Asst. Director's Notes
(if such a thing existed)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is, in many ways, a
story told through changes in dialect, and Big River
captures this essence of Twain's writing. Brice asked me to assist
him with this production because of my background in prosody and
comedy, which are at the heart of my graduate program in Shakespeare
and Performance.
Specifically, Brice tasked me with the Duke and the King, two
frauds that Huck and Jim meet on their travels, and both have
rhetorical backgrounds that enable them to change their identities
by changing their speech patterns. Of course, they try to take on
too much, and the extent of their self-deception is revealed when
the Duke, a self-stiled actor, creates a mashup of lines in place
of "Hamlet's immortal soliloquy," and when the King, who describes
preaching as his line of business, can barely make it through a
simple eulogy.
In order for the emptiness of the Duke and the King's rhetoric to
shine through, their patterns of speech need to be precise,
layered, and deliberately flawed when they get in over their heads,
and I am grateful to Brice for giving me the charge of such two
fine actors as Black and Kohler, and helping them rise to the
challenge of these demanding roles.
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