The rain it raineth
September 2006. It’s 7 o’clock outside the old horse barn in Wyuka Cemetery we now call The Swan Theatre. Outside the theater, an actor or two, the stage manager, ticket sellers, the director and a large white duck are all staring at the black cloud moving in from the west. This is our preshow ritual on rainy days. If it starts pouring before 7:30, we’ll cancel. If it doesn’t, we’ll perform, but only a few intrepid souls will show up if the sky is black. If the sun breaks through, we’ll be fine. The perils of out-of-doors theater.
However, the cemetery is remarkably beautiful—one of the few places in Lincoln with trees from when it was created in the 19th century, beautifully kept and filled with foxes, raccoons, garden spiders and barn swallows.
We play in the square open-air courtyard formed by the back of the barn, two sets of what were once stalls for horses running along each side and a storage building on the end of the square. The audience sits in rows of chairs facing each other, and when the place is full, we have managed to cram in 131 people. Both the actors and audience are naked to the sky, although in case of rain the audience can move back into the old stall areas. The actors just get wet.
Shakespeare had the same set of problems. No roof. Some shelter for the rich folk—none for the groundlings. In one play he had Feste the Jester sing “And the rain it raineth every day.” Shakespeare knew.
Truthfully, most of the time it doesn’t raineth on us, at least not every day. The Flatwater Shakespeare Company has been doing shows at the Swan for 10 years. If it raineth’d every day, we’d have stopped by now, but we’ve managed to stay dry most nights.
I’m not going to write you a history of Flatwater’s first decade. You can go on our website for that (www.flatwatershakespeare.org); what I want is to tell you the story of Cordelia the Duck, and maybe then you’ll have a feel for who we are and what we do.
In the fall of 2006 I directed “King Lear” at the Swan. It may be the greatest play ever written. True, it’s about getting very old and realizing that pain and loss are never-ending parts of life—the rain it raineth every day—but it also tells about the ever-regenerating nature of youth and the power of loyalty. It features high adventure, disguises, blood, torture, love, despicable villains, thrilling duels and laughter—lots and lots of laughter—all these things following one another in a roundelay of brilliant theatrical moments. In other words, it’s like every play Shakespeare ever wrote, only this one is in the top 10. And it has some of the best dramatic poetry ever written.
I love the play, and I loved this cast. Stephen Gaines was a brilliant Lear, George Hansen matched him as Gloucester, Dick Nielsen and Brad Boesen made me cry as the fool and Kent respectively, and Rob Burt playing Edgar, a guy who feigns madness, covering himself with mud and dung, knocked me on my butt every night. There were more—it was a play filled with great acting, but I’ll only name the ones who figure in this story because they were in the famous storm scene.
One night we were rehearsing this particular scene, the old king cast out into a stormy night, when a large white duck came waddling into the Swan Theatre. The duck sat down between Michelle Zinke, the stage manager, and me and watched the storm scene as we worked on it most of that night. It didn’t go looking for food or quack or peck; quite literally it sat there and watched. At the end of rehearsal we carried it outside as we locked up, and then, when it realized we were leaving, it quacked and honked its little beak off. We carried it around the corner where there is a duck pond with swans and mallards, thinking that must have been where it came from. Hated it. Stood there quacking away at us as we drove off.
Next night, the duck came back —and the next and the next. We finally realized this was someone’s pet duck that got dumped near the duck pond. What’s more, it doesn’t know it’s a duck. Ducks, we find out online, are like that; raise ’em with humans and they bond with humans. God knows what they think when introduced to those other honky things with the feathers. Certainly our duck did not belong with those ducks (I sympathize, as an only child, I felt that way in kindergarten.) Finally we asked the cemetery groundskeeper if we can keep the duck in the barn to keep it from becoming fox food. She agrees, since during the day the duck keeps climbing in her golf cart to go for rides with her. Everyone likes this duck.
That night the rain it raineth. We weren’t rehearsing the storm scene, but all the actors mentioned above run on stage and start doing it anyhow. Steve Gaines, well into his seventies but with a Lear voice that complements the thunder, stands center, rain pouring down his face, commanding the storm, with Dick Nielsen as the Fool huddling beside him for shelter. “Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage storm!” George Hansen’s Gloucester comes in to lead Lear away, and, wet to the skin, they confront Rob as Edgar, who is now all skin, having stripped to his Fruit of the Looms as does Edgar in the script. Luminously rained on, the white duck sits watching it all. It’s magic.
I no longer know how you’re supposed to discover that scene if you don’t rehearse it outside in the rain, and I’ll bet Shakespeare’s actors did exactly that. Next time I do the play (direct a lot of Shakespeare, you start having second and third cracks at them), I’ll keep an eye on the Weather Channel for a good storm. Whether I’ll have actors as game as these is another question, but I’m sure I’ll never find a comparable duck.
The duck starts bonding with me, Michelle Zinke, the stage manager (everyone in the company bonds with Michelle, poultry included), but mainly she (by this time we’re pretty sure it’s a she) bonds with Kara, the actress playing Lear’s daughter, Cordelia. She calls the duck Cordelia as well, and the name sticks.
Then the cemetery gets an anonymous phone call asking about the duck. Seems these folks’ late uncle Morris had this pet duck—so after his funeral they decide it would be cool to release the duck into the wild. Very romantic, you bet. Shakespeare, who understood nature, would have known better. Is the duck OK? they ask. Do they really care? I can’t imagine.
Anyway, by this time we’ve done more research, are feeding Cordelia a proper diet and have bought her a wading pond—which, much to Cordelia’s annoyance, Rob/Edgar uses to wash the mud off when in Act 4 he stops pretending to be crazy and becomes the hero instead.
We usually rehearse five to six weeks before opening night. It arrives on a Thursday night, and the audience is filing into the lobby waiting for the theater to open. We have cordoned out an area back stage for Cordelia, since she likes it on stage and she’s likely to wander onto the set at just the wrong moment. We go to find her promptly at 7:00, and she’s gone. Michelle and I look on stage, back stage and outside the theater, and she just ain’t there. Finally it occurs to us that Cordelia loves people and will gravitate toward the biggest crowd, so we look in the lobby and there she is, with the audience, standing at the front of the line waiting to get in the theater—and me without a camera.
No, we don’t comp her in. Even the best of ducks are intrinsically funny, and this is, after all, a tragedy.
A few nights later it raineth during the storm scene, not hard enough to stop the show but wet. The actors keep going, and the audience quietly moves below the shelter of the eves of the barn or beneath the roof of the old horse stalls.
Once more the actors get soaked to the skin. “Blow winds!” shouts Lear. It’s magic, always has been when we play in the rain. No actor ever stops until Michelle, worried about safety, finally calls a halt. This year, during a downpour, because it was “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” a silly comedy and we could get away with it, the audience and the actors crowded into a 12-by-12 roofed space in the barn and we finished the last 20 minutes of the play, adlibbing the blocking while the elements raged behind us. Magic again, only no duck.
At the end of the King Lear run we realized that none of us live in a duck-friendly environment. Ducks in apartments have to wear diapers—it’s true, duck “Depends” are available online—whereas all of the duck lovers who have yards are worried about predators. Eventually, we found out that just as there are rescuers of cats and dogs, Lincoln also has duck rescuers. We found Cordelia a good home with other ducks who think they are people. She’s long since been given a more mundane name, but in her heart she knows she is still Cordelia, white and fair, daughter of Lear, King of Storms.
So why do we do this screwy thing—have done for 10 years, and with your support will do it for another 10 and hopefully more: Shakespeare beneath the stars and sometimes in the wind and the rain. We do it, of course, for the stories we can tell. As do all actors. As did Shakespeare.
This fall, Flatwater Shakespeare will present “Antony and Cleopatra.” Sept. 9 to the 26. Check it out on the above-mentioned website. Check the weather, too, and if rain is predicted, don’t hesitate to come. It’s magic when the rain it raineth.
Our prices are low, and ducks get in free.
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