Season Nine: Week 15

“This is an awesome play for prisoners. 100% of us have felt like Hamlet.”

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Tuesday / December 10 / 2019
Written by Emma

One of our newer members piped up almost immediately after lowering our ring, suggesting that we “start from the beginning [of the play.]” Nodding heads around the circle seconded her idea, as one of our returning members began strategizing how we should go about doing that. She remarked that last season, “we ran the scenes three times--it was the magic number!” She smiled and added, “but for me, it’s two.”

Facilitators didn’t even have to ask the group what we would like to do today--it seemed they already knew! We started at the very beginning (which, as Lauren pointed out, is “a very good place to start”) with 1.1. Our goal was to run the scene once, collaborate on blocking, then run it again with some new ideas. Before we even got started, one woman hopped up and began strategically setting chairs, tables, and even artificial plants across the stage. “What are you setting up?” another woman asked. The first woman stopped, thought for a moment, and said, “When there’s more objects, there’s more to do!” When she finished, we got some actors onstage and began our run.

The tone of this run was, surprisingly, rather comedic. In this scene, we find guards on watch duty discussing the odd goings on in the kingdom, and they encounter a ghost who looks just like the recently-deceased King Hamlet. The actors playing the guards delivered their lines with an almost machine-like quality: upright and stoic. That is, until the ghost came onstage. One of our guards scurried behind a fake plant in fear, which elicited laughter from the entire ensemble. Even our ghost, who had held a chilled expression, began to crack a smile.

One big highlight of the run was watching one of our first-season members read for Horatio. At multiple points this season, she has expressed discomfort with acting, saying she wasn’t sure what to do when she was onstage. Facilitators and ensemble members alike have spent the past few months giving her time, space, and support to help ease her stress. It seemed like it all paid off as she confidently walked around the stage. At one point, she even realized that she was upstaging her scene partner, so she repositioned herself to open up the stage. A real pro move!

“You already know what I’m going to ask!” Lauren remarked as the scene came to a close. The question, of course, was how that scene had felt for the actors. We talked about how we liked the comedic undertones and strategized on how we could re-stage and block in order to ham it up a bit more. We imagined where the guard tower could go (using a music stand as a marker), and after some rearranging, we were ready to run it again. The second run immediately looked better. One actor stood at attention behind the music stand/guard tower, scanning the horizon for any signs of disturbances. Two more guards marched back and forth across the stage, turning on their heels in unison, as Horatio struggled to get them to listen. It was much more apparent what was going on in the scene, and we got some new blocking ideas.

The group was ready to move on to 1.2. This scene is significantly longer than the previous one and provides much of the background information needed to understand the events of the play. One of our new members volunteered to read for Clauduis, who more or less talks at everyone else in the scene for a few straight pages. Realizing what she had gotten herself into, she didn’t shy away from the task. Instead, she let everyone know that she struggles with pronunciation but to not correct her if she made mistakes. We all agreed, and the scene got started.

“Really, who isn’t in this scene?” I wondered as almost our entire ensemble took the stage. Claudius took a strong stance in the center of the stage, and the other actors fanned out behind her in a way that visually emphasized the relationships between the king and his people. Claudius carefully made her way through the challenging text, taking her time with phrases and occasionally substituting words to maintain a flow.

After a few minutes, we took a break to re-strategize. Where should people be standing? What should actors who aren’t speaking be doing to keep the energy high? The facilitators pointed out that much of the text will be getting trimmed down for performances, but it’s still a good idea to start thinking about ways to block this scene.

After tossing around a few blocking ideas, Claudius piped up to say that she was having difficulty understanding her character. She said that she was feeling more connected to Hamlet in this scene, what he was saying and doing. Lauren gave her some more ideas of what Claudius may be thinking based on where he’s at in the play, which seemed to put her at ease.

Before we could run the scene again, our time was up. We raised the ring, having made some excellent progress on serious blocking!

Season Nine: Week 14

Tuesday / December 3 / 2019
Written by Maria

What with the PCAP art show and winter sickness working its way through the facilitators, it was a small group of us today. The energy seemed a little subdued, as is wont to happen around the holidays, and no one was really interested in playing a game.

We did start to get into the nitty gritty of things though, like how to cut this monster of a play down and what roles people are starting to be interested in playing. A couple of women said that they were interested in playing Ophelia but didn’t want to sing. I assured them that if that was the only thing holding them back from considering that role, to go for it, as there are plenty of ways to get around the singing noted in the script. Another woman, who was originally only interested in pulling the curtain, said that she is considering playing Fortinbras or the Ghost. This made one of our veterans very happy, and she noted that this woman’s consistency and dedication are what’s needed to make the play a success.

We hopped around the play a bit, looking at cuts to Hamlet’s speech in Act 4 Scene 4 after meeting the captain and seeing Fortinbras for the first time. Then we jumped to the last scene of the play so we could have a little fun with the sword fight. Our Hamlet got a bit overzealous with the fighting, and I had to jump in a few times to pause the bout, as there was important dialogue between King Claudius and Queen Gertrude, and poor Laertes was trying to both follow the story and defend herself.

It seemed to lift our spirits, though, as almost all of us hopped onto the stage or called out a line or two from the audience during the play’s final scene. We left the theatre eager to start working with a trimmed down script, and with a renewed focus on working towards casting the play.

Season Nine: Week 13

“I’ve never felt so supported, like my talent meant something.”

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Tuesday / November 26 / 2019
Written by Lauren

We started out with a check-in. One woman was very excited about Thanksgiving this week and the opportunity to decorate the Christmas tree that will be going up in her unit. Another woman had some of her drawings accepted into an art show! Good news all around.

After the Ring exercise, we played some games. We had a couple of fast and furious rounds of “Zip, Zap, Zop” and “Wah.” Since we were in the auditorium, the ensemble was anxious to jump into the material and get a feel for performing on the stage. They are starting to think about what characters they might audition for, so this was a good opportunity to try acting out some of those out.

The first scene we worked was Act 3 Scene 4. One woman commented that it was a lot more fun acting on the actual stage than in the classroom. The woman playing the Ghost does not typically read or act out scenes, but was feeling adventurous tonight. After running the scene, she had ideas for the Ghost that she wanted to try out during another run. A woman who was not in the scene added that she liked some of the choices the woman playing Ghost had made, such as taking Hamlet’s sword. The woman playing Gertrude enjoyed the dynamic between her, Hamlet, and the Ghost, most notably seeing Hamlet’s reactions to the ghost while Gertrude could not see it. The woman who played Hamlet commented on how many emotions Hamlet has in the scene.

We ran the scene again. Some women chose to stick with their characters, while some new actors stepped into others. A different woman played Gertrude this time, and there were comments on how “there” her emotions were. She said that the character’s emotions were easy to pinpoint. The woman playing the Ghost tried her idea of entering from the back of the house, and the reactions to that choice were positive. We talked a little bit about staging this scene, and the overall agreement was that there should be somewhere to sit—possibly a vanity type set-up—for Gertrude.

Next, we ran the end of Act 5, Scene 2. One woman who hasn’t performed much really enjoyed getting up on the stage. It felt good to her. The woman who played Horatio told us that she is considering auditioning for that part. She struggles a bit with pinpointing characters’ emotions, and Horatio has become a character whose emotions are clearer to her than the rest.

We moved on to the end of Act 1 Scene 2. The woman playing Hamlet really liked this scene and felt her own emotions coming out in the character. She said she felt like she was asking the questions about the Ghost herself, not as Hamlet. The woman playing Horatio (previously mentioned as being interested in the part) understood the scene and the character more after having the chance to act it out. One woman responded to her with a short analysis of the character. She commented on how Horatio is so in-tune. She said she thought that Horatio does not know that the king was killed, but definitely feels that he was. He is loyal to Hamlet and shows that loyalty by going to Hamlet about the Ghost instead of to the guards. He never doubts Hamlet—he is “empathically connected to him,” she said. He never judges Hamlet or turns his back. Even in Hamlet’s death, Horatio does not have anything bad to say, sings his praises, and tells his story to Fortinbras.

Finally, we moved on to the end of Act 3, Scene 3. One woman commented that playing Claudius in this scene is like waiting for Hamlet to pounce, but he never does. We started talking about staging, and one woman suggested that the Ghost could be behind Hamlet, and that his presence could symbolize Hamlet’s conscience, since Hamlet considers killing Claudius but chooses not to in that moment. Another woman made the comment that there are a lot of inmates who are there at WHV for a long time, and that those women have seen our shows before will be seeing many more in the future. She suggested having tie-ins such as Zannis (Twelfth Night) to connect the shows from year to year, as well as to provide some comedic relief in such a dark play. This is something that the ensemble is interested in exploring further as we continue working on the play.

Friday / November 29 / 2019
Written by Maria

“I have an idea for a game!” one woman said, jumping up enthusiastically. I should have called her a “thought burglar” because when she suggested playing Bombs and Shields, I said that I had been thinking of the same thing earlier that afternoon. Someone else suggested charades since it’s a typical party game that one plays with the family at Thanksgiving.

We cleared the stage of all the chairs and everyone who wanted to play got into a circle as we explained how to play Bombs and Shields. Each person silently picks someone in the circle to be her bomb (who she will want to stay away from) and another person to be her shield (who she will want to keep between her and her bomb). We played this a couple times, and we were all giggling as we dashed around the stage in small circles of people trying to hide or escape from their bombs. “What did we learn from this?” we asked once we had all settled down. “Getting comfortable with the stage,” one woman replied, “and it’s okay to have fun.” We agreed and also briefly discussed objectives and spatial awareness, which will definitely come into play when we start staging. We then played one round of Party Quirks with five party guests, Lauren as the hostess, and the rest of us in the audience shouting out guesses about each party guest.

After more laughter, we eagerly jumped into some scenework. Two of the women wanted to look at a scene with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, so we started with their introduction to Hamlet in Act 2 Scene 2. When we asked how the scene had gone, the woman playing Hamlet replied, “He’s got some funny lines, but sometimes you just want to pinch him. He’s very wordy.” Rosencrantz had crossed down to sit on the stairs at one point in the scene, but we ran into some challenges, as the light is dimmer around the edge of the stage and our Hamlet was having trouble seeing the words in her script.

The second time we ran the scene, we added some chairs and a table to play with upstage of the curtain line where the lights are brighter. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern played off each other amazingly, with Guildenstern copying Rosencrantz’s mannerisms and facial expressions. “I understood the scene more this time,” Guildenstern said. “I was proud of [Guildenstern] because she came out of her shell more and followed her instincts.” our Rosencrantz shared.

One woman said that she really wanted to look at Hamlet with the gravedigger in Act 5 Scene 1. There was some whispering as the two women playing the gravediggers dug around (pun intended) backstage to find a way to create the grave. They ended up rolling the chalkboard over and grabbing some drumstick “shovels,” and the scene was on its way. “I want more skulls!” our Hamlet lamented after the scene was over. She also said that she wanted Yorrick’s skull jaw to flap as she played with it. It’s so great when we can start to look past understanding what’s going on in the scene and start to play with design elements, comedic relationships and connecting with other people on the stage. “She played Horatio good,” our gravedigger commented after we finished the scene for the first time. “I felt like I was playing ping pong listening to the two of them,” our Horatio replied, shaking her head back and forth. We replied that it worked for both her character and the scene.

We then ran the scene a second time, with each of the women playing a different character. Our new gravedigger created a shallower grave from a tipped over table, and our new Hamlet added two chairs. In both renditions of the scene, I burst into laughter as the gravedigger popped up with enthusiasm and pride, shouting, “Mine sir!” to Hamlet when he asked whose grave this was.

“This scene has to stay in! It’s a good comedic scene to break things up,” one woman insisted as we asked the audience for their thoughts on the scene we had just watched. “It kept us tuned in and was entertaining to watch,” another woman jumped in. There was so much silliness and energy that the time flew by, and before we were able to run the scene again, it was time to go.

Season Nine: Week 12

“You don’t have to be good at anything but being yourself.”

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Tuesday / November 18 / 2019
Written by Emma

Tonight’s session was the first time we met since finishing our initial runthrough of the play! At our previous session, we put the final scene of the play on its feet (and had some fun with pretend sword fighting). Our game plan for the next few sessions is to hop around in the play, giving newbies a chance to get to know some of the characters better and allowing everyone the opportunity to explore roles they may be interested in. With the temperature outside dipping, we may also try to incorporate more games to shake off some of the cold.

We got down to scene work. One woman had indicated earlier in the evening that she may be interested in playing Hamlet (after some encouragement from a fellow ensemble member). As such, we decided we should give 3.1 a shot. In 3.1, Hamlet is giving Ophelia the classic “get thee to a nunnery” spiel, which is one of the most pivotal moments in Ophelia’s descent into madness. The woman interested in Hamlet requested to see the scene once before she hopped in, so Kyle stepped in and read Hamlet, with a longtime member reading for Ophelia.

After the first run, we stopped to discuss. “Hamlet is being sincere and not trying to hurt Ophelia when he tells her to go to a nunnery,” one ensemble member said. “He wants her to save herself, but he’s bad at putting it that way.” A few other women agreed. The woman reading for Ophelia added, “It was good. I could have been more aggressive, to throw Hamlet's aggression back at him.”

And with that, we ran it again. The woman reading Hamlet seemed to be pleading with Ophelia, imploring her to save herself by stealing away to a nunnery. The woman playing Ophelia invested heavily in the physical movements of her character, sitting down and standing with an emotional emphasis that underlined the heavy dialogue. At one point, she even got down on the ground in desperation, confused by what Hamlet was telling her. It was a truly excellent run, with both women giving their all.

After the second run, a new member who has had her eye on Laertes asked if we could run 1.3. In this scene, Ophelia, Laertes, and Polonius are having a discussion before Laertes goes off to France. Out of the three actors in the scene, two were new members--something that was a real joy to see! It can be very tough to volunteer to read as a newbie, but these women are naturals. The scene went by quick, and afterwards we asked how the actors felt. The returning member who read for Polonius stated that it felt like there wasn’t a lot for her character to do during this scene, and that we were going to need to think of ways to keep the characters moving during these dialogue-heavy moments.

Next, we moved on to 1.5--the ghost scene. One of our newer members had quietly indicated that she was somewhat interested in reading the role of Hamlet, so she stepped up to read and Kyle read for the Ghost. The woman reading for Hamlet shone, looking engaged and animated throughout the Ghost’s long monologues. And when it came to delivering her lines, her words were full of emotion and her diction was excellent. After the run, Kyle asked her if she had considered playing Hamlet in the performance. She admitted that no, she hadn’t been considering it, because she thought the part should go to someone with more experience. Kyle encouraged her, congratulating her on a job well done and explaining that with this group there is no need to ever be worried about disrupting seniority. We work as an ensemble, and if she is interested in the part, she should absolutely go for it! Sitting next to her, I could see a subtle smile creep across her face.

Moving on, we did one read through of 2.2. During this scene, Hamlet sasses Polonius, calling him a fishmonger and flippantly insulting him. A returning member who has been interested in Polonius’ role stepped in to read the part. As the actors made their way around the stage, Polonius did a notably excellent job of separating the dialogue with Hamlet from the many audience asides. She would change her tone, turn to where the rest of the ensemble was sitting, and seem to confide in us in a way that was incredibly engaging and impressive. Moreover, she delivered the trickly lines with ease, suggesting she has been practicing outside of rehearsal.

After a quick wrap-up, we raised our ring. Colder weather isn’t going to keep this group down!

Friday/ November 22 / 2019
Written by Maria

When we asked what everyone wanted to do today, it was pretty clear that they wanted to start with a game. Lauren suggested “Animal Sounds”, as it is one of her personal favorites. Everyone gets into a circle with one person in the middle. The person in the center of the circle closes their eyes, points one finger straight ahead, and turns slowly clockwise while the rest of the circle walks silently counter-clockwise. When the person in the middle says, “Stop!” the person she is pointing to needs to make the “animal sound” that she is assigned. We started out with some easy sounds, like a motorcycle and drums, but we also had a snail making soup, a giraffe eating, sunshine, and Beyoncé. “It’s so much fun, I want to do it at my next party!” one woman said, laughing. There were a lot of laughs and smiles, and it got us off to a great start.

We then decided to go back and look at a couple of really important scenes for the play and for character development: the opening scene (which we haven’t read in months and a lot of our newer members had never read with us) and the play within a play in Act 3 Scene 2. In this version of the first scene, the Ghost was very aggressive, circling around the guards and moving chairs around. “Are we afraid of the ghost?” one woman asked. “Curious and scared, because we stay and keep talking,” another woman responded.

Before getting up on our feet to work the play within a play, we discussed our many staging options. We want the audience to be able to see King Claudius and Queen Gertrude’s faces when watching the play, but they need to see the players performing as well. Some of the women also seemed to be concerned that the audience wouldn’t be able to follow what was going on in the play. We decided to try staging the scene on a diagonal, which both the women acting the scene and sitting in the audience liked. “It allows the audience to see reactions while being a part of the action,” one woman commented. I asked about the dumb show before the players start speaking. Did we like the actors pantomiming the scene? Did we need both versions of the play? What if we had puppets? That really got the creative juices flowing.

If we had hand puppets, we would need some kind of flat for the puppeteers to hide behind. “Zannis! I knew we could put them in somewhere!” one woman jumped in, reminding us of last season’s Twelfth Night as we discussed who could help with setting up the scene. What if we had the poisoner puppet’s costume color coordinate with Claudius, another woman suggested. Another member expanded on that idea, suggesting that the puppet king could match the Ghost, who is dressed in armor with his family crest. One woman (who was very excited) suggested that the Ghost could come out and watch the play within a play from the back. We had discussed having the Ghost be more present in our production than the scenes that he is written in, and this prompted even more fast and furious ideas.

What if Ophelia’s death is pantomimed while Gertrude explains what happened to her? I suggested we use blue fabric to represent the water, but then someone had a much better idea: what if the Ghost wraps the same fabric he is wearing around the now-dead Ophelia? The Ghost could then become a sort of shepherd to the afterlife for the characters who die in the play. We mentioned that he could come out when Hamlet kills Polonius and do the same thing.

The facilitators were furiously trying to keep up with the ideas and excitement that were flying back and forth across the room, and before we knew it our time was up! It was a fantastic session with some scene work, fun and lots of great design ideas.

Season Nine: Week 11

“That sense of trust just kept bringing me back.”

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Friday / November 15 / 2019
Written by Kyle S.

After the first big snow storm of the season on Tuesday canceled our session for us, both the ensemble members and the facilitators were itching to get back into the play. After we all settled and checked in with each other, we took a moment to celebrate that, as of last week, we had finished reading through the play! Hamlet is a loooonnngg play and Act 5 is a loooonnngg act, so it was quite an accomplishment to get through it as quickly as we did.

The play ends with everyone’s plans for vengeance realized (and some accidental poisonings and drownings), resulting in the deaths of Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Ophelia (oof!). As the ensemble reflected on our thoughts about the play as a whole, we found that there were definitely some different reactions; one returning member came away with a very sympathetic view on our hero after his death—“Hamlet saved Denmark from Claudius”—and a newer member felt...less moved. Her reaction? “It ticked me off that everybody died at the end.”

After our conversation, we tried moving on to playing some improv games, with little success. The consensus around the room was that the ensemble wanted to put the final scene up on its feet instead. Act 5, Scene 2 is long and complicated, so we split it up into sections. It begins with Hamlet recounting to Horatio how he foiled Claudius’s plan to have him killed, and sent Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to the chopping block instead. Then, Osric informs Hamlet that Laertes has challenged him to a fencing match, which Hamlet accepts against Horatio’s urging. One of our newer members played Hamlet, but expressed that she was having trouble finding ways to move around during blocks of long text. One of our returning ensemble members quelled her worries by reassuring her that “it’ll come to you the more you know your character,” while another offered this wise piece of advice: “If you have an idea, use it. If it doesn’t work, we’ll save it for later.”

Then we moved on to the fencing match. Claudius’s poisoned glass and Laertes’s poisoned rapier made the event deadlier than intended, resulting in the death of not only their target, Hamlet, but of themselves and of Gertrude. The ensemble had a lot of fun with the sword fighting, and took on the challenge of timing out a scene in which four characters die at different times, all monologuing while they do it.

After we finished putting the whole play on its feet, we moved back to Act 1, Scene 3. We realized that the ensemble members who joined at the end of October never got to meet Polonius and never knew an un-maddened Ophelia. This scene lets us see Laertes’s relationship with his sister before he leaves for France, and gives us a pretty good lens into Ophelia’s complicated relationship with her father. A longtime member offered to read as Ophelia, and played her as a rebellious teenager, which gave us a very new way to look at the character. The woman who played her father, Polonius, was given kudos for her balancing act of authoritarian to concerned father. This scene took us to the end of our session, but it opened up the door for us to start exploring these characters in new and exciting ways as we get ready to cast our show.