Gallathea Rehearsals

Catherine Gilbert as Diana and Stone Stowers as Neptune

      We’ve reached week three here at the ASC Theatre Camp.  Campers, counselors, directors, and dramaturgs alike are rearing to go for our big performances on Sunday. By now everyone is off book, costumes are materializing, and actors are polishing up their delivery and blocking with the help of their directors and dramaturgs. Of the three plays that we are performing for session one, John Lyly’s Gallathea stands apart for two reasons: First, it is the only one of the three written by someone other than William Shakespeare. Second, it is entirely in prose. These differences should in no way discourage would-be viewers. As Lilly Carr, one of our campers, said: “Gallathea is ridiculous and funny; complete with cross-dressing that is Twelfth Night on steroids.”  Lyly’s Gallathea includes witty servants, supernatural intervention, and problematic love not unlike many Shakespearean comedic plots. Though the version that will appear on the Blackfriars stage has been cut down to meet the one-hour time limit, Lyly’s text and the performers are not short on humorous charm.   

Doing Text Work for a Scene

Chelsea Phillips, the director of Gallathea, has created an open, organized, and positive environment for the campers. Leila Silberstein spoke to this effect when she said: “I love the freedom that Chelsea gives us. She is always very energetic and positive.” This sentiment is one that many other performers in Chelsea’s cast repeated. At the start of each rehearsal, Chelsea typically informs the campers of what they will be working on and what they can expect during the day. After brief warm-ups hailed as “spontaneous and fun” by Caroline Link, the campers split up into their different subplots to work on their scenes. These divisions do not mean that the campers in one subplot are unaware of the progress and work that their peers in other groups have made. As Calliope George explained to me: “Rehearsals are made up of split-up and group work. We get a lot done while also interacting on a personal level with other members of our cast.” In short, Chelsea Phillips has given her actors the freedom to work and to develop their characters while also providing a structured and positive work environment.

Josie Kritter and Maren Ericsson

Each cast only has three weeks to work on their shows, so there isn’t much time to waste. Even so, Gallathea rehearsals are full of laughter and physical comedy. The characters that Lyly has created are a varied bunch. While some of our campers only play one role, many get to experience several roles through doubling (or even tripling). Lily Carr, for example, plays Robin and the alchemist. In doing so, she faces the challenge presented by clowning: “Playing a clown is a new experience for me. Everything is a lot bigger and expressive.” As the campers soon realized, each new role involves its own set of discoveries and challenges to work with. Since the plot of Gallathea calls for more than just clowns, there are many types of characters. For example, much of the plot revolves around the pesky problems posed by the involvement of deities in both life and love. As such, some of our campers have been faced with playing the parts of Roman gods. When I asked about her experience playing Diana, goddess of the hunt and the moon, Catherine Gilbert said, “Diana has been a challenge. She is very headstrong and stubborn. Not at all like the more lovey characters I’ve had to play in the past.” Gallathea also features a set of lovers, played by Campbell Long and Calliope George. Gallathea and Phillida are similar characters. For this reason, Cam and Calliope emphasized that their “challenge lies in making our characters their own people. Our characters have essentially the same backstory and motives. We need to make it clear to the audience that they are vastly different… oh, and in love.”

Stone Stowers as Neptune and Marina Finelli as Venus

It has been an absolute delight to observe the rehearsals for Gallathea. Chelsea’s positive energy combined with the natural humor and creativity of the campers has yielded a production that is bound to delight. Already a wonderful show, Gallathea has doubtlessly been made better by what assistant director and counselor Francis Whitesell called “the deep abiding love that the cast has for each other.”  A great amount of effort, energy and hard work has gone into making Gallathea, and I hope that anyone who can will take advantage of the opportunity and come out to watch it Sunday, July 8^th at 2:45 at the Blackfriars Playhouse!  

-Madeleine M. Oulevey

What else is happening at YCTC?

Wednesday evening, the “What You Will” talent show went up, and since I know it beggars all description, I will simply pass along some photographs of the evening as soon as I can.

Thursday, instead of having a lecture, the whole camp went to see part of another show at the Blackfriars Playhouse: the Touring Troupe’s production of The Winter’s Tale, which was having a dress rehearsal during normal lecture time. However, the campers were only able to see the first half of the production, so there was a great variety of response to the pre-intermission part of the story. Some mentioning, “Leontes is pretty opinionated. I don’t think I like him at all.” or "Yay, for the depressing half!" Some of the campers have been in productions of this play; one had acted in The Winter’s Tale at ASCTC earlier this summer. Others were in the camp production two years back, and some had never seen or the play and had no idea of the story. It’s one of my favorites in Shakespeare, so here’s hoping they come back sometime to see the end. :)

As always, the weekends at camp are full of trips to the Playhouse to see the ASC’s shows, but this weekend featured two other special events. Saturday night was the Masquerade ball, a dress up affair featuring everything from Elizabethan Ball gowns to fairy wings. On Sunday the whole camp drove out to Lake Lofton to spend the day outside, where everyone had some time in the sun, on the beach, in the water, and just time to relax in the midst of all the craziness of camp.

Today we begin the home stretch, heading towards the final productions on Sunday afternoon. Everyone’s way more comfortable. We might make ice-cream runs during siesta, or sit around chatting about where best to find stain remover in walking distance of Stuart Hall. We start the late-night rehearsals in the Playhouse, where the campers get a chance to rehearse their plays in their performance space. This morning was the last workshop. There are only two more lectures, and the rest of the camp will be devoted to preparing for the final shows and preshow performances. You can feel the energy among the campers despite how much of their days are just plain hard work. Watching them succeed when we set the bar so high is a pleasure every day.

First week in pictures!

Rather than telling about every detail of this camp, I thought I’d show a bit of the work and the fun that goes on at ASCTC.


Here are some of the campers waking up the space in the Blackfriars Playhouse, the first evening of camp.


Monday morning, Doreen (one of our camp co-directors) opens the auditions at Stuart Hall's King Theatre, encouraging the campers to make the space their own.


Campers work together in the auditions, planning their wordless storytelling.


One of the most popular workshops is Clown Class…


…taught by ASC actor, Daniel Kennedy.


Let the clowning begin!


Rehearsals are now in full swing. Lysander and Hermia get lost in the woods of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.


Riley Steiner directs her cast in Dido, Queen of Carthage.


“I, one snout by name, present a wall.” In the play within A Midsummer Night’s Dream.


When not working on a scene with the director, campers spend rehearsal working on their lines.


Or running bits of scenes.


Sometimes with a counselor coaching their work.


Every weekend, the campers go see two shows at Blackfriars, and often dress up for the occasion.


This weekend, Doreen led an acro-balance workshop with help from Tom.


It takes great teamwork.


And a lot of trust.

More traditional blog posts coming soon!

Text and Storytelling

The directors cast their shows on Monday afternoon, and that night, the directors led a script party in which they talked about some basics of language as the whole camp plunged into the text. Even basics like questions such as “What is verse?” and “What is prose?” turned into discussions of Christopher Marlowe’s “Mighty Line” and how his style of verse is different from Shakespeare’s “heart-robbing line.” The campers also got some basics of script preparation and how best to use the physical script. What should they write in it? What are some good ways of marking scripts? What should you do with notes from the director you get in rehearsal? One of the directors did a little activity about intention from Othello, the scene in which Iago tries to get the handkerchief from Emilia, and everyone learned about the excitement of investing each line with a clear direction and a motive.

Starting Tuesday, the camp began its regular routine. Workshops or lectures in the mornings, rehearsals in the afternoons, more workshops in the evenings. Our first lecture was with Bob Jones, ASC actor, Mary Baldwin MFA graduate, and this session’s director of Troilus and Cressida.

Bob talked about the rise of English theater, pointing out that when Shakespeare was born, theater as we think of it did not exist. There were mystery pageants, traveling acrobats, musicians, skits, jokes, dancing acts, but no theatrical industry. All that changed with the growth of London, and by the time Shakespeare was working, there was a thriving professional theatrical community. The campers all examined sketches and woodcuts of early modern playing spaces, and what these playhouses might have looked like, keeping in mind the knowledge they now all have of the Blackfriars Playhouse reconstruction we have here in Staunton.

At the end of this workshop, we looked at all of the original quarto title pages of the plays for this session and talked about the process of printing and bookshops and what sort of information worked as advertisement on the title pages. To solidify all of this information, the lecture ended with the campers breaking into groups to write and design their own title pages for the plays. The title pages sported printer’s marks, highlights from the plays, and elaborate names for the imaginary printing houses they came up with to publish their quarto texts.

Workshops so far have included clown, mask, unarmed stage combat, and music. Today there were not a few red clown noses seen among the campers. On Wednesday morning, half the camp went to a stage combat workshop with Jeremy West, fight captain for the ASC Summer and Fall seasons. Besides teaching the campers a wide variety of slaps, punches, hairpulls, drags, falls and rolls, Jeremy taught them all a great deal about learning and storytelling. A common misconception in learning a physical skill -- be it a sport, a musical instrument, or combat move -- is that speed equals quality. In any skill, the important thing is to learn specificity in technique and pattern, not to try and go at a fast pace too quickly, because fast and sloppy gets dangerous. When the campers learned to “fall” onstage, we rolled out safety mats for practicing. Really it is not “falling” so much as “controlled sitting.” If you can learn the proper technique on a mat and get all your mistakes fixed with protective cushioning, you can learn to perform the falls, rolls, and combat without a mat very safely. Jeremy challenged the campers to always think about what story they’re telling onstage. As an actor you might think falling to the ground all sleek and fast would be the most impressive thing, but perhaps a more interesting story would be a character loosing a battle to stay vertical. Which choice is best for the character? For the play?

This morning Ralph Alan Cohen, co-founder and Director of Mission for the ASC, lectured about the plays and about verse. Asking the campers for a line or two of the plays they are working on memorizing, he helped them to think about their stressed and unstressed beats, and he encouraged them all to use all the tools that Shakespeare and Marlowe give them to speak with clarity and grace. When he got onto talking about the plays, he used the same sort of material he uses in his graduate courses on Shakespeare’s plays. The campers left the lecture all buzzing with renewed enthusiasm for the plays.

Dramaturging for ASCTC

Here is a post from one of our beloved dramaturgs, Paul Rycik, sharing what it means to be a dramaturg and some of his experiences in the Timon rehearsals

In some ways, a dramaturg is like the twine of the theatre world- at first people don’t know what to do with it, but it always comes in handy. The job itself is often not very well defined, which means that a dramaturg’s responsibilities change on a daily basis. Therefore, when I came to work at ASCTC, I knew that the best policy was to expect the unexpected and sure enough, I found myself doing a huge variety of tasks before and after rehearsals began, from creating annotated notes in the script, to writing character descriptions, to creating a dramaturgy website (https://sites.google.com/site/timonofathensdramaturgy/home).

I view a dramaturg primarily as a resource for the actors. When rehearsals began, I made myself useful by giving workshops and lectures on the play and providing packets and other information to the actors. I also served as a text coach; each actor came to me and we would discuss the meaning in the text, and talk about how to apply those ideas in their performances The campers listened very carefully to everything I had to say and brought a great deal of creativity. One particular area I feel we had great collaboration on was implied, or embedded, stage directions, an instance in which subtle cues in the text direct an actor to gesture or laugh or move in some way.

Together, the director, the two counselors, the actors, and I have mined this play’s text and discovered a treasure trove of rich humor, social commentary, and incredibly complex characters. We spent a great deal of time figuring out what each character is saying and why he or she talks the way they do. Some characters in this play speak in a very long-winded manner, using hyperbolical text, noting these tendencies gives the actor clues about their character’s personality. Other characters like Timon and Apemantus frequently speak antithetically, juxtaposing words like “dark” and “light,” possibly because the characters wish to see chaos in Athens. All of the actors are working to find the richness in the text and use it to create and costume their characters in very imaginative ways.

One of my favorite moments of the rehearsal process was the day the actors created a framing device for the play. The director wanted to create the market place of Athens for the first scene and gave the actors free reign to interpret how to represent it onstage. The actors found a perfect iconic device to represent many of the play’s themes of poverty and wealth: cardboard boxes. They strew the stage with boxes to represent shops, stands, goods, even the shields of the peacekeeping soldiers. Characters ran in and out, pressing their wares, and it became apparent that the Athens of this play is a place where most residents are profoundly poor. Likewise, the boxes became Timon’s banqueting table and the cave he retreats to in the second half of the play, which showed the cast members’ great imagination and ingenuity. It was at this moment that I knew I was involved with a great production and that this group of actors was well suited to taking on this challenging and difficult play.

Dramaturgs don’t usually get thanks for their work, since everything they do is invisible to critics and audience members, but I feel my reward is seeing these talented young performers take some of my ideas and use them to make their own performances richer to create a wonderful piece of theatre. The talent and enthusiasm of these wonderful performers and the chance to work alongside Jeremy, Caroline, and Francis on this production of Timon is certainly a reward in itself. I truly hope that when you see this production, you see its value is worth its weight in gold.