Final Week of Rehearsals

More speeches from Justin won't be welcome to anyone at this stage, but with less than a week to go until our opening performance, it might be time for a few words from an actor's perspective. We've come a long way since our meeting with the full cast (or pretty much the full cast - there have been a few dropouts and additions along the way) at the end of Winter Quarter. Lines are down (more or less), phalluses on (in my case at least), and actors are growing visibly in their roles (in the case of Al's human-trafficking Russky, alarmingly so). The nervous, excited calm preceding the final comic storm would seem to provide the perfect opportunity to take stock of our thespian progress.

Rehearsals began a little later than most of us would have liked. Justin himself was off in Athens for a few weeks immersing himself in the background for his role (and, incidentally, attending an epigraphy course), and the usual business of campus life took another week or so away before we could make a real start at our own version of Greek life. When we did, it took us a while to find extras for all the walk-on roles in which this kind of comedy abounds - the Frenchy's Assistant, for instance, or the Homeland Security Informant - so that it was some time before we could rehearse the play in full. In the event, the brave souls who stepped into the breach of last-minute line-learning have slipped with unruffled smoothness into the general Aristophanic mayhem.

One of our purposes in founding SCIT was to provide ways for undergraduates and graduates to associate in a cooperative, constructive, but fun way. Acting out a light-hearted parody of child prostitution wasn't quite what we had in mind, and it took a while for a few of us to stop being embarassed about some of the more provocative sections of the play (it may take the audience some time, too). But watching the Acharnians rapping away the other night for the first time, it struck me that we had indeed found an ideal site for generic, ideological, and social interaction by digging our hands into the Old Comedy mud.

While line-learning has proven more of a challenge than many of us expected, mainly because of the repetitive nature of Aristophanes' humour (how many objects do I have to ask Jay-Z for until the joke finally becomes - funny?), for the most part the company has reacted to the challenges of acting out ancient humour with an Athenian swiftness, flexibility, and team-spirit. And as we speak (or as Justin writes) posters display our alternate identities to the world (well, the university anyway), the fishbowl awaits filling, and phalluses nestle in the prop bag like expectant larvae. Now all we need is an audience - and an open-minded one too...

Advertising and Rehearsals - Less than 2 weeks left

Al here, giving the producer's update.  This week we were fortunate enough to receive support from the Stanford Graduate Student Council to help cover the costs of lighting and sound.  This was a major relief, as these tend to be costy items, both to rent and to run.  Kudos to the GSC!

With less than two weeks left before opening night, publicity is becoming an increasingly pressing concern.  Foivos, the director, suggested a poster themed after publicity images for HBO's "The Wire".  A stylized black and white saturated with yellow and marked by rubric, it made a striking image.  Taking photos at Wednesday night's rehearsal and combining them with an shot of a street fair in Kansas and a shot of the Capitol Building from Google Images created the perfect Main-Street-meets-Washington milieu.  Justin Cittee, the protagonist, stands front center, flanked by Captain America, an Envoy, two Russian "little-kittens" and Mr. Talibaloneys.  Only one Acharnian, played by C.J., made it into the picture.

With the poster designed and website now up (http://scit.stanford.edu; thanks Jason for the prime web address), we're ready to take our campaign to the streets and facebook.

Rehearsals are proceeding apace, and perhaps the most entertaining (if time-consuming) aspect has become choreography.  Nikita, a Classics undergrad and member of an award-winning dance team, has produced stunning on-the-spot choreography for our musical interludes.  Half of our cast (myself included), however, seem to have two left feet, and this is a chance for the undergraduates to really show the grads up.  Foivos and I discussed how satisfying a well-choreographed scene is.  We hope our production may open eyes and minds to the immeasurable (because unknown!) effect of dancing and singing in the original performance.

James has been a master of his many lines.  Matt has yelled himself nearly hoarse as Rumsfeld.  Eleri's Parisian is outrageous, Maxine and Alice are, well, wonderful sports.  Bianca and CJ are masters of the line-dance, and everyone's putting in a ton of time and effort as the rehearsals become increasingly demanding.

So, for the next two weeks, props will be a major concern (in Zana's capable hands), as will be organizing the hitherto-neglected technical side of the production.

See you at the production!

-Al

SCIT happenings, week of 2/23/09

With our first major hurdles past us, the week after auditions was somewhat of a relief. The translation is basically finished, the play is cast (though not definitively -- more on this later), and our able director is now envisioning the final, staged product.

However, even with the translation done, we're still faced with some issues of reinterpretation. To paraphrase another dramatist, the fault in this case lies not in ourselves, but in our star -- that is, Aristophanes himself. For the man was a scatalogist of the highest order, and in adapting his language and imagery we've had to face the fact that he was quite deeply offensive, even to those of us who scoff at bowdlerizing Victorian translators. This is mostly a question of audience reception, and the general consensus is that we'll make it clear that this show ain't for the kiddies. (Plato says somewhere that they prefer puppet shows to comedies, anyway.)

To stir up interest in our project and kick ideas around, we held a colloquium on aspects of interpretation and production on Thursday, February 26. (See Al's description below.) The turnout was great for a week when everyone was busy with prospective student events -- thanks to all who came out! The meeting covered everything from specific practices of dramaturgy to Aristophanes reception to the political perspectives of ancient comedy.

Jason kicked things off with a look at the parabasis ("stepping aside" of the chorus during a comedy, at which time the members remove their costumes and speak directly to the audience). He reviewed the history of scholarship on the matter down to the present day, even to our own production. We still have some decisions to make on this crucial (not to mention lengthy!) portion of the Acharnians. In short, we'd like to achieve something meaningful while skirting excessive "meta-theatricality."

James led us through a chapter of Simon Goldhill's How to Stage Greek Tragedy Today on the actor's role. While of course no one but Socrates thought tragedy and comedy were similar enough for the same person to write in both genres, Goldhill's study nevertheless offered several insights on bringing ancient texts of whatever style to the stage. In particular the discussion found its way to the question of props and material objects, which we think we'll have in abundance. After all, as Foivos has pointed out, Dikaiopolis' offer to put his head on the chopping block is not merely metaphorical, and we've devised our own twist on this scene of physical literalness.

Aristophanes in Performance, 421 BC - AD 2007, edited by Edith Hall and Amanda Wrigley was the treasure trove of Aristophanic history that Al served up for us. We noted with interest the relative lack of productions of the Acharnians over the long term, with a major bump in output in the years during and after the Vietnam War. People have evidently found the anti-war message of the play, whatever that might ultimately entail, "bon à penser," as the saying goes (more on this in a moment). It was suggested to us by Sarah M. that we look for correlations between "conflict years" and show productions and see how ours fits in.

Foivos gave us a whirlwind session of "Everything You Need to Know about Aristophanic Politics in 10 Minutes." Poet and propagandist, populist and purebred, Aristophanes has rather fittingly worn as many masks as he has interpreters. Whatever one thinks about Aristophanes' personal views, many readers, and I would count the SCIT crew among them, are willing to treat an Aristophanic comedy as (among other things) basically an act of political commentary.

I ended our colloquium with a few questions about what such a commentary might consist in, and in particular what thought processes go into making Aristophanes relevant for today. Adapting the Acharnians now has its difficulties, especially because one does not want to make Aristophanes something he was not: namely, a principled, non-violent pacifist. (And this is all on the too-easy assumption that the comic hero speaks for the poet!) Our production will certainly have a "message" of sorts, but mostly at the expense of everyone, with Aristophanes' spirit, if not his personal politics, guiding our decisions.

Finally, the issue of offensiveness reared its ugly head again, but we encountered nothing but encouragement. Nick said it best: "Hey, 'classics' do not mean 'classy'!" On that note, we'll see how the cast reacts to our first read-through...

-Matt

SCIT 2009 – The first 45 days

The new year has pushed SCIT into new directions. Our original translation of Aristophanes' Acharnians, composed in large part by Rachel, James, and Matt continued apace through the fall, but apart from a handful of planning meetings and the creation of our website, very little work has actually been put into the production proper.

This was in part a problem of conception.   Though we had always intended to use the Fall quarter to write our translation/transformation, I don't think we realized in September that many of the details of our show could not proceed until the translation was finished—or at least, nearly finished. Questions of venue, cast size, date, funds, and countless other considerations could not be answered before we knew: (1) when and where the play would be set, (2) who and what would be satirized, (3) whether any major cuts (or extensions) would be made to the original Greek text. As such, the SCIT project seemed as if it was on hold. We did not want to rush composition—we knew we would need time to decide what modern parallels would be best suited to the Greek Lamachus, Euripides, the Megarian, etc.--nevertheless, it was frustrating to wait.

Booking performance space on campus also proved difficult. Attempts to pursue the Stanford Humanity Center's Levinthal Hall were met with initial success, but as SCIT's goals turned further away from a formal academic symposium toward an large-scale, successful, and fully dramatic production, Levinthal's multi-use capabilities (suitable for lectures as well as a final production) seemed increasingly unnecessary.  [Thanks to the SHC for holding the space until we decided we probably needed to turn elsewhere].  But where else to turn? The many outside venues at Stanford are enticing, but a late April or early May production does not have guaranteed sunshine, and a night-time performance would require outdoor lighting, seating, possible security/janitorial services, which all come with a price-tag. At the moment, less than two months before our show, we are still without a secured venue, and this will certainly be our next big step, since blocking and artistic conceptions of the show are dependent upon our facilities.

We began 2009 by hosting two early evening information sessions about our production: one for a general audience and one targeted specifically at classics undergraduates, whom we wanted to include as much as possible. Our hope is that, for future iterations of the SCIT project, productions can be a way to bridge the current graduate/undergraduate divide. One of the goals of the SPICE initiative, which has so graciously funded this project, is to enhance our department's intellectual community—the acronym SPICE stands for Student Projects for Intellectual Community Enhancement. Though SPICE funds were awarded to support graduate students specifically, we see it as an important additional benefit that the Acharnians will also bring together Classics graduates with their undergraduate colleagues.

SCIT would like to extend its thanks to Dr. Maud Gleason, who allowed us to give a 5 minute introduction to our project to the two majors seminars which she is teaching. Her support was integral in drumming up undergraduate interest in either auditioning, helping out back-stage, or just attending the production.

Both evening information meetings were poorly attended (we recognized later that people are often too busy on the farm to attend an information meeting when they could have their questions answered by a website or e-mail). However, they had the benefit of laying a publicity groundwork for our eventual auditions during the second week of February. For future SCIT projects, less emphasis perhaps should be placed on information meetings, and more on “informative publicity”. A thoroughly informative flyer/poster or website is able to get our message across. Perhaps, however, there could be an event a few weeks before auditions to focus interest and get word about the production out in the Stanford community, so that people can look forward to auditions.

To dispel the disappointment in low-turnout at the information meetings, a strong gust of confidence and renewed purpose filled up SCIT's sails after last weeks' auditions, held 7-9pm in the Classics Department on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. We had, again, low attendance the first two evenings, but a bumper crop of talent on Thursday, including a handful of declared Classics undergraduates. We are impressed (and relieved!) by the influx of talent, and since we now have a body of people outside the core SCIT members to whom we are responsible, our inner organization must respond by becoming more pro-active and disciplined—a necessity, when our show is (potentially) only 9 weeks away.

This last week, Foivos, Rachel, James and Matt worked tirelessly on the translation to bring it to completion! A great thank you to all translators—it is perhaps all to obvious to say that we couldn't do it without you. We are planning on having a final collective read-through of the translation together in the department lounge this Friday to streamline the text and add any new jokes we can.

Our thoughts are now turning to our first Colloquium, to be held 26 February 2009. A number of us will be presenting briefly on a number of books and articles relating to Aristophanes, the Acharnians, and modern performance. This will be a collective idea-session to bring us together before our first rehearsal and read-through the following day. We will have posters around the classics department to open our round-table discussion up to a larger audience.

So, to sum up the last 45 days of SCIT's project: (1) the long-awaited script is finally finished, (2) the show is finally cast, and accordingly (3) our momentum and spirits are high, and we are encouraged by the palpability and immediacy of a project that seemed so distant and abstract back in September. The current desiderata: (1) a secured performance space (2) a clear sense of available funding for lighting, costumes, etc., all quite dependent on desideratum 1, and (3) rehearsals.

Until the next update,
-Al