Underwater Shakespeare

A couple of weeks ago, after all the blood and sweat, and maybe an occasional tear, I saw the culmination of a couple months of effort. Not so much by me, but by the Shakespeare Association of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (ZUEL). For a little while now, I've been heading over to Cori's school about every week to help direct their production of Twelfth Night. These are just ordinary Chinese students getting together to perform a few of the Bard's better works, in the original Elizabethan English. Pretty impressive, when you think about it. They aren't all necessarily English majors or theatre kids. They don't get to rehearse on a stage. They have a faculty advisor, but no official director. Naturally, having studied both Shakespeare and directing, Cori and I were happy to help out.

We learned pretty quickly that this wasn't going to go how we wanted it to. We're used to a well-planned and efficient rehearsal process—movement, lines, character, dress, show. They direct themselves on-the-fly and by committee, which doesn't really work unless you're a finely-tuned acting company with a history of collaboration. These were Chinese students who could spend an hour debating the proper delivery of the play's opening line.


Usually, the most important part of the play is the text, and when they can't pronounce the text, you give them some actions and hope that people get the gist of it. We mostly just gave notes, taught basic theatre techniques, and even showed them a little swordplay. It was a good learning experience all around.

The performance was definitely a surprise. They had a packed auditorium. They also had actor microphones (which must've been cranked up to 11), a set with props (which were covered in flashy gold tinfoil), and scenes with narration (which aren't in any copies of Twelfth Night I've ever seen). They changed a few things and cut out a bunch of scenes, but the running time still stretched to nearly three hours (with no intermission).

In the end, I managed to understand only about 30 percent of the lines, but it’s sort of like going to Latin mass—you know what’s supposed to be happening. What I wonder is whether the Chinese could catch more of it than I could, since they have an easier time deciphering the accent.

This entry’s title comes from Cori’s rather apt description of the show. On a related note, the previous entry’s title comes from my students. Unfortunately, that really is how some of them talk.