Thanks for your patience. One of my old writing teachers used say, when you have a good draft, put it in a drawer for 6 weeks and let it sit - or "take," is more like it. A new piece of work is a new thing in your life that you have to get used to.
When I first reread these scenes, just a month or so after seeing Hamlet performed on Alcatraz, I knew this section (below) is what the movie needs - an argument when people are saying mean nasty things to each other, that could get loud, and if distorted by wall and airspace and accompanied by actors' business, could really sound like a domestic dispute, especially to a second language English newlywed who is so green she ran away from home because she really believed bopping her husband on the head with a frozen Cornish game hen could kill him. But I had 1) just seen Hamlet live and 2) we didn't know yet why Keskarel ran away from home.
We have a few guidelines that seem to work for us: the writer (usually Chris, but in this case Shakespeare) writes a script and provides it to the actors. Diana and I improvise, and so did our natural, Nidal at the store downstairs. Nima followed the script without having specific lines. The guidelines for this scene are you are two actors who are rehearsing together to play H + O in your own Shakespeare theatre company. Your fellow troupers don't think you're a fit, and you have to prove to them that you can make it work: you have decided that you will try to surprise each other at rehearsals to keep things fresh. I don't think it's necessary for you to be off book - it just needs to be clear immediately to the audience once they see you, that your characters are actors.
Please remember that the only rule besides show up at sylviatoyindustries is have fun - life is short. We already have a woman attacking her husband with a chicken in the first scene, so knock yourselves out.
HAMLET
Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a
breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;
but yet I could accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
Where's your father?
OPHELIA
At home, my lord.
HAMLET
Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.
OPHELIA
O, help him, you sweet heavens!
HAMLET
If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for
thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a
nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs
marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough
what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go,
and quickly too. Farewell.
OPHELIA
O heavenly powers, restore him!
HAMLET
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God
has given you one face, and you make yourselves
another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness
your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages:
those that are married already, all but one, shall
live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a
nunnery, go.
I have a shotlist in my head - there are about four or five. This isn't specific yet, but
- One in Sapna's living room
- One from outside an open window (with you inside/camera outside, peeping tom style)
- One in the front yard a prop of your choosing - the only rule is that it has to be big enough for the camera to show an object
- One with the two of you from behind walking up the sidewalk, vigorous business/action of your choosing - big enough for the camera to show (it could be tag, skipping, beating each other with plastic baseball bats - you just have to surprise each other)
- One with you passing the Videographer on the sidewalk, running your lines however you like
Thanks, and see you soon.
sylvia
--
Thanks.
The Keskarel the Movie production team
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment