Page 31 - 2018 Festival Edition

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A modern retelling of Milton’s epic
N
PARADISE LOST
ABILITY CHOICE FREEWILL OPPORTUNITY LIBERTY RELEASE REDEMPTION ABILITY CHOICE FREEWILL OPPORTUNITY LIBERTY RELEASE REDEMPTION
GALEN SIMMONS
Sta Reporter
A poem fit for the stage.
After years of studying 17th-century English poet John Milton’s 10-book epic, that’s how award-win- ning playwright Erin Shields came to view Paradise Lost.
“It’s a story that we all know in some way or another. It’s the story of Adam and Eve, the story of the serpent, and the story of original sin.
“And Milton has that story being told from Satan’s perspective, which is incredibly theatrical, actu- ally. And originally, I think Milton had actually envisioned it as a play, but as he set out to work on it and write it, he was like, ‘No, no, I want this to be an epic,” the Montreal-based Shields said.
“But you really do feel the influence of Shake- speare. Satan’s almost like a Richard III-type char- acter – really dramatic. To me, it was just begging to be dramatized, but it took me a while to build up the courage to do it.”
Having first studied Paradise Lost in a third-year course focusing on Milton’s work at the University of Toronto, Shields’ Anglican upbringing and her resultant passion for canonical literature kept her coming back to the poem’s text, rereading it over and over and comparing it to Adam and Eve’s story in the Bible.
After graduating with a degree in English litera- ture, Shields used Paradise Lost as source material for two theatrical productions: a 13-artist multidis- ciplinary interpretation of the poem, and a one- woman show in which the playwright – who also happens to be a trained actor – examined the idea of original sin from a feminist perspective.
But it wasn’t until she found a stage at the Strat- ford Festival that Shields decided to transform the poem into a modern theatrical adaptation.
“My first step was to start with the text. I actu- ally read it out loud to myself, in part because I come from an acting background ... so I find when I’m writing, getting the words into my own body actually helps me understand it. But also, that’s how Milton wrote it. He was blind when he wrote this epic, so he would wake up in the morning and dictate it,” Shields said.
“So that’s how I started, and then as I went, I started seeing and hearing and envisaging this play, and after I’d sort of read a chunk of it, I’d do a bit
of writing on my own. And I started to hear Satan’s voice, and Satan, maybe not surprisingly, came to me as a female.”
As perhaps the most relatable character in Mil- ton’s poem, the poet’s male Satan spoke in Shields’ voice as she read the epic aloud to herself.
“A big part of it is that Satan’s the most interesting character, and it irritates me that all the most inter- esting characters are played by men. But there’s also something that made sense to me in the sense that Satan sort of stands up to God, and God is figured
as this sort of patriarch, and Satan is the rebel,” Shields said.
Along those same lines, Shields reimagined the relationship between Adam and Eve. In Milton’s poem, Shields said the pair fits into traditional gen- der roles, with Adam speaking to the angels in the garden while Eve prepares his meals.
continued on page 32
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