well yes is meant to be an actor-blog but...

Kate and El have been doing so much else for the company that I can't in good conscience ask any more of them. There has been a lot of suspense this week, as El sprained her ankle Tuesday. Would she be able to walk for opening? Check. But what about doing all the fights, etc? It would be so sad to see all that beautiful choreography (really the most fun part of any "Shrew" anyway) go awol. As of tonight, final dress, the only thing missing is two carries of Kate. Im sure they'll be back for next weekend. Troopers, all of my lovely ladies. *sniff*

Why we love the Bay Area theater community

This is the most lovely hell week I've ever had. First of all, the show has absolutely blossomed in the past few days. Then, when we realized we couldn't fit our set into our rehearsal space, Cal Shakes graciously let us use their space (thanks Ava and Jean-Paul). Then, our designers were working their asses off, and actors chipped in to help finish details, and designed like pros themselves. (Gotta love how multi-talented all these women are!) As a result, the show really feels like an ensemble creation, like something that everyone involved feels is precious and is working together to nourish into being. That's just how the company started, and just how I could only have dreamed my final show with the company would be. Feeling profoundly grateful and proud tonight.

Why we call it hell week

Took the truck to the indoor rehearsal space, all ready to do a full dress/tech. Set? 3" too tall for the ceiling there. I need to say, this is not all that tall a set. Sigh... it's always something during tech. We really need to work with that thing. However, the run, once we finally got going, was lovely. I heart my actors.

Kate's diary: a history of injustice

When just a child, I found a gleaming stone.
A diamond, my wandering dreams it named.
My sister seeing it, cried and cried
she called it hers and quickly lied:
"oh father,father she has my stone!"
Plucked it was from my loving hands
and given as penance for her tears

My mother held my head to heart
and gave peace to anxious trials
Her arms softened my raging fears
and pulled from me a smile
but heaven stole her warmth from me
and lay her body cold
she left me aimless here to flow
and sink to muddy guile

When my body gave way to womanly form
the doors of liberty broke around me
trees no more could be my haven
and every weasling man bloomed quick
into wedding bands heavy and thick
my father dreamed of airing house
of the breath and weight I put there in
But then my heaving heart let fly
the anger breaking from my pores
and I raised to heaven a hellish din
I hoped my waning freedom to win

yet fate holds dear the trick
of giving the carrot with the stick
Fire found fire and burned white hot
it melted fear, revenge and thought
and though I could deep grievance bear
I'd rather flowers of loving peace wear

Crunch time... and awakenings

This weekend in Dimond Park rehearsing, we had an avid bunch of kids watching. They left a birthday party to come see a stop and go rehearsal! Less than a week from opening—the time we are all trying to cram in the last great ideas, realizing all the things I've done wrong (why on earth did I place everyone in front of Grumio in the second scene?) and making everything picture perfect. Luckily, inspiration is striking. Actors are realizing that they do really know those characters, and this cast seems to feel each other's timing very well. It was also our final day outdoors with the set, so luckily some things didn't work well—meaning we have identified the potential problems already and have time to fix them. As usual I wish we had another few days to rehearse, but it really was a fun show today even as a rehearsal. Nice women, nice play. Our unofficial motto is "kickass women, kickass plays", and we've got a few more days to make the transition from these lovely actors to those awesome characters, and it's looking good.

If it be thus to Dream: or Actor Kate's delusions of destructions

So i know I have the same name as my character (though I am more often cursed than curst) but there is a point where one wants to leave the wooing and shrewing behind and settle down to peaceful slumber.
Everyone's had the "oh my! the play's about to open and I'm naked without money in a desert in Tunisia and my camel ate my passport then dropped dead!" dream, right?
But I have now evolved to a more complex state of what doctors may--one day--call sub-conscious-narco-drametus obsession. As I slept last night, two characters from the play snuck into my dream. Petruchio and Hortensio joined me in a quest to find *inhale*... something! i do not remember what and the "what" is not what's important for "whats" in the end are usually found wanting. Rather it is the Quest that drives a dream and no Quest could be complete without side kicks. Thus, in a wonderful change of positions (perhaps stemming from a deeply repressed need to control even false semblances of proto-masculine figures) Petruchio became my side-kick and Hortensio downgraded even further to the side-kick of the side-kick. And so we began our Quest for the "what."
The thing about "Whats" is that everyone wants them. So in a Quest for a "what" you inevitably have to battle nazis, ninjas, crusaders, magicians,rabid puppies or possessed kittens. In the case of me and my hapless cast-mates, we had to battle traffic. Yes, hoards of taxi-cabs, scratched-up Mercedes,vengeful Minis, and hellish hybrids dogged us through the streets. We ran and dodged over boulevards and through alleys while massive collisions followed in our wake. No CG rendering could ever live up to the vivid destruction that lay behind us.
With amazing agility I saved Hortensio from a raging Hummer and tossed a clue to the location of the "what" to Petruchio in that same glorious leap. Then the three of us took on a beast of a Caddy with monster shocks and battled our way through a place that vaguely resembled Union Square. (If I could control dreams I would have definitely put a cable-car chase in at this point, but instead...) The ground gave way beneath us and we found ourselves in a dark labyrinth of a parking garage. At this point I think Hortensio was hit by a yellow Beetle with a peace sign on the side. Don't worry, he lived. We carried him (or he levitated?). Next, Petruchio was clipped on the leg by Sharon Stone's limo (Ok,so I just made the limo bit up). At this point, I have one side-kick hobbling like a crab, the other is semi-conscious and levitating, and I only have one measly clue about the whereabouts of the "what." But never fear, Kate will persevere!
Somehow I get a light-saber-like object and slice my way out of the parking garage which it now appears in on the top of a sky-scraper. I and my trusty, but road-rag'ed, companions stand staring at the abyss below when suddenly I'm pushed from behind. Then as is always true, the dream ends without satisfaction. The "what" remains out of my reach and the identity of my pushy assailant remains unknown. Was it a vehicle returned from the dead or could it,would it possibly be one of my own dear comrades? Ah I shall never know.
So what did we learn from this little tale about Theatre, shrews and the meaning of life?
That the malevolent manifestation of destruction symbolizes the downfall of the human endeavors to master their globalized over-birth of technology?
or perhaps... that when a mind is singularly focused on inhabiting a performance the theater reality can become interwoven into all aspects of one's life.
Or...more likely, the moral is that you should never trust a person who's name ends in "io"
-Kate

Why theater is so addictive...

There comes a period in almost every rehearsal process when everyone sucks and loses faith and vows not to invite their friends to see the show. It is inevitably the moment when they are forced, screaming, off book for the first time. When trying to remember lines without your script safety-net, they lose their balance again and again, they swear loudly and with feeling, and every ounce of momentum, joy and focus leaves the room. And then, just when I too begin to lose faith, they start to know their lines, and the show takes this magical leap forward, not back to where it was before they dropped script but way beyond, to a place of infinite potential. And man, does the joy flood back into that rehearsal room. That started happening last night, and tonight it was in full force—people making exciting choices, bringing in ideas I had never seen before, even making me hear the script afresh. And I've heard this thing five million times—taught it, been in it, directed it, had a scene from it at my wedding and so on... And you know, that feeling of extreme, group relief that we're not all just fools feels really really good.

Rhyming = Magic!

Petruchio has some pretty awesome zingers in this play. Besides all the fun, (often dirty) banter that he gets to have with Kate, he has such a wide array of speech patterns that it gives me so much to play with! It also really shows the depths of this character. I have to admit: it’s been a little daunting… but if I can just look at all the language clues that Shakespeare created, then already, so much of the work has been done for me. Sure he’s playful and a jokester and dude’s dude, but he also sneaks so many moments of truth and earnestness into what he says. And thus the treasure hunt begins for all these golden moments, or phrases at least…. Rhyming = magic!

Reasons to be tamed

Trying to write my Director's Notes, but Antoine de Saint-Exupery has already said it for me: "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ."

"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower . . . I think she has tamed me . . . "

"My life is very monotonous," (the fox) said. “But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . . "

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time. "Please--tame me!" he said.

"What must I do, to tame you? asked the little prince.

"You must be very patient," replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me--like that--in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . . "

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--

"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."

"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . . "

"Yes, that is so," said the fox. And then he added: "Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world.”

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made a friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

And the roses were very much embarrassed.

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose."

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. Men have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it. You become tied, forever, to what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose.

from The Little Prince (please forgive the imperfect quoting)

Kate's playlist

What sweet melodies would
frolic upon her drum
If Kate had an Ipod...

Rage Against the Machine-Bulls on Parade
The Decemberists- The Mariner's Revenge
A Perfect Circle- Annihilation
Sound Garden- Black Hole Sun
Deftones- My Own Summer (Shove it)
Lunatic Calm- Leave You Far Behind
Smashing Pumpkins-
Pink Floyd- Another Brick in the Wall
Nirvana- Love buzz (should be should buzz...haha)
Jeff Buckley- Yard of Blonde Girls (really more a song about Bianca)
Iron and Wine- Woman King
Cat Power- He War
Modest Mouse- The Good Times are Killing me
Daniel Johnston- True Love will Find you in the End (just to add a dash of hope)

--This actually looks alot like my 8th Grade play list

Kate's Diary June 14th

My husband was gone yesterday, subjecting himself to painful labor, and I felt his absence keenly. Ruled by a patterned instinct, I looked for his face and felt a subtle sinking when it did not greet me.
Air replaced his rough hand upon my spine and voices from the distance shadowed the familiar words that used to spill forth from his lips.
Strange, after so brief an acquaintance, I should long for that which I despised. Fickle is the heart that follows what it flees.
The servants alone kept me company. After my husband's violent injustices towards them, I feel great sympathy for their state. They bumble and stumble, but seek their best to please.
The green hills of Dolores park also cheered me greatly. Yet, the bright sun beams belied the cold that snuck into our clothes.
I dream of days where the whisper of warmth will heat our bones, yet I fear the powerful onslaught of the sun's beams will make for miserable company.

Leaping into the fray

Monday night our fight director, Carla Pantoja dropped by, and we all kicked each other's asses.

With all the fighting many of us have to do on a daily business (for our rights, for recognition, for the retention of our credit card limits, you name it), you'd think we wouldn't want to fight when we don't have to. But stage combat (staged fighting) is exhilarating! A big part of the reason we started the company was that many of us women had tons of stage combat training but never got to use it outside of class. And just like men, we love the camaraderie of a good tussle.

I met Carla in 1999 when another fight director said we just had to use her in our "Coriolanus." Love at first sight. I ended up playing Coriolanus (that's still pretty funny to me, at 5'2" and I think I weighed about 100# at the time), and she was my nemesis. We had one scene together in which we raved about how we loved fighting each other much more than sleeping with our wives, and I could feel it. Our fight was vicious and passionate and I felt intimately and infinitely connected to her. She was a company member for many years and still is our company fight director. (She also is co-owner of other company: www.duelingartssf.com, which offers public classes.)

So there we were on Monday night, building comic fights in exactly the same way we build the serious ones. She asks an actor what move comes to mind, what instincts she has, and then builds from there. I leap in and then try to contain my enthusiasm. We try to remember which of us punched the other in the groin in that Coriolanus fight—I think it was me punching her, followed by her kicking me in the face into that backward roll—and suddenly the conversation is all about how extreme a situation would have to be for a man to actually go beneath the belt. Pretty extreme. Or highly comic, anyway. There are elements of Shrew that are pretty "3 Stooge-y."

And of course it's not just the actual punches and kicks; fighting starts with how all the characters relate to each other physically, and so off went Carla to see how Kate and Petruchio naturally circle each other and discover how that gets fight-y, while I worked with our servant-clowns to see what tables they might use for hiding places or how their heads might happen to come in to contact with doors or other painful objects. I think we ended up with some hilarious choreography, but right now I don't even care—the night was so full of laughter and wonder both at the crazy things people do to each other and at what we can create together.

Seriously, I think everyone should be given a strict regimen of comic fighting. It's as good as a massage for getting everything out of your system, and I have never laughed so hard at a massage.

—Erin

Dicks forward, Ladies!

I’m constantly having to remind myself that that extra little piece of anatomy that dudes have below the belt sure does change a whole lot physically! Beyond the obvious “making room” for such a piece, it’s a lower center of gravity, a shifting of the hips and pelvis which then in turn totally changes how you hold your upper body (not to mention the fact that guys don’t have the extra weight on the upper half that we tend to have).

“Tuck that stinking butt in!” is a phrase I’ve become accustomed to having yelled in my direction during this first week of rehearsal.

It’s funny because I felt like I had it down pretty well with Shui Ta, the dude I played last summer (although maybe I could get away with a little more then because technically my character was a female impersonating a male… um… and she was pregnant to boot). Petruchio’s a whole new ball game though. As I said to Erin today: “Shui Ta just wasn’t quite this grabby” (meaning not at all… but that should give you a lil’ sumpin’ to look forward to this show, huh?). I was also just able to stand my ground with him a little more; I could plant somewhere and that was that. Petruchio takes up a little more room on stage… not that Shui Ta didn’t, it’s just that Petruchio is, in general, just a more physical guy.

I sadly had to miss the always eye-opening “Find your Inner Man” class that Woman’s Will offers at the start of every rehearsal process (and which is actually open to the public and if you haven’t taken advantage of that lil’ gem, I guarantee it’s an afternoon well spent beyond the kicks and giggles you get out of facial hair application). I think it would have been extremely useful for me to revisit that class for this process, but by a fine stroke of luck, we got to have a mini discussion of the process during rehearsal in the park yesterday where there as a woman practicing a fight style that I can’t particularly name. Said “woman” had a very manly way about her, (not just in stance but voice as well, although the stance is what captured our attention the most). Her hips and the flat of her feet seemed like they were so connected to the ground and she had this side-to-side swagger movement that she was using in her fighting that was so the opposite of feminine it was inspiring. She also had quite a bit of muscle on her and so much so in her arms that it forced her to have a little extra room in her armpits, which in turn forced her arms to hang a little farther away from her body and her shoulders to round a bit. She would even toss her long hair out of her face, not with a swooping action like you see the stereotypical “valley girls” use on whatever the hottest tween soap is at the moment, but instead she’d remove it with a quick flick of the head, all the while never taking her threatening eyes off her opponent. She also probably had some “medical” help…. maybe I could ask her where she got her stuff…. Just kidding.

(NB: Woman’s Will does not condone the use of illegal substances… no really).

- El (Petruchio)

Location, location, location

Erin again. Rehearsing at Berkeley's glorious John Hinkel Park this weekend. This is where I saw my first Shakespeare (well, the first Shakespeare I remember), where I studied Shakespeare as a wee teen in the then Berkeley Shakespeare Festival's "Summer with Shakespeare" program. My first year there, Annette Bening was Juliet, and Tony Taccone was one of my teachers.

But it was the park that made it magic. We students were encouraged to see each show more than once, and I walked up to that park for at least 4 shows a week all summer long—watching performances that many times taught me more than I ever could have learned in my admittedly excellent classes, and sitting under that canopy of trees was pure heaven. When I started the company, that was the first place I booked to perform, and I look forward to it every year. It's still the best place we perform (followed closely by Mountain View's Rengstorff House), and the first time we rehearse there, I always see the actors come alive a bit.

We rehearse out in our performance park sites on weekends because the actors need the time to adjust their voices and gestures to the hugeness needed to compete with frisbees, dogs, and the other distactions we see in our parks. But John Hinkel is quiet, with great acoustics, even a bbq pit so we can cook for our first performances. And I don't know if it's all the history there or just some inherent blessedness of that place, but everything feels possible when we are there.

Today we "blocked" several scenes—tried out and set the characters' movements in parts of the play—while a couple of young men ate their lunch and a little boy rode his bike, stopping to watch whenever the actors were speaking their lines. Jon Tracy, who I hadn't seen in ages, dropped by to measure the space for his August production of "The Farm" with Shotgun Players. A very comfortable, collegial place to be. Rehearsal is my favorite part of theater work—it is really very hard work, but it feels like playing, and my actors are all so game to try anything I throw their way. Our enthusiasm bounces off each other, and off the peace of the park, and all seems right in the world.

Kate's Diary June 3rd

How Dare he! What? does he think I am so easily won?
This is only the beginning.
Last night we prowled around each other, all silent but for the buzzing air between us. Would I could turn that air to lightening to strike him down. I tried to start him and charged and raised my hand. Threaten though I might, he did not flee. Rather, he grabbed me by the waist.
Foolish weakness! Why, I had to bite my lip to keep the smile in.
There was a moment, I could not say how it happened, where our bodies moved simultaneously to attack each other. His impulse was joined to mine.
What of that?
He is no gentleman. That be certain.
What impudence to lay his hands upon me so! Not only did he touch me, but he held my arms in such an awkward form that I was hard pressed to gain my liberty.
That rudesby will soon get his however studied his words may be!

Kate the Cursed is Loose!

Erin here. Founder of the company, director of the show. We have talked about doing Shrew since we started the company. Such an obvious one for us to do, and everyone wants to know how we'll play that infamous last scene—as if there were any question at all! And no, I'm not giving you the answer here—you just have to come see it. All I'll say is that it's Shakespeare's sexiest, sassiest comedy, and fireworks will be flying all summer around here.

Usually when we rehearse a show, we have one cast member blog. In this show, it's much more apt to have two—Kate Jopson, who is playing Kate (the titular Shrew) and El Beh, who is playing Petruchio, the Tamer of the aforementioned. I'll probably butt in now and then too, since it's my last show with the company (I'll be handing the reins to the elegant and infinitely capable Victoria Evans Erville, but that's another story...), and that has made me particularly wordy about what we do and why we do it.

We do all-female Shakespeare. We do it because when we began 12 seasons ago, there were few roles for women in classical work, and even modern plays weren't giving us the full range of human experience to explore—the men got that, and we were hungry for what they had. Times have really changed—now we have all these fantastic roles for women being written (and more well-rounded roles for men too) and other local companies hiring women for a broader (no pun intended) types of roles. One of the actors in this new production was 9 years old when we started—her experience of women on stage surely is different from mine growing up. I can't wait to see how the company changes with the world.

But for me, for this last show with my first baby, I'm going retro. Thinking back to how rip-roaring fun everything was when we were new and trying all this all-female stuff for the first time, before we had the good reputation we wanted to keep. Back when we were bad girls, shrews even. Thinking back even further to my high school trip to Ashland, aged 16, tripping through a cemetery with a boyfriend, quoting Shrew by heart, wooing each other with this ancient play. Our first time—with Shakespeare. Young and sassy and sexier than we even knew. That's what it's all about. Youth and theater—same hot and bothered energy. And the Shrew? Can't wait to play with her again.