It’s Amazing
June 22nd, 2008
It’s amazing that audiences seem to understand Shakespeare’s enigmatic dialog when the performers often don’t even know what they’re saying without consulting the drama turd.
(Affectionate nickname for Holly Van Houten, MSF’s resident dramaturge. She’s one of those people who spends a lifetime figuring out what nuggets of wisdom the Bard buried beneath the archaic language.)
Maybe, as director Peter Kjennas believes, people don’t need to fully understand the dialog to know what’s going on in a Shakespeare comedy. Maybe the action and general tone fully communicates its deeper meanings.
Another thing that bothers some folks about Shakespeare is the tendency for many actors to attempt to use British accents when performing his work that mostly come off sounding foppishly foolish.
It’s quite annoying to hear American actors using bad British accents while playing Italians who presumably should really have Italian accents.
Apparently, American actors fail to consider that the reason Shakespeare’s works have been played so much and so well with British accents is because they were mostly played by real British actors talking and reacting normally in their own voice who would not attempt to use a cheesy sounding foreign accent.
I believe Americans playing Italians or other foreigners in a British play ought not try to emulate Gielgud or Olivier and just talk as naturally and realistically as they can in their own voices - within the bounds of the imaginary circumstances, of course.
British actors playing Nazis, for example don’t try to use bad German accents either.
But American actors portraying Germans seem somehow compelled to affect some bad accent they heard in old WWll movies.
The problem - especially with Shakespeare - is that actors often spend so much time crafting what mostly end up being poor caricatures that they overlook the opportunity to find real reactive moments and lose the opportunity for meaningful communication with their fellow actors. And that, of course, generally results in pedestrian performances which would probably greatly disturb the Bard were he still around.
I hope that one day we can present an updated version of a Shakespeare work which will be understood by modern audiences and still knock the proverbial socks off even the purists.
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2 Comments Add your own
1. Administrator | June 24th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
You are addresses two of the toughest things about doing a Shakespeare play: the language and making it real and alive for the audience.
There are so many misconceptions about how to do a Shakespeare play, such as the fake British accent fallacy you mention. There is a wonderful investigation of this done in the 80s that established that the most likely “accent” alive today that would have been spoken commonly by actors in Shakespeare’s plays is now found in the Appalacian Mountains in the US! Hicks, we would call them that sound nothing like Lawrence Olivier.
Be that as it may, I believe the reason the language still resonates is that it’s just so rich in images, thoughts and spiritual dimension and that it is the foundation of our modern language. In this brief period around the end of the 16th century the English language evolved by leaps and bounds and became what we speak today, albeit our vocabulary has suffered over time.
There is a certain magic that occurs when the actors fully understand what they are saying and simply communicate with passion and committment. The audience “gets it” and flies along for the ride. Why? My belief is that it’s because we have become a society that focuses on literacy but not language. The root of the word language is tongue, not pen, and in Shakespeare’s day illliteracy by our definition was shared by the vast majority, they couldn’t read. On the other hand, the guy who cut your beef knew more words and could use them than the above average University graduate of our day. So, who is “illiterate?”
We do a great service by giving this living language back to the people because that is what language is essentially for, speaking, not reading.
I have seen a couple of modernized versions of Shakespeare plays and hybrids as well that use a combination of his and modern words. They can work, but often fall off as being just clever rather than with substance. It’s a great challenge that I would like to see fulfilled one day, though I believe that doing his plays edited by as written is still the best path.
2. Shannon Norris | July 2nd, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Who was the author of the “Amazing” post? Doth it say?
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