Coriolanus: Bloody. Thought-provoking. Shakespeare.
I had the great pleasure of seeing the first preview, or – as Director Jack Paterson called it – “the tech/dress” of William Shakespeare’s *Coriolanus*, which is currently on at the Jericho Arts Centre. *Coriolanus* is the story of a returning war hero who becomes ruthlessly disenfranchised by the politics of peacetime.
The thorny issues of the play are made vividly accessible through the talents of Paterson, the cast and the production team.
The play is being produced as an "Equity Co-op":http://bardatjac.com/, which means that “like-minded professional theatre artists come together to bring their work to the stage. Co-ops are self-produced; members take equal shares of the net box office proceeds after all expenses are paid.” In a nutshell, this means that the prodigious talents of those involved are donated out of a passion for the project rather than a desire for a paycheque. The investment of those involved is palpable and the project is superb because of the efforts of the ensemble.
I spoke to Paterson before opening night about the process of unearthing Coriolanus for Vancouver’s audiences.
*Rachel Scott:* Well, here’s the most obvious question: Why Coriolanus?
*Jack Paterson:* That’s a really good question. It’s been floating around in my head for awhile. We had done an online vote for our last show [at the Jericho Arts Centre]. And everyone overwhelming voted for Titus Andronicus. I wasn’t expecting anyone to vote for it. Which was kind of like, “oh fuck, how are we going to do that?” So we figured out how to do it. But what do you do after you’ve done Titus Andronicus? And [then] I got really busy and didn’t have time to run the vote again. So we just picked the most evil show we possibly could. And then it was, “how are we going to do this?”
*RS:* Having watched it, it seems like quite a good play and I wondered why does no one ever do it?
*JP:* Well that’s the thing. It’s not an easy read… because it’s [written at] the end of Shakespeare’s career when he’d moved more toward naturalism and away from verse. And he’s writing about topical events. [At the time of writing] there had just been a riot near Stratford where Shakespeare was living. In that sense, it’s a very immediate play. He’s writing for the people around him, he’s not writing for posterity.
*RS:* So you think that’s why people don’t do it? Because it’s a hard read, that seems too political and complex? And that it’s written in prose, not verse?
*JP:* Yeah, it doesn’t have the elements we’re used to in Shakespeare. It’s also done in reverse, because the big war is at the beginning, not the end. It’s reversed in its build, so it’s quite different. And it’s never taught in schools.
*RS:* But it feels really quite immediate.
[img_assist|nid=752|title=Trained for violence: Ian Butcher and Anna Cummer try to settle their differences: photo by Quinn Harris|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=171|height=288] *JP:* It’s so present. I was working on [and cutting the script] during the Democrat primaries in the United States, the American election, the Canadian election, Parliament going on hold for two months – what’s that? – and then the shit-storm going on in Gaza and the Russia-Georgia conflict… both of those conflicts feel very much like, “who’s going to take on Rome?” And as more and more went on in Gaza, the more and more I was like, “okay, that is the kind of world that Coriolanus comes from. This is where his mother comes from; this is why these people are who they are, because they live under threat.” It just started to seem really, really, really present.
*RS:* I loved some of the design elements that added to that immediacy. The sound design by Jeff Tymoschuk, which included the sound of the helicopters, was so evocative of wartime. The use of blackberries, Starbucks coffee – so many elements were recognizable – that these characters were immediately place-able in my own world. Anything to say about the process of using those elements?
*JP:* In order for me to understand the story, I have to set it in my world. I have to go, “okay, who are these people? How do I relate?” I need to know who they are in my world before I can take the next step to who they are in Shakespeare’s world. It was fun trying to [imagine] the Tribunes. They’re in suits, they have briefcases. We’re just at the beginning of democracy in Rome. We know they have something to do with a mob uprising. Should they be drinking coffee? Yeah, they should be drinking coffee! It all started to make sense as we were going through it. A large part is because I need to be able – I’m as thick as a brick – I need to be able to understand it. And for me to understand it, I need to see in the present, now, who are these people. And I wanted to really prove that this is a universal story. We assume that because it’s Shakespeare - a playwright for all ages - that the audience will get it. But I think, every time we approach a classical text, we need to prove that it’s universal, rather than assuming that it is.
*RS:* I think there can be the temptation to get gimmicky or clever. “Oh, let’s do Shakespeare in this context that’s never been done before.” This didn’t feel like that at all.
*JP:* My work often gets [termed as] “re-inventing” Shakespeare or “blowing the dust off” and it always makes me really mad. Because what we’re actually trying to do is get back to Shakespeare’s original intent. Because [in the original Shakespeare productions] they wore Elizabethan clothes, they didn’t wear togas, they didn’t do period pieces. So what we’re trying to do is get back to the basics. Shakespeare was writing for the people around him; we should be presenting this play for the people around us.
*RS:* Do you think that Coriolanus deserves what he gets at the end?
*JP:* I don’t know. For me the play – and I’m hoping this is what the audience gets – the play is a debate. It feels like the two arguments of the play are should he die or should he be put in charge of things. And I think a lot about [Roméo Dallaire], the Canadian general who was in Rwanda with the UN peacekeepers, who wasn’t able to do anything. Coriolanus, had he been there, would have done something. So we aren’t necessarily keen on strong individual military leaders, because they might get upset if and when the people don’t agree with their ideas. So we’re afraid to give them too much control. The debate of the play is what should we do? What do we do with these people that we create? We need them. Like the guys who are in Afghanistan right now, they’re our guys, we train them, we send them off to fight for our interests. This has been going on since the beginning of time. We train them to do these horrible things. There are serious affects. I actually think Coriolanus suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder; it would have been “soldier’s heart” in Elizabethan era. They suffer from the horrible things they have to do [but] we need them to do it. But what do we do with them afterwards? Because they can’t just fit in afterwards.
*RS:* What about Coriolanus’ son, Martius? We see a lot of the story through his eyes. Was he written into all those scenes or was that a directorial choice?
*JP:* I worked him into more scenes. Martius’ journey, I think, is similar to the journey that Coriolanus took as a child. I wanted to contrast the innocence, the learning, and also explore where Coriolanus came from. I mean, we are what we teach our kids. I am what my parents taught me. My kids will be what I teach them. So that needs to be addressed.
_Coriolanus, written by William Shakespeare; Presented by the Coriolanus Equity Co-op; Directed by Jack Paterson; Set Design by Al Frisk; Sound Design by Jeff Tymoshuck & Corina Akeson; Lighting Design by James Foy; Costume Design by Moira Fentum; Ian Butcher as Coriolanus, Kristina Agosti, Corina Akeson, Chris Cochrane, Anna Cummer, Josh Drebit, Evan Frayne, Keith Martin Gordey, Adam Henderson, Paul Herbert, Anthony F. Ingram, Sebastian Kroon, Ashley Liu, Una Memisevic, Christina Schild, Cailin Stadnyk, Troy Anthony Young, and Gwynyth Walsh as Volumnia_
_Coriolanus at the Jericho Arts Center through March 14th, Tuesday-Sunday 8 pm. For more information – including their innovative 2 for 1 offer for anyone with a program or ticket stub from another show – go here: www.bardatjac.com and have a riot._