Generally considered one of Shakespeare's earliest plays, The Comedy of Errors (or Comedie, per its first publication in 1623) will be performed this month at Caltech by EXPLiCIT, the EXtracurricular PLayers at CIT (the i, as they say, is imaginary). It premieres July 23 at the Braun Amphitheater on the Caltech campus.
As if gathering a cast and crew during the "down" time between academic terms and presenting six outdoor performances at the height of summer weren't enough, these players have thrown themselves into the challenge of performing the comedy as Shakespeare's own troupe would have done it 400 years ago—with "cue scripts" and an onstage prompter to keep any less-alert actors from missing their entrances.
Actors in Shakespeare's time didn't have complete scripts for a performance, explains Jonathan Wolfe, who is directing the play—or coaching the actors, as he prefers to put it. "Paying scribes to give everyone a copy was unreasonable for the time," he says. "It would have been both expensive and dangerous."
Expensive, of course, because someone would have been paid to do the copying. Dangerous, because there were no copyright laws in 1594, the year of the play's first recorded performance. Actors were given only partial scripts to prevent the possibility of a disgruntled performer hijacking the play to another theatrical company.
So actors of Shakespeare's day worked with cue scripts—scrolls of paper wrapped around twin dowels that could be held in the hand and rolled between the fingers, bringing into view the actor's cues to enter or begin speaking, followed by the performer's own lines. Rehearsals in the modern sense were virtually unknown.
When actors use this technique, the first complete run-through they do of a play is when they perform it before a live audience. "That's what makes it fun!" says Wolfe with a smile.
The EXPLiCIT troupe, he adds, is choreographing and rehearsing only the fights, of which Shakespeare's Comedie has many. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from the Roman playwright Plautus for this farce, so the slapstick is fast and furious.
Mistaken identity forms the basis of the plot. Two sets of identical-twin boys—one set slaves, the other masters—are separated at birth and raised apart, one Dromio and one Antipholus each in the towns of Ephesus and Syracuse (Sicily, not New York). When the four come together in the same locale, chaos ensues. Beatings of one Dromio or the other are a frequent result.
There's little likelihood of cuts and bruises, however—most of the "beatings" in these performances will be administered with hats.
Because the actors perform with cue scripts in hand while picking up clues to their characters' behavior from the dialogue itself, they are in effect developing their own characters as the performance proceeds. The somewhat impromptu nature and fast pace of this style of performing is great fun for the audience, says Wolfe. It also tends to break down the so-called fourth wall between audience and performers, which didn't exist in Shakespeare's time.
"It keeps the attention of people who may not understand every word of the play," says Wolfe, who first saw the cue-script technique in action when he spent a summer stage-managing for the New England Shakespeare Festival. He particularly recalls a performance of Richard III. "The audience was enthralled," he says.
The cast of The Comedie of Errors includes four Caltech undergrads, five grad students, and eight performers from JPL and the greater Caltech community. They'll not only be using "rolls" of paper, they'll be taking quite a few liberties with "roles" as well. For instance, grad student in planetary science Meg Rosenburg—the president of EXPLiCIT, and, as it happens, spouse of Jonathan Wolfe—is playing one of the Dromios. The other Dromio is played by Tim Hill. (Wolfe considers this a way of winking at the audience, as if to say, "They're not really identical twins, so let's pretend.")
Identical or not, these twins will be trading places. One evening Rosenburg will be Dromio of Ephesus, the next night Dromio of Syracuse, and Tim Hill the opposite. The upper-class Antipholus twins—another male/female combo, played by David Seal and Miranda Stewart—will similarly switch off. The major female roles will also be rotated among the actresses playing them. "On a different night, you'll see a different play," Wolfe says.
Rosenburg and Wolfe met as undergraduates at MIT, participating in that school's Shakespeare Ensemble. Romance followed. After graduating, they moved to the L.A. area, where Jonathan works as a software engineer for Zipcar while Meg's in graduate school. They tied the knot on June 20.
Both see the style of performance they're employing in the Comedie as challenging not only because of its rough and unrehearsed quality, but also because the script—which in its earliest form contained almost no stage directions—requires such close study. The actors' dramatic choices must always be made on the basis of clues contained in the text itself. For example, when Dromio of Ephesus, a slave, complains to upper-crust Adriana "That like a foot-ball you doe spurne me thus," it's pretty obvious that she is physically . . . treating him like a football.
The cue scripts in use today are based on the First Folio, the collection of Shakespeare's plays published in 1623. "Not all scholars would agree," says Wolfe, "but in my opinion the First Folio is as close as you can get to the original text used for performances in Shakespeare's own time."
"The First Folio gives you all the clues you need," adds Rosenburg.
She says that acting has improved her public-speaking skills, and that working with cue scripts has left her "more comfortable reading on the fly" when presenting papers. Her research, which involves analyzing data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, is a long-term project, so one pleasure of her involvement in theater comes from "having responsibility and creating something, but with more immediate validation."
The Comedie of Errors will run Friday through Sunday, July 23 through July 25, and July 30 through August 1. All performances start at 6 p.m. General admission is $5, and students who buy one ticket can bring a friend free. Tickets are available through the Caltech Ticket Office and at the door, but seating is limited and advance reservations are recommended.
Written by Michael Farquhar