Barry Kraft, Actor

Barry Kraft with Kevin Lynch

Barry Kraft has acted and served as a dramaturg at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as well as at other theatres across the country.

Audio Excerpt

Barry Kraft and Kevin Lynch read from Julius Caesar

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Interview Excerpts

ON KEEPING SHAKESPEARE FULL

BARRY KRAFT: One of the things about people like Gielgud and Olivier is they had come from a long tradition of theater acting, before they went into the movies, and a lot of those theaters were really big. And if you’re going to get something across in a big theater, it’s different than having a microphone right in your face when you do this sort of thing.

So they brought over maybe things that weren’t so helpful when we started demanding more realism—what we call naturalism or realism—in—in films.

Okay. All right. Shakespeare didn’t invent his plots. Maybe two, maximum three. Right? So he took stories that were tried and true and worked for people and he put them into the medium of blank verse; poetry, if you will—right? For the most part. That was because his society loved that.

Now, we might say, well, now in the 21^st century, the stories are great, and a lot of the way he said it was great, but he said it at great length. You don’t have to talk about the red bull in four lines; we can all get the idea, it’s just a red bull—right? So why don’t we just really trim him? Which is usually done.

You know, when people get tired or—or lost, so we will get the best parts, the Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations parts of Shakespeare that have lasted, and we will do these plays and put a lot of modern stuff in. We’ll have like TVs on the set so people don’t feel that, you know, odd about what they’re listening to. And the stories are going to, like, work like gangbusters, even before Shakespeare got a hold of them. And maybe that’s the way we can make Shakespeare palatable to modern sensibility.

Now, I’ve been thinking with Shakespeare like opera. You know, for the most part people don’t understand what they’re hearing in opera because they read the—but they read the synopsis beforehand, like they do with—with Shakespeare—right? And I have a feeling that a lot of this blah-blah-blah-blah, blah-blah, blah-blah-blah-blah goes by like Holden Caulfield would say: you know, really a hell of a handsome guy and a great voice and everything but something isn’t stirring within us.

So we try to say cut the blah-blah-blah-blah out. Have some good close ups and throw some stuff in that weren’t even in the plays. Because I mean, for God’s sake, Shakespeare did that to his stories. He changed them like crazy. So then we have Shakespeare for our time.

Now, when you were talking about what writing is, I just thought of this great short story I read in The New Yorker recently, called Complicity, by Julian Barnes. And he—he doesn’t just say the red bull is a red bull; he goes off on tangents and he is, for me, a delight to read. I mean, that’s my taste. And I realize that my taste isn’t the normal taste.

I like my Shakespeare full; I don’t like directorial—what’s the word? Imposition? Maybe that’s too strong of a word—to make it reflect our times. I mean, well, for God’s sake, it has to reflect our times because we think he is saying something eternal. Except for the sexist and the racist and the dirty jokes—right? But there is something basically eternal that we think he’s the best. Give us—give us what Shakespeare said. It’s going to make us better, or bigger, human beings.

ON SHAKESPEARE THEN AND NOW

BARRY KRAFT: It was an aural society. And—I mean, that’s not to say that they were just doing stage—you know, readings. They would dress beautifully. You know, they would—clothes that weren’t their own. But often they would buy it from servants, who were given master’s clothes, after the master had died. And they—so when they walked out on stage, costumes were a huge, huge thing. But they—but the costumes were to enhance the actor who was walking there.

But there weren’t the special effects. Like you say, directors’ theater is really I think today not so much director but designers’ theater. So you have—you—you have things that Shakespeare didn’t have to worry about: lighting, sunlight—right. But now you can do a thousand things with artificial light.

A cast of thousands, how are you going to have them—in a movie or a big cast? He had like fifteen actors. Eleven to fifteen actors, doubling and tripling in roles, so you didn’t have that.

And you don’t have, like, all these wonderful props that we have today, you know, just like dazzling the eye. It’s the actor in this gorgeous costume in a blank stage under sunlight.

So, there were no people getting money for directors back then. There were no directors. I mean, Shakespeare undoubtedly told his company, you know, how to interpret things, but it—it isn’t the production that it is today.

Because it’s like opera, again. You go to see something—see an amazing set, you know, and—or an amazing way of looking at this new opera. So it’s like, “That’s how they’re doing it.” But the “it” to me is the most important thing. Not how they’re doing it, the “it” comes across.

Moya O’Connell, Actor

Moya O’Connell is an actor who has previously performed at the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Audio Excerpt

Moya O’Connell recites a speech from The Winter’s Tale

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Interview Excerpts

THE RELIGION OF THEATRE

MOYA O’CONNELL: I grew up on a farm, sort of as far away from the theater as you could possibly get, I guess. And—except that my parents are very—very literate, art-loving people. I guess that’s it. And they’re immigrants from Ireland and England. We grew up living off the land.

And I don’t know why I became an actor and actress. There wasn’t a seminal moment in it. I—I just always liked language.

Actually, I think this is—it’s—it’s something that I’ve seen in a lot of people I know. I was raised Catholic—I’m not—I’m a lapsed Catholic; I’m not a Catholic anymore. Sorry, Dad.

But—but a lot of people I know who are actors, or classical actors, have some sort of religious background in—is there an aurality that you have that you’re forced to go to this sort of cavern and hear these things incanted and rhythmically intoned within a community and I think that’s a—we share that. A lot of people I know. A wonderful classical actor in town, he’s the son of a—a minister and he grew up reading the King James’s Bible every night. So maybe that’s where it came from, that I. . . .

I despised going to church but something about the ritual of it and the words being intoned stayed me and so I think I grew into it. And I never—it wasn’t a big leap.

THE PERFECT TRIO

MOYA O’CONNELL: I just finished reading a book about Peter Brooks, who is an interesting man, of course, but he was talking about how it exists—Shakespeare exists on so many different levels: it exists on the narrative level, these great stories that he’s penned or, you know, taken; and it exists on a metaphorical level, his—the depth of his language; and then it exists on just a sonic level, where the words express what he’s trying to say, the same as in music.

And I think all three of those things come—when they come together, as an actor, it’s not something you can—you can think about too much but in the practice of it, that’s what you really try to put together. Telling the story, the depth—trying to articulate the depth of what he’s saying, and just, for lack of a better word, singing it or the way the words sound create what he means. It’s a perfect little trio.

BIGGER THAN US

MOYA O’CONELL: But this idea that it’s the director’s vision and it’s their show, it’s so-and-so’s production of—and they have this grand conceit behind it, I think—I think it falls short. I think the best directors of Shakespeares are the one who understand the heart of the story and who know how to move people around the stage and hire the right people in order to say that.

And once you start putting massive conceits on Shakespeare—I mean, I’ve done so many of those plays where there are these big conceits on. Sometimes they work, oftentimes they don’t. Well, oftentimes they do work and they’re very interesting. But always, guaranteed, every single time the play will bust forth and will bust out of the conceit. It’s too big to be put, for a play to be set in, you know, so-and-so time period with this parallel running. It’s—the plays—which is while they’re still done—they’re—they grandly appeal to all time.

So we try to constrain them, we try to put our stamp on them, but they will bust forth. And I think the real, the true artist, being humble enough to realize that . . .

. . . to realize that they are—they are bigger than us and we just need to—to tell the story. And to tell that story expertly, with expertise and skill. And heart. And that’s when you’re going to be moved, I think. Or challenged or stimulated.

Mary Hartman, Education Consultant

Mary Hartman is an education consultant who has worked with the Bard on the Beach Festival in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Interview Excerpts

PUTTING SHAKESPEARE UP ON A PEDESTAL

MARY HARTMAN: I really can’t stand it when people say things like Shakespeare was the greatest writer in history and things like that. And—and there are two reasons I really don’t like that, and one is I don’t know whether or not that’s true. I—I haven’t read everything ever written and I’m not going to get a chance to in my short life. So I don’t like pronouncements like that for that reason.

And I also don’t like it because then suddenly Shakespeare is up on this pedestal, as if he’s sort of this demigod that had nothing to do with us mere mortals down below. And I think the absolute opposite is the case. Shakespeare has everything to do with the merest of us mortals down here.

And that’s why it’s so important that we all get a chance to do Shakespeare, to hold Shakespeare, to—to sort of have Shakespeare belong to us. Shakespeare is not for the elites; Shakespeare is not for the experts; Shakespeare is for everyone. That’s everything he—I think everything he did—well, at least everything we know about what he did in his lifetime—shows us that he was writing for everyone. He was writing for the common man; he wasn’t writing for the elite.

And—and I think the very best experiences that we have of Shakespeare are those that include everyone, that involve everyone, that welcome everyone into the experience.

PLAYS, NOT WORKS

MARY HARTMAN: You know, he wrote plays, and actually in the Elizabethan time acting wasn’t called acting, it was called playing. And so to play is to do Shakespeare. And I think so often we forget that when we have to sit in straight lines in straight rows in a stuffy room and be quiet and be still and study Shakespeare. Oh, my God, is it work?

And isn’t it interesting that they’re called the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, when that’s not what he called them? He never called them works. And he wasn’t writing works. And yet now we approach these plays with such a sense of work associated with it.

And it—not only is it—it makes it a drudgery, it makes it so much to harder to understand it, whereas play—obviously it’s a lot more fun but I think far more importantly, it—it makes it easy to understand the plays. In all of their richness, in all of their complexity, with all of the—the, you know, sort of epic seriousness as well as the delights that are in the play.

DRAMA AS A DEMOCRATIC MEDIUM

MARY HARTMAN: Drama is the most democratic art form I know of and there are a couple of reasons for this. Unlike in a novel where there is an authorial voice, be it first person narrative or third person whatever, there is an authorial voice and you’re getting everything that you read through that voice.

In drama, every character speaks for himself or herself and there is no grand arbiter telling you what to think about anyone else. It’s just each person speaking for him or herself.

Then when you go to a performance, you know—and when you go to a movie, film is a very dictatorial medium. You basically look where the director wants you to look. And you look at it for as long as the director wants you to look at it then there’s a cut and you look at something else.

But in the theater, you can sit there in the theater and you can listen to Hamlet or you can pay attention to that really good-looking second lord on the left; it’s up to you. And then also you can hear what Isabella and Angelo, etc., what they have to say, and you’re going to have your own experience of what they say; you’re going to come away with your own thoughts and your own feelings.

And so it’s a very democratic medium. And I think Shakespeare takes that to such a delightful extreme, in terms of really providing us with incredibly complex, well-rounded, multi-dimensional characters, multifaceted characters, so that they—it isn’t easy to sort of dismiss anybody as, you know, that person’s evil, that person’s a monster. Even like the really—people who do horrendous things are very human.

Mike Stack, Coordinator, Young Shakespeareans

Mike Stack is the coordinator of the Young Shakespeareans program at the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Interview Excerpts

IDENTIFYING WITH THE CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEARE

MIKE STACK: And I’ve grown to love the Shakespeare, you know. And I think it is because he—he—more than any other writer, for the theater, in the English language—that I’m aware of—gets inside and gives little pieces of ourselves, you know. Little pieces of myself; I identify to the characters in his plays.

Each—sometimes—I know that he wrote characters—I mean, we write what we know. You know. That’s what all the people I know who writers or comics, or anything, they say, “Write what you know. Write what you know.” And Shakespeare wrote what he knew.

And you can sure tell when he was being deeply honest with himself, you know, about some deep feelings, because that’s the stuff that we now call the great quotes or the, you know, stuff that you—I mean, all the Hamlet stuff that people so often quote. You know. That’s Shakespeare, I think, exposing a bit of himself. And deep down inside, I mean, instincts and feelings and all that, I mean, they’ve been the same since time immemorial, I think. You know.

Like I like to tell the young people, I mean, craving someone’s sandwich during break time, you know, and figuring out how maybe you’re going to get a piece of that sandwich, comes—is—is the exact same thing as craving someone’s crown and wanting that crown. I think they come from the same basic instinct. You know, the stakes are just different.

THE RHETORIC OF SHAKESPEARE

MIKE STACK: I think once we get into things, for instance, like a Julius Caesar, where you think, “My God, it’s political rhetoric. How are the young people going to relate to this?” Well, I taught it this summer with ages eight through twelve and they were—you know, they started—so to see the discovery of them thinking mob mentality, that’s like that riot that happened in—that’s like that thing I saw on the news, that’s you know, political rhetoric to hear—and I mean, it wasn’t me, it was like a ten-year-old who said, “That’s kind of like what’s going on in the world today,” when Brutus, after the murder of Caesar, stood up in one of his big things and says, “Who will not love his country?”

And this whole discussion ensued about—and these are eight- through twelve-year-olds—talking about what they hear on the news coming from different parts of the world concerning, you know, affairs overseas from us right now, about the whole thing about patriotism and—and you know, the deed as far as loving your country goes.

FLAWED CHARACTERS

MIKE STACK: He writes what he knows and he writes beautifully flawed people. You know, I think that’s his greatest strength, is how flawed his characters are. You know. If he—if he were to write perfect characters I don’t think we’d be sitting here right now. He writes people who make grave mistakes.

It’s interesting, you know, the discussions that go around about some of the problem plays. Why would someone do that? Well, because they made a—you know, some people say that about the motives of some of Shakespeare’s characters, you know. Because why would the duke in Measure for Measure do that? It’s a problem play. Well, I think he’s a flawed individual and he makes mistakes, you know. And there’s no resolution at the end. Hmm. Interesting.

Christopher Gaze, Artistic Director & Founder

Christopher Gaze is the Artistic Director and Founder of the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Audio Excerpts

Christopher Gaze talks about the power of Shakespeare to express the human condition.

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Christopher Gaze recites Puck’s lines at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream

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Interview Excerpts

ON WHY SHAKESPEARE IS STILL IMPORTANT

CHRISTOPHER GAZE: It’s the stories, it’s the language, it’s the words. It’s all the things that the heartbeat of that language is—speaks: who we are and how we feel. He, in my view, shows us how we feel and shows other people how we feel. Very often it’s hard to describe how we feel about any particular thing, or the size of emotion that is actually—exactly does exist within us.

And when you start speaking Shakespeare and trying to express those things of warmth, of love, of hatred, of desire, of lust and so forth, it’s hard to find the words and we come up so chronically short. You quote Shakespeare and you don’t come short and you express the human condition brilliantly.

I always say to young people, if you’re ever short of things to say, in a nice card or a sad card or whatever it might be—expressing your condolences or expressing your joy or delight—and you need some good quotes, then open up your collected works of William Shakespeare and you will find the very, very best way to say it.

ON THE MAN OF THE MILLENIUM

CHRISTOPHER GAZE: I like to think of the fact that when we have five hundred and twenty young people, say, on a student matinee coming in, I will say to them before the show—and I talk to the audience generally before the show—I will say the wonderful thing—the communion that’s taking place today is that many of you are enjoying a Shakespeare play for the first time, but you are now part of a great tradition that hopefully your parents enjoyed, your grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on, until we get back down the line many generations and towards Shakespeare. It doesn’t take too many hops, actually, to get there.

And I think that that is something—it’s a—it—that links us back into Shakespeare, it links us back into storytelling. It—it’s—these are stories that our families and our bloodlines that go back in time have embraced—some more than others—over the centuries. And that links us to the past and I think that’s a beautiful thing, as it will link us now and into the future to our own children.

Because these are the stories of our lives. Harold Bloom has said—and it’s a great sort of opening comment, you know—there’s the Bible, there’s Shakespeare, then there’s everybody else. The invention of the human, how—in a sense he created how we—Shakespeare did; not Harold Bloom—how we—how we communicate, how we operate in the world; how we speak and so forth.

So the effect of Shakespeare on civilization is monumental, no matter—no surprise that he was the Man of the Millennium. That’s a pretty big deal, Man of the Millennium.

Frank X

Frank X

Frank X is an actor from Philadelphia. He has also performed the role of Malvolio in Twelfth Night with Seattle Repertory Theatre.

Audio Excerpt

Frank X talks about playing Malvolio

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Interview Excerpts

ON MALVOLIO

FRANK X: At the end of the play Malvolio is actually kept in a dark room and treated shabbily; he’s made to think that he’s insane, by these people who are playing a prank on him, and have sort of gulled him into thinking his mistress loved him and then that his mistress had him imprisoned.  And at the end he comes before her and in no short terms, berates her and demands to know why she would treat him the way she has – only to realize it was all part of a prank.

And his famous last line is that he’ll be revenged – on all of them.  And the question of tone comes in how he delivers that line.  Quite often it elicits laughs because people just sort of take it as a very silly thing to say.  And the wording can lead to that; “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you,” sounds rather childish.  So it can seem very impotent.  Or it can seem very weighty.

He’s been compared earlier in the play to a Puritan and we realize in a matter of years the Puritans are going to take over, in England, and actually close down the theaters.  So Shakespeare’s sort of clear-eyed view of Puritanism is sort of presaging what’s to come.  So to have that character say he’ll be revenged – indeed, they did get a bit of revenge on – certainly on the theater people.

ON THE GLOBE THEATRE

FRANK X: You know the way the theater was set up – the cheap seats were for the groundlings – they were the people who stood on the floor.  There were no seats on the groundling area.  And these were like Joe Schmo, just paying what he could to get in.  And then the higher ups, the lords or whatever, who would grace the theater then would be seated in more or less the sort of what we would call the balcony seating, around the edges.  And so he had sort of a dual audience:  there were the people who were actually sitting, who were very well educated, I would imagine; and then there were the groundlings, who probably had very little education at all.  So he had to please both — both audiences – with the same play, which is utterly amazing to me.

So, yes, you did have your high and your low humor, in the same play.  It’s not just like Hamlet was for the sophisticated people and Twelfth Night was for the unsophisticated.  They were both for the same audience.  And of course, he would take the plays later to the court, to the queen.  Elizabeth loved theater.  So it’s fascinating to think that he was trying to reach the greatest audience with each play he was writing.

I tend to think if Shakespeare were writing today he would be definitely writing for film, probably television, and he would probably have his hand in the Internet somehow.  [laughs]  You know, he would be finding and sort of nurturing audiences, the greatest audience he could find, I think.  You know, he wouldn’t be locked into simply theater, any more.  Which is an interesting thought.

ON PLAYING MALVOLIO AND BEING AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN

FRANK X: Being an African American of certain age, you can’t help but think of expressions that White America used to use, back in the day.  Expressions like, you know, “Know your place.”  And in fact, there is a line where Malvolio is imitating a lord, himself, and he says, “I know my place, as I would they should know theirs.”  And I wondered if people would sort of like really grab on to that.

The whole idea that the nobility is frowning on this servant that wants to rise above his place is, of course, nothing foreign in England, where they are so class conscious that that’s a weighty issue.  In America we don’t talk about class even though it’s important to us.  But the whole idea of the Black man wanting to rise above his place is – we have a history of that.  And I was wondering if people would bring that into the theater with them, which is – I mean, it wouldn’t damage the production at all, I don’t think, but people haven’t.  Haven’t mentioned it, anyway.

The other really potent image is, of course, Malvolio – Malvolio’s hands reaching through grating in the floor.  Which of course, to me, you can’t help but think of slaves, on slave ships.  But no one has mentioned that.  Yet.  I don’t think that’s a fault, either of the audience’s awareness, or even the production.  I just think it’s, hopefully, a sign of the times, that people aren’t mired in this sort of one-track thinking; that we are actually more open to an idea that we’ve been sort of speaking about for many years now – this notion of non-traditional casting.  You know?  But I wonder, indeed, if it’s lost on people, or they’re just not mentioning it.  Or it’s just not that important an issue.

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Scott Bellis, Actor & Artistic Associate

Scott Bellis is an actor and artistic associate at the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival.

Interview Excerpts

CONNECTING WITH DIFFERENT AUDIENCES

SCOTT BELLIS: You often have in his plays characters of all different social status, from kings and queens down to, you know, the commoners. And they’re all written to appeal to the class in which they exist, in which those characters exist.

So, you know, the groundlings for the most part would—would relate more to the common characters but they would still want to see the story line of the king and queen and what’s happening with those characters. And similarly, those in the royalty who would come to see Shakespeare’s plays would relate to those characters who were at the top-most of the society in which they exist within the play.

And I think that if—if you go to see a Shakespeare and it appears too highbrow and—and like it’s—it’s existing way up in a stratosphere that you can’t reach, then it hasn’t been presented very well.

I think that the key to making Shakespeare come alive is to make it accessible, to find ways to have it connect with the audience.

LANGUAGE THEN AND NOW

SCOTT BELLIS: Well, I think that’s part of the brilliance of Shakespeare and why he’s lasted so long is that first of all, the plays are well crafted. They’re well written. The language, of course, is—is—is central to everything. I think part of the reason these plays live on century after century is—is because of the language, especially in our modern world.

You know, now we’re in the twenty first century and I—I think that the English language is constantly being broken down because we live in an age of information. We live in an age of technology. A lot of the language we employ on a day-to-day basis has to do with—with technology and with the idea of communicating information. It’s technical in nature.

The—the English language and it’s—and the people who speak it are—are, I think, a little losing the ability to express themselves in a creative form, especially in the spoken word. And I think that Shakespeare is one of those venues where we can hang on to that. I think people have a desire to hear that; they have a desire to hear beautiful words, expressive words, words that are evocative, words that can create a mental image that is wonderful.

They can listen to a character speak and understand that character through the words he says, through—through the language, through the rhythm, through the poetry. And it—it just takes you to a different place than we generally are in our day-to-day lives and—and, yes, I think that’s part of the reason that Shakespeare lives on.

[…]

We are constantly bombarded from—by—by different types of media, whether it’s the newspaper, television, movies, and the radio.

And these are not bad things by any stretch of the imagination but I think what they’ve done is they’ve kind of turned us inward a little more, as we take more time to absorb the information that is—that is thrown at us on a daily basis. Whereas back then, there was no media, much of the population didn’t even read. So their focus could be more on expressing their inner world. They had more practice at it. They had more practice with expressing themselves, using their language—their spoken language.

And I think as a result, became very adept at it. Whether it was the higher classes trying to use rhetoric in the court or whether it was the barmaid in the tavern, you know, trying to get a—a patron out of his bar stool and back out onto the street. [Slight laugh.] You know. I think you would have seen a great variety of language used and—and they just lived in a more spoken-word kind of world.

Susan Patella

Susan Patella is a 6th grade English teacher at University Prep in Seattle where puts on a Shakespeare play each year with her students.

Audio Excerpts

Patella discusses how she talks about metaphors with her students. Metaphors do for language, she says, what espresso does for coffee.

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Go behind the scenes of a Romeo and Juliet rehearsal.

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Double, double, toil and trouble. Listen in as the witches rehearse Macbeth.

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Interview Excerpts

SHAKE HANDS WITH SHAKESPEARE

Sue Patella helps Macbeth with his crown

SUSAN PATELLA: And so when I decided that I wanted to start doing Shakespeare with kids that one is I really wanted them to have a broad exposure to a lot of different types of plays—of Shakespeare’s plays. But secondly I decided I wasn’t going to—I don’t want to say dumb down the language, but I was not going to use anything other than Shakespeare’s words. So I edit the scenes for length, sometimes appropriateness for that for the age group. Some things are not exactly appropriate. And then give them the language.

And it just started out like a little thing I did in my classroom. You know, okay, we’re going to put on our scenes and it was very—it was just basically like a little project that we did. And I honestly don’t know where we got the idea to start putting it on a stage. But it was like one of those, “Hey, let’s put on a show,” kind of thing. And we rented a stage and the idea was basically to do it for ourselves and for a few family members and that kind of thing.

But it’s just grown so much over the years that it really is—many of the sixth graders would say—the highlight of their sixth grade year. And they’re astounded that they can do it. But they can and they do it beautifully.

OPENING THE DOOR

SUSAN PATELLA: Here’s the language and what I feel like I do is I lead them to the door and I give them a way in. So if I teach them to understand the intricacies of the language and say ah, this is a metaphor, this is a simile. Oh, look, a hyperbole here; isn’t that great? Or look at the way he puts these two thoughts together.

If I give them ways to see it and I just leave them there, it’s not my responsibility to push them through the door; I just sort of put them at the door and then give them the way in. And some will enter in and some won’t. Or will just stand at the door and watch the other people go in.

And I think that’s why it works so well to do this with sixth graders is because they’re pretty fearless. They go, “Sure, I’ll do it. Yeah, okay.” Give me the bungee cord, you know, sure. I’ll jump off this.

STEVE ROWLAND:  Now why is that? Why are sixth graders good at that?

SUSAN PATELLA: Well, I think like in some way they’re—okay, just a couple of thoughts came. One is that they still like to play at that age. And I try to get them to transfer the meaning of play, like playing baseball in a field, to play, like being a player on a stage. And so they still like to play.

And they’re at that point in their lives where they’re willing to venture out. They need to know you’re there but they go, “Okay, all right. I’ll do this. I’m going to check to see if you’re here behind me, but I’ll do this.” And they’ll step out.

Not too much further down the line, and they’re so aware, they become so much self-conscious and they open up a social life that in some ways inhibits them more. You see? They open up into a social life, but then their sense of what they can do and can’t do kind of closes up because it all is in relationship to that social life.

METAPHORS

SUSAN PATELLA: The beauty that you’re talking about makes me think about a metaphor. For example, one that I share with the kids: in Romeo and Juliet, is the east and Juliet is the sun—to teach them the concept of metaphor and to say, well, you know, where is the metaphor there?

And they say—they know what a metaphor is so they say Juliet is the sun. I said well, why did he say that? Why didn’t he say that, you know, she’s this sort of luminous light, you know, and warmth and all that thing in the night? All he has to say is those four words: Juliet is the sun. And look at what’s in those four words that’s way beyond any description with a lot of words.

I tell them, I said that figurative language is like the espresso of language. So, you know, you think about what is espresso to everyday language? Well, it’s really rich, it’s condensed, it’s strong, you don’t need very much of it to, you know, make the impact. So that’s what figurative language is. And so isn’t that amazing?

And then to say well, look at how often you do that in your lives, too. They’re always using hyperbole and similes and that sort of thing to describe what’s going on with them. So it’s there. I think you just need to call their attention to it.

Andre Pleuss, Sound Designer

Andre Pleuss is a sound designer and composer who has worked with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Interview Excerpts

BEGINNINGS IN SOUND DESIGN

ANDRE PLEUSS: I went to the University of Chicago, in Chicago, Illinois—the great city of Chicago. And I studied music theory and composition there and—as a minor concentration—and I had a major concentration in European history and at the same—while—while an undergraduate there I started working for the student theater in various capacities.

And in my final year there I ended up as a sort of marriage of, between my European major and my music theory—my music theory composition minor, writing a rock opera with a fellow—another student who is a very good friend of mine to this day. We work together all the time. A guy by the name of Ben Sussman.

And we did this adaptation of Dante’s Inferno, as a rock opera. It was terrible but we had a great time. Worked on it for a year and it was my—it served as my research on—on—on the Divine Comedy and was, you know, it sort of fulfilled my European concentration and then, you know, my work adapting it for the stage and writing the music for it sort of did the work of my music theory and composition minor. So.

That—in the aftermath of that—and that—that was my final year there—it made me really want to do more with music and theater. Not to say that we wanted to write more musicals but we were just interested in the role that music plays in plays.

I didn’t know at the time that there was a category of theatrical design called sound design. But I knew I wanted to write music for the theater. And over time we realized that, oh, wow, you know, while we’re interested in music, directors and playwrights were interested in also ambient sound effects, like literal sound effects.

The first time somebody asked us to work with sound—I remember it was rain in a play—it took us a while to kind of get our heads around the idea that they were literally asking for literal rain. [Slight laugh.] And we were thinking, you know, what’s the musical metaphor for rain, and you know, and—and working from a composing—composer’s standpoint.

THE SPECTRUM OF MUSIC

ANDRE PLEUSS: Over time, you know, we realized that—you know, if you think of it as a spectrum on—on one end of the spectrum music in the most traditional sense, you know—harmony, polyphony, multiple parts, counter points. You know, they are pieces of music that we are writing for plays, that are for trend—that are dances in a Shakespeare play, songs in a Shakespeare play, songs in any play. Transitional music to cover—to cover big scene shifts, you know, in scene breaks, and they are pieces of music, you know, and they range from anything from a small chamber ensemble to a rock and roll band to a jazz trio, whatever, depending on whatever the—the needs of the show are.

And then on the other end of the spectrum it’s just straight up sound design and we’re doing a play that’s sort of maybe say it’s rooted in naturalism and there is a lot of environmental sound that’s part of the design, you know, and that—that’s us curating, finding in sound effects libraries or going out and recording our own sound effects, editing them, and integrating them into the piece.