Murray Ross

As You Like It #4: Miss Nebraska

Any decent director will tell you that casting is at least 80% of the job, and in some plays casting your lead is most of the casting.  You'd be crazy to do Hamlet, without  knowing in advance who's your Prince of Denmark, or Richard III without a clue about who's going to be your guy with the hump. The same is true for casting Rosalind in As You Like It.  The play is not hers alone, but it's certainly more hers than anyone's.  She has more lines than any woman character in Shakespeare. And they are good lines too. She's Shakespeare's most gifted comic heroine, and, as Harold Bloom says, "as remarkable in her mode as Falstaff and Hamlet are in theirs."  In other words, it's a pretty good role.  But as recently as two months ago I had no idea who our Rosalind might be.

My Open Heart and the Energy of Actors

As some of you know, a month ago, and much to my surprise, I had open heart surgery -- a routine triple bypass. I'm well on the road to full recovery, but for the moment I have a little time on my hands, and I thought to spend some of it in reflection, not so much about myself as about my longest running love, theatre.  And I thought I'd begin with an account of my latest theatrical adventure, followed by an encounter with actors that made me understand what "actors' energy" means in a whole new way.