Looking for Richard

Our revels now are ended.

These our actors, as I foretold you...

were all spirits and are melted into air...

into thin air.

And, like the baseless fabric of this visión...

the cloud-capp 'd towers...

the gorgeous palaces...

the solemn temples...

the great globe itself...

ye all which it inherit...

shall dissolve...

and, like this insubstantial pageant faded...

leave not a wisp behind.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on...

and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

Who's gonna say, "Action"? Should I say it, or should you?

You wanna say it? You can say it.

- I don't want to. Say it. - You say it.

- And action! - How do I look?

I can't see anything.

Are they out there?

This is my entrance.

Fuck.

I'm actually reading Richard III...

and I can't get on with it. I've been reading it for six months.

You want to do it with your American accent?

We're getting $40 a day and all the doughnuts we can eat.

Shakespeare? What the fuck do you know about Shakespeare?

Arise, fair sun...

and kill the envious moon.

Like eager droppings into milk, it doth posset and curd.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness...

and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Intelligence is hooked with language.

When we speak with no feeling, we get nothing out of our society.

We should speak like Shakespeare.

We should introduce Shakespeare into the academics.

You know why? Because then the kids would have feelings.

- That's right. - We have no feelings.

That's why it's easy for us to shoot each other.

We don't feel for each other, but if we were taught to feel...

we wouldn't be so violent. Shakespeare helps us?

He did more than help us. He instructed us.

Hi. You gonna see the play tonight?

You're gonna see it, huh?

Hello.

How much it cost? It's for free.

- Okay, I'm going. - Okay.

- Thanks a lot. - Your first Shakespeare play?

- Yeah. - It'll be interesting. Give it a try.

- I saw Hamlet recently. - How did you feel about it?

- Did you see it live? It what? - It sucked.

- It what? - It sucked. I saw it live.

- It sucked? - Yeah.

Anything in Shakespeare that made you think it's not close to you...

- or connected to you in any way? - Yeah, it's boring.

A bank in England uses Shakespeare as...

Cover my account number. See, it's a hologram.

They use it as ID to prove it's a real card.

What do you think of Shakespeare?

He's a great export.

Who's moving in on Shakespeare? The Japanese.

Because they're kicking the Americans' ass.

And they're all interested in Shakespeare.

You know Shakespeare? William Shakespeare?

We're peddling him on the streets.

I remember our English teacher sent us to see...

a local college production of King Lear .

I went with my girlfriend...

and after about 10 minutes of these people:

They were doing this kind of Shakespearean acting.

I just tuned right out. We made out in the back row and left at intermissión.

I was brought up in a school...

where Shakespeare was taught very kind of...

straightforwardly and dully, to be honest.

We read it aloud and it made no sense, because there was no connection made.

My own experience...

was in the fields in Michigan, where I was raised on a farm...

and an uncle, who was a Northern guy, black Northern guy...

came out of the field one day and started narrating...

Antony's speech, the funeral oration.

- From Shakespeare's Julius Caesar ? - Yeah. We'd heard stuff from the Bible...

but my first time as a kid, I was hearing...

great words having great meaning.

What brings us to Montreal?

To Paris? To London?

What takes us into dungeons, to parapets...

- To Japan next. - To Japan, maybe, is a quest.

It has always been a dream of mine...

to communicate how I feel about Shakespeare to other people.

So I asked my friend Frederic Kimball, who is an actor and a writer...

and also our colleagues Michael Hadge...

and James Bulleit, to join me.

And by taking this one play, Richard III...

analyzing it, approaching it from different angles...

putting on costumes, playing out scenes...

we could communicate both our passión for it...

our understanding that we've come to...

and in doing that...

communicate a Shakespeare that is about how we feel...

and how we think today. That's the effort we're gonna give it here.

We've done Richard three times. Twice.

You did it at the Studio, we've done it in Boston and on Broadway.

At least, the head start is that I've done it. You've done it.

But the problem, Frederic... The audience hasn't done it.

- They haven't done it. - It's a difficult play.

If someone were to ask you about Richard III...

what would you remember about it?

To be honest, I really don't remember that much, if anything at all.

Did you know that Richard III had a deformed arm and a deformed back?

- No, I didn't. - You didn't know that?

The play, Richard III , about the guy with the humpback?

- No. - You got me there.

Mm-mm.

He was a humpback? "A horse. A horse. My kingdom for a horse"?

- That comes from Richard III. - It does, yes.

I mean, nobody knows who Richard III is.

- Nobody. - It's a tough play to get.

The relationships between those characters.

- Who can keep it straight? - Well, I think the question is...

what is the understanding? I mean, the understanding is...

It's a simply... Can you follow the story line and the plot?

We've provided this kind of docudrama-type thing...

to inform some of the scenes so you know where you are.

For instance, there's an early scene with the queen...

and her brother and her two sons...

which is outside in an anteroom...

waiting for the king to call them in because he is inside, sick.

The queen is worried. She's afraid the king will die, who is her husband.

And when he dies, the only...

The only people left to inherit the throne are her two young sons...

by the king himself.

She has two sons by a previous marriage, which are in the scene.

And she's afraid that the character I play, Richard III of Gloucester...

is going to take hold of the situation...

and somehow manipulate them into thinking...

that they're, you know... That the kids are...

I'm confused just saying it. I can imagine how you must feel...

hearing me talk. It's confusing.

I don't know why we even bother doing this at all.

But we'll give it a little try.

Let's see what we can come up with. First of all, let's get a smaller...

Let's work out of a smaller book than this. This is hard to carry.

- Excuse me, but look at this. "Hello?" - I think...

"Yes. It's my entrance? Oh, I see."

It's good sometimes that you open it, and it is Richard , it's not Hamlet .

Sometimes in Shakespeare, there's a tendency...

to confuse the plays.

The first act is about a sick king, and everybody maneuvering...

Sure. Around. I wish that this play...

could begin...

on the body...

On the sleeping king...

Edward IV, your brother, in bed. Yeah.

And it pans up and you are standing over him, looking at him.

Yeah.

- Yes, but he's alive, the king is alive. - Yes.

I would prefer having him off in the distance. I'd like...

- Good. You can watch him. - I'd like to walk...

- Frederic? Can you get the other end? - Yeah.

I'd like... Hi, how are you?

Frederic and I decided to go to The Cloisters...

a museum that has a medieval setting...

which is good for us because the play takes place in this period.

We thought we'd rehearse in this atmosphere.

We're shooting him. We're shooting him.

I'll be with you in a minute, if you can just wait for me out there.

- So you're here. - Okay. Okay.

- And here we are. - Okay.

Now, you're Richard's brother, the sick king, and I'm Richard. Okay.

Yes. I move this way, and you follow me.

- Now... - How exciting to start with "now."

You'd wake your audience up, wouldn't you? "Now!"

Now...

is the winter of our discontent...

made...

glorious summer...

by this sun of York.

It's a pun.

The sun of York is the sun in the sky...

over the English countryside of York.

York is also your family name, and you are one of three sons of York.

Let me say it again, then.

Now...

is the winter of our discontent...

made glorious summer.

I said the opening speech from Richard to a group of students...

"Our discontent made glorious summer." Anybody know what that means?

Who were interested, because I meant something, didn't know what I meant.

"Now is the winter of our discontent." What am I saying?

He is referring to their part... To the Wars of the Roses.

Before the play Richard III starts...

we gotta know a little bit about what happened before.

What happened is, we've just been through a civil war...

called the War of the Roses...

in which the Lancasters and the Yorks clashed.

Two rival families, and the Yorks won.

They beat the Lancasters, and they're now in power. Richard is a York.

My brother Edward is the king now.

And my brother Clarence...