Page 33 - 2018 Festival Edition

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Looking through a different lens
THE TEMPEST; THE COMEDY OF ERRORS; JULIUS CAESAR ABILITY CHOICE FREEWILL OPPORTUNITY LIBERTY RELEASE REDEMPTION ABILITY CHOICE FREEWILL OPPORTUNITY LIBERTY RELEASE REDEMPTION
BRUCE URQUHART
Managing Editor
Some might call it synchronicity.
And for Stratford Festival artistic director Antoni Cimolino, it could definitely be called a happy coincidence: Three directors indepen- dently working on three di erent Shakespear- ean productions while embracing a cross-gen- der approach to key casting decisions.
While inevitably there were conversations during the early development of this season’s productions, there was never any overarching direction from Cimolino about casting. The directors – Cimolino himself, Keira Loughran and Scott Wentworth – had decided to explore the rich possibilities o ered by cross-gender casting on their own.
“It wasn’t planned,” Loughran said. “We all came to it in our own ways and it’s articulated di erently. I would say it’s come out of an ongoing conversation and an increasing con- sciousness and curiosity about how to include more women in your shows.”
Cimolino’s motivation for casting a Prospera in this season’s production of The Tempest was a simple one – an opportunity to work with the incomparable Martha Henry, one of our great- est living actors. For Loughran, her decision to direct The Comedy of Errors coalesced around a gender-fluid interpretation of the text. Wen- tworth’s inspiration came from a chat with Cimolino about the artistic potential of gender parity in his casting of Julius Caesar.
“Stratford has been a leader in terms of the examination of these plays in the world today,” said Cimolino. “I feel that it’s important to do them with nuance and it’s important to inter- pret them carefully. But also, interpret them
with creativity and imagination and with an eye to a changing world.”
While certainly not new – Charlotte Cushman famously played Romeo opposite her sister in an 1845 production of the classic romance – cross-gender casting in Shake- speare remained a rarity as recently as six years ago. When Phylidda Lloyd mounted an all-female production of Julius Caesar in 2012 at England’s Donmar Warehouse, many purists dismissed her staging as nothing more than novelty. Its success – and the productions that have come in its wake – have shown just how powerful cross-gender casting can be, looking at Shakespeare’s canon through a di erent lens while helping redress the gender imbalance in classical theatre.
“I feel it’s really important that we explore new avenues, stylistically and creatively, of interpreting the classics,” Cimolino said. “... An exploration of gender in these plays is happen- ing around the world.”
Shakespeare, of course, was constrained by the social mores of his time. Simply, women were prohibited from appearing on stage, prompting acting troupes to hire young men to play the female roles. Of course, that necessity meant cross-gender casting was always a part of Shakespeare’s tradition but it also, by that same necessity, limited the number of female roles in the plays.
“Shakespeare had certain limits,” Cimolino explained. “He couldn’t hire actresses, so his exploration of the women in the canon was limited. It had to be. His only real professional actors were men and ... the young boys who played women.
“But we’re in a situation now where some of our most gifted artists are women and these parts are so rich. ... Shakespeare is such a great writer. He was writing about people – it’s resonant and full, and more is discovered by an exploration of gender than is lost.”
THE TEMPEST
This year’s Stratford Festival production of The Tempest very much hinged on the casting of Henry as the sorceress Prospera. Cimolino wanted the opportunity to work with an actor of her immense gifts in one of the greatest roles in theatre.
Unlike the approaches taken by Loughran and Wentworth, Cimolino simply changed the character’s gender, making the exiled sorcerer into a sorceress.
Not without precedent – Dame Helen Mirren took on the role of Prospera in a 2010 film adaptation directed by Julie Traymor – the gender reversal made sense to Cimolino, given his own interpretation of the play.
“It struck me that, in Corialanus and in the Scottish play, there’s this male warrior code – that the person who should be king is the person who can plant an axe in the head of the next person because the strongest rule,” Cimolino said. “But people who do that for a living aren’t necessarily good governors. So the behaviours that Prospero exhibits are traditionally what we would call more feminine behaviours.”
Intent on self-improvement, the sorcerer spends time in the library, learning the spells he hopes will deliver both freedom from exile and revenge, while becoming closer and closer to his daughter Miranda. It’s these more reflective qualities, including a capacity for forgiveness, that helped Cimolino understand this production’s Prospera.
“During Shakespeare’s time, the king he would have known the most would have been Queen Elizabeth. ... I think Shakespeare was writing about Elizabeth – writing about a ruler that ... wasn’t a belligerent male but instead an intelligent, reasoned, scholarly and, in this case, female leader.”
While this interpretation served as the creative starting point for the director, it’s the collaboration with Henry that has been the true privilege, Cimolino said.
“The exploration of Propero with Martha Henry, who arguably is our greatest living actor, is yielding brilliant, brilliant discov- eries,” the director said. “It’s been such a pleasure working on it and such a pleasure working with Martha.”
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