FROM STAGE TO SCREEN

FILM ADAPTATIONS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARES PLAYS

Topics

Text in performance:

Introduction to the grammar of film: Camera techniques. Camera movements. Editing techniques. Narrative Style. Graphics. Sound. Filming modes. Shakespeare in twentieth and twenty-first century films:

An Introduction to Elizabethan Performance Studies: Elizabethan Playhouses. The Players. Costumes, Scenery and Effects. Performance Techniques A contrastive approach to Elizabethan theatrical conventions and modern theatrical/ film performance conventions.

Shakespeare and pop culture: Al Pacinos docu-drama

Looking for Richard Shrew

A shrew for all times: Franco Zeffirellis The Taming of the Gazing on Hamlet with Kenneth Branagh Shakespeare, film and race: Oliver Parkers Othello

An Introduction to Elizabethan Performance Studies

The first permanent theatres: old inns which had been used as temporary acting areas when the companies had been touring. E.g.

The Cross Keys, The Bull, The Bel Savage, The Bell The first purpose built theatre building: The Theatre

Categories of playhouses: Public/ outdoor theatres: e.g.The Theatre (1576), The Curtain (1577), The Rose (1587), The Swan (1595), The Globe (1599). Private/ indoor theatres: e.g. The Blackfriars; The Cockpit

Structure and Design of Public/ Outdoor Theatres

the pit or yard the roofed galleries the Heavens the Frons Scenae the discovery space the stage gallery the Tiring House the Hut

Structure and Design of Public/ Outdoor Theatres

The Players
more parts than actors doubling or trebling of roles an actor performed during the same performance. only male actors (Female roles were performed by boy actors in disguise.) intense and demanding rehearsal and performance schedule (e.g. In a typical season, a theatrical company could perform thirty-eight different plays.) few formal rehearsals for each play and no equivalent of the modern director

Costumes

a strange combination of what was (for the Elizabethans) modern dress, and costumes which - while not being genuinely historically or culturally accurate - had a historical or foreign flavour. strict laws about types of clothes and colour codes (e.g. red blood; black gloom, evil; yellow sun; white purity; scarlet doctor; gray friar; blue serving men). extensive make-up for the boys playing female parts and for actors playing blackamoors or Turks. mad people (esp. women): loose hair and disordered clothing. night scenes signalled by characters wearing nightdresses

Scenery and Effects

no fixed scenery or painted backdrops (hence the playwrights had to provide the actors with spoken descriptions of landscape). yet, a wide variety of furniture and props: simple beds, tables, chairs and thrones to whole trees, grassy banks, prop dragons, an unpleasant looking cave to represent the mouth of hell, etc. copious quantities of animal blood, fake heads and tables with holes in to stage decapitations; heads, hands, eyes, tongues and limbs cut off onstage. other simple special effects: real cannons and pistols (loaded with powder but no bullet) for ceremonial salutes or battles ; rolling large metal cannon balls backstage or drumming for thunder; fireworks set off in the heavens above the stage for lightning or magical effects. no lighting effects (except for the indoor theatres candlelight) torches used to indicate that a scene was taking place at night.

Performance Techniques

Performance lasting between two and two and a half hours with no act breaks the actors were continually moving forward and backward into the midst of the surrounding audience through the doors at the rear of the stage. Clowns/ Fools: a great deal of improvised repartee and jokes in the performance, especially responding to hecklers in the audience; dancing or performing a jig (anything from a simple ballad to a quite complicated musical play, normally a farce involving adultery and other bawdy topics ) The spectators: The Groundlings standing in the pit, frequently shouting up at the actors or hissing the villains and cheering the good guys. The Elizabethans did not speak of going to see a play, they went to hear one: the most expensive seats were not the ones with the best views, but those in the Lords box or the balcony behind the stage, looking at the action from behind; the higher the seats, the more an audience member had to pay.

Specific Aspects of Elizabethan Performances

bear-baiting: Bears were set upon by hounds in a fight to the death. fencing: Less gruesome, this civilized sport also took place before plays. dumb-shows/processions: These parades or spectacles required the use of the most ornate costumes the actors owned, including crowns and sceptres, torches and swords. Dumb-shows appeared at the end of each act to summarize the events of the following act. By the turn of the century, dumb-shows were considered old-fashioned. Processions were more solemn as actors moved mannequin-like across the stage. jigs: At the conclusion of a play, the actors would dance around the stage. Separate from the plays, these were bawdy, knockabout songand-dance farces. Frequently resembling popular ballads, jigs were often commentaries on politics or religion. masques: Masques were plays put on strictly by the royals. These were celebrations, i.e. royal weddings or winning a battle. Designed as banquets of the senses, these celebrations spanned several days during which each member of the party played a part in the allegorical theme of the banquet. Masques were always held in private playhouses.