The Revenger's Tragedy Workshop - Blog - Bailey Brook

Day 1: I think what was principally interesting to me was the variety of interpretations we all had upon an initial read. It felt to me as though and wealth of experience, individuality and openness hand brought within the first hour of the day so many hypothesis for the the revenges tragedy, which was such an exciting start. The day felt like a dissection, with the most part of this coming from a scenario wherein we explored the world of their ‘court’ - a scene in which junior is trialed on the rape of Antonios wife. The exploration/ discussion of this dark scene led to the beginnings of unveiling a world that, although undoubtedly steeped in horror, was full of corrupt agenda and familial complexity. Exploring this gave us great world-building context and allowed us to shape/ understand potential intentions of not only those in power, but those outside it too.

Day 2: it was useful coming in with more of an open mind to the moral complexity of the play, talking about intentions vs the actual horror of there action. In the first half of the day when we were figuring out step by step how the plot of the duke’s death unravels, it struck me that most of the plot points in our individual groups were the same, yet there were some very obviously different. It made it apparent to me that that in a production of this play you could stress a certain element of the death depending on what you wanted to say (or what hypothesis you were putting forward). For instance, if you were to emphasise more the poison on the skull it could emphasise the Duke’s lechery and perhaps suggest something about the nature of Vindice’s type of revenge (justice for Gloriana?), or on the flip side if you minimised this and focused more on the stamping and the torture it may become more of a selfish revenge (take that for humiliating me!). Furthermore, the afternoon wherein we played out the mass murder scene, the chaotic nature was very apparent. Not only was thus useful in the feel of the play being like a train with the brakes tampered with, but it felt like it had unlocked a common understanding amongst the actors of capriciousness, the feeling that anything could happen anytime. It’s a dark spontaneity that changes choices and dictates a theme of a play. To summarise, I think coming into the R&D it felt like somewhat of a straight forward play in a sense that the plot seemed rigid, however this day particularly left us peek into the world of choices that it actually offers. It feels very malleable.