LA Women's Shakespeare

Heather Pauley

On March 20th, in celebration of Women’s History Month, Santa Monica College students experienced the awesome power of a group of women performing Shakespeare. The LA Women’s Shakespeare Company (LAWSC) was invited to our campus by the women’s college to share their feminist take on a historical tradition. Challenging the traditional all-male theatre companies of Elizabethan England, these all-women casts have been surprising audiences for the last decade. LAWSC came to SMC to share how they put a show up as a company, and performed a scene from their upcoming production, The Tempest.

We started a little late, but as soon as the ladies arrived the show began. Lisa Wolpe, the founder and director of LAWSC, dynamically took stage to introduce her troupe. She brought four women with her: Veralyn Jones, Linda Bisetesti, Susan Kelegrian and Natsuko Ohama. As Lisa spoke she moved about the stage with clarity and eloquence. Honestly I felt like the performance had already begun. She spoke with a deep- rooted clear voice directed at each audience member equally.

Her goal was to take us through a typical rehearsal period for LAWSC. It all begins with a relaxed and connected instrument. Natsko Ohama led a vocal warm-up inspired by the voice guru Kristin Linklater. We stretched our bodies, our jaws our mouths and our necks. It is important to be free of tension to do Shakespeare successfully. As Lisa noted a typical Shakespearian sentence is packed with fifty words compared to the nine words in a contemporary novel. That language must come from a relaxed body or your voice won’t last one night.

The “day in the life” continued as we assembled in groups of three to practice, “dropping in”. Dropping in is an exercise created by the Shakespeare mastery of John Barton and the pioneer American Shakespeare group, The Shakespeare Company. You and your fellow scene members sit in a small circle all looking at one another; you need an extra person to direct you through this. Each person goes through their dialogue word by word saying the word several times as the director evokes different images and feelings for each word. The director might give you ten different images, emotions as you say the same word over and over. This helps to give you a clear connected interpretation of the text. By looking into the eyes of your scene partner, you build trust and honesty. The audience was directed by Lisa as we practiced “dropping in”. Lisa chose a piece of text that would hit home. One word was thunderous and she brought up the image of a bomb falling. The audience shared their reactions to this new technique agreeing that it helped give new meaning to Shakespeare’s text.

We had relaxed voices, a good grasp on what we were saying; now we needed to move with our words. The three women performing the scene from the Tempest, Veralyn Jones, Linda Bisetesti and Susan Kelegrian took turns speaking and moving. The first actor began moving toward the other actors as she spoke her dialogue. This created a reaction from the other scene members and together they birthed the movement pattern the scene will take. This kinesthetic responsive movement challenges the more “traditional” director-actor relationship. The actors work together with the director to create the blocking.

The purpose of these exercises is to present a polished play. In our case we got a taste of a polished scene. Using the skills they fostered in rehearsal, the three female actors now performed a scene from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The audience played the sound effects, as the actors on stage got tossed around by an invisible storm. Although the dialogue is from over four hundred years ago, the audience neither skipped a beat or a laugh. I was on the edge of my seat the entire scene, delighted in seeing women in every part. I recommend seeing The Tempest this June at the LA Women’s Shakespeare Company. You can get more information about the troupe and the upcoming performance by visiting www.lawsc.net. Enjoy!

Heather Pauley is a student at Santa Monica College.