Banana Split Festival (Ohio)/Pink Tomato Festival (Arkansas)/Balloon Festival (Vermont)/Strawberry Festival (Indiana)/Strawberry Festival (Michigan)/Strawberry Festival (New York)
2008-06-13 @ 11:59 p.m.

So tonight The King Lear Project came to an end with the final production of the trilogy, The Lear Universe, in which the audience was treated to (or made to endure, depending on personal opinion) five performances of the final scene of Shakespeare's tragedy. The folio edition's ending was performed twice, then the quarto's version, followed by Nahum Tate's revised happy ending, and finally, a return to the folio version. This was in the same circular vein as the previous two night's, where the presumed ending of the play is but a prelude to the real ending, which is in reality a repeat of the beginning. Best to visualise this as a serpent biting its own tail, but more on the structure later.

It is interesting to consider the three alternative endings, since this numerical motif pervades the trilogy. The differences between folio and quarto are substantial, amounting to more than 400 lines in a play that has more than 3000. The effect of these lines, added or subtracted, is to modify how Lear is perceived in his dying moments, indeed, whether he has learnt anything at all from his ordeals. The detailed critical commentary, you won't get it from me, since you'd be much better off looking it up from books and essays. Though I must say that I was pleased to notice the difference in the attribution of the final lines, which are given to Edgar in the folio but to Albany in the quarto. Was glad that was explained explicitly in the production, or I'd have been killing myself trying to figure out the significance of the change in the third iteration of the ending. As for Tate's revision, which was so popular it displaced Shakespeare's original for more than 150 years, it struck me as absurd, although one can understand why it would have been popular in earlier centuries, with its message of virtue triumphant. In this day and age though, even the religious must confess that virtue isn't always rewarded and neither is vice always punished. (I actually recently led a Bible study that was tangentially related to that.)

Now about the production's structure. I brought up recursion when I talked about the first night, a phenomenon that has fascinated me since I encountered it in fiction in the form of Tony Ballantyne's novel, Recursion. Incredibly, tonight's performance took the concept beyond Wednesday's. For tonight, each time Ben Slater came on as the moderator for the Q&A session, he was really preparing the way for the next iteration of the ending of King Lear. In effect, we segued continuously from ending to Q&A to ending, a process that could have continued ad infinitum because of the manner in which the device was incorporated into the greater scheme of the production, which thus fully embodied the idea of recursion. Sadly, some members of the audience, including a group of students seated directly behind me, failed to appreciate the significance and ingenuity of this device, instead complaining that it was boring. (Ironically, there was an additional Q&A for them after the actual one took place. One hopes that they had cogent thoughts to express!)

This in turn leads me to consider the role of the audience. As mentioned before, the audience is powerless within the confines of the theatre, and this was fully brought home during the first iteration's Q&A. When Ben invited the audience to ask questions, it wasn't clear if he meant it seriously. So several people tried, including one of our acclaimed young local poets. It soon became clear, however, that Ben was really waiting for planted questions to surface and propel the action of the play. (Frankly, the plants asked the most lucid questions I've ever witnessed in a Q&A session, which made it rather obvious that they were plants.) This again could be viewed as a violation of the fourth wall's integrity, as when Elizabeth popped out after the first ending to request for more enthusiastic applause. However, when Ho Tzu Nyen was asked why he didn't allow real questions from audience members to be answered, he commented that he was doing theatre. Quite right. As I understand it, only in forum theatre is the audience's participation actively solicited, and desired. The Lear Universe wasn't forum theatre, but a simulacrum of it. (It's interesting to note that the cast acknowledged that actually performing a play of this nature before a live audience created a markedly different dynamic from rehearsals.) In light of Tzu Nyen's comments during the Q&A, perhaps it's best to see the fourth wall not so much being breached as extended beyond the stage to encompass the whole venue.

Finally, some random stuff that I liked but didn't want to fit in elsewhere. The rearrangement of the cast that Ben did in the first iteration's Q&A was cool, emphasising the moral dichotomy in Shakespeare's play. Yet as Paul pointed out, none of the characters is wholly good or bad, no matter how extreme Shakespeare made their actions. I also liked the points where Paul made comments about the audience, like how they were trapped in the theatre, faced with the scrutiny of each other's eyes, and how they fidgeted because they didn't know what to do. That the comments could have applied equally to the imagined and the real audiences heightened their comic effect. Also loved what I think of as the executive summary of the original play, where Elizabeth narrated and the cast dramatised fragments of the scenes to great effect. Call it Lear-lite.

The actual Q&A, when it finally took place, paled in comparison to its simulated counterparts. Overall though, I greatly enjoyed my three nights of The King Lear Project. I've come to see it not as an interpretation of King Lear, but a reconstruction. For though Shakespeare's play is never once performed in full, over three nights we do move from its beginning to its ending. The proceedings of all three nights were captured on video, which ought to make interesting viewing if the footage is ever released. Meanwhile, I leave you with a link to an interview with Tzu Nyen, which in keeping with the spirit of the project, is really not an interview at all, but a simulated creation. Enjoy...

This week:

Hermit Week