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Variations
on Measure for Measure
Tygres
Heart Shakespeare Company at the Winningstad Theater, Portland
Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway,
288-8400. 7 pm Thursdays, 8 pm Fridays, 2 and 8 pm Saturdays,
2 pm Sundays. Ends Nov. 5. Call for ticket prices.
Marowitz
is the former theater critic for The Village Voice and was
the artistic director of The Open Space Theater in London.
"The
actor who gets buoyed by the enthusiasm
of a moronic
audience is like
an addict getting his kicks from placebos."
Charles Marowitz
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"Theater
is dying, I think, and we'll probably wind up being as much
a coterie art as poetry, which is also dying hard. "
Charles
Marowit
Before returning to his theater base in Los Angeles after
directing his version of Measure for Measure in Portland,
the famed critic, playwright and director Charles Marowitz
spoke with WW about the state of the nation, the
theater and the Bard.
Willamette Week: When did you start writing variations
on stage classics?
Charles Marowitz: It began with the "Theater of Cruelty"
season at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the '70s, which
Peter Brook and I co-directed. Brook suggested we try to
get across the essence of a play without relying on narrative,
and we decided to experiment with Hamlet, which became
a 28-minute version in our hands. When the season was over,
I went back to the piece and refined it into a longer version.
But the whole exercise convinced me that this was something
I wanted to explore further.
How much has your current version of Measure for
Measure changed from your original version 20 years
ago?
Considerably. Five scenes have been added as well as two
new characters. I originally scrapped the "comic" subplot
with Froth and Elbow entirely, as, quite frankly, it's not
funny. But then I found it necessary to provide some relief
from the central crisis and so countered it with the surrounding
whoredom found in the Overdon scenes.
Which seems like the legitimate subplot.
Exactly. You have to establish the decadence of Vienna
and its society if you want the main plot with Isabella
and Angelo to reverberate. Naturally, those scenes are in
my own cod Shakespeare. Even my effrontery doesn't go so
far as to ape the verse. How it all comes together, or whether
it even works, I don't know.
I think your ending certainly works. For me, Measure's
end has always been disturbing because of Isabella's
silence. Yet we've all been drilled that this is a wonderfully
comic finale.
Shakespeare was, intrinsically, a commercial hack. He always
defaulted to a "feel-good" ending, even in most of the tragedies.
One finds that one part of his nature is saying, "I really
want to explore these darker issues," while the other is
saying, "Yes, but we need to wrap it all up with a ribbon
at the end with virtue triumphant." It's genius versus hackery,
and that's what justifies going at this brilliant heap with
shears. Otherwise, you have these directors desperately
twisting the material to try and make it fit an idea antithetical
to the text.
Have you faced outcries for your "butcherings"?
Scholars have cried, especially in England, where traditionalists
are in the majority. But I'm fairly inured to criticism.
You get praise, you get beaten up, that's the job.
Do you still read criticism of your work?
Absolutely. I'm always interested in what other people
say, however damning. Frankly, I feel there's too little
criticism; there should be much more.
Impressions of Portland's theater?
I've auditioned and worked with some dedicated, conscientious
actors here. But it seems that this town desperately needs
proper theater training. If it gets that, it has a future
as a center for drama. Without it, it doesn't matter how
many companies spring up here, the theater will never be
able to overcome amateur mediocrity. It's odd, but I've
never been in a city where a dearth of training was so obvious.
That's true. In a few weeks, you've been able to perfectly
pinpoint this community's main problem.
If you were to get real in-depth training, where you expose
actors to Artaud, Grotowski and Brecht as well as the various
versions of Stanislavsky, you would see an innovative and
qualitative rise in the work. But I sense that Portland
has great potential to change in its approach to this dying
art form we strive for. Theater is dying, I think, and we'll
probably wind up being as much a coterie art as poetry,
which is also dying hard. But when one is in an audience
of school children watching Shakespeare, one can't help
but feel that this is drama's twilight.
You've long promoted the idea of a national theater.
Is such an institution practical in these waning days of
the stage?
America is desperate for a national theater. I think that
would stanch some of the theater's bleeding. Americans should
know their classics: O'Neill's The Hairy Ape, the
Hecht and MacArthur plays, Kaufman's The Butter and Egg
Man, as well as his plays with Hart and Connelly. Just
as the French are familiar with Molière and the English
are versed in Wilde and Coward, Americans deserve to experience
their past riches. In a country that's supposed to be the
wealthiest in the world, it's pathetic that we're so culturally
backward. In a strange way, there's a parallel with the
way Ralph Nader is being treated. Nader has quality and
seriousness and value, and yet he's not allowed on the stage
to speak. What does that say about us?
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