Tonight was the general call auditions. I can't go into too much detail, but it became clear to me that I am looking for a wildness in spirit and freedom of both vocal and physical expression that I would say only about a fifth of the actors showcased in their pieces. I do have enough actors to call back for the second round on Friday. I do have some exciting options to choose from. I do NOT know who I will choose.
The organization of this audition is actually extremely difficult. Because the roles are double or triple cast, and because I may or may not have the opportunity for a larger cast, there is a chaos to the selection. I know that these young actors will do excellent work, as they are very talented and well trained, but I will not find an actor who is well suited for a young lover, a poor work-hand, and a rich uncle. That actor just doesn't exist here. And that's okay. But deciding what to have them read and who to read it with is quite complicated.
As always, the answers will come and it will all work out, I'm sure. at least that's what my mother always says!
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
THE ORIGINAL THESIS PROPOSAL
MFA DIRECTING THESIS Lab Proposal
Dana Friedman
First Choice.
The Mill on the Floss
By Helen Edmundson, adapted from the novel by George Eliot.
1) The Play & the Playwright in Context
The Mill on the Floss is named so because the driving obstacle that catapults the action of the play saving the Mill that Maggie’s family owns on the floss. The word floss itself in this title means a small stream of water, but it also means a delicate piece of thread. To me, the second definition is much more evocative as it suggests that Maggie is holding on by a thread. Throughout the play we see her struggle to please the ones she loves, (living properly under social confinements), but constantly fighting the current pulling her towards spiritual freedom.
The Mill on the Floss is a work of startling sadness and is one of the most affecting stories of family loss, tragedy and the sheer meanness of fate in the history of the novel (and now the play.) It was published in 1860 and is the story of Maggie Tulliver, our heroine, who is the daughter of a miller in the English midlands. Like many nineteenth century literary girls, her intelligence and emotional capacity outflank those of her family and cause problems. Only a very limited group, including Philip, show sympathy for her, and only a dreadful flood in which Maggie tries to save Tom, can lead the well-meaning but doomed girl to some kind of transcendence.
George Eliot:
Mary Ann (Marian) Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity.
She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Female authors published freely under their own names, but Eliot wanted to ensure that she was not seen as merely a writer of romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes.
The Mill on the Floss was Eliot’s third book (written at the age of 40) and is a favorite to many for its intensity of feeling. It contains a partial self-portrait in Maggie Tulliver who is dark, disobedient and passionate, and leads an imaginative life at odds with the simple provincial world into which she is born. She is not a feminist writer in the sense that she proposed new goals for women; on the other hand there is an unmistakable feminist element in her writing that depicts characters who, like Maggie, feel the cruel lack of education and opportunity and would like to do something more in the world than they are permitted.
Eliot was a pioneer, but also a self-doubter, often falling ill and suffering from depression. Perhaps the most important thing about her us that she saw the world honestly and finely, and drew unforgettable pictures of people going about their daily activities and worrying over the dilemmas into which they are drawn by greed, ambition and love. These are things that do NOT change.
Helen Edmundson:
Edmundson's first play Flying was produced at the National Theatre Studio in 1990. Since then, her work for the theatre has included: The Clearing, first performed at the Bush Theatre; Mother Teresa is Dead, at the Royal Court Theatre (and currently at City Theatre in Pittsburgh); and four stage adaptations for Shared Experience Theatre - Anna Karenina and The Mill on the Floss, both of which toured nationally and internationally, War and Peace, which was produced at the National Theatre in 1996, and Gone to Earth which was seen on tour and at the Lyric Hammersmith.
Her adaptation of Jamila Gavin's award-winning children's novel Coram Boy premiered at the National in November 2005 and lived on Broadway last year. Her most recent work for Shared Experience, Orestes - Blood and Light, toured in the UK in autumn 2006 and played at the Tricycle Theatre until December 2006. The Clearing received the John Whiting Award for best new play, as well as a Time Out Award. She also won TMA and Time Out Awards for The Mill on the Floss, Anna Karenina and most recently, a Time Out Award for Coram Boy.
The best way to know Helen Edmundson is to read her plays; in lieu of that right now, listen to her words in this interview with Brian Logan from The Times:
“Her style can be defined by the exigencies of adapting sprawling literary epics for the stage. “If I’m doing an adaptation,” she says, “and I have to have the Battle of Borodino in the middle of it, or somebody has to die in a flood, that pushes me to be more daring and more theatrical.” For Edmundson’s first adaptation, Anna Karenina in 1992, Nancy Meckler told her to “think about how I would do it if I were doing an opera or a ballet. To free myself from naturalism and go somewhere beyond that.” She hasn’t looked back since.”
“These days we make very strong distinctions between adaptations and original work. But they’re all plays, and they all have to tell the audience a story with a particular voice behind it. Shakespeare plundered other people’s stories shamelessly. And people didn’t say, ‘That’s not a play, it’s an adaptation’.”
When I first saw Edmundson’s play, Anna Karenina about eight years ago, I fell in love with her voice. When I read The Mill on the Floss for the first time, (only last spring), I cried. It opened my imagination and my heart and while it is challenged me on many artistic, academic and emotional levels, I want the opportunity to live inside this world for as long as possible.
My Vision:
The Mill on the Floss spans the life of Maggie Tulliver, sailing her from childhood, through adolescence into young-adulthood. The device of the three Maggie’s expresses beautifully the heroine's emotional conflict, with number one arguing for impetuous passion against number two's moral restraint as number three is drawn into a relationship with her cousin's wooer. It makes you understand, in a way entirely in keeping with the spirit of the Victorian novel, how Maggie is shaped by her environment and circumstances. The environment of the play must stem from her soul’s yearning and the style of the writing encourages me to push the boat of theatricality well beyond the usual constraints of production. If the play is about freedom of spirit, the world I create must come from a place of dreams and imagination. When I read the play I feel like a child in an imaginary land where anything is possible and wishes rule. There is a line in the play that truly hurts my heart: “I have said unto thee, and now I say again I say the same, Forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou shalt enjoy much inward peace and tranquility. Then shall all vain imaginations, evil perturbations… evil perturbations and superfluous cares fly away; then shall immoderate fear leave thee, and inordinate love shall die.” Perhaps this line is the definition of my own greatest fear. Must one choose between inner peace and a life of passion? Free spirits are constantly challenged to stay in line with what is commonly thought acceptable… even if it breaks ones soul. But in truth, the strongest critic of a person lives inside, and this can be the most dangerous one. A person divided by spirit and earth cannot be two people; that conflict will become a rip tide and can only create create a deeper abyss.
Genre: Drama.
Style: Strong imagery, imaginative, linear and real—but not naturalistic. Soulfully tragic.
Plot:
The story is of brother and sister, Tom and Maggie Tulliver, who live with their parents in a fictional St Oggs, a rural, low lying community in England. While Tom goes to school at ruinous expense to his father, Maggie is not given an education although she is intelligent and free thinking. Maggie is born before her time, unable to conform to society's image of women. The story traces the Tulliver family through ruin, losing the ownership of the mill and rebuilding. Maggie, as a young woman discovers Thomas a Kempis, an ascetic philosopher and writer and she learns principles of self denial. Through her friendship with the intelligent, considerate Philip Wakem, who is a hunchback, Maggie gives up asceticism. She is wooed by her cousin Lucy's fiancé, Stephen Guest. Maggie 3 goes on a boat trip with Stephen and is compromised when she cannot get home and he proposes an elopement. Initially she agrees, but gives him up out of family loyalty to Lucy. Stephen goes abroad and Maggie returns to St Oggs where she is a social outcast. Tom refuses to have any contact with his disgraced sister. In a final scene when the river is flooded, Maggie takes out a boat to try to save her brother but they are both drowned. Maggie is 19 when she dies having tried to save her brother when no one else would.
Thought:
How does one choose between two loves? How does one stay loyal to another while betraying herself? How can this young woman survive her own conscience? The flood at the end of the play acts as a sort of Deus Ex Machina, allowing her to finally transcend the despairingly difficult struggle between earthly circumstances and spiritual freedom.
Character: The basic division is of people driven by spirit versus those driven by earthly circumstances and obligations. Fear of suffering plays a large part in the characters choices, but there is not one character without absolutely redeemable qualities.
Language: The language of the play fits well into the world of the mid 1800’s England, although it is completely accessible and dialogue flows like music. There are often bilblical references as well as musical references that elevate the language to a much more heightened and poetic world. The growth of Maggie is very clear in her speech patterns from childhood to adulthood. Also, often her emotional outbursts are described as a “deaf rage” rather than words. Silence is extremely important because in that stillness of sound, something is always about to happen. The play is mostly written in prose.
Dynamics: There is music, there is rhythm, some dancing (though childlike or parlor music). As the play begins with Maggie sitting above the water and ends with a flood, it is clear that there is an ebb and flow of the water, rising and falling, pulling and pushing Maggie through life. Sometimes she is treading water, sometimes she is sailing beautifully, nothing lasts for too long. The conflict is spiritual in nature but must be visceral for the audience and the highs and lows of spirit in all the characters are palpable.
Spectacle: This play was written for designers and directors and actors to use our imaginations fully and wildly. There won’t be water rushing the stage at the end of the play… the flood means so much more than just water. The spectacle is in creating a magical universe for us to live inside. The spectacle is in the performance and the heart of the play. The creation of three Maggie’s does give the journey a three-dimensional feeling that will hopefully allow the audience to climb inside.
Character and Casting:
Casting:
Cast: 4m., 4w
Male: Mr. Tulliver, Dr. Kenn
Female: First Maggie
Male: Bob Jakin, Phillip Wakem, Uncle Pullet
Female: Second Maggie, Aunt Glegg
Male: Tom Tulliver, Wakem
Male: Stephen Guest, Mr. Stelling, Uncle Glegg
Female: Mrs. Tulliver, Lucy Deane
Female: Third Maggie, Aunt Pullet
First Maggie: Young, impetuous, imaginative. Curious. Doesn’t understand the why’s of the world. Hungry for exploration, a dreamer and a fighter. But absolutely loving and trying to be selfless.
Second Maggie: Moral Restraint. She is full of shame and remorse. She will obey at all costs. Abegnation. Abegnation. Abegnation. But she loves Phillip.
Third Maggie: Sexual Being, a lover and resisting restraint. She must constantly make choices that cause great pain to someone, particularly herself. She is much more aware and therefore more consciously pained than the younger versions of herself. She is still a fighter, though, and it is this fighting that helps her to resist the temptation of love with Stephen.
Tom Tulliver—Maggie’s brother. Loyal and responsible. Angry at his lot in life at times but truly loves Maggie and tries to follow the righteous path his family has set. He dislikes Maggie’s wild nature and tries to save her. I think he would follow the saying, “work will set you free.”
Mr. Tulliver— He runs the mill on the floss. He often takes Maggie’s side in disputes. The bankruptcy of the mill is largely due to pride and single-mindedness. He is a kind soul, gentle with his wife and daughter, but his feud with Wakem changes him in the end of his life.
Mrs. Tulliver—Tom and Maggie’s mom. She is a bit dull-witted.A former Dodson, she expresses that the Dodson ways better than the Tulliver way. She feels constantly that she is a victim of bad luck. She has the “why me” disease. She always prefers Tom, but grows to accept Maggie more and more as Maggie grows into a seemingly mature woman.
Lucy Deane—The pretty, petite (blonde) cousin of Maggie and Tom. She is genuinely good-hearted thinking often of the happiness of others. She is a child of society life, though, and so she pays close attention to social conventions and her own appearance. Perhaps she is who Maggie is expected to be more like.
Phillip Wakem—The sensitive and intelligent son of lawyer/father Wakem. He has had a hunched back since birth. He can be described in the play as “womanly.” His love of art, philosophy and music counteract the severe sadness he feels about being deformed. He falls in love with Maggie when they first meet.
Wakem – Lawyer Wakem is a wealthy and powerfully growing member of St. Ogg’s society. He loves his son dearly and scorns the “vindictive” Mr. Tulliver.
Stephen Guest: He is courting Lucy when we meet him. He is handsome and self-assured. He unexpectedly falls madly in love with Maggie because of her strikingly different qualities.
Bob Jakin—A childhood friend of Tom and Maggie’s. Tom rejects him, but Bob returns to help them out of their misery when they are bankrupt. He works hard but for the “right” reasons.
Aunt Glegg— A former Dodson. Loud, especially about her disapprovals, which usually are due to someone doing something other than her family’s way. It is her strict sensibility that also allows her to stand by Maggie at times when no one around will.
Uncle Glegg-- Like his wife, he is a bit miserly, but he does try to mediate his wife’s hard nature and he will stand up to her.
Mr. Stelling— Clergyman tutor of Tom and Phillip. He wants to grow beyong his current position but knows no more than Latin or Euclid. He lacks imagination.
Uncle Pullet— A gentleman farmer. He used to feel well-off, but with Deane’s successes, he sucks peppermints all the time so he doesn’t have to speak.
Aunt Pullet—She is also a former Dodson. She is the closest to Mrs. Tulliver. She (like Mrs. Tulliver) loves fine, household goods.
Dr. Kenn-- The stern, but charitable, minister of St. Oggs church. He encourages Maggie to leave St. Oggs. Of course, she cannot.
DESIGN
I can say that a primary factor leading to my interest in the play is how open the script is for the imaginative element of design. How can design best tell this story? Imagery of water, witch hangings, the mill, fabric, the Red Woods each must exist fully and beautifully in our imaginations. That is the goal of the design. We will lead the audience into a world that Maggie lives in and is both in awe of and tortured by. Edmundson has crafted the play to not only incorporate design, but actually makes it as important a character as anything else. Already in the script there are so many examples of design furthering the story.
To answer what is absolutely essential in each scene is very difficult because the story can be developed in so many ways. I am interested in a malleable environment. I am interested in evoking a spiritual world and pedestrian. There is an innate conflict in this world and it is the urgency to cross from one side of life into another that interests me. Maggie is caught in the current.
Sound design will be a very important element in this design I know. Maggie can hear and see things others can’t. What does the “deaf rage” sound like? Other examples of sound in the show are: “the air is full of the sound of water,” and later, “the water lapping against the banks” and later still, “amidst the sound of wind and rain, there is now the sound of rushing water… there is a sudden horrific cry as the flood sweeps the town.”
Scenic Design-- The opening image of the play is Maggie sitting on a dock, reading a book, with a witch hanging below her. The final scene is of a flood. All design elements should work together to create the events. The how is not so important to me yet, the WHAT is so much more important. Will Maggie survive this life?
Costumes—I would like to have period costumes for this piece. The world of the play is 1860 rural England. Beyond historical accuracy, though, the characters must live within the constraints of that era, and the clothing communicates so clearly the class distinction and the personal attention to social conceits much more than any other design element can. What does it mean when Maggie drops her Bonnet on p. 4 of the script? Or when Maggie cuts her own hair and Maggie grabs her fetish and hurls it against the wall on p. 17? Or when Lucy dresses identically to a doll she carried in an earlier scene as a child on p. 28? This is what is so worth exploring.
Lighting—This play provides an amazing opportunity for a lighting designer, transporting us from one reality into another and into another. Often in the script, directions like “a great light appears” or “the light grows dark and there is a strange red glow around him and he gradually takes the shape of…” and late in the play, “the light has gone from her eyes.”
Estimated Running Time—Under 2 hours.
Dana Friedman
First Choice.
The Mill on the Floss
By Helen Edmundson, adapted from the novel by George Eliot.
1) The Play & the Playwright in Context
The Mill on the Floss is named so because the driving obstacle that catapults the action of the play saving the Mill that Maggie’s family owns on the floss. The word floss itself in this title means a small stream of water, but it also means a delicate piece of thread. To me, the second definition is much more evocative as it suggests that Maggie is holding on by a thread. Throughout the play we see her struggle to please the ones she loves, (living properly under social confinements), but constantly fighting the current pulling her towards spiritual freedom.
The Mill on the Floss is a work of startling sadness and is one of the most affecting stories of family loss, tragedy and the sheer meanness of fate in the history of the novel (and now the play.) It was published in 1860 and is the story of Maggie Tulliver, our heroine, who is the daughter of a miller in the English midlands. Like many nineteenth century literary girls, her intelligence and emotional capacity outflank those of her family and cause problems. Only a very limited group, including Philip, show sympathy for her, and only a dreadful flood in which Maggie tries to save Tom, can lead the well-meaning but doomed girl to some kind of transcendence.
George Eliot:
Mary Ann (Marian) Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity.
She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Female authors published freely under their own names, but Eliot wanted to ensure that she was not seen as merely a writer of romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes.
The Mill on the Floss was Eliot’s third book (written at the age of 40) and is a favorite to many for its intensity of feeling. It contains a partial self-portrait in Maggie Tulliver who is dark, disobedient and passionate, and leads an imaginative life at odds with the simple provincial world into which she is born. She is not a feminist writer in the sense that she proposed new goals for women; on the other hand there is an unmistakable feminist element in her writing that depicts characters who, like Maggie, feel the cruel lack of education and opportunity and would like to do something more in the world than they are permitted.
Eliot was a pioneer, but also a self-doubter, often falling ill and suffering from depression. Perhaps the most important thing about her us that she saw the world honestly and finely, and drew unforgettable pictures of people going about their daily activities and worrying over the dilemmas into which they are drawn by greed, ambition and love. These are things that do NOT change.
Helen Edmundson:
Edmundson's first play Flying was produced at the National Theatre Studio in 1990. Since then, her work for the theatre has included: The Clearing, first performed at the Bush Theatre; Mother Teresa is Dead, at the Royal Court Theatre (and currently at City Theatre in Pittsburgh); and four stage adaptations for Shared Experience Theatre - Anna Karenina and The Mill on the Floss, both of which toured nationally and internationally, War and Peace, which was produced at the National Theatre in 1996, and Gone to Earth which was seen on tour and at the Lyric Hammersmith.
Her adaptation of Jamila Gavin's award-winning children's novel Coram Boy premiered at the National in November 2005 and lived on Broadway last year. Her most recent work for Shared Experience, Orestes - Blood and Light, toured in the UK in autumn 2006 and played at the Tricycle Theatre until December 2006. The Clearing received the John Whiting Award for best new play, as well as a Time Out Award. She also won TMA and Time Out Awards for The Mill on the Floss, Anna Karenina and most recently, a Time Out Award for Coram Boy.
The best way to know Helen Edmundson is to read her plays; in lieu of that right now, listen to her words in this interview with Brian Logan from The Times:
“Her style can be defined by the exigencies of adapting sprawling literary epics for the stage. “If I’m doing an adaptation,” she says, “and I have to have the Battle of Borodino in the middle of it, or somebody has to die in a flood, that pushes me to be more daring and more theatrical.” For Edmundson’s first adaptation, Anna Karenina in 1992, Nancy Meckler told her to “think about how I would do it if I were doing an opera or a ballet. To free myself from naturalism and go somewhere beyond that.” She hasn’t looked back since.”
“These days we make very strong distinctions between adaptations and original work. But they’re all plays, and they all have to tell the audience a story with a particular voice behind it. Shakespeare plundered other people’s stories shamelessly. And people didn’t say, ‘That’s not a play, it’s an adaptation’.”
When I first saw Edmundson’s play, Anna Karenina about eight years ago, I fell in love with her voice. When I read The Mill on the Floss for the first time, (only last spring), I cried. It opened my imagination and my heart and while it is challenged me on many artistic, academic and emotional levels, I want the opportunity to live inside this world for as long as possible.
My Vision:
The Mill on the Floss spans the life of Maggie Tulliver, sailing her from childhood, through adolescence into young-adulthood. The device of the three Maggie’s expresses beautifully the heroine's emotional conflict, with number one arguing for impetuous passion against number two's moral restraint as number three is drawn into a relationship with her cousin's wooer. It makes you understand, in a way entirely in keeping with the spirit of the Victorian novel, how Maggie is shaped by her environment and circumstances. The environment of the play must stem from her soul’s yearning and the style of the writing encourages me to push the boat of theatricality well beyond the usual constraints of production. If the play is about freedom of spirit, the world I create must come from a place of dreams and imagination. When I read the play I feel like a child in an imaginary land where anything is possible and wishes rule. There is a line in the play that truly hurts my heart: “I have said unto thee, and now I say again I say the same, Forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou shalt enjoy much inward peace and tranquility. Then shall all vain imaginations, evil perturbations… evil perturbations and superfluous cares fly away; then shall immoderate fear leave thee, and inordinate love shall die.” Perhaps this line is the definition of my own greatest fear. Must one choose between inner peace and a life of passion? Free spirits are constantly challenged to stay in line with what is commonly thought acceptable… even if it breaks ones soul. But in truth, the strongest critic of a person lives inside, and this can be the most dangerous one. A person divided by spirit and earth cannot be two people; that conflict will become a rip tide and can only create create a deeper abyss.
Genre: Drama.
Style: Strong imagery, imaginative, linear and real—but not naturalistic. Soulfully tragic.
Plot:
The story is of brother and sister, Tom and Maggie Tulliver, who live with their parents in a fictional St Oggs, a rural, low lying community in England. While Tom goes to school at ruinous expense to his father, Maggie is not given an education although she is intelligent and free thinking. Maggie is born before her time, unable to conform to society's image of women. The story traces the Tulliver family through ruin, losing the ownership of the mill and rebuilding. Maggie, as a young woman discovers Thomas a Kempis, an ascetic philosopher and writer and she learns principles of self denial. Through her friendship with the intelligent, considerate Philip Wakem, who is a hunchback, Maggie gives up asceticism. She is wooed by her cousin Lucy's fiancé, Stephen Guest. Maggie 3 goes on a boat trip with Stephen and is compromised when she cannot get home and he proposes an elopement. Initially she agrees, but gives him up out of family loyalty to Lucy. Stephen goes abroad and Maggie returns to St Oggs where she is a social outcast. Tom refuses to have any contact with his disgraced sister. In a final scene when the river is flooded, Maggie takes out a boat to try to save her brother but they are both drowned. Maggie is 19 when she dies having tried to save her brother when no one else would.
Thought:
How does one choose between two loves? How does one stay loyal to another while betraying herself? How can this young woman survive her own conscience? The flood at the end of the play acts as a sort of Deus Ex Machina, allowing her to finally transcend the despairingly difficult struggle between earthly circumstances and spiritual freedom.
Character: The basic division is of people driven by spirit versus those driven by earthly circumstances and obligations. Fear of suffering plays a large part in the characters choices, but there is not one character without absolutely redeemable qualities.
Language: The language of the play fits well into the world of the mid 1800’s England, although it is completely accessible and dialogue flows like music. There are often bilblical references as well as musical references that elevate the language to a much more heightened and poetic world. The growth of Maggie is very clear in her speech patterns from childhood to adulthood. Also, often her emotional outbursts are described as a “deaf rage” rather than words. Silence is extremely important because in that stillness of sound, something is always about to happen. The play is mostly written in prose.
Dynamics: There is music, there is rhythm, some dancing (though childlike or parlor music). As the play begins with Maggie sitting above the water and ends with a flood, it is clear that there is an ebb and flow of the water, rising and falling, pulling and pushing Maggie through life. Sometimes she is treading water, sometimes she is sailing beautifully, nothing lasts for too long. The conflict is spiritual in nature but must be visceral for the audience and the highs and lows of spirit in all the characters are palpable.
Spectacle: This play was written for designers and directors and actors to use our imaginations fully and wildly. There won’t be water rushing the stage at the end of the play… the flood means so much more than just water. The spectacle is in creating a magical universe for us to live inside. The spectacle is in the performance and the heart of the play. The creation of three Maggie’s does give the journey a three-dimensional feeling that will hopefully allow the audience to climb inside.
Character and Casting:
Casting:
Cast: 4m., 4w
Male: Mr. Tulliver, Dr. Kenn
Female: First Maggie
Male: Bob Jakin, Phillip Wakem, Uncle Pullet
Female: Second Maggie, Aunt Glegg
Male: Tom Tulliver, Wakem
Male: Stephen Guest, Mr. Stelling, Uncle Glegg
Female: Mrs. Tulliver, Lucy Deane
Female: Third Maggie, Aunt Pullet
First Maggie: Young, impetuous, imaginative. Curious. Doesn’t understand the why’s of the world. Hungry for exploration, a dreamer and a fighter. But absolutely loving and trying to be selfless.
Second Maggie: Moral Restraint. She is full of shame and remorse. She will obey at all costs. Abegnation. Abegnation. Abegnation. But she loves Phillip.
Third Maggie: Sexual Being, a lover and resisting restraint. She must constantly make choices that cause great pain to someone, particularly herself. She is much more aware and therefore more consciously pained than the younger versions of herself. She is still a fighter, though, and it is this fighting that helps her to resist the temptation of love with Stephen.
Tom Tulliver—Maggie’s brother. Loyal and responsible. Angry at his lot in life at times but truly loves Maggie and tries to follow the righteous path his family has set. He dislikes Maggie’s wild nature and tries to save her. I think he would follow the saying, “work will set you free.”
Mr. Tulliver— He runs the mill on the floss. He often takes Maggie’s side in disputes. The bankruptcy of the mill is largely due to pride and single-mindedness. He is a kind soul, gentle with his wife and daughter, but his feud with Wakem changes him in the end of his life.
Mrs. Tulliver—Tom and Maggie’s mom. She is a bit dull-witted.A former Dodson, she expresses that the Dodson ways better than the Tulliver way. She feels constantly that she is a victim of bad luck. She has the “why me” disease. She always prefers Tom, but grows to accept Maggie more and more as Maggie grows into a seemingly mature woman.
Lucy Deane—The pretty, petite (blonde) cousin of Maggie and Tom. She is genuinely good-hearted thinking often of the happiness of others. She is a child of society life, though, and so she pays close attention to social conventions and her own appearance. Perhaps she is who Maggie is expected to be more like.
Phillip Wakem—The sensitive and intelligent son of lawyer/father Wakem. He has had a hunched back since birth. He can be described in the play as “womanly.” His love of art, philosophy and music counteract the severe sadness he feels about being deformed. He falls in love with Maggie when they first meet.
Wakem – Lawyer Wakem is a wealthy and powerfully growing member of St. Ogg’s society. He loves his son dearly and scorns the “vindictive” Mr. Tulliver.
Stephen Guest: He is courting Lucy when we meet him. He is handsome and self-assured. He unexpectedly falls madly in love with Maggie because of her strikingly different qualities.
Bob Jakin—A childhood friend of Tom and Maggie’s. Tom rejects him, but Bob returns to help them out of their misery when they are bankrupt. He works hard but for the “right” reasons.
Aunt Glegg— A former Dodson. Loud, especially about her disapprovals, which usually are due to someone doing something other than her family’s way. It is her strict sensibility that also allows her to stand by Maggie at times when no one around will.
Uncle Glegg-- Like his wife, he is a bit miserly, but he does try to mediate his wife’s hard nature and he will stand up to her.
Mr. Stelling— Clergyman tutor of Tom and Phillip. He wants to grow beyong his current position but knows no more than Latin or Euclid. He lacks imagination.
Uncle Pullet— A gentleman farmer. He used to feel well-off, but with Deane’s successes, he sucks peppermints all the time so he doesn’t have to speak.
Aunt Pullet—She is also a former Dodson. She is the closest to Mrs. Tulliver. She (like Mrs. Tulliver) loves fine, household goods.
Dr. Kenn-- The stern, but charitable, minister of St. Oggs church. He encourages Maggie to leave St. Oggs. Of course, she cannot.
DESIGN
I can say that a primary factor leading to my interest in the play is how open the script is for the imaginative element of design. How can design best tell this story? Imagery of water, witch hangings, the mill, fabric, the Red Woods each must exist fully and beautifully in our imaginations. That is the goal of the design. We will lead the audience into a world that Maggie lives in and is both in awe of and tortured by. Edmundson has crafted the play to not only incorporate design, but actually makes it as important a character as anything else. Already in the script there are so many examples of design furthering the story.
To answer what is absolutely essential in each scene is very difficult because the story can be developed in so many ways. I am interested in a malleable environment. I am interested in evoking a spiritual world and pedestrian. There is an innate conflict in this world and it is the urgency to cross from one side of life into another that interests me. Maggie is caught in the current.
Sound design will be a very important element in this design I know. Maggie can hear and see things others can’t. What does the “deaf rage” sound like? Other examples of sound in the show are: “the air is full of the sound of water,” and later, “the water lapping against the banks” and later still, “amidst the sound of wind and rain, there is now the sound of rushing water… there is a sudden horrific cry as the flood sweeps the town.”
Scenic Design-- The opening image of the play is Maggie sitting on a dock, reading a book, with a witch hanging below her. The final scene is of a flood. All design elements should work together to create the events. The how is not so important to me yet, the WHAT is so much more important. Will Maggie survive this life?
Costumes—I would like to have period costumes for this piece. The world of the play is 1860 rural England. Beyond historical accuracy, though, the characters must live within the constraints of that era, and the clothing communicates so clearly the class distinction and the personal attention to social conceits much more than any other design element can. What does it mean when Maggie drops her Bonnet on p. 4 of the script? Or when Maggie cuts her own hair and Maggie grabs her fetish and hurls it against the wall on p. 17? Or when Lucy dresses identically to a doll she carried in an earlier scene as a child on p. 28? This is what is so worth exploring.
Lighting—This play provides an amazing opportunity for a lighting designer, transporting us from one reality into another and into another. Often in the script, directions like “a great light appears” or “the light grows dark and there is a strange red glow around him and he gradually takes the shape of…” and late in the play, “the light has gone from her eyes.”
Estimated Running Time—Under 2 hours.
DESIGN LAUNCH
Yesterday at 6:00 p.m., we launched the thesis design process. This is a meeting at CMU, that invites the director, production managers, designers, dramaturge (now also Anthea) and advisors into a room. First, we cover the business as usual, contact info and dates to follow, then the table turns over to the director, to inspire the team to greatness and inform everyone about the initial ideas and goals of the production.
Here was my launch:
1. Welcome everyone to the room. This is THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.
2. I chose MILL for several reasons,
a) the pleasure and awe I had assistant directing ANNA KARENINA by Helen Edmundson about 8 years ago.
b) when I read the story, I cried not at the sad part, but in the love scene between Phillip and Maggie. This told me that I had a very personal and strong connection to both the story and the characters. (this type of emoting is NOT typical for me!)
c) The style of the play is fascinating and challenging. I have never directed a play of this epic size and overtly theatrical style.
d). Female novelist, female driven cast, female playwright, female director. Perfect for my thesis.
3. I had a few striking and new images on the table. Provocative, that's all.
4. What is touching to me in this play? "Extraordinary girl in an ordinary environment." This can be terrifying, tragic, but beautiful when it happens.
5. The play is about determinism. The machine, will, survival.
6. The play is about US.
7. DESIGN:
a) IMAGINATION
b) Environmental -- scale and relationship to audience.
c) Transitional, transformative, and emotional. Directing, as life, operates in transitions. Give the stage moments of transformation.
8. LAW OF DIALECTICS: Quantity increases to a point that grows into a CRITICAL MOMENT and turns into a NEW quality. This is the same thing as the LAW OF PHYSICS.
We must look HOW to build a new moment. And then how do all of the moments create the new world at the end of the play.
9. PROCESS:
a.) Mutual trust and respect. Giving and taking ideas as a team. Relentless communication.
b.) EVERYTHING EXTERNAL MUST COME OUT OF THE STORY AND WORK ORGANICALLY TO HEIGHTEN THAT STORY.
c.) High energy, high positivity.
d.) Collaborators ARE THE FIRST AUDIENCE.
The play must give courage to extraordinary people!
ART IS CREATING A LARGER SENSE BY SIMPLER SYMBOLS. -- emerson
See quote in post about Theatre de Complicite.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Designer Dinner Party
We haven't launched, so it was NOT a meeting, just an informal "let's meet before we meet in a formal setting" kind of event. And it was lovely. The clearest result I see immediately after is that we all, Sarah, Mallory, Brian and I, are extremely passionate about theatre and are willing to work dilligently and deliberately to uncover as many possibilities and ideas before having to narrow things down to decisions. Everyone understands that the play is dense and epic and will require persistent communication.... and everyone is up to the task. After the launch on Tuesday, we will combine our schedules and create a plan to meet and read the play aloud together. Which should be fun. Everyone should have a pen or pencil in hand, sketching and taking notes as we go. We will also have three or four very longs meetings to story board the show-- this will be story-boarding moments and transitions. After we do this, we will then take a look at all of the ideas and research and create the BIG IDEA of the production.
Everyone committed to include all designers in all emails-- particularly emails with new ideas and scheduling meetings. At CMU, one of the pitfalls can be a drastic lack of communication between the design options after the initial week. This team is enthusiastic about actual collaboration throughout.
Everyone also committed to a professional approach to the show. This means a respectful and positive outlook. Keeping lines of communication open, staying punctual and following through on tasks will ensure this goal.
And we spoke about keeping the details of the production relatively quiet in the department. Involve advisors, of course, but let's allow the audience to be surprised.
On another note, I met a guy at a bar who almost came to CMU and is interested in Assistant Directing the show. We'll see if this works out.
Also, as of today the three designers assigned to the show (a professional sound designer will be added shortly) are now able to post blogs! This site is about to get bigger.
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A gift from Maggie One
Through the eyes of a nine-year-old
Images of the Maggie's world
