Portico, Portia and Ingress. (I have to point out that Portico also refers to the colonnades where Greek philosophers met - which is appropriate for Door’s father.) Richard does find a door to another world.
I was struck when I was rereading the novel how twice uses her skill in a way that shocks her once she opens to save herself from the assassin and kills him. Once she reaches out for somewhere safe then, at the last moment, thinks “someone.” She calls a person not just a place and so her guilt over having gotten Richard into his mess is real. She called him.
It always pleased me when reading the novel that the story switches back and forth between Door and Richard. Certainly Richard follows the classic fairy tale or mythological model. He is forced into an adventure. He is from our world so he is our point of view character. We experience London Below as he discovers it. (Unless perhaps there are folks from London Below reading the novel). But Door is on her own journey, she has had her own loss and being orphaned and seeking revenge are also fairy tale devices.
What is trickier is that there isn’t quite a direct analog for Door. She is both the entrance to this other world for Richard, but she is not just the guide to Richard. She is in the midst of her own story. Strong women in fairytales are tricky. There are a host of evil witches or bad step-mothers. There is a clever girl like Molly Whuppie. (I had the Errol Le Cain Illustrated version as a child.) The Twelve Dancing Princesses are clever but only so they can evade their father and dance at night. In East of the Sun West of the Moon and the Frog Prince the peasant’s pretty daughter and the princess go on quest but only after they had rejected a magical suitor.
A number of years ago I read Reviving Ophelia, in which psychologist Mary Pipher examines the increasing problems facing young women. She describes how strong female characters start to disappear from books for girls when they hit adolescence and those characters become increasingly focused on relationships and marriage. Door is refreshing in that she is so unique. She is strong and skilled and independent. She has vulnerabilities but does not need saving. In fact, all the women in Neverwhere are strong.
She is not just an entrance for Richard into his story. They both have stories that are tangled together like a map of the London Underground.
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.
At certain first rehearsals there is a sort of alchemy that happens where you look around the table at the set design and the costume designs and hear the sound designers play clips. It is magic to hear the actors start reading a script and hear the voices from the page aloud and laughter at the funny bits.
It is also exciting to feel like you are embarking on a journey with people who care about the same things. This was a good first rehearsal. The designs were fantastic and there was this feeling in the room of how excited each person was to be working on Neverwhere. Paul and the cast read aloud Gaiman’s poem, Instructions, (instructions for what to do if you are in a fairy tale) which seems like a good way to start. Like Richard we are all embarking on journey, however we have the luxury of a group to help us. So here are some musings on Richard’s journey and our own journey.
I have been thinking about tribes. Theater is certainly its own tribe. There are tribes in London Below (or fiefdoms and duchies).
I recently heard a discussion of the theories of the political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, they resonated with the line from the beginning of Neverwhere when the old woman tells Richard’s fortune. Part of Arendt’s statement that struck me, in rough paraphrase, is that a beautiful soul is not enough to live fully and securely, every human being needs the social and political status that comes with full membership. The old woman tells Richard, “You’ve a good heart. Sometimes that’s enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it’s not.” Without trying to minimize or simplify Arendt’s theories, I think both thoughts get at some of the key ideas in Neverwhere, that is that being having a good heart or a beautiful soul is not valued, it is in fact a liability, but also that we want membership in a social group to live securely.
Richard’s decency in helping Door is not appreciated by London above, or in many ways by London below. In fact in both worlds we see acts of great selfishness it is under a veneer in London above that Jessica doesn’t care about an injured girl or that Mr. Stockton doesn’t really care about art or the guests. In London Below the stakes are higher, Lord Ratspeaker would happily slit his throat. London below is more extreme because existence is more extreme but the motivations, selfishness among them are the same.
Richard is not only disoriented by the foreignness of London below but also by the lack of a group of friends who help give him definition. When Richard enters London below he is tribe-less. He is continually being asked to whom he swears fealty, which duchy, which fiefdom? Part of Richard’s desperation to return to London above is to be part of the established and familiar social order. He breaks down and cries when he has lost his identity in London Above and when Door, Marquis and Hunter have left him. He wants to belong.
In truth, in London above he doesn’t have a tribe either, but he is lulled by the normalcy of everything around him into thinking his life, his work, his fiancee are all fine. Whey he returns from his time in London below he lost again, and finds work, going out for drinks are meaningless. He tells Jessica he’s changed. This is why the challenge is so harrowing. He is forced to face the loss of a group that could give him definition but also he conjures the images of his former fiancee and friend to tell him he is insane and worthless. He must decide if his live is worth living without the certainty of others to define him and yet it is the recollection of the generosity and loss of Anasthesia that recalls him to his senses.
Interestingly, Henry Mayhew, journalist, social researcher and editor of Punch, who wrote the 1851 London Labour and the London Poor, refers to the various groups that he interviews in the London underclasses as tribes. But even while his approach is anthropological he wants to understand the costermonger and the orange a lemon seller. It is that same curiosity that infects Richard Mayhew. He keeps asking, Door, the Marquis and Hunter questions about the peoples of London below, he wants to understand the world.
What interests me about Richard’s journey is not just the journey (that story is familiar to us and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey has described separation, initiation and return and it is interesting see that journey) but after then end of the journey, after the return. What happens then? Fairy tales always get us home but they don’t talk about what happens after you get home.
When I was a child, I was always frustrated by children having to go back after having an incredible journey. Back out of the wardrobe, out of the rabbit hole, back to Kansas, to the Dursleys. I didn’t want them to go home much in the way that I didn’t want the stories to end. Richard has changed, almost without knowing it. He is back home and discovers he his allegiances have changed, in a world that may be dangerous but after technicolor who wants to go back to black and white. Richard can see a life of security in London above but he forsakes that security. It makes me think of the last line of Instructions, “And then go home, Or make a home, Or rest.”
I am glad to be on this journey with a tribe of like-minded individuals, who switch from Cockney to Irish in a heartbeat and design magical clothes and sets and lights and sounds. Where else would I get the chance to exchange emails about how best to create a piece of tang dynasty pottery that can be eaten several shows a week.
Oh and one more thought, when we left the first rehearsal the misty day had turned into a thick fog, a peasouper, which seemed auspicious for our production. It smiled as I drove (slowly) all the way home and saw the strange shapes of gravestones in the cemetery and the dangerous trees in the park and the pale yellow glow of street lamps in the fog. It is late now and I think I choose rest.
Note: This is a cross-posting from Paul Holmquist’s “Neverwhat?” blog, chronicling his research for directing our spring MainStage production of Neverwhere.
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.
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.
Note: This is a cross-posting from Paul Holmquist’s “Neverwhat?” blog, chronicling his research for directing our spring MainStage production of Neverwhere.
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.
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.
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.
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 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!
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!
| ©2007 Lifeline Theatre |