I had my first discussion with the cast of Performance
Ensemble tonight, and I have to say that I am so lucky to be working with such
intelligent, active-thinking people as a part of this project. They’ve already
put together so many ideas in such few rehearsals, and this is already shaping
up to be an incredible piece. But I had no doubts based on my impressions of
the piece last year, and my admiration for Anjanette and her way of working. I
came in with my basic agenda, and she let me take it on, participating in the
discussion herself as we discussed one of the most interesting themes that I
believe is present in Romeo & Juliet…
honor.
As I
stated in my last post, I found two amazing books on the subject of honor and
dueling in sixteenth-century Italy, and have spent the past few days dissecting
and pulling quotes from these very dense texts to help give the cast an
impression of the cultural idea of honor. First, we handed out copies of the “bite
your thumb” scene from Act I of R&J (Anjanette’s idea, not mine, to give
credit where credit is due.) We assigned parts, and had people read it out loud
twice. It helped put me back into the mindset of the play, and give the cast a
sense of what we were dealing with. I then asked the very simple question “What
is honor?” I got a few slow answers of integrity,
virtue, and what others think of you? I used these as a jumping off point to go
into my findings from the books. In my own words, I boiled these ideas, which
were based on Aristotle and various writers and thinkers of the Italian
Renaissance, to this:
“Honor is
the perception of virtue from others, endowed by humanity, and not nature. A truly virtuous man does not
have honor. He is a hardcore altruist, as opposed to the honorable man’s softcore altruism. Good reputation vs. doing
the right thing.”
The discussion began to liven up. Ideas where thrown back in
forth, including a reference to the movie Mulan.
I then asked another question “What does honor look like today?” From
here, the discussion was taken from me, as the cast began to equate honor with
everything from rape to terrorism to going to church as a child. My ideas of
honor were challenged as I began to think about how I am constantly worried
about how I am perceived by others, and I fear someone having the wrong
impression of me and being seen as “dishonorable.” I recorded the entire
conversation, and may try to post it on here if I can figure it out.
I wanted
to get these ideas of honor in their heads as I went into the next part, which
was sharing information on the culture of dueling. In the second of Bryson’s
books, which deals specifically with the elements of a duel, he details out an
order to things. The basic “order” of things goes as such: an insult, the mentita (or giving of the lie), the
challenge, the preparation (including the choosing of the weapons), and then
the eventual combat. Now this is a gross over simplification of things, but it
gives you the basic gist of how a quote “legal” duel took place during this
time period. I say that because the duels fought in R&J go through very
little of the process, which would typically include paperwork and legalities,
and I believe that raises the stakes of these duels even more.
As I had
been reading through these steps, I remembered that I had heard a similar order
of things before as it pertained to dueling, and that came from Dusten, our
combat teacher’s, comedy sword fighting duo the Dueling Fools. Having seen them
perform once before, and having watched some of their videos I realized I had
watched a few before that consisted of the two characters going through the
order of things before their duel. So, I pulled the cast into the computer lab
and played them the following two videos, so that they could put get some more
historical background and, of course, laugh.
And that’s
where I ended my time at rehearsal. I had originally planned to discuss another
topic after I showed them the video, but I ran out of time, so that will have
to be saved for another rehearsal. Anjanette is giving me more of a shape of
what she wants, and we discussed how to include some of the ideas spawned from
today into the piece. In the meantime, the plan is to start teaching them
weapon basics next Wednesday, and continue on in the process. It’s time for me
to now not think about dueling for the first time in a few days. Fight on J
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