by Kirk Woodward
[Kirk Woodward’s “All’s Well That Ends Well Production Notes,” drawn from his production journal, continues below with Part 2. If you haven’t read Part 1, posted on Wednesday. 26 November, I strongly recommend going back and picking that up before starting Part 2.
[The conclusion of Kirk’s account of his work on this Saint James Players production picks up right where the first part left off—with Kirk returning from his family vacation in North Carolina in mid-July and rejoining the cast and production team in rehearsal for Shakespeare’s All’s Well, already in progress.]
Back from the beach, I watched the next rehearsal, a run-through, and read lines for the missing actors – actually there were as many missing as there were present, which made the rehearsal uninspiring and also meant that occasionally we had to skip scenes because none of the actors in them were present, or only one.
I felt that Colleen had done a fine job of basic blocking, and she had a couple of ideas (the opening parade; a wedding performed as background; a funny bit with the children and a drum) that were spectacular.
We agreed that I’d take the acting scenes for the next few rehearsals, while she worked on the peripheral framing of the play. I was itching to do just that, without knowing whether any of my ideas would work – they seemed to me to be funny but crazy.
Colleen liked my suggestion that I tell the cast, when I was working on scenes, that we were “playing,” and that Colleen would review them to see what we would keep. We hoped this would keep the actors from wondering which director to listen to.
So Colleen didn’t come to the first rehearsal on 20 July after my vacation. I worked on nine scenes, many of them short and transitional, trying to find “angles” for them that would interest the cast and provide some vitality. It was fun directing scenes again; I hadn’t directed in a while. I ran out of energy with about twenty minutes to go in the rehearsal, and we basically pushed across the finish line.
Rehearsal the following night was cancelled – too many people who were scheduled to be out, and one with a sick child. Colleen and I used the time to talk through costumes, which turned out to be less complicated than we had feared. We decided to go with basic black clothes, enhanced by accessories that we hoped would be emblematic and maybe funny.
Continuing to work on scenes in the next rehearsals, I learned something about myself as a director: when I start to run out of energy I talk too much. Time to stop, so I ended one rehearsal about 10 minutes early. The next rehearsal ended at 8:30 for the same reason.
But on each night we worked through all the scenes we’d planned to. Colleen worked one scene where she had a definite idea on how it should go. So it was a productive period.
Looking ahead to August, though, I saw an impressive number of schedule conflicts – sometimes half the cast Run-throughs were almost impossible. The best we could think of was identify the scenes that most needed work, identify the scenes it was possible to do, and match them up.
Actually at the next rehearsal we had a good percentage of the cast present, and since we had announced that the rehearsal would be a run-through, I told the cast the rehearsal objective for the evening would be continuity.
I had them think through the script in their seats, asking them to narrate to themselves the sequence of events in the play. This is difficult because there are so many short scenes and I knew Colleen and I had a hard enough time keeping track of them.
Then on Sunday, 3 August, we ran the play from beginning to end, telling the actors they could act or not, work with the script or not, whatever they wanted, as long as they were where they should be when they were supposed to be there.
I think it’s important for each rehearsal to have an explicit goal, especially in early rehearsals, so the actors don’t try to do too much at once. On this night there was some excellent acting, particularly by the two leads. But there wasn’t any pressure for them to do that – it happened as a by-product of reduced stress.
We had few people for the next two rehearsals and only worked for about an hour each night. Colleen solidified a tricky piece of staging, and I worked with two actors, aiming to add more variety and movement to a few scenes and speeches. I hoped that the actors would retain the work.
I was particularly happy with one small blocking change I made, where a tiny “cross” by one actor and a “counter” by the other (one takes a couple of steps in one direction, the other adjusts a little in the other direction set up the rest of the scene with clarity and zest. Little things!
It struck me that in this production the play had two elements, an envelope and its contents. The contents were the scenes. The envelope was the apparatus around them – the children bringing out costume pieces, the location signs, the music, and so on. Colleen specialized on the envelope.
The actor playing the King had been on vacation for several weeks. When he returned we devoted the next rehearsal to his scenes. He had worked on his lines while away and the rehearsal went well until we reached the last scene of the play, which wasn’t blocked at all. Colleen and I had each assumed the other had staged it!
The scene has all the major characters and a lot of activity in it. I had worked out on paper some blocking for the scene, which is fairly complex, weeks ago, but for some reason I assumed that Colleen had staged it while I was on vacation, and she had assumed I’d handle it.
So I went ahead and blocked it now, and we got it done, although this made the rehearsal run half an hour later than we had wanted (9:30 PM instead of 9 PM).
Our next rehearsal, a run through, was the last for two weeks because of a holiday weekend (Saturday, 30 August–Monday, 1 September 2025) – no sense trying to get people to rehearse on Labor Day! Colleen and I gave notes afterward, the first time we’d been able to do that, and the rehearsal felt productive. I have to say, this show was work!
Colleen and I sat down one evening and ordered from Amazon the costume items we needed and were happy with the results.
We prepared the following “director’s note” for the program:
If you haven’t seen “All’s Well” before, you’re not alone – few people have! There’s no record of its production in Shakespeare’s time; its initial appearance is in the First Folio of 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death. That script could be a first draft! The directors of this production have edited it to one act and about 70 minutes, but we think it’s a fair representation of the play. Its theme is Shakespeare’s great interest, love, but this time it’s love of every kind but ordinary romantic love. Our heroine is in love, and as you’ll see, she has quite a problem to solve. We think the play is wonderfully funny and have tried to bring that aspect out. The cast is a delight and we’re excited to share this Shakespeare rarity with you!
After a two-week layoff for the Labor Day weekend, and with memorized lines due, the next rehearsal was awful. Sticking to the principle of one purpose per rehearsal, I told the cast the rehearsal was entirely about lines and not to worry about anything else. In most cases the actors had done a good, if often incomplete, job of memorization. Not much else was good, though, and I had to remind myself that I had told them that would be okay.
I had thought we’d be able to get through the whole play; in fact we barely got halfway and continued from there the next night, which went much better. The cast seemed more attuned to the play; the level of memorization of lines wasn’t bad; a few scenes genuinely clicked, with the actors relating well to each other.
We distributed the costume accessories we had ordered, such as sashes, medals, hats and crowns, and even fake moustaches for the children in one scene, and the cast seemed to enjoy them. Colleen reworked a bit of the last scene and improved it.
Meanwhile it appeared after all that I would be the one to play the role of Lafeu on the next to last performance, so I had to learn the lines. I used a portable tape recorder (primitive technology, I know, but convenient), taped all the scenes I was in (five altogether), and started listening to it every chance I got.
Then I discovered an improvement to that method. After each line of my own on the recording, I left a space for me to repeat the line – just like learning a foreign language. No sooner had I started on that method than the assistant pastor of the church volunteered to play Lafeu for the one performance. So I discovered a useful memorization method and was off the hook.
Denise, our trained opera singer in the cast, who was playing Lafeu, told me another interesting method of line memorization that she used. She learned her lines word by word – literally one word at a time. She’d memorize one word, and when she had that one down she’d memorize the next, and now and then she’d review the whole speech. Slow, but possibly effective. I intend to try that approach sometime.
Two rehearsals to go before the final week of rehearsals, 21-25 September. At the first we had several absences that made it difficult to organize scene work. Colleen used the performance space (the church sanctuary) with the four children, and I took everybody else upstairs, told them we were going to “play,” and led exercises on monologues and scenes based on training procedures I’d seen used by members of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Working together, our actors ran through the material once, then paraphrased it, then did it in the original text making a physical move for every noun or pronoun, then once more to see if anything had changed. In every case it had – the work was fresher, more fun, with better communication
After the rehearsal I asked one of the actors how she thought it had gone, and she said it was good but “I didn’t like it at first” As an actor I don’t enjoy this sort of work either, although I’ve taught “theater games” for years. In a production of a play I want to work with other actors to develop a role, and that’s all.
But the need for “games” arises when the language of the play approaches the “poetic.” American actors, raised on modern plays, approach them through the emotions, and American acting training is based on that assumption.
For example, Lee Strasberg (1901-1982) of the Actors Studio taught actors to reach into their own emotions for experiences they could then apply to basically realistic plays.
On the other hand, it’s generally necessary for actors to approach poetic drama – for example, the plays of Shakespeare – through the language, or they’ll have little idea what is going on in the play.
English actors traditionally have been trained in this approach, which helps explain why American actors often think of British acting as dry and even mechanical – the English are accustomed to approaching the play through its language.
I described this idea to the actors at the following rehearsal. We also talked about the fascinating fact that although the actors know what will happen in the whole play, the characters have no idea, and we tried to apply that insight to our script.
Over the next break between rehearsals, Colleen, one of our performers, and I tried to drum up business at a “sidewalk sale” on the church’s street. We were able to pass out more postcards for the show than I’d expected. Some people took them readily; some tried not to look me in the eye, perhaps because I was wearing a sort of Viking helmet with two big horns – a Shakespearian look, you know.
“Production week,” 21-25 September, leading up to opening night, began on a Sunday night after the usual week’s layover, and I told the cast that we didn’t expect full performances, we just hoped to get the show back in focus. Good thing – there were parts that went smoothly, but the beginning and the end were a mess, and lines were erratic all the way through.
I was “on book” prompting, and Colleen took notes. We agreed that there was no cause to panic, although deep inside I suspect we were both panicking – I found myself recalling many other shows in which, at one point or another, I had vowed never to direct again. But it was a useful night . . . I was pretty sure.
The next night we’d gotten the sound going and the costumes and props were handled pretty well. The run-through matched the previous night’s pattern of starting slowly and gathering momentum as it went along.
It struck me that each actor in the play had a different style of acting. Putting them all together – who knew? Hopefully it would be fun, but at this stage I couldn’t tell. Line memorization was still sketchy this night – lots of stopping and starting – and Colleen and I decided not to offer prompting of lines the next night . . . .
Which worked fine. There was still some stumbling and ad-libbing, but the story was clear and mostly interesting, although focus weakened again at the end. I had a page full of notes and hoped that people listened to them. I will say, it definitely felt like we were seeing signs of hope.
Another rehearsal, the 24th, more progress. The play, with a couple of exceptions, moved swiftly from scene to scene, and I thought it likely that the audience would respond to that. The whole presentation ran an hour, faster than we had figured.
We started that particular run-through late because the church had double-booked the space until 7:30, and we used that time in another room to work on the last scene. It definitely improved. Dress rehearsal on the 25th was even better – about three major glitches but all easily avoidable.
And then, finally . . . opening night, Friday, the 26th, was a joy. An audience of about 35 saw a fast-moving play that told its story clearly and well and featured some excellent present-moment acting, which I define as the actors seeming genuinely to be talking and listening to each other, rather than just saying words – which makes the work fresher and more fun. Colleen and I were thrilled. I said to her, “There’s a possibility we actually know how to direct.”
With some friends after the performance, I was asked, “Is Bertram [the central male character] really as horrible a person as he seems to be in the play?” I told them that was exactly what Shakespeare had written. My friend Martha Day pointed out that if Shakespeare had weakened Bertram’s “badness” in any way, there wouldn’t have been any play – the whole story is that of a woman who loves a man who has absolutely no use for her at all.
The second performance, the following night, would have shaken my confidence if what happened hadn’t been predictable. Although some performances were solid, much of the show was just a little “off,” and one actor forgot chunks of his speeches. Colleen went backstage during the performance – something I don’t believe I’ve ever done as a director, but she was right to do it – and calmed him down.
The next performance, the Sunday matinee, before the show I said to the cast:
There were some really good things last night, but as you know we had some problems. I think the reason is that we were trying to answer the wrong question. We were asking, “How do we repeat what we did last night?” That’s never the right question. We can never repeat a performance. We can only move forward. The question we want to ask ourselves today is, “How do we tell our story this time?” If we do that everything will be all right.
“Tell a story” is more and more my idea of what a play does. I don’t know if what I said had anything to do with the performance, but it was fine. The story was told clearly, the play moved speedily from one scene to the next, and the audience – our biggest so far, seventy-five people – seemed to enjoy it.
I should add a note about our sound effects, because I was in charge of them. There were only three, at the beginning, middle, and end of the show, all music cues. I ran them from my cell phone over speakers. And I messed them up in just about every way I could. I neglected to test the equipment before a show not once but twice, and each time there were problems. Once I forgot to plug the amplifier in. Twice I was just plain late. A fine showing from the director! Mr. Professional . . . I hate tech.
After a several day layoff, many of us met the following Thursday to work with the actor who was going to play the role of Lafeu the next night. He was in a tough spot because actors often accomplish a great deal of their line memorization through rehearsal, and he only had this one. We agreed that he would use his script in performance and not worry about it.
The nicest moment came after rehearsal when Colleen, who was going to be travelling, said goodbye to the cast. Their affection for her and their gratitude for her work was lovely to see.
The Friday night performance of the following weekend, 3 October, was a pretty good show, and since I knew several of the factors involved – the cast hadn't done the play in five days so they were out of practice with the language, and someone was reading one of the roles as a substitute – the cast had a right to be pleased with themselves.
Our “ringer” paraphrased one line in a way that has made me laugh a great deal since. His line was, “Helena, that's dead: such a ring as this, I saw upon her finger.” What he said, in a furor of exuberance, was, “That ring! I saw it on Helena’s dead finger!”
I think one thing in favor of our production was that almost no one is familiar with the play, so they were wondering what happens in it. (I did meet one man who went home and read it when he saw the poster.) Anyway, I was happy . . . and relieved . . . and tired. Colleen, as I mentioned, had flown the coop, traveling to a wedding in Maine. Two is definitely better than one, if it's the right two.
The final performance on Saturday night, 4 October, was alive and lively, an excellent ending. Facts and figures: we performed for about 250 people (“houses” of around 35, 55, 75, 55, and 35 over the five performances), and took in $1,466 in contributions, well over our expenses, which didn’t reach a thousand dollars.
As my friend Dan Landon, who worked for the Shubert Organization, says, “One dollar over the ‘nut’ – it’s a hit!” (The “nut” is expenses.) We were a hit!
Looking back, I was happy with our production. It didn’t do everything we wanted it to do – its style was neither purely ’30’s slapstick, Monty Python, or graphic novel, but we did borrow from all three.
We also didn’t emphasize some themes that are present in the script – the role of Heaven in the story (the play has a deeply spiritual side), the theme of Honor that Auden emphasizes, and many of the bawdy sexual references.
But we told the story of the play in an entertaining way. I believe that those who weren’t familiar with the play before they saw it (a category that included virtually the entire audience) left with a solid grounding in the play. The show moved fast, with one scene finishing while the next was coming onstage.
Having two directors could be a problem, I’m sure, but Colleen and I were proud of the way we worked together. One thing we were able to do was to bounce ideas off each other. I believe we both tried to reach for the best decision each time, rather than insisting on our own ideas. I’d cheerfully do it again.
At the cast party one of the actors said to me, “I like working with you – you’re so easy-going.” I thanked him politely and thought to myself, “You should have seen what it was like inside me.” No two directing jobs are the same, ever. Colleen and I compared ourselves to ducks, calm above the water and paddling furiously underneath. But that’s part of the fun.
[The first recorded production of William Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well didn’t occur until 1741 in London, 125 years after the Bard’s death. The last New York City mounting was in the Delacorte Theater in Central Park from 6 June to 30 July 2011 by the Public Theater for Shakespeare in the Park. It was on Broadway only once at the Martin Beck Theatre (renamed the Al Hirschfeld Theatre in 2003) from 13 April to 15 May 1983 in a production by the Royal Shakespeare Company, directed by RSC artistic director (1968 to 1986) Trevor Nunn.]
[The Saint James Players’ production of All's Well, codirected by Kirk Woodward and Colleen Brambilla, took place on 26, 27, and 28 September, and 3 and 4 October 2025. Performances were held at Saint James Episcopal Church, 581 Valley Road in Upper Montclair, New Jersey.]
[Near the end of this installment of Kirk’s All’s Well journal, he recounts: “At the cast party one of the actors said to me, ‘I like working with you – you’re so easy-going.’ I thanked him politely and thought to myself, ‘You should have seen what it was like inside me.’”
[One time—and only one time—I had an almost identical experience. (The complete tale is related in “The Importance of Being Earnest and the Big Bluff” in “Short Takes: Theater War Stories“ [6 December 2010].)
[After I finished my acting MFA, I meticulously avoided trying to direct. My two brief experiences in the director’s chair had convinced me that it wasn’t for me. Eventually, however, I found myself accumulating stage experiences I wanted to apply on the other side of the footlights.
[I’d been working for an Off-Off-Broadway company for about a year or so, and I eventually asked the artistic director to let me direct something there. One evening, he called to tell me that the cast of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, a couple of weeks into rehearsals, had fired its own director! They’d become frustrated with him because he hadn’t blocked the show, hadn’t given them any character notes, and, despite fervent requests, hadn’t made any cuts in the script.
[The artistic director asked if I’d consider taking over the production. I agreed to accept the job, my first professional directing gig. In addition to not wanting to upset the cast any more—they acknowledged that they were floundering—and not wanting them to see that I didn’t know what I was doing, I consciously chose actions to appear more secure and authoritative than I really was.
[I decided, first, not to tell them that I’d never directed pros before, then to make very specific decisions about text cuts (that was the straw that caused the rebellion) and tell them exactly what was in, what was out, and what we could discuss. I made some specific blocking decisions, worked out some physical business to insert, and made some very specific character notes.
[I deliberately selected these actions so that I’d seem to be in charge and on top of the situation (even though I wasn’t). It was all a choreographed act I figured would carry us into the rehearsals far enough until the work itself became a focus.
[One thing that worked in my favor that I couldn’t have known was that the cast was so desperate for some guidance and direction that they glommed onto my efforts like Velcro! The bluff worked, but mostly because the cast was really ready for it.
[Here’s
the bit that parallels Kirk’s anecdote: after the play opened, and we had our
opening night party, several of the cast, drunk by then, very forcefully said
they’d work with me anytime again and that I was a real “actors’ director.” That’s when I told them that this had been my
first professional gig. They were
shocked—and I was delighted!]
