How Do I Figure Out Who The Merry Wives of Windsor Are?

When I am picking a show to direct, I pretty much follow the questions as I have been asking them this week.  I read a bunch of scripts and try to figure out why I like a specific script.  I give it another read to find out what it's all about, discovering if it's a story I want to tell.

Then I tackle the big three:  when, who and where.  The answers to these three questions determine if it goes from a story I want to tell to a story I can tell. 

While I normally start with "who", with Shakespeare "when" is the big factor.  I try to find that hook that will help my audience get into the story and first see if the story can be set in modern times.  I've set Two Gentlemen of Verona in a skate park, and Romeo and Juliet at a rave.  I was all set to put Love's Labour's Lost in a fraternity house when I heard some Shakespeare purists in town were upset that I was always updating Shakespeare to the modern era.  So I decided to show them, and I set it in the late 16th century and it was a mistake.  The production had some glorious tech elements and some of the finest performances from my actors, but the audience had a visual hurdle they couldn't overcome in a single viewing.

"Where" is so closely tied to "when" and ideas do formulate right away within the second read, but first I have to determine if I have the personnel to do the show.  And in order to do that, I have to know the job descriptions for each role.  This does not mean that I cast the show this far in advance.  I always wait until the auditions for that.  Instead, I start doing what I call a breakdown of the script, so that I can get to know the characters better.

I open an empty Excel file and then start reading the script again.  Having read it twice already, I know the story fairly well, so this time I am tying to flesh out each of the roles.  As I come across any role (whether it be a lead or a role with one line and I classify them by gender and approximate size of the role.  I try to do three categories for each. 

For gender I make a column of men on the left, a column of women on the right, and a column that could be either role right down the middle.  Then I have a row for leads (them that carry the majority of the script), a row for principals (them that are vital to the show or carry principal action) and the minor roles (both named characters that may have only a scene or two and those that may only have a line or two).  With the minor roles (and some of the principals I can't tell apart) I'll put down a few words that will immediately inform me of the character at a glance.  This could be something from the character's lines or some bit of action they have to do. 

I will keep adding to this breakdown as I go through the development the show, especially in the lead up to auditions and the actual casting process.  Currently my Merry Wives breakdown looks like this:

I move characters based on gender or role size as I go.  At first I thought the Host of the Garter Inn could be a woman, but wasn't sure, so I put the character in the middle "either sex" column.  I went back and read all of the Host scenes specifically and placed the character in the "women" column for any number of reasons including having another principal role for a woman as well as being able to make the Garter Inn more of a brothel.

I also originally thought Bardolph, Pistol and Nym were much smaller roles and Robin, Peter Simple and John Rugby were much bigger roles.  Falstaff's entourage end up carrying a lot of the principal action of the show even though they don't have a lot of lines, whereas the three named servants/pages are only in a scene or two each.  Also only Peter Simple has any gender specific action (Mistress Quickly hides him in a closet so Dr. Caius doesn't catch her with a man.).  That means potentially two more roles for women or girls.  The three servants are much bigger roles than William and the two unnamed servants, but we could run a rehearsal without them, so they did get their own slight designation.

The Fairies do not have any lines per se, though there is a song.  So with that area, I made a list of all the fairies that are called out by name in dialogue.  This gives me a window into the kind of fairies (and there are many different kinds of fairies) that the show needs, as well as any named large groups of fairies.  As I look at this section of the script later, I will fine tune it further.

So now I can look at this list and see that I need 3M/3W Leads, 8M/2F Principals, 1M/2E Minor Roles, and 3 other speaking roles that could be either sex for a total of 12 Men, 5 Women and 5 of either sex.  I also need a large group of children to be fairies. 

I wonder what other kinds of choruses I do need, especially for adults and teens.  My instincts say that we need other servants, either at the opening dinner party at the Pages or in the other scenes at the Ford house.  Also, should there be at the opening dinner party as guests, perhaps as parents of the children we need for the end of the play.  I also wonder how do I flesh out the Garter Inn.  If the host is a woman, do we head to more of a brothel feel for the place?  If so, I can have another rather large group of women and teen girls who work there.  This of course ties into when and where, so they become problems for another day.

Now, I need to focus on who specifically the 22 speaking roles are.