Certain character types recur throughout Shakespeare’s canon of plays: the ingénue, hero, villain, and clown. These types are embedded in the history of how we tell stories, and they continue to reappear today, of course, in books, films, and television, as well as in contemporary stage

One of those people, the comic actor Will Kemp, played Shakespeare’s “clown” roles, including Dogberry—the malapropism-prone Constable in Much Ado. Dogberry is brought to life in our production by the great comic actor John Ahlin, who is known to our audiences for his performances in Charlotte‟s Web, The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, and Waiting for Godot. Here, John talks about how we can make a direct connection between 400-year-old stage characters and contemporary human beings, and the challenges of playing the clown.

Being funny is hard. Being funny on demand is just shy of impossible: It‟s like trying to get the hiccups on purpose. If I were simply to decide to make the next sentence humorous I can tell you, I would already be emitting torrential flop sweat. Comedy is like a lawyer delivering his closing argument, except the jury shouts out the verdict every other line. The feedback is instant: get the laugh…now, or you fail. I guess that‟s why comedians use fatal adjectives to describe their acts; „I killed, I slew, I died, I bombed.‟ It‟s not easy.

Much Ado About Nothing. Photo by Joan Marcus

Fate, proving at least she has a sense of humor, got me an audition for the role of Dogberry, the clown role, in Shakespeare‟s Much Ado About Nothing at Two River Theater. Every actor‟s audition process is different; mine is pretty straightforward. Much like the evil king in Jason and the Argonauts strewing dragon‟s teeth on the ground to summoning warrior skeletons, I scatter chattering joke shop dentures to summon Skeltons, as in Red Skelton, and other comedy giants: Phil Silvers, Milton Berle, Groucho Marx, Lou Costello, Jerry Lewis. I bring forth the titans too;
Oliver Hardy and Jackie Gleason. I watched these master comics on our black-and-white TV set (proving you don‟t need X-Box to waste your youth) and used all their spirits to inhabit my id when I went in to audition. John Ahlin as Dogberry (left) & the cast of The director was outnumbered and had to cast me.

Now where does one start in playing a Shakespeare clown? And when we say clown, we don‟t mean Ringling Brothers, we mean a character that appears mostly for laughs. (No pressure.) And Shakespeare‟s low comedy is usually high over the heads of modern audiences, using topical references from 400 years ago and puns and mispronunciations of words nobody knows any more. Thanks Shakes. Add to that the entire audience having expectations of a laugh riot: “Oh, Dogberry‟s a screamingly funny role.” Oy, I need to lie down. But nothing great was ever achieved lying down (the Sistine Chapel notwithstanding) so I decide to charge ahead. It is good advice in acting and life that sometimes you need to draw both knees up to your chest, yell “cannonball!” and jump in.

Heeding Hamlet‟s advice to the players, to “hold as „twere, the mirror up to nature”, I crack open the ol‟ folio and take a look at Dogberry. Well, nature‟s mirror must be cracked because this character is crazy!! Who talks like this? I can‟t make sense of him. I‟ll misplay this role as badly as that grande dame actress, the one a critic said “played her role like a sinking battleship firing on her rescuers.” Cue the anxiety. But then I pull out, with a flourish, my actor‟s secret weapon: not caring. I won‟t worry about the critics, or embarrassing myself, or fortune and men‟s eyes. I‟ll learn the lines, be ready to fully commit and trust my director, cast mates, and Shakespeare.

Much Ado About Nothing. Photo by Joan Marcus

Collaborating on comedy in a dry clinical rehearsal hall is like whistling Liszt with a mouth full of Fluffernutter. It is hard to expose yourself, trying something you know is only 5% there without an audience, and not worry that people will judge you. But, if you can brave all that, a miracle happens. Live in the role for just a few minutes and you start to understand. Stay in the play and a human character slowly reveals itself.
It happens every time I do one of the Kemp roles. Will Kemp was a member of Shakespeare‟s company and a clown of renown, with legions of fans coming to see his familiar routines. He liked malapropisms and carrying on both ends of a conversation with himself, which Shakespeare wove into his roles, and he also liked ad-libbing his own jokes. Kemp was probably the prime culprit when Hamlet warned; “Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them.” He had a pet dog too, which did tricks, and even the dog was immortalized as a character in Two Gentleman of Verona, where Launce comes on stage with his dog, Crab. Kemp originated Launce and many clown roles including Bottom, Costard, Dromio and Launcelot Gobbo. I‟ve played several and I feel I really know Kemp. I displayed my Bottom in Pittsburgh, the audience ate it up (this stuff writes itself).

Shakespeare wisely included popular clowns in his plays but, being Shakespeare, used them brilliantly. He would contrast the tragedy by having comedy in strange places; Ophelia‟s grave for instance. The less I strive for laughs playing Dogberry the more alive and real he becomes. He is simply an outlandish person of imagined self-importance (who isn‟t), when suddenly the whirligig of fate thrusts real greatness upon him. What pours out of him is not shtick or jokes but pure humanity. His wants and needs and reactions are huge but honest. And if they happen to be funny, well that‟s Shakespeare‟s genius. Shakespeare coined or invented over 1500 new words. I herewith will try to coin one, Anthroportrayology: Discovering mankind by inhabiting a role. Playing the clown is simple; just move toward the human…and trust one of our greatest humans, Shakespeare.

The Vow

A few years ago I sat, in a rented tux, in the back of the vast orchestra section at Radio City Music Hall, hoping to win the Best Play Tony Award as an actor in The Lieutenant of Inishmore cast.  When our moment came and History Boys was announced, I felt the stiff blow of disappointment.  Actually, it was the stiff combo of disappointment. Three sharp punches battered my hopes in quick succession.  First, that we hadn’t won, second that our Irish play had lost out to an English play and third that an American play wasn’t even really considered.  Then, after a moment of mental staggering, a clarion bell sounded in my head and much like Moss Hart, in Act One, after his first big hit, vowed never to ride the subway again, or Scarlett O’Hara vowed, as God was her witness, to never…whatever it was she vowed, I rose up off the metaphorical canvas of Seat 506, Row R, adjusted my cummerbund and vowed to some day stand on that stage and accept the Tony Award as the playwright of the Best Play, the Best American Play of…well, I left some wriggle room in re the year.  It was a magic moment…spoiled only by the guy from Drowsy Chaperone in Row S asking me to sit down in a stern tenor voice.  Just so you know; all of this is true but none of this has anything to do with Gray Area, the play that has played in both LA and NY to critical acclaim.  I just wrote it to grab your attention.

 A seldom dwelled-on part of the playwriting process is ‘how do you whip people into a lather about your play without giving away all the good parts?’  I guess that’s why newspaper ads for plays rely exclusively on reviewer’s quotes.  It’s a delicate challenge, and I’m trying to figure out how to grab your attention; how to convey the excitement that has followed Gray Area on its journey, and the portent of its further adventures; how to whet your appetite but not spoil your meal.  So, I’ve come up with this little article which hopes to be about things about this play, except what it’s about.  And the first thing I’ll tell you is; it’s about Civil War Reenactors. 

 By the way…regarding the above Tony story?  The next year I sat in Seat 604, Row V, as an actor in Journey’s End, and watched the very English Coast of Utopia win Best Play.  However, the very British Journey’s End was in the Best Revival category, and we won, too!  It was a long hike to the stage but I don’t think my rented shoes touched the floor, and there I was, standing on that stage…and looking out at 6000 people (the largest gathering of tuxedoes anywhere on Earth that night) is quite a sight.  So, really, I guess the moral is…do an English play.   And then the next year Tracy Letts won with August: Osage County, a beautiful American play, eating my playwriting dream for lunch.  There’s another moral in there somewhere about vow’s being more of a push than a prediction or something.  Lessons can be drawn from everything.

The Inspiration

             Where do new plays come from?   When does an idea become an inspiration?  These are the kind of questions a playwright asks himself while sitting at his keyboard waiting for an inspiration. Trying to force inspiration is like trying to get the hiccups on purpose.  Inspiration should come as a quick surprise (ironically a cure for hiccups), like a lightning bolt, and to best experience lighting, stand out in the storm, so likewise, I sit at the keyboard, hoping for genius to animate my fingertips.

             A little ploy I play sometimes, when stuck for inspiration, is to retreat into my brain and think in the abstract.  So excuse me while I shut everything down and retire to my cerebral sofa and ponder the two questions at the top of the previous paragraph… Well, I’m back. Here’s what I got: clearly this article should include the very first inspiration that started Gray Area on its journey to the stage.  Second, I think one way an idea becomes an inspiration is when you have it and realize its value at the exact same moment…the idea, its application and implication all exploding in you mind at once.  Shouting ‘Eureka!’ optional.  And thirdly Gray Area, began its life when I read a little article in some non-descript newspaper (it wasn’t even an article; it was more like a filler), about a Civil War reenactor who got shot by an actual bullet while performing the reenactment of some famous battle.  My first reaction was a chuckle, which I immediately retracted, because it probably hurt this poor guy, who was treated at a hospital and is ok, but it got me thinking; the idle stare-out-the-window thinking, not the retreat onto the cranial couch kind…How did a real bullet get in the mix?…Do these guys know when they march around like they do much of civilization thinks them nutty?…Is there really a thrill to impersonate some long forgotten soldier?…(Then the questions turned from shallow to genuine).  Wow, how did it feel to get shot?  What must have it been like when all the bullets were real?  How could those long forgotten soldiers stand to face a fusillade of real bullets?  Why would they volunteer to come face that?  Why-Boom!!  That was it…the question…the why…the inspiration…Why would one American go to some distant battlefield, far from his home and family and risk death to fire a bullet, with purposeful malice, at another American?  You know…that ‘why’, would make a great play…Eureka!  Just think…if I never glanced at the bottom of that newspaper page, you wouldn’t be reading this. 

 The Bullet

             First, a joke:  They put a bunch of cows into the Space Shuttle and blasted off.  It was ‘the herd shot round the world.’  Well, it’s not so much a joke as a bad pun on that first Revolutionary War shot, and maybe a metaphorical clash mixing Lexington Green and Redcoats with Blue and Gray but it’s good enough to clumsily lead into my point.   So many things have begun with a shot.  And so much has ended same.  Reading a little newspaper article about a real bullet hitting a Civil War reenactor during some play battle kept me up at night.  My mind turned to thoughts of the reenactees, the originals, the real Johnny Rebs and Billie Yanks.  For them it wasn’t just a weekend’s outing, a hobby, it was life and death. Their ghostly faces filled my nighttime daydreams. I was tormented by the “why” of “why would one American fire a bullet at another American and think he was doing it for America?”  Why would they come, to do that?   During my first week living in New York City many (many) years ago, I heard a bullet whistle past my window one night.  Actually, it was more of an echoing zip traveling north above St. Nicholas Ave, but it was enough to give me a severe case of adrenaline laced willies.  How could I ever voluntarily stand to face a bullet aimed at me?   After reading that little article, many sleepless wee hours were spent reflecting; if I was back in the real battle, what would I do?  Would I flee or fight?  Would they say I ran away?  Would I be branded, scorned as the one who ran?  (What do you do when you’re branded, and you know you’re a man?) Or would I, like Teddy Roosevelt, after being shot in the chest by an assailant while going to give a speech, not blink and give the speech anyway, with the bullet still lodged in me?  (The thick manuscript of his lengthy speech in the breast pocket slowed the bullet and saved him, [an excuse I often invoke when I’m accused of writing too wordy].)  What was the stuff of these Blue and Gray clad men?

             I decided to consult their ghosts, and where better to go than Gettysburg.  In this beautiful town in beautiful Pennsylvania you can stand in the ironic loveliness of the stony hills or broad fields and in broad daylight see ghosts.  It is as haunting a place as you can find.  There is the actual Devil’s Den, and Little Round Top, and the copse of trees and the high water mark and the ghosts…I wandered and wondered: ‘why?’  The souvenir shops along Steinwehr Avenue sell bullets…actual bullets from the battle…and I stepped up to a box of .69 caliber  (half again as big as Dirty Harry’s baddest) and selected one that didn’t look too mangled, like it was fired by some nervous soldier from Connecticut and hit a nice benign hillside.  And it was heavy. Break my bones heavy.  I wouldn’t even want it thrown at me.  But there it sat, on my desk, and I often picked it up late at night to wonder who shot it, and who he was aiming at and what happened next and what opinions could be so different to make him pull the trigger and did he live and…before I knew it, it was 3AM.  The bullet and that unknown soldier and his unknown target and the why and the plunking of some unsuspecting reenactor were the sparks and toiling upwards in those nights was the engine. And in those late, late hours, when playwrights imaginarily roam the Earth, a play emerged.  It was the ghosts of those long forgotten soldiers who wrote this play. Ghostwritten by real ghosts.  I had to press the keys for them, however.  Playwrights are happy to employ ghosts to help write their stories because there’s no sharing of royalties.