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Having a vision of the way ahead is
fundamental.
– Deborah Warner
The director who cannot collaborate
with his (or her!) actors has mistaken his (or her) vocation.
– Harley Granville-Barker
Young directors simply must from time
to time be hired by a theatrical institution, if only to correct
its inevitable tendency to fossilize.
– Tyrone Guthrie
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What follows are a few of the plays on which I wish to work.
This
is by no means an exhaustive list, although it is a fairly representative
sample of the kinds of plays that feed me.
Whatever You Will by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare particularly excites me because he reveals
so many facets of a relationship with just a few words: at the end of Much
Ado about Nothing's IV,i, Beatrice and Benedick, in the wake of Claudio's
humiliation of Hero, are finally able to tell one another of their love.
Their punning, playing and provocation are set aside by the gravity of the
situation and the intensity of their true feelings for one another. Having
seen her cousin shamed by Claudio's accusations, Beatrice turns to Benedick,
immediately on the heels of declaring her love for him, and demands, "Kill
Claudio." Less than forty lines later, he agrees. In this brief exchange,
we see the playfulness as well as the competitiveness between Beatrice and
Benedick, the intensity of the love that they share, their need to give
it voice after the brutality of Claudio's denunciation of Hero, and the
depth of their commitment when Benedick promises to challenge his friend
at Beatrice's request. Certainly there are many other playwrights who can
do this. But Shakespeare is, through this combination of the beauty of his
language and this specificity and intricacy of character, the fragment as
well as the pane. His work is the prism through which I begin to see.
Eventually,
I hope to direct every play in the canon, but among the plays I want to
direct soon are Titus Andronicus, Measure
for Measure, Henry V, Macbeth,
Romeo & Juliet, The Two Noble Kinsmen. I am also particularly interested
in directing the Q1 Hamlet (1603) ã taken on its own terms, and even within
the canon, this unloved and almost never produced text offers a different and
more visceral, muscular set of responses to murder and revenge than does
the play we think we know.
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Blood Relations by Sharon Pollock
A hypothetical day in the life, Blood Relations pays a visit to Lizzie Borden one hot afternoon ten years after her acquittal for the murders of her father and stepmother. The play is both whodunit, but also Lizzie as split subject. During a game of let's pretend, Lizzie steps back and watches the events of August 4, 1892 play out before her. She is protagonist, antagonist, housemaid and spectator, all at once. Blood
Relations is its own play, but it reminds me of Martin McDonagh's trilogy (see below) because it demands to know, it explores and examines what drives a person to violence.
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Still Life by Emily Mann
Emily Mann's Still Life is a play that does violence. The characters visit tremendous violence upon one another, and they have had tremendous violence done to them. Still
Life looks at lives in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, but its scope is wider. Mark participated in a war in the strictest sense of that word, but all of the characters are fighting a war. For their emotional selves. For their identities. For the way that human beings are supposed to treat one another as opposed to the ways that human beings often do treat one another. Still
Life is an opportunity to explore the parameters of violence, of war, in personal lives and in public ones.
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Beyond the Horizon by Eugene O'Neill
The challenge of Eugene O'Neill's work is to find both what is strong and redemptive, what is the very kernel of human nature, while also exploring fearlessly the dark crevasses, the pain and the brutality that he has written. Beyond
the Horizon looks at potential, both that tested and that wasted. It looks at the waste, the diabolical waste of self-sacrifice. The cost of the waste is beyond all measure. It is a beautiful, terrible journey; I await it eagerly.
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Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Arcadia is that brilliant combination of the
intellectually challenging and the emotionally provocative: I love
a play (or a novel or a piece of music) that breaks my heart at the
same time that it encourages my brain to an epiphany, to understand
something for the first time, to see something familiar in a new
way.
Other Stoppard plays that I would love to direct
include Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
Are Dead, Travesties, and The
Real Thing, although David Leveaux's
brilliant revival has probably ruined the play for me for the near
term: thrilled to my marrow by his production, I cannot, at the
moment, think of a single note to change.
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A Man's World by Rachel Crothers
It's amazing to me that Rachel Crothers has practically disappeared off our theatrical map. Prolific and smart, Ms. Crothers asks good questions about the role of women in America, about the double standards with which our culture is still rife. Some of the plays are dated now, but there remain powerful pieces of theatre waiting for their next opportunity in her long-neglected work.
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A Skull in Connemara and The Lonesome West by Martin McDonagh
I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Irish political
theatre and I grew up in an Irish Catholic household. I learned
both Republican fight songs and drinking songs before I could read. I
feel a strong affinity for much in the canon of the Irish theatre,
from the works of Lady Gregory through Sean O'Casey to Anne Devlin
and Marina Carr. I look forward to directing more of these plays.
When
I saw Beauty Queen of Lenane on Broadway, I was riveted (despite
Stephen Wadsworth's claim that it is nothing but a potboiler!). When
I read A Skull in Connemara and The Lonesome
West, I knew that Beauty
Queen had only begun to examine the murderous impulse that can grow
up inside a trapped or wounded individual, an individual who lacks
the means for other forms of expression. These plays are magical
in part because they are full not just of anger and vindictiveness,
but also human inconsistency and especially humor.
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