The Shakespeare Syndrome

Thumbing through the Arts First guide and trying to figure out how to spend this weekend feels a lot like picking classes all over again. There are simply too many attractive choices, spanning a range from the familiar a cappella jams and orchestra concerts to the lesser-known stylings of Lowell House's Senegalese drummers and the Madrigal Quintet. For Shakespeare fans, though, the choice is even tougher, as this weekend and the next will see four different productions of the Bard's work going up around campus. The upcoming shows offer perspectives ranging from a minimalist treatment of Romeo and Juliet to an elaborate staging of Trollius and Cressida as a post-apocalyptic desert rave. "I can't think of a more different set of productions than the four that will be going up in the next two weeks," said director Josh Edelman '00, whose version of Twelfth Night is set in the Beat and Jazz Era culture of northern California.

These shows represent a welcome and long-overdue change after a fall season that passed without a single Shakespeare production on campus. It never rains but it pours, though, and many are wondering what caused this sudden flood. Edelman credits the plethora of Shakespeare to "Coincidence, as well as the general Arts First swelling and the relative ease of doing a production late in the semester." Though underclass students may wonder what is so easy about finding free time late in the semester, for senior directors the time could not be better for one last show. "I'd directed a play last spring, and I wanted to try one more play before I graduated," said David Egan '00, who is directing King Lear.

For the most part, though, the directors' choices to do Shakespeare need no explanation beyond the excellence of the plays. "Why do many Shakespeares go up? [Because] he's a damn good playwright," said David Corlette '96, one of the designers of Trollius and Cressida's rave-style lighting. Director Martijn Hostetler '00 agreed, saying "I think people choose do to Shakespeare because he's a terrific writer. Many times during our rehearsal process we'll read over a certain passage a couple of times, and marvel at how wonderfully complex and expressive it is."

For directors, the nearly 400-year-old texts are both a challenge to contemporary theater and a tremendous opportunity to make a unique artistic statement. Though simply putting on one of Shakespeare's plays is no mean feat, putting together a show which is new and exciting from texts that are such a familiar part of our cultural landscape presents quite a challenge to directors. "It's a monumental challenge just to get the play on its feet untouched... but the plays are a kind of common cultural currency, you can use them as a jumping-off point for a whole range of theatrical styles," Edelman said.

For King Lear, Egan's goal is to get down to the foundations of the text, stripping away all that is superfluous to the characters and their situations. Though the production will be largely in a traditional style, he says that the differences which separate his version from a more conventional treatment are in a large part a matter of set design. Egan claims that the set will allow the show "to slowly strip away layer after layer leaving nothing but barren nakedness at the end." It is also important to him to challenge the notion that Lear requires a level of style and maturity which is beyond the abilities of undergraduates. "I've learnt that it isn't the age, but the number of incredibly strong actors," he said.

Martijn Hosterler's Trollius and Cressida is by far the most ambitious of the productions that will go up in the next week. Hostetler was tired of seeing Shakespeare's work spoiled by stuffy productions. "I'd seen too many Shakespeare plays treating the text in this academic and really esoteric fashion that really inhibited the audience's experience," he said. He decided that Trollius deserved something entirely different. His concept is to set the text within a post-apocalyptic desert rave, an environment that he feels will underscore the pomp and vanity of many of the characters. For Hostetler, "there is no better way to present a text that is not well known than in a manner that is visceral and visually exciting."

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the minimalist production of Romeo and Juliet directed by Kathryn Walsh '00. The show will take place on the steps of Memorial Church and will employ no set and limited costuming and props. For Walsh, working under limited conditions is actually somewhat liberating as it "allows us to use the text as a starting place rather than some time period."

It is being put on by the Hyperion Theater Company, a theater group formed five years ago by students in History and Literature Lecturer Jennifer Carrell's first-year seminar on Shakespeare and Performance. The group's goal is to make Shakespeare more accessible and to perform his works in unusual settings.

Rounding out the group is Josh Edelman's Americanized, Beat Era Twelfth Night. Looking into the text, Edelman saw the opportunity for such an updated setting in the freewheeling idiosyncrasies of the characters. "They're all nuts, absolute nuts," he said. "The play seemed to me to have a kind of giddy (and ultimately foolish) individualism that only made sense to me in Northern California." To him, the wide-open world of the Beats and the Jazz Age provides the backdrop necessary for one of Shakespeare's more outdoor comedies.

Though they come at the busiest time of year for the arts at Harvard, these are four very promising productions, each featuring the talents of one of the school's most experienced directors. While even the most intrepid Shakespeare fan will probably not have time for all four, any of them would certainly be worth checking out during the bustle of Arts First or the calm of Reading Period.