"By innocence I swear!": The Ladies Perform

Twelfth Night Act III Scene1

Viola/Cesario: Eleanor
Olivia: Julia

This is cut down a bit, both so as not to run too long for tomorrow's homeschool speech meet, and for the comprehension of the young actors. This is a fun scene for Olivia especially, because she's so changeable, but Viola has several different shifts as well, and we tried to capture those.

I was hard put to make sense of Olivia's "Do not extort thy reasons from this clause" speech in order to interpret it for the girls, but we just decided in the end that Olivia just wasn't making a lot of sense there anyway.

Intensive

One of the great things about having a degree in Drama is that it's excellent life prep. Learning how to analyze a scene, discover a character's motivation, and stating an objecive for a character to pursue -- these techniques translate very well to real life, in which one has oblique conversations where one must discover what the other person wants. Heck, even buying a car is a bit less painful with a bit of dramatic training under the old belt.

So I find that when (as now, prepping for my Shakespeare class) I read books on directing, they usually contain some advice that's applicable in larger settings. For example, here's a selection from Notes on Directing: 130 Lessons in Leadership from the Director's Chair by Frank Hauser and Russell Reich:

23. Assume that everyone is in a permanent state of catatonic terror.
This will help you approach the impossible state of infinite patience and benevolence that actors and others expect from you.

I wish I'd had some advice like this under my belt not just for previous directing situations, but in any circumstance in which I've had to try to get a large group of people to participate or follow directions.

Not of general relevance, but something I thought was interesting (tender eyes may want to avert themselves now):

Meaning It

There is only one intensive in the English language: the word "f*ck" (or "f*cking").

Listen to the actor declaiming:

O! What a rogue and peasant slave I am!

Note how he strains to make the derogatory language real, as if he really means it. Get him to put in a few "f*ckings":

O! What a f*cking rogue and peasant f*cking slave I am!

Hear how it immediately hardens and sharpens the images, makes them more like real anger and real self-disgust rather than disguised self-pity. Not just impressive, but meant.

Should you keep these word substitutions in performance?
No.

I tried it myself with some Shakespeare, and true enough. Nothing intensifies like the F-bomb. For all you concerned parents reading: I do not intend to teach this in my Shakespeare class. Just sayin'.