Tabling: The Podcast

Off we go! Claire Curtis-Ward, Levi Morger, Sam Gibbs and Ariana Karp delve into Act I of Shakespeare's nihilistic masterpiece! 

This week we discuss:

• The family dynamic of Gloucester, Edmund & Edgar
• Are the knights riotous? Whose report of them do we trust?
• Difference between Goneril and Regan?
• Kent and the 'perfect' disguise
• The tenuousness of identity 
• Dementia and Senility and their role from the beginning of the play
• The repetition of the word "nothing" within the 1st act! 
• The complicated switch of the child becoming the parent and the tensions within the father/daughter relationship

Laurence Olivier as Lear in the opening scene of the play

Happy One-Year Anniversary Tablers! 

We are very pleased to bring you this very special episode, recorded in February 2016 during the First Folio Festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico where this special extended conversation between The International Shakespeare Center (ISC), The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) & Tabling: The Podcast Producers (all of whom are LAMDA Alumni) took place. Join us as we delve into why we continue to read, study and perform Shakespeare 400 years later and what is the enduring potency of his work.

Joining us for this conversation are:

• From the ISC Board: Caryl Farkas (President), Kristin Bundesen (Vice President), Anna Farkas (Associate Artistic Director), 
• From LAMDA: Joanna Read (Principal),  Rodney Cottier (Head of Drama)
• From Tabling: The Podcast: Brittany Chandler (Producer), Emily Ota (Producer), Nicholas Koy Santillo (Producer),  & Ariana Karp (Producer).

Welcome to the sublime and terrible world of King Lear! This week join Claire Curtis-Ward, Levi Morger, Sam Gibbs and Ariana Karp as we commence our examination of Shakespeare's remarkable tragedy.

Here are a few reflections on King Lear from the Romantic poets to 20th century commentators:
"O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute!
   Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away!
   Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,
   Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay
   Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit.
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
   Begetters of our deep eternal theme,
When through the old oak forest I am gone,
   Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire." --John Keats

"Above all others, this is the Shakespeare play of our time." --Jan Kott
"King Lear…ultimately baffles commentary." --Harold Bloom

We then talk about our own initial thoughts about the play and our experiences with it. What is your experience of King Lear? Write in to [email protected] or post on our Facebook page! 

Drawing of the final scene of King Lear.

Emily Ota, Ian Harkins, Brittany Chandler, Levi Morger, Rafe Terrizzi, Samantha Blinn & Ariana Karp conclude our discussion of the play in this episode, as we tackle questions about: 

• Most productions make massive cuts to this last act, why?
• The ultimate sin of despair in Elizabethan and Jacobean times
• The Duchess is the only character who is saved in the play
• Has the cultural attitude towards murder changed since the Elizabethan times with the rise of forensics?
• Who is the play really about?
• What is the biggest difference between Shakespeare and Webster?
• How the Julia wooing Bosola scene mirrors the Duchess wooing Antonio scene from the beginning?
• Staging questions about the multiple deaths in act 5 and the use of darkness.
• The importance of the soundscape in this play in our conception of the production

Production image from Cheek by Jowl's famous production. Julia & the Cardinal.

Emily Ota, Brittany Chandler, Levi Morger, Samantha Blinn, Claire Curtis-Ward & Ariana Karp are in a melancholy and disturbed state as we reflect on the murder of the Duchess, her children and Cariola. 

At the beginning, we talk quite a bit about our experiences and the acting challenges with the strangling scene. Puzzling away we also discuss: 

• Does Bosola kill the Duchess? Or do the Executioners?
• The psychology of killing-the ultimate act of intimacy for the executioners?
• Ritual nature of violence and brutality-spectacle of violence in Elizabethan & Jacobean culture
• Public vs. Private deaths 
• Ferdinand's lycanthropia
• What does Ferdinand want? Did he want Duchess to die?
• Science and mathematical language and imagery within the play and the significance of its use.

A Lycanthrope

This week Emily Ota, Levi Morger, Brittany Chandler, Samantha Blinn, Claire Curtis-Ward & Ariana Karp discuss Act III of the Duchess of Malfi. Things are getting craaahzy…we spend quite a few minutes just trying to figure out everything that happens in this Act! 

Other discussion topics include:

• Ferdinand and the Cardinal find out that Antonio is the father of the Duchess's children! Escandoloso! What does this mean to them?
• Ritual and religion in the play
• The role of the dumbshow in classical theatre
• The relationship between Cariola and Duchess and generally the relationships between great ladies and their handmaidens
• The Duchess and Antonio's private farewell in public
• Why the Jacobean obsession with incestuous relationships?
• How danger creeps into the domestic sphere in the bedroom scene

• We end with Levi reading us a poem about a dagger by Jorge Luis Borges

By the way, Britt's computer is fine and King Arthur the pup is still as cute as ever! 

Medieval pilgrim 

Join Brittany Chandler, Rafe Terrezzi, Ian Harkins, Levi Morger, Claire Curtis-Ward, Samantha Blinn, Emily Ota, Zoë Goslin & Ariana Karp as we tear through Act II of The Duchess of Malfi! As we had a lot of new participants, Ariana and Emily recap the Jacobean era, equivocation,  John Webster & Jacobean language.  We discuss our previous experience with the play which wonderfully ranged from some participants never having read or seen the play to one of our participants who has been in the full play twice, once as Bosola and once as Ferdinand (looking at you Levi)! 

Other discussion topics include:

• Why is it a "hot" or "sexy" play?
• The muscularity of the language
• The constant threat of death
• What does Bosola want? Could we call this play "Bosola's transformation?" 
• The abuse of the old woman. *Note to all: use "abortive hedgehog" as an insult at some point in your life. 
• The quick changes from verse (where there is a rhythm scheme) to prose in Bosola's speeches
• The Elizabethan significance of green apricocks with regards to pregnancy
• Relationships between each character and the audience-how do they change over the course of the play?

Elizabethan apricocks. 

Join the fantastic-transatlantic-LAMDA-trained crew of Emily Ota, Samantha Blinn, Will McKay, Robyn Hoedemaker, Zoë Goslin, John MacCormick, Sam Jenkins-Shaw, Bathsheba Piepe, Sally O' Leary & Ariana Karp as we dive into the murky depths of the world of John Webster. 

Ariana gives us the history and dramaturgy around James I, John Webster and Jacobean cultural history. To put this into perspective, Shakespeare's plays could be divided into his "Elizabethan" and "Jacobean" eras. Some of Shakespeare's Jacobean plays are: Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Measure for Measure, Coriolanus, Winter's Tale among others. The verse structure becomes more complicated, more rhythmic irregularities. 

Emily gives us the thematic breakdown of Jacobean plays, delving into the meta-theatrical, visceral, messy, dirty, passionate, madness, murder, chaos and cannibalism of these crazy plays! 

The group then discusses their experience with the play and traces the line of Jacobean tragedy and violence thru to the explosively violent British playwrights of the 90s like Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill. 

Portrait of Giovanna d'Aragona, attributed to the workshop of Raphael. (The real life inspiration of the Duchess of Malfi)