Season Two: Week 16

Tuesday / October 9
Written by Matt

Always tenacious, the group wanted to revisit the beginning of Act II, scene ii, which had caused us some frustration on Friday. Specifically, one of the guys wanted to try a different take on Kent, who initiates the fight. What if, he wondered, Kent is actually torn between wanting to fight Oswald and wanting to walk away? The scene is so short that he was able to run through it a few times, gaining in confidence each time. Still, the scene wasn’t coming together convincingly. “No offense,” said one of the other members after watching it one last time, “but I can tell you never picked a fight.” The man playing Kent acknowledged that he was working against type, and we rotated two new people in.

Up next was a member who has been mostly sitting on the sidelines when we put scenes up on their feet to play Kent. And Frannie jumped in to play Oswald. It was immediately a different take on the scene. At the end, though, Frannie said that she hadn’t felt her character was in danger enough to fully commit to shouting for help, as Oswald does. “Oh!” he said. “I was trying not to get too far away from myself, but maybe I should bring in more danger.” Actually, this is one of the less obvious benefits of working through these scenes with facilitators. Often--especially with the men’s ensemble--our members are understandably hesitant to act in any way threatening, even in a scene that manifestly requires a threat to be made. But working through these scenes in rehearsal, with a clear understanding that they are allowed to step into this zone under the right conditions, we allow people to safely open up a part of themselves that is often stifled and wrapped up.

The man playing Kent had no time to tap into his “danger,” though, as Frannie slipped right behind him at the beginning of the scene and out the door. “Dude!” she said. “You let me go in the house!” The next time through, he moved to block her, spitting his lines at her as she scurried between the pews in our chapel meeting place. The effect was one part menacing and one part comical. In the end, Frannie made a break for it as the scene ended, just as Cornwall and his entourage entered. The spectators were enthusiastic.

When two new guys got up, Frannie clarified the objectives of the characters: Oswald wants to go into Gloucester’s house; Kent wants to stop him. This both clarified the situation and resulted in some pretty hilarious circling around on stage as Oswald tried to scurry into “the house.” At one point, Kent had Oswald backed up against a potted plant. Still, it was beginning to work in terms of bringing clarity and purpose to the scene. When Kent tried to apologize for missing lines, Frannie made a Shakespeare Pronouncement, forbidding anyone from apologize for making line mistakes. We usually have to make this pronouncement at least once a season--going up or stumbling on lines is the easiest sort of mistake to fixate on, and the one that is least problematic, at least at this stage.

On one last time through, we decided to run the scene through after the entrance of Cornwall and the others from the house and continue up until Kent is placed in the stocks. The entrance was surprisingly intense--one man came striding over the pews!--and the “show” was stolen by a feisty Regan and a Cornwall who can only be described as… sassy! But his sassiness had a sharp undercurrent of danger, which had several people excited about the possibilities of a sassy Cornwall. On the subject of eye-gouging, one of the guys said he had made a prop eyeball out of a ping-pong ball. Frannie was intrigued, but asked everyone to strategize about “how to use that without making it funny.” After a beat, one man said, “So--no paddles, then?”

We closed by thinking about what sort of concept we want for our design. This was a necessarily free-wheeling discussion, since we haven’t talked about it before. One man who has expressed interest in playing Lear, though, had an idea. Perhaps characters (or factions) could be assigned different colors. And he had a vision of Lear beginning the play in a bright, multi-colored outfit that would be “swirly--because he’s in flux, you know?” But over the course of the play, he envisioned Lear losing each colorful article of clothing one-by-one, until, at last, “he’s just all grey. No color left.”

Friday / October 12
Written by Frannie

We decided to stick to the plan we came up with on Tuesday, engaging in a solid acting/vocal warm up and settling in to put the latter part of Act V scene iii on its feet: from Edgar’s entrance through to the bitter end. We figured out who would play each role and talked through some of the scene’s logistics: everyone wanted to see if we could go from beginning to end without stopping.

The man playing Lear talked aside with Matt during this, asking for a reminder about what the deal is with the howls. Are they actual words? Sounds? Where are they directed? There are a number of options. Matt encouraged him to try them out to see what clicked — and to fully commit to whatever he decided to do. I sat down beside them at that point, and the man asked me a similar question: is it a literal howl? “Not necessarily,” I said. “It’s a long, open vowel — more of an expression of emotion than a literal word — and he gives it to you four times.” The man said, “So is it, like, a sound of anguish?” I nodded. “Yes. He’s in absolute agony.” The man took a deep breath, gave us a wry smile, and got up off the bench to go prepare.

I encouraged everyone to stay focused, even if things went a little off, and to sustain their energy even if we needed to call a hold. That way, I said, we’d get a much better idea of how the scene flows.

And then they launched into it. Though there was some roughness due to our never having done this scene on its feet, quite a few things worked or gave us an idea of how they could work. We felt ourselves — on stage and off — completely drawn in. The man who entered with the news about Goneril’s suicide read his lines in a complete panic, which upped the ante for everyone else. Albany frequently failed to pick up his cues, but that was due to his investment in the scene: at point, for example, he became totally absorbed in looking at the sisters’ “bodies” laid beside one another on the floor.

Lear hesitated on his entrance, and I reminded those on stage to sustain their energy and give him the time he needed. Finally he entered, hitting the “ow” in “howl” but not letting loose completely (which honestly would have been too much to ask at this point). He rushed the language a bit (as did Kent), but a few lines seemed to really hit home: his voice became more resonant on “No, no, no, no life,” and he grabbed Edgar’s knee on, “Do you see this?”

The scene ended, and we began to breathe again. How to debrief, even, on such an emotional scene? It was tough to get the conversation going. Finally the man who’d read Edmund said, “I hate that Edmund takes so long to die.” I asked him why, and he said it was because he was on stage for so long, just lying there, that he hadn’t know what he should have been doing. I said that he wasn’t alone — Shakespeare leaves characters hanging around on stage all the time with no lines or action — and that, at those times, the most important thing to do is simply to listen and react. In this scene, that’s especially paramount for Edmund as the lead up to his change of heart. Another man described the process by which someone dies of sepsis after having been stabbed and suggested using that to help stay occupied during that time.

The man who’d read Albany said, “I felt like, ‘This is all happening way too fast,’ and then I saw my dead wife, and I was like, ‘Damn.’” Which explained why he missed that cue!

We talked, too, about breathing on the punctuation to make sure we don’t rush or fight the text. The language gets choppy here for a reason — the playwright wants us to slow down. We talked through a few more details, and then it was time for round two.

The scene began to live a little more as people took their time and really used the language. Now that they’d done the scene once, knowing it on the page as they do, they began to intuit all sorts of details. Before Albany’s line, “No tearing, lady,” the man playing Goneril leaped forward and snatched at the letter. Albany maintained his sense of horror while staying more on top of cues, Edgar and Edmund sank deeper into their lines, and people functioning as messengers managed to be less distracting.

When Lear entered this time, he was closely followed by a messenger who quietly wept. Lear fed off this energy — I think they planned it, but it could have been spontaneous — and, though the howls were still truncated, he definitely gave himself more vocal freedom than he had before. Both he and Kent slowed down and honored the punctuation more, and it greatly enhanced the scene for everyone. It was truly moving, and a testament to just how good this play is: we wouldn’t have to alter what anyone had done much at all to arrive at an effective staging.

I asked the group how the scene had gone. “The second time, we were all really in tune with each other,” said one man. Everyone agreed: having more familiarity meant they could connect more with the text and everyone else on stage. There were a few technical questions about projecting one’s voice in a lower register and how to maintain focus when a character is physically wounded, but the consensus was that the whole thing had worked overall. “I like the commitment,” said one man. We talked a bit more about how having that connection — that ability to build on one another’s work — is the key to acting and telling a good story with a play.

Before we left, we decided to take one more day to explore a scene or two, and then to cast the play next Friday. We’re ready. Some of these roles very clearly belong to people who personally identify with them; the rest of the casting hasn’t made itself clear, and it’s impossible to know how it’ll go. We’ll see!

Season Two: Week 15

Tuesday / October 2

Written by Matt

As we began, we talked a little bit about our conversation on Friday. “For me,” said one of them, “the important thing was the respect,” and he complimented everyone for their civility and open-mindedness. Another agreed. “This group represents hope that you be more than that piece of paper that the judge gave you after you were sentenced.” Another nodded. “The amount of respect that we’ve all been showing each other is just blowing my mind,” said another. “Seeing the responses—we just all really respect each other. That meant more to me even than the conversation.” Still another man said, “I just want everyone to know how much I value this space, and the energy I feel in here enabled me to share some things I have never been able to share before.” Another member added, “In a group this size, you usually lose this dynamic.”

Since we are now finished reading the play, we decided to return to Act I, scene i. We usually play around with scenes and characters for some time before casting, and this scene allows almost all of the major characters to introduce themselves.

Of course, as soon as we marched into the scene we remembered how complicated it is—most of the lines belong to Lear, Cordelia, and Kent, but there are at least eight and as many as a dozen people standing onstage throughout. This had two effects: first, it made the scene painfully slow during its transitions, and it made for a lot of uncomfortable standing around. We managed to stumble through the whole thing, then debriefed to talk it through.

What ensued was a little bit chaotic. This group of men is full of ideas and suggestions, which is part of what made reading the play with them so much fun. Now that we are putting scenes up on their feet, however, the desire to analyze every move and line has not slackened a bit, and there was so much to talk about! The few men who had managed not to have some role in the scene had a lot of questions about how best to cut it down or change it to make it more easily understandable. Several of the men had specific blocking and movement advice, and they went straight up to the ensemble member they wanted to talk to and started describing and marking out their ideas—all at the same time.

After some semblance of order had been restored, we talked a bit about what story we wanted to tell with this scene and how to tell that story, especially if we have to cut out a lot of the speeches (which we do). “If we’re gonna take [words] out,” said one man, “let’s keep the feeling.”

At the center of all the noise were core questions about the play: what sort of relationship does Lear have with each of his daughters? What sort of relationship do they have with each other? Or Gloucester with Edmund? Lear with Kent? France with Burgundy? All but two of the major characters appear in this scene (only Edgar and the Fool are absent), and all of the major characters who appear in the scene have dialogue that goes directly to the heart of their central conflicts. Though we have to cut it down, the play truly wastes no time in revealing the main characters to us, although all of them except Lear himself need to do a lot of that revealing in nonverbal ways (An always astute ensemble member asked, how do Regan and Goneril respond to the surprise of each being given an extra quarter of the kingdom? How do Cornwall and Albany? They have few lines—Albany has no lines spoken alone—but they are onstage for almost the entirety of the scene, and much can be understood from their reactions). The man playing Edmund wondered what he was supposed to do—why he was even present, then decided that Edmund would be bored by the whole thing until Cordelia unleashes chaos.

A second run-through went much more smoothly, though there is still plenty to work on. This scene presents many challenges, but it was helpful to walk through something big and long and messy after several months of sitting and talking or doing monologues. The theatrical process is often messy, and SIP often even more so, but that is part of the challenge and the wonder of it. It is all well and good to read through a big, complicated scene and muse about its language, but that language wants to live and breathe on a stage—or a small space cleared behind the pews in a prison chapel—and we are finally ready to let it.

Friday / October 5

Written by Coffey

“There’s a lot to be said for scenes with a lot of anger and intensity; there are ebbs and flows to it…It’s like a tide.”

After our check-in and warmup, one of the men asked that we focus on the top of Act II Scene 2, an intense encounter between Kent and Oswald. Man A cast himself as Kent, a part he has gravitated toward since we began reading the play. With Man B volunteering to play Oswald, the scene began tentatively, as both men were still very attached to their scripts but wanted to get the scene on its feet. After the first run of the scene the flood gates opened, with nearly every audience member volunteering their own analyses of the scene and their own ideas as to what precisely the delivery of Kent’s insulting litany (“A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats…”) should look and sound like. This led us to discuss why Kent is behaving with such intense hatred in this scene. “He knows he’s going into the ‘nest of vipers’. He’s letting his emotions get the best of him,” one man said. “Could it also be blind devotion rearing its ugly head?” another man asked.

We ran the scene again, this time placing a little more focus on the various levels within Kent’s attack on Oswald. This time, Man A tried circling Man B during Kent’s monologue, “trying to have more of an intimidation factor”. The second run of the scene went well and the guys became more invested in the scene the more we worked on it, but this manifested itself in a lot of corrective, prescriptive comments from the guys in the audience. Each man had such a vivid picture of how the scene could play out, but it was becoming clear that so much focus on aesthetic particulars and analysis so early on might get between us and the heart of the scene. Matt took the opportunity to encourage the men to make comments from their position as viewers, rather than giving the actors corrections.

Matt’s suggestion helped to refocus the group as we went into our third run of the scene. While the guys in the audience were able to center their attention on their experience as viewers, however, the two actors onstage agreed with their audience that the third run-through felt a bit stiffer than the second, less natural. Man B was having a hard time not moving backward whenever Man A approached. Man A expressed feeling as though he was following Man B around the stage: “I feel like I’m being upstaged.” Both actors were really clinging to their scripts and were having a hard time connecting and forming a fluid dynamic.

To help the two actors let go of their scripts and dive a bit more into the emotional content of the scene, Matt formed the fourth run of the scene around a “dropping in” exercise. While the two actors performed the scene, they focused solely on maintaining eye contact with each other and moving towards each other in a straight line, refraining from moving backward at all. Matt and another ensemble member stood near each actor, holding the actors’ scripts and quietly feeding them their lines.

It became clear during this exercise that both actors felt uncomfortable ceding their scripts (and that much control). Man B expressed discomfort with being so dependent on his drop-in reader: “I was really dependent on him. It was really difficult. It felt like I was defeating the purpose.” A man in the audience pointed out that Man B’s discomfort might be evidence that the exercise was working: “It’s more of a trust exercise, too. You have to trust that the person is going to read you the lines.” The struggle to let go of the script and connect with your fellow actors on stage during rehearsal is a long, arduous process for many professional actors, and this exercise showed us that the same process would be an important part of our production. For the fifth run, I suggested that the men use a “bucket and well” model for using their scripts on stage; filling their buckets by carefully reading one small chunk of script at a time, and then emptying their buckets by lowering the script and delivering those small pieces of script, one at a time, without looking at their script.

The fifth and final run was, according to one man, “a lot more clear and concise”. Another man said that he felt the lines were “a lot fuller”. Both actors still had a hard time taking their eyes off the script and being with each other on stage, but we all ended the session feeling as though we had found a good focal point for future rehearsals: taking time to read carefully, connecting fully with other actors, and trusting ourselves and others on stage. It will be wonderful to see the men put more focus on pulling themselves out of the script and into the moment.

Season Two: Week 14

Tuesday / September 25

Written by Frannie

“So, there’s a Tribe Called Quest?” said one of the guys as we settled in for check-in. “We’re a Tribe Called Will.”

After talking through some ensemble business, we went through the play’s characters so I could write down who is interested in playing each part. The group has bonded in a way that leads me not to anticipate much tension during the casting process, though I could, of course, be wrong! Some of the guys really gravitate toward specific roles, either because they personally identify with them or because they want a challenge — or both. Others truly have no preference and are happy simply to round out the cast wherever it’s needed.

We played a couple of improv games to loosen up, and then we got out the books to figure out what scene to start our exploration with. The plan had been to begin with the play’s final scene, but many people had left early, so we thought perhaps we should switch it up or narrow the scope.

There was a bit of “head-butting” that I couldn’t quite figure out between a couple of the guys. Man A suggested that we look at the scene when Cordelia returns; he wanted to see Man B read Cordelia, and then he wanted to give it a go. They’re both interested in the character, but it’s my impression that Man A is more interested in another role, and that the suggestion wasn’t competitive. That said, I never know all the dynamics at play, and, for whatever reason, Man B was really irritated. They argued about it enough that I finally asked if we could just find something else to work — rather than choosing scenes for other people, I said, it might be better for each person to suggest a scene that they, themselves, wanted to explore.

Man B finally said he wanted to work a portion of 5.1, from “when the sisters get into it” till the gentleman’s entrance with the bloody knife. Somehow this still led to confusion, but we finally got it figured out and got on our feet. Most of our work was figuring out what each character wants, and how that affects what each actor does physically. Albany in particular switches up who he’s talking to pretty frequently, and the guy who gamely read him needed a lot of guidance finding those moments.

At one point, he stepped pretty aggressively in toward Regan on Albany’s lines suggesting that she propose to him, since Goneril is “subcontracted to” Edmund. The guy reading Edmund said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you getting in her face about? You’re not mad at her.” Albany looked to me and said, “Well, I’m talking to her, right?” “Well, technically, yes, you’re speaking to her, but are you serious?” I asked. That was the wrong word to use — the two men who’d been bickering before picked it back up, even as I tried to explain that what I meant was that the line is said to Regan for the benefit of Goneril and Edmund — and that that impacts the staging.

For whatever reason, those two guys could not stop arguing, and I finally broke in, issued a mea culpa, explained again what I had meant, and asked if we could move on. We messed with the staging a bit more, identified some details in the text that helped with that, and tried out two options for the line, “Ask me not what I know”. I think we landed on giving the line to Goneril, rather than Edmund — it seemed to work a lot better — but we could always change our minds.

We also talked through Edgar’s motivation in this final scene. He’s just come from his father dying in his arms and (depending on whether you’re looking at the Quarto or Folio) Kent’s reappearance, and he’s behaving with more abandon than he has yet. But is he there for revenge? It only took a little discussion to decide that he’s not: what he wants is justice.

Despite the odd tension between two members, it was a good day. I’m not sure how much time we’ll spend on scene exploration — most of the guys know the play extremely well already, and we’ve done enough on our feet to have a good idea of each person’s strengths and weaknesses. We’ll see.

Season Two: Week 13

Tuesday / September 18

Written by Matt

Today we began to read the final scene of King Lear, which we anticipated would take us at least two sessions. After reading just the opening few lines and speeches, as Lear and Cordelia are taken off to prison, the group had a lot of thoughts. In addition to simply providing rich moments of character development to discuss, scenes in Shakespeare that deal with people in prison or waiting to go to prison often bring up a lot of thoughts and feelings from our members. Even before we were done, as one of the men was reading “No, no, no, no. Come, let’s away to prison:/We two alone will sing like birds i’the cage,” another took a breath, shook his head, and whispered, “Damn.”

“When we all first got arrested,” said one, “we all didn’t understand the scope of it--the scope of the time we were gonna lose.” “[Lear’s] not grasping the situation,” agreed another. “He’s talking like he’s in court, not headed to prison.” A third offered, “Sounds like he’s giving up, actually.” Some people agreed, and one even suggested that the speech is “still just a rant, like when he was yelling at the storm,” and that Lear has learned nothing. “To me,” said one new member, “it sounds like he’s coming to terms with it. He’s finding peace in it.”

One of the men said that he had memorized the speech to try to translate it into American Sign Language, and when he read it, “I didn’t see peace in it. I see the walls closing in.” The man who had read Lear’s part added, “As a king, he never had to experience [prison]. He don’t know what he’s getting into. It’s like, you see those people never been to prison talking about us and prison and stuff without understanding.” Another man reminded us that the speech does not exist in a vacuum. “If you take it alone, it’s just ranting,” he said, but said that, taken as a response to Cordelia’s line, it’s much more hopeful. “He’s finally realizing what he lost with Cordelia.”

One of the guys who has been quiet for a couple of weeks, put the moment in historical context. King Lear was written at a time of religious upheaval in Europe and England. “Historically, [the story of] King Lear was Christian,” he said, referring to Shakespeare’s sources. He talked about the Reformation and the conflict between Catholic and Protestant church factions in England during Shakespeare’s life, and then about how Shakespeare’s introduction of pagan elements into the text was controversial. This ensemble member had brought up the larger historical picture several times, and he has zeroed in on the subtextual, political elements of the play.

A little deeper into the scene, conversation turned to Edmund and Albany, as the extent of Edmund’s betrayal is made known. “Edmund feel like he’s on top of the world,” said one member, saying that his fall is even more ironic for this fact. At the same time, another member said, “[Albany] sees him as a subordinate,” and gets the last laugh.

Speaking of the sisters, two guys brought up their roles, now that they are either dead or close to death. “Goneril,” said one, “she pushed more buttons in this play than people realize,” and then went on to describe the many important plot points that Goneril put into motion. “I also feel like there’s some genuine infatuation with Edmund,” added another, countering the idea that her relationship with Edmund was all about power plays on both sides.

We focused on Edgar’s powerful speech to his brother before they fight for a while, and the man who read it went through it twice. Immediately, most of the group approached the clear logistical problem of the scene: that Edmund does not recognize Edgar until after the duel. “Did he ever really see his brother?” one man asked of Edmund, “I’ve known people who change completely when they’re mad.” Another reminded us that they have not seen one another in a long time, long enough for Edgar’s features to change. Yet another suggested that his voice could be altered purposely or from stress. At this point, we needed to return to the issues in the text--it can be fun to explore logistics and staging questions, and they can be important to the overall effect of the play in production, but those discussions can also too quickly become distractions from the main ideas. Frannie reminded the group that, sometimes, these plays just have a little bit of “Shakespeare Magic,” and two people will miraculously not recognize each other without needing to explain it rationally.

“To trick his brother, he had to really know his brother,” said one man, taking the cue. “Very rarely do you get into a fight where you get to [be right],” he mused. “Mostly, you get into a fight, and you lose your humanity.” Then he reminded us that Edgar eulogized Oswald after killing him--clinging to his humanity even after being forced to take a life. “This entire time,” said the man who had read his speech, “I feel like he’s been an arrow pointed straight in one direction.”

Next, the guys stopped on Goneril’s line, “the laws are mine, not thine,” as she asserts her authority. “She knows the laws, so she’s in charge,” translated one member. Another added, “It’s like everybody is trying to act like they’re the most important, but there’s always a comeback.”

Meanwhile, one member who had spent a lot of time with Edmund’s first speech noticed that Edgar’s lines here were echoing Edmund’s from Act I, scene ii. “It’s the contrast again,” he said. “The phrases are coming full circle.”

“But why did Edmund want to confess?” asked one man, raising a key question. “Because deathbed confessions mean something,” replied another, saying that it’s perhaps a final attempt to control the story or laugh at the others. The other man shook his head, “But that’s assuming he’s still cocky and arrogant,” he said, and explained that it would deny Edmund any hope of redemption, however small. “I think he is!” replied the other. “I think this is: ‘Yeah, I did it. So what?’”

Another of the guys quietly brought the discussion back to the words on the page, and he pointed to the evidence of Edmund’s genuine transformation. The man who read Lear observed that Edgar’s journey through the play is as important and powerful as Lear’s. “He’s about to kill the only sibling he has,” he noted, “so--yeah. That’s a lot.”

The same man brought up Gloucester’s death off-stage. “When [Edgar] revealed himself, [Gloucester’s] heart couldn’t take it. Oof… that’s heavy.” Another nodded and said, “How can a person suffer the same pain twice?”

Friday / September 21

Written by Frannie

After playing a couple of really silly games, we settled in to read the rest of our play! We began midway through 5.3, when a man enters with a bloody knife and the news that Goneril has killed herself. A couple of the guys did a quick recap of the first part of the scene, I reminded everyone that open vowels indicate strong emotion and don’t need to be said exactly as written, and then we went for it.

We paused just before Lear’s entrance to check in — things move very fast in this part of the scene. A couple of people were uncertain about what the bloody knife was all about — they hadn’t realized that was what Goneril used to kill herself. One of the guys mused, “I wonder why…” I asked him to explain what he meant, and he said, “I don’t think she cares about the fact that she killed her sister… I really don’t understand why she killed herself. Does anybody understand that?” Another man said he he thought she might actually care about her sister, in spite of everything. “My brother’s a [jerk], but I still love him. This is someone she grew up with, and she’s killed her.”

“I think she wanted to avoid the judgment,” said another man. “She finally realized she wasn’t gonna walk away scot-free.” Someone else brought up Edmund’s death, and another man shook his head, saying, “I don’t think she gave a shit about Edmund dying… I think it’s all about herself.” “Yeah,” said one of the guys, “she lost her only way out, and she’s going to be held accountable.” Another guy built on that. “The chase is over. I think Goneril was in it for the chase from the beginning… Every avenue that she was aiming for has now been stripped from her…” He continued, “I wonder if it wasn’t the lack of stimuli now… LIke I said, she didn’t give a shit if Edmund dies — as long as Regan didn’t get him.” Another man said, “She’s got nothing left to lose,” and the person to whom he was responding said, “It comes full circle. It’s just ‘do’, and it’s gotta stop somehow… Her atrocities finally caught up with her.”

One of the guys said he wasn’t sure that Goneril made the decision spontaneously. “I think she pre-planned this from the beginning… When a person loses control of what’s happening around them [they go to ] the last resort… I don’t know how many of you have been down that road, but it’s not something you do spur of the moment — you plan it out.” “Was this the last thing she had power over?” pondered another man. “Yeah,” replied the first man, “Now she just has power over herself.”

Another man reiterated his belief that Goneril’s suicide was a spontaneous reaction to the scene’s events, referring us to the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash, when a number of people killed themselves, seemingly without planning to do so. “There’s different levels of suicide,” he said. He reminded us to try to take an objective view. “When I first read it, I judged the characters quick. I judged Edmund quick, I judged Goneril quick. But now I have to think them through again.”

“I think everybody’s right,” said a man who is quite insightful but generally pretty quiet. “She had it in her mind from the beginning that her situation was unbearable… She starts to see her plans come to fruition, and she can’t go back to where she was… The decision was already in the back of her mind that she’d rather die than go back… Maybe it was self-talk that she said over and over till it became a prophecy.” He continued, “She’s gonna go out on her own terms… She’s not gonna get locked up like Lear and Cordelia… She’s not gonna face others’ judgment.”

That man nodded and said that that was in line with what he interprets as Shakespeare’s wholesale assault on the double standards of his day, including one about women who were “doing things out of strict protocol and then chastised for it — or judged unfairly for it.” Another man agreed, “She’s not doing nothing else that the men don’t do. But she’s judged.” The first man looped back to whether Goneril’s suicide was premeditated. “I believe that she was a control freak… That string was always there to pull — it’s a question of whether or not you pull it… It’s a last resort… It’s an act of defiance.”

We got into a brief discussion about lechery as a running theme in the play; who suffers consequences for it and what those consequences are. The conversation began to meander. “What about Edmund?” asked one man. “What about Edmund?” I replied. The man looked around the circle, tapping the page with his index finger. “His deathbed change of heart.” He said he’d taken my advice and made lists of the ways he’s like Edmund and the ways he’s not like Edmund. “I think in blacks and whites and have no room for greys. I think he finally caught a shade of grey,” he said. “He realized that his actions affected so many people, that he wanted [to make up for it somehow]... It was dope — it was nice to see that vulnerable side of him again, just like the first monologue, where you can see his plight — you can feel empathy for him again.” He paused. “When people say they want to win at any cost, they don’t understand what ‘at any cost’ means.” He said he could identify with Edmund’s journey; that he had had “tunnel vision” in his addiction that didn’t allowed him to see the way his actions took a toll on his loved ones — he couldn’t see it till he came to prison.

“Wait, I have a question for you,” one man said to the group. “Does Edmund get what he wants?”

There was a pause, and then one man said, “It’s interesting how [Shakespeare] made the play… It’s like in the hood or in the bad neighborhood. But just because you come up in a bad hood don’t mean that everybody in the household come out bad.” He continued, “The culprits of this play are Lear, Gloucester, and Edgar, but [Edmund] makes them look like the good guys… but the bad guys are the products of these people. What happened to Edmund’s mother? All this came from somewhere.” In that way, he said, we can empathize with the bitterness that makes Edmund want to “take everyone out”. “Did he want to take everyone out, or did he want everyone to validate him?” asked someone else.

“You remember those first few conversations about masks?” asked one man. “I think we finally found the true Edmund… But — man, it sucks that he found that all out, found his compassion, right at the very end. If he had taken all of that energy and put it into something positive, it would have been a different story.”

We picked it back up just before Lear’s entrance. The man who’d volunteered to read Lear was clearly intimidated even just by reading the scene, and he took a little time to psych himself up. At the beginning of the season, he could barely bring himself to read aloud at all, but he’s pushed himself more and more, and we waited patiently. One of the guys had been distracted and asked, “Are we waiting for someone to say, ‘Action?’” The others shushed him and said we were just waiting for the other guy to be ready.

This was just a reading, and a first reading at that, so no one expected him to go as far with the howling and wailing as we know someone will need to go in performance. But I noticed that he allowed himself to open up more vocally than he has yet; to access the power in his voice and begin to let it come out. He speaks very softly — something it seems he’s been conditioned to do — but there is a deep, resonant voice in there, slowly making itself known. I hope he’ll let us keep working with him on it.

We reached the end of the play. There was silence for a few moments, broken by one of our most passionate members literally falling out of his chair onto the ground. “Auuuuuuugggghhhhhh,” he said, lying flat on his back. We all laughed a little — we know how in love with this play he is, and we understood. “Somebody get his shoes!” joked one of the guys.

I turned to the rest of the group. “Thoughts?” I said. “I’m confused,” said one of the men. “How did Lear die? Like, what happened?” One man said immediately that, although people say you can’t literally die of a broken heart, that’s what happened here. “Just when he thought he had the opportunity for reconciliation, it’s ripped away from him – irreconcilably so.” We went on a bit of a tangent, then, about the physiological things that could cause a heart to stop (i.e., an aneurysm). I eventually called a “ratatouille” and reminded everyone that the playwright likely wouldn’t have had an exact medical condition in mind, and that we probably don’t need to settle on a literal cause of death. That’s not the point the playwright was trying to make. What is the point?

The point, one person said, is that Lear has nowhere left to go — there’s nothing left for him to do but die because there’s no hope for him. I asked if there’s hope for anyone at the end of the play. One of the guys firmly said yes: there is hope for England itself in Edgar, who will likely be a much better king than Lear because he’s experienced so many walks of life and types of people. “He’s been through being Tom o’ Bedlam, and he’s been a peasant, and maybe he’ll be wiser.” Another man agreed, saying, “Edgar won’t make the same mistakes as his predecessors.”

Coffey asked why that necessitates Lear dying. Why does this have to be a tragedy?

“The very existence of Lear was tied to Cordelia,” said one man. “And when she dies, he dies… The death is the hope. He can finally be with her. When he was alive, he was tormented, he was imprisoned. Now he’s free.”

“We learn the most from when we fall, not when we ride the bike properly,” said one man. “Shakespeare wrote this as an allegory for the human psyche and how emotions play on it… The tragedies are necessary for comeback stories. They’re emotionally cleansing… When I read it, I don’t see it as something dark and depressing. It’s beautiful... It’s like a good thunderstorm… When you’re done reading it, you’re more alive for having experienced the tragedy.”

“The whole message of the play is about love,” said one man. “This living is so hard, how can we be anything but loving? The humanity that they all were lacking at the beginning, they learn in the end. If you read it right, you can even find empathy for the two sisters… [Lear] had to go through all this to see what his daughter really was saying. ” Another man pondered, “This thing that he’s looking for, which was in Cordelia — would he have found what he was looking for in Kent?” Opinions were mixed. “Cordelia said she saw him as ‘lord and father’, said one man, explaining that Kent couldn’t say the latter. But he sort of does, others pointed out. The two men are obviously very close. “I don’t know how many of us would have the capacity to be hurt as badly as Kent is hurt by Lear, and then still to come back,” mused one man.

“Everyone can relate to at least one character, at least at one time, right?” asked one man. “This has us reflect on our own lives, which we live, every day.” Another man said, “We as the audience have the opportunity to learn without living out the mistake ourselves.” And another added, “It’s easy for each individual to get caught up in our own ego… If I don’t know I have a fault, I’ll never know without reaching out and getting help. This play is about reaching out.”

One man said that the play has opened his eyes to the harm society does by attempting to constrain women into certain roles, and that his new perspective has positively impacted the way he sees women, and the way he’d like to raise a daughter someday. The play is a check on one’s ego, another man said.

“The human life is so fragile,” said one man. “It could vanish in an instant. And what we leave behind matters most.”

Season Two: Week 12

Tuesday / September 11

Written by Matt.

We are reaching the end of King Lear! After checking in (all good things today), we set out to finish Act 4. We jumped right into reading, since we had left off in the middle of Act IV, scene vi, which is a sprawling, disjointed scene that we mostly finished last week.

As we got through the end of the scene, one of our most active members fixated on the connection between Edmund and Edgar--the ways in which they are similar while still being opposites. “Look at this!” he said, excitedly pointing at the page in his book, which is already dogeared from reading and rereading. “Edgar the legitimate is playing like he’s base, and Edmund the base-born is playing like he’s legitimate!” Another member brought us back to Edgar’s regret at killing Oswald from earlier in the scene and contrasted it with Edmund’s lack of empathy. “He’s not after vengeance,” another man agreed. “He’s not like the other ones that’ve been done wrong, and are only out for vengeance.”

After finishing this scene, several of the guys were eager to get to playing improv games. We played a simple game of Bus Stop (a variation of Hitchhiker) in which one character is waiting for a bus, and another comes and tries to get the first one to leave. It is a game of desire and motivation: the characters’ goals are opposed. After a few rounds, we stopped to ask what worked best for these little scenes. “Commitment to character,” immediately said one of the men. We moved on to Party Quirks, which they had tried for the first time last week, and which is more complicated. The “host” of the party was utterly confused by a few of them, including one whose “quirk,” improbably, was that he had balloons tied around his neck but very sticky feet. “Hey, uh, you invited me here,” he said, trying to help out, “and I feel like it was a trap.” He paused for a second. “A Venus Flytrap!”

We turned back to the play to finish Act IV. The scene, which reunites Lear and Cordelia at last, moves along quickly, but we paused often to reflect.

“I sense remorse from Lear,” said a longtime member, “and he seems apologetic.” Another noticed how much more coherent Lear is in this scene than in the last one. He has had time to sleep. One man was clearly affected by the language. “This verse here,” he said, “starting on line 45: You do me wrong to take me out o’the grave./Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound/Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears/Do scald like molten lead.” He looked up. “My own tears scald do scald like molten lead. I’m sorry, dude, sometimes I hear things like that, and I just... “ he searched for the words for a moment. “I just love words, and-- he’s just so grief-stricken. The tears feel so hot they’re just burning trails into his cheeks.”

“Lear finally gets what he was looking for: redemption,” added a normally vocal member of the group who had been quietly contemplating the scene for some time. Another noted that Cordelia asks for Lear’s blessing. “It’s totally humbling,” added the one who had been brought up short by the earlier description. Then he added, “What’s with all these people clutching to their disguises?” We discussed a bit about the use of disguises, literal and metaphorical, in the play. One member connected the masks with our discussion last month of madness: “They had aspects of the madness in them from the beginning,” he noted, “and they disguised it. But they’re getting back to the madness at the end.” After discussing that idea a bit, he added, “The problem is that Lear has always related everything back to his being a king--not to being a father or a man. And now he can own up to his mistakes as a father, and as a man.”

“This reminds me of--wait, who’s that king in the Bible?” asked one of the men. Another, who is better versed in the text of the Bible than the rest of us, clarified gently that is was Nebuchadnezzar.

“Right! Nebuchadnezzar had to go because he was too proud, and he could only come back when he had humbled himself.”

At that moment, we ran out of time and rushed to put the ring back up. Each scene in Lear offers opportunities for reflection and self-reflection. The men (and facilitators!) in that room meet the challenge directly, and we are so looking forward to wrestling with the end of the play with them.

Friday / September 14

Written by Frannie.

The guys really like reading scenes on their feet from the get-go, and, while this creates some challenges, it’s also a neat way to take stock of people’s comfort levels. Today, for example, two men who have often been hesitant to get on their feet immediately volunteered to play Goneril and Regan.

So, okay. What’s going on in this scene?

It’s clear that Regan is very attracted to Edmund and jealous her sister slept. When did this attraction and rivalry begin? People immediately saw it as being connected with power — perhaps it was when Edmund became Earl of Gloucester, or when Cornwall died, leaving Regan free to pursue Edmund. But attraction can precede action, we all agreed.

One man cautioned, “I feel like how you read it is more important than the words alone.” He said we should be reading between the lines — is this all about lust, or is there more going on? “Lust and obsession and possession — those things are powerful… You forget about that power stuff because you’re falling in love with that girl or that dude.”

Another man wasn’t so sure. “There’s no love there — they’re all just jockeying for power. It’s not even about lust. It’s about whatever they think is important to them at the time. They fight for these things, and once they’ve got it, they throw it away… It’s not enough… It’s not Edmund, it’s what he represents.” One man said, “It’s about the boy. The power is a byproduct.”

I wondered if maybe Regan’s judgment was clouded. “There’s no strategic reason for Regan to kill Goneril — she’s not gonna marry Albany for his power. All she’ll gain is Edmund.” One man said, “Now that they have that power, they don’t need to scheme.” Another laughed and said, “Man, I grew up in a house full of female cousins and things. I know how this story ends.”

“I see Edmund totally in control of the situation,” one man said. “He’s that manipulative and deceitful… He gets a taste of that power, and he wants more and more and more and more. It’s not, he’s being taken for a ride. He’s pulling it in. Don’t think for one second that all his dreams aren’t coming true.” I said that I didn’t think the two things had to be mutually exclusive, but this clearly wasn’t part of the original plan, or he would have told us at the beginning of the play. He didn’t orchestrate Cornwall’s death. So, even if he was sleeping with one or both sisters prior to that, he couldn’t have anticipated the opportunity to marry one of them. Perhaps now he’s in control, but this stuff is unexpected.

Another man agreed, saying that Edmund’s only original goal was to get Edgar’s land. “Having a different title doesn’t change who you are, though,” he said. “When you have a viewpoint what it’s gonna be like… it doesn’t make those expectations true… He’s not quite at the end yet, so he’s still trying to figure out that plot… His whole thing was, ‘I don’t want to be seen as base. And if I get a bunch of power along the way, awesome.’” He continued, “He didn’t want to be king; he wanted to be acknowledged… If anyone’s had a sibling, where you feel like you’re living in their shadow, you know that you can get caught up… and you keep chasing it. They’re chasing an idea. Some people end up in prison, chasing those kinds of ideas.”

A lively debate ensued about Edmund’s motives: recognition, legitimacy, power. Matt pointed out that Edmund got what he wanted but lost the love of Gloucester along the way. I did a bit of a fast-forward to the final scene, when Edmund, finding out that the sisters died over him, says, “Yet Edmund was beloved,” and then tries to save Lear and Cordelia before he, himself, dies. So that’s probably part of it, too — a longing to be loved.

One man was particularly fired up, as he has been about Edmund since the beginning. It’s very clear that he has a strong connection to the character. As he literally leaned to the discussion, another man grinned at me and said, “I think he should play Edmund.” I grinned right back. Things could always change, but, more often than not, when the ensemble sees a connection like this, they clear the way for that person to play the role.

We decided to read Act V, scene ii, before we left, since it’s very brief: Gloucester alone as the battle rages off stage. I asked why everyone thought that it was written this way when other plays put the action of the battle right in front of the audience. One man, who is often unfocused or antagonistic, had an epiphany: “I don’t think the battle scenes are what make this play this play. It’s everything that happens around the battles.” People nodded in agreement, and one man said, “Good job, [NAME],” and walked over to give him a high five.

Another man expanded on that. “Why do you need battle scenes when you got battle scenes through the whole play: battles of the mind. Of the human psyche, of morality, of power and ideals…” The man whom I talked to at the beginning of the day said, “And gender.” The first man excitedly said, “And gender! You’re right!”

We decided to spend all of next week on the play’s final scene. And then we’ll see how much time we want to spend on exploration before we cast it.