This time with
Elizabeth Ruelas and Andy Kirtland was a great pleasure, and I think I learned
a lot working with them. The first thing that struck me was the way they manage
to build a team within the very short time of the workshop (only two days!).
Almost all of us were meeting for the first time, and they now are going to
perform the two plays this month, with no more rehearsals together than fight
rehearsal. That capacity of team-building is very precious for that kind of
form which aims to go very deep very fast: deep into Shakespeare’s words, deep
into theatre, and deep into each of the actors. I am more used to long rehearsal
periods or of group work, and that kind of hurry was very refreshing and
life-affirming! Yes, we can do great things in just a short time! And
Shakespeare might be a great example to have in mind for that!
The way Elizabeth Ruelas and Andy
Kirtland directed us was very interesting for me, too. We had both a lot of
work and a lot of fun. They managed all the time to be friendly and firm. They
made it very precise what we were working on, and how much time we would have
for that, but they would smoothly change their plan if they saw that any of us
would need it, so I had the feeling we were taking our time despite the swiftness.
They were really driving us to the places they wanted to, but in the same time paid
a lot attention to each of us during the process. I hope I will take the
benefits of that experience, as a director.
Concerning the Cue Script Technique
itself, the experience overcame the theory of it. The feeling, as an actor, to
be on stage, looking for my cue, and paying attention in the same time to the
movements, the stage directions given by the text, is an essential part of
acting, for me. It increases the attention the actor pays to both the text –
its details, how it works, and how to make it obvious and thrilling for the
audience – and the stage, that is to say the space, one’s own place, and the
relationship to the other actors and the audience. Most of the qualities
necessary to improvise are there and make the play very vivid, build the
actors’ and the audience’s pleasure; those qualities meet the qualities of
text-theatre, with the secure presence of a great author’s words and story to
help them to elaborate a great moment. Indeed, the Cue Script Technique makes
it understandable how Shakespeare’s plays came to be so efficient, in spite of
their complexity, and with such a little time of common rehearsal – if any –
they had. It is now obvious for me that I couldn’t set, nor read, an
Elizabethan play without paying a great attention to those points we worked on:
each actor’s having only his own part; the cues, and the author would use false
or repeated cues to trick the actors, and make them feel as the characters do;
suiting the Action to the Word and the Word to the Action; the way the verse is
used to understand the emotional state of the character, thanks to
irregularities in the number of beats; how the actors crossing the stage and
addressing directly to the audience makes the action lively and clear; the
information the First Folios might give about the pronunciation and action.
During the text sessions, all of those points were made very clear, as well as
the plenty of puns and references Shakespeare would spread in his plays, and
that Elizabeth Ruelas and Andy Kirtland were qualified to explain. Moreover, these
two directors would give us the tools and methods to plainly understand our
roles, in order to perform it with pleasure and matter; each of them having his
and her own personal approach of Shakespeare through these common rules.
Eventually, the main thing I will retain from that experience, is that to
enable the audience to get the complexity of Shakespeare’s texts, their subtle
or trivial puns and simple or tangled story-lines, the first thing to do is to
make those plays as entertaining as they used to be. And that can be an
efficient way to do it thanks to all of those rules and codes that would be
used at the moment they were written, just as Elizabeth Ruelas and Andy
Kirtland do with the New Renaissance Theatre Company and the Unrehearsed
Shakespeare Project – bringing in their own point of view, humour and fantasy.
- Compte-rendu de Marceau Deschamps-Ségura
