Tuesday, June 26th
Show Title: Volpone, or The Fox
Director: Mary Finch
Assistant Directors: Miranda McPherson and Chase O’Neill
Production Intern: Abraham Joyner-Meyers
Rehearsal Room: Hunt West
What we did
After our usual check in, Finch led the cast in a viewpoints exercise, exploring voice and kinesthetic response, where sound (a clap) or the motion of another participant can trigger total changes in movement, (perhaps from neutral to slow, or back). We continued by beginning to block the intense final court scene (where I even get a cameo appearance as a deputy). This evening, we head to the Blackfriars for another rehearsal on the stage!
Quick and Quotable
From the play
CORVINO: That I could shoot my eyes at him like gun-stones.
Finch pointed out the similarity to this line from Henry 6:
LUCY: O, were mine eyeballs into bullets turn’d,
That I in rage might shoot them at your faces!
Who did it better?
From the director
FINCH: Wait, why did we name this scene ‘Drop your Cheese?’”
(It’s one of the cast’s favorite lines from the scene.)
FINCH: I forgot, we’re in the West. Cattle doors can be totally cool.
(Cattle doors are the swinging side doors of the playhouse.)
From the cast
LUCY: (getting Mosca’s attention) Psst. Psst!
This “line” resulted in more than a minute of continuous laughter.
Production Insights
One of the questions the cast dealt with in today’s rehearsal was what motivates the characters to together return to the courtroom after the trial has finished. As Finch realized today, they are inspired by an interest in hearing the sentencing (of two innocent characters), a popular entertainment in Jonson’s time. The end of the uncut play includes a series of eye-for-an-eye sentencing for each wrongdoing characters (those who are excited for the first sentencing). Jonson simultaneously provides his audience with a pleasure, and satirizes those who take pleasure in the same vindictive act.
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.