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.