I had another fantastic interview, this time with the famousAnn Bosler, my mother. She was a theatre major at BYU long ago and continued with a career in acting on stage & film. Ever since we discussed in class the imagery of Shakespeare's words versus the importance of stage art, costume, etc. I have been very interested in looking at the performance aspect of A Midsummer Night's Dream and what it lends to the audience and the actors. I thought I'd interview my mother, since she played Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
When did you play the role of Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream?
Around 1979-1980. It was a performance off campus at the Lighthouse Repertory Theater.
Do you think performing in a Shakespeare play added to your knowledge and understanding of Shakespeare? How so? Definitely. Performing Shakespeare gives you a much greater understanding of the characters. Acting a part, and watching others around you doing the same, forces you to understand why each characters says what their saying. With that knowledge, then your challenge as an actor is to make the words sound just as they should've sounded coming out of the mouths of those characters.
Did you do research to prepare for the part of Titania? And/Or what advice did the director give you on the role? I didn't do much actual research because was an imaginary character. I did "scan" the lines/perform "scansion" on my lines, which is writing the iambic pentameter accents over all of the lines so that I could figure out what emotional state the character was in. For example, in Hamlet Hamlet's lines are often skewed from iambic pentameter to echo his depressed/insane state of mind.
My director (John Huntington) was responsible for my approach to the mythical character of Titania because of his specific vision for the play. He wanted Titania to be "art nouveau"--flowing costumes, ethereal yet earth, dark and libido driven, very passionate but not overtly animalistically sexy.
Were there certain themes the director consciously highlighted in the performance?
Mainly the obvious theme love & romance. The actors approach was based on "realness" not a stagy dramatization.
Do you feel that the visuals (scenery, costumes, etc) were necessary in carrying the overall tone of the play? The director mixed the "art nouveau"with a minimalistic approach. We had almost no scenery or props. The bed Titania laid down to sleep on was just a pillow. Because the scenery was minimal and modern, the costumes were essential. Titania and her fairies were draped in flowing, loose material. Usually Titania and Oberon have the typecast of blonde, and light skinned, but me and the man cast as Oberon were dark skinned, dark hair which added a different feel to the fairies.
Do you think A Midsummer Night's Dream is more of a romance or comedy?
Romance, definitely--especially from an actor's point of view. The romance pulls on the heart-strings because you feel for Helena.
Did you have any personally comical moments while performing? (hint hint!)
Hmmm..whatever do you mean??! Yes, this classified as my "most embarrassing moment " of my life! When I was supposed to be asleep and waiting for Bottom to wake me, I experimented with a relaxation exercise that would be so real that my eyelids wouldn't even flutter so the audience could tell I wasn't asleep. It worked! I fell asleep! What's more is that I was supposed to wake up at the musical cue which they played three times to no avail. Finally the "comic" fairy came onstage and pretended to trip and fall on me to wake me up! I woke up and the whole experience threw me so that, although I didn't forget my lines, I got through the following scene in half the usual time!
Should Shakespeare be read so that it is obvious it's written in verse?
I was trained to perform the lines according to the scansion and I believe that can be done without it sounding stilted and so you can't "hear" the verse. I'm not a fan of the modern actors who perform the lines with such a modern cadence to make it sound real, that they give no respect to the unique iambic rhythm form in which it was written. Performing Shakespeare is NOT like performing just any other kind of script.
What did you do to make the experience of seeing Titania and reading Titania different?
Well to be honest, I didn't have much to base that on. I don't think I ever saw a performance before I did the part--it was before VCR's!
What other Shakespeare characters have you portrayed? What were the similarities and differences in performing those characters?
I was also in As You Like It and played the shepherd girl who falls in love with the shepherd boy--I don't remember her name. I found myself leaning heavily on the director's vision both times--in fact the two characters were a lot alike. The director wanted me to play her as a "pastoral"character--earthy, simple, naive to her physical power and charm, sexual but innocent.
My thoughts:
- I remember learning about "scansion" but I have yet to have practiced that with any of Shakespeare's plays I have read so far. I think I will try that with the next genre we read--Tragedy--since I'm sure the characters emotional states won't be the most stable.
- I'm interested in her director's different approach to A Midsummer Night's dream because reading the play I wouldn't think "Scenery: minimalistic". I would tend to lean towards over the top, but then I can see how that would be too much paired with the rich with imagery dialogue of the play.
- Ever since I saw the question on Ian Mckellen's StageWorkMckellen I've been interested to ask more actor's the question of whether Shakespeare should be read so that it's obvious it's written in verse. At first, I thought that question was an obvious no, but I thought my mom's answer was very interesting--"Performing Shakespeare is NOT like performing just any other kind of script." I agree with her that there is needed respect to be given to the art form of Shakespeare's words, but I think there also needs to be a balance of executing them in a cadence the audience understands.
- Although my question "What did you do to make the experience of seeing Titania and reading Titania different?" was going in a different direction, my mom's answer shedded some slight on something I would have never really thought of. How often did people, let alone actors, get to see performances of Shakespeare's plays--even just 30 years ago? How much of an actor's portrayal now is based on what they have already seen of Shakespeare? Not to discount them, but I think since Shakespeare is easily reachable on YouTube, Netflix, etc. that performances now are much different. Seeing Hamlet performed the same way over and over again forces actors to take more creative liberty with the characters and add their own twist, or go in a completely opposite direction. Does this take away from Shakespeare or add to it?
