Presentation of my theorist and aspect:

Elizabeth LeCompte is an American director. She was a founder and serves as director of a
company called “The Wooster Group,” which their website defines as an ensemble of performers
in “theatre, dance, film, and media.” Their mission is “to take something familiar, something you
know, or think you know, subject it to every conceivable transgression of interpretation and form,
and return it to you illuminated and deepened.”

The New Yorker explains it... “She frames it so that her players are acting out the thoughts and
people and confusions in the character’s head.” According to an interview with The Paris
Review, Lecompte was passionate about photography and drawing in college which led her to be
“fascinated by structure” and “devoted to the deconstruction of original texts to serve her
intentions.”

In an interview with Ms. LeCompte, when asked about her cross-media techniques, she states “I
love that two-dimensional TV world; I can feel the surface.” In the same interview, she explains
the emergence of her directing style: she says, “we began to structure it like a piece of music
(concern with rhythm), like a painting (concern with light and colour), and like a dance (concern
with movement).”

Her three steps to creating a piece:

Give them something to do — series of actions that have nothing to do with the text
Add sound — something you're interested in that doesn't relate to the text
Say the text somehow
EVENTUALLY it should all mold together nicely, or maybe it won’t. That’s art for you.

Her pieces are frequently referred to as “cross-media collages.” My inspiration was her version
of Hamlet. I listened to interviews with LeCompte about it and watched all the trailers available.
In this production, she included a film adaptation of Hamlet that came in and out of focus
whenever she saw fit.. The idea was to take the text and cut it and move it around and then take
choreographed movement from the film and exhibit them together to show the inner feelings of
each character — regardless of the words they were actually speaking in the film.

I took some of Shakespeare’s most famous Sonnets and excerpts from a few of his plays that I
believe juxtapose nicely the feelings of a young, naive, somewhat delusional romance with those
of a more mature, complex, and flawed love. Neither is better than the other, they are simply
different and serve different purposes in our lives. I chose to backdrop Shakespeare’s words with
my favorite movie that I believe also shows the dangers and the excitement that all kinds of love
bring with them. If you know the movie, you know how these two very different relationships
pan out…
Liesel and Ralph’s dance
VS
Maria and The Captain’s dance

“Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.”- Romeo, Act 1, Scene 4

YOUTHFUL

Thou know’st the mask of night is on my face,

Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek
For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight.
Fain would I dwell on form. Fain, fain deny
What I have spoke. But farewell compliment!
Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say “ay,”
And I will take thy word. Yet if thou swear’st
Thou mayst prove false. At lovers' perjuries,
They say, Love laughs. O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.
Or if thou think’st I am too quickly won,
I’ll frown and be perverse and say thee nay,
So thou wilt woo. But else, not for the world.
In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou mayst think my 'havior light.
But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true
Than those that have more coying to be strange.
I should have been more strange, I must confess,
But that thou overheard’st, ere I was 'ware,
My true love’s passion. Therefore pardon me,
And not impute this yielding to light love,
Which the dark night hath so discovered
-Juliet

Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

MATURE

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

If it be love indeed tell me how much

There’s beggary in love that can be reckoned
I’ll set a bourn how far to be beloved
Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth
-antony and cleopatra

I love you with so much of my heart that none

is left to
protest
-Beatrice Much Ado About Nothing

“Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.”- Romeo, Act 1, Scene 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwnqoL0mZnQ

xhttp://thewoostergroup.org/history

https://ashiimalovlie.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/devising-theatre-in-the-style-of-the-wooster-gro
up/

https://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/stories/7-things-wooster-group

https://theater.skidmore.edu/2016/05/elizabeth-lecompte-66/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_10u984AvzE&list=TLPQMjQwMjIwMjE_v7vruiEi9g&ind
ex=2

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/10/08/experimental-journey

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/03/30/making-theater-an-interview-with-elizabeth-lec
ompte/