The Major Dramatic Question

So, right now I'm in yet another new experience for the theater -- I wrote a play, and I'm acting in it, but I'm not directing it. My friend Stephanie has that quite, quite well in hand. In a way, it's allowing me to focus myself on just diving in to really explore the question I wanted to tackle with the play.

When I went to school, the Major Dramatic Question was one of those core concepts that we as actors were given to analyze the play and the role, along with "tactics" and "beats" and all that jazz. Often, people put forward the Major Dramatic Question of the play as being that one question that needs to get answered for the plot to resolve. For instance, supposedly the "Major Dramatic Question" of Waiting for Godot is "Will Godot ever get there?"The "Major Dramatic Question" of Macbeth was once put to me as "Will Macbeth get away with it?"

But these are very different from the questions that actually drove the playwright to write those plays. I can't speak for those authors, but I bet the real dramatic questions were "What do we do when we're trapped in waiting?" and "Can we really step outside our own fates?"

That's the unique privilege I have right now -- as the central character to the plot, the question that's leading my character along is the question leading the heart of the production along, and it's the question that I the playwright am still investigating. It's a unique privilege because it's a question I felt completely lost on myself, going into the play. There was no amount of thinking about it or writing to it that would help me figure it out. For once, I have to be through the question, and that's the experience I'm going through.

Riffing About Riffing

Riffing in jazz and rock is the chance of the musician to break out of the melodic and rhythmic structure of the song. Nowadays, jazz and rock tracks are limited by their structure; a single melody and rhythm. Because there is a single melody, a single prevailing rhythm--I'm talking most popular jazz and rock tracks, not avant-garde jazz and prog-rock, etc.--it is difficult to spend more than three or four minutes on the same idea. The lyrics, the build in emotions, the complexity of that single melody/rhythm can prolong it, but basically: one idea is limited in length.

I'm a theater person, so I like to ape what I see and apply it to theater. And theater, really, is the same way as music. Aristotle came in with what he called unities: unity of action, unity of time, unity of space. What Aristotle didn't demand is unity of tone/theme, or unity of character. Of course, in his splitting Tragedy from Comedy, he created the implication of a unity of theme/tone.

I don't know when exactly the concept of unity in character arose--perhaps it was always there, perhaps the psychological rise of naturalism created it--but to a certain extent, that became limiting. I know this because I think unity of character is what hobbles Shakespeare productions. It is not so much that the plot hits monotony--it's that with a unified character, it becomes difficult to hit all the different marks that Shakespeare leaves. A dour, depressed Hamlet (who is defined by dourness) simply cannot get the gravedigger scene, or the relationship with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or the scene where the play is presented to King Claudius. Nor would a comic Hamlet (I don't think anyone's ever tried to play Hamlet completely for laughs)

That carries into unity of tone. A dour Hamlet doesn't want to break the "mood" of the To Be Or Not To Be moment. If I were designing the play, I'd try to make it really funny right before "to be or not to be," if possible. I remember a production of Romeo and Juliet that I was once in whose major success was grasping the fact that the first half of Romeo and Juliet is a comedy. At the point it was written, Shakespeare had not written any tragedies. And nobody at the time knew how Romeo and Juliet ends. So straight up until Mercutio dies--even past the point where he is stabbed and is bleeding--the classic Shakespearean comedic devices are employed. I mean, for crying out loud, what does Mercutio say after being stabbed? "Call for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man!" Mercutio literally doesn't notice that things have become "dramatic." Suddenly he collapses, and there--then the tragedy starts, and the audience (and characters) realize the impact of what they've been doing.

If you play a Shakespeare play with a unity of tone, or a unity of character, you have to abridge. It will be too long. People will "get it." Especially since they know the ending. You might protest that there are many layers of language to explore--but if you're following a unified tone, or a unified character, you're not really exploring the language. Even in the same speeches, Hamlet goes from ecstacy to tragedy, from mania to depression, to absolute cool calm. This is not the place for a unified psychology, a logical progression of thoughts. If anything, Brecht understood this point best when he angrily denounced this unity of character in his Alienation Effect In Chinese Acting. Man is contradictory.

A sidenote: this is something that I first saw as a huge flaw in the otherwise well crafted, gripping, (and sometimes one-tone) Battlestar Galactica, a show that I highly recommend. No I have not seen the original yet, but I will eventually.

I liked this disunity of tone and of character best when I saw Patrick Stewart's Macbeth, and the now-infamous sandwich-eating scene (for those of you who haven't seen it... well, go and see it). The scene is such an odd deviation of tone and of character for Macbeth (without straining reality--because reality deviates in tones and of characters, as my day today has proven to me).

So why am I talking about this with riffing? Well, because... you should riff. If you've got a show that's got one tone going on, or one character, you need to find a place to riff. A place to drop whatever structure of the play is going on, and put in something that doesn't fit the play. David Herskovitz, for instance, would throw in places where the play falls apart--actors forgetting lines, etc. etc. If something breaks the mold of the play, steps right outside for a bit to play with new tones, new ideas, etc., then you won't have to worry about time; it might take up more time, but it will prolong the audience's interest.

Even in an "established" text like Shakespeare is open to riffing. There's plenty of riffing to go in between or around the lines. But if you've written your own work, are working on something new--leave room for riffing! Please. You wouldn't do it on the recorded track (i.e. the script) but you'd better do it when it comes to concert time (the performance).

Review: Macbeth

Shakespeare seems so dry, so removed from our times, that it is hard to imagine it having a deep, visceral impact. Richard Foreman once said that all theater is about death because in the act of freezing it and performing it exactly, over and over, we've killed it. If that's true, then Shakespeare has been dead for hundreds of years. The production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, directed by Rupert Goold and staring Patrick Stewart (Macbeth) and Kate Fleetwood (Lady Macbeth), does create that visceral feeling. This is what a remounting of a classic should be: absolutely grounded in our guts.

The set, designed by Anthony Ward, provides an immediate base from which the play can already begin its powerful effect. It is gray and dingy, at once recalling ugly kitchens, sinister morgues, interrogation rooms, or whatever gloomy industrial needs one might have. As the play progresses, a few small moving set pieces are all that is needed to transform this set into whatever locale is needed.

Meanwhile, an equally sinister story is being told onstage. Macbeth and his companion Banquo (Martin Turner) come back from the war as heroes, but a prophecy from three demonic sisters (Sophie Hunter, Polly Frame, Niamh McGrady) gives him an appetite for more: he and his wife collude to murder the King of Scotland, and everyone who stands in their way.

The play has a very distinct tone, set in place not only by the set, but also by powerful sound choices from designer Adam Cork, subtle lighting design by Howard Harrison, and video/projection design by Lorna Heavey. The tone was very distinctly set, creating a very heavy and sometimes overpoweringly suspenseful backdrop to all of the character's actions.

Sometimes, early on, this was not ideal--it seemed as though the choices were so powerful that they'd have nowhere else to go as the play progressed. The video projections in particular were often less helpful; it seemed to me as though they should have either been used more, or used less. Some visions, such as the appearance of a ghost near the end of the second act, were accompanied by strong psychedelic projections. But others, like the infamous "is that a dagger which I see before me?" were played without any projection at all. I found it difficult to understand what the logic was behind certain choices of projection versus others. But there was no denying that even before the end of the first scene, the show's tone and mood was very powerfully set, and that all of the design elements had played a part.

Of course, had the mood prevailed in one tone for an entire show, it might have become overpowering, even stifling. And it is here that the director and the actors are to be commended for balancing out the mood. The heavy tones of the play could have been insufferably relentless, but at times became a springboard to turn even the subtlest humor into a real joy and release. In one scene, Macbeth is discussing ordering a murder. As he does so, he prepares a sandwich for himself and for the murderers, putting it in one murderer's mouth to stifle objection. The choice brought humor into a stark moment, but the care with which the choice was deployed turned an intellectual concept about greed into a human moment of hunger.

This transformation of intellectual concepts into visceral, emotional experiences was clear in each of the actors. Patrick Stewart's Macbeth was a very human incarnation, whose soliloquoys seemed to be honest conversations with the audience. No matter how many murders, or how vile his actions were, there was a human being looking for something, whether it be from the audience or from other members of the ensemble. Kate Fleetwood's Lady Macbeth was equally invested with life; like Lady Macbeth she seemed to be able to slide from one end of Lady Macbeth's existence to the other without destroying the integrity of the character. Neither character ever milked the "great lines" of Shakespeare any more than the moment dictated.

The term 'modernization' is bandied about a lot in reference to Shakespeare, but it seems strange to talk about this production as 'modernizing' Macbeth. Although the prop elements (also from Anthony Ward) and the costume choices (supervised by Christine Rowland) were 'modern,' the feeling was not that this is what Macbeth would look like if it happened in the 21st Century. It looked to me as though this story was a universal story, and that all of these 'modern' elements had been selected for no other reason than to make the story work. The time in which the play took place was not important--what was important is that it was happening now, in the visceral sort of way that theater has of always happening now.