Tuesday, June 19th
Show Title: Volpone
Director: Mary Finch
Assistant Directors: Miranda McPherson and Chase O’Neill
Production Intern: Abraham Joyner-Meyers
Rehearsal Room: Deming Black Box
What we did
Rehearsal today began as the Volpone cast started to experiment with the physical nature of their characters. After reading through the first act and digging into character relationships, blocking started. Our fearless and eminently cool director Finch explained that “On the first day we find habits and we break them,” as we put the first scenes on their feet. Volpone raked in gold as many jealous suitors competed to be his heir.
Quick and Quotable
From the play
MOSCA: “Rook go with you, raven”
Jonson loves his character names. Corbaccio, Corvino, and Voltore are three of the suitors to the wealthy Volpone. Each is identified as a bird; a Crow, a Raven, and a Vulture. In our dramaturgical discussions, we enjoyed the playfulness of Mosca’s punning.
From the director
“Volpone, that couch is your dragon’s hoard”
The couch appears in enough scenes that I think it should be included in the Dramatis Personae.
From the cast
“Which Avocado am I?”
The four Avocatori (the lawyers and judges of the Venetian court) have been quickly renamed by the cast as the Four Avocados, who I think should start a band under that name.
Production Insights
Jonson’s animal names for the characters (included in the cast list below) reveal how Volpone is very much a fable. Despite the character types suggested by the names, and the ending where all wrongdoers receive their just comeuppance, the actors are quickly making these characters their own. While offstage, we flipped through an uncut copy of the (four hour long) play to see the punishments meted out in the original. Corvino is sentenced to be rowed around the city wearing a hat with donkey ears. I’m glad I didn’t let slip to the campers that I wore a donkey hat last fall as Bottom, the enchanted actor from Midsummer Night’s Dream. It wasn’t so bad a punishment after all.
Cast list (for the fable)
- Avocatori (Charlie Nelson)
- Bonario (Carina Park): “Good-Natured”
- Celia (Scarlet Frishman)
- Corbaccio (Mia Randers-Pehrson): “The Crow”
- Corvino (Spencer Cohen): “The Raven”
- Lady Politick (Elsa Vinso)
- Mosca (Emilia Vizachero): “The Fly”
- Nano (Caroline Raymond): Volpone’s “Dwarf”
- Peregrine (Will Muoio): “The Falcon”
- Sir Politick (Kiernan Green)
- Volpone (Lucy Bertolet): “The Fox”
- Voltore (Adrienne Rugg): “The Vulture”
Abraham Joyner-Meyers
Abraham Joyner-Meyers is a fiddler, a juggler, and a huge Shakespeare nerd. He completed watching the Shakespearean canon in the fall after seeing ASC’s production of The Fall of King Henry (Henry VI, Part 3). His passion for the Bard also led him to attend ASCTC for two summers, where he acted in Two Gentleman of Verona and Much Ado About Nothing. When Abe is not furiously reading, seeing, or acting in Shakespeare plays, he’ll often be found teaching himself to play new instruments, dancing at contras and with Morris teams, or training with his school archery team. He just completed his freshman year in the dual degree program between Harvard University and Berklee College of Music.