Portraits d'étudiants

Dear reader,


You'll find below a link to a video of several student portraits for the University of Lausanne.

... and if you go to the very end, you'll be able to see excerpts of the play! That'll keep you waiting until we do something more important with the footage (but I'll keep it as a surprise for now).

http://itunes.unil.ch/

Take care,

Guil

.. more on Portraits d'étudiants

Production Shots

Here they are, finally! I hope you enjoy(ed) as much as we did. Until next time...

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard

"I can do you murderers..."

"... or ravished virgins"

"Ay, there's the rub"

"We could play at questions"

"What's your name when you're at home?"

"You come back to find that hardly was the corpse cold before his younger brother popped unto the throne and into his sheets thereby offending both legal and natural practice. Now why exactly are you behaving in this extraordinary manner?"

"Death followed by eternity, the worse of both worlds"

"The old man is...?"

"What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened." 

"Very good, very good! Took me in completely, didn't she take you in completely? Encore, encore!"

"It would have been nice to have had unicorns." 

"We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the words for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction. And time is its only measure." 

"We're on a boat. Dark, isn't it?" 

"Not for night." - "No, not for night".

"There: divine intervention, that is to say, a good turn from above concerning her, cf. children of Israel, or retribution from above concerning me, cf. Lot's wife" 

Now, counter to the previous syllogism:...If we postulate, and we just have, that within un-, sub- or supernatural forces the probability is that the law of probability will not operate as a factor, then we must accept that the probability of the first part will not operate as a factor, in which case the law of probability will operate as a factor within un, sub- or supernatural forces after all; in all probability, that is."

"We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see." 

"Alfred, disport yourself"

"There, see anything you like?"

I'm too sexy for my shirt...

"I'll report you to the authorities, perverts! I know your game alright, it's all filth!"

"What did you have in mind? A short blunt human pyramid?" 

Your diction will go to pieces - Your lines will be cut - To dumbshows - And dramatic pauses

"There we were - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance - and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. Don't you see?! We're actors - we're the opposite of people!" 

"Is that what you imagine? Is that it? No fear?"

"Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking: Well, at least I'm not dead." 

"It was urgent. A matter of extreme urgency, a royal summons, his very words"

"You know I'd no idea ... I mean I'd heard of, but I never actually -" 

"We can give  you a tumble if that's  your taste and times being what they are...  Otherwise, for a jingle of coin we can do you a selection of gory romances, full of  fine cadence  
and corpses, pirated from Italian;and it doesn't take much to  make a   jingle - even a 
single coin has music in."

"Pirates could happen to anyone." 

"Rhetoric! Game and match!"

"The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body. The King is a thing"

"In our experience, most things end in death"

When I have rencontred you,

You was a jeune fille au pair,

And I put a spell on you,

And you rouled a pelle to me.

"If we have a destiny, then so had she - and if this is ours, then that was hers - and if there are no explanations for us, let there be none for her"

"Oh, come, come Rosencrantz - no flattery - it was merely competent"

"That's it, then, is it?"

That's it!

.. more on Production Shots

"There's a limit to what two people can do."

Or is there?

Ros and Guil are excruciatingly endearing idiots, and they are limited. In time, in space and in possibilites. But they are, surprisingly enough, accompishing a lot through their inaction and addressing a lot of themes in their verbal logorrheia and exclamative grunts.

The late 50s psychanalytic German and French theories of reception concerning the reader and the spectator state that mimesis works only if the identification of the reader to the story is not complete. Hence Claudius, upon seeing "The Murder of Gonzago" performed, reacts because what he sees stages a nephew and not a brother killing his King.

On the same note, the spectator beholding Ros and Guil gets a direct access into the intense tragedy of Hamlet through an identification to these two fellows - their friendship and betrayal of Hamlet can be identified with a spectator's experience of empathy and abnegation of Hamlet once he kills Polonius and Ophelia goes mad.

Thanks to these secondary villain fools, we can understand royalty, tragedy and Oedipal complexity and more importantly, question it. 

The Player Why?

Guil Ah. Why?

Ros Why what?

Guil Why what exactly?

Ros What?

Guil WHY IS HE MAD?

Ros I DON'T KNOW!

Their uncomprehension and puzzlement illustrates generations of high school students' perplexity. Herein lies Stoppard's coup de génie: 

"Ros You can't treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires. They know nothing of that, and you know nothing of them, to your mutual survival. Now, give them a good clean show, suitable for all the family, or you can rest assured you'll be playing the tavern tonight."

So, is there a limit to what two people can do?

We certainly don't hope so, because we're planning on taking over Switzerland with this project, and who knows where else we could land on?

On a lighter, more aesthetic note, there seems to be no limit to what one hairdresser can do. Here are a couple of production shots for you to enjoy. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank again Mara Coiffure and her amazing work and enthusiasm for our project. This play would've been completely different without her. As a beloved anonymous said (can't remember who it was exactly for premiere-excitement-vomit-see-below reasons):  

"If people get bored, they can just look at your hair."

Ros' hair or "A Peacock Exploded on My Head"

Who would've thought an iron railing can  be accounted for a beautifully crazy hairstyle?

Mara had her hair salon's shop window decorated for our play! So sweet!

Guil, or "Crazy Marie-Antoinette going Virginia Woolf"

Ros' heart-shaped Minnie Mouse hair

We paid attention to details and color distinctions for Ros and Guil

With flowers in our hair... Wink to our poster and reference to madness

DONE! This is the no make-up version I'm afraid. But there were several steps to getting to be Ros and Guil that day. Hair was the first, and definitely most spectacular.

The Player had lovely wavy hair

Ros and Guil are taking the bus. Funny bus anecdote: a priest asked us if we were celebrating a bachelorette party.

Make-up part of the process. I jus love backstage pictures - so theatrical. How a person gets ready to go on stage is very important and ritualised. Ros had crazy blue eyes make-up, reminding of a mask.

Hamlet/Alfred calmly posing en coulisses.

A couple of Guil's flowers and innumerable pins fell off my hair during the play - no major problem though (surprisingly enough) - and it gave me a funnily stupid look. Make-up-wise: I went for a Marie Antoinette red lips and black mouche combination with black eye liner.

Alfred had crazy slave-actor tattoos.

Thank you for your time, dear reader.

Next on "Staging Ros and Guil Are Dead": production pictures!!! I don't know about you, but I can't wait!!! Also, unlike your favourite shows, we don't stop our show during the summer so be sure to stay tuned to be updated on our future performances and experiences.



With love,
Guil

.. more on "There's a limit to what two people can do."