I think she has several, abut she doesnt spend much time on them, so really does she have one?
First:
Am I a Capulet who hates hell all Montagues or am I a woman in love defined by passion for Romeo whoever he may be?
Second:
Do I tell my parentes about my wedding plans or shall I just impulse enter holy matremony?
Third:
Can I still love Romeo if he has killed Tybalt?
Fourth:
Should I enter bigamy? What are my alternatives?
Fifth:
Should I go along with the friars plan?
I am Sophie. So we've reconfirmed that the text is beautiful, intriguing and exciting (most of the time). But, I rather agree with miss Nagy, the text is sure to get boring if we subject our audience to it twice during the same performance even if in different languages. Especially since I'd say we can fairly expect most of our audience to know this story, and probably even some of the text, pretty well.
We played with pictures, movement and folksongs. This was wild fun, and I think could enhance the story very well, especially if we keep pushing for deeper experimentation. Avoiding turning this into a nostalgia driven piece of pretty aesthetics will involve experimentation in terms of both performance and subject matter. I think the latter is about relevance. What does Juliette, her character and the nature of her dilemma, mean to us now?? (This is not a rhetorical question, I'd be very interested in opinions)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_MgvvMokIk
As I was wondering about the costume It occured to me that I might research how Juliet has been dressed on stage in days past. After some reading and googeling I have come up with some visual material.
.
First of from 1918, Gizi Bajor as Julia in the production of the National Theatre of Budapest. Photograph taken by the Kardos Sisters.
The dress is greek-style virgin white, with the happy dagger in her hand.
I love this image but it is not very Juliet like.
She looks older than I imagine Juliet to be.
But if this captures the dramatic moment of her waking from the dead, and realising that her tru love is dead, thus deciding to take her own life before people arrive, than this disturbed state, this final determination, this last push of will does stil come through with theatrical force and artistic expression.
Than there is Zita Szeleczky from 1940, next to the oddest Romeo, this scene must be when they first meet, and the holy palmers kiss.
The costume is interesting.
Only six years later in 1946and in the well-know balcony scene (come on boy, you can clim up there surely) Juliet is played by Alice Fenyes in the production of the Belvarosi Theatre. Romeo is the young Kallai Ferenc. Her costume is like an ugly wedding dress with humangous shoulderpads.
This is not a great quality picture, but again the lovers devotion and dreamy gestures shine through the black and white imagery.
Also note that this picture is probalay taken from the actual performance while the previous two were much posier, much more stattic, much more arranged from a photograpic perspective. Visual composition vs dramatic composition. Differeny kinestatics and esthatics.
This performance is part of my living memoriy as well, starring Klari Tolnay and introducing the beautiful Ivan Darvas.
They fell in love and got married.
This phota is again very staged, in the conext of the plot it could be them watching the sunrise listening to the lark.
Hair and is much more sturctured, shiny an tidy, probably closer to 1953 style than the middle ages, the make up almost androgenous, simple yet quite stong.
The costume perhaps a bit more historic although it seems like a shot in the dark.
They look very good together you get bravery for the first time from a couple. Again older woman younger man does not seem to be an issu when casting the roles.
And I had some great pictures from the queen and king of Hungarian stage: Eva Ruttkai and Zoltan Latinovics, who were also truely in love and truely great.
I had a few glasses of Martini.
She has to be beautiful.
I am sick and tired of cheap ugly theatre.
Bring on some stunning costume.
But what should she wear?
Something fab. Something stunning.
I believe it was 1998 when I witnessed the opening night of Romeo and Julia performed by the Atlantisz Comapny, directed by Adam Horgas.
I wrote a very good performance analysis out of it for Andras Nagy, who thought I was very talented. Thank You.
In that paper I argued, that the whole performance was directed as a strange nightmare, full of ghosts, and the set reminded me of bones, as if the whole piece would take place in a skeleton. Yes, very cheerfull child I was, never the less I made a good point.
To approach what I am about to share from an other perspective I have to mention Peter Nadas and his postmodern trilogy: Cleaning-Encounter-Funeral. (Takatitas-Talalkozas-Temetes) They are to be compared dramaturgically to Sarah Kanes work, and you will find the same dramaturgical process, but That is another story, or two.
Anyway in Talalkozas - Encounter, that also happens to be my favourite, one of the possible explonations to this very unusual piece is, that it dramaturgically depicts the emotional landscape of agony. The set is very stylized - all white, one red door in the middle, old lady in black dress. And then a young man enters and together they tell a story from the past.
My idea for the day is to use the notion of agony or fiverdream to serve as a directorial concept. I might have written earlier that I was going to include a dream scene at the end, where Julia sleeps for 48 hours.
48 hours - not a bad title actually. 96 minutes - good performance lenght.
This will allow me anything.
Wow.
Ps: Was it 48 hours? I remember it being an akward number
We have met the first potential Julia today.
We read Julias lines out loud and they are 55 minutes long.
This is great news, becouse it means that I can edit it down, because it is long enough. But It also raised a lot of questions of course. The reading has made it clear:
- that one version following an other (English-Hungarian-English-Hungarian) sucks.
- that the dramaturgy will only be able to be finallised on rehersals.
- that listening to the text is draining so movement and songs are wellcome.
- that we will want to loose some dialogy bits.
Got to run to WAMP, but I took pics as well, and I shall upload them.
I was reading a paper for university and it got me thinking about space.
Ideally I would like the show to be very adoptable and flexible.
It should work as well in a classroom as in a classical theatre space.
I would love to leave the black box behind.
Space may determen costume, mood and all sort of things as well. Like ticket price. Enters the producer.
I have read that there are shows in the Moulan Rouge. What a divine and exquisit location that would be. One would have to sex it up naturally, but that never was a problem.
To perform it in the Velevet Saloon means something very different than to perform it in front of a highschool class.
Or does it?
What do you think?
Today I told my mother what I am working on and she liked the idea.
Should I worry?
Julia jelentkezz!
Shakespeare tragediaja nyoman ketnyelvu kamaraeloadas alakul, es 1 fo magyar Juliara meg szukseg lenne.
Elonyt jelent: angol+ 1 barmely idegen nyelv ismerete, de nem feltetel.
Ha erdekel a szerep irj a natinagy@yahoo.com ra, csatolva az oneletrajzodat, vagy jelentkezz en.
Jelentkezesi hatarido: 2008 december 15.
Szep Napot!
I woke up and realised, that Hungarian Julia in fact could be played by a man.
Yes, yes, yes.
How exiting. Now, that creates a whole new universe of directorial possibilities. A few thoughts on the subject:
- Not that creative choices have to be justified, but as we well know there were no woman on the Elisabethan stage. Female roles were played by young boys. Oh, this could be very good. The stage chemistry between a heterosexual woman and a gay man. Very exiting. A beautifull transvestite.
- The sociologist in me always argues that every performance I make should have social relevance. Eventhough the story is predominantly heterosexual this performance shall not be. Even if it is one story told by two women, this piece will have a queer feel to it. Julia and Julia is a piece in lesbian textuality I belive. But if there was a cross-dressed gay man on stage and a woman...
It could be androgenous and very sexy. Or drag-queen very sexy. Or a bit out of place.
Wow.
Great idea. Is there a man in fair Budapest who would desire such role?
Where do I find him?
Time to visist some gay websites.
And does the performance then become a marketing-challange, catering for a sub-culture?
I feel, that it is very relevant to talk about and work with gay issues. Ok, it is not my fight, I am a pseudo-lesbian at best, latent bisexual, but in Hunagry today it has to be adressed.
This could realy politicize the performance and make it relevant in current cultural context. I will think about this more.
Much more.
When one is working on a performance one must work with the wastness of ones universe, the endless eternity of things. And little by little cut out the unwanted. Directing in the first step is a selective process.
First you have to select a play, or in the post-modern a subject or a mother-object or anything from the endless eternity of things.
And than you must realise that your choosen subject or text could be related, paired up or juxtaposed with yet again the endless eternity of things. So you have too pick and choose again.
This part of the process is what we might call performance research. At this stage we flirt with all possible components of our piece.
Lets stick with Julia: at a first glance she is just a pretty face with suicidal tendencies. We all remember her on the balkony and perhaps her death. She isnt even a typical role-dream.
She is 14, Italian, living in Verona - according to Shakespeare, who was writing about her in the 1600.
If I was to direct her today, regardless if I am to do it as a performance or classicaly I need to ask the question:
Why is her story relevant? And give myself many banal answers:
- Becouse it is about love
- about youth
- about freedom
- about violence
- about family and society
- about moral issues
- about suicide
- about loosing virginity
- about will
- about growing up
- about sacrifice
Just to bring up a few. I will start analysing her through these points, hopefully together with my actors. What they think about their own characters will be integrated in my directorial concept.
And than there are some more difficult questions: do I want to re-tell this story or performatively analyse it? The fact that I have two characters playing one role lends itself to to opportunty to really create a performance laboratory. To juxtapose them, to make them critical of eachother using meta-techniques, to explore the poetic language in a XXI century context. All these are tempting, but are very likely to take away from the storytelling.
Is Julia an emo?
- So far the simple decision has been made, to have only the text that Julia says from the tragedy: so the performance text is all Julias' lines but both in Hungarian and in English.
- With the Hungarian part of the text there are already issues: which one to use? I know of 3 translations: Kosztolanyi, Meszoly and a contemporary one that must be copywritten. So I am down to two. Or shall I translate it? 3 options. Or shall it be a mixture of the 3 translations? You see. It is not easy.
- After all the lines are sort of fixed than I have to start really working with the text and begin to take it from page to stage. Questions at this point: Do I want all her lines? Do all lines make sense on their own? Do they have to make sense? Do I want to tell her story in the cannonised order?
- The two languages naturally make it more complex: how often does one switch between English and Hungarian? At this moment I have the hungarian lines follow the original shakespearean lines. Surely that has to change. These switches will have to varie I am sure or else the performance will be too predictable. I might have to wait until rehersals to make a decision on that. But how I arrange her and her lines will be the key in this dramaturgy.
I might just use the scissors-paper technique I used on the Kane text.
You see I need two. The whole idea started with the lack of text. A writers block and copywright combined aborted previous performative attempts.
Until one day I was sitting in a lecture, listening to Mr Kekesi about Wilson, and two Julias just walked into my head.
And now the text is 60% done and I have half of my cast I am waiting for a Hungarian Julia.
I have a whole lot to do until than
- Finalise the text
- Come up with a concept and know it
- Than think about rehersal space
- Think about performance space
I need two Julietts before Christmas. I do. And having an assistant would be nice. And a secretary, so I dont have to mess around with the script.
Yet this is the beauty of theatre, that it needs so little. If you dont have a rehersal space, use your living room. If you cant afford costumes wear your clothes.
'My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
That I must love a loathed enemy.'
William Shakespeare
"Ó, gyűlölet, te anyja szerelemnek.
Korán láttam meg s későn ösmerem meg.
Milyen csodás, csodás a szerelem:
Halálos ellenségem szeretem."
Kosztolányi Dezső
