Stanislavski's Cat

Recording voiceovers for the tiny Shakespeares, with a group of local drama types, seated round a massage table. None of us is an "Ac-tor", so we try to find ourselves in the story...to speak as-if. Dressing up "like a witch" in pointy hat and stick-on warts as-if Dressing in our best butch to pre-empt certain types of undesired attention. To pass unnoticed...or to challenge and brazen out. If the story is right we should all be able to find a personal truth in it somewhere, which means we can speak for ourselves rather than try to be a Jacobean era witch/herbalist/batty old lady.

stolen from pinterest. Cat from Maeterlinck's Bluebird

None of us is an "Ac-tor", so there was a certain amount of confusion, hilarity and collapse of stout party. In fact, most of the cackling happened off-the-record as we just chatted, teased and generally improvised around the theme. Our host suggested that instead of one of us making a cat noise, why not record the cat? Ah, I have failed to explain that the point is there is no cat. We fashion an imaginary cat to make believe we are witches. Directing is a whole lot more difficult when there are actual people involved. Let alone cats.

Witch one (which one?) suggested we should just record all the bits in between the script...Woman 1 (not yet a witch) replied that that might be the basis of another and much better film - about 3 women pretending to be 3 witches, who in turn are anachronistically commentating on a play in which they were actors. About how the contemporary sensibilities, politics and social structures would commentate on that. About a group of feminist/ lesbian/ non-actors interpreting the behaviours and words of 3 women who were really men, and whose words were crafted by a man.

No, stop, my head hurts. In the end, there really does need to be a "good bit later where Lady Macbeth goes nuts."

Scripts, image sequences and videotape

Working on the scripts for the Shakespeare shorts has made me realise how much fun it is to work in a different medium. To explore telling a story through multiple perspectives but using words/ and different voices.
To find creative ways of avoiding too much lip-synching but without resorting to a disembodied narrator...through close-ups, cutaways...keeping the story visual and not letting the images become secondary to the words. I find this means the script changes as I go, as interesting visuals suggest themselves. Forgive me (colleagues) but I seldom stick to a storyboard and seldom even draw one. Its mostly back-of-the-beer-mat/ organic flow - or as we professionals call it Zen Animation!

But...I have only just realised -while updating the website - that every narrative I create is also told (differently) through a series of still images (the thumbnails) which compose a sort of trailer in comic-book form. In fact, another adaptation.
Damn. Now I've realised that, I'm going to have to start being more creative with the shape/ layout/ size of the thumbnails.
Maybe with speech bubbles...

MacBeth/ Macbeth/ mac beith ...

...is turning out to be enormous fun. Read Learned Papers! Disagree with them! search the internet for mad German woodcuts of what Choleric temperament looks like;confuse yourself with Elizabethan/ Jacobean customs, attitudes and belief systems; wish you still had a copy of "1066 and all that".

Some of the papers I found were student dissertations and essays; some of the evidence and rationale was scanty. But all of it was interesting. Put it in a sack, shake it up, and pull out some mildly controversial fragments which I hope will encourage people too look at and enjoy the plays. For those "forced" to study them at GCSE/ A level. For those frustrated by the deeply gender-divided and unequal world view of the day but looking for a way through it. Or bored by the passnotes which are just that - notes to get you a pass, but not necessarily to make you think deeply/ or sideways-on. (yes, it's "about ambition". but also the pointlessness of war, gender politics, philosophy, Brechtian devices, "Mock the Week" and the perils of patronage. A cultural mash-up) (maybe...you decide)
And now, even more fun, I get to draw woodcut-esque and intricate Black-and-White images with a vulgar disregard for perspective, anatomy... or anachronism.
God, I feel Shakespearean!