Viva Italia, Due!

Last I wrote a bit about our journey with the original show, Love Is Crazy, But Good, forgoing a lot of the details about how the show changed in that process and what it finally came to be. That may be an entry for another day. Today, however, I write about some of the interactions we had with our Italian comrades, and the business and theatre opportunities that sprang up around us all like Periwinkle(s?).

Our original collaborators in venturing to Italy were the good people at Lingua Si in Orvieto; specifically, David's friend Piero Salituri. We met with Piero a few times whilst visiting, never for very long, as he is a very busy man (and we weren't sunning ourselves overmuch, either). You walk about Orvieto with him, and good luck making it a quick one, because he will know absolutely everyone you pass. We had an amazing time our first year in Italy, taking classes through Lingua Si and then watching our students suffer through those exact same classes with malicious schadenfreude. Or, in my case, watching them and wondering how they can talk the Italian so good that fastly. It's a great school with great teachers, and their philosophy of cultural immersion as the best route to learning a language goes right in time-step with our approach to introducing commedia dell'arte to American students. This time around, Piero proposed that we help him in an effort to bring Umbrian culture to America's universities. He runs these visiting workshops at universities, with segments about Italian art, language, theatre, cooking, etc., and it sound just like a perfect opportunity to associate our program, In Bocca al Lupo, with the educational communities here. An exciting possibility for promoting two great adventures.

I wrote previously a bit about our work with Angelo Crotti, someone with whom I was very excited to meet, and with whom I was not in the least bit disappointed. We found some common ground with Angelo over the course of several days, bringing him in to the folds of our friendship (and, I hope, we into his) almost as closely as our friend and fellow actor Andrea Brugnera now is. Andrea came to teach and perform in America a couple of months ago under the auspices of The Northeast Theatre (see 3/24/08), and it is our ambitious hope to bring him and Angelo over not just to work with us, but to work with us on our clown'n'commedia version of Romeo & Juliet. More on that ambition anon (Get it? "Anon"? Aw, geez...) but even if R&J doesn't go quite as planned, working with Angelo proved a gratifying experience for everyone, it seemed. It was in the final stages of our staggering toward performing in Il Theatro che Cammina that we really came together with him, finding the common ground in developing gags together. Between that experience and watching his workshop with Andrea's students, we discovered that in spite of differences in training and experience, Zuppa's aesthetic and technique is dramatically aligned with Angelo's. We work in threes, we attempt to make sequences that build, and value clear, specific action executed with a greater emphasis on timing than volume or exuberance. As we worked with Angelo bit-by-bit that Thursday before our performance, it felt like a homecoming to me; this lunatic Italian was doing more of what I wanted to be doing than I was.

Il Teatro che Cammina brought us a couple of interesting new contacts as well. The organizer of the truly impressive affair, Alessio Michelotti, is a very friendly friend of Andrea's whom we didn't actually meet until her picked us all up from the train station in his subcompact (thank God for low production values). We were tense, and perhaps not the best company over lunch. At lunch, however, we did meet Natalie Ravlich and Miner Montell who, together, make up the circus/theatre company Tilt. In the nature of festivals, we ran into Natalie, Miner and Alessio severally through the day into night, which was very, very good, because it afforded us the opportunity to seem marginally more normal and sociable. Alessio left us feeling informally welcomed back to the festival next year, which we take to mean we did good (enough). David suggested to me, upon viewing the rest of the entries to that spectacular spectacle, that the best thing to bring to it would be something very physical and trick-heavy, without too much effort toward character development and such. My mind instantly hoped for a space in the schedule/budget for fledgling circus and street-theatre productions. As to Tilt, it's hard to say if our paths will ever cross again, but I felt very at home with them and hope they do. They reminded me of circus friends back in New York.

It might have been easy, after the first Saturday of only two, to take the rest of the time to rest on our laurels. Well: It was. Very easy. And we loved it. All twenty-four hours of it. Then it was back to work with meetings of various kinds with Piero and Andrea to discuss specifics for upcoming ventures. Though we didn't exactly have a meeting with her, we did spend some time with Hanna Salo, when we also taught a class to Andrea's students at Teatro Boni (in Aquapendente), a theatre that is rapidly becoming The Northeast Theatre's sister stage. The class was utterly fascinating to me, so you'll forgive me getting briefly off-topic here with business, though it may be largely because of that class that our connection with Teatro Boni in general was left as strong as it was. Essentially, Heather and I taught some tumbling and acrobalance to eight Italian-speaking, predominantly non-actor young students. The language barrier was not absolute, but it was present, and we had to begin without Andrea to help translate. It was an amazing experience, and we owe a great deal of it to the willingness and gradual enthusiasm of the students. David excitedly video-recorded our journey that day, starting with a warm-up, basic tumbling, then moving on to basic acrobalance. To make up for my horrid Italian, I had to keep demonstrating movements in various ways, so I was utterly exhausted by the end. It was, however, very much worth the effort.

Perhaps the most personally exciting possibility for me as regards our work with Teatro Boni has to do with a space we visited (read: broke in to) last trip around -- the outdoor amphitheatre at Aquapendente. Last visit, this space was under refurbishment. That work is just about done, and Teatro Boni is working to get the equivalent of grant money to allow us to perform Romeo & Juliet there on our return next year. It would be a tremendous experience. The space is beautiful and ideal for Shakespeare. Just the thought of performing there motivates me to work as hard as possible to make it happen. In November, Heather and David are aiming to return to Italy to perform and to cement opportunities. I will probably not be joining them, seeing as how I will have just tied the knot, thereby missing a lot of work, being very poor and wanting to spend some time with my wife that is not spent planning a wedding (by then we'll be moved on to planning the honeymoon). November, however, is when a lot of important groundwork will be laid.

All of that was a lot, and we earned ourselves a much-deserved break, which we planned to spend sight-seeing in Sienna and Florence, and did so. The next day, not feeling quite so much like traveling again, we opted for more local fare. Marybeth had yet to see Civita di Bagnoregio, one of our favorite locations, and Heather and I had planned to take photographs there for R&J promotion, so on our second-to-last day we returned to "Civita."

Civita is a beautiful, tiny city on a hill, which you can find pictures of everywhere. (In fact, the moment after I got home I spotted it all over a frickin' DiGiorno commercial.) Our first visit there, over two years ago, was a big contributing factor to inspiring the Romeo & Juliet production. When you visit, you can see why. It's ancient, established by Etruscans (or earlier) and surviving through the Romans on into the eighteenth century, when an earthquake took out three-quarters of the place. In recent years it has been rebuilt and refurbished, some of it to the detriment of its particular history. Nevertheless, it is uniquely appealing, and captures everyone's imagination. We visited twice, once while it was still light out, then another time to walk off yet another incredible meal at Hostaria del Ponte. David disappeared for a time during our evening visit, a thing surprisingly easy to do in such a small town, then showed up with a light on inside. He had run into some people and chatted them up. Turns out they were among the very few people who not only lived in Civita, but had grown up there. As he was leaving their company, one of them said (in Italiano, of course), "You should do a show here."

So. The next day we returned, talked to people in charge, photographed the town square for staging purposes, and tried to get the mayor on the phone (he was out of town that day on business). Everyone we spoke to, however, seemed optimistic and enthusiastic about the idea. In November, Heather and David will meet with the mayor and whomever else, and on our next return we hope to bring an environmental staging of a clown'n'commedia Romeo & Juliet to Civita di Bagnoregio's public square.

Of course, we haven't built the show yet. But when has that ever caused us problems before?

The Courage to Collaborate

Not too long ago (though and hey: where the heck did March go already?) I was writing about my disillusionment with the collaborative work I had been doing of late (see

1/18/08

). Now I am suffused anew with the natural light of a hard-won, worthwhile collaborative experience. Am I fooling myself? Does this gratitude spring more from my frustration over the lately lack of long-term work in my life, or is it genuine and in response to reclaiming the better bits of collaboration?

I was gone last week. Did you miss me? (<--rhetorical) I was in Pennsylvania once again, working. Whilst there I taught various workshops, thanks in large part to the efforts of Friend Heather, and worked with

The Northeast Theatre

and

Zuppa del Giorno

in initial efforts and training for a new original show. Well, somewhat original, at any rate. You may notice a new link to the left under the "Hugin" heading.

Zuppa del Giorno is taking on

Romeo & Juliet

.

So last June the gang (gang this time: David Zarko, Heather Stuart, Todd d'Amour and yours truly) was sitting around the breakfast table in Italy, pondering a perfect project for collaboration with Italian artists as we sipped our espresso, munched our Nutella(R) plastered bread and peered out at the castle on the opposite peak. Thus encumbered by effort, we managed to mention

R&J

, and it tickled our fancy. (Fancy tickling being perfectly legal---nay, encouraged--in Europe.)

Romeo & Juliet

had, in a way, haunted us from our first trip to Italy, when we visited

Civita di Bagnoregio

by night and discovered that all those seemingly over-wrought

R&

J set designs, full of giant boulders and myriad irregular balconies, were in fact quite accurate. David said to me, "You're into Shakespeare, right?" I thought,

I am? Oh yeah! I am!

It had been so long for me, I had literally forgotten how much I loved studying and acting in Shakespeare's plays.

I can't recall who first suggested it be a clown show. (See

3/14/08

, paragraph 2.)

Cut to last week, and six Zuppianni,

local actor

Conor McGuigan, Italian actor

Andrea Brugnera

, and clown director

Mark McKenna

, playing at different times in the conveniently inactive space on Spruce Street. It was amazing. Sure, there were times when we couldn't communicate well, both due to linguistic differences and differences of vocabulary within the same language. There were many moments of being on stage and thinking/praying, "Dear God...send me an idea, please." There were even mornings when we arrived at the theatre and the consensus was that it was the last place we wanted to be. But every time we played, if we played long enough, we made beautiful discoveries. Commedia lazzi hundreds of years old surprised us with laughter. Clowns telling us a story we knew by heart, even while inserting punchlines, made us cry. And through all of it was a sense that we were somehow being reunited, even with those people with whom we had never played before.

I have often said that the beginning of a collaboration is my favorite part, the part when all the possibility seems most present. It's when the show still has the luxury of existing in your mind just as you want it to be, before any compromises, before anyone really knows anything, before argument, ego and expectation pressurize the palate. In the past year I've been forced--forced, because it's quite against my will--to accept the possibility that any collaboration may end in tears or, worse, sighs of resignation. But hope springs eternal, I suppose. Especially when one is so surrounded by brilliant friends.

Learing Glances

I was walking down the street the other day, on my way to il dayjobo, when I noticed a woman wearing boots with the kind of impossibly narrow and tall heel I see in anime, and believe to be a physical impossibility. She was having no trouble with them, and I considered asking her if she'd stilt with me some time, but then I noticed that the boots were black leather and patterned somewhere between a musketeer's and some kind of glam paratrooper. Aggressive boots. Which got me thinking.

Generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of concept-heavy theatre. There's a great temptation to do it with Shakespeare, and many arguments for and against such approaches. I like my concepts light, and with little-to-no discernible influence on the dramatic action of the play, especially when it comes to The Bard. After all, the play's the thing. Don't change the ending of

Hamlet

. Face my wrath. That having been said, and in honor of beginning work on a clown version of the

Romeo & Juliet

story, I decided to share what this woman's boots got me thinking on.

A lot's been done with

King Lear

. I was in a Suzuki-styled production set in a sanitarium (molto originale), there was a recent movie called

A Thousand Acres

that set the story in rural America of the 90s, and of course there's

Ran

, Akiro Kurosawa's feudal-Japan take on the thing. It's been done to death. Still, these things get done to death because they resonate. It's a play about the anguish of youthful ambition and oncoming mortality, and that don't ever go away for we humans. So it may be done to death, and my ideas may fall far short of being original, but a strong idea benefits from expression.

I wonder how the play would change if it were the love of sons rather than daughters that incited the action?

Lear

has so many family relationships through it that in many ways it's all about family, so I got to wondering about that. Suppose Cordelia, Regan and Goneril were -- I don't know -- Corey, Ronald and Gary. They act completely the same, but have wives (or an imagined future bride, in Corey's case) they involve, and their possession of the inheritance is more assured. Not sure if Lear should be a father or mother in this case, and not sure if that altogether matters.

Once I'm imagining the story this way, I immediately want to set it in an urban, contemporary environment. Perhaps amongst some entitled New York family. There is a film version of

Hamlet

that does this (with Ethan Hawke) and, in my opinion, fails spectacularly to play past the adaptation, but I feel the idea can be done well. In this environment, the sons can be fairly underspoken, manipulative and cruel and it seems quite normal to us; masterminds of business, or media. Their wives take more direct action, but this is fitting in a contemporary environment as well. I can also see Lear (be he or she) as descended to a homeless state very clearly in this setting, and wonder how all the nature imagery might translate to an urban environment.

From here I wonder what else I can alter without getting in the way of the story. Suppose Corey is gay, and that contributes to his estrangement from Lear. It would have to be done without issue; the idea would be to avoid making a statement not found in the original story, to just have it proceed as you expect, but this son is gay. Suppose, too, that Edgar and Edmund are the same person.

WHAT?! I know. I start to doubt myself here, too, but I want to play it out; to play

with

it. So deal.

Without having read the text in years, I wonder if it could be played in such a way that the E.s are one guy with a personality disorder. I imagine him vaguely as a guy taking prescription medication, young and volatile, freshly returned from treatment. Gloucester, his father, is thereby a bit more justified in his ineffectiveness. He's been through a lot with this kid, who has his good days and his bad, and Gloucester finds him, on his bad days, to be a different sort of bastard. Gloucester also must humor E. in his dual personas, in the hopes of bringing him through to sanity, but everyone around him doesn't know how to respond to this, because it isn't clear how much is his humoring and how much he's come to believe his son is divided in two.

If you're still with me now: Let's go produce, because you are a rare creature.

Gloucester, of course, has his eyes dashed out for him by Cornwall, Regan's husband. Or Caroline, Ronald's wife, in this case. It was the glimpse of those boots that got me thinking about it all. In the production I participated in, I played Cornwall, and we stamped out Gloucester's eyes with my heel. Those boots would make that choice far more ... shall we say, effective. The rest of the ideas rolled out from there.

Violence. Such a potent aphrodisiac for romancing the id.

By this point, of course, I have to imagine the show out of the context of the language. You can subvert some lines here and there to justify cross-casting genders, but combining two characters into one? Introducing contemporary psychological understanding to Mr. Bill Shake-Off-Subtext? No, no. I imagine it now as a contemporary retelling, rest assured. Still and all, William had some unshakable lines. There's no escaping, in the end:

"Howl howl howl howl howl! Oh, you are men of stones! Had I your tongues and eyes I should use them so the heaven's vaults should crack! She is gone, forever..."