Wow Act II – The Sexual Meets the Spiritual: New Knowledge

Posted by Gail M. Burns - August 2010

Women of Will: The Complete Journey
Act II: The Sexual Meets the Spiritual: New Knowledge
Thursday, August 26 at 9:30 a.m.

PART ONE
Scenes from Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, and Troilus and Cressida
PART TWO
Scenes from Antony and Cleopatra

Today we entered to a much barer room – fewer props and costumes in evidence. Pack er and Gore launched right into the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, which, when played in isolation like there, becomes a charming and playful love scene between to besotted teens. It was fun at the start, when Gore literally climbed over an interior wall in the playing space to reach Packer.

Packer called our attention to how the sexual and spiritual language merge and commented that the scene is very sexy to play. Gore remarked that Romeo climbs over the orchard wall as a naive boy and leaves changed men thanks to the sexuality that Juliet injects into their conversation.

Packer explained how the wall was a symbol of intellectual enlightenment. Monasteries, the seats of learning in those days, were walled in, and someone was said to go “over the wall” when they entered that world of knowledge.

She remarked on how Juliet stops the revenge cycle when she pulls herself back from her rage upon learning of the death of her cousin Tybalt at her husband Romeo’s hand, and how the young couple’s death shocks their parents and the entire society into ending the revenge cycle between the two families – at least for that generation.

Packer pointed out that both the sun – Romeo famously says that “Juliet is the sun” – and gold – the Montagues and Capulets make golden statues of the couple after their death – are alchemical symbols for change. Romeo and Juliet marks a profound change in how Shakespeare writes his female characters.

Feedback from the Act I audience expressed an overwhelming desire to be allowed to speak and ask questions, which Packer said that Gore and Tucker encouraged her to do, so there was a brief question and answer period. One audience member pointed out an aspect of the scene with Margaret and Suffolk that hadn’t occurred to Packer before – that Margaret substitutes her rage for her deep love. Another audience member asked if it wasn’t true that Kate in Taming of the Shrew had a “personality disorder” to which Packer basically replied that whatever “disorder” Kate might have was the right response to the abuse she had suffered.

Gore noted that Kates still exist and that a Margaret is the logical consequence of a Kate.

Packer made the point that Shakespeare was open to many different interpretations, and one of the points of a dialogue like this was to listen, respect, and learn from different opinions. “”Once you get a passion for Shakespeare you want to be the person who understands him best – and to believe that you are the person he understands best,” Packer said.

There was an interesting exchange between Gore and the audience concerning a comment he had made last night about a new experience he had had playing York to Packer’s Margaret where he found himself sad instead of angry after her emasculating denunciation. Gore said that it was very much an experience of the moment and one that he was still processing intellectually.

Packer said that one of the hardest parts of doing WoW was making the abrupt shifts being being and actor and being a “talking person,” but from my perspective one of the joys as an audience member is observing that magic, and getting the immediate feedback from the actors about their experiences “in the moment,” as Gore said.

After the feedback session Packer took the audience quickly through the chronology of Shakespeare’s writing. Following Romeo and Juliet he wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which Packer sees as a comic version of Romeo and Juliet with five equal couples. Next he wrote “The Merchant of Venice” which features three couples but also focuses on Shakespeare’s fascination with the outside, which Packer promised to address when she had expanded WoW to ten parts.

In the history plays Henry IV, Parts I & II Shakespeare is deeply concerned with honor and he is also much concerned with honor in Much Ado About Nothing, which is the only comedy Packer is including in this Act of WoW. An audience member pointed out that out of the four couples considered in this Act – Romeo and Juliet, Beatrice and Benedick, Troilus and Cressida, and Antony and Cleopatra – only Beatrice and Benedick get to live out their equal partnership. All the others die.

Gore and Packer then performed the scene from Much Ado About Nothing in which Benedick discovers Beatrice crying in the chapel.

Packer returned to the statement by the Roman Catholic church that women didn’t have souls and pointed to Benedick’s line that begins “Think you in your soul…” “Shakespeare couldn’t write the way he did and not believe that women had souls,” she remarked. England and been in a period of religious flux during Shakespeare’s adult years, and though there are rumors that he was a “secret Catholic” he was nominally Church of England.

“We need to start telling new stories, not just the revenge story all the time,” Packer said. “No one of us can change the story but we can collectively. Some people with great inner authority – like Mother Theresa or Nelson Mandela – can effect change in the world around them without force. But even our institutional structures, which are about 2,000 years old and were created by men, prevent us from making change. It will take all of us. We each have to work on our own stories. In Troilus and Cressida and Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare is holding these stories of an equal partnership between men and women up to the political structures.”

Packer felt that Shakespeare was greatly influenced by the ancient Latin novel The Golden Ass, and she explained in detail the story of Cupid and Psyche told therein. “This story weaves throughout all of Shakespeare’s plays in the interaction of gods and humans, the erotic and the intellectual.”

Gore and Packer then performed the scene from Troilus and Cressida where they first meet in the garden. This is a story that Shakespeare took from Chaucer about two lesser known characters in The Iliad.

I was struck by Cressida’s line: “I wish I were a man or that we women had men’s privilege of speaking first…”

After intermission we returned to find the room much changed and the performance space strewn with colorful robes and pillows. The second part of Act II opened with a scene from Antony and Cleopatra which had Gore shirtless and both actors barefoot. Throughout these performances, there is a sense of intimacy and immediacy between actors and audience that does not obtain in a normal theatre setting. Conversations between the actors and audience members are on a first name basis, and at one point Packer confessed to a momentary inferiority crisis when she realized she was going on about Shakespeare’s sources while an eminent Shakespearean scholar sat nearby.

“What is most important to Antony and Cleopatra is their sexual passion for each other, their intellectual passion for each other, and their mutual will to power. For many centuries Antony’s fall from nobility under Cleopatra’s influence was seen as the central tragedy of the play,” Packer explained. “But is because Rome won the war that we have the world we have today. The American Founding Fathers were greatly influenced by Roman ideas and we are steeped in that stoicism, the idea that emotions mustn’t go too far. But what is the power of an equal joining of the male and female? Most institutions in our society don’t allow that, and I believe the opposite is a kind of despair. Acting through love changes our whole perception of the world. Individuals have lived that way (Mandela, Mother Theresa) but we’ve never done it as a society. We are always dividing the male and the female.”

A random comment of Packer’s that I jotted down: “How you deal with the tensions in your life is enormously important.”

Packer took some time to expound her theory that Shakespeare’s “Dark Lady” was Amelia Bassano Lanier, the daughter of Christianized Jewish musicians brought over from Venice by Henry VIII. The family were originally silk-makers from North Africa, and Amelia, though married, was the lover of the Earl of Southampton, among others.

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