Henry V, Parts I and II

Weyers Cave, Virginia, January 18:

Weyers Cave was one of the first places we visited on the first leg of our tour, and it was nice to return to do Henry V, having done Taming of the Shrew in the fall. It was nice to do Henry, at all, in order to satisfy our interrupted expectations two nights prior, and our previous performance of Shrew made us fairly certain that they weren’t going to ask us to do Shrew instead.

Both shows at this venue were excellent; the audiences were friendly, engaged, and quick to laugh, and the true thrust stage set up in their lovely black box theatre is one of my favourite environments for involving the audience, and, thus, for Shakespeare. Our Shrew last September was one of my, say, five favourite Shrew performances so far, and this Henry was, from my vantage point, also one of our best Henry performances so far. I felt freed from some of the things that have been continually constraining my performance as the Boy, and it seemed that all of my continually-brilliant castmates had a similar energy in their performances. Ginna did a particularly beautiful job with the Hostess’s monologue, and all of the ‘Low Life’ scenes, which we’d worked on during our rehearsals that week, seemed fresher.

Alisa was particularly excited to see that they had installed mirrors in the dressing room, because they were not yet installed when we inaugurated the new space in the fall. The lack of mirrors was particularly noticible because the partitions set up between each seat, reminiscent of desks found in libraries—as if the management were afraid of actors copying other actors’ make-up—neatly framed twelve rectangles of blank wall.

Sweet Briar, Virginia, January 19:

The promise of three Henry shows in as many days was indeed too good to be true, but the universe allowed two consecutive performances with no further complications. Though I myself did not have quite as good of a show as the previous evening, Sweet Briar played host to one of the most outgoing and enthusiastic audiences for Henry we’ve had outside of the Blackfriars. (A couple of people got exit applause, including Ginna and myself for the English Lesson scene!)

The large auditorium had weak lighting for the house, which made it difficult to see specific people in the audience. Because I’ve always felt that to a particularly painful blow in my struggle to do the Boy’s soliloquy with any kind of passing professionalism, I decided to alter the blocking a little in order to be able to talk directly to people. Fortunately, there were wings to the stage, projecting like runways along the side walls; I scrambled over there to hide when Fluellen stormed out, consequently putting myself in a place where I could see the audience more easily. Not only was it helpful to me to be able to jump off the runway into the auditorium, but it was also an opportunity to be a Theatre Ninja, which always delights me.

Our reception at Sweet Briar was extraordinarily hospitable, especially for a venue that we were only visiting for one night. The way to actors’ hearts is frequently through their stomachs (my friend Stephanie observed to me that the two things I always talk about on this blog are theatre and food), and the lovely people at Sweet Briar provided us with an entire panoply of snacks for the afternoon, and THEN held a reception for us afterwards! It made us feel well-loved and well-fed, or perhaps (as I posit) well-loved because well-fed.

I extend my warm thanks to the staff and the superlatively friendly audience not only because they deserve our gratitude, but also to emphasize that I have nothing but good will for them despite the fact that this women’s college has a truly terrible motto. We were eating lunch in the campus dining hall, when someone noticed that the napkin dispensers contained a bright pink piece of paper that read

SWEET BRIAR: THINK IS FOR GIRLS

After much deliberation, we determined that they were attempting to play off of the idea ‘Pink is for girls,’ but I don’t think that is a strong enough concept to be worthy of subversion, at all, especially when its product employs a verbal acuity reminiscent of Tarzan. The fact that “think” is so wildly ungrammatical, compounded with use of the word “girls” rather than, say, “women,” gives it, to my ear, a kind of insulting tone. (The latter reminds me of my friend Devin, jokingly saying to his friend Becky who scored a letter grade higher than him on a high-school Spanish test, “Gee, Becky, you did well on that test…for a GIRL.”)

Consequently, THINK about it! With both ‘think’ and ‘girls’ being slightly promblematic, the only decent words are ‘is’ and ‘for,’ thus rendering a full 50% of the motto potentially offensive. In conclusion, I am struck by the irony of having a motto encouraging thinking that apparently involved so little mental activity itself.

Many people suggested revisions, of varying political correctness; my favourite was Mr. Paul Reisman’s:

THINK IS FOR GIRLS

GRAMMAR IS FOR GROWN-UPS