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Friday, Aug 29, 2008
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Swansong: Seattle Shakespeare 'In Repertory' |
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| Swansong: Seattle Shakespeare 'In Repertory' | ||
| by Miryam Gordon - SGN A&E Writer
SWANSONG WRITTEN BY PATRICK PAGE DIRECTED BY STEPHANIE SHINE STARRING TIM GOURAN, BRANDON WHITEHEAD, IAN BELL SEATTLE SHAKESPEARE COMPANY JANUARY 7-23 SEATTLE CENTER HOUSE THEATER January is Seattle Shakespeare Company's "Counter Season." Not a lunch counter, but a reverse to the usual season habit in Seattle of attending theater from Thursday through Sunday, most places. So, it's counterintuitive, although people are used to going to all kinds of other events on Monday nights, like sports. Adding a show to a full season is risky and fairly unusual. Shakes' usual season is four plays long. But Stephanie Shine, the Artistic Director, was so taken by this new play, Swansong, that she had to find a way to include it in the 2007-2008 season. Shakes shares its Seattle Center House Theater space with Book-It Repertory. They take turns having their seasons, including time for rehearsals and set building and all the other parts of creating what you see on stage. The only reasonable way to do that was to have performances on the "off" nights. Chamber Julius Caesar (a slightly shortened, compressed version of Julius Caesar) will be performed from Thursdays to Sundays and Swansong will be performed from Sundays through Wednesdays. There are two different casts, so that doesn't mean actors are working seven days a week for this. But the challenge is to draw a full audience on days audiences are not primed for attending theater. It's called "repertory" meaning having one theater running a couple of plays at the same time so they rotate. Some theaters have several spaces, so they have more than one production at the same time, but they're not running in repertory, since it's not on the same stage. What makes this play special enough to warrant turning your season upside down to produce it? Partly, it's the story, about the tumultuous friendship of William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, another contemporary poet and playwright of their time. Shakespeare has been dead for seven years, and his plays are being forgotten. But John Heminges wants to publish his "folio" (all 36 works of William Shakespeare) and he needs Ben Jonson to write essentially an introduction. Ben was more famous than Shakespeare was at the time. The play fantasizes about Ben's fear that if he writes this introduction, Shakespeare will become more famous and then Ben's work will be left in obscurity. Since many know Shakespeare, even today, and most don't know Jonson, that fear wasn't unjustified. Ben Jonson's introduction was like Oprah's today. If Jonson said 'read it', attention would be paid. Clearly, Ben Jonson's book-club entry was very successful. Shine tells the story this way: "David Pichette (a great Seattle acting fixture, as "Scrooge" and many memorable parts) asked me to come to his home to hear this play out loud. I sat on a couch in his living room and was delighted to hear actors Tim Gouran, Brandon Whitehead, and Ian Bell transport me into an experience of spending time with William Shakespeare, the human being. "When you see a play written by Shakespeare, you get to know him as an artist, but even if Swansong is one author's imagination, it's still like seeing him as a real person. And to see Ben Jonson and explore their relationship. It feels like it's a romance, in a Shakespearean sense, not a romantic love, creating the world in how it could be or should be, rather than how it is. Patrick Page (the playwright) wrote me in an email, 'Ultimately the play is written in the spirit of Shakes' great romances, worlds in which forgiveness and reconciliation is possible in spite of many obstacles. Shakespeare had lived and lost enough by this time to know that this is not how the world is but how it might be.' It's been lovely to talk to a playwright; most of my playwrights are dead&." Shine talks more about her admiration for the play and the three actors she heard read it for the first time. "The play references many Shakespeare works and a chunk of audience will recognize portions, like Julius Caesar, a wooing scene from As You Like It. You don't have to have that background (of knowing the plays). It's funny, heart-wrenching and a beautiful journey of friendship. "These three actors I'm fond of, but also I was honoring the efforts they made to help me hear this play. Actors are sometimes given short shrift and sometimes don't get the opportunity to actually do the parts after they've put effort into them. So, it's very important to me to honor the actors." "It's my tenth anniversary as the artistic director and I wanted something that is a little crowning achievement to cap off this saga of turbulent history in a theater. It's an anniversary gift to our subscribers. We have other fun things planned for next year, but that's a secret for a little while longer." Theater is never easy to support in Seattle and the last couple of decades have shown that, as companies such as The Bathhouse, The Group and The Empty Space have shut down production. Shine describes some of the ups and downs of her ten years at Shakes. "The company has grown 1000% in its budget, from two plays to something that works throughout the school year, has budget of just under $1 million, and employs many people. It's wonderful how constant we're becoming in the community. "Ten years ago, we were at Westlake, we had a one room office, no staff, nobody was paid for a long time, we were in debt and barely hanging on. It was exciting to have the idea of creating Shakespearean productions for our community, but it was a pretty harrowing experience to pull it off. I've always had a few people who are very supportive and have a calling to do this work, do Shakespeare. Sometimes, if you're so in love with what you're doing, you don't know how not to keep going. There were a few times when I didn't know if this theater would exist or not, but I had a few very important board members who kept us going through those growing years. Sometimes, board members served as staff members, like doing accounting and other things that we didn't have staff for and really kept us going. "Artistic turning points for us include the talent that we've been able to attract and now we're developing ?associate artists' that continue to work with us year to year. Richard II was done without a set, because we couldn't afford one. We called it a 'bare stage' production, and it was during a time when, every day, I didn't know if the doors would be open. Peter Crook played Richard and it was camaraderie of the company that made it happen regardless. The company of actors was so enthusiastic and giving and we had a wonderful production and were able to keep our doors open. Other notable productions for me are King Lear with Kurt Beattie and an all-male Taming of The Shrew that I was very proud of." Shine mentions another reason she likes doing this repertory production. "I hope the community will support this idea of us being open seven nights a week. I think it's an important development for Seattle. We just lost our ranking of 'most literate' city in America to Minneapolis, so maybe this will improve our ranking." |
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