notes from the dramaturg
production dramaturgourd
saturday, october 16, 2021
when working on beckett, a little lightheartedness and levity can be helpful. in an effort to add a little cheer to the atmosphere, i brought in a tiny pumpkin to our most recent weekend rehearsal. it is, after all, october!
images from left to right: kenzie bradley (actor, play and come and go), chelsea drumel (production dramaturg...ourd), alison scaramella (actor, rockaby and come and go.)
revolving it all
thursday, october 14, 2021
with the filming of play wrapped and in the rear window, the rehearsal process has turned to the remaining three plays on the performance roster: footfalls, rockaby, and come and go. and what a delight it has been to make that shift. play is thrilling, and our actors were masterful of its difficult language, but it’s a nasty little story about less-than-admirable characters. it’s a work that does not exactly tug at your heartstrings so much as it dangles and jerks them around like they’re attached to puppets.
at the beginning of this process, i was encouraged to find as many threads of connectivity to weave between each of these four plays. if you had asked me this in may, i probably wouldn’t have more to say than they’re all written by samuel beckett. beyond that? not much.
as with anything else, slowly i started to find more as i spent time in the room and the more i revisited the text. with the rehearsal process of the remaining three plays in full swing, my eyes and ears have become usefully more attuned. reinforcing this attention has been the balance of writing my thesis proposal (more on this later, inquiring minds...) and the program note, both of which have made me examine all four of these plays again with more care. the connective tissue between these four plays is more binding than i had first realized. the relationship between the three lovers in play is radically distinct from the trio of friends in come and go. the repeated sound of the rocking chair in rockaby is different, but not unlike the sound of pacing footsteps in footfalls. both may in footfalls and flo in come and go speak of childhood memories, but from unique perspectives. and more and more. this is just a sampling.
sometimes, with a play, you just need to sit with it for a while before it unfolds and blooms to you in a recognizable way. with beckett, especially so.
all that was just play
thursday, october 7, 2021
a picture of a camera that i took on the camera of my phone while on a break from play, a play that we filmed to be played in a theatre. whew!
tonight, i worked in an environment fairly atypical of a dramaturg: a film shoot. why dramaturgs aren’t regular employed on television and movie sets, i will never know. it would make a huge difference! if a dramaturg had been present on the set of mare of easttown, they probably would have never said "PECO gas," a phrase that any philadelphian who watched knew did not dramaturgically track! but i digress.
for now, there might not be dramaturgs on film and television sets. but, there is the role of the script supervisor, a job which aligns pretty well with the skill set of a dramaturg has. tonight, we had our first night of filming for play. our director, ed sobel, charged me with the task of capturing details in a shot list. i also acted as a sort-of script supervisor. on a traditional film shoot, the script supervisor is responsible for continuity of verbal and visual integrity of the script. part of my job during this shoot was to keep track of the script and take note if a take of the correct iteration of whichever scene we filmed had not yet been captured.
it is pretty fascinating how radically different the process of filming is from performing theatre. mainly, there is so much more within human control. unlike a live performance, if an actor missed a line, the team could go back and re-shoot. easy. no suspension of disbelief threatened. the performance is in the hands of the director and the post-production team to edit, enhance, and add effects as they see fit.
luckily for us, villanova theatre has a brilliant resource to aid us for all of our cinematic needs in hezekiah lewis. heze is a beloved assistant professor at villanova, filmmaker, and our director of photography for beckett bites. for this film shoot, heze generously offered up his studio to us and aided in every step of the process. also in the studio with us was our resident lighting designer at villanova theatre, jerry forsyth. in some ways, the night felt like a mini-reunion, as many of us had worked together last year on bakkhai variations, a collection of five filmed plays based on anne carson's translation of euripides' bakkhai. if there is one thing i know for sure, it's that i'll never again take for granted how much better it is to be with other people in a room (and not on zoom.)
we had a really smooth and productive two evenings of filming, and i cannot wait to see how it turns out. our actors in particular, were troopers. the text of play is incredibly difficult to master and requires intense concentration and endurance. all three of them adapted quickly to the change of setting from rehearsal room to film studio and delivered beautiful performances. how will it turn out? you'll just have to come and see.
hellish half-light
first encounters of the beckettian kind
thursday, september 30th, 2021
in the name of dramaturgy, collecting sand from the beaches of the jersey shore. not quite the french riviera or grand canary, but sand from a sunny place, nevertheless.
last tuesday night, i got struck by lightning. or, well. no. not really. but i did finally figure out an idea for the "first encounter" i would present on the evening of the first full rehearsal of cast, production team, faculty and designers of beckett bites, which was earlier this week on tuesday.
the first encounter is in many ways, a pitch. it's the first and strongest opportunity that the dramaturg has to present information that will be helpful and relevant to the process. it's also the best chance to illustrate if and how the human being in the role of dramaturg will be helpful and relevant to the process. at it's best, the first encounter engages the team in a way that will ground them in the work to be explored and also bind them in an experience with one another before they embark on the journey of rehearsal. in short, the stakes are high. a week out from the first full rehearsal, i had nothing. "something with a metronome, maybe????!" was my response when asked what i planned to do. reader, she was in a state of acute panic.
then during rehearsal one evening, my ears perked up as i listened to the actors work on play. i heard the lines "i smell her off you," "just strolled in all honey," and "all night i smelt them smoldering" anew, and suddenly realized how large a role the sense of smell plays in play. a lightbulb went off, and i wondered if my first encounter might involve the incorporation of those scents somehow. when i went through and made a list of them, i was surprised at how many there were. honey, olives, fresh cut grass, the sea, bonfire smolder - only to name a few. quite suddenly, i had an idea for a multisensory experience. one after the other, i started to think about ways in which i might engage all five (or six) senses that would incorporate the other three plays.
i've witnessed firsthand just how powerful and enhanced theatre can be when the experience is immersive and multi-sensory. prior to my time at villanova, i had the good fortune to work with the fantastic folks of bluelaces theatre company, an organization devoted to devising multisensory theatrical experiences for the neurodiverse community. one of their oft-used props (and biggest hits) from those experiences were "scent jars," created with the intention to expose audience members to the scents of the world of the play. so, i had scent jars. i started to think about it as a "scent jar station." but what else? could i do something maybe with phones to demonstrate how they isolate us from one another? rockaby has a rocking chair, of course. but would i be able to get one for folks to rock in?
with to the generosity of the prop shop, i was able to secure a rocking chair. after a few trips to storage, rummaging through my own kitchen items, and the kindness of a friend who lent me ashes from her fire pit, i had enough supplies to create four distinct environments. i'll spare any readers the details of me running around the mullen center in an anxious haze, but by the time tuesday came around (and by some miracle), i had everything i needed. i guided the cast and team through four different multi-sensory stations, with goal of exploring the sensations of isolation and darkness as well as connection and light.
i won't go on and try to explain every specific moment from every room in an effort to avoid a tedious reading experience. but, here is what i know. after taking a sniff of a jar of kalamatas, i heard the line "gazing out over the olives" entirely differently. and that the sensation of sitting alone in a rocking chair in a practice room while others were outside the door drinking tea and chatting made the unease and loneliness of rockaby completely visceral. and finally, that i had the most absolute game, all-in, yes-we-will-do-this group of people i could have ever asked for to come along on an immersive beckettian carousel. our full evening of rehearsal with all four plays felt alive and electric, and it would not have worked without them.
words are all we have
tuesday, september 21st, 2021
today, september 21st, is the first day of fall and thus the end of the season of extra daylight, warm temperatures, and what turned out to be my great beckettian summer. since receiving the assignment to serve as production dramaturg on beckett bites, i have absorbed an immense amount of information. i have also learned that the early days of dramaturgical work can be a little lonely. conversations about the material are limited, really only between the dramaturg and the director. there's a benefit to that, but i admit that the collaborative joy of rehearsal has quickly made the earliest part of this process, much of which was spent alone, fade into my memory.
this summer, i racked up my collection of borrowed items from falvey library, fell down an assortment of rabbit holes, and fell utterly in love with dramaturgy. perhaps it was the relevance of our current moment, the attachment i have to beckett and his work, or the curious itch i was regularly able to scratch in reading and research. it's likely a blend of each of these, but i am all the more grateful for it. it seemed worthwhile to me to attempt to chronicle this experience as it is happening, and the best way to do that, it seems, is through a blog of sorts.
so, let us begin at the beginning.
in june, i made a stop by my favorite used bookstore on earth - hooked on books in wildwood, nj. i've been hunting for books at this gem since i was a teenager. growing up, my father and i would enter this store with no specific literary longings and leave with more books than either of us could ever hope to finish in the course of a week's vacation. i have found countless arden-edition shakespeare plays for the price of a latté, and i am always encouraged by their robust dramatic literature section. so, when i found a copy of damned to fame by james knowlson for under $12, i was delighted. maybe not a typical beach read, clocking in at 872 pages, but an invaluable resource that i not only found useful, but highly enjoyable and readable. i think biographies are at their best when respect for the subject is extremely high, and knowlson's work is an excellent example of that.
reading damned to fame also emphasized an important point - the value of record preservation. with beckett, the world has an usually vast amount of quality records of his life. there is a wealth of scholarship, yes, but there is also decades of correspondence. with damned to fame, knowlson gave the gift of a replete and honest biography that allowed me to understand the nature of beckett's life and work. with so many of our greatest artists and writers, there is not nearly as much available to help us understand them on a deeper level as there is for beckett. it is a gift to all who enjoy his work.
my hope is that, by including these notebook entries, there might be a little more light shed on the dramaturgical process. defining what a dramaturg does can feel a little like grasping at straws or describing the taste of water, but it is not impossible. i have become so swept up as the rehearsal process has gone into full swing, but i do not want the earliest parts of this experience to be forgotten. as beckett said, words are all we have.