While the Histories ensemble continues in rehearsals for the “King’s Shadow” tetralogy of plays, we take a moment to check-in with project actors Zach Brewster-Geisz, Gary DuBreuil, Tom Howley, and Molly E. Thomas to find out what it’s been like to work on Shakespeare’s story of power, family, and war in repertory so far …
As a quick introduction for everyone reading our blog, what roles in the upcoming ‘King’s Shadow’ tetralogy will each of you be playing?
ZACH BREWSTER-GEISZ: I’m playing the Duke of York in Richard II, the Archbishop of York in Henry IV, Part 2 and Bardolph throughout the three Henry plays.
GARY DuBREUIL: In Richard II: Richard II, in Henry IV, Part 2: Lord Bardolph and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and in Henry V: Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, Nym, and Monsieur Le Fer.
TOM HOWLEY: Oof! As an older character actor, I’ve accumulated twelve or thirteen speaking roles in this sequence. A lot of authority-figure types: John of Gaunt, Bishop of Carlisle, Owen Glendower, Constable of France, Justice Shallow, [a] comic “old-guy” role which I fell in love with at the first read-through. At least three messenger / aide / ally characters: Morton, Harcourt, Richard Vernon — all of whom have surprising depths to be plumbed. And at least one or two minor nobles who don’t manage to escape with their heads intact.
MOLLY E. THOMAS: I’m joyfully playing the Duchess of Gloucester and Lady Scroop in Richard II (as well as being the understudy for Richard II himself), and the highwayman Gadshill, the Welsh Lady Mortimer, and, perhaps most loudly, The Douglas, in Henry IV, Part 1.
What past experiences have you had performing Shakespeare or performing in repertory?
ZBG: A bit of both! My first job out of college was working at The Theatre at Monmouth, the “Shakespearean Theatre of Maine,” which performed in rotating repertory over the summer. Since then I’ve done countless productions with Baltimore Shakespeare Factory, WSC Avant Bard, NextStop, etc.
TH: Shakespeare — not a ton, although both college and grad school leaned heavily into Shakespeare for class work, and we had solid instructors in both programs. I’ve made this comparison a couple of times, but it bears repeating — I’ve always been the typical American actor who viewed Shakespeare as being like those darned vegetables: that it’s good for you… but I honestly didn’t care for it (him) so much. I have done repertory before, but at the extreme other end of the artistic spectrum. Two summers touring with the last Vaudeville Tent Company in America (The Rosier Players). Five different full-length shows a week. Plus selling lemonade. Plus playing in the band. The atmosphere itself was probably more Globe-like, though, y’know?
MT: I have been lucky enough to have played several of Shakespeare’s major male roles, including Hamlet, Romeo, and Tybalt, as a result of being a founding member of the Vixens En Garde, the all-female sword-fighting and Shakespeare troupe. While our productions are twenty-five-minute parodied versions of Shakespeare’s plays, in which we focus on the fights and play the male roles (tapping male audience members to play the prominent female roles), the behind-the-scenes work I’ve done in rehearsal for these shows is the same deep-diving text work and character analysis that I do for any full-length production, and it’s been a joy and a challenge to get to explore characters and stories that are typically unavailable to women. I also have played Beatrice twice, in separate, back-to-back 2018 productions of Much Ado About Nothing in New York City with the Titan Theatre Company, and Rude Grooms, and have done readings and productions of Richard III, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, The Roaring Girl, Julius Caesar, and Richard II with various companies around NYC.
GD: My first experience ever performing Shakespeare was in the summer after my junior year of high school in the Advanced Studies Program at St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire, and it was performing a rep of Titus Andronicus and The Taming of the Shrew! I’ve performed many more of Shakespeare’s plays since then and also studied classical acting in the Shakespeare Program at the British American Drama Academy in London. I’ve performed my share of repertory theatre too, appearing with summer stock theatres in New Hampshire and Maine (mostly performing contemporary works) and, of course, appearing in the Incest Rep with BST.
What was it about the Histories project that interested you and drew you to audition?
MT: Oh, it’s simply such a glorious challenge! To use the skills I’ve developed in my career so far on such a gigantic scale sounded absolutely thrilling — and a bit terrifying. I also was ready to leave New York City, after being there for fourteen years and carving out a good niche as a working actor, and this felt like a serendipitous opportunity. I moved here in May, and I’m so happy to be here!
ZBG: The historic nature of the project (pun absolutely intended). Also, the chance to play a single character over multiple plays was a significant draw. It’s as close as I’ll ever get to playing a regular character on a TV show.
TH: The fact that it’s one long, giant, sweeping story — that’s something that speaks directly to the old-school comic book fan in my soul. There’s the irresistible hook of extended continuity, a self-contained, self-referential “universe” that we’re just suckers for. And then, geeze, it’s never been done in its entirety in the U.S. before! A little slice o’ theater history!
GD: I was studying in England when the RSC last produced a Histories project like this, and I experienced the first four plays of the cycle in four nights. It was a truly awesome experience that inspired me to produce and star in Henry V as my senior project for my undergraduate theatre program, and it has stuck with me ever since as one of my greatest experiences in the theatre… so from the moment I first heard about this project, I knew I wanted to be a part of it!
At this point, you’ve all had in-depth text work and rehearsals that incorporate techniques such as Chekhov and Viewpoints. What has it been like for you to apply those different methods on these four plays?
TH: The table work was quite valuable, particularly the scansion and paraphrasing homework. Once you realize that it’s less important to get lost in the minutia of the “rules” for both exercises than it is to use them for revealing the intent and meaning of the text. Viewpoints and Chekhov, to be plainly honest, simply doesn’t resonate with me as an actor, which has been a tough hurdle to get past. I clearly see how much it benefits a number of my castmates, though, so the challenge has been to find a way to get myself around this particular acting method so that I can still be properly present for my teammates when and if they need me during an exercise.
MT: It’s been fun to explore new (to me) rehearsal techniques and approaches to character development, and to revisit the full scale of text work again, since the last time I encountered such things was in college, which is not exactly recent history (*cough*). I will admit to having been skeptical of the efficacy of Viewpoints work, both in college and at the start of this process, but have been surprised at how helpful that work has been in finding ways to delineate all the separate characters I’m playing in this tetralogy. Juggling all those personalities and physical traits can be tricky, and the Viewpoints explorations have helped me quickly find specific physical choices to make for each character so they’re all distinct, separate, and fully realized.
ZBG: I can say that the emotional imagery techniques from Chekhov have directly influenced my work as the Duke of York in particular. They’ve given me the tools, and courage, to take a moment that could have been very dry and imbue it with an explosive anger. I’m not going to say which moment. You’ll know it when you see it.
What’s been the most surprising or memorable moment that you have experienced so far?
GD: We’ve developed what we’re calling a Boling-beat as a musical marker of Bolingbroke’s march to power. I remember the first rehearsal where we began playing with this convention, how the beat felt so powerful, so unstoppable, especially compared to Richard’s more liturgical, classical musical themes. As I played the Boling-beat on the djembe, I remember it seeming so intimidating and connecting with, perhaps for the first time, a feeling of pitiful vulnerability in Richard.
ZBG: It was actually a moment as an audience member. Early in the rehearsal process, we identified the climactic moments in all the plays, and then Charlene scheduled a day where we ran all those climaxes, one after the other. When we did the first climax from Henry IV, Part 2, Dean Carlson, who plays Northumberland, put in a stunning performance that left us all breathless. We really felt all his despair at the death of his son, and other setbacks he was learning about, and his determination to push forward in the face of grief. It was a magical moment.
TH: I don’t know if I could pinpoint a specific single moment, but there have been a number of instances in rehearsal already where the fundamental, to-the-bone humanity of these characters strikes like a bolt from the blue — shed of all that clichéd veneer of “Classical Shakespearean Acting” — and it is intensely moving. Molly Thomas, in the early Lady Gloucester / Gaunt scene in Richard II as her life vanishes; Dean Carlson’s breakdown as Northumberland in the first scene of Henry IV, Part 2, upon hearing of the death of his son. The universality is there for the taking.
Which characters have turned out to be the most interesting or difficult for you to take from the script page and develop in the rehearsal space?
TH: Glendower is the one who, at this point, is most different than he was at first read-through. Much more centered, focused, assured — as opposed to the over-the-top, loudly-flailing wild man that I brought to the table. I’m really liking this direction.
ZBG: I’d say the most interesting, and difficult, thing has been to figure out the character of Bardolph. He first appears in Henry IV, Part 1 as a somewhat stupid character who, while great fun, doesn’t have all that much to do, but by the time Henry V rolls around, he has grown to a lieutenant in the army, and while not exactly heroic, at least stands up for himself and exhibits some smarts, after a fashion. So how does he get from A to Z? And how do I make it clear that he’s still the same person? I don’t know yet.
GD: Lord Bardolph (no relation whatsoever to Zach’s tavern Bardolph) has been a really interesting character to translate from the page to the stage… a character who’s traditionally driven by his military service, we’ve combined him with Lady Northumberland, who only appears in one scene to beg Northumberland not to go to war, to create a character that feels so much richer, from both perspectives. In addition to mining the more personal, emotional side of engaging in war, the character is giving us an opportunity to explore how a homosexual relationship can exist in Bolingbroke’s England.
MT: I have fallen absolutely in love with Lady Mortimer, the Welsh woman who marries Mortimer just before the events of Henry IV, Part 1, and who speaks no English. Often productions of this play will make her some overly-emotional milquetoast of a person, and Shakespeare himself only writes her lines as “The Lady speaks in Welsh,” which points to a deliberate desire to highlight the “gibberish” nature of the Welsh language and, therein, the ridiculousness of that character. However, Charlene and our dialect coach, Jenna Berk, have written a full scene of Welsh for our production, and frankly, the language is beautiful — it sounds like Elvish from The Lord of the Rings — and the character is independent, capable, passionate, and loving. Playing her is a real joy.
Now that you’ve performed a couple of early run-throughs for the project design team, what would you say you are learning?
ZBG: I’m learning that keeping multiple plays in my head is just as hard as I thought it would be. For example, we just finished our design run for Henry IV, Part 1. Do I remember anything from Richard II, which we did a week or two beforehand? Golly, I hope so…
MT: This is the biggest acting challenge I’ve ever had the pleasure of tackling, and is taxing my skills and habits in a way that’s already making me a better actor, ensemble member, and stage combatant. It can be easy, as one’s career trundles along, to start to rest on one’s laurels and feel like one has a good handle on the whole thing, and this process is shaking me out of my comfort zone and keeping me honest about what works for me and what choices are antiquated. I’m immeasurably grateful to be learning and growing like this, and I’m pumped to keep adding plays to the roster over the next year and a half!
TH: While we haven’t delved into it much as a company, I strongly believe that we are going to have to be mindful of not relying on costume changes and minor cosmetic adjustments to carry the day in identifying us as different characters in the same play (and sometimes in the same scene). I think there’s still a lot to be gained by exploring the often-eschewed “outside-in” elements of character-building. This is really where they can come into play. I have to say that I now cannot imagine characters like The Douglas or Westmoreland being played by a man at this point. I think the plays are much stronger with the more balanced female / male presence. And boy, what a great group of folks in this ensemble. I do feel like we’re bringing out our best selves in each other. Surely, we can’t all be this relentlessly nice…
GD: First off, the design runs continue to showcase what a talented group of actors we have working on this project! But also, I think I’m observing anew the role of war in the cycle, and how many of the personal stories we encounter are in response to or in anticipation of bloody conflicts.
The cowardly knight, Falstaff (who appears in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2) was so popular that Shakespeare wrote a separate comedy for the character. If you could create a spin-off play for any one of your characters, who would it be about and what would happen?
MT: The Douglas. That character is mentioned in nearly legendary terms over and over in Henry IV, Part 1, eons before they even enter the stage in Act IV, and it would be thoroughly entertaining to see a play exploring how that reputation developed — and how truthful the tales are or aren’t.
TH: Justice Shallow’s whole mis-en-scene could be the setting for a sitcom, I swear. It’s even pointed out in the text that there’s this grey area in the master / servant relationship at his slowly-failing estate. I think… I think there’s a Moliere comedy in there somewhere!
GD: I’m enjoying discovering Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and would be interested in seeing a play that details his development from the baby of Bolingbroke’s family to the central figure we see in Henry VI, Parts 1 and 2. He has very few lines in this tetralogy, but he’s present in a lot of critical scenes… almost like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby (although he’s not a foreigner in this world, he’s just young). My spin-off could explore how these early monumental relationships and experiences shape him into the person we meet much later in his life.
ZBG: The Archbishop from Henry IV, Part 2 is named Richard Scroop, and there are many Scroops in the plays, and they’re all on the losing side of civil wars or rebellions. There has got to be a spin-off out there called “Too Many Scroops,” in which this wacky family keeps picking the wrong side of all the conflicts.
What’s your favorite line that you get to say in this first tetralogy?
GD: Oh boy, where do I start… I really like Richard’s prophesies, especially in the context of this project. “Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal / The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne, / The time shall not be many hours of age / More than it is ere foul sin gathering head / Shalt break into corruption.”
MT: “That’s the worst tidings that I hear of yet,” [from] The Douglas.
TH: My own ratio of great lines to amount of actual text is way lopsided in my favor. I’m extremely lucky in that regard. And it changes depending on what I’m trying to commit to memory. Right now it is, of all things, Richard Vernon’s: “I saw young Harry, with his beaver on, rise up from the ground like feathered Mercury, and vault with such ease into his seat, as if an angel had dropped from the clouds to turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, and witch the world with noble horsemanship!” Hoo, I declare — gives me the vapors!
ZBG: A line from the Duke that I’m hoping won’t be prophetic: “I know not what to do!”
And finally, the most important question: are you Team York or Team Lancaster?
MT: York! Definitely York. Decidedly York. I’ll never change my opinion on that, unless it’s conveniently scripted for me to do so in Henry VI, Part 3.
ZBG: Well, two of my characters are from York, so… Lancaster, clearly.
GD: I mean, I’m playing Richard II now and Richard III later, so most definitely York. Sorry Humphrey.
TH: Pffft — Lancaster!
You can catch up on everything that’s been happening with the Histories project in our previous blog posts or follow behind-the-scenes on our Facebook and our Instagram!