As I Like It, Only Better

It’s Sunday afternoon (a week ago ... busy times) and I’ve FINALLY found time to blog! To think that a few months back I didn’t know what to do with my spare time and now weekends are as busy as weekdays, if not more. I’m at the Brussels Book Fair selling children’s books for a week and beginning to think that consumerism is innate. I work for a small publishing house just outside of Geneva, right by the lake. It’s so beautiful I almost shed a tear every time I look out the window into a horizon of white swans and snowy mountain tops. Cornilicious, I know, but I think I like it.

“Expect the unexpected” said Oscar Wilde (who else) – expect to assist the biggest name in French publishing and write about the humpback whale for little ones, expect to move to Lausanne after a hectic year in London, expect to be happy again when you thought that sadness had no end. There are a lot of things I didn’t expect. Yet, what I expected least was to meet the firecracker that is Victoria Baumgartner.

It had been a month since my arrival in Lausanne and I didn’t know a soul. Ok, one or two, through my sister who’s a medic and so are her friends – lovely people but not much in common and very different schedules. Right, where do I go from here … Ah yes, that’s when I remembered that I used to brag about having this passion with a big P for theatre with a T, especially Shakespeare in CAPITALS. In truth, I’ve only read a couple of the bard’s plays and acted in a handful of amateurishly performed contemporary pieces (Acykbourn, Pinter & co), but that’s about it. I hold a fascination though, that’s for sure. A rather unknowledgeable one, but none the truer.

I started by checking out what the Geneva & surroundings English-speaking theatre scenes had to offer. Turns out, not much. I dragged my timid and hopeful self to a play-reading taking place in some Anglican’s church basement one cold and grey Tuesday evening in mid-November. They were reading / performing a play about female Russian convicts in the 1960s… Dreary, just like the audience, most of them over 60 and a little dried out. There was no way I would find happiness there.

My BFF Loneliness and I were about to take a wrong turn direction DESPAIR, when I happened to stumble upon an article in MUSE – musing as I was online – a magazine written and published by undertaking English Lit students at Lausanne University (hereafter ‘UNIL’). Wait a second – I thought I saw, I thought read the words Shakespeare, Company and UNIL in one sentence! Are you for real??!!! Yes, they are and yes it is: the UNIL Shakespeare Company (hereafter ‘USC’) stands tall and proud, with 3 Shakespeare plays to its repertoire so far, including my favorite – As You Like It – performed at the FECULE festival last year. At the center of this dramatic loco-motion, a girl called Rosalind onstage and Victoria off. A “whirlwind” of a young lady the article says. Attached: a picture of her kissing a daisy in the wind – she looks like a fairy – and an email address. I emailed, she answered and that’s when it all began … Ros and Guil were born, but they didn’t know it yet.

At work I told my colleagues I had cross paths with la femme de ma life. We hadn’t actually met yet, but that was just a small technical detail. And then we did. Victoria says ‘no, of course not!’, but I’m sure she had pepper spray in her bag just in case I turned out to a complete nutcase. Turns out we’re both freaks, of the I-heart-Shakespeare-and-the-theatre-and-especially-the-acTORs breed. In our defense, our fanati– I mean fascination is entirely legitimate: I have a Masters in Eng Lit, and Miss V is just about to start writing her thesis on gender roles in guess who’s plays. FYI the girl is only 21, which makes my 27 ½ years look pre-menopausal. But who cares – age is overrated and friendship ageless. I might be a ‘real person’ now, with a proper job and 2 ½ years left before I hit the big 3, but my early twenties are still ever-present and smile back at me every time I look into Victoria’s mischievous eyes.

That evening we talked about it all: the have tos, the like and hate tos, the hope tos and the wish I hadn’ts. I hate to admit it, but the cliché sometimes says it best: it’s like we’d know each other for years. Our American TV-show brawl punctuated with French outbursts here and there had beer glasses quaking and “OMGs I love that play” were being unleashed at an escalating pace. Sparks and excitement it was! And then, although I never thought I'd dare to, I did and I asked:

“Victoria, would you want to stage a play, you and me?”

“Hmmm… (thump, thump, thump went my heart) Sure! I’d love to!”

“Really?!!”

“Yes, really! And I think I know just the one…”

Two weeks later, our project outline was off to the board of Feculian decision-makers and after a month of nail-biting and ‘I so hope we get ins’, we did, we got in. On May 9^th 2011, Ros and Guil will die yet again, at the Grange of the UNIL, at approximately 8.15pm if my calculations are correct… Random, isn’t it? Then again, it’s Stoppard and it’s life and all it sometimes takes is a mid-December email for things to turn out as I like them, only better.

We’ll have rehearsed twice by the time you finish reading this. The first time didn’t go as planned, to say the least… Victoria will say more, I … less. I’ll have the decency of refraining from being indecent and leave her the honors of telling you about the dramatic heights we reached before even getting started on the drama. All I’ll say is that it turned out for the best, with jolie Elodie joining the team to play the player with the French accent he should have but has never had... until now. People, it’ll knock your socks off!!

Below a picture of the cast, crew & 3 chicks + 1 Dean (as tall as he is gentlemanly ladies)… The future is bright, the future is yellow. Demolish.

(left to right) Nadia/Ros, Elodie/Player, Victoria/Guil and Dean/Hamlet/Alfred

My next blog post: a little about our directorial approach!!

.. more on As I Like It, Only Better

J-87

In the beginning... or: how it all started

Our play, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead", is due in less than 3 months.

Dear reader, let me take you back a little to how it all started.

Oh! and by the way, this is a rather long story. So you might wanna get comfortable, slip in your slippers, make yourself a cup of tea and relax.

It all started when I received an email from Nadia Fries a while ago, in December. It basically went like this:

"I'm new here in Lausanne but saw what you were doing with the Unil Shakespeare Company and think it's amazing!

I personnally have done tons and tons of theatre and love Shakespeare.

If you're not too freaked out by this email yet, can we meet up?"

Now, dear reader, of course I couldn't leave another Shakespeare philologist out there all by herself, could I? So we met up during that bleak week between Christmas and New Year's Eve (that non-week should I say, where no one really knows what to do with themselves except sleeping and waiting around for the new year).

It was love at first sight. Total girl crush.

Turns out she's lovely and amazing, and we love the same things and have had tons of similar experience - most of those Shakespeare-related of course, but other stuff as well. So we met again. (And again. And again. But that's another story...)

I told her I had just read this really good play I've been wanting to read for ages: "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," by Tom Stoppard. She was really interested at the sound of it (which was partly out of her desperate wish to act again, since I had hinted it would maybe be do-able during the theatre festival and partly out of the play in itself). I sent her the play by mail the following day (this giving me the opportunity of writing a note by hand - I really miss that somehow)* . She read it in a week - and we met up again with my dear friend Melissa to talk about it. And so this is how it all started.

Which tells you tons about the power of friendship, and courage, and love and theatre. To quote dear Tom Stoppard: "It's a mystery!"

So you float a while in this mesmerizing magic of catalystic meetings, then suddenly you realise you have 3 days to put a whole dossier together in order to be even able to play! The Fécule (University of Lausanne Theatre Festival - the real deal)'s applications were closing in yes! - 3 days.

We got to work like crazies to put a dossier together and actually "cast" people, find suitable things to work with (like directing and project ideas, costumes, staging, funding, other venues, etc...).

Lucky for us, we are both (graduate, in her case) students of literature and it wasn't our first time preparing an application for a play at a festival - so we did our best, and that went pretty smoothly I think. Well, of course we were really stressed out about the festival's coordinator reaction, but we already had the projet rooted in our guts (can you say that? isn't that creepy? ... hummm... well, but you get my meaning dear reader, don't you?) so we did our best. Which, to spare you the suspense we had to endure for weeks - turned out to be quite enough! The fact I had already put up a play last year at that same festival - Shakespeare's As You Like It (I think) must've helped.

Then, we got to the casting! We cut most of the parts in our take on "Ros and Guil Are Dead" (hereafter RGAD) in order for the play to fit a one-hour format. So we only kept Hamlet and The Player. Ros and Guil were to be me and Nadia of course - we kind of flipped coins on that one (ha!), but I have to say Nadia had a slight preference for Ros. I agreed to play Guil then. So far so good. And of course, having female Ros and Guils is perfectly fine in this time of womanly emancipation. Also, they are rather asexuated and consequently poses no kinds of plot-related issues. Moreover, it winks-winks-nudges-nudges back to the Shakespearean stage where boys were dressed up as female characters. What is more, ... ok, I think you're convinced by now.

But remember? We had only 3 days to put a dossier together with the names of the cast (because usually when you give your dossier to the Fécule, you've already started rehearsing a couple of months ago)! Lucky for us, I emailed a couple of people I knew, and my friend Dean (curriculum: Oliver in above-mentionned As You Like It) agreed to take on Hamlet. Which we were so very grateful he did - and at such short notice as well! We struggled a bit more to find someone suited enough for The Player - and my friend James (his curriculum is a bit of a delicate matter, I'll let him introduce himself if he wishes to), recently moved from England to our good old Switzerland, agreed a bit later on to take on that part.

So here you go. This is how it all started. I'm really glad if you've read me til here. I bet you've finished your tea. And you wanna go back to doing something else. Consequently, and because I'm worried about your wellbeing and attention, dearest reader, I'll let Nadia and/or Melissa (or Dean? James?.. the suspense is complete) continue the story of our fabulous adventures.

In the next episode of "Staging RGAD": First rehearsals, plannings, other venues?, South of France?, poster and more... So be sure to stay tuned!

Thank you, dear reader.

Yours,
Victoria

* When we'll have become famous, this note will definitely be in a museum. Most probably at the Globe itself. What we're doing here is re-writing Shakespeare history. But no pressure.

.. more on J-87