I've been thinking a lot about rehearsal this week - specifically the 're' bit - because I've been re-reading 'The Haunted Stage: Theatre as Memory Machine" by Marvin A Carlson, which is a fascinating exploration of the (if you think about it!) utterly bizarre act of memory that is theatre performance. It is one of several books which have some relevance to my current thoughts about the Benson company and their repertoire and this week I've been trying to pull it all into some coherent form that might actually make sense to someone else.
I keep coming back to the fact that so little has been recorded about the day-to-day business of being in a company. Piecing it together often comes down to sifting though various autobiographical accounts and trying to pick meat from bones. Almost every Merry Shrew wants to tell their funny story of a performance when something went hysterically wrong but very few give more than a scrap or two about how life went on day to day.
O.B. Clarence at least intersperses his anecdotes with a few little nuggets in No Complaints:
"Benson himself, of course, rigidly attended and supervised all rehearsals. At midday Charles Richmond, his dresser and factotum, would appear with a large bag of buns for a short lunch interval. It was an established practise that anyone who was late for rehearsal had to subscribe a shilling to the 'Bun Fund." (pg41)
"No one could be of the Benson company for a day without feeling the urge to 'mark, read and learn'. We were constantly rehearsing, parts were constantly changed round, we were always under observation and supervision. When one got a better part it was a pat on the back, an encouragement to learn and strive more." (pg 51)
I suspect a closer 'mining' of my bookshelf might uncover a few more.
In an attempt to plug more gaps, (with 16% still left to find...) I've started to use an alternative newspaper archive - newspapers.com - partly because it has access to the Manchester Guardian. I managed to fill in around thirty gaps, including some which had eluded me for a long time. (Canterbury and Kettering proving particularly stubborn) Inevitably, most April and May references to Benson focus on Stratford and whilst hunting in vain for some signs of the South Company, I found this gem in the Daily Mail for 26th April 1911:
1911 is an excellent year for Bensonian photographs - most of the 'outside the theatre' photos from Stratford date from 1911, and the Festival had a full, illustrated write-up in the Windsor magazine. But this one is a gem. It is difficult to surmise exactly WHAT is being rehearsed here - I suspect it might be little more than a bit of theatrical posturing! Dorothy Green's fashionable ensemble and hat also somewhat limits her movements, although I confess to some envy of those lovely shoes! However, it was lovely to find because of its incongruity - 'Shakespeare' poses, in day-clothes, surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of what I assume to be the yard of the Shakespeare Hotel?
Tomorrow is 23rd April. Celebrating by visiting the newly opened Shakespeare First Folio exhibition in Durham and then on Friday I'm 'zooming' in on the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust 'Performing Shakespeare's Women' one day conference. A former colleague of mine is in Stratford this week on holiday and, knowing how much I love it, is keeping me furnished with photographs - it looks as lovely as it always is in the spring, (although the slightly soggy Morris dancers outside the Birthplace looked a little unimpressed with the April showers...!)
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