SUBSTANTIAL UPDATE!

I am finally Moved In. I've unpacked the detritus that has accumulated over the past three years of my life, re-arranged my room to accommodate it all, and have hung out with my closest Oak Park friends. All is very, very well.

Tuesday I'll be meeting with the head of the scenic design department at Columbia in order to make sure I get credit for more than the hours I already have. As it stands, I've had enough transfers to mean I'm about 40% graduated, which is pretty alright considering the shit show that is my trascript. I just need to make sure I get credit for designing Killer Joe, because holy shit I designed, however inelegantly, a show.

I've been reading THE SPLINTERED STAGE: THE DECLINE OF AMERICAN THEATRE (capitals added for effect), by R.H. GARDNER. Gardner describes himself as a simple newspaperman who the mantle of theatrical criticism was thrust upon, but delivers one of the most elegant analyses (analysises? analysees? I don't know, but don't you dare correct me in the comments section) of Hamlet that I've ever read.

In short, Hamlet is an incredibly decisive character. He, with little thought, kills Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, engages Laertes in the fatal duel, and immediately has Horatio and Marcellus sworn to secrecy.

"But Ian!" you cry, "what of his postponed promise to murder Claudius?"

There was no promise.

Hamlet never actually swears to avenge his father. Thus, while Hamlet is urging Horatio and Marcellus to swear on his sword not to tell anyone of the events that had transpired that night, the ghost repeatedly says "SWEAR." But this entreaty is not aimed at the witnesses of Hamlet's otherworldly encounter, but rather at Hamlet. Marcellus and Horatio never even hear the ghost; only Hamlet does. It seems to Gardner that Hamlet is, in his insistence to get Marcellus and Horatio to swear to a detailed pact about keeping this secret, acting like a man who has himself just barely escaped from making a profound deal. Sure, he promises to think it over, but nothing more.

And thus Hamlet begins his game. He seems insistent at drawing Claudio out in order to justify the murder. He refuses to kill him in cold blood, such a base action unthinkable for one with such a high self-image. Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Laertes were exceptions only because they had made moves against him, and Hamlet, feeling validated to return force with force, responds in kind. Polonius, too, is not killed in a calculated way, but in a moment of passion when attack could have been imminent. He never saw who was behind the curtain, after all, and must have feared the worst. One of the most compelling pieces of evidence that Gardner offers to justify this point is Hamlet's speech to the players:

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, by use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it."

Indeed, there is more, but it is very long, and you get the idea. The reason I really like Gardner's use of this passage is how unexpected it was. Too often is this passage cited only when someone is speculating that "OMG LOOK ITS SECRET ACTING ADVICE FROM THE BARD." No. Stop that. While that may very well be true, there's no reason to start assuming that. All we have is the character saying lines, and all that can extrapolated from that is more information about the character. In this case we are informed, Gardner says, that Hamlet has a really-really high self-image. And in his (Gardner's) defense, where else is that more evident than in a passage where he tells a troupe of actors, in length, how to do their job?

Aside from his pride, Gardner contributes Hamlet's avoidance of direct action to his self-image as a loving son. He seems reluctant to murder Claudio in cold blood, yet, if the ghost is to be believed, and enough evidence of that certainly piles up, then he must take some sort of action in order to be a faithful, loving son. He then fills the time between the ghostly encounter and the actual murder with a long-range scheme in order to feel as though he is working towards that larger goal at all times. And attain that goal he does, albeit at the expense of seven other lives.

In case you were wondering why Gardner would include such an in-depth analysis of Hamlet in a book about the fall of American Theatre, it was to show a truly great hero. Gardner disdains both absurdism and realism, finding them limiting. Why show man onstage, one of the few places where he can search for meaning and explore lofty ideals, as being constrained by the same forces that act upon him in life?

A pretty valid criticism of both schools of thought, though one must be careful, in the abandonment of realism, to not get too puffy-wuffy and turn the whole thing into a hollow spectacle.

At the same time, when one adheres too strictly to realism or absurdism, one may get the drab existence that the audience came to escape in the first place in the case of the former, or perhaps a completely unintelligible experience when dealing with the latter.

And that, I believe, is one of the fundamental balances that must be struck by any production.

Such is my discipline.