Shakespeare & Company completes phase one of the Rose Theatre USA

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“I dramatize and am contradicted, and in the conflict of opinion find delight,” said Iain Mackintosh, theatre design advisor for Theatre Projects Consultants, U.K., speaking the words of Samuel Johnson. Following two days of intense review and debate, he and nine other members of the team that has worked on Shakespeare & Company’s Rose project presented two years’ worth of study, Oct. 8. The Rose housed Shakespeare’s first plays, before they reached the Globe. Shakespeare & Company proposes to build a replica of the bankside theatre, authentic down to the plaster. Mary Guzzy, director of the Rose Playhouse U.S.A., and Tina Packer, artistic director of Shakespeare & Company, introduced the team and the project. Packer opened the presentation with a letter from Dustin Hoffmann, its honorary lifetime president. He looked forward, he wrote, to joining “a project so committed to demonstrating the connection between language, the arts, architecture, history and society,” and he “was inspired by the courage and vision of this theatre company.” Packer said Shakespeare & Company had survived for 25 years “because in the end, we love doing the work; we love teaching the work; we love what the work has done to us.” The 16th century was a pivotal time in the history of theatre, she said. Permanent theatre spaces appeared. Shakespeare, Kidd, Johnson, Decker and others were creating a language, writing a psychology into existence. At the same time, plays shared the playhouses with jugglers, tumblers and horseback riders. She wanted to search out that energy, she said. Archaeology & architecture Jon Greenfield of Parameta Architects, U.K., was project architect for the Globe Theatre — which, he said, fills itself to 95 percent capacity at every performance. On the Rose project, there are no shortcuts, he said. The last two years have been full of minutiae. “This is really a story about some drains, a sewer . . .” He gave a flavor of the project. Scholars have had an interest in the Rose since the 1950s, because the building is described in Henslow’s diaries — account books from the theatre’s operation in the 1580s. In 1989, Greenfield said, archaeological remains of the original Rose Theatre were found while builders were surveying the site for development. The Rose went from being an also-round to the most interesting theatre in the round scholars knew about. The original Rose was a 14-sided building 71 feet in diameter. It was built into a natural amphitheater, a dip in the ground with a mound at the back. Water collects in natural amphitheaters; the original drain was still in place. The original Rose, he said, had no stage. It was an arena. People sat around the outside, watching juggling, dancing, trials by combat, and perhaps theatre on a booth stage: a temporary stage that could be erected, for instance, in an inn courtyard. But the Rose did eventually have a stage, and the replica will have one. Like the 1587 stage, it will tilt at a strange angle of the regular 14-sided arena, and allow room for a tiring house — a dressing room — at the back. The foundations are built up with brick walls, and the structure above is timber-framed. The foundations show a natural dip, and a six foot wall separating the yard from the rings of seats. There is nothing like this, Greenfield said, in the Globe. He believed the Rose had three galleries and a fixed back wall for the stage. Packer said Greenfield had calculated the change in latitude and longitude, and would see that the stage faced exactly as the Rose Stage had faced relative to the sun at 3 p.m. Julian Bowsher, senior archaeologist directing the Museum of London Archaeology Service’s excavation of the Rose Theatre Project, said later that time ran out on the dig. There may be Medieval or Roman remains under the theatre that the dig did not uncover. The museum has recently received a grant for the full analysis of the remains from the original Rose, and the results should come out shortly. Peter McCurdy, master builder of the Globe, gave a ‘potted history’ of the Globe project, to explain the tools and the methods that will build the Rose. The round along the Thames were gone by the time of the Great Fire in London, he said. He has studied maps and other existing Tudor buildings, and the building contract for the Fortune and the Hope theatres in the round. He framed the Globe in oak, with curved braces that followed the natural growth of the oak tree and larger, straighter trees for the posts. Historically, timber framing is prefabricated: assembled in flat pieces and brought to the site, in the case of the Globe, on barges. The beams are fastened with mortise and tenon joints and secured with wooden pegs, or trunnels. He filled in the frame with thousands of feet of split lathes, cemented in plaster. Lathe splitting must have been a major cottage industry in the 1580s, he said. He would build the Rose replica the same way, and thatch the roof the same way. The Rose had internal stairways where the Globe had stair towers, and though the Rose had oak pillars, they did not support the stage roof. Master builder Jack Sobon, a native of Windsor, Mass., will coordinate the American and British teams of timber framers on the Rose project. The American Timber Framers’ Guild has gotten involved; it has its headquarters in Washington, Mass. Rose Village George Marsh, an architect with Payette Associates, discussed Shakespeare & Co.’s preliminary plans for the campus around the Rose. He had studied the buildings on the campus. Many will be rehabilitated, and some taken down (because they have been condemned). They will not turn into 1580s architecture. The lawn for tents and pavilions, and the spires of Lenox Village over the trees, will give the campus all the authenticity it needs. Packer hopes to have galleries in the space, for exhibits on anything from the History of Civilization to Modern America in the Elizabethan Age. There will be a library, facilities for students and actors, and a tunnel leading from the galleries to the Globe. Visitors may be able to enter by way of the stage. The future of the Rose Andrew Gurr, from the University of Reading Department of English and advising scholar to the Globe, said before the Globe opened, “the Brits said they didn’t want ‘Museum Theatre.’ In fact, the Globe has had a higher level of attendance than any in Britain.” And over 50 percent of the audience have been there before. They are regulars. Sales are over $2 million every year before the booking season opens. The experience you are not in the dark. You are not sitting . . . . It changes your mentality. You are not an individual, but a member of a crowd . . . . It works, and it works superbly. I think that’s a wonderful prospect.” Frank Hildy, director of the University of Maryland Theatre Department and an advising scholar to the Globe, said he recently participated in a meeting of Shakespeare Centers from all over the globe, and they were all brimming with envy, because the Rose was going to be here. Simon Blatherwick said by all the sources, the London theatre in the 16th century was an exciting and even dangerous place. He read an excerpt from The Art of Living in London, published in 1642. It was an account of a merchant’s wife who asked leave of her husband to go to the theatre, for the first time in seven years. He told her to take his apprentice along, and to take care she did not lose her purse. She came back without the purse. She had taken care of it, she said; she had put it between her hose and her petticoat. “And did you feel no one’s hand there,” he asked? “Yes,” said she, “but I did not think it had come for that.”
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McCann Recognizes Superintendent Award Recipient

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff

Landon LeClair and Superintendent James Brosnan with Landon's parents Eric and Susan LeClair, who is a teacher at McCann. 
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Superintendent's Award has been presented to Landon LeClair, a senior in McCann Technical School's advanced manufacturing course. 
 
The presentation was made last Thursday by Superintendent Jame Brosnan after Principal Justin Kratz read from teachers' letters extolling LeClair's school work, leadership and dedication. 
 
"He's become somewhat legendary at the Fall State Leadership Conference for trying to be a leader at his dinner table, getting an entire plate of cookies for him and all his friends," read Kratz to chuckles from the School Committee. "Landon was always a dedicated student and a quiet leader who cared about mastering the content."
 
LeClair was also recognized for his participation on the school's golf team and for mentoring younger teammates. 
 
"Landon jumped in tutoring the student so thoroughly that the freshman was able to demonstrate proficiency on an assessment despite the missed class time for golf matches," read Kratz.
 
The principal noted that the school also received feedback from LeClair's co-op employer, who rated him with all fours.
 
"This week, we sent Landon to our other machine shop to help load and run parts in the CNC mill," his employer wrote to the school. LeClair was so competent the supervisor advised the central shop might not get him back. 
 
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