Directing Shakespeare in America

Historical Perspectives

Charles Ney

• Editorial: The Arden Shakespeare
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781474289702
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Literatura
• Categoría: Arte dramático shakespeariano

This unique and comprehensive study reviews the practice of leading American directors of Shakespeare from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century. Charles Ney examines rehearsal and production records, as well as evidence from diaries, letters, autobiographies, reviews and photographs to consider each director's point of view when approaching Shakespeare and the differing directorial tools and techniques employed in significant productions in their careers. Directors covered include Augustin Daly, David Belasco, Arthur Hopkins, Orson Welles, Margaret Webster, B. Iden Payne, Angus Bowmer, Craig Noel, Jack O'Brien, Tyronne Guthrie, John Houseman, Allen Fletcher, Michael Kahn, Gerald Freedman, Joseph Papp, Stuart Vaughan, A. J. Antoon, JoAnne Akalaitis, Paul Barry, Tina Packer, Barbara Gaines, William Ball, Liviu Ciulei, Garland Wright, Mark Lamos, Ellis Rabb and Julie Taymor. Directing Shakespeare in America: Historical Perspectives offers readers an understanding of the context from which contemporary practitioners operate, the aesthetic philosophies to which they subscribe and a description of their rehearsal methods.

1

First American Directors 1870s–1940s

Theatre historians generally agree that the German Duke of Saxe-Meiningen was the first theatre director in the modern sense of someone dedicated to making artistic choices and overseeing a production’s development as their major responsibility. Beginning in the 1830s, the duke worked on productions by the Meiningen Ensemble, an amateur court theatre. The group’s influence was considerable, especially after an 1874 tour that demonstrated the effectiveness of having an independent person in charge of production.

Soon after, American director Augustin Daly began to execute similar tasks. His career was pivotal, not only as the first American director, but also as a director of Shakespeare. His process – evolved in response to the European theatrical traditions of the late nineteenth century – established the first seminal approach to directing the bard’s work in the United States. Then, in short succession came David Belasco, Arthur Hopkins, Orson Welles and Margaret Webster. While several of these names were key figures in the development of American stage direction, they were also directors of Shakespeare. Their working styles and methods presage much about the future staging of Shakespeare’s plays. Daly, Belasco and Welles were visionary leaders with large egos to match those of any star with whom they worked. Hopkins and Webster had a more temperate, collaborative approach to directing. Collectively, they represent philosophies of directing that continue to the present time.

Before launching into a survey of these directors’ work, it is helpful to look at the environment out of which they were spawned. In the 1870s, the actor-manager system was still in full force in America, and tradition governed how rehearsals were handled. A company’s major actor or actress was responsible for supervising the chief management details: hiring, firing, as well as overseeing rehearsals. The actor-manager staged the scenes in which they appeared with some consultation with the other chief players. She or he might even have a detailed prompt book in which all of the business of the play would be outlined. It was left to the stage manager to rehearse the remaining scenes with the minor characters and supernumeraries.

According to Warren Kliewer, two other methods of rehearsal were common at the time. A modified version of the actor-manager system relied upon an actor or actress in a supporting role who would also be charged with overseeing the production as well as the administration of the company. Company management had two sides to it and directing was viewed as ‘the artistic aspect of theatre management’ (Kliewer 1998: 515). Another method was to consult the company’s previous productions’ prompt books for notes on blocking and other business. Situated at stage right, the stage manager or prompter was charged with ensuring that the actors followed the stage directions. These monitors did not particularly have much power in the rehearsal hall, but the prompt books they consulted held considerable authority.

By the early 1900s, cracks had begun to appear in the foundation of this system. Julia Marlowe and E. H. Sothern, considered to be the foremost Shakespearean actors of their day, were well versed in the actor-manager traditions. In 1909, they began work on a production of Antony and Cleopatra, in which they were to star. The production was to open the New Theatre in New York, with thoughts that this grandiose new building might become America’s national theatre. In his landmark Shakespeare on the American Stage, Charles Shattuck details a misunderstanding that arose at the very first rehearsal. Marlowe and Sothern assumed the arrangement would be business as usual:

[They would] handle the staging of not only their own scenes, but also those of the entire company. To that end, Miss Marlowe scrupulously prepared a promptbook. ‘She cut and arranged the text as seemed best for a three hour presentation. She settled every movement and essential stage business. She marked every line for verbal emphasis’. Unfortunately her efforts were thwarted because at the first meeting with the stage manager Louis Calvert, the English actor/producer, took one look and ‘smilingly returned it with the words to the effect that “we won’t need that, dear lady”’. (Shattuck 1987: 279)

It immediately became clear that Calvert was not just a stage manager, but was also going to operate as a director. The collaboration did not improve. Marlowe and Sothern insisted that Calvert had violated their contractual rights and forced him to depart the production. Still, the existing system was challenged and its days were numbered.

B. Iden Payne in his autobiography provides another account of the actor-manager system.

At this time ‘producing’ (or ‘directing’, to use the American term) meant no more than arranging the movements of the actors on the stage. This was the prerogative of the leading actor, often partly in consultation with other actors in important parts, especially the leading lady. The reading of the lines was left almost entirely to the judgment of the actors themselves. Touches such as tempo and pauses were expected to develop spontaneously. (Payne 1977: 58)

He credits the plays of Ibsen and Shaw with the reason directors were needed. Not only did the complexities of production demand more supervision, but character motivation became more difficult for actors to determine in these texts than with earlier writers. The situation required clarification and supervision by a non-performer. Also, achieving the appropriate ‘atmosphere’ was a central consideration in the production of many plays and the theatre needed someone who could help create it (Payne 1977: 58).

The first directors had to be strong, sometimes ruthless, in order to justify and maintain their power. While instilling the changes they sought in their companies, tensions often arose in rehearsal halls and on stage as the American theatre struggled with, but ultimately assimilated a very different administrative structure, along with a new set of rules. Their most significant innovation to the old actor-manager system was that the director now held the power for decisions with the company.

Augustin Daly

By 1890, Daly had been a successful producer and director for several decades. A reference to Daly gives an example of an early use of the term ‘director’. The 9 August 1890 the Illustrated London News, reviewing his production of As You Like It at Daly’s Theatre, remarked: ‘In some instances, an independent director is possibly the very best thing for the art in which he is interested’ (The Playhouses 1890). In listing advantages, the writer argues: ‘Mr. Augustin Daly is not an actor at all. He is a man of letters, a Shakespearean student, a collector and maker of valuable books; he was once a very eminent dramatic critic, and strange to say, to all these gifts he adds a very excellent business head’ (The Playhouses 1890). The writer claimed that an independent director might offer a considerable advantage to a production: ‘The director, not being an actor, does not buttonhole a rival artist, and suggest that he should speak his lines inaudibly, in order that he, the actor-manager shall have the pull. No; the play is the very first consideration, and the players have to fall into the general scheme of presenting it’ (The Playhouses 1890).

In a 1 June 1882 letter to William Winter, Daly outlined his primary goal: ‘We want to make Shakespeare attractive to the masses, and to that end … we must concede something to them’ (Winter 1882). He meant to create productions that were visually attractive and charming and ‘clean’ (Winter 1882). Throughout his career, Daly maintained a close partnership with Winter. Although a theatre critic for the New-York Tribune, Daly paid him to cut and prepare production texts. Although the arrangement was ethically questionable, Winter’s work included ‘vetting the texts of plays’ that Daly was producing as well as composing forewords to his ‘acting editions’ (Shattuck 1987: 57). Shattuck discovered that Winter often prepared his review in advance of the opening.

Winter’s ‘principles of emendation’ for the acting editions started with the dictate that one should avoid ‘touch[ing], even in the most reverent spirit, the work of “the divine William”’ (Winter 1885). Nevertheless, he argued that the texts could be improved: ‘It is impossible to act Shakespeare precisely as the text is written’ (Winter 1885). He cut the plays to three hours. This task was more difficult than it might seem, as the final running time had to figure in the lengthy scene changes that were typical in Daly’s Theatre. Since it was believed the scene design itself was most effective at establishing the setting, certain passages of dialogue that described the location were eliminated. In addition, offensive and lewd utterances, and any erudite sections that slowed the action were struck. Under Daly’s supervision, Winter censored anything that was sexual, religious or what an audience might find distasteful or controversial. Shattuck lists some of the words and phrases in The Merry Wives of Windsor that were considered objectionable: ‘God, by’r Lady … entrails, urinals, foul … guts made of puddings … fornication, boarding, keep him above deck … whore, bitch, my doe with the black scut’ and so forth. Of all the Victorian and nineteenth-century prompt books Shattuck studied, he found Winter’s versions to be the ‘cleanest’ (1987: 63).

Although Winter’s text was quite prudish, Daly could be adventurous in other ways. He was determined to break with the antiquated practices of the nineteenth-century stock company wherein actors were hired according to their ‘lines of business’. This phrase referred to the character types for which actors were best suited. Daly challenged his players to stop thinking of stock parts. He often made atypical casting choices, such as Ada Rehan as Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (instead of a more likely Hermia), the Falstaff of Charles Fechter (played as a kind of Father Christmas) and James Lewis assigned to Toby Belch and Bottom. It was rumoured that Lewis’ duty to play Falstaff in his later years contributed to his death as Lewis could be described as ‘a bony, chirrupy little man’ (Shattuck 1987: 59).

Daly was often a tyrant in his dealings with actors and the other theatre artists involved in his productions. To affect change, Daly could be harsh. Shattuck provides this portrait of him: ‘Humorless and dictatorial, insatiably egocentric … less a play-director than a lion-tamer’ (1987: 21). Obsessed with the need for justifying stage action and business, he was determined to exert his absolute will on his company at all times. He was a serious-minded despot who was referred to as ‘The Governor’ by his company (Shattuck 1987: 57). By some accounts, Daly was a frustrated actor. ‘He used his performers to do what he himself longed to do but could not. A performer who did not respond to his direction as a fine violin to a master fiddler would not thrive in his company’ (Shattuck 1987: 54).

The first rehearsal began with Daly reading the play to the company. He ‘elucidated the full meaning of the text, made every character visible and comprehensible, and indicated the stage business suitable to each person and scene’ (Winter 1915: 276). He posted rules in the rehearsal hall, fined actors who dared to transgress them and humiliated anyone who questioned his authority. According to Shattuck: ‘When Charles Fechter once insisted on having his own way in a certain scene, said Daly, “I turned to him and told him what I thought of him and of his acting and his conduct, and I made it perfectly clear that I intended to be, at all times and in all circumstances, the manager and absolute master of my theatre. We never had any trouble after that”’ (Winter 1915: 235). Daly also fought against any notion of stars in his company. He once remarked to a reporter, ‘I put them all in a line, and then I watch, and if one head begins to bob up above the others, I give it a crack and send it down again!’ (Shattuck 1987: 59).

A preoccupation with finding logical behaviour in every single moment dominated his directorial choices. He could be relentless in his search for the truth within the circumstances of the play. Clara Morris, who worked with Daly from 1871 to 1873, gave this account of his directing:

I realized that he had the entire play before his ‘mind’s eye’, and when he told me to do a thing, I should have done it, even had I not understood why he wished it done. But he always gave a reason for things, and that made it easy to work under him.

His attention to tiny details amazed me. One morning, after Mr. Crisp had joined the company, he had to play a love scene with me, and the ‘business’ of the scene required him to hold me some time in his embrace. But Mr. Crisp’s embrace did not suit Mr. Daly – no more did mine. Out he went, in front, and looked at us.

‘Oh’, he cried, ‘confound it! Miss Morris, relax – relax! Lean on him – he won’t break! That’s better – but lean more! Lean as if you needed support! What? Yes, I know you don’t need it – but you’re in love, don’t you see? And you’re not a lady by a mile or tw o! For God’s sake, Crisp, don’t be so stiff and inflexible! Here, let me show you!’

Up Mr. Daly rushed on to the stage, and taking Crisp’s place, convulsed the company with his effort at acting the lover. Then back again to the front, ordering us to try that embrace again.

‘That’s better!’ He cried, ‘but hold her hand closer, tighter! Not quite so high – oh, that’s too low! Don’t poke your arm out, you’re not going to waltz. What in----are you scratching her back for?’ (Morris 1901: 326–7)

She contrasted this episode with the practices of the previous system. ‘Now in the old days, the stage director would simply have said: “Cross to the Right”, and you would have crossed because he told you to; but in Mr. Daly’s day you had to have a reason for crossing’ (Morris 1901: 327). Daly could be compulsive in his search to justify a bit of business. Morris recalled an instance in which six different motives for a stage cross were investigated and discarded. Finally she blurts out ‘I suppose a smelling-bottle would not be important enough to cross the room for?’ This suggestion immediately won the day (Morris 1901: 328).

Daly found in actress Ada Rehan his most perfect collaborator – one who would never question, but would serve as a willing conduit for Daly’s directions and ideas. She became his leading lady for many Shakespeare comedies including Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew, Rosalind in As You Like It, Viola in Twelfth Night, Mistress Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. Critics Nym Crinkle and George Bernard Shaw remarked on the unique, one-way relationship between Daly and his chief actress, controlling her every thought and gesture. She joined his company in 1879 and stayed with him until his death in 1899.

Winter, who spent considerable time observing Daly in rehearsal, considered his direction of novices to be ‘exceedingly serviceable’, but with veterans, he believed Daly’s direction could be effective. Winter also pointed out flaws in the approach: ‘Sometimes he marred individual performances by checking spontaneity and suppressing originality, and sometimes he wrought injustice by arbitrary forbiddance of the right and proper exaltation of a character’ (1915: 273). There was an edge to the atmosphere in the rehearsal room. The company ‘worked under a painful nervous tension, which could not be otherwise than injurious, at least to some individuals’ (Winter 1915: 273). He insisted that his actors treat each rehearsal as a performance, and avoid the practice of saving oneself for the audience. Winter recorded this heated exchange: ‘Don’t tell me you’ll be “all right at night!” I once heard him exclaim, to an actor on his stage. “If there’s anything I hate, it’s that! If you’re ever going to be ‘all right’ you can be ‘all right’ now!”’ (Winter 1915: 277). The ‘governor’ monitored his company’s every action at all times (Winter 1915: 273). ‘[He] was feverishly sec...