Theater Review: Guest director sees modern possibilities in original language of ‘Romeo and Juliet’
“Romeo and Juliet” is a play that “people are probably more familiar with than most of the plays in the Shakespeare canon,” said Geoff Elliott, co-artistic director of Pasadena-based classical repertory theater company A Noise Within. So, putting a production of this timeless romantic tragedy into the hands of a guest director like Dámaso Rodriguez — the artistic director of Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, former associate artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse, and the award-winning co-founder and co-artistic director of edgy, Los Angeles-based Furious Theatre — was an interesting choice.
In this “Romeo and Juliet,” opening Saturday, Rodriguez’s signature “brash, innovative” style, Elliott said, preserves Shakespeare’s text and lets the story be clear through the language, “while surrounding it in a world that makes us pay more attention to words that perhaps we’ve heard many times before.”
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The world of “Romeo and Juliet” in Rodriguez’s staging is a modern-day urban alley where an itinerant company of actors have gathered to put on the play. “But when we’re inside the scene,” Rodriguez stressed, “it’s a period production of the play. They’re doing it as written.”
Mounting this particular Shakespeare classic was his choice. When Rodriguez was approached by A Noise Within to do a show, he said, “I wanted to do a Shakespeare production, and I wanted to do the one that I discovered Shakespeare with, like a lot of young people who will be coming to see the show.”
Some audience members might know the story only through “a cartoon version, or ‘West Side Story,’ or a sitcom that has a mini version of it in its plot,” Rodriguez said. “But it’s always worth doing, no matter how often it’s been done. We keep needing to tell this story. While arguably there’s progress with each generation, we continue finding reasons to tribe up, to perpetuate prejudices with those not in our tribe.”
What is deeply relevant to Rodriguez about the play, he said, “is this idea that prejudice is taught, and then it’s learned, and either passed on or not — because ultimately,” he said, “each generation has the power to change their world if they have the guts to do it.”
He might have made the feuding Montagues and Capulets “a Muslim family and a Christian family, or black and white, east and west,” Rodriguez said, but he wanted to strip it “of all that and let its sort of visceral humanness come out.” While the cast is diverse, “it’s not divided up in any way based on skin color or anything like that. It is just actors gathering in an alley, engaging with the audience.”
The setting (dumpsters, graffiti), in stark contrast to the affluence of Shakespeare’s Verona, “could be Havana, it could be skid row, it could be a future version of our society where we’d find ourselves in a repressed society. It could be Syria, Eastern Europe — it could be ‘fill-in-the-blank.’ That’s the world of the play,” Rodriguez said, “and I wanted these actors to play it at those stakes in the storytelling.
“On some level,” he added, “it is a literalistic interpretation of the play except that it’s set in this incongruous environment, where the only thing left is the language and the raw emotion of it.”
Rodriguez’s vision for the production began with his interaction with local theater-makers during his recent trip to Cuba as part of Theatre Communications Group’s U.S. delegation to the Havana Theatre Festival.
“It was really powerful in that the resources are so minimal there,” he said. “Things we would take for granted are difficult to come by — they had tomato cans converted into lighting instruments. You see these artists finding a way to will these productions into being and you realize the intention behind the work is completely pure. They are trying to connect and communicate something with their audience. It was really inspiring.”
Rodriguez is directing “Romeo and Juliet” under the auspices of an unusual, four-year, $400,000 Edgerton Foundation grant that allows Occidental College to connect its student theater program with A Noise Within and fellow Pasadena-based Theatre @ Boston Court, bringing in professional directors and playwrights to both teach at the college and to serve as guest artists in residency at the two theaters. The grant also funds student internships and postgraduate fellowships.
“We were looking for an opportunity-slash-excuse to work with Dámaso again,” Elliott said. “We have been grateful recipients of the Edgerton Foundation grant, and that allowed us to be able to choose him [to direct] for us. So it was a delightful win-win.”
Rodriguez, now in his fourth season with Artists Repertory, will be back in Portland in time to direct the last show of the company’s eight-play 2015-16 season, a production of Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth,” opening in May.
“That’s one of the thrills: Once you get established and get your team in place,” Rodriguez said, “you can go direct somewhere, and that will inform you and bring you back energized.”
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What: “Romeo and Juliet”
Where: A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena.
When: 8 p.m. Sat. (Feb. 20), March 18, April 8, April 29; 2 p.m. Sun. (Feb. 21), Feb. 27-28; 2 and 8 p.m. March 19, April 23; 7:30 p.m. April 7, April 28; 2 and 7 p.m. April 17, May 8. Ends May 8.
Tickets: from $44
More info: (626) 356-3100, www.anoisewithin.org
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LYNNE HEFFLEY writes about theater and culture for Marquee.