Date: Sunday, March 4, 2012

Players: Morgan, Marc, Caroline, Amy, Jerome, Martin

We decided to roll with a female Shakespeare and her daughter, rather than male. It made the dynamic a bit different, and we found that pretty interesting.

The daughter, Portia, was estranged because she joined an Evangelical Christian group and went to live in a religious community. Her mother Rose Shakespeare was none too happy about this, and berated her for it. We sat down to hash things out and get to the bottom of the issues.

Caroline was Rose Shakespeare. Morgan was the family Rabbi (whose name I can't quite remember). Jerome played Chad, an upbeat Evangelical high school friend of Portia's. Amy was Portia's half-sister Rosalyn. I played Harold "Harry" Shakespeare, Portia's father and Rose's second husband. Last but not least, Martin was Jessica, a local English teacher who knew Portia from school.

We first saw the estrangement take place at the wedding reception for the marriage of Harry and Rose. We also looked at scenes during rehearsals for a school play with Portia and Chad, an amateur theater production put on by Chad, Rosalyn, and Portia for Harry and Rose, and a Christian rock concert attended by Portia, Chad, and another friend named Evie.

In the end, Shakespeare decided she'd seen enough and stormed out. Typical.

Rabbi Strom in the house!

Thanks for doing the write up, Marc.

Everyone really brought it this time. I think Amy and Jerome were our first timers (Martin, had you played before?) and both performed admirably.

Marc, I was so mad when you mentioned the Newsboys. I hate those guys. But I wasn’t playing a character that round, so I just had to swallow the bile. We don’t know exactly why Rose Shakespeare stopped us, but we were piling it on her pretty hard for being either a very strict mother or too loose with her faith and providing a poor example.

We had a lot of people performing people performing plays. Amy actually asked, “So what should we be imagining?” I had to think about it pretty hard. I always imagined our actors on a stage with Shakespeare in the audience, but I unintentionally strayed from that a couple times. It might be fun to be more strict with the theme of plays and say things like, “Then Rabbi Strom speaking as Chad says, ‘Do you like Creed?’ while leaning against the railing that sat stage left, with the painted background depicting the parking lot of the Gorge.” Although typing that sentence was hard enough.

I think Martin said he hadn't played before. Not sure though.

Ha! They were the first Christian band I could think of. I only know like one song by them, and it's super upbeat and catchy, like most Christian rock.

Yeah, I'm not sure what exactly we should imagine. When I'm playing, I tend to just see the scenes themselves with the actual characters. Almost like watching a memory. It gets even more complicated when you think about the fact that the scene changes each time we run it. Is there even a play really happening here? Where's the script? I can't help but wonder if maybe we're just talking heads in Shakespeare's subconscious, acting out these moments again and again in some fever dream, until finally Shakespeare awakens and has it all figured out.

That got weird. I guess I think more about the characters in the scene, rather than our actors.

I wonder why this has never bothered my play before. Amy pounced on it immediately. I know I'm not a very visual person...