We had a run through of Caesar on Sunday. I had been working through it in a jumbled order, focusing first on the two person scenes, and blocking them based on character motivation rather than moment to moment movement. Then I came back to the big scenes – the top of the show, the funeral, etc. Finally, I began to look at what I’m calling the second layer of the play, which is the stuff that is happening behind the action. So in doing all of that, I was the only one thinking about issues of continuity and story. I had encouraged all of he actors to focus only on the scene at hand: what did their character want at the beginning of the scene and what happens to them during the scene. I have trusted that the story, if told clearly through the motivation of the characters, will come through. I’m delighted to report that it all worked as planned. The run through, especially the first act, was truly the sum of good parts and went extremely well. There were some really wonderful moments.

There are many ways to block a show, of course, but for this production, the choice of getting the actors to really focus on their characters’ motivation and relationships to discover the blocking, seems to have worked wonderfully. From my perspective, that’s the first hurdle, and we jumped it easily.

An issue did emerge the other day and needed to be solved. I had hoped (as you can see from the cutting) to get all the way through the conspiracy and funeral before taking the intermission. Needless to say, five act Shakespearean plays always provide a challenge for figuring out where an intermission should fall. As you probably know, they believe the plays were originally performed without intermission. In modern times, an intermission is pretty compulsory for any play that is more than 90 minutes long. Many of the early 20th century plays even require two intermissions. For most Shakespeare, one intermission is fine, but the question is often, where to put it. Shenandoah Shakespeare Express performs the plays uncut without intermission. It’s a great idea when it works, and makes for a long evening when it doesn’t. For our Caesar, I’d hoped to take the break late in the play – at the end of Shakespeare’s Act III. It’s kind of a natural break in the play, which is pretty clearly of two parts. However, it’s late in the action. The difficulty is that the break right in the middle of the play means breaking the all-important funeral scene in half, which would kill the momentum of what is arguably the most important part of the play. In running the show with the break before Act IV, we found that the first act ran about 1:25 and the second act ran about :30. I knew that I would be laying the second act with some transitional stuff and giving them a little more time to play emotions, but I also knew that making the first act closer to 1:05 would be pretty tough. So despite my original instincts, we decided to put the break right after Antony’s great “Bleeding piece of earth” speech in Act III, sc. 1. But I wanted to end the act with his defiance, “That this foul deed…” which Jeffrey Thomas will do brilliantly. But I also still wanted that great little scene with Octavius’ Servant right after it to be in the play. (The “Here is a mourning Rome, a dangerous Rome….” bit.) So, as is a common practice when dealing with this stuff, I’ve moved that little scene to just before the Antony speech, which gives us the best of both moments and still lets us end the act on a critical high point with Antony’s defiance. It means that the acts will be about the same length. It also leaves us with some pretty compelling stuff in the second act. In a way, it’ll allow us to climb even higher into the drama of the funeral and the killing of Cinna, and allowing that all to resonate through the slow burn of destruction that is the second half of the play.

In this writing, I wanted to touch a little on the idea of fighting in Caesar. Most people, myself included, think of Caesar as a play where a bunch of politicians kill the title character, and don’t really think much beyond that. Probably, that’s because people only read that far and then give up. Whatever the case, Caesar really is a play about the power struggle of warriors. So there actually is a war in the second half of the play. That is, the forces of Cassius and Brutus are fighting the forces of Antony and Octavius. However, for my money, it’s not a war play. Unlike Henry V and so many of the English histories, where the French are the bad guys and the English are the good guys, this play is about individuals. It seems to me that focusing on the fighting during the second act undermines the real story. It’s not Brutus and Cassius verses Antony and Octavius. More often it’s Brutus verses Cassius and, to a lesser extent, Antony verses Octavius. Ultimately, it’s Brutus versus himself. Since my earliest readings of the play, I’ve felt strongly that the second act can’t be about the conflict on the battlefield. After all, suicides are at the center of the second act, and ultimately, the play, not deaths in battle. This is a little bit of a different tact than many directors take, but I’m firmly behind the idea and it seems to be working. We’ll see. When you see the show, I hope you get the feeling that there is a war going on in the second act and that the scenes take place on the battlefield, but I also hope you care about Brutus and Cassius more than about the bigger picture of one army verses the other. Most of all, I hope the second act isn’t boring. If you’ve ever seen a live production of Caesar, chances are the second act was boring. I’m actually setting out to make the second act have you more on the edge of your seat than the first act. Yikes!

Finally, I wanted to suggest that you watch the Caesar mini-series on TNT network if you get a chance. It premiered Sunday and Monday night, and I’m sure will repeat. While not historically accurate, it’s close enough, and gives a great sense of the history leading up to the play. The two-part movie ends with the stabbing, and deals a lot with Pompey and the wars. Interestingly, it had Caesar returning to Rome as he does in the play, but he brings Cleopatra and their baby with him, which makes for an interesting view of Caesar as hero in the face of Calpurnia’s public humiliation. It was a pretty cool choice dramatically, although not historically accurate.

We’re now into techs for Two Gents and Philadelphia Story, so I only have two rehearsals over the next two weeks. Then it’s a race to opening. I’m looking forward to the show coming together. Next time I’ll write about sets, lights, costumes and sound.