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Annotations, Part II: Taming of the Script

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Today we return to the subject of annotation in playwriting. POW casting director Melinda Marks tells us the tone that she’d adapt in her version of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew:

shreMelinda:

I get why people have a problem with the play, and I saw a version of it in Virginia that was very true to the script; it wasn’t edited at all. It was played very straight. For some reason, it didn’t sit well with me, and not because I wasn’t comfortable with the play. It was because I thought it was a cop-out. The actress who played Kate played it completely straight, like she was having this revelation. In my optimum version of the play, you have this guy who comes to Mantua to get a wife because he’s rich as heck, and he has all these landholdings and all this money, and now he wants to accumulate more wealth for his retirement. He wants to marry a rich woman to get a good dowry and increase his landholdings.

If the richest guy in town’s daughter is kind of a bitch and a half, it doesn’t matter to him, because it’s an investment. And everybody is so eager to get rid of her that they agree to this. But he meets her and likes her, because what he doesn’t expect is how witty she is, because nobody says that. Nobody says, she’s smart, or she gets all those zingers in. Everybody says she’s terrible. So then he meets her and he likes her.

I want to see a version where he sees that he has all this, and has this wife, and he realizes that he doesn’t know how to be a husband. He wants to know how to get control of the situation because he’s a businessman. He has no confidence. This is how I always thought about it. How is he going to deal with the fact that now he’s secured this investment, but it’s so unstable? So he tries to.

There are things that can justify this in the script; you just have to find them and you have to bring them to the surface. He’s acting mean to keep her off balance. The annotations that I made show that he doesn’t know what else to do. There’s a moment in the middle of that, when she’s been living at his house and acting crazy for a couple days, she says, in so many words, “Listen: I have to say what I feel. Because if I keep what I feel inside, I will die. My heart will break. I have to be free. You can’t keep me from being who I am, because at the very least, I will say what I please. And if you love me or you don’t, that’s it.”

It’s in the script. I didn’t have to change anything.

Julia:
So what appeals to you about this play?

Melinda:
I want the dynamic between the two of them to be frank. I want to see him sweat.  I want to see him not be confident. In a lot of versions he’s made to be very confident, like he’s had this plan all along, to tame this woman. But he didn’t have an idea. His idea was to get money. And he did. He improved his status significantly, and beyond that I want to see him sweat it out. I want to see him not in his element.

Julia:
It’s like that horrible song, “Blurred Lines”.

Melinda:
Not really. That song said, “of course you want to be with me.” It’s a different vibe. But I want to see a version where Petruchio is really nervous.

Julia:
So are you going to write that version?

Melinda:
The version is already there. It’s all there.

Julia:
You’re going to adapt that?

Melinda:
I don’t even have to. I just have to make cuts.

Julia:
Are you going to do it for Play On Words?

Melinda:
It’s a Shakespeare play, so, no. Are we prepared to mount a full Shakespeare play?

Julia:
Not at all. But we could workshop it.

Melinda:
Oh my gosh. But I want to see him sweat. I don’t want to see her get psychologically tortured. I don’t mind her being vaguely uncomfortable.I don’t mind her thinking, is he trying to break my will? I don’t mind that, but when she says listen, this is who I am, that’s the moment.

I want that to be the moment where they decide that they are going to have to make this work on each other’s terms. That is what is missing from a lot of other versions. And it’s not because they don’t try to make it seem like he’s right or that she comes out on top.

I’ve seen a lot of versions like that. I want to cut the script into something where, not only does Kate come out on top and feel that she can make this marriage successful in her own right, even though she didn’t get married on her own terms. I want to see this guy squirm. I would like a version where the two of them recognize that about each other and are able to move on based on that.

Tune in next week to learn how annotation can shed light on the creative process. Don’t forget: we need submissions, especially works of theater! Email submissions for our spring show to playonwordssj@gmail.com. 

What is Annotation? [Part One]

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At Play On Words, we like to read. We like to write. You know those magnetic poetry kits you can use on your fridge? We got those. This spring, as we plan ahead for our next show, we’re busy reading, writing and discussion production. In addition to rehearsing, performing, teaching and curating, Play On Words Casting Director and co-founder Melinda Marks is busy adapting Shakespeare plays. She agreed to share some thoughts on the process of annotation, and how adaptation can help writers reflect on their own artistic processes. Today’s post is the first of three in a series we’ll be sharing over the next few weeks on the art of annotation.

Julia:
So Melinda, you are a playwright slash dramaturg, director, actress. Tell me what it means to annotate a play.

Melinda:
With anything, it’s making notes that are relevant, making notes about what other people have said about something, anything that contextualizes a piece of writing for a reader or an audience. I decided that I was going to annotate some Shakespeare plays for fun. I’m just doing a cut of the play, how I would like to see it done, edited how I would like to see it edited, in order to make a cleaner and clearer version of what I imagine the play to be about. It isn’t radically different from how it started, but it’s different enough that if whatever imaginary people might read or watch this version of the play, if they had any questions about it, then I would be addressing those cuts in as bold and defensive manner as I can.

Julia:
Do you actually cut lines?

Melinda:
Yea.

Julia:
What’s an example of a change you made?

Melinda:
With Hamlet, I actually ended up cutting about 50 percent of all the dialogue. I made it really short because I wanted to see a version where the only time that Hamlet really talked a lot was when he was alone. And that’s very different from the version where everyone has these long speeches, especially Hamlet. When he’s alone he goes on and on to the audience. But I decided that I was going to make it really dense. And that’s because I wanted a version of Hamlet that was really scary, where people weren’t really saying anything, or a lot of it was represented visually. That’s a choice, and I justified it at the time.

Julia:
Did you stage it?

Melinda:
No. I don’t have that kind of pull. If I were ever to stage it, I would go into it being able to justify it, not only to whoever was on my creative team, based on what I wanted, but already having that version, having thought about it.

I went to Virginia recently and I saw three Shakespeare plays and none of them were edited. I saw a version of the Taming of the Shrew, and while I don’t have a problem with it, a lot of people do, because of the lighthearted psychological torture that happens.

Julia:
Which part makes people uncomfortable?

Melinda:
The fact that Petruchio marries Kate for her money, and she’s a mean person, so he decides to give her a taste of her own medicine. Once he takes her back to his house, there are these references to the fact that he’s denying her food, or he’s denying her sleep. And they are played for laughs, and that makes me think that it was played very broad and very silly, and at the end the conceit is that they go back to her dad’s house, and everybody says, she’s so different, and there’s this speech about marital obedience at the end. A lot of people have different approaches to this, with different degrees of tongue-in-cheek.

Ten Things I Hate About You
Source: Wikipedia

Julia:
Isn’t Ten Things I Hate About You based on Taming of the Shrew?

Melinda:
Yea.

Julia:
That’s my cultural reference.

Melinda:
In 10 Things I Hate About You, Kate realized that she wanted more than herself, and that she could still be who she was, but also fall in love, be in love with someone at the same time. The switcheroo there was that Petruchio made a bet, but he felt bad about it. A lot of people play it with different degrees of that. I’ve always considered it to be the fact that it should be a joke, that that should never be taken seriously.

Stay tuned next week to hear Melinda’s thoughts on adapting Taming of the Shrew.

Kirstin Chen’s “Boys on the Roof”

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Happy Monday!

We’re excited to kick off this week by featuring Melinda Marks’ performance of “Boys on the Roof,” a wonderful short piece by fiction writer and regular POW contributor Kirstin Chen. We were lucky enough to read an excerpt of her new novel, Soy Sauce for Beginners, back in February, and were delighted to receive this submission in time for our Lit Crawl show. Here’s Melinda “Boys on the Roof” on October 18 in San Francisco’s Clarion Alley:

Thanks, Kirstin, for your beautiful words, and for joining us last weekend! What a treat.

100 Word Stories–Live

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How short can a story be, and still be a story? This Saturday, Julia Halprin Jackson read 5 one-hundred-word stories at Play On Words’ Lit Crawl show in Clarion Alley. See if you can count along to “When Life Gives You Lemons,” “Bilingue,” “Crunchy,” “Like,” and “Career Day”:

If you like writing flash fiction, please send to us at playonwordssj@gmail.com. Our inbox is hungry for submissions.

“Unigirl,” by Leah Griesmann

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We chose Leah Griesmann’s “Unigirl” for the Lit Crawl reading in part because it fit our San Francisco setting so well. The entire story, which you can read at Pif Magazine, is masterfully written, but we only had time to read a brief excerpt. Leah was unable to join us on Saturday because she is en route to a writing residency at the MacDowell Colony, a wonderful honor and opportunity. Here’s a clip of Melinda Marks performing an excerpt of “Unigirl” at Clarion Alley this past weekend:

We hope to film or tape Melinda reading the story in its entirety soon. Stay tuned for more Lit Crawl recordings this week–and please submit to our next show!

Lit Crawl Success!

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We did it: we filled San Francisco’s Clarion Alley last Saturday night for our Lit Crawl debut. What a terrific night. We couldn’t have done it without the support of the amazing Lit Crawl crew–Renee Senogles, Andres Bella, Lisa Church and Travis Peterson–as well as Lyra Halprin, our day-of photographer, and Rick Alpers, our trusty videographer. A million thanks to all of you who came out to revel in good words.

And, for those of you who missed it, here’s our first installment from Saturday night’s show, featuring Andres’ introduction and our re-production of Brian Van Winkle’s brilliant play, “The Way I Picture it In My Head,” as performed by Brian Van Winkle, Melinda Marks, Jeremy Ryan, Ryan Alpers, and Michael Weiland. Enjoy.

Ryan Alpers: Writer, Reader, Man About Town

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Ryan Alpers
Ryan Alpers

Ryan Alpers has become a Play On Words regular. His short story “Predecessors” was performed at POW’s October premiere by Adam Magill and Melinda Marks, and that same night Ryan performed two poems by Eric Sneathen. His interpretation of Gary Singh’s poem “Here” at our February show has generated quite the buzz as well. We sat down with Ryan to compare the experience of hearing his own work read aloud to that of performing another writer’s work.

POW: What did it feel like to have your words performed aloud? Was this the first time you saw someone interpret your work? What did you learn about your own writing?

RA: It was great hearing another interpretation of your work by actors. It gives you insight into your own prose and craft in a way feedback and group critique and friends and family and your dog/cat cannot. It is an honest look at your words through the eyes of another set of equally talented eyes. It’s also a great group of people. They’re nice and do this because they need to do it. San Jose needs it. You need it. I certainly needed it. My writing has only improved since.

POW: What was it like to perform a piece knowing that the writer was in the room? How did you prepare? How did this experience make you feel about your own writing/creating process?

RA: Conversely, performing someone else’s work with them in the room was another set of challenges. But with poetry, it is so fun to interpret because each work is so rich with meaning you can really play around with the meter and rhythm and cadence and intonation in ways you just really don’t do as much with lines of dialogue. So that’s fun. Playing with words is fun. But it also takes practice. We read through the pieces a week beforehand to get the sequencing and whatnot figured out. So in that reading we also discussed what worked delivery-wise in that first reading, and adjusted accordingly. That reading was good for me, because just talking about line delivery and blocking and actor stuff is just. Plain. Old. Fashioned. Fun.”

Ryan teaches high school English and runs the Lincoln High School newspaper, aptly called Lincoln Lion Tales. He has a B.A. in literature from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a teaching credential from San Jose State University. While studying at the College of Creative Studies, he was published in the CCS Literary Magazine “Spectrum” and awarded the CCS Brancart-Richardson Award for fiction.