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My two cents on *The Amateurs: * One-sentence Assessment Medieval drama experts are more likely to be disappointed than excited by this production. Synopsis of *The Amateurs* After the death of one of their company, a group of actors hopes to impress their patron so much with their new production that he will invite them to stay on, safe from the plague behind his castle walls. The actors rehearse their play, revealing interpersonal conflicts and everyday concerns. One discovers she is pregnant, and not by the man who would probably assume he is the father. Another mourns her brother, the actor who died of the plague. The one who makes their props and effects knows everyone else thinks he is stupid. A stranger joins their company with his own secrets to guard. Finally, as they practice, the actor playing Noah’s wife wonders *why* she is refusing to get on the ark. What is her objection? What does she want instead? At this point, the play pauses. One actor steps out of his ‘medieval’ costume and addresses the audience as the playwright, Jordan Harrison. He explains why the playwright became interested in this moment, in Noah’s wife’s refusal, seeing in her a connection to himself, her moment of asserting her individuality reminding him of a similar moment in his own life. A second actor (the one playing Hollis, who plays Noah’s wife), joins him, and they posit (by means of other actors coming onstage with sandwich board images of famous paintings), the role of art in demonstrating/provoking the emergence of the individual. Finally, saying he is ‘bringing the fourth wall back down,’ the playwright-actor steps back into his ‘medieval’ costume and the original storyline resumes. In this part, another actor dies of the plague and the others struggle to continue their performance, still hoping for their patron to offer them refuge. He declines, however, and they face returning to the increasingly-deadly wider world. Assessment I am an Olney Theatre season ticket holder and have been since 2011. The current artistic director, Jason Loewith, has done outstanding work here—innovative, intriguing, wonderful shows—including commissioning and producing new, groundbreaking plays. But sometimes when you swing for the fences, you hit a pop fly. I’ve been both dreading and looking forward to *The Amateurs* since the 2019-2020 season was announced. From the title, you can guess why. On the one hand: A contemporary play set in a medieval acting troop is not something you see every day. Or ever. I really wanted it to be marvelous. On the other, referring to a group of people who make their living as *actors* as ‘amateurs’ made me worry about how the play would approach medieval drama. As it turned out, that concern was warranted. The play is set during the Black Death but works from the assumption that the surviving later texts can be unproblematically transposed backward in time. The play has the actors use a wagon to transport their gear—fair enough—but also as a performance venue, not seeming to understand that pageant wagons were used in particular places—York, Chester—not by itinerant players. When enacting a pageant of the Seven Deadly Sins, the actors used masks—good!—but wore plain black robes, which was disappointing since we know medieval production invested in impressive costumes. The costumes were heavily influenced by the widespread modern iconography of ‘the medieval': most pieces of clothing had ragged, unhemmed edges. We can talk elsewhere about what cultural work this symbolism is doing, since it has nothing to do with reality. When a single shirt represents 80 hours of labor, care is taken to preserve garments, including hemming raw edges to prevent fraying. I don’t hold this against the production specifically, since it’s an issue we see often, but it tells us the production employed the shortcut of that modern iconography rather than researching medieval clothing. More troubling is the play’s attitude towards its medieval subject matter. Bluntly, the play seems to employ medieval content and characters to hammer home a point (the playwright’s theory about the emergence of the idea of the individual), not because there is interest in the time period itself. Nor does the play appear to consider the dramatic work its characters engage in to be theater in the same way *it* is theater. This was most telling in the handling of audience address. When the medieval play-scenes addressed the audience, the result was flat (the night I was there, the audience laughed at the Seven Deadlies), in large part because the staging was flat. The Seven Deadlies were positioned at the rear, as if on a proscenium arch stage, and hardly moved as they spoke. The Noah scenes occurred partly on the wagon and partly on the ground, but again, with little movement apart from (usually unsuccessful) handling of stage effects (the dove falls when it should hover, the cloth scroll of painted animals doesn’t budge when they try to crank it). But when the actor speaks as the playwright, he uses the entirety of the stage, coming close to the audience, leaning towards them. The production’s thumb is on the scales, using the same technique but with staging choices that make the contemporary use seem engaging but the medieval’s simplistic. The play’s message—the emergence of the individual from a period of darkness—is a retread of something we have all heard about the Middle Ages, to our frustration. Also frustrating is that *The Amateurs* is not quite certain this *is* its central theme. The play makes a parallel between the Black Death and AIDS, which could be a rewarding and fascinating topic to explore, but leaves that connection underdeveloped. The method by which *The Amateurs* delivers its homily upon the emergence of the individual is also worth considering. The middle section, in which the theory is presented in the voice of the playwright, is long, resembling nothing so much as a TED talk. This doesn’t appear to bother the *Washington Post* reviewer, but all three members of my viewing party were independently annoyed about being told what we were supposed to think rather than being shown persuasive scenes leading us to that conclusion. *The Amateurs* isn’t a bad play, but it isn’t a good one either. There is promise here, and hopefully Harrison will put the script through another round of workshopping that will help that promise develop. If so, I hope he decides to take the Middle Ages and medieval drama seriously for their own sake, not just for the argument he wants to make from them. Cheers, Michelle Butler ____________________________________ Michelle Markey Butler she/her/hers michellemarkeybutler.com facebook.com/michellemarkeybutler On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 10:03 AM Alan Baragona <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Thanks for Theresa’s discussion. I assume she’s on the listserv, because I > don’t have her personal e-mail address and wanted to send it The message to > her. > > I would love to hear your comments, especially on 1) whether its version > of the Noah play is close at all to the Towneley play and 2) what the > playwright’s stand-in opines about the connection between medieval plays > and the rise of individualism. > > Alan > > Sent from my iPhone > > On Mar 11, 2020, at 9:39 AM, Michelle Markey Butler <[log in to unmask]> > wrote: > > > I saw it on Friday. I can share observations, if you like. > > Btw Theresa Colletti participated in a panel discussion about making > theater on the road, organized by Olney Theatre in connection to the > production, and there's a video of the discussion on the theater's Facebook > page: https://www.facebook.com/142692869075359/videos/200051651238352/ > > Cheers, > Michelle Butler > ____________________________________ > > Michelle Markey Butler > she/her/hers > michellemarkeybutler.com > facebook.com/michellemarkeybutler > > > On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 8:05 AM Twycross, Meg <[log in to unmask]> > wrote: > >> WOMAN playing Noah's wife? >> >> Meg >> >> Professor Emeritus of English Medieval Studies, >> >> Department of English and Creative Writing, >> >> Lancaster University, >> >> LANCASTER LA1 4YD >> >> >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* REED-L: Records of Early English Drama Discussion < >> [log in to unmask]> on behalf of Alan Baragona < >> [log in to unmask]> >> *Sent:* 11 March 2020 02:51 >> *To:* [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> >> *Subject:* [External] Modern play about medieval troupe performing Noah >> >> >> *This email originated outside the University. Check before clicking >> links or attachments.* >> Today’s print version of *The Washington Post* has a review of a play by >> Jordan Harrison call *The Amateurs*, which premiered in 2018. It's about >> a traveling troupe of medieval players who are performing a Noah play in a >> time of plague, especially focusing on the woman who is playing Noah's >> wife. Do any of you know of it? First I've heard of the play or of the >> playwright. It sounds a bit reminiscent of the players in *The Seventh >> Seal*, and I'm a little surprised the review doesn't mention it. In >> earlier years, my wife and I would have jumped on I-81 and gone up to D.C. >> to see it, but between the coronavirus and other things, there's no way we >> can get there before it closes on April 5. But I just like knowing this >> play exists, and I've preordered the volume of Harrison's plays that is >> coming out in July and will include it. >> >> I don’t know that the Noah play being performed by the troupe is the >> Wakefield Master’s *Noah* or, more likely given the opening as described >> in the review, is loosely based on it, but if either is the case, it makes >> a nice irony that the actor who plays the character who plays the wife is >> named “Townley,” just one <e> off! >> >> For those of you who subscribe to the Post but may have missed the >> review, here is the link. >> >> >> https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/coronavirus-looms-over-this-play-set-during-a-plague-but-the-amateurs-speaks-to-timeless-concerns/2020/03/09/b06229a2-620f-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html >> <https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fentertainment%2Ftheater_dance%2Fcoronavirus-looms-over-this-play-set-during-a-plague-but-the-amateurs-speaks-to-timeless-concerns%2F2020%2F03%2F09%2Fb06229a2-620f-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html&data=02%7C01%7Cm.twycross%40lancaster.ac.uk%7C1533b90b85774451fac808d7c567369a%7C9c9bcd11977a4e9ca9a0bc734090164a%7C1%7C1%7C637194919419841278&sdata=Wa6kyVg47IkAGswszgYvYZoz3CbI02W3dRDWKsWrE2g%3D&reserved=0> >> Alan Baragona >> >>