Saturday July 21st
Show Title: Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Director: Marshall B Garrett
Assistant Directors: Chase O’Neill and Olivia Pedigo
Production Intern: Abraham Joyner-Meyers
Rehearsal Room: Blackfriars Stage
What we did
Much of our rehearsal today focused on learning the quirks of the Blackfriars. Marshall walked the cast through everything from operating the entrance doors and discovery curtain to how to cross a thrust stage. We moved on to Thaisa and Pericles’s marriage dance, excellently choreographed by RDA Chase. Finally, the cast began to stage the first scenes of the play, including creating the severed heads that decorate Antiochus’s court.
Quick and Quotable
From the play
PERICLES: And both like serpents are; who though they feed
On sweetest flowers, yet they poison breed.
From the director
MARSHALL: Is three enough, or do you need more severed heads?
From the cast
CAMPER: [responding] There should be four severed heads. Four is the number of death.
Production Insights
Putting our play onto the Blackfriars’ stage highlighted for me the performative nature of many moments of the play. Many members of our cast have the challenge of acting a character who is themselves acting, including Pericles and Kind Symonides often disguise their true feelings, only speaking truthfully to the audience. That close relationship between character and onlooker is highlighted in our early modern playing space.
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.