 “To Embrace the Possible”
In Conversation with Julius Caesar director, John Sipes, with Don Rothman, UCSC Professor and SSC Board member.
Don Rothman: What attracts you to SSC in 2009?
John Sipes: It’s my profound admiration for Marco Barricelli that prompted me to accept his offer to direct at SSC. I imagined that any institution with which Marco was affiliated had to be strongly influenced by his rigorous artistic standards and ardent aspirations for achieving excellence. Having worked with Marco on several projects in the past, I am familiar with what he expects of himself as an artist, and I find that example inspiring.
DR: What does directing in Santa Cruz this summer give you the opportunity to do artistically?
JS: Of course, I have been given an opportunity to examine one of Shakespeare’s most compelling tragedies in an environment that is new to me and one that has a unique combination of attributes and challenges. Directing at its simplest level is about problem solving. So, every theatre one works in presents opportunities for exercising one’s stagecraft skills in ways unique to that theatre. Although I have worked in outdoor theatres much of my career (12 years at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival and 14 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival) I’ve never worked in one quite like SSC’s Redwood Glen. Here the intimate relationship between the natural environment and the artificial elements of the stage is truly unique. I can’t say I’ve ever worked in a theatre in which giant redwood trees are part of the playing space! I think working with the mixture of natural and artificial elements presented by the Glen will be an artistic challenge unlike one I have ever experienced.
DR: How to turn a serene redwood grove into an ominous site haunted by potential and actual theatrical violence?
JS: I look forward to discovering how best to wed the voice and energy of the play with the voice and energy of the Glen.
DR: How would you describe your planning process as a director?
JS: I start with the play. I read it over and over until my imagination is stimulated by the story, characters and ideas presented in the play. Usually in this process I will arrive at what I consider to be the central themes, and from there I will begin to develop ideas about how I might stage the play.
DR: What does that involve?
JS: Typically, but not always, I’m guided by several strong images that will eventually serve as the foundation upon which a production can be built. With Julius Caesar, for example, I had images of classical marble and monumental architecture representing reasoned and principled governance. These are juxtaposed with the dark shadows of political conspiracy and the bright, red blood that flows from the deaths of Caesar and others in the play. Marble drenched in blood. I then share these ideas and images with the design team who transform them into sets, costumes, lights and music.
DR: What can our audiences expect?
JS: When Marco approached me about directing Julius Caesar, he told me he wanted an “in your face” production of the play. I intend to deliver that for him. The play will be set in our time; the actors will wear contemporary clothing, and the stage design will reflect contemporary values.
DR: A society in the throes of profound upheaval?
JS: Yes. I intend to highlight the central political theme of the play – the crumbling of the republic and the rise of tyranny – and present in clear theatrical gestures the personal and social destruction that results from the misguided actions of a few men who, convinced their motivations are noble and selfless, attempt to rectify the situation through conspiracy and murder, but in the end bring about nothing but more bloodshed and destruction. The actions of “these good men” are a waste. Nothing is resolved by the assassination of Caesar. One tyrant is deposed, but clearly another one will rise in the person of Marc Antony. Caesar’s murder is an immoral act that simply leads to further violence and civil disorder.
DR: Is the play a mirror in which to see ourselves?
JS: It requires little imagination to see how Julius Caesar is particularly relevant today. We have just passed through a period in our society in which our leaders attempted in both covert and overt ways to essentially dissolve our democratic government and establish a government in which authority was invested in a few very powerful individuals. The results of our previous administration’s machinations were in many ways as violent as the actions of the conspirators in Julius Caesar – look at the condition of our country now. We are crumbling as a result of the immoral deeds of a few. Our economy is in shambles, we are conducting two wars and many of our citizens are without jobs, healthcare and education. In many ways, our democracy has experienced a blow not unlike the Republic of Rome depicted in Julius Caesar. I hope the audience recognizes the similarities.
DR: SSC audiences will be alert to those connections, I’d say. Which elements of the play, if any, are sacred, and which are more available to artistic interpretation, open to creative twists?
JS: I actually do not consider any aspect of Shakespeare’s plays sacred. I view them as scripts written to be spoken and embodied by actors and adapted to the demands of the venue in which they are staged and the audience for whom they are performed.
DR: Available to a diversity of audiences then?
JS: Definitely. Shakespeare’s plays have suffered immeasurable damage in the hands of academics who have, in their attempts to explain and analyze them, made them dry and unappealing for generations of students and theatre-goers. Undoubtedly, theatre directors have also inflicted their own kind of damage on the plays in their attempt to make them “relevant” and suitable for a contemporary audience. Personally, I am not interested in highly conceptual takes on the plays, but I am interested in finding ways to open the plays for a contemporary audience and guide them through the stories and language to a meaningful experience, one that is unique, fresh, active and compelling. To that end, I freely cut and adapt the plays so that, in my judgment – which can admittedly be flawed – the language is accessible and the story is as clear as possible.
DR: This reminds me of something you wrote in your early notes to your collaborators about giving audiences of Julius Caesar the experience of being plebeians, those addressed by Brutus and Marc Antony’s rhetoric.
JS: In Act 3 of the play, after Caesar’s death, Brutus and Marc Antony address the people of Rome. In our production, Brutus and Marc Antony will deliver their orations directly to the audience. I hope this has the effect of engaging the audience more fully in the moment of the story when in fact the people of Rome are called upon to make a choice – to either remain calm and support Brutus, or to follow Marc Antony’s urgings and avenge Caesar’s death.
DR: Why theatre at a time of economic crisis?
JS: We as Americans in 2009 are victims of our crass materialism and greed. This economic crisis is of our own making. I feel fortunate that we are in the hands of a president who is not deflecting us from the magnitude of the problems that confront our society. President Obama is calling upon us to change our wasteful ways and find new and profound solutions to the causes of our economic woes. In my estimation, one of the most powerful methods Obama uses to encourage change is an intangible one. He uses his gift for poetic oratory to inspire hope, to lift us out of the confines of “the impossible” in order that we might embrace “the possible.” This too is what Art can do for us. I think our nation is more in need of a renewal of spirit than a renewal of economic prosperity. President Obama is trying to heal our nation’s spirit, and those of us in the arts must try to do the same, especially in these troubling times in which our citizens are experiencing so much pain and fear.
DR: I’m grateful for your vision and really eager to see Julius Caesar in the Glen.
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