The End Game of "Measure for Measure"

"Measure for Measure" closes Sunday, Aug. 29, after a two week run at the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle, but I've been thinking about the show since January, when I enrolled in a Shakespeare class taught by Harvard Professor Gordon Teskey. The class was a survey of Shakespeare's works, but students also learned how the events of Shakespeare's life and times shaped his writing. Teskey is a charismatic teacher. Students have organized a Facebook page for him because they love hearing him read Chaucer. I loved hearing him read Shakespeare, too, and there's no mistaking the actor in him, especially because he's one of the most stylishly dressed members of the academy. (The Harvard Crimson fashion columnist wrote a story about him.) This summer, Teskey was teaching in Venice, but he took a few minutes to answer questions about "Measure for Measure" -- a play I find difficult but that he helped me see more powerfully as a story about self sacrifice and as a demonstration of Shakespeare's progressive sense of structure for comedy and tragedy.
Given Teskey's expertise, I wanted him to help us understand more deeply the final scene of the play in which Shakespeare disconcertingly ties up the ends of a comedy that tipped so dangerously toward tragedy. As we continue to investigate this play, Teskey sets us up to consider how we might see the final scene.

Here's Teskey on the final scene of "Measure for Measure":

The most difficult scene technically is the final one. So much happens in it, and there are so many dramatic reversals. The moment when Mariana begs Isabella to kneel with her and beg the Duke to spare Angelo's life -- this when Isabella still thinks Angelo has murdered her brother -- is deeply moving, because Isabella does so. She is at last moved to pity for someone. But so much else occurs in the scene: the unmuffling of the Duke and the humiliation of Lucio as well as of Angelo, the trick with the head of Ragozine, and so on. It is very hard to stage and to keep up the pace, which should be rapid, without confusing the audience. It is thrilling, a little bewildering, funny, emotionally moving, and at the end (perhaps) a little mysterious.

Pierre-Marc Diennet: "I'm here to live."

Abby Bray, a student at Stonington/Deer Isle High School, recently interviewed actor Pierre-Marc Diennet, who plays Lucio, a "fantastic," in "Measure for Measure" running through Aug. 29 at the Stonington Opera House. "Interviewing some of the cast of 'Measure for Measure' was the first time I'd done a formal interview," says Abby. "After some trial and error, it proved both fun and educational. I learned about the characters on a more personal level, and I also learned what attracts people to Stonington." Pierre is a veteran artist at the Opera House where he performed "Perdita," a show about his mother. In this interview, Abby asked Pierre -- as Lucio -- why we should care about his character. She also asked about working in Stonington compared to working in other locations. Give it a click. Then buy tickets! And check back on the Shake Stonington blog for more of Abby's interviews with actors. Coming soon!

Who's got the power?

Yu Jin Ko is a Shakespeare scholar at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and our guest conversationalist for the Talk Back after the production of "Measure for Measure" 7 p.m. Saturday Aug. 21 at the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle in Maine. He will be joined onstage by director Jeffrey Frace and Opera House artistic director Judith Jerome to talk about the play, the production and Shakespeare's life and times. Recently, I asked Yu Jin (whose name is pronounced Yoo Gin) to answer three questions. The first is below; the second is here and the third is here. You can buy tickets to join us Saturday, Aug. 21 (TONIGHT!) after the show. Bring your own questions!

AA: Who is the most powerful person in this play?

YJK: You have so many centers of power and the source of power is so different for each in this play. Harold Bloom [the literary scholar] suggests that the most captivating character in the play is Barnadine, the prisoner who refuses death because he has been out drinking the night before. He presents a kind of irrepressible vitality that escapes the whole moral system of the entire play. He embodies that superfluidity of artistic energy that Shakespeare always displays in his plays. In some sense, he is the most powerful character. But more conventionally, you’d have to choose among Angelo, the Duke and Isabella. For me, it’s Isabella. She might come across to some as prissy and puritanical. But beyond all of that, the value she puts on her chastity, which she values above her brother’s life, is a value that is integral to her sense of self and takes her out of circulation – erotic and commercial – defining Vienna, a very corrupt and sordid society into which the Taliban in the form of Angelo has moved. Curiously, Isabella is the most powerful character because she tries the hardest and with the most force to define herself away from the categories of selfhood available to her.

Melody Bates/Mariana: "I hope folks will understand I am true of heart"

Abby Bray, a student at Stonington/Deer Isle High School, recently interviewed actor Melody Bates, who plays Mariana (a rejected lover) and other roles in "Measure for Measure" running Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House. "Interviewing some of the cast of 'Measure for Measure' was the first time I'd done a formal interview," says Abby. "After some trial and error, it proved both fun and educational. I learned about the characters on a more personal level, and I also learned what attracts people to Stonington." Melody is a veteran performer at the Opera House where she played Hippolyta/Titania in last year's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." In this interview, Abby asked Melody -- as Mariana -- why we should care about her character. She also asked about working in Stonington compared to working in other locations. Give it a click. Then buy tickets! And check back on the Shake Stonington blog for more of Abby's interviews with actors. Coming soon!

Do You Relate to Shakespeare?

Guest blogger Abigail Bray lives in Blue Hill (Maine) and is a student at Deer Isle-Stonington High School. She enjoys writing and will be contributing posts occasionally during the run of "Measure for Measure" Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House. She also works at Fisherman's Friend Restaurant, a tasty place to eat dinner before or after the show!




As a sophomore in high school, I found reading “Measure for Measure” for the first time a bit of a struggle. Some of the situations were almost easy to relate to while others were a bit harder. I think we all can agree that there is at least one person in our lives who is strict and stubborn, and who decides to fix whatever situation he or she thinks needs fixing, like Angelo did while the Duke was “out of town.” And at one point or another, we all have to choose between helping someone close to us, or staying true to what we believe in, as Isabella was forced to chose between her virginity and her brother’s life.



Other parts of the play are less easy to relate to. Because things have changed drastically since the 16th century, it is now more common for women to have children out of wedlock. Another situation I cannot relate to is Claudio changing his mind and asking his sister, whom he knows to be very virtuous and chaste, to give up her virginity to save him. It is one thing for Isabella to decide; it’s another to put her in the kind of situation where she feels obligated.



Although “Measure for Measure” isn’t one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, I feel that it helps us compare and contrast the difference in politics and morals of the 16th century with today’s.

Taking the "Measure" of Flannery O'Connor

Several years ago on a visit to Savannah, I came upon Flannery O'Connor's house on Lafayette Square. Her childhood home is now a museum, but that didn't stop me from walking straight up to it and hugging it. Or hugging a corner of it. I've done this with the houses of several writers whose art has deeply influenced the way I see the world. The first time I went to Paris, I walked directly to Gertrude Stein's house and hugged it, too.

But Flannery O'Connor has been in my thoughts these days as I've been reading "Measure for Measure," running Aug. 19-29 as this summer's annual production of Shakespeare at the Stonington Opera House. Director Jeffrey Frace, who played Oberon in last year's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Stonington, has a literary crush on O'Connor and decided to run "Measure" through the filter of her Southern Gothic style and Catholic sensibility. The production reportedly is "dripping kudzu and Spanish moss," according to Linda Nelson, executive director at the Opera House.

Here's what Frace says about O'Connor:

She creates characters and situations that are as real as she can imagine, and then, as events transpire she learns more about them. Often she’s surprised at what transpires. But she is interested in flawed characters, characters suffering from spiritual blindness and in need of grace. Sometimes that moment of grace arrives in this lifetime: often it is accompanied by violence and death. Shakespeare, uncharacteristically, was more merciful on his characters in Measure for Measure. At least they all live. It is a comedy, after all. But there is spiritual blindness a-plenty, and real suffering along the way. And what is at stake is more than the love life of a sympathetic young person or two: it is the health and welfare of a whole community.

Now, for a brief primer on O'Connor:

• She was born Mary Flannery O'Connor in Savannah, GA in 1925.
  
• Her work includes novels, short stories and essays.


• She studied writing at the famous Iowa Writers' Workshop with the likes of Robert Penn Warren. In her 20s, she was diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease from which her father died when she was a teen. She died at age 39.


• She was obsessed with birds.


• Her work can be very funny and very creepy.


• It's likely her most famous work is "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," a short story about an argumentative southern family that meets a serial killer. You can see the cutting approach to the human condition in this line about the annoying grandmother in the story: "She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."


• Her work is deeply concerned with redemption -- and the tension between the Christian mission and un-Christian people.

That last part makes O'Connor a perfect fit for "Measure for Measure," which shines a surreal light on the workings of justice -- in the state, the city and in love.

Theatergoers always ask me the best way to prepare for attending a production of Shakespeare, and I encourage them to read the original text. This time, I also invite readers to pick up a copy of Flannery O'Connor's short stories and explore her world, too. She and Shakespeare have much to say to each other.

Some rise by art

Put actors onstage together, and you probably can guess what will happen: theater. But what about after hours? Let's say they're sitting around the table eating dinner together after a performance. Are they still acting?

Turns out, the answer is sometimes yes.

In 2006, when the Stonington Opera House cast of "As You Like It" was finished performing in the evening, the members often found themselves sitting around the late-night table together eating dinner and making up characters -- as actors do. They had also been inspired by the sign on a defunct diner -- Conni's Restaurant -- and sometimes shared a romantic vision of what it might be like to leave the big city and make it in a small coastal town on an island.

"Stonington is so beautiful in the way it creates community," said Rachel Murdy, who was in the 2006 production of "As You Like It." "We had a microcosm community in that theater group. We had this ongoing idea that we could buy the restaurant that was for sale and open an avant-garde restaurant. We would live year-round in Stonington and have that kind of life. We dreamed about that, and we felt so strongly about it that when we left Stonington we had a reunion and had lunch together and literally decided to do that: have a restaurant."

And that's when "Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant" was born. The show is an original work of audience interactive cabaret theater that also includes food and drinks. Not dinner theater exactly. But dinner prepared and served by the cast in the midst of an evening of storytelling that swears the avant garde is still alive. Or not. You can read more about the past New York production here and about the current production at Club Oberon in Cambridge, Mass., here.

Right about now, however, you might be thinking: What does "Conni's" have to do with the Opera House Arts production of "Measure for Measure," running Aug. 19-29 at the Stonington Opera House? Good question.

The answer is embedded in the Stonington Opera House motto: "Incite art. Create community." Not only did the creators of "Conni's" find their inspiration in Stonington where the opera house is located. But they carried that spirit back to their home bases and kept it alive in far-flung areas. Many of them return in this year's production of "Measure for Measure": Rachel Murdy, Melody Bates, Stephanie Dodd, Peter Richards and Jeffrey Frace (who is directing "Measure"). That means they are rehearsing Shakespeare in New York City and traveling for the next three Sundays (July 18, 25 and Aug. 1) to Cambridge to perform in "Conni's."

Even though these actors are familiar with one another through graduate school at Columbia University and their performances at the Stonington Opera House (and if you've seen their Shakespeare work, then they're familiar to you, too), I like the idea of them working on two shows together this summer. By the time we see them in their Shakespeare characters, they will have presumably formed an even stronger ensemble connection.

As a side note, Murdy was part of the original creative team for "The Donkey Show," which was a hit in New York City years ago and was revived by Diane Paulus, artistic director at American Repertory Theater, at Club Oberon last year. After being in the show originally, Murdy also helped Paulus re-create the show for the Harvard scene. "Donkey Show" is still playing Friday and Saturday nights in Cambridge -- and if you're up for an unusual double header, a Saturday night disco version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (on which "Donkey Show" is based) and Sunday dinner at "Conni's" could be as intoxicating as a double header at Fenway. (Well, for me, anyway.)

But back to our main story. In "Measure," old Escalus warns: "Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall." If the performance connections between Stonington, New York City and Cambridge teach us anything, it is the opposite of a warning. It is a validation: Some rise by art, and some by community gain all.