The Heart of Robin Hood

I’ve been reading Michael Shurtleff’s Audition this past week. It was a book I was assigned in undergrad but never read. I found it in my parents’ house this summer and, since I’m doing a bunch of auditions again, I thought I might as well do my homework. 

I wonder if I could still get credit for it…

Anyway, one of the tips that Shurtleff has is to play opposites. For example, let’s pretend your character is trying to get Hamlet to stop swinging his sword around Polonius’ tapestry, because, hey, you don’t really want your son to become guilty on manslaughter. What’s the opposite of that? Maybe that you really would like him to kill Polonius because the old creep is basically your homicidal husband’s canary, and it would make sure that Hamlet no longer came near you with his theatrical mousetraps and visions of the dead. If you keep both of those opposites in play, it makes your performance much more dynamic and gives you as an actor much more to work with.

And how does this ties into OSF’s The Heart of Robin Hood? That play is a good example of playing opposites in an entire production. On its surface, it’s a silly play. Almost Monty Python silly. Eduardo Placer’s Bishop of York called Eric Idle’s performance as Pontius Pilate in The Life of Bryan vividly to mind. But what made this play really good was the pervading rot of violence and injustice that the silliness was in constant conflict with. Playwright David Farr wrote a villain with no redeeming qualities: Prince John thinks nothing of rape, infanticide, or using religion to legitimize his misdeeds. Michael Elich sells the role by, once again playing opposites. He does all these awful things, but he does them with a sense of playfulness and glee that makes his character all the more disgusting, and thus the conflict in the play so much more dire.

So opposites. They’re a part of the craft that I never gave any thought to, but now that I do, I see how they can not only exponentially increase the quality of a single actor’s performance, but that of an entire production as well.

I really should try to remember who assigned me that book.