I read you

Nox by Anne Carson

2010-06-02T20:34:00.005-10:00

I bought Anne Carson's newest book the other day. She is one of two authors alive today whose works I will buy at the drop of a hat. (The other is Thomas Pynchon.) It's called Nox, and it is a beautiful piece of literature. Physically, it is a beautiful book.

It's more of a box than a book exactly. The box opens like a book, but the pages come out in accordion-like fashion as one long strip. It is one piece of long paper. At first, it's difficult to decide how to handle these odd pages. I assumed the thing was fastened into the bottom of the box-book somehow, so I carefully held it in my lap and gently turned the pieces over revealing one page at a time the words.

Then came a section that ran on for several folds in the manuscript and made me look at the thing in a whole new light. I could lift out the front part and stretch the words out over several pages and take in a larger section than is normally afforded to the reader with the average book.

Finally, came the realization that the back of the manuscript was free of the bottom of the box-book. I could lift it entirely from its case. So, I did. I spread it out before me on the bed where I sat reading and took in the beauty of the lovely words that lay before me.

Nox is the Latin word for night, and the manuscript is a long, loving translation of Catullus 101. The pages alternate between dissertive translations of the poem word by painstaking word and fragments of letters from Ms. Carson's deceased brother and her thoughts on their life and relationship. The manuscript is a facsimile of something she created for herself in memory of her brother.

There are old photographs and copies of handwritten letters. I should say that there are copies of torn pieces of letters from her brother. We are left wondering whether we have all to go by to decide what we should think.

But isn't that life? Aren't we in a constant state of wondering whether we have all the information we need to think?

The physical manuscript itself calls out to me and begs to be handled. It implores me to stretch it across the floor to try to piece it together.

Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

Good Habits

2010-03-10T21:39:00.000-10:00

To develop good habits you must nourish them with good action; and to do this it is necessary to seek good company. Environment (in particular, the company you keep) is very important, for it is stronger than will power.

Paramahansa Yogananda, The Divine Romance

What a telling short two sentences written circa 1930 by one of the twentieth centuries greatest yogis. It goes right along with a saying that is popular among my friends: you can act your way into right thinking, but you cannot think your way into right action.

This collection of many sermons, speeches, and writings of Yogananda is ripe with gems like this one. If we take his words at face value, he would seem to be telling us that we are the company we keep. In other words, you are what you eat.

Surround yourself with good people, and you have a better chance of becoming one yourself. I don't think the yogi is imagining that it will happen by osmosis but that it will occur of its own accord. Like begets like. It's interesting the reliance he places on people. He alludes that it is through people we learn our most basic lessons of how to act.

We are not islands. We do not exist in isolation. From birth, we are surrounded by people. I quite agree with him that from the age we are capable of doing so, we must hunt out the best possible people to have in our lives. It's like picking the best possible fruit at the market. To enjoy good health, we must eat wholesome food, and to enjoy a wholesome life, we must seek out genuine people.

Three Little Monkeys

2010-02-23T15:30:00.001-10:00

[The Blogger lives! After a long hiatus, I'm back.]

Nearly everone is familair with those three little monkey-figures that depict the maxim, "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." I emphsize the positive approach: "See that which is good, hear that which is good, speak that which is good."

Paramahansa Yogananda, The Divine Romance

What does it mean to switch from negative to positive statements? Can semantics alter the reality of what we see and feel? I think the answer is yes. In the first instance quoted above, we are admonished of what not to do, but the second gives us more room for movement.

When I concentrate my efforts on not doing something, I restrict myself. But the quest to seek out something, I am opened. I am given free rein to conduct myself in ways that are life-fulfilling and life-giving. What a joyful difference it is, too. I am emboldened to go out and find the good in all things.

Instead of concentrating on the bad, I have a reason to appreciate the good. In the end, I find beauty.

Caprice!

2009-11-01T23:02:00.001-10:00

At the end of Act 1 in Amadeus, Saleiri flings these words at God:

"Now for the first time I feel my emptiness as Adam felt his nakedness ... You gave me the desire to serve You -- which most men do not have -- then saw to it that the service was shameful in the ears of the server. Grazie! You gave me the desire to praise You -- which most men do not feel -- then made me mute. Grazie tanti! You put into me perception of the Incomparaable -- which most men never know! -- then ensured that I would know myself forever mediocre."

And thus begins his duel with God. He goes on, "They say God is not mocked. I tell you, Man is not mocked!"

Just think about the hubris. It has to come from a human. God has no need for arrogance. Only a person capable of enough self-reflection can produce such a torrent. Not since Sophocles wrote his Theban Trilogy and forever set down the tale of Oedipus, have we seen such a whirlwind. Not since Shakespeare gave us Hamlet, have we heard the internal workings of such a tormented mind.

Oedipus was guilty of excessive pride among other things. His fight is with himself. In The King, we have a heroic undoing, and in At Colonus, we have a divine reconciliation when the gods themselves choose a tomb for the wandering, blind old man. We see the roots of the schism between the sacred and the profane in Oedipus's arrogant rants, but the wounds are healed. It is the man, standing before his tomb: "We see him bow and kiss the ground and stretch his arms to the skies, salute the gods of Olympus and the powers of the Earth in one great prayer, binding both together." Only a human being can accomplish that. Only a man.

We must look to Hamlet to again see the inner turmoil:

"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wan'd;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba?
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have?"

Hamlet's plight is with his uncle. It is an earthly duel like Oedipus's. In this text from the late sixteenth century, men bewail their fates and rant once again at the caprice of the heaven's. The fight is between humans at the behest of higher powers. The inner workings of Hamlet's mind are laid bare in a way never seen before, yet he does not fight with God.

What happened in the last 400 years that sets up Salieri's declaration: "From this time we are enemies, You and I"? What allows for this shift, this earthquake? I think the answer lies in revolutions in America but most especially in France and Russia and then in two great wars that engulfed the whole planet, which were revolutions of another type. Shaffer's Salieri is only possible in the light cast from the flames of these great wars that upended the very spheres of the heavens.

Salieri's fight is not with Mozart, as he asserts himself, but through the man to God. Could this battle take place before the twentieth century? Were the pieces in place previously? Salieri is certainly as arrogant as Oedipus, and his inner life is open for us to see in the text like Hamlet's. Still, the war is on a higher plane. It is with the divine. Shaffer, the playwright, mesmerizes us.

Are we, each one of us, at war with God?

A Poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay

2009-09-18T19:40:00.000-10:00

Never May the Fruit Be Plucked

Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough
And gathered into barrels.
He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.
Though the branches bend like reeds,
Though the ripe fruit splash in the grass or wrinkle on the tree,
He that would eat of love may bear away with him
Only what his belly can hold,
Nothing in the apron,
Nothing in the pockets.
Never never may the the fruit be gathered from the bough
And harvested in barrels.
The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins,
In an orchard soft with rot.

In this poem, four lines are almost repeated save one or two words. Importantly, those changes are verbs. There is something in the action that the poet wants us to look at closely. In the lines beginning "never, never...," plucked becomes gathered, and in the lines about the barrels, gathered becomes harvested. The ideas in the words rhyme. It's interesting that she chose only 3 verbs to play with. Plucked. Gathered. Harvested.

Plucked has joy in it. Spring laughs.

Gathered begs multiplicity. It is full.

Harvested is final. Ripening completes.

And in the end, in love's winter, nothing is stored but rots where it hangs or lays. The ripe, full joy comes to an inedible sour sweet stench.

Seeking God

2009-09-13T15:36:00.001-10:00

I lived overseas for many years, mostly in Asia. Living overseas changes a person, and I have to say that I have some un-Orthodox ideas about spirituality, religion, and God. I believe fervently in a spiritual side of life, but I refuse to be drawn into defining it by standard means. I would go so far as to say that I doubt there's a single person on the face of the planet who really knows what the spiritual side of life is exactly like.

When I read Indian spiritualists and mystics, I find a great deal of truth, so it was with relish that I accepted a couple of books of poetry when a friend was moving. Imagine my surprise that the author, Adyashanti, was a Caucasian American, living in the Bay Area. I have found a great deal of truth in the poems and sayings in the book My Secret is Silence. One stanza I especially like ends a poem:

Has it ever occurred to you
that you are seeking God
with His eyes?

I fell asleep last night repeating that question to myself. I also asked myself whether I would act differently if I believed it. The answer is yes.

Don't get me wrong. "I" am not God. I do not believe that I am God. I don't really even know what God is.

Here's what is right. God is. I don't know where God's boundaries are, but I find it hard to fathom that God has them. That being the case. What is divine and what is profane?

In Oedipus at Colonus, the blind former king Oedipus goes out in search of his own tomb. Unguided, he leads those who follow him, and a messenger recounts, "But then after a moment, with no word spoken, we saw him salute the earth and the sky, home of the gods, at the same moment." In one motion, a man links all that is sacred with all that isn't. With a salute, all becomes one. It takes an action from a human to accomplish this.

There's something in the salute by a blind man that binds the sacred and the profane. There's something in the act. Human action has the capacity to bring God into the equation.

Reading Tarot

2009-09-07T21:12:00.000-10:00

I read tarot cards as well as books, and sometimes I read books about tarot. I just finished one: Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot by Lon M. DuQuette. It's an exhaustive study of the most fascinating tarot deck yet drawn. The Thoth tarot contain astrology, Qabbala, ancient Egyptian references, and more. There's no end to the imagery and what can be elicited from them.

While astrology placed Earth at the center of the universe for millenia, Crowley boldly sweeps that away with his new deck. DuQuette writes, "The individual is now to be recognized as the primary and preeminent unit of society. It is now possible for humnaity to awaken to the liberating fact that each of us is a star, as unique and self-radiant as our celestial counterparts." A new age has begun, and with it, new cards for the new deck. Justice is replaced by Adjustment, Strength by Lust, and Temperance by Art. The crowning change is the elimination of the Judgement card with the advent of the Aeon card. All of these substitutions speak to the new dawn of human spirit glorifying the power of the individual.

I've read tarot for well over a decade, and when I first encountered these new cards, I honestly didn't know what to make of them. I doubt that many tarot readers do. Once it is understood that Crowley meant his deck to be the crowning symbol of a new age, they make more sense. Justice is an absolute, existing outside people and acting on them. Adjustment, on the other hand, is an individual act. The new card points to the person's responsibility to place himself in harmony with the universe. While Strength is measure all on its own needing no other reason to exist than itself, Lust calls to each of us and to the strength of our own passions.

I don't think it's strange at all that Crowley would rid his deck of the Temperance card, that chaste angel measuring the questioner's worth. In its place, he gives us Art. It is a halting picture of a single figure with a double face pouring both water and fire into the cauldron of creation. Isn't that what creating is? Aren't artists preeminent creators? This new card combines the masculine and feminine in a new form forged from the combination of opposites.

Judgement is replaced by the Aeon. The Judgement card in traditional decks gives us an angel sounding the horn calling for the dead to rise again. It's a chilling portrait with all those open graves, and always makes me wonder about the unopened ones. Crowley proclaims a new age has begun, a new Aeon. The card is decidedly Egyptian. The goddess Nut arches her star-studded body across the sky to cover the seated god Ra-Hoor-Khuit. The god Hoor-Pa-Kraat stands superimposed transparently before the others. From this, we are to gather that the era of fear-based existence is at an end. Indeed, our fear of the end or death is to end, and we are to understand our own immortality.

Reading tarot is fun for me. Reading the Thoth tarot is pure enjoyment. The colors are striking. The images pull ideas out of me. I have half a dozen different decks, but this one gives me the most to work with. The figures of the trumps exude mastery. The court cards clearly define different kinds of individuals. Finally, the numbered cards call out their meaning in ways that other decks do not. I am enamored with these cards.

"The Future of Reading"

2009-08-29T18:26:00.000-10:00

There was a great article in a recent New York Times book section. It outlined one teacher's use of a somewhat novel approach to teaching reading: allowing students to choose their own books.

(The article can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/books/30reading.html?pagewanted=1)

What I find curious about the whole thing is that it's not new. In the eleventh grade, Mrs. Brinkman--if I remember her name correctly--gave us all freedom to choose our own book to read in the spring semester. The previous fall, we'd all read Lord of the Flies together. I remember being fascinated with the book and drawing what I imagined was a map of the island. I gave it to my English teacher who used it in class. I don't remember now, but I'm sure I was proud.

Reading has always been important to me, and I truly don't understand people who don't have bookshelves full of books that have been read and are waiting to be read. I don't understand people who don't know how to use a library. But that's just me. Reading is my life in a way.

I have to say that I am a reading snob. I can't stand pulp. I once picked up something by Danielle Steele, not knowing anything about her or her books. I got it for light reading on the beach. I remember that I made it through the first two paragraphs, I put the book down in the sand, and I walked away never looking back. I'm sorry, but it was trash to me.

So, during that spring semester in high school when I was given freedom to choose anything I wanted, what did I read? As You Like It by Shakespeare. I was a fanatic of his even then. I distinctly remember that the language was tough going. It was hard on my ear, but I read it and understood enough to report on it. I could have picked anything out of the school's library, but I chose Shakespeare. I was a literary snob even then.

Born to Love

2009-08-22T23:07:00.000-10:00

In Love's Labour's Lost, Berowne pronounces, "We cannot cross the cause why we were born." And in those few words tells us that life without love is not possible. He goes on some lines following that one to make a long dissertation about why oaths against love are unlawful and therefore lawfully broken.

He's talking about women, of course, but tonight I'm in love with words. I love to fit them into places they might not at first glance seem to belong. I like to rearrange them. I even mold them at times.

T.S. Eliot said it better than I ever could in "Burnt Norton":

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.

I cannot touch the Chinese jar, but words can. They last. They move.

Reading Opening Lines

2009-08-21T12:04:00.004-10:00

A screaming comes across the sky.

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon opens with that sentence. I like the simple, declarative structure. Sound takes on the active role. Something that we see as normally passive and received becomes the actor, the mover. It does so in a medium that is painted with adjectives to adorn it with meaning. Here sky stands alone. It's not stormy, blue, clear, cloudy, or even star-studded.

And how does sound relate to this empty sky? It comes. Of all the ways it could have passed, ridden, approached, or appeared. The whole idea has been stripped to its essence, and in those naked words, a glimmer of what is to come is born.

Opening sentences carry enormous responsibility in books. They have to inform the reader about the subject of the book, and good ones subtly set the tone. Great ones make the astute reader stop and stare. The line quoted above is one of those. It announces to anyone interested enough to consider it that the following book is going to be loud enough to fill an empty space. Gravity's Rainbow roared into literary space in 1973 and has been the subject of study, adoration, and derision ever since. It happens to be one of my top 5 favorite books.

Another great book also opens simply. John Steinbeck's East of Eden starts with "The Salinas Valley is in Northern California." At first glance, the sentence is almost boring, until you consider the elements. There is a name, and there is place echoed from the book's title. What follows in the story is a wrestling of name and identity in place that grows, anchors, and frees.

I edit books. That is, when people send them to me to edit. I can tell a lot by the opening line. I've read some pieces in which I knew the entire plot by the first sentence, and I've read some that needed a lot of work on that one little sentence.

My favorite opening line of all time comes from a little book with a big title, Winner of the National Book Award by Jincy Willett. While it's very good, no, the book did not win the National Book Award. That's not what we're here to consider.

What does the opening line say?

Lightning sought our mother out, when she was a young girl in Brown County,
Indiana.

There it is. It's got sentient natural electrical weather. It's got the maternal role juxtaposed against the promise of a youthful girl. And it's got place. I love that the moving inanimate electricty searches for the girl. It injects just a note of paranoia. But it's in the past and in a seemingly unlikely place. The book goes on to fulfill the promise of this opening. It's got bad weather and women and an odd place little thought of by people except those who live there.

When I browse bookshops, I often read the opening lines of books. I rarely look at what the cover has to say. The verbage written on the dust jacket is advertising, but the opening line is there to hook me. It's there to compel to read what follows.

Talking About Acting 3

2009-08-17T13:57:00.004-10:00

To bring an audience the revelation of the failings and aspirations,
the dreams and desires, the negative and the positive aspects of human
beings—this is what we should set as our goal as committed theater artists. Then
we will be respected and have respect for ourselves and respect for acting! --
Uta Hagen, Respect for Acting

I have read both of Uta Hagen's books about acting and admire each one. Besides the one quoted above, there is Challenge for the Actor, which I prefer.

Revelation. That word is miraculous. I go about my days meeting various people in many different walks of life, and it's always astonishing to me to think about their lives. I wonder what the home is like for the cashier at the grocery store. What story has the doctor just been a part of before he comes in to take a look at my sore throat? What's going on with the friend who isn't returning calls? The individuals I meet on a daily basis are full of failings and aspirations. They have inner lives that I can imagine and gather occasional glimpses of.

The study of people around me assists me in building a character. My role in a play assumes that I know much more about my character's thoughts and actions than simply when he's speaking. I have to know what he's thinking between the lines. More acting happens when I'm not speaking than when I am. I've been in long scenes on stage with only 5 lines of my own, but my character must exist the whole time I'm in front of the audience. While it might not be written down, I have to know what my character would say if suddenly called upon to speak.

To get to that level of character, I have to work. I relate that work to my own life as well. What are my motives for pursuing a certain goal? What are the dreams and desires behind it? Finally, what are my negative and positive aspects that I present to the world every day? Playing me takes full time. I never get to lay it down, take off the costume, or wash off the makeup. I'm aware that I perform everywhere I go.

In Search of Art

2009-08-15T12:46:00.000-10:00

Goodness is nothing in the furnace of art.

So says Salieri at the beginning of act 2 of Amadeus. That brash statement certainly causes me to stop and ponder it for a bit. It implies that goodness will vanish in the heat of artistic fervor. I don't think the play is about being good, no matter what definition of that you use. It's about art and talent and covetousness. Salieri means nothing impedes art.

I've heard it said by professional writers that they have to write. They're driven to it. Their passion forces the words out of them. I've heard the same thing about professional dancers and even scientists. My competitive nature wants that kind of zeal, too. I want to feel some manic desire force me to frenetically pursue a desire. Do I have it in me? Do I truly want it? Do I know what's best for me in this case? Wouldn't I be consumed by the fire, destroyed in the furnace?

I have a passion for reading. Books bring me joy and tears. They show me vast plains of existence, all the while forcing my sight inward to my most miniscule parts. It's that turning inward that compels me to read.

In Amadeus, Salieri is compelled to write music. He describes wandering the hills of Lombardy as a boy humming and singing what he would later in life write down on paper. Holy music. Operas. Dances. He is treated to great fame and glory, while Mozart wastes away impoverished, churning out miraculous pieces one after the other. Salieri's music is beaten out of him on the forge of necessity. Mozart's flows out of him in the river of eternity. One slaves away. One gushes forth.

Salieri's envy undoes him. In the play, he goes to great lengths to destroy Mozart's genius, and in the end, he can't. Mozart's music thrives for all to hear, while Salieri's languishes.

I am grateful that I have the opportunity to read great literature and meditate on it. My passion doesn't seem so life threatening.

Talking About Acting 2

2009-08-12T16:57:00.000-10:00

Is acting a craft? Is it an art? How do we allow for such differences in the acting world as lie between the Little Rascals on the one hand and Meryl Streep on the other? What makes an actor?

Stanislavsky was the first who put in writing what came to be a widely accepted answer. It became so widely accepted that it is accorded the status of a proper noun and capitalized as the Method. He put on paper a formula for creating a character that still carries weight today and still engenders controversy. In the same interview in 1961 quoted previously, Mr. Jose Ferrer said:

By definition, how can Stanislavsky's so-called Method, which was created
for the period of 1890 in Russia, be valid today,...in a period that has
television, has the atom bomb, has radio, and media of communication for actors
that didn't exist for him.

Indeed, why does the Method still matter and what is it? Mr. Ferrer went on to call it a kind of realism arising out of the Industrial Revolution and the political milieu of the time also evident in Impressionism in painting and music. I am just beginning to read Creating a Role and Building a Character, but I know a lot of what I'm going to find simply due to being in and around the theater and actors since I was six.

An actor is more than a shell. He brings experience and talent to a role. His body carries physical memories of emotions. His mind remembers mental images of events. He is a whole, and a good actor applies it all to his assignment. He takes his own inner life and uses bits and pieces to create a character for the audience to believe in. He uses it all to craft a being to live and breathe its hour on the stage.

Shakespeare had something to say on the subject of acting in Hamlet (III.2):

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the
tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town
crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but
use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,whirlwind of
passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it
smoothness...
Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit
the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance,
that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from
the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to
hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own image, scorn
her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and
pressure.

Shakespeare draws a line between using all gently and anything so overdone. Isn't he calling for realism? While the words here concentrate on outward shows of action, won't the inward feelings follow that give the Player the ability to cry for Hecuba? Or is it all bound up in talent? I don't know the full answer to that yet, and I'm looking forward to the possibility of discovering it.

Talking About Acting 1

2009-08-12T15:39:00.000-10:00

In an interview published in 1961, Jose Ferrer said, "I like to tell the author's story. That's the satisfaction of acting to me." He stressed relaying the playwright's narrative. He did not address the issue of absurdist theater in what I read, but I came away with the clear sense that the play's the thing.

What is the actor's responsibility to the script? Can it be as simple as to breathe life into it? An actor takes written words and transforms them into an oral medium. He gives them voice. If he's any good, he may even give them life. But a lot happens between the first reading and the performance. Words spark imagination. Words inspire the actor to feel. A whole range of physical reactions stir the actor to create. And it all starts with words. Words. Words.

In another part of the interview, Mr. Ferrer described memorization as the most unpleasant part of the acting process, and I agree. There's a tyranny of the script, and it makes me ask about the choices the author has made. Hamlet gives us a brilliant speech about his inept handling of his dead father's wishes in "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" The words fight to get off the page and fly about the theater firing the passions of the hearers. Hamlet is chastened by the Player's tears for an unknown Hecuba, while he himself toils with the knowledge of a dear murdered father.

Yet, when we see him next, Hamlet is lost in "To be, or not to be..." A good actor has to be responsible for the transition from one to the other. There must be a world he occupies where objects and events lead him from shouting to hesitation. What can the actor accomplish between those two disparate speeches to arrive from the passion of one to the pathos of the other?

The author only sets down what is absolutely necessary to advance the plot. Any extraneous speech, line, phrase, or word has to be struck from the page. While we can write reams about the difference between these two speeches and how inappropriate their timing may be, we have to assume that Shakespeare set them down on the page in sequence for a reason. In Olivier's movie of Hamlet, he interposes the scene with Ophelia between the two. I think he does a disservice to the writer.

As Mr. Ferrer said, the actor is telling a story, one written by someone else (except on very rare occasions). The actor is not an editor. He is a vessel. He is the important transporter of the playwright's words, delivering them to a receptive audience, hopefully, in a dynamic and correct manner. He exists to animate what is on the page.

Reading a Play

2009-08-11T00:01:00.000-10:00

There's more to reading a play than meets the eye. When an actor reads one, he constantly looks for hints for building character. I look for little pictures in the words, for scenic interpretations to pop off the page.

Two friends came over the other day to read Art by Yasmina Reza, and one picture presented itself in a humorous and dramatic way. The play is about three friends and a white painting that one has purchased for a small fortune. It's a totally white painting. The words used to describe the piece by one of the friends are "resonance" and "system." Another simply pronounces it "shit." The playwright allows the characters the full range of reactions to what is essentially empty.

In any event, the whole situation is comical, and the way each character confronts this expensive void is telling. Their treatment of each other is what fills the picture. It's what the artist really intended us to see. The culmination of which is a bit of physical confrontation resulting in one man's ear being hit. He collapses in agony and holds a compress to his injury when what should appear but a rat.

A rat dashes through the room.

And isn't that just like life? Just when we are brought to the utmost end of our tolerance, just when we strike out against our lack, just at the edge of our control, something small invades us. Here sits a man in pain inflicted on him by accident since the blow was meant for another, here are three friends driven to the extreme by an expanse of white canvas, and we are treated to a sideshow.

The three men are not so much in control as they imagine.

An actor reading a play molds the written words into mental images of stage action. He starts with emptiness and fills it with entrances, exits, walking, gesturing, shouting, whispering, and any other expression that comes to mind to fill the expansive theater, to bring life to the void.

Beginning Classically

2009-08-08T18:40:00.000-10:00

O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep,
Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep!

So says Berowne in act 1 scene 1 of Shakespeare's gloriously witty Love's Labour's Lost. Opening with the "O," the author invites us to follow the next sounds along, and indeed pounds our ears with hard consonants in the first of the two lines.

But he follows on with a slightly alterred meter in the second line, emphasizing the little word "to." He invites us to concentrate on seeing, studying, fasting, sleeping. And I am struck by the sliding sounds of s that make us think of the words to follow, ones ripe with action.

With this beginning, Shakespeare sets the stage for a play of words, wit, rhythm, rhyme, and juggling language. We're off on a roller coaster of verse interrupted by ribald humor from more rustic characters, not to mention the ostentatious Spaniard, don Armado.

For 32 summers, Hilo Community Players have presented Shakespeare in the Park, and for our thirty-third installment in 2010, we will perform this beautiful play of banter and love. The verbal sparring will center around a swing displayed prominently, and the men and ladies will try their wits to the motion of the language as well as the physical prop.

I will be co-directing this production along with the experienced Amy Jackson. It is our intent to let the rich language fill the air of Kalakaua Park in Hilo, Hawaii. Audiences will come away knowing something of Shakespeare's verse as well as his views of love and courtship.

But this blog will not limit itself to one text. No, I will be writing and reporting on what I'm reading. My tastes are varied. I hope you enjoy.