by Kirk Woodward
[Kirk Woodward, a prolific guest blogger on Rick On Theater, lives in Little Falls in Passaic County, New Jersey, north of Montclair in neighboring Essex County, in the environs of which, much of his theater work is staged. Among the many small theater groups in and around Montclair is the Saint James Players. Kirk’s previous post concerning SJP was “A Directing Experience” (13 and 16 October 2023).
[SJP mounts one main production a year, usually a Shakespeare play (though the production described in “A Directing Experience” was Sophocles’ Antigone, a Greek tragedy and SJP’s first—and, so far, only—non-Shakespearean production). Associated with Upper Montclair’s Saint James Episcopal Church, SJP is an amateur and semi-professional community troupe.
[This year’s production, returning to the tradition of presenting a Shakespeare play, was All’s Well That Ends Well, a “problem play” (which Kirk defines below) and a comedy. It was mounted earlier this fall with Kirk codirecting alongside his longtime friend, Colleen Brambilla. Kirk kept a journal of the work on All’s Well, which he’s submitted for publication on Rick On Theater, as he’s done several times in the past.]
In March 2025, as the Saint James Players (SJP) of Upper Montclair, New Jersey, began to plan for its annual production of a play by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Sharon Quinn, who had directed the previous year’s production of his play Love’s Labours Lost (possibly written in the mid-1590s; presented by SJP: 13-15 and 20-21 September 2024), suggested a production of his play All’s Well That Ends Well (abbreviated as AWW or All’s Well).
I had been intending to propose a different project – a production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (probably written between 1596 and 1598) in which the controversial character of Shylock was replaced by another character, eliminating the “religious” issue from the play. But a close friend had just warned me against this idea.
I suspected that she was correct. Not all ideas are good ones. (I still haven’t completely given up on it, though.) I was interested in Sharon’s idea, but she didn’t want to direct again this year unless she had to, and I suggested that I direct the play with my longtime friend Colleen Brambilla (see “Notes from a Sometime Actor” [27 December 2019]), a skilled choreographer and director.
We proposed the idea to the SJP board and the board liked it. I made a cutting of the play, since the SJP requests that when possible its productions be one act and no more than 90 minutes long. This approach might not be appropriate for all Shakespeare’s plays, but it seemed feasible this time.
The cutting was not difficult, partly because a great deal of the original play is comedy that is unlikely to come across to the audience. I adopted the principle that anything that needed a footnote in order to be understood today had to go. I tried to maintain the storyline and not leave the secondary characters with too little to do.
The play itself is problematic, beginning with its dates. Scholars estimate that it might have been written sometime between 1598 and 1608 – a wide range. I see a few things in it that seem to me to date it after 1606, one of them being the use of the word ‘equivocate,’ which came into usage that year in connection with the notorious Gunpowder Plot to blow up the king and Parliament.
There is no report of any production of the play in Shakespeare’s time. It initially appears in the First Folio (the 1623 published collection of Shakespeare’s plays). Compared to more familiar plays of Shakespeare’s, it has been produced little since (see note in the afterword below).
Reading – and, we assumed, seeing – it can be a complex experience. All’s Well is frequently called a “problem play,” defined by Wikipedia as “a play that poses complex ethical dilemmas that require more than typically simple solutions.”
This is well said. For a comedy AWW is peculiar. Comedies typically end in romance; AWW does not, because as far as the reader can tell, although it concludes with a marriage, during the entire play the groom has had no use at all for the bride, and it’s not clear that he ever will.
Shakespeare as a dramatist characteristically examines the themes of his plays from multiple angles. My take on the play as we began work on it was that AWW, like the more familiar As You Like It (frequently abbreviated as AYLI, first registered in 1560), looks at the subject of love from varied perspectives, and that in this case Shakespeare has chosen particularly difficult viewpoints that do not easily resolve themselves.
I thought of AWW as the “underside” of AYLI. Many of the aspects of love in the play make us uncomfortable – unrequited love, self-love, love of status and influence, love of war and glory.
Helena, the principal character in the play, is in love with Bertram, a man above her station with absolutely no interest in her at all. He is however “on the prowl” for other women, and Helena uses this fact, among others, to try to win his favor. She is the active character in the play, and at the end she maneuvers her way to victory, but what has she won? And yet the play, at least technically, is a comedy!
With these things in mind we began preparing the production in April. As a director I’ve never felt I’ve done a particularly good job at preparing for a production, so I wanted to do better this time. I began by heeding the advice of my acting teacher, the late Elisabeth Dillon (see “‘Portrait of a Mentor’” by Alan Geller, posted on ROT on 30 July 2020) – she learned this from her teacher Herbert Berghof (1909-1990; see “Herbert Berghof, Acting Teacher” [1 June 2011]), I believe – that a director should read a play once through for each character in the play, “including the dog.”
Doing this, I began immediately to find nuances in the characters that I hadn’t seen before. For example, something that ought to be useful for us is the observation that many of the main characters seem impetuous, in a hurry.
This is useful because Colleen and I wanted to make sure we directed a comedy. Sharon originally suggested a “screwball comedy” like a number of films from the 1930’s. I pictured the play as a farce – very fast pace, rapid entrances and exits. Colleen suggested that it resemble a Monty Python episode. We thought it likely that it would end up all three.
I wrote my friend Steve Johnson:
I think the text we have is a draft,
possibly a first draft. Not to say there weren’t later scripts, but as you know
we don’t have any, and no records of production in Shakespeare’s time either;
the First Folio is also the first indication it existed. There are a
number of peculiarities in the script that to me say “I’ll fix that later – got
to finish,” particularly the careless naming of the peripheral characters like
First Lord and Steward, and the first indication of the disguise subplot – the widow
tells Helena, “I’ve got a great idea, tell you later,” but a few scenes later
Helena comes up with the idea and has to sell the widow on it.
I read Auden’s
lecture on the play; for him it’s primarily about Honor, and that’s
definitely correct. I also see it as the reverse side of “As You Like It,” with
AYLI’s in-depth examination of love between two people who care for each other.
AWW is about two people one of whom absolutely does not care for the other, and
other kinds of love get a look too, such as straight-out lust, self-love, love
of status, and so on . . . as though AYLI is a lovely piece of needlework and
AWW is the stitching you see on the back of it.
(Poet and critic W. H. Auden [1907-1973]
gave a series of lectures as a course at the New School for Social Research [now
simply the New School] in New York City from 2 October 1946 to 14 May 1947.
Auden never prepared them for publication as a book himself, but the volume was
reconstructed and edited by literary critic Arthur Kirsch [b. 1932], now
professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, using notes taken by Auden’s
students at the time. The lectures were
published in 2000 by Princeton University Press.
(In the published Lectures,
the discussions of each play are presented as separate chapters, entitled
simply by the name of the play they discuss. [All’s Well is on pages
181-184.] During his original lectures, Auden grouped these as “problem plays”
thematically.)
Colleen and I agreed not to try to “block” or stage the scenes in the show until we saw who was cast and how they handled the space and the entrances and exits we worked out (which of course were also tentative).
So in early April Colleen and I sat down for three hours and worked out the entrances and exits that the actors would make in the show (tentatively, again, depending on how they looked when we saw them on stage).
We got the job done, and I was happy with how well we worked together. It had been a while since I co-directed with anybody, and forty years or so since I co-directed with Colleen on the farce Chemin de Fer by Georges Feydeau (1862-1921), and on the musical Something’s Afoot (book, music, and lyrics by James McDonald, David Vos, and Robert Gerlach), which had opened on Broadway (not directed by us) in 1976.
My temperament is not basically collaborative; I tend to jump in and do a lot of things before my partner has a chance to get started. I decided not to do that this time, and as it turned out Colleen and I treated each other with respect, listening to each other’s ideas and agreeing on which were better.
A week or so later, Colleen told me she had thought of a formulation of the style of the play that would convey it quickly and clearly – we would do the play as a “graphic novel,” which would allow for strong picturization, non-realistic action when needed, and even “balloons” of words to illustrate what characters were thinking (which we ultimately did to indicate where scenes were taking place). This struck me as perfect, offering clear illustrations of what’s going on in the play, and plenty of opportunities for outlandish ideas or exaggerations.
I presented this idea at the company’s “announcement meeting.” Colleen couldn’t be there – 27 April, so I described the play we were doing, talked about its style, emphasized the important dates, and generally tried to stir up enthusiasm for the project.
Our auditions on 12 and 13 May were “cold readings,” where arrivals are given scenes to read. (If they’ve read the published play beforehand that’s even better, but of course the version we were doing was shorter than the published version.) We tried to find scenes for the principals and for the different types of characters in the play (young and old, energetic and passive, and so on).
A technical note: when I was growing up, a “side” was a script on which one actor’s lines were written, with blank spaces for the lines of the other actors in the scene. This was supposed to encourage performers to listen closely to each other, which you have to do if you don’t know what the other person is going to say.
I haven’t encountered “sides” of that kind in years and I don’t know if anyone uses them today. Our “sides” for auditions were just short scenes. I did add one innovation that I’ve always thought would be worth trying: at the top of each “side” I wrote out a short description of its context, hoping that this would at least start the auditioners out on the right track when they read the scene. (It did seem to.)
For actors waiting to audition, I also prepared a cast breakdown; a summary of production dates; and a list of numbers of the audition scenes so the papers didn’t get hopelessly scrambled.
And I made “audition sheets” to collect each actor’s contact information, conflicts on rehearsal dates, and any information they wanted us to know about themselves. I forgot to print the audition sheets out, went to auditions without them, and had to dash home, print them out, and bring them back.
We had a small group for the first auditions, eight actors, several unfamiliar to us. The second night was much the same, except that we had many more extremely talented women than we thought we could possibly find roles for in the play. This is a familiar situation in theater: plays written by men, with lots of men’s roles, and mostly women available to play them.
To be fair to Shakespeare, he had severe limitations on how many women’s roles he could write, since acting by women on stage was forbidden by cultural norms at that time. As far as we know, theater companies in his day would have a handful of male actors who specialized in women’s parts – boys, some of them apparently remarkably good performers, and they must have been skilled for Shakespeare to have written Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, and Helena, in our play, for them.
Nevertheless Shakespeare made as much of women’s roles as he could. In AWW the women are the doers, the ones with agency, much more farsighted than the men. In our production the play came across as a feminist statement. If Shakespeare had been able to write for a cast that included female actors, what else might he have been able to accomplish?
Colleen raised the possibility that Shakespeare had played women’s roles in his early days in theater. (In his day boys played the women’s roles until they grew out of them.) It’s a tantalizing thought.
We have no idea, of course; because there is no information available today on Shakespeare’s late teen and early adult years. But she raises an intriguing possibility. Might he have been equipped to write strong roles for women because he’d played them?
We sat down together and worked out the casting for the show, working slowly from the leading roles on. One event was unique in my experience: we weren’t positive that Lydia De Souza, who had greatly impressed us in auditions, would be interested in playing a role in the broad style we were hoping to use for the play. I suggested that we call her and ask. We did, she said she was excited by the idea, and we told her she was cast.
The next day I drafted an email offering people roles, sent it to Colleen for review, and sent it out. The first reply, which I received almost immediately, read, “No. I would love to work with you and Colleen again, but if I'm doing Shakespeare, I like to be able to speak a few times. . . [.] I'm sorry you thought I only deserved one scene.” This was a turn-down, and we moved on to our next choice.
Casting really is an awful process. I learned from this experience that directors don’t cast actors. They cast plays, as best they can. Life would be easier if actors (including myself, when I’m auditioning) could believe that.
After about a week we collected enough acceptances to assemble a cast, and I went to work on a rehearsal schedule. At this point it was May; the company’s policy is to rehearse on Sunday and Monday nights through the summer, moving to production week (the last week of rehearsals) with performances in late September.
It took about five concentrated hours to finish a draft of a schedule; I had to make a chart with every scene by number (all 27) on one axis and all the characters on the other, in order to be able to keep track of who was in each scene.
We made, and stuck to, several decisions about how the play would be staged. Performing in the front of the sanctuary of the church, we made no effort to conceal any of it (for example, the pulpit, the baptismal font, or the altar). We used no curtains, amplification, or lighting effects. The only “technical” element of the show was a set of speakers for three music cues, for the beginning of the play, a march, and the curtain call.
This decision-making process illustrates something I’ve said many times: directing a play by Shakespeare isn’t the same as directing a typical play. It’s more like staging a musical – or a military campaign. A great deal of the work is strategy.
After creating a rehearsal schedule, I second-guessed myself, felt that the schedule was too loaded on the early rehearsals; second-guessed myself again, and finally felt it was all right. I sent it to Colleen, who approved it, and drafted this email on 15 May to accompany the email with the schedule:
Hi everyone,
Below and attached is a
tentative rehearsal schedule for “All’s Well.” (It’s always tentative – things happen.)
Because of major conflicts in early June, we will begin rehearsals with a
read-through on Monday, June 23, followed by two nights of basic staging. From
then on, scene work will alternate with full cast run-throughs.
Since the play is only
about 70 minutes long, even at run-through rehearsals we will be able to work
scenes as well, as needed. We don’t want to waste anyone’s time, but pretty
much everyone’s scenes are spread throughout the whole play.
The script we’re using
has numbered scenes (1 through 27!). Because we will work on multiple scenes in
many rehearsals, since the first thing we’ll stage is entrances and exits, when
a director calls a scene number, you can go directly to the entrance point.
Think of it as movie acting – scene by scene, not necessarily in order!
Because of conflicts, it
may be a while before some scenes get detailed work. Don’t worry, it’s planned
for.
Comments welcome. Thank
you!
Colleen and Kirk
Meanwhile, as I started to think about “blocking” the movements and events of the play, I wondered if we should be planning to “gag it up” with the play, putting in hopefully humorous stunts within the action.
I found myself thinking this way: “gags” are fine in the framework of the play if we want them, but where the characters in the play are concerned, humor must come from their personalities and not be arbitrary.
Colleen and I sat down, figured out the remaining casting questions, and got a lot further on our ideas for the production. We continued working on things we could pre-plan, agreeing that for this particular show, much would have to be decided as we went along.
My new motto as I worked through the script: “Physicalize!” This has not always been on the top of my list as a director (it is for Colleen), but I was learning.
One of our actors, in a major role, had health issues, and after much discussion I suggested to him that he might switch to a smaller role, and he accepted . . . and then declined the role because it was too small! See earlier maxim – directors don’t cast actors, they cast plays.
Around the same time we had also lost a male teenager in the cast and gained an older woman. Colleen and I met to try to distribute the supporting roles so everyone had a meaningful part in the play.
Then the woman playing Lafeu was cast in an off-Broadway production. We replaced her with another woman we know, an opera singer by training. She had never performed in a Shakespeare play but was willing to give it a go, but there was one performance (the second Friday) she couldn’t miss.
We offered to find someone else for that one performance if she’d take the part, and started looking. I suspected it would be me. We came close a couple of times and finally found someone.
The first rehearsal was a read through on 1 June. We had all but two cast members there (we knew those two had conflicts – the first of many throughout the rehearsal period). It felt great actually to begin work with the actors, and what a lovely group they were – Colleen and I were relieved and excited.
We read through the play (which took about an hour) and caught everyone up on line assignments, and Colleen walked them through the opening procession of the show, up the center aisle to the front, to give them a flavor of what the production would be like. We were relieved to see that the distribution of lines among the actors was fairly even – enough, we hoped, to let everyone feel the show was worth doing.
Meeting again, Colleen and I were uncertain how to proceed with blocking the movement in the play. We decided that at the next rehearsal we’d stage the entrances and exits, letting the actors move freely during the scenes themselves, and then we’d decide how to handle the rehearsal after that.
This was the first time I’d staged the entrances and exits of a play by themselves and before anything else. It made sense in this case because in our version there were a total of twenty-seven scenes in the play, with no two successive scenes in the same location.
We figured the cast would have a sense of security once they had the outline of the play in hand. I told the cast it was like giving them a glass jar and then we’d all fill in the contents.
The “entrances and exits” rehearsal was hard work, but the cast did seem to enjoy knowing what they were dealing with. We repeated this approach at the next rehearsal, at which I offered a few character suggestions.
Then I left on 5 July for two weeks of vacation in North Carolina. I experienced some stress at the beach because I realized that Colleen would be blocking the whole show, and would I know how to work usefully with what she got done, when I got back?
As I watched the ocean from our rented vacation house I tried to think what “activities” (often called “exercises,” but I’m not fond of that word) might help the actors. But I needed to see her results before I could make any decisions.
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