Robynn Rodriguez, Actor
Robynn Rodriguez is an actor at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She portrayed Constance in King John.
Audio Excerpt
Rodriguez explores Constance’s speech at the end of King John.
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Interview Excerpts
MAKING SHAKESPEARE COME ALIVE
ROBYNN RODRIGUEZ: The beauty of it is when you’re open to – when you can really be courageous and stay open to whatever happens, it just – the – it really – it starts to live. The words are the most natural thing that would come out of your mouth. You really are those people. You’re really having this conversation, in this moment in time. It makes all the sense in the world. And on every level. And any – the anticipation of how somebody’s going to respond, any flubbing of the text – just not getting your mouth around the words – all those things – boom, we’re back at square one. Not really, but kind of – we are doing a play. We’re not really there, now.
But there are those times when it just sings. And you get to go to some amazing place. Together. As you try to render this story to those people out there in the dark.
We’re all in a big old room together, really, when we do this plays – it’s just the audience and the actors, they’re just all a group of people in the room and there’s an amazing alchemy because we are affected by each other, but we’re also affected by the chemistry of the people in that space.
And that’s what makes it – maybe that’s why we stay in it for as long as we, those of who have never left the theater, is that – there’s times when you really hit it and you’re just sort of living for the opportunity for that to happen again. It really is magic. And transformative.
GETTING INSIDE SHAKESPEARE
ROBYNN RODRIGUEZ: But I think in our, you know – maybe in the American culture – maybe just that we don’t see Shakespeare acted very well, that people have a tendency to act at it as opposed to get inside it. When we get inside those people and get inside those words, then we’re talking about something that we all understand.
The universality of Shakespeare is something that is accessible to all of us. If we’re really willing to remind ourselves that real people are saying these beautiful things. And the not so beautiful things in a beautiful way.
THE WOMEN OF SHAKESPEARE
ROBYNN RODRIGUEZ: But, someone told me quite recently that this – and I don’t know if this is true, but someone said this – that this history play was sort of known as “the woman’s history” because of the powerful women. They said that of all of Shakespeare’s wailing women, that Constance is the fiercest. I could say, “Well, yeah, I guess that’s an argument that could be made.” But what’s ironic is that if this is the women’s history play, that all of these women are gone by Act III, Scene I, and yet you don’t forget them. Even Lady Falconbridge is not forgotten because what an unbelievable scene with the bastard. You know from whence he springs – in that beautiful scene between mother and son.
So, I find – I love the history plays, I love them – but you go into this play, you look at Margaret –the cycle of Margaret through the Henry VIs into Richard III. What an unbelievable woman to play. Margaret of Anjou, one of the great warrior queens of all history. And it’s too bad he only wrote one play that had Eleanor of Aquitine in it, because talk about another unbelievable woman of her time. They’re just incredible people, these women.
And that he gives them an equal voice. They may not win the war, but when they get to go toe-to-toe, many battles are theirs for the having. Because of their ability to be completely comfortable in their skin and to be able to walk their talk, to argue a point. I mean, Constance is a brilliant listener. The rhetoric. She listens to something somebody says, she picks right up on a word and uses it to her great advantage. So, it’s just – it’s just rich, thick stuff.
