Blog #25: Shakespeare via the Caribbean

If Shakespeare’s soul is viewing his work today, from wherever he is, above or below, he must be delighted by the scholarly interest and audience appreciation his plays continue to engender all over the world. Especially if his ghost attended St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn for Kevin Spacey’s recent rendition of Richard the Third.  Very sadly, I missed it, but read various rave reviews and heard Spacey on Charlie Rose spreading his enjoyment at playing the role.  But the Bard must also be saddened by students who wish to play his characters but are terrified by the ‘sanctity’ of his archaic vocabulary and the complexities of rendering justice to his verse – and he probably hates the teachers who make it even more inaccessible by scaring and demeaning their students’ capacity for grasping both the form and content of his plays.

After a lifetime of viewing and working with Shakespeare, I can confidently agree when he puts these words into Polonius’ mouth in Hamlet:

‘This above all: to thine own self be true                                      And it must follow, as the night the day,                                      Thou canst not then be false to any man.

It’s the magnificent irony of Shakespeare that the man who expresses himself so wisely is utterly false, himself  - blindness? stupidity? both, probably – and through his disastrous council at a decisive moment gives major impetus to the fall of the tottering House of Hamlet and the deaths of nearly everyone in it!

To divine the meaning of Shakespeare’s poetry and then convey it theatrically is a process that adds up to more than the sum of its parts.  Actors who manage to get this far and directors/designers who bring about successful productions know that the supreme effort it requires to ‘understand’ the material energizes the mind, body and heart, and awakens the soul in non-believer.  After putting in all that work, the plays take over and begin to explain themselves, like magic writing on a blackboard.

Years ago, I was teaching a young man, Dejon, who originally hailed from the Caribbean.   He was a good musician, like his father, a professional player of  the cuatro, in his native country.  In coming to America, Dejon Senior had hoped to make his living by playing with a band, and was bitterly disappointed to find that the cuatro, which resembles a ukulele in appearance only, didn’t exist in his new home.

Dejon Junior had been a slow learner in school and a discipline problem. When I first met him, he still had a strong native accent and lived at home.  One thing lead to another and in return for doing chores, etc. he moved in with my family. Every day he practiced the trumpet, which helped him to vent his many frustrations. Classes improved his voice production dramatically and before long his accent began disappearing. Acting was quite a challenge; relating to characters was difficult for him.   He was tall and good looking, light-skinned like his mother, and because of his voice work, I decided to assign him a monologue of Oberon’s from A Midsummer Night’s Dream for his speech class.  The results were astonishing; without any previous experience he understood what he was saying and how to make it flow. Eventually, I cast him in a Showcase performing the scene where Oberon commands Puck to place an enchantment on Titania.  

That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,                                Flying between the cold moon and the earth,                            Cupid all arm’d; a certain aim he took                                            At a fair vestal throned by the west,                                              And loos’d his love-shaft smartly from his bow,                              As it should pierce a hundred-thousand hearts…

Not easy stuff! But Dejon found Oberon’s arrogance, elegance and above all his sheer need of to bend Titania to his whim.  After that, something began to shift in this young man with talent but no sense of how his life could take him where he wanted to go. He vanished from my life for a decade, and then recently I got an invitation to ‘friend’ him on Facebook. It turns out that Dejon has returned in triumph to his island, taking his family with him. He has risen to the top of his chosen field, which includes daily appearances on television, bringing him respect and fame throughout the whole country!  Shakespeare conjured up a lot of magic words on Dejon’s  blackboard, I think…

In my last entry, I mentioned Paloma from South America and her experience preparing Shakespeare monologues for college auditions. More on that next week…