Backstage Blog: Week 2 - Creating The Way of the World
It’s the end of week two, and our morning ‘warm up with Articulate’ sessions have pushed our description skills into whole new realms not imagined possible by many of us before.
As well as becoming rather excellent at ‘the fast talking description game’, we’ve been exploring the world of the play and really getting to know the characters that in inhabit it. The most important thing so far has been getting to know the plot as well as we possibly can and working out who is doing what at any particular moment. If we intimately know what’s going on, then there’s a much better chance that we’ll be able to tell the story clearly on stage.
Along the way we’ve also been researching all sorts of exciting things to help us understand the text, such as what Ratafia is, what Bartholomew Fair was (and what happened there) and when and how the word ‘cab’ came into use. We’ve also been getting our heads around the rules and conventions of ‘witty’ dialogue. The play is set among a group of people who value wit and crafty use of language extremely highly indeed. As part of our research into wit and wordplay we’ve been taking it in turns to watch an excellent film called Ridicule, which has fired up our understanding of just how important it is for the characters to say the right thing at the right time. A misplaced joke could cause serious damage to your popularity.
When you set out to rehearse a play nobody quite knows exactly what’s going to happen or what you might end up doing and discovering in order to create a show. Part of the magic of rehearsals is that many unexpected delights inevitably pop up (learning piquet – a very fine card game), intense discussions evolve (how to pronounce Shrewsbury) and many unusual questions are raised (what exactly is the difference between a ‘wit’ and a ‘fop’?). Piquet has been especially helpful at aiding us in understanding the vital divide between winners and losers in the play. In The Way of the World the stakes are high and money, relationships and reputation are always on the line.
One of the favourite moments from the past few days has got to be a communal listening of Billy Joel’s classic hit ’Always a Woman’. Congreve’s portrayal of women is quite radical considering the historical context of the play. Millamant is a woman who knows what she wants, and in one of her scenes with Mirabell, is not afraid to say what she would like her marriage to be like. Most women in 1700 had to just accept their husbands’ terms, but Millamant imagines a new kind of relationship. It can be difficult for us to imagine what life was like three hundred years ago, but by finding inventive ways to try and access life as Congreve would have known it, we can get a firmer grip on what the play explores. Looking at pictures, listening to music and occasionally delving into a historical article or two have helped us to really dive into the script and get our 2012 minds around a text written a few hundred years ago.
Although the Billy Joel moment was one of the main highlights of the week, here are some ‘top three’ lists from The Way of the World so far to fill you in with some of the reasons why we are enjoying this amazing play:
Top three catch phrases:
_*‘I don’t shilly shally’
‘All’s one for that’
‘Pass on or pass off’*_
Top three edible items mentioned in the play:
*_Chocolate
Olio
Cherry brandy_*
Top three flirting tips:
_*Greet a suitor with a ‘swift levee from a couch in some confusion’
Develop a ‘swimminess’ in your eyes
Suggest a walk for a walk’s sake with the object of your affection*_