1. King Lear Cort Welch Mickey Rowe Laura Kammerdiener
Melanya Larson-Materne
Michelle Mean
William Price
Michael Stoumbos
Sara Tierney
Chris Veys

2. Lear Adaptations Presented
King Lear
Directed and starring by Laurence Olivier (1983)
Ran
Directed by Akira Kurosawa (1985)
Slings and Arrows
Directed by Peter Wellington and featuring Paul Gross (TV Series 2003)
Directed by Trevor Nunn and featuring Ian McKellen (2008)

3. King Lear – Directed by Trevor Nunn
Starring Ian McKellen
2007 Stage-to-Screen presentation of the Royal Shakespeare Company

4. Madness and the Body
Madness in terms of medical discourses of age and mental declension
Uncontrolled trembling and Alzheimer’s
Connects with contemporary audiences
Fatalistic message
Uncontrolled
Contrast Goneril and Regan

5. Movie Clip
Act III Scene iv

6. The storm McKellan’s physicality emphasizes:
Connections between madness and age
Connections between madness and body
That is, his physicality plays out his body’s betrayal off his mind.
The emphasis on age and infirmity writes Lear’s death as inevitability, regardless of what he might learn over the course of the play.
The setting of the heath, bleak and stripped down, emphasizes a nihilistic reading of the play.

7. King Lear as Film: Lights and Set
Overall lighting, set and costume designs
Visually convey a fatalistic reading of Lear
Overall sense of a stripping away
mirrors the paring down of Lear’s mind as he descends through the play.
In Act I.i
Lighting is bright, somewhat warm.
Quickly the lighting is darker and darker, where the stage is cast in darkness but for the cold, white-blue moonlight.

8. Lights and Set (Continued)
Lear’s costuming
Steadily stripped of its pomp, color and finery
At the end it is plain white linen.
The set from Act I.i.
Fuller, with warm woods;
After this moment, the sets are more and more barren
Ending on the stark heath.

9. “Slings and Arrows” Television Series, 2003-05
Follows a Shakespeare Festival in New Burbage (fictional town) in Canada
3rd and final season, producing King Lear
Metatheatrical – Play within a TV Show

10. Characters Geoffrey Tennant – Artistic Director
Ellen Fanshaw – Geoffrey’s Girlfriend
Richard Smith-Jones – Executive Manager (the businessman)
Darren Nichols – Director of the Musical/Geoffrey’s Rival
(The Ghost of) Oliver Welles – Former Artistic Director/Geoffrey’s Mentor
Charles Kingman – Cast as Lear
Old man, dying of colon cancer
Taking heroin to counteract the pain
Gradually going senile - “Madness!”
Treats Madness with Representations
Characters Play Figures in Lear

11. Geoffrey’s Lear
History of madness, in a position of power, things go awry…
Gives control of the festival to Richard and Charles (Regan and Goneril)
Charles: holds responsibility of play as the leading player
Charles – Bullies the cast; condition (senility, cancer, drugs) prevent him from functioning
Richard: given reign over the creative development and producing of the Musical
Richard – Cancels the Lear in favor of the Musical
Ellen cannot tell Geoffrey what he means to her
(mirrors Cordelia’s “Nothing”)
Gets kicked out of his house
Eventually loses the theatre to Darren Nichols
Loses ‘Everything’
“Don’t have to be artistic director around here to be king.”

12. Oliver Welles - The Fool
Only seen by Geoffrey and Charles (the Lears)
Ties into both men’s madness
Comic relief
Literally fades out of scenes, (as the Fool disappears after the third act)
Oliver Welles seen hanging by his neck
“…My poor fool hanged…”

13. Lear’s Madness Charles: “Lear is the storm!”
(scene)
Oliver: “He’s not playing Lear; he’s living it.”
Geoffrey: “I thought dying would make you more compassionate—”
Charles: “It doesn’t; it pisses you off!”
“…‘Tis our fast intent//To shake all cares and business from our age;//Conferring them on younger strengths, while we//Unburthen'd crawl toward death.”
Charles (about Lear’s line): “But he doesn’t mean it. Of course! He doesn’t really think he’s going to die; no one does; I don’t. That’s the real insanity of it.”
“Slings and Arrows” draws out the process of Lear’s madness
Assigns multiple reasons
Allows for him to lapse in an out of coherency
Discusses the madness

14. King Lear – Directed by Laurence Olivier

15. Madness Lear is perfectly sane in the beginning of the play.
He gradually loses his sanity and wits throughout the play.
His wits begin to fain in the storm scenes.
He appears to be far gone when he is alone.
Imagines Cordelia is alive.

16. Lights and Sets
Dark setting
Ominous sun/lighting

17. Idiosyncrasies
Stonehenge standing for Britain emphasizes how old Lear’s world is.
Possibility that Edmund finds out he’s a bastard in the first scene.
Goneril’s concerns about feeding the knights and their misbehavior.
Regan does not assist Cornwall after he is stabbed.
Lear’s facial hair is shaven and is in clean clothes. Represents the inner change in him. “the great rage is gone from him.”

18. Ran – Directed by Akira Kurosawa

19. Discussion Topics