We three met in the summer of 2015 while training and working together on a production of Henry V. Inspired by that experience, we started looking for the next thing. A two-man production of Antony & Cleopatra. Even though we knew we would be separated geographically for months. And the play was about 3500 lines long, 42 scenes, with 57 characters. And typically Antony & Cleopatra are not played by young men.

 

Daunting. But we couldn't shake the idea. It took us 4 weeks to cut and adapt the script during Sept 2015, reducing the characters to 8 and concentrating the story to the relationships and creating a distlled narrative that inrigued us, that disturbed us. Luke would play Cleopatra, Caesar, Enobarbus and the Messenger. Ronald would play Antony, Charmian, Lepidus and also the Messenger. We conflated many characters into the single Messenger, who one audience member suggested became the hero of the story. 

 

Ronald also started writing the original music in September, working throughout the months to create music, lyrics, songs, and underscoring that cohesed our prouduction and dynamically influenced our staging and story. Music was a critical additional character in our play.

 

From September 2015 to May 2016, we three were variously located in the UK, Czech Republic, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and North Carolina. We would have to rehearse virtually.

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We had no idea how to do this. With the first draft of the script in good shape, we began, nonetheless, our extensive rehearsal process on Skype, across different time zones, states, countries.

 

The first couple of months we spent researching, developing and questioning these characters, gathering source material. This was tough, these were difficult characters, a complicated narrative. But A&C was proving a constant source of inspiration, curiousity, challenge. 

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In January we got on our feet, still through screens, and started to explore staging ideas. We made unexpected discoveries through the restriction of flat squares side-by-side, boundaries, faces in close-up, words funneled directly into ears, time and sound delays. Skype was proving surprisingly intimate, despite our inability to touch each other. This intimacy never left our production. The delicacy, the nuance. From restrictions came possibilities. 

 

In June 2016 -- finally and we were very ready -- we were reunited in Virginia, and figured out how to do this play while sharing the same physical space. So many questions. How, when, do we, look at each other, do we turn, face forward, do we touch? Are we loud enough? Do we keep moving in these separate planes? It was fascinating to start this phase of the rehearsal with the memory of months of virtual communion.

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In the end, it became less about Skype, about men, about 2 actors playing multiple parts. We began to strip away anything we didn't need. No costume changes, no set, just 2 folding chairs. A couple props. No clever ideas. Nowhere to hide. What we were after was the truth. Emotional truth. Truth in the characters, the physicality, the relationships, the words, the story, the messiness. Integrity in a generous, raw, vulnerable, intimate experience for us, and always, for the audience.  

 

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