1. How did you come to be with Shakespeare & Company?
I first heard about the Company through my voice teachers, Zoe Alexander and Virginia Ness, when I was training as an actor at Yale Drama School. My first audition out of grad school was for Tina Packer’s 1986 production of Antony and Cleopatra. I was cast as the Soothsayer and the Clown (who brings the snake).
2. Who is The King of France? In what ways is the character similar or dissimilar to you? What do you like best about him?
For any meaningful change to take place within an individual, one has to ‘die’ to old habits and forms to experience the new. The King comes very close to dying, and like so many accounts of those who’ve had near-death experiences, there’s an enlightenment that reportedly takes place. I feel this is true for the character that I play in All’s Well…. His renewal or healing has afforded him the insight that Bertram and Helena are ‘meant’ to be together. At the time of the formal ceremony—on the human level—a huge mess is made as a result of the coupling, yet in the end, as the play’s title foreshadows, the King’s more expanded vision comes full circle. The parallel for me has to do with allowing the near-death or ‘letting go’ of my director-self, which in turn has inspired my actor-self to emerge and hip me to things that I simply cannot access or see when I’m at the helm of a production. I’ve had many revelations during the rehearsal process.
3. What exactly are you doing with the Young Company, and what do you enjoy about it? Have you done anything like it before?
During the first several years of my tenure with the company, I trained as a Linklater voice instructor, and for many years, before my transition to directing, teaching was my primary role in the theatre. For the Young Company I’m actually pinch-hitting for Corinna May who will be going away for three weeks to make a film. I will pick up where she leaves off in teaching the fundamentals of Freeing the Natural Voice, and while doing so getting back in touch with my teaching roots. I love to teach and I do miss it … but truth be told, I was feeling a bit burned-out by the academic settings I was teaching in when I stopped doing it full time. Working with the Young Company will be the perfect revival for me in the pedagogical role.
4. Was there a certain point in time, a certain play, or a certain performance when you had an “aha!” moment with Shakespeare, when the work suddenly took on greater importance or significance for you? Was there a moment of realization?
Actually, for me the ‘aha’ moment came when I was featured in a production of John Milton’s Samson Agonistes. It was the only play he ever wrote, and he was inspired to write it after ‘hearing’ a Shakespeare play (he was already blind by that time). He was so inspired by the concept of ‘a play’—and Shakespeare specifically—that he was moved to write one. To date, I’ve never been faced with a more challenging text, and somehow we made it work. Because Shakespeare’s text, arguments and philosophies are far more facile in their construction, it was like ‘mother’s milk’ coming to it after the Samson experience. But more than that, I, like Milton, was at once and completely taken with the brilliance of the Bard, and never questioned my lifelong commitment to the illuminating of his work.
5. You’ve had a lot of experience directing the plays of August Wilson. You even directed the premiere production of his final play, Radio Golf. What was that experience like? Did you work with August Wilson?
I did work directly with August—first as understudy on the original productions of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (always a bridesmaid, never a bride), and then under an extremely unique circumstances during Radio Golf. The dates for that premiere had been set for Yale Rep before the play had been written. August knew what the story was to be, but had yet to commit pen to paper when I was hired to helm the project. In fact, I did not see the first draft until 3 days before the first rehearsal, and then he proceeded to completely rewrite the play as I was directing it…. I got the last scene of the play the day of the designer run through, which meant that the whole time I was directing a play whose ending I did not know. Even still, both his reputation and personality inspired enough confidence in me that I never freaked out, which I imagine I would have had it been a writer with fewer Tonys or Pulitzers. At the same time—as extraordinary as that man and his talents were—he was very childlike in his approach and demeanor, and took absolutely nothing for granted within the creative process…a truly humbling experience for me to have had.
6. Imagine 50 years from now: what’s going on with theatre as an art form?
Sorry, but I no longer engage in hypotheticals. (It’s done wonders for my sense of well-being and staying ‘in the moment’.)
7. You’re off to a desert island and can bring one Shakespeare play and one Shakespeare quote, what’s it going to be?
(Okay…I’ll engage in this hypothetical—only because the responses came to mind immediately.) The play would be Pericles, and the quote is from Richard III (and I condense here):
Why should calamity be so full of words?
Let them have scope: though what they do impart
Help not all, yet do they ease the heart.
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