"Julius Caesar"
Shakespeare
Portland Actors Ensemble's Shakespeare-in-the-Parks
June-July, 2008
Brutus (Michael Godsey) offers his sword to Volumnius,
and asks his old schoolmate to kill him
photos by and courtesy of
Annaliese Moyer
In my third outdoor production with Portland Actors Ensemble I played five different name roles -- in order of appearance: Soothsayer, Cicero, Metellus Cimber, Messala, and Volumnius -- and also spent time on stage in crowd scenes.
The setting was pre-selected by the PAE board: the Lewis & Clark monument at the entrance to Washington Park overlooking downtown Portland. It provided a grand skyline for our show, which had "footlights" consisting of a row of Coleman lanterns after the sun went down.
The cast had a couple of veterans I knew from other projects -- Curt Hanson as Caesar, Siobhan Caverly as Calphurnia as well as several servant roles -- and an array of talented young actors. That's my reluctant conspirator, Metellus Cimber, at right, with Dan O'Malley as co-conspirator Cinna in the background.
Director Asae Dean dressed us in revolutionary outfits (American, primarily, with hints of French as well), brought in a musician Tobias Ryan to sing several traditional battle and "home front" folk songs (sometimes assisted on guitars by actors Dan O'Malley and William Groblirsch), and placed us on blocks and benches around the edge of the stage so we were pretty much in sight of the audience for the duration of the show.
A couple of the most memorable incidents happened the very first weekend. A small, maybe three-year-old Hispanic boy was watching the show near the front of the crowd with his picnicking family. When we got to the Senate scene, my character Metellus Cimber (whom I made fearful, full of doubt about the assassination, and instantly regretful afterward) is supposed to approach Caesar with a petition that gives the other conspirators an excuse to gather round. Since the petition concerns my brother, Publius Cimber, Caesar booms "Cimber" several times.
Hearing that, the little boy started to call "Simba," the character from "The Lion King," over and over. Since I and the other conspirators were all kneeling with our heads down, we could chuckle to ourselves, but poor Curt had to keep on delivering his lines over this distraction! (Moments later, that's Curt receiving the final thrust from behind courtesy of Brutus while Cimber falls away before him just after his cut.)
A little later in the play, an angry mob assaults a poet named Cinna, mistaking him for one of the conspirators. At the climax of the mock beating, effectively choreographed by Kendall Wells, a golden labrador at the rear of the crowd plaintively cried "Roowf!" He was very into it.
WHAT THEY SAID
"Lots of shouting." -- Anonymous, Followspot blog, 7/12/2008 02:08:00 PM
"... the worst show I've ever seen in my entire life." -- Anonymous, Followspot blog, 9/05/2008 04:08:00 PM
"There's always something scintillating -- and often something unexpected -- about Shakespeare under the stars. Saturday in Washington Park, for instance, just before the big battle scene, fireworks erupted over downtown. Brave Brutus batted nary an eye at this sudden advent of artillery. ... It's easy to understand the enduring lure of Shakespeare. After 400 years, it's all still there right on stage. Love and loss. Despair and deceit. The salve of humor. The salt lick of revenge. And always some lad falling in love, or on his sword. We like living in a city where a wanderer, out for a summer stroll, might happen upon a rhyming couplet and suddenly be snared in its spell. To pause. To linger. To marvel at the miracle of language and wonder just how good would taste a slice of that meat pie." -- The Oregonian editorial page [Jonathan Nicholas], July 22, 2008
The Soothsayer