Libby Appel, Artistic Director Emerita
Libby Appel
Libby Appel is the former Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Audio Excerpt
When she was younger, Libby Appel liked a stage filled with visual effects. Now, she prefers to have theatre stripped down to its essence: telling a story.
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Interview Excerpts
ON BEING A STORYTELLER
LIBBY APPEL: I do believe that that is my primary responsibility, as a director, is as a storyteller. You know, when I feel as if I’ve – I mean, I’m always very critical of my work and I’ll look at something and I’ll say, “How did I let that happen?” Or – but the biggest compliment someone can give me, particularly in a big Shakespeare play, but really almost in anything I do, will say, “Ah, the story was so clear!” I had – in Shakespeare – “I had no trouble following it. The story was so clear.” Well, guess what? I worked really hard to get that story clear. I gave you a visual that supports the clarity of the story. Rather than detracts from the clarity of the story.
I mean, when I was younger I think I was much more into a cluttered stage and a lot of visual effects to make something happen. I think I was always interested in storytelling but I think as my life has gone on I realized, “Take it away. Take it away.” Less, less, less. It’s the actor and the stage and some light to focus how you’re thinking. Obviously, I want very beautiful things on that stage, but it’s the – it’s how the actor and his partner have come to terms with what the playwright is writing, and really believes it and speaks it with skill and passion, that tells the story – from moment to moment to moment. So you spend seven weeks in rehearsal working moment to moment: What is that moment about? You can’t generalize that idea. It has to specific, it has to be rooted in something – the personal.
ON THE SHAKESPEARE MUSCLE
LIBBY APPEL: Saying Shakespeare is extremely difficult. It’s another muscle. It’s like the difference between – I – I’m not very good at athletics, but you can understand that every sport takes a particular talent and skill base in order to perform it well. Well, Shakespeare – you know, just any actor can’t do Shakespeare. You have to have the – the verbal facility, the literally, the tongue and the mouth and the vocal breath support to be able to do it, and then you’ve got to have the brains to understand what you’re saying and the imagination to hook what you’re saying to something personal and real – real imagery.
ON THE IMAGE OF A PLAY
LIBBY APPEL: I always have a strong image; not how it should look, but what the play is saying. I can see it in a kind of visual way. Not the way the designer should wind up with it. I’ll give you an example: Winter’s Tale — which I’m doing this season — I knew that the play was about the seasons, rather than two different places. Bohemia and Sicilia are usually, in productions – very often, in productions of the Winter’s Tale, are two very, very opposite worlds that look as if it’s two different plays and sometimes that works wonderfully.
But I – I knew that at the – for me – that at the heart of the play was the whole idea that it was – even though it was sixteen years, it was really one season. A season going through the seasons of nature because it’s nature and art combined in this play. And I also saw the kind of impressionistic palette that a Monet or – not so much Van Gogh because Van Gogh was a little rougher in treatment – but Monet is so subtle and what he paints in dabs of light – lots of little dabs of light – if you step back you see the whole picture, when you step up close you only see those dabs of light. And it makes you see the idea in a totally different way because of the way he’s captured the light. So, in other words, it’s not a haystack, it’s something marvelous that can — extraordinary because of the light on it and the different seasons.
