![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Thoughts on Puck
This week, rehearsals began for a 50's rock 'n roll version of A Midsummer Night's Dream in which I play Puck. I wanted to get some preliminary thoughts down, in an effort to work through how I'm going to do this, and I thought other people might be interested.
The way the script is put together, basically, 50's pop/rock songs are scattered throughout cut but otherwise unaltered Shakespeare. A prologue is added which I find not only unnecessary but problematic, and here's why:
It makes explicit certain aspects of the period and setting which alter the dynamics between the characters despite the language of Shakespeare being intact in the rest of the play. To wit: The setting is high school. Theseus is the principal, Hippolyta the drama/gym teacher and his fiance. Oberon and Titania are high school royalty, the Mechanicals are mostly former graduate ne'er do wells, and Puck is the (explicitly female) freshman class clown who follows Oberon around.
So far so good (sort of--the prologue is not at ALL Shakespearean in tone, and I fear will do more to confuse than clear up), but what does it mean when we get to the lines which imply a former relationship between Oberon and Hippolyta, or Theseus and Titania? That's not, ultimately, my problem, and good thing. The problems facing Puck are more interesting, I think.
What's interesting about making Puck a freshman is that it alters the power dynamics significantly, but only in the future. That is, originally you get the sense that while Puck has a great deal of power, like the traditional brownie (or puck) it's harnessed to mostly harmless or at worst mischievous deeds. Sometimes they're even helpful. Which is interesting for a character who appears to have no morals and could potentially be very sinister. He is tamed by Oberon, his inhumanity somewhat mitigated by his eagerness to please both his master and, later, the audience. Which isn't to say he's immensely sorry about his mistakes.
But what happens when Puck is made explicitly a freshman, on the lowest social rung of a ladder with only four steps? What happens when you know that if Oberon is king now, next year he'll be gone? Granted, the script doesn't make any more reference to high school after that added prologue. But what it says to me is that Puck, for now basking in Oberon's approval, is going to realize her own power sooner or later and rise to it. Oberon and Titania are not constants. And neither is Puck's subservience.
I don't know if this will make a difference in the playing of it. It may be difficult, to get something like that across, especially since most of it takes place in the forest and the cues that it's not Athens will be the costumes and music. But what if Puck can be made to consider her own power? To question, if not Oberon's current authority, his permanence? More difficult to convey, really, than a simple chafing under the yoke. I'm not sure exactly who Puck is, yet, even without the period trappings. (Mostly I'm thinking Peter Pan, in the original, amoral, childhood-is-brutal sense.)
Another difficulty lies in navigating the characters being both magical and explicitly more human than usual--when the fairies are cheerleaders, how do we take their running about in the forest? If Puck's a freshman, what does it mean that she's also magical? If Puck is a human female, or something close to it, how do we take her devotion to Oberon? She scoffs at love several times in the play, and I've always taken that at face value. Does it sound different, from a 14 year old girl posing for an older, taken, idol? More importantly, is that self-irony something I can convey without simplifying it into a conventional unrequited scenario?
It remains to be seen--some's going to depend on what I can glean from the script, as well as my own skill, but a lot's going to depend on the rest of the company and the director and how it all comes together.
The way the script is put together, basically, 50's pop/rock songs are scattered throughout cut but otherwise unaltered Shakespeare. A prologue is added which I find not only unnecessary but problematic, and here's why:
It makes explicit certain aspects of the period and setting which alter the dynamics between the characters despite the language of Shakespeare being intact in the rest of the play. To wit: The setting is high school. Theseus is the principal, Hippolyta the drama/gym teacher and his fiance. Oberon and Titania are high school royalty, the Mechanicals are mostly former graduate ne'er do wells, and Puck is the (explicitly female) freshman class clown who follows Oberon around.
So far so good (sort of--the prologue is not at ALL Shakespearean in tone, and I fear will do more to confuse than clear up), but what does it mean when we get to the lines which imply a former relationship between Oberon and Hippolyta, or Theseus and Titania? That's not, ultimately, my problem, and good thing. The problems facing Puck are more interesting, I think.
What's interesting about making Puck a freshman is that it alters the power dynamics significantly, but only in the future. That is, originally you get the sense that while Puck has a great deal of power, like the traditional brownie (or puck) it's harnessed to mostly harmless or at worst mischievous deeds. Sometimes they're even helpful. Which is interesting for a character who appears to have no morals and could potentially be very sinister. He is tamed by Oberon, his inhumanity somewhat mitigated by his eagerness to please both his master and, later, the audience. Which isn't to say he's immensely sorry about his mistakes.
But what happens when Puck is made explicitly a freshman, on the lowest social rung of a ladder with only four steps? What happens when you know that if Oberon is king now, next year he'll be gone? Granted, the script doesn't make any more reference to high school after that added prologue. But what it says to me is that Puck, for now basking in Oberon's approval, is going to realize her own power sooner or later and rise to it. Oberon and Titania are not constants. And neither is Puck's subservience.
I don't know if this will make a difference in the playing of it. It may be difficult, to get something like that across, especially since most of it takes place in the forest and the cues that it's not Athens will be the costumes and music. But what if Puck can be made to consider her own power? To question, if not Oberon's current authority, his permanence? More difficult to convey, really, than a simple chafing under the yoke. I'm not sure exactly who Puck is, yet, even without the period trappings. (Mostly I'm thinking Peter Pan, in the original, amoral, childhood-is-brutal sense.)
Another difficulty lies in navigating the characters being both magical and explicitly more human than usual--when the fairies are cheerleaders, how do we take their running about in the forest? If Puck's a freshman, what does it mean that she's also magical? If Puck is a human female, or something close to it, how do we take her devotion to Oberon? She scoffs at love several times in the play, and I've always taken that at face value. Does it sound different, from a 14 year old girl posing for an older, taken, idol? More importantly, is that self-irony something I can convey without simplifying it into a conventional unrequited scenario?
It remains to be seen--some's going to depend on what I can glean from the script, as well as my own skill, but a lot's going to depend on the rest of the company and the director and how it all comes together.