What I learned. . .
Everything, actually. How could I not? It’s Hamlet, after all.
Preparation is everything. Assemble the best collaborators you can. Cast well and fight for what (and who) you want. Be specific. Ask for as much rehearsal time as the theatre can afford. Trust the material. Really trust the material. Do your homework; be specific; remain open; know the play well so you can lead with confidence (and abandon your bad ideas when they don’t make sense or simply do not work in the way you thought they would); communicate your vision as clearly as possible; remember that you are only as strong as your strongest link and always as weak as your weakest link. Did I mention, be specific?
The first time I directed Hamlet it was with a collection of mostly middle school–aged students that had formed a loosely organized group of young players at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival known as the Black Cygnets. I think our cut was about an hour and a half in length; we performed once, mostly for parents, family friends and company members on a Monday night late in the season on the outdoor Elizabethan stage at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The next time was several years later at the Kern Shakespeare Festival in Bakersfield, where no one really knew the play was happening and not many people came to see it, with a cast of real adult actors (and twenty years before my next crack at the play at Repertory Theatre of St. Louis). Perfect ways to get my directorial toes wet and/or slightly immersed in the Hamlet “pool.” So I had a bit of experience with the play, a body of knowledge from having seen any number of productions in the intervening years, and plenty of “seeping/osmosis” time to absorb and consider the script and what I might do with it were I granted another opportunity to work on it. Plus, I was around for Jim Edmondson’s riveting and moving production at the Great River Shakespeare Festival, the cut script of which formed the basis for my own at the Rep, and which might have been the most enlightening bit of assistance/acquaintance/preparation of all.
I took the summer off from directing so that I would have adequate prep time, and even though I ended up traveling more than I expected I would during those summer months, I continued to get back to the script any chance I got (numerous “salons” with Hilary Tate at home in Ashland, with whom I always consult and work through scripts by Shakespeare and Shaw any time I’m contracted to direct one of their plays), and had lots of time to think as I drove back and forth across much of the Western United States.
Those travels included a day and a couple of nights in Boise, where Jim Poulos, who played the title role, was working at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival. Other than a fair amount of emails, texts, and phone conversations (and his audition for the part), this was our first chance to settle in with Shakespeare’s words and really get on the same page about the play, the character, and the production. Because it’s an enormous play in so many respects, we focused on the seven major soliloquies: reading them, talking about them, doing our best to pin down their trajectory within the story, and also getting specific about the element of direct address inherent to dealing with solo monologues in Shakespeare’s plays. Our time, brief as it was, proved an invaluable launch pad for the work to come – and fortunately, Jim and I have known each other for years, worked together numerous times, and have a trust and communication which was essential to tackling the play and the role.
Jim proved an exemplary leading man, which didn’t come as anything of a surprise. He was prepared (80% off book at first rehearsal), was flexible in rehearsal, open to ideas, and always – always – generous with his fellow actors. He never played the ‘title role’ card; if he needed something, he asked for it without ever demanding or assuming ‘diva’ status; he stated his ideas and opinions simply and clearly; and he understood from the get-go (because he is that kind of actor) that he needed to drive the play and that the production would benefit from a no-nonsense, non-indulgent, non-lugubrious approach to the role. Soliloquies needed to be as active as anything else, even when delivering them in utter stillness. As physically dexterous as he is mentally acute and emotionally available, Jim’s Hamlet was a director’s dream – in rehearsal and performance: lithe, physical, deep, funny, risky, dangerous. Could not have done better.
But I was also able to surround Jim with a superb ensemble, and managed the doubling of roles so that our cast size fell within the Rep’s budget restrictions without falling into the “minimalist” sort of production in which actors are constantly reappearing in various guises yet failing to present truly separate, unique identities every time they come on stage. I was thoughtful in the doubling: the actor playing the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father reappeared as Fortinbras at play’s end, thus bracketing the production with two very different kings played by the same actor; the Player King and Queen doubled as the Gravediggers in Act V. I was able to cast eight students from the Webster University Conservatory of Theatre Arts in “essential extra” roles, so the stage was peopled with courtiers, soldiers, messengers, and attendants to the King and Queen when needed – and I think we were well-served by the sense of ensemble having twenty-some bodies available in staging created and also in not having the actors playing the Ghost, the Gravediggers, or Polonius lurking in the shadows as strangely familiar-looking courtiers, still recognizable to those who might happen to pay attention and notice. So much of a director’s job is to make sure the loopholes are all closed – that there isn’t anything that takes an audience “out” of a production; rather, everything leads the audience deeper into the illusion you’re setting out to create as completely and solidly as possible.
I think one of the successes of casting the production was clearly demonstrated when Ben Nordstrom appeared late in the play as Osric, the courtier who brings word of Claudius’s wager on a proposed (deadly) duel between Hamlet and Laertes. Although we’d seen Osric in earlier court scenes where it made sense that he would be present, this was his first speaking appearance, and to have as skilled an actor as Ben creating the role was an excellent reminder to always pay attention to the “smaller” roles. As with Friar Francis in Much Ado About Nothing or another Friar (John, in Romeo and Juliet), Osric can be something of a throw-away part; and too often the necessary exposition the role carries can be lost in a less skilled performance or by directors who are hastening toward the end of the play and not paying close attention to the character’s function, which is all the more crucial coming tardily in the action of the story.
Hamlet was also another great reminder of the benefit of working with familiar collaborators whom you know and trust. To have a design team comprised of people who have developed shorthand together over a series of production experiences helps mitigate the natural compression of time and resources involved in any theatrical endeavor. And because we came together early in the process – and because I think I provided the right information to the design team in advance (not so much as to straight-jacket them, but enough to point them in a clear direction), we were able to develop a compelling and unified approach to this particular production. Not knowing exactly what period in which I wanted to set the play, I was able to offer a range of images and ideas about what, for me, the play had to say, and what were some of its basic truths and essences: revenge story, ghost story, political story, love story; Scandinavian rather than Mediterranean; winter rather than summer; dark rather than light – and, if possible, snow, snow, snow. Working from these ideas and plenty of the designers’ own, we honed in on our approach, stripping away what seemed or became unnecessary, so that action moved as fluidly as possible and storytelling was always paramount as I think it must be when you’re directing plays by Shakespeare.
Working with Michael Ganio on the set design was particularly rewarding, as although this was not our first time collaborating (we’ve worked together frequently, and done many plays by Shakespeare since first working on a production of King Lear at PCPA Theaterfest in the ‘90’s), it was his first Hamlet. So we started at the beginning, and whenever things got too complicated, found ways to pare back and cut close to the bone. Ultimately, we used two chairs, an array of hand props, an elevator to create Ophelia’s grave (one of the questions Michael and I have learned to ask each other is “what’s the Act IV or Act V surprise that’s likely to trip us up?” In Macbeth it was Birnam Wood, and so we’ve learned to begin the design process with those stickier challenges rather than leave them to the end when we’re too overloaded or weighted down to pay proper attention. It’s the designer’s version of Osric, in a sense.) – and best of all, I think, no arras behind which Polonius would conceal himself. Just part of a permanent, leaning and foreboding wall on the set, which seemed to work fine.
My aesthetic when it comes to Shakespeare set design is that what you need most of all is a platform for storytelling (which was, after all, the chief feature of Shakespeare’s playhouse) and that usually less is more. It’s wonderful to work with a designer who not only agrees but is able to embody that principle in the dynamic, helpful, and meaningful ways in which Michael always works. He’s a designer who can work practically and metaphorically at the same time, considers the script carefully, asks probing questions, has consistently unique responses to the play -- and for him, details are everything, even (especially?) in the seemingly simplest of designs.
Having seen productions of Hamlet in which the Act V duel between Laertes and Hamlet felt tacked-on , under-rehearsed, under-developed, and somewhat haphazard, I insisted that we start staging the combat from the get-go. Fortunately, Paul Dennhardt, an accomplished fight director of whom I’d heard but with whom I’d never worked, was available and close by: Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, where he is on faculty at Illinois State University. Paul joined us toward the end of our first week of rehearsal and was able to return every weekend throughout the rehearsal period, often with assistants in tow. We also made sure that almost every rehearsal day started with an hour of fight review, under the watchful eye of Fight Captain and cast member Christopher Gerson, who played Horatio and was, therefore, on stage every night during the Hamlet-Laertes duel and all the more able to keep his eye on the staging throughout the run. I wanted the duel to be a fencing match (it sometimes is; sometimes not) between two of the most accomplished athletes in Denmark (if not Europe). I also was convinced it needed to be lightning fast, to have a story arc all its own, and to lead to as visceral a denouement for the production as possible. I loved it the day that Jim and Christopher really struggled for the final drink of the poisoned cup, scrambling across the floor to be the first to get to the cup and prevent the other friend from drinking its contents . . . I wanted as messy a sense of chaos, horror, and tragedy as we could accomplish so that Fortinbras’ lines in the final moments of the play made sense. I believe the play devolves from order to chaos, and I felt strongly that the arc of the play as well as the final scene should reflect that.
The lessons that Hamlet has to offer are endless. I don’t know if I’ll get to experience those lessons again as a director and discover a whole new raft of them, but I know if this is my last shot at directing the play I will go out knowing I delivered a compelling and successful production for the Rep’s audiences. The reviews were more than kind; sale of single tickets surpassed its goal halfway into the run; and everyone who saw the play that I talked to was lavish in their praise. I was lucky in every single instance with the production, and owe much to Steve Woolf, Mark Bernstein, Seth Gordon, Edward Coffield, the entire staff of Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, my sensational design team, and the talented, accomplished ensemble of actors who trusted me, brought their ‘A’ game to the table, and worked so hard to fulfill the challenges of this deep, engrossing, funny, and very moving play.
Perhaps the greatest lesson of all is one I’ve understood for a long time but am always reminded of whenever I work on one of his plays: Shakespeare requires us to summon forth all we’ve got – spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, physically, psychologically. Unless you’re ready to be vulnerable and to have a full-body/mind/heart experience, don’t go there. I couldn’t have asked for a better refresher course on this principle than getting to work on this particular production of this truly great play.
