Drama Tuesday - If We Were Villains

 The Never Ending Quest – Stories of Drama Education

Let’s be clear from the very start – If We Were Villains (Rio, 2017) is a murder mystery (I will try to avoid any spoilers!). My interest in  this story is the specialist Shakespearean theatre and acting school context: the people and the setting.

The action takes place in a small liberal arts/performing arts college in an undisclosed location in the Mid-West in driving distance from O’Hare in Chicago. The action focuses on the seven remaining fourth year students in the Shakespeare Acting cohort. 

The author has neatly skewered acting types (and stereotypes) – hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingenue, supernumerary, observer (though along the way, the roles change). These are the seven who have survived the end-of-yearly purges. Richard, pure power, six foot three, carved from concrete, black eyes, thrilling bass voice, playing despots and warlords. Meredith, supple curves, skin like satin, designed for seduction. Wren, Richard’s cousin, ingenue, girl next door, waif thin, Filppa, tall, olive skinned, cool, chameleonic. James, quintessentially heroic, handsome like a Disney Prince. Oliver (who narrates the story) sees himself as average in every imaginable way.

The staff are also deftly drawn – Gwendolyn, the bangle leaden, redheaded stick figure hippie acting teacher; Frederick, the chalk dust laden theatre history and text don; and, Camillo, the physical action, combat and movement teacher. And the distantly inspirational Dean of the Academy: I encourage you to live boldly … make art, make mistakes, have no regrets; we expect you to dazzle us and we do not like to be disappointed. (p. 36). The hothouse climate of selective acting schools is strongly evoked.

This group of students are all that are those remaining in the  elite program. The dark hints of savagery in the process are present from the start. Final year students focus on The Tragedies – following on from Third Year focused on The  Comedies – a Midsummer Night’s Dream production with Oliver and James as Demetrius and Lysander clad only in striped boxers and undershirts.

Their unfolding school year is effectively sketched.

The acting classes for the year begin with a ritualistic personalised purging interrogation in acting class leading to revelation and self discovery at the hands of Gwendolyn. How many times do we read accounts of acting schools setting out to break down and then re-build individuals. In so many acting school approaches this sort of blood sport is mandatory. Cathartic and cleansing and cruel. Questionable.

The text study class is full of fusty philosophy and dusty epithets. The first combat class gives a sound description of the business of the illusions of stage fighting – setting up for later as the rules of the game are disrupted when things get out of hand. The ordinariness of observations such as “being Monday, we all lined up to be weighed”, touch on the unspoken assumed practices of this sort of training.

Productions provide major plot points in the mystery and there are also well-drawn examples of creative challenges for acting students. Twice in the plot development, students are set “secret assignments”. For Halloween, each of the main characters are given roles from the Scottish Play and the instruction to learn the lines and talk to no one else about their role. On the night, they are told to turn up to the lake side with their provided costume and, without any rehearsal, play their given roles. This impromptu and high risk task is an adrenaline rush, calling on skill and trust. Oliver is assigned to play Banquo. The tensions revealed in the exercise set in motion significant plot developments. 

The second example of this is when the students secret assignment involves Romeo and Juliet for the Christmas Masque Ball. Oliver here plays Benvolio, reinforcing his status as the sidekick mate, at the edge of the main action. Passions unfold and swirl around him yet provide him with insight into his growing power as an actor. 

Major plot developments are embedded in two productions: Julius Caesar and King Lear. 

Another major feature of the writing is the frequent resort to the characters quoting from the wide Shakespearean cannon at apposite moments in their lives. As tempting as it is to skim them, each quotation is apt and pertinent to the character development. And serve as reminders us of how annoyingly obsessive and insular the lives of actors in training can be. They converse in their own language (borrowed language!) to the exclusion of all others. The quotations are wide ranging – and are a good primer for “best bits of the Bard”.

There is a deep wisdom put into the mouths of the characters. 

Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?

I blame him for all of it.

It’s hard to put into words. We spent four years – and most of us years before that – immersed in Shakespeare. Submerged. Here we could indulge our collective obsession. We spoke at a second language, conversed in poetry and lost touch with reality a little.

Well that’s misleading. Shakespeare is real, but his characters live in a world of real extremes. They swing from ecstasy to anguish, love to hate, wonder to terror. It’s not melodrama, though, they’re not exaggerating. Every moment is crucial.

A good Shakespearean actor – a good actor of any stripe really – does not just say words he feels them. We filled all the passions of the characters we played as if they were our own. But the characters emotions don’t cancel out the actors – instead you feel both at once. Imagine having all your thoughts and feelings tangled up with all the thoughts and feel feelings of a whole other person. It can be hard, sometimes, just sort out which is which.

Our shear capacity for feeling got to be so unwieldy that we staggered untruths, like Atlas with the weight of the world.

The thing about Shakespeare is, he’s so eloquent … He speaks the unspeakable. He turns grief into triumph and rapture and rage into words, into something we can understand. He renders the whole mystery of humanity comprehensible.You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough. (p. 248)

It’s important not to read too much into all of this. As I said the start – never forget that this is a mystery novel. It is designed to thrill and charm us. Yet, there is also something to tell us about acting schools. The small interchanges are revealing. (Often the text is laid out like a play script)

Meredith: “Welcome to our art school. It’s like Gwendolyn always says, “when you enter the theatre there are three things you must leave at the door: dignity, modesty, and personal space.

Philippa: I thought it was dignity, modesty, and personal pride.

Oliver: She told me dignity, modesty, and self-doubt.

All three of us were silent from moment before Philippa said Well this explains a lot.

Do you suppose she had three different things for every student she talks to me? Oliver asked. (p. 261)

Through the whole novel there is a melancholic recognition of Hamlet’s words:

“There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow." 

Yes, I did enjoy the mystery. I also enjoyed the portrait of the acting school and the people who live there. 

Is this a fair portrayal? 

I open our discussion to stimulate the debate.

Currently, there is turmoil in many of the known institutions – acting schools amongst them. It is reasonable, in these times, to question the practices of some, maybe all, drama schools. What lies behind the seductive images of Lotus Eaters and sirens? Why are some drama schools churning and turning themselves inside out over casting, choices of texts and practice? It is important to remember that there is a climate of disruption in the wider academy that has found its way into acting schools. 

What could be the way forward for these troubled spaces?   

Oh, and,  who killed the actor? It’s a mystery. Or, tongue in cheek, to quote from Shakespeare in Love :

Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?

Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

Hugh Fennyman: How?

Philip Henslowe: I don't know. It's a mystery.

Bibliography

Madden, J. (Writer). (1998). Shakespeare in Love. In. United Kingdom: Universal Pictures, Miramax, and The Bedford Falls Company.

Rio, M. L. (2017). If We Were Villains. New York, NY: Flatiron Books.