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Tayari's Blog: The Lady Hamlet

Posted by TayariJones on November 19, 2007 07:43 PM
Filed under Living For The City

This afternoon, I had another genuine New York Theatre experience. I saw a reading of Sarah Schulman's latest play, The Lady Hamlet at New York Theatre Workshop. For those of you not in the loop, a "reading" of a play is different from a performance. A reading consists of the actors seated in a semi-circle reading from the script. (You may recall that I participated in something similar when I was at MacDowell this summer.) This description makes it sound sort of dull, but the actors were so good that I could really imagine what the play will be like when it is actually produced.

Did you know that before most (white) actresses hoped to one day play Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, the dream role was for a woman to play Hamlet? This is what lit a fire in Sarah Schulman's imagination. The Lady Hamlet is the story of Margo Stayden Burns as actress who is determined to make it to Broadway as Hamlet. Other characters include Helen De Montpelier, an actress of an earlier generation who shares the same goal, having been a "Lady Hamlet" for years in France. The play is very cerebral addressing complex questions about gender and representation. The other very cenrtal issue is the matter of mentorship. Never fear, the meaty ideas of the story never weigh down the characters or snare the plot. Schulman strikes just the right note in this piece with issues that will provoke deep thought and meaningful conversation along with characters that will steal your heart. (The actors were just wonderful.)

After the play, there was a roundtable discussion. All participants were given a copy of the rules for the conversation "Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process." My favorite rule was that you had to ask "neutral questions." Here is an example:

"Why is it so dark?" is NOT a nuetral question. "What ideas guided your choices about lighting?" is.

I think this is a technique we should employ in our interpersonal relationships. (Instead of saying "Why can't you do the #@!&( laundry?!" you should say, "Baby, what impulse guides your decisions regarding soiled clothing?")

I didn't participate too much in the after-play group discussion. I didn't feel that I know enough about drama to make meaningful comments. I tend to come at everything the way a fiction writer would. Character, character, character! So I just sat quietly and listened, and left feeling very impressed.

(No pics, sorry. It wasn't a picture-taking kind of event.)

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