![]() I always wanted Solea Pfeiffer to be Ophelia. So as people are walking into the Delacorte it’s like, a funeral is in progress. Set it in Atlanta, Georgia, so the funeral’s in southwest Atlanta. So, you know, he says, there’s a funeral. Leon: I think Shakespeare left a beautiful road map. How dare he tamper with it in that way?” I’m sure there are going to be people who say that about every Hamlet production they see, yours as well. I’m sure some Elizabethan purist who came to see Shakespeare’s Hamlet in 1600 walked out of the Globe Theatre saying, “I can’t believe he messed with my favorite play. It wasn’t his Hamlet it was somebody else’s. A play called Hamlet was staged when Shakespeare came to London in the late 1580s. Shapiro: There are always going to be those who are purists. But this is a Hamlet that is, at heart, about people. Now, some of these people may be in positions of power some may not be not in positions of power. Because when you get rid of our institutions, our armies and navies, and you get rid of presidents and governors, you’re left with people. We’re not focusing on the political, the military part of the play. We’re focusing on the domestic part of the play. Leon: We’re focusing on the relationships. Shapiro: And that meant focusing the play on certain of its themes? Can I set this play in 2020, in Atlanta, Georgia, honoring everything that Shakespeare has on the page, only using his words, only substituting original songs that are more contemporary but nothing else? And as I went through that process, I got more and more excited. I realized that this is an opportunity to look at Hamlet through the lens of those students. I saw sadness in them about where our country was, where it was going in terms of politics, religion and almost everything. And I looked into the eyes of the young people, and I saw the fear in them. When we spoke, I had also been teaching classes virtually. And we indeed set it in Atlanta a year after the start of the pandemic, a little bit after George Floyd’s murder and the racial reawakening. Does it make sense to explore this story in a return to the South?” So you’ve been thinking about this play for two years now. I do want to do it with an African American cast. And you wrote, “I’m reading Hamlet over breakfast. ![]() James Shapiro: I just found an email from you, from February 2021, a month after the attack on the Capitol. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. As dress rehearsal approached, I asked Kenny if we could chat while he grabbed a quick dinner in Manhattan’s theater district. Watching Kenny direct over the past six weeks, surmounting this challenge, has been among the most gratifying experiences in my career as a Shakespearean. We went to work figuring out how to manage a cut that would allow him to, as Shakespeare put it, show “the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” The challenge of making a play first staged in Elizabethan London speak to contemporary Americans was daunting. So I was thrilled in 2021 when he got in touch and said he was interested in directing Hamlet for a Shakespeare in the Park production. And I was learning a lot about the play that could never be picked up from books.Īfter that run, I saw everything Kenny directed on Broadway- A Soldier’s Play, Topdog/ Underdog, Ohio State Murders-always wondering if he’d return to Shakespeare. Most directors don’t like having a scholar in the room, but Kenny made clear that he enjoyed having me around. After only a couple of days of rehearsals, I could see that Kenny had an unrivaled gift for getting at the essence of Shakespeare. We talked about which of Shakespeare’s plays he might find appealing and settled on Much Ado About Nothing, a darkish comedy that could accommodate an African American cast and be set in contemporary Georgia (it helped that the play’s locale, Messina, shared a name with a town not far from Atlanta). I knew him only by reputation: a Tony Award–winning director who had acted, run a couple of theater companies, and done a lot of work on television and Broadway, much of it illuminating Black life in America. ![]() I’m a white guy from Brooklyn he’s a Black man from the South. And after a decade or so of advising Royal Shakespeare Company and Public Theater productions, I could tell pretty quickly which directors were great at staging Shakespeare it turns out surprisingly few. I’m a professor with no acting or directing experience, but I am good at cutting four-hour plays down to size, can explain to actors the difference between thee and you, and have written extensively about Shakespeare’s world. He was hoping to persuade Kenny to direct something for Shakespeare in the Park, and asked me to talk with him. In 2018, Oskar Eustis, who runs the Public Theater, where I advise Shakespeare productions, introduced me to the theater director Kenny Leon.
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