Some Ado
Some Ado tells the story of Benedick and Beatrice, from Much Ado About Nothing. Written in 2005 for a production at the Theatre Project in Baltimore, alongside other Shakespeare-based works by Amy Kirsten and George Lam, I revised the piece for another performance and a film version of the work in 2006.
The making of that film is a great story. I raised a couple thousand dollars from Johns Hopkins, got some equipment, the cast and not nearly enough crew together. The first day we shot for fifteen hours. The second day we shot for twenty-three hours. The next day two of our cast members graduated from grad school. It was totally crazy, and a total blast. We broke some lightbulbs, put gaff tape on the ceiling of one of Peabody’s concert halls, and used a percussion practice room for craft services. People lost sleep, worked incredibly hard, and somehow shot a twenty-minute film in two days.
This piece was a fantastic proving ground for a lot of the concepts I’ve developed in later theatrical pieces, particularly Summer’s Twilight. Among them are my way of writing operatic dialogue, especially comic dialogue, as well as my basic approach to form and cutting together a libretto.
And these are the talented people who lost sleep with me over this project:
Benedick – Jason Buckwalter
Don Pedro – Elisabeth Halliday
Beatrice – Tara Stafford
Marimba – Michael Compitello
Assistant Director, Director of Photography – Michael Feldman
Recording and Mixing – Zachary Herchen
Crew – Dennis Clark, Caitlin Donovan, David Cohen, Jenni Bank, Clifton Lyddane
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