Ben Crystal speaks at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo about maintaining the performing arts and Shakespearean performance during a pandemic. This talk was hosted by Thomas Dabbs and sponsored by the AGU English Literary Society.
Ben Crystal speaks at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo about maintaining the performing arts and Shakespearean performance during a pandemic. This talk was hosted by Thomas Dabbs and sponsored by the AGU English Literary Society.
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Hello I'm Thomas Dabbs
Aoyama Gakuin University Department of
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English and American
Literature and I am very
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very happy to be introducing a good
friend of mine and a colleague and a
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very fine actor
a writer a producer a curator of an
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ensemble of actors who have done global
performances, Ben Crystal
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Ben has spoken uh at Aoyama Gakuin
before
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and some of you are here and he's spoken
at your universities and has performed
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at your universities and he's going to
go into this tonight
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what I need to do is to make sure that
we
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have on record that we are
number one I want to make sure that we
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are recording and we
are and I want to make sure that
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in the recording i say that this is
October the 29th
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2020, roughly 6 30 at night for
us and another time for Ben in in Wales
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and this talk is sponsored by the
English Literary Society
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of Aoyama Gakuin Department of
English
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and American Literature and we have
members
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from that society in attendance tonight
and
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that said we're very very happy to
welcome Ben
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Ben the stage is yours
Thank you so much Tom
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it is a a great sadness for me to not
be
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actually in Japan today
this year and it's a great
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pleasure
to see so many familiar faces it's a
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great honor to
have you here Igarashi sensei Taniguchi
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sensei and all
my other colleagues that I can't quite
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see on the same page
of this Zoom world and my deep thanks
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to
Dabbs sensei and
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for inviting me to speak for them
again. This will be my fourth consecutive
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year
working in Japan, let's say in Japan. I'm
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not
actually there but I'm virtually there
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and my heart
is very much with you all. I miss
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Japan very much
and it's yeah it's a great
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pleasure and honor to be here. I hope
all your families are safe and well and
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I hope that
the last seven months have been
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gentle and kind to you as much
as possible in a global pandemic.
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As you are probably aware
the pandemic has not been kind to the
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arts industry
the creative arts in the UK
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and in America is
is almost non-existent and
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we were very very fortunate last year to
come to Japan
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with three Shakespeare plays when i say
we this is the
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myself and the Shakespeare ensemble the
the ensemble of actors that i've been
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lucky to curate for the last three years
when we left Japan having
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brought the experiment of and the
question of can we
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make Shakespeare plays
rehearse and perform them as fast as
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Shakespeare's company did 400 years ago,
and we found out that we could but we
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had some great lessons to learn.
We learned a lot of lessons whilst in
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Japan and we were very excited to
unpack those lessons and to improve our
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crafts
ever further and
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we planned a what we call an
R&D a research and development time in
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Wales not very far from where I live
here in north Wales
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up in the mountains of Snowdonia and
colleagues and actors from all over the
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world from
North America east west coasts
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from India from all over Europe
booked to come to the UK
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and we were going to meet in the
mountains and work for two weeks
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and improve our craft not perform not be
working towards a production--just to
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improve our crafts
and then shortly after that we were due
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to fly to
the east coast of America and we were
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going to raise a production of 'The
Tempest'
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in two days, and then we were going to go
to New York and raise a production
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of well we weren't quite sure what that
show was going to be
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actually, but we were going to teach what
we learned in the research and
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development process
to a group of actors that had never
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raised a Shakespeare play
before in such a short space of time
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so it was very much about refining and
defining our toolkits
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and then seeing if how easy it would be
to teach that
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toolkit to a bunch of essentially
novice actors or at least novice in the
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practice of raising Shakespeare plays in
a very very
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short space of time
some of the my colleagues arrived in
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Manchester airport
on, let's see now,
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was it March the 20th. They didn't leave
the airport. They got to the UK
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from America and from India and
essentially had to stay in the airport
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and catch the first flight back home.
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The R&D was due to start two days after
the
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global pandemic lockdown began
and so everyone went home and
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the prospects of being
of creating theater which
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is after all singular
in that a lot of people think that
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theater only exists when you are
sharing the same physical space
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breathing the same air
bathing in the same light as
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your audience actors and audience
together,
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theater seemed very very far away from
us in March
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and one of the ensemble members from
India a man called Anirudh Nair,
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who had just been performing with a
different company in Japan
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in Kyoto, he
suggested to the ensemble that we begin
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to meet
online virtually, either in Zoom or
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Google Meet, it didn't really matter
which, but we would meet
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and discuss
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whether it was possible to collaborate
at distance,
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never mind the global pandemic because
we're an international ensemble.
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There are two factors that are always
going to
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inhibit or be obstacles to our being
able to
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meet and come together and one is
finance
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and the other is climate. Every time we
want to get together to do a production
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or to rehearse,
someone has to fly somewhere
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and of course there are a number of
costs involved in that how can we
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collaborate at distance
and let's pretend that the global
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pandemic isn't a factor,
he said and so we began to meet every
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week and we began to have
what we call distance collaboration
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meetings
and three to four months later this was
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in April by August so what's that--
April,
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May, June, July August--four months we met
in this way and the result of that
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meeting
was the project that Dabbs sensei kindly
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invited me to,
to come to speak with you today about
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which is a project we called
'What You Will and for those of you that
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might be familiar, more familiar with
Shakespeare's plays,
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you might remember that 'What You Will' is
the
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alternative title to Shakespeare's play
'Twelfth
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Night,' and i
will explain why we chose that title a
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little more
later on. The
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distance collaboration meetings were
an opportunity for us to come together
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more regularly than we ever had done
before
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and we have worked very hard
to make our Zoom
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meetings much more
like our rehearsal rooms, so we will
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begin every meeting with once
everyone has arrived, we'll begin with
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two minutes
of silence as we, as we rest,
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as we come to share the same space, as we
set aside what has happened before
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in the day the the work projects
or the homework, or the
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the relationship argument, or the
the hunger from the meal, or the too much
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food from the meal,
we set all of that aside, and we think
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about what we want from
this moment from this meeting today.
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And after those two minutes of silence,
we each take a minute
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to speak to,
to how we're feeling, to whatever is on
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our minds, to whatever we would like to
share with the group
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and once everybody has checked in,
there is one person a bit like Dabbs
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sensei today
who shepherds the meeting, who
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facilitates the smooth running of the
meeting and then at the end of the
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meeting,
we each take another minute to reinforce
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something, to speak to something that has
particularly resonated, that particularly
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stood out for us in the meeting,
something that we want to take from the
0:10:23.920,0:10:28.320
meeting,
a good thing perhaps, that it was
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that it made you laugh, or that it made
you think about something,
0:10:32.640,0:10:38.640
and, or it could be something, some
negativity that you don't want to take
0:10:38.640,0:10:42.240
away from the meeting, some feeling of
anxiety,
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and we put these,
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we put these things in place at the
beginning at the end of the meeting
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to allow us to to feel more supported, to
feel more together, to feel more
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community
and also to acknowledge that
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humans are,
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are social creatures and
when we engage in physical contact with
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each other,
a chemical is released inside of us that
0:11:13.440,0:11:18.640
makes us feel good. It's called oxytocin--
it's the hug chemical. Every time you hug
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someone,
or if you stroke an animal, if you stroke
0:11:21.360,0:11:27.120
a dog or a cat,
then that chemical is released, and
0:11:27.120,0:11:32.160
especially actors are very tactile
and very social creatures, and we were
0:11:32.160,0:11:35.920
missing that
social side of things, and we were
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missing that
contact so it was important for us to
0:11:40.399,0:11:43.600
to try to find ways to balance it, but
also
0:11:43.600,0:11:47.519
this little circle here, this black
camera
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is very very good at transmitting data,
and it's quite good at transmitting
0:11:52.399,0:11:57.920
sound, and it can be okay at transmitting
visuals of video, but it's not very good
0:11:57.920,0:12:02.399
at transmitting empathy
or atmosphere, and as you may have
0:12:02.399,0:12:04.880
experienced over the last six or seven
months,
0:12:04.880,0:12:08.480
it's not very good, in fact it's not good
at all,
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it's not designed to for example
allow a number of people to speak at
0:12:15.120,0:12:17.519
once.
0:12:17.839,0:12:21.680
If you if you if you are a member of a
choir
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and like to sing and you met your fellow
choir members on Zoom and you all tried
0:12:26.959,0:12:30.480
to sing together it wouldn't go
down very well because there is an
0:12:30.480,0:12:34.639
algorithm in Zoom
that prohibits sound from different
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sources to overlap
at the same time to come out and be
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harmonious
the way that the video,
0:12:43.680,0:12:47.200
the camera translate what it translates
what it sees
0:12:47.200,0:12:50.639
in order to have so many different
pictures of so many different people
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from all around
Japan and all over the world at the same
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time
the quality is much lower. It's not HD
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quality, and there are parts of our
brains
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the socio-linguistic parts of our brains
that are continually looking out for
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non-verbal cues. We're continually
looking out for
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body language and
where the speaker's eyes are looking
0:13:18.839,0:13:25.120
and how they hold themselves
all of these things help us understand
0:13:25.120,0:13:28.399
what is being said to us and it relaxes
us.
0:13:28.399,0:13:32.160
And there are parts of the brain that
are continually working like this,
0:13:32.160,0:13:36.800
and in a zoom environment those parts of
the brain are still working very hard,
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but they're not receiving the
information that they're used to
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receiving
when they are engaging with people and
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that brings another
type of anxiety, Zoom anxiety
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is a common, commonly written about
subject in newspapers in the UK at the
0:13:55.920,0:14:02.000
moment.
So we wanted to combat that the anxiety.
0:14:02.000,0:14:07.440
We wanted to explore
0:14:07.920,0:14:12.480
what other restrictions Zoom might have,
not just not being able to
0:14:12.480,0:14:16.079
to speak at the same time, but what other
restrictions were there,
0:14:16.079,0:14:20.720
and we started to watch the zoom theater
that was being made,
0:14:20.720,0:14:26.160
and I'm sure a lot of you have seen
some Zoom theater in the last six or
0:14:26.160,0:14:29.920
seven months,
perhaps it will just be an environment
0:14:29.920,0:14:33.440
like this
where uh actors and audience are all in
0:14:33.440,0:14:37.760
the same screen
in, in the gallery view if that if you
0:14:37.760,0:14:43.120
can see, the gallery view
and, and we,
0:14:43.120,0:14:48.160
we perform, we read a play, or we rehearse
a play and then perform it for you,
0:14:48.160,0:14:51.600
and sometimes we will interact with the
audience as if
0:14:51.600,0:14:55.279
we were speaking to you from the stage
and you were able to reply like at the
0:14:55.279,0:15:01.120
Shakespeare's Globe.
Or perhaps using the
0:15:01.120,0:15:04.560
virtual backgrounds there would be a
picture of
0:15:04.560,0:15:08.800
a beach as i perform Prospero in The
Tempest
0:15:08.800,0:15:13.600
or perhaps there will be a picture of a
prison for Caliban's in jail.
0:15:13.600,0:15:21.839
There's Zoom virtual background theater,
and we talked a lot about the things
0:15:21.839,0:15:25.360
that we liked
in the Zoom theater world and the things
0:15:25.360,0:15:29.360
that we didn't
like, and we talked about the things that
0:15:29.360,0:15:33.360
naturally happen
in the zoom world, about interruption and
0:15:33.360,0:15:38.240
about
poor connection and about
0:15:38.240,0:15:41.519
people's microphones not being turned on,
or they're
0:15:41.519,0:15:45.279
forgetting to turn their cameras off, we
talked about all these
0:15:45.279,0:15:49.440
natural things that happen when we try
to
0:15:49.440,0:15:55.040
replace day-to-day interaction with this
virtual world.
0:15:55.040,0:15:58.240
One of the things that happens in Zoom
theater a lot
0:15:58.240,0:16:02.160
is that people shout. Now people shout in
theater
0:16:02.160,0:16:09.199
as well, but i was always taught
that with Shakespeare you don't need
0:16:09.199,0:16:13.040
to shout
to use the words. There is a
0:16:13.040,0:16:18.320
difference between intensity
and volume. And people use
0:16:18.320,0:16:22.000
volume, they shout when they feel that
they're not being heard
0:16:22.000,0:16:26.240
or not being understood, and in
Shakespeare and in theater people often
0:16:26.240,0:16:30.959
shout
when their emotions get so great
0:16:30.959,0:16:37.360
that they feel that they need to raise
their volume, but as a colleague said to
0:16:37.360,0:16:41.839
me
early on in lockdown, you cannot fill the
0:16:41.839,0:16:45.600
void
of the Internet with shouting.
0:16:45.600,0:16:49.600
We feel that we need to reach out into
the camera
0:16:49.600,0:16:55.279
and connect with people because we're
missing this connection.
0:16:55.279,0:16:58.720
So we raise our voices in hopes that we
the,
0:16:58.720,0:17:06.480
the volume will create a bridge
through the Internet and into your heart,
0:17:06.480,0:17:13.600
but actually as a lot of people find,
shouting pushes people away more,
0:17:15.600,0:17:22.480
so we found ourselves looking
at Zoom theater.
0:17:22.480,0:17:28.960
And a lot of people were using
Zoom and wanting to pretend that
0:17:28.960,0:17:32.400
everything was normal, that we were all
in the same space,
0:17:32.400,0:17:35.679
and of course we're not and a lot of
people
0:17:35.679,0:17:40.400
were using the virtual backgrounds
more
0:17:40.400,0:17:49.919
and trying to turn this environment into
a TV show into more of a film experience.
0:17:49.919,0:17:53.360
And the questions that the ensemble and
I came to
0:17:53.360,0:18:00.080
after six weeks of meetings or so
was what can
0:18:00.080,0:18:06.640
theater be in this
medium? What
0:18:06.640,0:18:15.760
can Shakespeare be in this medium?
Can the theater live in this medium?
0:18:15.760,0:18:22.880
what could the digital arts
be if the digital arts is a new medium
0:18:22.880,0:18:28.960
a new type of art expression that
isn't trying to be theater and isn't
0:18:28.960,0:18:32.480
trying to be TV in film?
0:18:33.200,0:18:37.600
There are singular advantages as well as
disadvantages
0:18:37.600,0:18:45.520
that being by myself thousands, hundreds
of thousands of miles away from you,
0:18:45.520,0:18:50.640
with a computer and a webcam and a
microphone and a light--
0:18:50.640,0:18:54.320
these are all supporting my being with
you.
0:18:54.320,0:18:59.120
There are some serious disadvantages to
not being able to be in the same space,
0:18:59.120,0:19:04.080
but what are the advantages, what are the
things that we can take advantage of and
0:19:04.080,0:19:09.760
make an even
a show that we would, a production that
0:19:09.760,0:19:13.120
we--or a project
that we would never have been able to
0:19:13.120,0:19:16.960
think of
if we hadn't been restricted in this way.
0:19:16.960,0:19:20.640
There is an
English phrase that that says 'necessity
0:19:20.640,0:19:24.240
is the mother of invention' and in some
respects
0:19:24.240,0:19:27.840
'restriction can be the mother of
invention,'
0:19:27.840,0:19:30.880
too. Shakespeare's company often didn't
have
0:19:30.880,0:19:34.480
very many props or costumes, and they
didn't use
0:19:34.480,0:19:41.120
very much set at all, and yet they were
able to create the most wonderful
0:19:41.120,0:19:47.360
pieces of art. So we
felt that with these questions of
0:19:47.360,0:19:53.679
can we collaborate together
what can theater be, what can Shakespeare
0:19:53.679,0:19:59.520
be,
what are the digital arts, and
0:19:59.520,0:20:08.400
these four questions were as it were the
the edges of the project.
0:20:08.400,0:20:11.840
We didn't know what the project was
going to be yet. We had a blank canvas,
0:20:11.840,0:20:16.960
but these were the four
corners of it how can we collaborate a
0:20:16.960,0:20:20.240
distance,
what can theater be, what can Shakespeare
0:20:20.240,0:20:24.480
be,
what are the digital arts.
0:20:24.960,0:20:31.360
And we kept talking about. I,
I watched every single piece of digital
0:20:31.360,0:20:36.320
theater that I could find. u
We spent every week meeting and talking
0:20:36.320,0:20:40.480
about the things that we'd seen and
talking about the things that we liked
0:20:40.480,0:20:46.960
and people started to
say, 'wouldn't it be interesting
0:20:46.960,0:20:52.880
to spend time
with this character or that character,
0:20:52.880,0:20:57.919
wouldn't it be interesting.'
In 'Twelfth Night'
0:20:57.919,0:21:04.320
the steward Malvolio is
duped into thinking that his
0:21:04.320,0:21:09.120
mistress, his boss Olivia, is in love
with him,
0:21:09.120,0:21:13.280
and he turns up and he dresses up in the
most ridiculous outfit thinking that
0:21:13.280,0:21:16.400
that's exactly how she wants him to
behave.
0:21:16.400,0:21:22.640
And she thinks he's mad, and so
he is sent to prison. In the house
0:21:22.640,0:21:24.799
there's a prison in the bottom of the
house,
0:21:24.799,0:21:29.039
and the clown dresses up and pretends to
be
0:21:29.039,0:21:33.360
a priest that has come to find out
whether or not
0:21:33.360,0:21:38.559
Malvolio is mad. And it's about,
in the play 'Twelfth Night,' I think the
0:21:38.559,0:21:44.799
scene is about five minutes long,
and we get to a glimpse of Malvolio
0:21:44.799,0:21:48.559
in prison--wouldn't it be interesting
someone said,
0:21:48.559,0:21:55.679
if we spent an hour with Malvolio
in prison. What would that look like?
0:21:55.679,0:21:59.360
If you've ever seen the Tom Stoppard
play 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
0:21:59.360,0:22:03.440
Dead,'
it is a play that is set backstage from
0:22:03.440,0:22:06.799
'Hamlet,'
that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, these
0:22:06.799,0:22:12.159
two friends of Hamlet,
that come to visit the prince and have
0:22:12.159,0:22:15.200
three or four scenes with him over the
course of the play
0:22:15.200,0:22:18.640
and are very much background and
supporting characters
0:22:18.640,0:22:23.679
whilst Hamlet philosophizes about life
and tries to work out whether or not
0:22:23.679,0:22:29.600
he's going to kill his Uncle Claudius,
but Tom Stoppard took these two
0:22:29.600,0:22:32.640
characters and made them the central
Characters,
0:22:32.640,0:22:38.400
and Hamlet was in the background
philosophizing about life.
0:22:38.640,0:22:42.400
What other characters in Shakespeare
could we
0:22:42.400,0:22:47.039
spend more time with and learn something
about?
0:22:47.039,0:22:51.039
What would it be like to
0:22:51.280,0:23:00.320
enter a zoom room with
Ophelia, let's say, from 'Hamlet'
0:23:00.320,0:23:05.840
or Lady Macbeth, but not in the middle of
the big scene or a big speech?
0:23:05.840,0:23:10.480
What would it be like to turn on the
Zoom camera and sit with them
0:23:10.480,0:23:17.600
when they have just finished a big scene,
or it is the morning before
0:23:17.600,0:23:24.000
they are going to kill
Duncan or talk to Hamlet. What would it
0:23:24.000,0:23:28.400
be like to sit with these characters
when they don't realize that their
0:23:28.400,0:23:34.240
camera is on?
What would these characters say
0:23:34.240,0:23:39.440
if they thought they weren't being heard,
if they had forgotten to turn their
0:23:39.440,0:23:45.600
microphone off?
That was the beginnings
0:23:45.600,0:23:52.400
of how these loose ideas about the Zoom
world began to start to shape towards
0:23:52.400,0:23:57.120
Shakespeare,
and I can't remember
0:23:57.120,0:24:04.080
whose idea it really was,
but 'Twelfth Night' kept
0:24:04.080,0:24:07.279
coming up. We kept talking about Twelfth
night,
0:24:07.279,0:24:14.960
and I had an idea an image
of
0:24:14.960,0:24:20.159
if you imagine the Zoom gallery with
lots and lots of little squares,
0:24:20.159,0:24:24.159
if you can see it now i'm not sure if
you can, but i'm sure you all know what
0:24:24.159,0:24:27.840
it looks like--
could you imagine what it would be like
0:24:27.840,0:24:33.279
if Zoom allowed you to
double click on one square
0:24:33.279,0:24:39.760
and make that person's video bigger
and then make three or four other
0:24:39.760,0:24:44.240
people's squares
bigger and then turn the volume on
0:24:44.240,0:24:51.679
to five other squares and be in
much more control of the video and audio
0:24:51.679,0:24:56.159
elements
of zoom? What would that be like?
0:24:56.159,0:25:01.279
That was the original idea that we
had, that we would
0:25:01.279,0:25:06.159
gift the audience agency.
0:25:06.240,0:25:11.279
These were the--if, if those four
questions were the corners
0:25:11.279,0:25:17.760
of the project, the beginnings of the
the colors or the palette that we wanted
0:25:17.760,0:25:22.240
to paint with,
were to do with congregation
0:25:22.240,0:25:26.080
coming together that's the ensemble
coming together to work,
0:25:26.080,0:25:30.080
but also bringing audience together,
that's the whole point of theater as
0:25:30.080,0:25:33.840
well of course to
to congregate, to come together.
0:25:33.840,0:25:37.520
Entertainment
to allow people to forget about the
0:25:37.520,0:25:42.000
global pandemic
for an hour. That's a gift for us and
0:25:42.000,0:25:45.679
hopefully it would be a gift for the
audience,
0:25:45.679,0:25:52.880
but also agency. How much of your day
are you now spending slumped
0:25:52.880,0:26:00.080
in a chair forgetting about the body,
neglecting the body and even if you go
0:26:00.080,0:26:04.400
to see
a piece of theater, you
0:26:04.400,0:26:09.200
join the meeting, you turn your camera on
or you turn your camera off,
0:26:09.200,0:26:14.159
and then you watch and maybe you can ask
a question or maybe you can chat and
0:26:14.159,0:26:21.039
maybe you're invited to
engage in some way, to applaud, to
0:26:21.200,0:26:28.159
to sing with the character, but they're
beyond that. We wanted to activate and
0:26:28.159,0:26:33.600
engage the audience,
to include them,
0:26:34.880,0:26:42.480
to to step towards a promenade
theater from your home. Now a promenade
0:26:42.480,0:26:45.840
theater
is, was, made famous in the UK and America
0:26:45.840,0:26:51.279
by a company called Punch Drunk
theater, and they would essentially hire
0:26:51.279,0:26:54.960
a big warehouse,
and they would fill it with scenery and
0:26:54.960,0:26:58.880
set and
you could enter the warehouse and walk
0:26:58.880,0:27:03.039
wherever you wanted to walk,
and perhaps you would stumble on a
0:27:03.039,0:27:06.159
character
and perhaps you wouldn't, perhaps you
0:27:06.159,0:27:10.960
would stumble on a part of a story
or perhaps you wouldn't. They adapted
0:27:10.960,0:27:17.760
'Macbeth' and called it 'Sleep No More,'
and you could go to see 'Sleep No More,'
0:27:17.760,0:27:22.559
and possibly not see any of the play
'Macbeth,'
0:27:22.559,0:27:27.200
or possibly you would see it all or
possibly you would see it
0:27:27.200,0:27:30.960
in chronological order or possibly you
would see it
0:27:30.960,0:27:37.760
out of chronological order.
The point was that you were in control
0:27:37.760,0:27:42.320
of the story,
that you engaged with it, was like if you
0:27:42.320,0:27:46.480
remember,
if you have those comics or stories from
0:27:46.480,0:27:49.600
the 20th century the choose your own
adventure,
0:27:49.600,0:27:54.000
where you get to page 23, and it says do
you want the character to jump off the
0:27:54.000,0:27:57.919
cliff. If you do
turn to page 28 if you want them to turn
0:27:57.919,0:28:02.799
around and go home,
turn to page 29 and so on and so forth.
0:28:02.799,0:28:09.600
We wanted an element of that
agency, so I
0:28:09.600,0:28:16.320
went to a live streaming company that
I'd worked with at the British Library
0:28:16.320,0:28:20.640
in 2016
and Middle Temple in London, where
0:28:20.640,0:28:23.520
Shakespeare first performed 'Twelfth
night,'
0:28:23.520,0:28:27.760
and of course this live stream
company had been doing--
0:28:27.760,0:28:30.880
It was was very very busy in March and
April.
0:28:30.880,0:28:37.440
They were doing very well. If
if there had been a Nostradamus
0:28:37.440,0:28:40.320
prediction
of things to invest in at the beginning
0:28:40.320,0:28:44.240
of 2020,
a live stream company would have
0:28:44.240,0:28:48.480
probably been a very shrewd
investment, and in the UK, the things
0:28:48.480,0:28:52.880
that run out
were flour and toilet roll.
0:28:52.880,0:28:56.080
So those were the other things we might
have invested in, in
0:28:56.080,0:29:01.120
the UK at least. But this live
stream company was doing very well,
0:29:01.120,0:29:04.480
and they said how happy they were to
hear from me,
0:29:04.480,0:29:10.080
and they, how sad they were about the
creative arts and the theater industry,
0:29:10.080,0:29:16.320
and they wanted to help, so they donated
their time and energy
0:29:16.320,0:29:21.279
and that's when the project, that's when
the ideas and the talking
0:29:21.279,0:29:26.640
and the hopes and dreams started to
become--
0:29:26.640,0:29:30.880
it felt like so we were actually going
to be able to create something,
0:29:30.880,0:29:34.159
even though we were all around the world
and even though every day
0:29:34.159,0:29:37.360
people were dealing with such tremendous
stress.
0:29:37.360,0:29:42.559
It really looked like we were going
gonna be able to achieve something
0:29:42.559,0:29:47.679
and the only thing that they said,
the live stream company said though was
0:29:47.679,0:29:52.960
that the original idea
of having essentially--there are well
0:29:52.960,0:30:01.840
20 there are 20 actors in the ensemble--
to have 20 separate
0:30:01.840,0:30:05.600
live streams as it were 20 separate
YouTube
0:30:05.600,0:30:09.360
live streams all at once, so that you
could
0:30:09.360,0:30:13.200
make one bigger, turn the volume on and
off on another,
0:30:13.200,0:30:19.360
all of those things
are not possible now. They might be
0:30:19.360,0:30:24.720
possible in five years time,
when computer processes are faster and
0:30:24.720,0:30:29.120
when
the rest of the world has as fast an
0:30:29.120,0:30:34.080
Internet connection as Japan
does, but right now most computers are
0:30:34.080,0:30:39.520
slow and most people's broadbands are
not very fast at least over here. So
0:30:39.520,0:30:44.080
we had success in that we had come up
with such a good idea,
0:30:44.080,0:30:47.600
we were five years ahead of the
technology and couldn't achieve it,
0:30:47.600,0:30:51.039
so we'll come back to that idea in five
years time.
0:30:51.039,0:31:01.120
But what we thought could work
was a house of rooms or a treasure map
0:31:01.120,0:31:09.279
so you could be presented with a map
or a mansion like an advent calendar
0:31:09.279,0:31:12.799
that you might see in a
western house at Christmas, with doors
0:31:12.799,0:31:17.200
and lights behind each window,
and you could click on one of those
0:31:17.200,0:31:22.080
windows or doors
and visit with a character from 'Twelfth
0:31:22.080,0:31:26.960
Night,'
and this character might be speaking
0:31:26.960,0:31:33.840
or walking or sitting
and thinking and perhaps it's
0:31:33.840,0:31:36.960
immediately before
a big emotional scene in the play
0:31:36.960,0:31:41.840
'Twelfth Night,' or perhaps
it's just them getting ready for their
0:31:41.840,0:31:46.559
day.
Perhaps there is a
0:31:46.559,0:31:53.840
stream, a live stream of Maria,
Olivia's maid, and she is just sitting
0:31:53.840,0:31:58.880
for the whole show waiting to be called
or coming up with the riddle that will
0:31:58.880,0:32:04.000
confuse Malvolio,
or perhaps we watch as
0:32:04.000,0:32:11.039
Viola slowly becomes Cesario,
slowly disguises herself as a man--scenes
0:32:11.039,0:32:15.840
that you don't get to see
in a normal Shakespeare play,
0:32:16.320,0:32:21.120
and if you, if that character is not
interesting to you,
0:32:21.120,0:32:25.600
then you have a choice to visit a
different character that's related to
0:32:25.600,0:32:28.159
them
or, another character that's related to
0:32:28.159,0:32:33.760
them, or
leave their room and return to the map.
0:32:34.480,0:32:41.360
And so you can see there is a degree
of promenade, there's a lot more agency
0:32:41.360,0:32:46.640
for the user. If you don't
do something, nothing will happen.
0:32:46.640,0:32:51.200
You have to do something in order for--to,
for the show to take place
0:32:51.200,0:32:54.640
it won't just happen and you can't just
sit there and fall asleep.
0:32:54.640,0:32:59.360
Well you can, but you understand what I'm
saying.
0:32:59.360,0:33:07.279
So we we took
pieces from um a friend's music album
0:33:07.279,0:33:10.399
that seemed to resonate with Twelfth
Night,
0:33:10.399,0:33:15.919
and we took particular lines from
particular characters that seemed to
0:33:15.919,0:33:18.960
really define the heart of that
character,
0:33:18.960,0:33:22.399
the engine of that character, whether it
was
0:33:22.399,0:33:29.600
grief for Olivia,
or vanity for Orsino, or music and song
0:33:29.600,0:33:34.559
for Feste the clown.
We each gave them an engine, we gave them
0:33:34.559,0:33:40.000
particular
speeches. but we would, say, take
0:33:40.000,0:33:43.200
Orsino's speech: 'if music be the food of
love,
0:33:43.200,0:33:47.039
play on. Give me excess of it,'
0:33:47.279,0:33:52.080
and we would redact particular words in
the speech. We would
0:33:52.080,0:33:56.320
black out the speech, so we would gift
the actor
0:33:56.320,0:34:01.360
let's say not 'if music be the food of
love play on,'
0:34:01.360,0:34:10.800
but 'if music
love play' and that was their speech,
0:34:10.800,0:34:21.839
and then they could explore that speech
if music
0:34:22.240,0:34:27.440
be love be love
and so on and so forth, it could really
0:34:27.440,0:34:34.399
explore one particular speech.
And we made a storyboard,
0:34:34.399,0:34:40.159
and we tried to make sure that across
the five or six or seven characters that
0:34:40.159,0:34:43.679
we could have--
because the live stream company said
0:34:43.679,0:34:48.720
that their technology could not make
more than, they said, seven characters
0:34:48.720,0:34:51.839
would be safe--
and that ten characters would be too
0:34:51.839,0:34:57.520
many. In the end, we ended up with nine
characters. We had
0:34:57.520,0:35:04.320
Malvolio, Feste, Olivia
Viola, Andrew
0:35:04.320,0:35:12.960
Aguecheek, Toby Belch,
um, i've forgotten the rest--oh, and we had
0:35:12.960,0:35:17.680
two Maria's.
So we had two actors exploring different
0:35:17.680,0:35:21.680
aspects
of the character Maria,
0:35:21.839,0:35:27.920
and
we gifted each actor a
0:35:27.920,0:35:32.079
package. We put together pictures and
music
0:35:32.079,0:35:37.200
and paintings and lines from the play,
and we emailed each actor
0:35:37.200,0:35:43.119
and a list of aesthetics,
like things that they could use in
0:35:43.119,0:35:48.720
the background. One of them
was fairy lights, another was water,
0:35:48.720,0:35:56.839
another was a mirror.
We gifted them toys for the playground
0:35:56.839,0:36:03.760
essentially, and each actor
was working by themselves
0:36:03.760,0:36:07.760
but we also invited another member of
the ensemble to be
0:36:07.760,0:36:13.119
there, what we called their outside eyes,
so we, we don't work with the director. We,
0:36:13.119,0:36:19.040
in our Shakespeare productions, we always
work as if
0:36:19.040,0:36:22.560
Shakespeare is our director and he
directs us through
0:36:22.560,0:36:26.560
the text that he wrote. Now i'm not the
director of the Shakespeare ensemble: I'm
0:36:26.560,0:36:32.240
the curator of it,
and i understand curation to mean
0:36:32.240,0:36:40.160
i set up the playground. I set up all the
toys in the playground, and I invite the
0:36:40.160,0:36:46.079
players who will play in that playground.
And having brought together
0:36:46.079,0:36:49.839
and thought about the quality of all
those ingredients,
0:36:49.839,0:36:58.079
I step back and let them play, so,
but actors are, um, they need
0:36:58.079,0:37:02.160
assistance, they need
people to step outside and to see what
0:37:02.160,0:37:06.560
they're doing,
but not to be instructed
0:37:06.560,0:37:11.119
in our ensembles. So we invited a member
of the ensemble to work with each actor
0:37:11.119,0:37:14.079
and
each, so each actor had a pair of outside
0:37:14.079,0:37:18.079
eyes,
and then another member of the ensemble
0:37:18.079,0:37:21.520
visited
each of those groups and was the outside
0:37:21.520,0:37:25.359
eye to the outside eyes who were
watching the actors, so there were
0:37:25.359,0:37:33.040
circles of creativity
and after working in this way
0:37:33.040,0:37:40.720
for six weeks on the 8th of
August this year, we performed
0:37:40.720,0:37:47.680
three performances. The shows were
45 minutes long. They were live,
0:37:47.680,0:37:53.680
then a week after those live
performances, we launched the
0:37:53.680,0:37:59.119
website, which I'll show you in a minute,
of 'What You Will,'
0:37:59.119,0:38:04.880
and remember those
corners that I talked about at the
0:38:04.880,0:38:09.119
beginning that we were
interested in exploring what theater was
0:38:09.119,0:38:12.800
and what digital theater was--
now we were certainly exploring what
0:38:12.800,0:38:16.480
Shakespeare could be.
We decided that you can go anywhere to
0:38:16.480,0:38:21.440
see a full production of Twelfth Night
but we wanted to look at what
0:38:21.440,0:38:24.160
Shakespeare
feels and looks like in the modern
0:38:24.160,0:38:28.800
digital world,
and we like the idea of providing
0:38:28.800,0:38:32.480
an insight into the depth of these
characters,
0:38:32.480,0:38:38.800
but also a non-linear
narrative that allowed people, allowed
0:38:38.800,0:38:44.400
the Internet and YouTube generation,
who YouTube says the, the concentration
0:38:44.400,0:38:49.200
span of the average user
is sometimes no more than 15 seconds--we
0:38:49.200,0:38:56.400
wanted to facilitate that sort of
audience, too.
0:38:57.520,0:39:02.880
And then the project wanted to explore
the digital arts,
0:39:02.880,0:39:07.839
remember, so this happened in a number of
ways.
0:39:07.839,0:39:14.880
First of all, Anirudh Nair
and Amba-Suhasini Katoch Jhala
0:39:14.880,0:39:21.599
were both performing in India
and Anirudh Nair
0:39:21.599,0:39:29.359
had to move house suddenly and
Amber was working from her parents
0:39:29.359,0:39:33.920
home in a part of India that didn't
have good Internet connection
0:39:33.920,0:39:41.680
and then Hiroaki Kurata,
who worked with us from--
0:39:41.680,0:39:45.280
he lives in Tokyo, but he worked with us
last year on the Shakespeare ensembles
0:39:45.280,0:39:49.680
tour of Japan--
he suddenly got an audition. So
0:39:49.680,0:39:54.320
the actors who could no longer
perform on the live
0:39:54.320,0:39:58.400
day, on the live performance day
pre-recorded
0:39:58.400,0:40:02.160
their performances but we were
performing at
0:40:02.160,0:40:06.640
12 pm British summertime 4 pm British
summertime
0:40:06.640,0:40:11.599
and 7 pm British summertime, to allow
audience members from all around the
0:40:11.599,0:40:16.079
world to
watch the performance, and hopefully it
0:40:16.079,0:40:17.920
won't be the middle of the night for
them.
0:40:17.920,0:40:21.599
There will be a performance that they
can see that isn't at 4am--
0:40:21.599,0:40:28.119
that was the idea. The actors that could
no longer perform live
0:40:28.119,0:40:32.160
pre-recorded their performances of a
45-minute,
0:40:32.160,0:40:38.160
non-stop, devised piece,
but they performed it at 12 pm they
0:40:38.160,0:40:43.200
recorded it and filmed it
at 12 pm, 4 pm, and 7 pm
0:40:43.200,0:40:47.760
in their own time zone, sent us the
recordings.
0:40:47.760,0:40:51.520
So that during the live performances
there were actors who were performing
0:40:51.520,0:40:56.240
live,
but there were also performances that
0:40:56.240,0:41:00.640
had been performed live
at the appropriate time of day, but were
0:41:00.640,0:41:06.079
pre-records,
and it pulled out another
0:41:06.079,0:41:12.480
quality that we were interested in about
subverting the audience's expectation of
0:41:12.480,0:41:15.680
that
magic of theater, where you sometimes
0:41:15.680,0:41:18.560
don't know if something is real or
something isn't,
0:41:18.560,0:41:24.800
and if if you go to look at 'What You
Will,' and you still can,
0:41:24.800,0:41:29.280
you would not be able to tell which
performance was pre-recorded
0:41:29.280,0:41:32.880
and which wasn't. So in that way we were
asking
0:41:32.880,0:41:37.599
different questions about what the
digital arts can be,
0:41:37.599,0:41:41.760
and then in terms of what theater can be
in the digital arts we had the live
0:41:41.760,0:41:45.680
performances,
then we had the record of which were
0:41:45.680,0:41:49.839
comprised of
live and recorded performances, then from
0:41:49.839,0:41:54.000
the website
we had to choose which performance
0:41:54.000,0:41:58.319
for each character would we use for the
website. Would we use their 12pm
0:41:58.319,0:42:01.440
performance
or their 4pm performance or their 7pm
0:42:01.440,0:42:05.680
performance
and each actor chose a different time so
0:42:05.680,0:42:08.160
the web
version is different from the live
0:42:08.160,0:42:12.720
version.
Then we were invited to take part in the
0:42:12.720,0:42:16.800
Cairo International Festival of
Experimental Theater,
0:42:16.800,0:42:21.440
and in order to do that we found out
that our performance
0:42:21.440,0:42:26.319
was was more experimental than their
application form would allow us
0:42:26.319,0:42:34.000
to apply. So we made a screencast
of someone watching the performance
0:42:34.000,0:42:37.839
so there's a recording of someone's
experience
0:42:37.839,0:42:43.520
walking through this performance walking
their promenade experience.
0:42:43.520,0:42:48.079
So you have the live performance, which
is also recorded,
0:42:48.079,0:42:53.359
then you have the web version which is
comprised of different performances,
0:42:53.359,0:42:58.640
then you have the screencast, which is
one person's performance and now of
0:42:58.640,0:43:03.920
course
you can still to this day, thanks to the
0:43:03.920,0:43:09.040
generosity of the live stream company,
you can go and interact with and engage
0:43:09.040,0:43:12.640
with
our production of 'What You Will,' and if
0:43:12.640,0:43:17.040
you want
you can screencast your journey through
0:43:17.040,0:43:22.079
this show and put it up on the Internet
and that is another
0:43:22.079,0:43:30.079
different look at what theater can be.
We think and
0:43:30.079,0:43:33.440
hopefully now Dabbs sensei said at the
beginning
0:43:33.440,0:43:37.760
right okay host is disabled
participant screen sharing, so I can't
0:43:37.760,0:43:41.760
show you. I was about to launch the
website there but
0:43:41.760,0:43:48.000
you can visit 'What You Will' if you go to
the Shakespeare Ensemble.com, and
0:43:48.000,0:43:55.839
you can now you can now oh thank you
okay let me see here uh here we go
0:43:55.839,0:44:03.520
so um here is the,
here is the Shakespeare Ensemble website.
0:44:03.520,0:44:11.200
And oh look there's us in Kochi
last year. If i go to
0:44:11.200,0:44:13.760
'What You Will,'
0:44:16.560,0:44:22.560
oh excuse me and there is
Anirudh and there is Hiroaki and
0:44:22.560,0:44:27.520
there is Amber
uas Anirudh performing as
0:44:27.520,0:44:32.480
Orsino, who decides to explore his
femininity, which of course in
0:44:32.480,0:44:36.720
India is quite a big thing for him to
have done. Hiroaki was
0:44:36.720,0:44:39.920
exploring melancholy in his tatami
room
0:44:39.920,0:44:45.200
and that's Amber, the maid, pretending
to be Olivia,
0:44:45.200,0:44:50.160
and you might see that in the background
there, there is a person watching her. We
0:44:50.160,0:44:52.880
wanted to
invite members of our family and our
0:44:52.880,0:44:57.359
friends
who would socially distance of course to
0:44:57.359,0:45:01.119
sit and watch in the actual physical
space,
0:45:01.119,0:45:04.560
so that there would be a performance
experience that was
0:45:04.560,0:45:08.960
live that people could watch virtually.
But also that there would be an
0:45:08.960,0:45:13.440
actual performance experience because
there would be real audience in the same
0:45:13.440,0:45:16.400
space.
So you come to this page and then it
0:45:16.400,0:45:22.240
says 'click here' to journey to our Illyria.
And I should,
0:45:22.240,0:45:26.160
I should point out that if you scroll
down--
0:45:26.160,0:45:31.119
you could--there is a digital exhibition--
we also wanted to create
0:45:31.119,0:45:35.680
the, the lobby experience. We wanted to
create an opportunity for our audience
0:45:35.680,0:45:41.280
to congregate, so we had a Zoom
chat, but also and I'll quickly
0:45:41.280,0:45:46.000
show you,
the digital exhibition
0:45:46.000,0:45:53.599
has the posters, character postcards,
portraits of the players, an interview.
0:45:53.599,0:45:57.920
It's got Amber's sketches of the
riddle.
0:45:57.920,0:46:02.000
Dan Beaulieu played Toby Belch and
looked at the
0:46:02.000,0:46:05.520
engine of addiction. There's a radio
interview with me,
0:46:05.520,0:46:09.280
and even here there is the minutes of our
very first
0:46:09.280,0:46:12.640
planning meeting when we first started
to talk about
0:46:12.640,0:46:16.560
how we might collaborate together. So we
really wanted to
0:46:16.560,0:46:22.000
invite the audience into our process but
also give them somewhere to contemplate,
0:46:22.000,0:46:26.079
somewhere to congregate. These are all
the--there's a--we made a different poster
0:46:26.079,0:46:30.800
for each character as Andrew 'Melancholy,'
Belch 'Addiction,'
0:46:30.800,0:46:36.079
Malvolio 'Madness.'
There are some of the players. These are
0:46:36.079,0:46:40.720
portraits that were taken virtually
via FaceTime with a wonderful
0:46:40.720,0:46:44.720
photographer
colleague of mine.
0:46:44.720,0:46:48.560
And here's the interview and so on and
so on. And there was the,
0:46:48.560,0:46:51.440
there was the riddle
0:46:52.800,0:46:56.560
notebook as well. So there's a digital
exhibition for people to explore
0:46:56.560,0:47:03.920
before, after the show but u
you click here to launch the micro-site,
0:47:03.920,0:47:09.839
and here is our 'What You Will.' You can
enter Illyria. There, there is a content
0:47:09.839,0:47:15.359
advisory because
some of the explorations were
0:47:15.359,0:47:18.560
quite provocative, and here is our our
map,
0:47:18.560,0:47:23.200
our house of rooms. This is what the, the
treasure map idea became,
0:47:23.200,0:47:26.319
so the idea is that you have all the
characters here.
0:47:26.319,0:47:29.920
Andrew, Orsino, Viola--and of course they
are linked
0:47:29.920,0:47:36.319
depending on their relationships, so
Andrew is linked with Maria, and he's
0:47:36.319,0:47:39.359
linked with Feste, and he's linked with
Belch.
0:47:39.359,0:47:44.559
Now he's in love with Olivia,
but doesn't have a connection to her, you
0:47:44.559,0:47:49.680
notice
and what you do is you can
0:47:49.680,0:47:53.839
start anywhere. Let's start with Feste,
0:47:56.160,0:48:00.480
and here you have all of the characters
that Feste is linked to.
0:48:00.480,0:48:05.200
You have, you can return to the map or
you can
0:48:05.200,0:48:11.920
start playing and
this is the beginning of the show
0:48:11.920,0:48:15.839
as Feste began, gets ready, and that's
Hazel Askew
0:48:15.839,0:48:23.520
who's a musician i've worked with a lot
and she's just settling there so we
0:48:23.520,0:48:27.920
can, um, let's go and see Malvolio let's
see what Malvolio is up to.
0:48:27.920,0:48:32.160
But it looked like Feste was about to
start playing a song,
0:48:32.160,0:48:37.599
so let's also play Feste's soundtrack.
0:48:42.480,0:48:45.680
Yep, it's the beginning of the show, so
nothing's happening, so I'm going to,
0:48:45.680,0:48:49.839
I'm going to be impatient. I'm gonna skip
forward here.
0:48:59.440,0:49:04.559
There's Malvolio's bum, great, wonderful
timing.
0:49:04.559,0:49:08.720
Let's go and see what Olivia's up to
0:49:09.920,0:49:13.599
and then actually because I've got quite
a decent Internet connection,
0:49:13.599,0:49:31.839
here i'm going to see what
Maria is also up to.
0:49:35.119,0:49:38.559
And you'll notice hopefully, yeah, there
we go, the
0:49:38.559,0:49:41.280
time code
0:49:41.920,0:49:45.760
is exactly the same so they've even
managed to allow
0:49:45.760,0:49:51.440
the audience to navigate around to
create multiple rooms at the same time.
0:49:51.440,0:49:57.119
And that's our show.
It's still freely available. it is
0:49:57.119,0:50:02.800
going to be forever,
and we are now starting to think
0:50:02.800,0:50:06.880
because it's November now nearly, and we
thought that all of this pandemic would
0:50:06.880,0:50:09.839
be over, and we thought perhaps we might
even be in Japan by now,
0:50:09.839,0:50:13.760
but we're still very far away from the
theaters being open
0:50:13.760,0:50:19.359
and we're thinking now what can we
create next with the hopes
0:50:19.359,0:50:23.040
if we're very very lucky that we might
be able to return to Japan
0:50:23.040,0:50:29.520
in autumn 2021 with another tour.
But until then we're going to keep
0:50:29.520,0:50:34.079
exploring what
this new digital art medium
0:50:34.079,0:50:37.839
can offer and what we can do that is
different
0:50:37.839,0:50:44.240
and new and challenging and entertaining
and can bring our audiences together in
0:50:44.240,0:50:48.160
a new and refreshing way
and perhaps allow us to forget that it's
0:50:48.160,0:50:52.960
raining outside
or frankly to forget how much pain the
0:50:52.960,0:50:56.880
world is in. And,
and if we've learned one thing, that's
0:50:56.880,0:51:01.839
what the theater can do it can,
it can be the balm and the soothing
0:51:01.839,0:51:05.200
calming
healing force to our lives to allow us
0:51:05.200,0:51:08.880
to laugh together
and cry together before we return to our
0:51:08.880,0:51:13.680
lives. So
we're gonna keep on doing that and
0:51:13.680,0:51:17.119
and if you haven't explored 'What You
Will' yet, then
0:51:17.119,0:51:22.880
I do hope you'll find 45 minutes to
to, to spend with these these wonderful
0:51:22.880,0:51:27.280
characters and these wonderful actors.
Thank you all for listening, and I'll
0:51:27.280,0:51:32.960
be very glad to take your questions
Some of my students are younger
0:51:32.960,0:51:38.800
and don't know your history with OP
or Old Pronunciation, and if you could
0:51:38.800,0:51:42.559
just explain
briefly why in the prologue of 'Romeo and
0:51:42.559,0:51:48.160
Juliet' the word,
love, rhymes with the word, remove,
0:51:48.160,0:51:55.119
Oh sure, of course, thank you.
So um the Shakespeare's Globe Theater
0:51:55.119,0:51:58.240
in London
is what they would call an original
0:51:58.240,0:52:02.079
practice
building. They looked at how the theaters
0:52:02.079,0:52:06.480
were 400 years ago,
and they tried to work out whether they
0:52:06.480,0:52:09.599
could
simulate or echo or mirror the
0:52:09.599,0:52:13.839
architectural design
of the space that Shakespeare and his
0:52:13.839,0:52:18.720
actors performed in,
and they've explored also
0:52:18.720,0:52:22.800
what Shakespeare productions would look
like or how would they be different
0:52:22.800,0:52:27.520
if the actors were also wearing costumes
that fitted
0:52:27.520,0:52:31.440
and restricted the body in the way that
Shakespeare's company used
0:52:31.440,0:52:35.680
and also fight technique and dance
technique.
0:52:35.680,0:52:42.640
And of course we as a company explore
the rehearsal process and how we can
0:52:42.640,0:52:46.319
take
rehearsal processes from 400 years ago
0:52:46.319,0:52:52.400
and what that does to Shakespeare modern,
Shakespeare performance.
0:52:52.480,0:52:56.800
My father, the linguist David Crystal, was
invited to the Shakespeare's Globe in
0:52:56.800,0:53:01.520
2004
to explore what the sound the accent of
0:53:01.520,0:53:07.520
Shakespeare's actors would sound like,
and that's, you know, that's quite easy
0:53:07.520,0:53:12.319
to do.
You can't be 100 percent right, of course, but
0:53:12.319,0:53:15.359
it's possible to work out what
Shakespeare's accent was.
0:53:15.359,0:53:18.480
It's possible to work out what Chaucer's
accent was
0:53:18.480,0:53:23.760
in the 1300s, and it's possible
in Middle English, and it's possible to
0:53:23.760,0:53:27.839
work out what
Beowulf's, the accent of the Beowulf poet,
0:53:27.839,0:53:33.119
would have been in Old English in the
10th century.
0:53:33.119,0:53:39.119
So dad went away and worked out
what all of the Shakespeare's accents
0:53:39.119,0:53:44.960
would have been like,
and they performed 'Romeo and Juliet,'
0:53:44.960,0:53:48.240
and just as Dabbs sensei mentioned
there
0:53:48.240,0:53:52.640
there are words in modern English
accents
0:53:52.640,0:53:57.920
that usually don't rhyme anymore
that seemed to have rhymed in
0:53:57.920,0:54:02.800
Shakespeare's time.
There is a line from Shakespeare that
0:54:02.800,0:54:07.599
goes: 'if this be
error and upon me proved, i never writ
0:54:07.599,0:54:11.359
nor no man ever loved.' And it's the end
of a sonnet
0:54:11.359,0:54:18.079
and it's a rhyming couplet and
it's supposed to rhyme, and it doesn't in
0:54:18.079,0:54:20.640
a modern accent, which means one of two
things:
0:54:20.640,0:54:25.599
either Shakespeare wasn't a very good
poet or the accent has changed.
0:54:25.599,0:54:29.040
And you can look all the other
sources of information
0:54:29.040,0:54:35.760
all the other bits of data like
the other poems the other rhymes,
0:54:35.760,0:54:43.440
the plays that rhyme and
you can actually, you can deduce without
0:54:43.440,0:54:46.720
looking in those places,
that if it was supposed to rhyme, then
0:54:46.720,0:54:51.400
either the rhyme was
prooved and mooved with a long vowel sound,
0:54:51.400,0:54:57.839
proved louved,
or a shorter vowel sound, proved,
0:54:57.839,0:55:04.319
proved, proved, and loved,
proved, and loved, or loved, and proved
0:55:04.319,0:55:09.119
so that's when you go to the other poems
and you go to the plays and you see if
0:55:09.119,0:55:15.760
there are other sounds like that
that seem to rhyme together and you
0:55:15.760,0:55:18.000
can
look at the spellings because they used
0:55:18.000,0:55:23.680
to spell a lot more
in the way the spellings would reflect
0:55:23.680,0:55:27.920
the sounds that they spoke which English
doesn't do so much anymore.
0:55:27.920,0:55:31.839
Or there were also people who wrote
books about
0:55:31.839,0:55:35.119
how the language was pronounced. Ben
jonson, one of Shakespeare's
0:55:35.119,0:55:38.400
contemporary playwrights,
also wrote a pronouncing dictionary of
0:55:38.400,0:55:40.799
English
0:55:40.960,0:55:48.480
and all of that data combined you can,
it's work out that most people
0:55:48.480,0:55:53.839
would say proved and loved rather than
proved and moved shorter vowel sound for
0:55:53.839,0:55:58.480
that sound.
and you can go go around and work out
0:55:58.480,0:56:03.839
all of the sounds from them.
0:56:05.920,0:56:09.440
I'm practicing now:
Could you do maybe
0:56:09.440,0:56:14.720
two or three or four or five lines
in--as you've done in one of your
0:56:14.720,0:56:19.440
YouTube videos,
Queen's English and then just so we have
0:56:19.440,0:56:24.160
a comparison so our--
so we can hear the difference. I'd be
0:56:24.160,0:56:27.200
glad to:
Well you mentioned the opening chorus
0:56:27.200,0:56:30.079
of 'Romeo and Juliet,' let's see if i can
remember it.
0:56:30.079,0:56:37.040
So this is
in the queen's English accent as it were
0:56:37.040,0:56:42.960
'Two households both alike in dignity,/ In
fair Verona where we lay our scene /
0:56:42.960,0:56:48.000
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny /
Where civil blood
0:56:48.000,0:56:54.559
makes civil hands unclean /
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes /
0:56:54.559,0:57:02.880
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life / Whose misadventured
piteous overthrows / Doth with their death
0:57:02.880,0:57:07.599
bury their parents strife.' I'll go that
far--I think someone's microphone might
0:57:07.599,0:57:12.400
be on there
um I turned it off?
0:57:12.400,0:57:18.720
But I'm trying to find who it is.
I can still hear them, I can still hear
0:57:18.720,0:57:21.359
too, and i can't see who it is. It's like
oh I
0:57:21.359,0:57:26.799
do you know what it is? It's um, uh it's
not anyone there. 'What You Will" is
0:57:26.799,0:57:31.280
still playing in the background.
Oh, this is what, this is where you were,
0:57:31.280,0:57:36.240
this is what you were talking about,
this is the world we live in Zoom. Well
0:57:36.240,0:57:40.160
please go ahead
with the i will i'm sorry assuming
0:57:40.160,0:57:43.040
someone's mic
had stayed on whereas in fact it was my
0:57:43.040,0:57:47.040
neglect.
uh so that was uh the opening speech in
0:57:47.040,0:57:51.040
Queens English.
with, um, my friend Renee from New York
0:57:51.040,0:57:56.079
chipping in from time to time as
0:57:53.680,0:57:57.760.
uh and hopefully she won't do this time.
0:57:56.079,0:57:59.760
this is the same speech in original
pronunciation
0:57:59.760,0:58:06.000
'Two households both alike in dignitary /
'and fair Verona where we lay our sin /
0:58:06.000,0:58:11.359
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny /
Where civil blood makes civil lands
0:58:11.359,0:58:14.960
unclean /
From forth the fat loins of those two
0:58:14.960,0:58:19.359
foes / A pair of star-crossed
lovers take their life / whose
0:58:19.359,0:58:24.079
misadventured
piteous overthrows / Duff with their death
0:58:24.079,0:58:30.400
bury their parents strife /
So that's a glimpse of the sound you
0:58:30.400,0:58:34.960
can hear that sound in,
in in fuller effect in on YouTube and
0:58:34.960,0:58:38.319
other places on the Internet.
We didn't use it in 'What You Will.' We
0:58:38.319,0:58:43.119
thought about it,
it was a tool that the actors could
0:58:43.119,0:58:47.280
have used.
We encouraged the actors to use
0:58:47.280,0:58:52.799
their their first language whether
it's Japanese or Hindi or
0:58:52.799,0:58:56.799
whatever language they had at their
disposal, but we decided
0:58:56.799,0:58:59.920
to not include Original Pronunciation
in 'What You Will.'
0:58:59.920,0:59:03.200
I'm not sure why, it just that's just the
way it happened.
0:59:03.200,0:59:06.640
Well also i would like to--we have a
couple of people here maybe three
0:59:06.640,0:59:10.480
from Sofia university and you
performed there
0:59:10.480,0:59:14.480
last year- Oh, really--with your ensemble
0:59:14.480,0:59:17.839
and so i can't see anyone so well
welcome
0:59:17.839,0:59:21.200
We're going to bring it back to gallery
view after we finish recording,
0:59:21.200,0:59:25.280
but if you could very quickly tell some
of the people here who--
0:59:25.280,0:59:30.960
I was on sabbatical so i missed it--but
I, I feel so gratified that they
0:59:30.960,0:59:34.240
marshaled the resources at Sofia to have
your group there,
0:59:34.240,0:59:38.720
and we might have people here from other
universities so if you could name the
0:59:38.720,0:59:42.240
the oh my goodness well um the
performances that you did and
0:59:42.240,0:59:45.520
we were very uh honored to perform our
first product
0:59:45.520,0:59:48.960
performance of 'Romeo and Juliet' at
Sophia University,
0:59:48.960,0:59:56.960
thanks to um Takanori Togo sensei and
John Williams sensei. We were
0:59:56.960,1:00:00.079
immensely honored to get our first
performance
1:00:00.079,1:00:06.480
of 'Hamlet' at Meiji
University, thanks to the, the
1:00:06.480,1:00:10.880
the great kindness of Rumiko Oyama
sensei.
1:00:10.880,1:00:16.319
We--thanks to the contacts
of my dear friends Masaki Taniguchi
1:00:16.319,1:00:20.640
sensei and Masanori
Toyota sensei, we were invited
1:00:20.640,1:00:25.880
to
Kyoto university. We performed at
1:00:25.880,1:00:30.960
the university of Osaka--our friends, as
you saw there
1:00:30.960,1:00:35.200
again thanks to you, Taniguchi sensei. I
made good colleagues with
1:00:35.200,1:00:38.799
Darren Lindley sensei down in Kochi
University
1:00:38.799,1:00:45.760
and we performed in Yusuhara,
a very old theater a wooden indoor
1:00:45.760,1:00:52.720
theater up in the mountains of Kochi.
We performed
1:00:52.720,1:00:55.839
our first production performance of
'Macbeth'
1:00:55.839,1:01:00.000
up in Nagano in a
beautiful old
1:01:00.000,1:01:04.960
temple on top of the hillside there that
that i'd fallen in love with and
1:01:04.960,1:01:12.160
visited--randomly stumbled on it,
and decided one day i will perform
1:01:12.160,1:01:17.119
Shakespeare here
and um yeah last year a lot of dreams
1:01:17.119,1:01:20.880
came true, and it's
in no small thanks to a number of the
1:01:20.880,1:01:25.599
people
here and my deepest gratitude
1:01:25.599,1:01:28.079
to
to all of you who are here that I, I
1:01:28.079,1:01:32.319
can't quite see but I
I'm waving to you in my heart. Well Ben
1:01:32.319,1:01:36.559
thank you so much. We're going to stop
recording now and and have you take some
1:01:36.559,1:01:40.960
questions and maybe set it up to where
you can see some of the people here, so
1:01:40.960,1:01:48.880
thank you again so very much
and this ends our recording for today.