Photo of the Day: Campers examining Character Relationship Charts

Today’s Date: 7/16/29

Show Title: Richard III

Director: Matt Minnicino

Assistant Directors: Lauren Carlton & Amalia Oswald

Production Intern: Spencer Cohen & Grace Wallace

Rehearsal Room: Hunt West

What we did

Today was our first in depth rehearsal. We started off talking with the students about some context for the play: What has happened in the war of the roses up to this point and more to the point who in the world all their characters are and how they all know each other. There are so many of them and when writing Richard III Shakespeare assumed that you would have recently seen the last four plays about this war or known about it already because it was the history of your country. We however don’t have the luxury of that. After our quick history lesson, we moved right into a full read through of the script. Once we finished our read through, we took a short break and moved right into blocking act 1 scene 1!

Quick and Quotable

• From the play

Look how my ring encompasseth thy finger

Even so thy breast incloseth my poor heart

• From the director
  • “Cutest murderer ever.”
  • “Yes, circular rejoinder!” After everyone got back from a break and returned to the circle we were sitting in

• From the cast
  • “Horse a horse a kingdom for my horse!” -Leah
  •  “[Richard] is a monster that we created.” – Sakura
  • “When power is introduced to a family, family doesn’t matter anymore.” -Max

Production Insights

This is my first time working as a dramaturg, and I find it exceedingly interesting to hear the all new lines of questioning that the students come up with that I hadn’t even thought of. For example, today Leah made a comment about how there is a motif of dreams and broken dreams or lost dreams in the play. I had thought of looking into the significance of the prophetic dreams in the play but I hadn’t even considered the idea that the dreams might serve a more metaphorical motif as well as the implications of having prophecies, a kind of magic, in a history play. All in all, I’m excited to learn even more about what I’ve been studying from the student’s ideas and new lines of questioning!