All The Virtual World's A Stage

Last week I played my first Virtual Reality game. It’s called The Tempest, have you tried it?

There’s this old woman, Prospera, who lives on an island and wants revenge, it seems. I was the only player on that day, so I started as myself, then became Miranda…then I think I was the bad guy at one point, and then I was back to Miranda.

The whole Virtual Reality experience left my state altered for about 18 hours after the event. And not in the same way I used to be altered by live theatre experiences back in the old days. It was overwhelming at first - I was definitely overstimulated. But it soon faded to just an occasional flash through my brain of a spinning and swirling triangular cartoon character.

Now it’s hard to remember that it even happened at all. I mean, I know that it did. I have a sense of myself standing in my living room, looking like Princess Leia in that bounty hunter get-up that time she rescued Han Solo from Jabba The Hut, and, I gather, waving my arms around and shuffling my feet *cue hysterical laughter from those watching me*.

But the memory is housed in a different part of me, because my body-brain can’t recall much of it. I have no physical reference point of walking into a theatre and sitting in my seat. My heart did not beat in tempo with fellow audience members. My breath did not sync with the players on the stage.

Back at the start of 2020 I wrote about working and learning remotely, and the past six months has taught me a little more about that. And I have a lot to say - I am a talker, after all, and when I learn a little, I talk a lot. But in that respect, I’m thinking about the benefits of online learning, and I’ll try to articulate more about that later. Tomorrow. Because today I’m thinking about what happens when mind and body are separated. What happens when the head brain is receiving all the information and stimuli? The body brain is relegated to responding to, and adapting to, the unusual weight of machinery and electricity putting pressure on the cranium. Huh. What heavy issues must be virtually grappled with up there…

I’ve just now realized that in the Tempest game, I saw no Caliban. Where was that character? Was it too hard to integrate the data for a figure who embodies connection to the land? Too hard to find a digital role for a physical sense of place?

No wonder those VR figures have large heads covered by powerful, magical masks. Heads which lead the movements, and drive the figures endlessly forward, onward, through virtual space, as their light bodies float behind.

Spring Training

Happy Spring Break!

I'm offering individual coaching sessions via Zoom from Monday March 16th to Friday April 3rd.

As well, I have a small number of in-person session times available in Vancouver, B.C. (with heightened hygiene practices, no handshake greetings, etc, for public health reasons).

Audition coaching, voice training, text analysis...your time, your choice. We have the technology - let's keep working!

Just reply here to let me know you're interested, and I'll send you details about rates and scheduling.

See you in the virtual studio!
Alison

The Gravity of Your Words

When I’m studying Shakespeare text, I try to start from a neutral place, as much as possible. This is a challenge, given how loaded words are. I am far from objective, and words are evocative. But I do my best to step back and look at the words on their own terms before making big decisions about them.

In his excellent book ‘Shakespeare On Toast’, Ben Crystal talks about what he calls the “false friends” – words Shakespeare used in the 1600s and which are still used today, only the meaning has changed. And the change, I’ve noticed, is often a negative one. There is a downward pressure on language, as if the words, like humans, are giving in to gravity. A downward pull to an adverse place.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘rhetoric’ as the art of using language to persuade. But today, that word is mostly used to describe empty, meaningless talk meant to confuse, obfuscate, or deceive. How did it go from being a valuable skill set to simply a fancy word for ‘lies’?

Or, take a word like ‘doom’. It pops up often in Shakespeare’s plays. Romeo asks the Friar, “what is the Prince’s doom?” Cleopatra says she will kneel “Till from his all-obeying breath I hear / The doom of Egypt.”

One’s doom was one’s fate. It could also mean a decree, judgement or decision. Yes, some of the Shakespearean examples turned out to be pretty serious, but that wasn’t necessarily built into the word itself.

In current times, we don’t separate the gloom from ‘doom’. We say the failed relationship “was doomed from the start”, or “that spells doom” when things look really dire. The word is now synonymous with disaster.

Changed meanings can be subtle yet powerful. The word ‘sad’ used to simply mean ‘serious’ or ‘solemn’. Two people “in sad conference” were just people having a serious talk. No weeping required.

The small, seemingly innocuous words are especially fascinating to me. ‘Should’ is an auxiliary or helper word for verbs, and not nearly so important as the verbs themselves. It’s doing its job in a statement like “I should like to meet her” – it’s about liking and meeting (and her, probably). In the Taming of the Shrew, when Kate says she is “as heavy as my weight should be,” Petruchio picks up on that ‘be’ and responds with “should bee? Should buzz.” It’s the “be” part that makes a pun.

But modern actors often emphasize “should”s in their texts, adding a sense of obligation or of being compelled. That might be appropriate in, “I SHOULD do my homework though I’d rather play outside,” but in many other instances, it colours the thought with a feeling of being constrained or doing something against one’s will. And that’s a downer that Shakespeare’s characters might not need.   

In a world of inflation (economic, academic, ego), we respond with linguistic deflation. When ‘amazing’ has become a synonym for ‘good’, and ‘awesome’ is really just ‘fine’, does joy have any meaning? Words are products of their time, and a robust language like English is constantly changing – that’s good. Through the centuries, meanings can start to slide around a little – that’s natural. But what does this hopeless slide say about us?

May we never lose our ability to feel the raw power of words. As James Hillman says in ‘Culture and the Animal Soul’:

“By means of speech we enact what animals do in

behaviour. With speech we warn, claim territory, challenge

and destroy. With speech we court and seduce a mate, and

by means of speech we instruct our offspring and organize

our group disciplines... Like tigers losing their stripes, like

beached whales and blind eagles are we without our

rhetoric.. “

Written in the Body

When I was completing my master’s degree, my advisor told me that her wish for me going forward was “that you spend time every day just being in your body.” She had noticed my habit of intellectualizing voice work. I believe this can be a strength for a coach: investigating the structure of languages and researching the meanings of words. I value the clear articulation of complex thoughts through the spoken word.

But the human voice is bodily process, a physical action. I do now spend time every day being in my body, and I seek new ways of developing and honouring this physical side of voice and text work.

Recently, I had an opportunity to work with Deaf artists on Shakespeare text. This extraordinary group of performers challenged my traditional approaches to text work, executing exercises in ways that were completely different from what I’d experienced before, adding new meaning and resonance to the texts. As I perceived through interpreters, the signed languages were communicating something far beyond a literal meaning. And this turned my phonocentric exercises - used by hearing actors to uncover layers of deeper meanings - into something of a game of catch-up.

My sense is that ASL expresses, through the body, not only poetic structures, grammar, and images, but even metaphor, temporal aspects, or emotional states. Of course this is particularly exciting in Shakespeare performance, which is always a process of interpretation – there is no objective ‘Hamlet’.

For me, it’s also a fitting reminder that words and ideas don’t reside solely in the brain. I have often thought of words being physical: muscular and filled with kinetic energy. But it’s also true that our bodies are linguistic. Now I find myself circling back to hear my mentor’s voice, “be in your body”. So maybe that’s my homework: investigating the structure and meaning and signs in the language of the body.

Summer is Over But I Still Can't Stop The Feeling...

The Kid informs me, with an epic eye roll, that I should have tired of Justin Timberlake’s ‘Can’t Stop the Feeling!’ months ago.  It's true, this ain't usually my kind of music.  But thanks to a funny and insightful podcast called 'Switched on Pop', I now understand why I’m still going electric wavy over this pop tune...text painting!  A synesthete's dream, text painting makes me think of Shakespeare -- how sounds and rhythms often reflect or underscore the literal meaning of characters' words.

Pick it up at the 15 minute mark for the specs on how exactly JT text paints this song, or listen to the full podcast for the broader discussion.  Plus, MC Hammer and Elvis Costello too:

http://www.switchedonpop.com/38-justin-timberlake-goes-medieval/

Play Dead

Waking up this morning, it drifted through my mind how Shakespeare liked to have actors play dead. Of course, the actual death toll in the Complete Works is substantial, and people have compiled lists, created pie charts, and performed new plays to illustrate the many ways characters are sliced, diced, pummeled and poisoned.

But there are also characters who only pretend to die, and that event is usually the turning point in the story. There’s Hero in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’: she ‘dies’ because of being shamed at the altar, and so that Claudio can feel the grief and loss and regret for his mistaken punishment of her. In ‘A Winter’s Tale’, Hermione is another virtuous woman accused of being false. She too must appear to be dead until her husband truly recognizes her innocence and mourns his loss.

This summer at Bard on the Beach, you will see Juliet pretend to die to avoid marrying Paris. In ‘Pericles’, Marina will be thought to be killed by the evil Dionyza’s henchman, and Thaisa, believed to have died in childbirth, is thrown overboard a ship by Pericles.

Sometimes the audience is in on the secret although the characters are not. The deaths, real or pretended, are always important. Men really die and their ghosts often return to haunt the killer (or an indecisive child). When the women die they don’t haunt anyone. And sometimes they have to pretend to die just so the men can grow up.