Table Work

Rehearsals for Sidmummer's are going along just swimmingly. The director has a clear vision for the show, the choreographer is totally organized, the musical director, while a little addled at times, is doing a fine job...yes, everything's just ducky!

Of course, we had to get through the table work first.

New Age Shakespeare Scholar Moonbeam Lagoon taught us that just about everything in Shakespeare has some kind of phallic connection and is related in some way to the worship of the Earth Mother, LeGaia.

It was a real eye-opener!

Then there's Michael McGillicuddy who plays Snuteling, one of the tiniest roles in the show. Thanks to his insistence that we really examine his character thoroughly, the rest of the cast now has a full and vivid picture of Snuteling and his relationship to the rest of the characters, what drives him, what frightens him, heck, we even got a full-blown backstory that McGillicuddy made up all by himself. Meanwhile, we spent considerably less time glossing over the more insignificant characters like Oberon, Puck, and Titania.

Ms. Lagoon also taught us that all of Shakespeare's writing (with the exception of prose and a fair share of verse) always follows the beat of the human heart. Always. To demonstrate this, she had us all take off our shoes and socks so we could really FEEL LeGaia beneath our feet. We then jogged a lap around the room, one at a time, speaking a Shakespeare monologue, one syllable for every step, like so:

"The - King - doth - keep - his - rev - els - here - to - night.
Take - heed - the - Queen - not - come - with - in - his -sight..."

I noted silently that healthy heartbeats typically go "BUH-bum, BUH-bum, BUH-bum," not "buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh" and that Shakespeare's verse USUALLY goes "buh-BUM, buh-BUM, buh-BUM."

Still, it was good to know who has stinky feet in the cast this early in the game. And hopefully the smokers, who were COMPLETELY winded from that little exercise, will take a hint and lay off the 'baccy for the next couple of months.

No, I take that back. It really was funny to run a single lap around the not-that-big rehearsal room, then look at my fellow actors doubled over, gasping in pain like patients in the emphysema ward, sweat fairly pouring down their contorted faces and pink bits of lung fluttering out of their mouths with each hack and cough.

Our table work is finished. Two of our female leads still don't really know what they're saying, we now know that McGillicuddy must have sheet music for everything, even though he declared very loudly that he cannot read music anyway, and Titania, not Diana, was the moon goddess and Elizabethan Midsummer celebrations were pagan orgies for her worship, performed around phallic maypoles in the phallic forest (the trees suggest phalluses).

I'd say it was a success.