TA, APHRODISIA!
Ta, Aphrodisia! is a testimony --- half meditation, half tirade --- on romantic love. Reliving moments of his passion and despair, the lover struggles to discover a reason, or perhaps even create a meaning, for a love that has brought more suffering than joy. The conclusion he cannot escape is that his profoundly sexual love is born of nature, and like nature, is indifferent. It comes and goes in its own time, without regard for human wishes or needs. This solo piece was performed with an original score, composed, performed and recorded by Geoffrey Gordon. The performance in this video was produced by The Field at the New Ohio Theatre on June 26, 1993.
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The Porter
Regarding The Porter, well, here’s Shakespeare’s advice, to certain members of his own acting company, no doubt, whose tendency was to take liberties with his text:
Hamlet, Act III, scn. 2
“…And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That’s villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.”​
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It pains me a little to admit that the opportunity to perform the Porter’s monologue proved to great a temptation for me. I took liberties. Lots of liberties. My director Tina Packer laughed when I took liberties. The monologue tripled in playing time. William Gibson, the playwright, after viewing this performance a couple of times, was quoted thus: “Hammond was brilliant. He ruined the production, but he was brilliant.”
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I’ve provided a transcript of the monologue based on this video recording, made in the summer of 2002. There was a significant amount of improvisation involved in each performance of this monologue, so the text varied from night to night.
The Cattle
Many years ago, probably around 2010, I wrote and performed a ten-minute monologue for the Boston Theatre Marathon entitled The Cattle, a brief account of a man struggling to explain the repeated appearance of cattle in his living room. Since that first and only solo performance I’d been considering how I might expand the piece, and re-imagine its presentation. Then, in April, 2018, I saw my friend Douglas Dunn perform his solo piece Time Out, and I had my “Eureka!” moment: that speechless but expressive figure before me belonged in the world of The Cattle. After a lively and inspiring conversation -- courtship? -- Douglas agreed to join me. We quickly agreed there should be a musician on stage with us, and convinced Cleek Schrey to join us with his fiddle. And, as it turned out, his daxophone. When the three of us agreed we wanted video in the mix, we pulled Jacob Burkhardt aboard.​
Photo by Paula Court
​One of the reasons I wanted to work with Douglas, who has had his own dance company for many years, had to do with his background as a member of Merce Cunningham’s dance company, and later as a member of the improvisational dance ensemble Grand Union. Both of these companies emphasized chance operations and improvisation in their performances, and I had been exploring that approach more and more in the classroom while I was training young actors at Boston University. But during the course of our collaboration on The Cattle, I sensed --- and later, understood --- that my idea of chance operations wasn’t as far along on the spectrum as the others’. Douglas’s primary concern seemed to be working out the timing of each of his entrances mathematically, regardless of what might be happening on stage at the moment. And when I reminded Cleek one day of an understanding we’d reached the previous day about the timing of his playing relative to a particular moment in the text, he said, “Yeah…I think you’re going to have to let go of that.”
Fools and Lovers Dream Dances
My wife Susan Dibble has created dozens of dance programs over the years, and has invited me aboard from time to time. In 2003 she presented Fools and Lovers Dream Dances at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA. I played the central fool. Well, maybe central is the wrong word, as my character spent a fair amount of time lying in bed, sometimes fast asleep. But I did get to join the ensemble occasionally, and especially in the glorious finale.
Five Shakespeare Sonnets
This track contains five Shakespeare sonnets, two audio recordings each. The earlier version of each sonnet was recorded in 2008, and the second version in 2025. To my ear, 17 years has certainly made a difference, not only in terms of vocal quality, but also in terms of acting choices. Some are repeated, but some are not. I think I adhere more consistently to the metre in the later versions. I have not included a transcript for these recordings, but you won’t have any difficulty finding these Sonnets: 23, 65, 76, 130, and 109.
Wittgenstein’s Margarita
And finally, a word from Ludwig “Luki” Wittgenstein ---
Photo by Jacob Burkhardt.