Word: plays
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Romeo and Juliet is one of four plays in the Shakespearian production "The Play's the Thing,' which the Harvard Players will present next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, August 15-17, in the Union Commons Room. The other three plays are Richard II, Henry IV, Part I and The Midsummer Night's Dream...
...First," Guthrie said, "the director must get to know the play thoroughly. He should read it again and again. I personally work more by ear than by eye; I find it best to read a script aloud to friends or family, because it compels me to go slowly. Any one of you could doubtless stump me on a fact about Hamlet in three seconds; but not six of you know the play as well...
...Magna Charta before breakfast or put the Crown Jewels down the lavatory and pull the chain. So it is that a director almost never can get a whole cast of first choices. And he faces the dilemma of whether to get big names that he knows can't play the part or to gamble on unknowns who just possibly might achieve good performances. A good audition doesn't necessarily mean a good performance, either...
...production of a play," he went on, "is bound to be a comment on the play. Now anything that has not been done before is likely to be branded as impertinent, especially by the elderly and the scholarly. But you can't have a production that is not a comment; and to think that you can is the real impertinence. It is an illogical and serious mistake to envision one pure, ideal performance...
...Actors are not very profound or articulate thinkers as a rule, but they are quick on the uptake and highly instinctive. It's not like dealing with a pack of engineers, for example. Don't keep actors just sitting on their behinds and reading the play a la Stanislavsky. Dame Edith Evans says she has to move on her feet in order to think and react imaginatively. You might be able to take your cast off to a farm for six months to read Uncle Vanya or The Cherry Orchard, but you can't do that with Tunnel of Love...