Adriano Shaplin

Adriano Shaplin

Adriano Shaplin is a member of the Riot Group theater ensemble. He previously served as the International Playwright in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Interview Excerpt

ON THE POETRY OF SHAKESPEARE

ADRIANO SHAPLIN: The fact that playwrighting is poetry, the fact that it’s dialogue, the fact that it’s written for the human voice, and the fact that it tells a story?  Those are my four basic rules and those are absolutely – those are rules that are defined by Shakespeare.

I mean, if anything I would like to return – I would like more poetry, you know what I mean.  More of a consciousness that playwrighing is writing for the human voice, that it’s music.  It’s not something that you do behind a desk and you – you know, you print your script fresh off the – off the printer.  I mean, it’s about the human voice, it’s about music.  And that’s what Shakespeare was about.  That’s what my plays are about, are about writing new poetry, you know, new narrative poetry for the human voice.

[…]

Well, I mean, I — when I talk about poetry, I mean, I’m inspired by – I come up having read Allen Ginsberg when I was a kid — you know what I mean?  So the poetry that I inject into my plays is as much about, you know, the Beat Generation as it is about the Elizabethan stage, you know.

What I borrow from Shakespeare is his deeply theatrical — I mean, you know, my thing is I don’t want to make movies, I don’t want to make television; I want to make theater – with people who sweat, you know what I mean?  And spit – on stage – with an audience that has to show up and put their pants on and hold their bladder and be a part of a communal experience.  I mean, that’s what theater’s about.  I’m trying – that’s what Shakespeare is about.

That’s why we’re tearing down the RSC stage and building a thrust stage – to bring the action closer to the audience, to make it a deeply theatrical experience, in the twenty-first century, to go and see plays.  And that’s what – that’s what I’m trying to do.