Guthrie’s Shakespeare project breaks the (recent) mold

CATHY: Say, have you heard about this? There's an ambitious project taking shape at the Guthrie Theater. They're staging three Shakespeare plays all at the same time with one core cast of actors. Arts reporter, Jacob Aloi, is following the story on an ongoing basis. He's here with us to talk about what this is going to look like. How are you doing?

JACOB ALOI: I'm doing great, Cathy. How are you?

CATHY: I'm great. Thank you for being here.

JACOB ALOI: Thanks.

CATHY: So first things first, OK, what are the three shows? And they're being performed as a trio. That's unusual.

JACOB ALOI: Yes, yes. So let me put on the Professor Aloi hat for a second and give you a little bit of background. So Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V tell one large story. So Prince Hal is a character in Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. He becomes Henry V, actually. And we see this tale of this epic hero across these shows.

And it's referred to in academic circles as the Henriad. It's a tetralogy, four shows. Although the Guthrie is performing Henry IV as one show. And there have been extensive cuts given to every single one of these shows so they can be performed in a timely manner.

CATHY: Are these shows often performed together?

JACOB ALOI: Yeah, well, they're actually part of a larger set of plays called the Histories, which is the larger story of English kings that Shakespeare wrote. And so they are performed sometimes together. And actually, the Guthrie did this set of plays before in a very similar way. A current artistic director, Joseph Haj, who's also directing this version of the histories was in that previous production.

JOSEPH HAJ: This project in some ways calls us back to our own legacy at the Guthrie. And being in those plays as an actor 34 years ago, I must say to this day, it remains one of the signal events in my artistic life and journey.

JACOB ALOI: And tomorrow is the first rehearsal at the Guthrie for the actors for these sets of shows.

CATHY: OK. So we-- OK, we have-- I'm trying to understand this now. Same group of actors in all three shows, right?

JACOB ALOI: Yeah.

CATHY: Some of the actors playing multiple roles?

JACOB ALOI: Yes. And some actors will play the same role over several plays. And you've got it exactly right. The technical term for it in the theater world is called rotating repertory theater.

CATHY: OK. So the Guthrie, of course, back in the day used to have perform in repertory like this all the time.

JACOB ALOI: That's exactly right. It started out doing that. But not since 1998 has there been rotating rep at the Guthrie. But when I spoke with Joseph Haj, he gave me a reason why there's been a decline in having standing acting companies like this.

JOSEPH HAJ: 35 years ago, if you had a standing company with even a little bit of diversity in it, you can make any play that anybody in the American theater was making 35 years ago. But today, if you want to do a David Henry Hwang play, and you want to do a Lisa Kron play, and you want to do an August Wilson play, and you want to do a Shakespeare play, there's no company of 25 actors that can move with facility across all of those titles. You need specific casting.

So the idea of diversity of programming actually sits in some challenging access to the idea of a standing company, unless you're in a festival format, like the Oregon Shakespeare Festival or the Stratford Festival where you can have 90 or 100 actors across 11 plays moving then you can. But there's no group of 18 actors that can go across a kind of programming that I think many of us are striving towards.

CATHY: So you wouldn't want a white cast and raisin in the sun?

JACOB ALOI: That's exactly right. Or a non-Asian lead in M. Butterfly. If you have a whole season of diverse shows, you can't just have one set of people be able to fill all of those roles. But Haj says that Shakespeare is the perfect way to do this kind of theater.

JOSEPH HAJ: If your average 10th grade classroom could collectively-- if you turn-- if you walked into a 10th grade classroom today and said, all right, hey, everybody in this room, tell me the story of Romeo and Juliet. Take your time. Give me a 10-minute story. Like, that classroom would tell you the story of Romeo and Juliet, which is to say those plays are part of our collective unconscious in some ways.

Better said, they're part of our culture, whatever our background is. If an average 10th grade class with all of the difference in demographics that might be in that group can tell you the story of Romeo and Juliet, then Romeo and Juliet belongs to all of us. There is no reason that those plays should not be populated with a whole bunch of different folks because we all own that story.

JACOB ALOI: Haj says that as an Arab-American actor himself Shakespeare was deeply important to his career. It was the first set of plays that opened up the world of classical theater to people of color as actors. And it didn't raise eyebrows when he was cast and took on leading roles in non-modern plays.

CATHY: OK, so I'm understanding the concept. But it's got to be pretty tough to mount all three plays at once with the same cast.

JACOB ALOI: Yeah, you're absolutely right. But while the actors enter the rehearsal room tomorrow, tech and designers have been working on this for a while. And lots of little things is they have to keep in mind. For instance, Trevor Bowen is the costume designer for all the shows. And he started work in earnest back in June for the project.

TREVOR BOWEN: I think the first thing that folks may not realize is the thing that you don't see, which is undergarments. So just to keep in mind that, there are a few show days where all three productions are being performed on one day. So that means one performer is going to go through maybe three different sets of underwear.

JACOB ALOI: Which is something that I don't think people think about.

CATHY: I don't think so.

JACOB ALOI: Right? He's setting up a system to make sure the costumes are all maintained even when there isn't time to do laundry between shows. He's also come up with color coordinated system to keep track of all the costumes across the shows. And while he's focused in on this set of shows, other departments at the Guthrie are having to balance this along with other productions that the theater is going to be opening before and after the histories. Jess Rao is the head of wigs, hair, and makeup at the Guthrie theater.

JESS RAO: It'll be really interesting as we get further down the road. And then we have other shows coming up afterward, how we're going to manage that and how we're going to build that into our track and into our workload. I think that's going to be the interesting, like, come back and talk to me in about two months.

CATHY: I love her job. OK, so there's always a story behind the story. You know that. Of course, why are you interested in this story Jacob Aloi?

JACOB ALOI: Well, I'm a huge Shakespeare fan. I spent a good amount of my youth in Southern Utah not far from the Utah Shakespeare Festival. And that has my heart. It was one of the theaters that does rotating repertory and focuses on doing Shakespeare shows. And I've always had a deep love and fascination for it. I competed in Shakespeare competitions in high school. And when the Guthrie announced last year that they were doing this project this season, I was immediately interested in it. And I'm curious to see what this will look like.

CATHY: Wow, I did not know that about your background. OK, so what will you be doing with all this reporting?

JACOB ALOI: Well, the Guthrie has agreed to let me attend rehearsals, interview people in the plays involved with the production and people behind the scenes, and maintain editorial control. And I'll be checking in periodically over the course of the process to take our audiences behind the scenes and see how everything ticks.

And interesting enough, when I was speaking to my editor, Max Sparber, he told me that Tyrone Guthrie, the founder of the Guthrie Theater, actually used to have a practice of letting reporters into the rehearsal room to capture the process. So in many ways I feel like I'm going to be carrying on that torch.

CATHY: And I love that. We have about a minute left. Now, we spoke earlier about Shakespeare. What about Shakespeare fascinates you? And really, why is it still important?

JACOB ALOI: Well, for many people, Shakespeare is the most accessible form of theater. Now, I know early modern English can be very hard to understand for people, especially if it isn't their first language, but it's so widely performed. It's in the public domain. And, of course, it's inspired tons of other stories, like She's the Man, 10 Things I Hate About You, Gnomeo and Juliet, the new film, Anyone But You. So I think of it as one of our greatest storytelling traditions, and I'm fascinated to jump into this project head first.

CATHY: I am so happy that you are doing it. I wish you well. We'll have you back, obviously.

JACOB ALOI: Thank you so much, Cathy.

CATHY: That's arts reporter Jacob Aloi. He'll be following this story for us in the coming months. Jacob's reporting. By the way, as well as all of our arts coverage is made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.