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UNC-Chapel Hill theater historian's book addresses rescripting Shakespeare plays for modern audiences

CHAPEL HILL -- By viewing hundreds of professional productions of William Shakespeare’s plays since 1974, theater historian Alan Dessen has probably set some sort of record.

Traveling across the United States, Canada and Great Britain, he has seen it all -- from Malvolio imprisoned in a doghouse to Tybalt driving a red Alfa Romeo in 1980s Verona.

Dessen, Peter G. Phialas professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed up on his fascination with a new book about the choices, omissions and interpretations contemporary directors make when confronting Shakespeare plays. "Rescripting Shakespeare: The Text, the Director, and Modern Productions," set for release in September by Cambridge University Press, marries his interest in words spoken and scenes omitted or transposed to his analyses of about 280 top productions.

There’s nothing new about "rescripting to streamline the play, save running time by cutting speeches or entire scenes and to eliminate obscurity and conserve on personnel," Dessen said. Today, directors are "rewrighting" more extensively, moving closer to the role of playwright, such as when the three parts of "Henry VI" are compressed into two plays. The results can be practical and effective -- or not.

"For years, I’ve written about the ways Shakespeare’s plays were performed in the 1590s and early 1600s," he said. "In this book, I use terms such as ‘tradeoff’ and ‘price tag’ to play off recent changes against what might have been the point of some omissions or original choices. For example, if you set ‘The Tempest’ on Mars or ‘Henry V’ on roller-skates, you get some distinctive effects, but you also lose something."

Dessen, funded by a National Humanities Center fellowship, joked that he’s too much of a purist to have a favorite rewritten production -- "Shakespeare knew what he was doing" -- but said he sympathized with directors staging the well-known classics.

"I’m not trying to treat directors as vandals sacking Rome -- some take pride in doing something different, especially in Britain where the Royal Shakespeare Company long ago ceased to be a company of actors and is now basically a collection of directors," he said. "The plays are cycled so often that directors feel pressured to come up with something different, to make their mark. This leads to lots of changes -- some that playgoers like and others that they don’t."

A favorite example was Michael Bogdanov’s 1986 contemporary production of "Romeo and Juliet," in which the director changed the ending to resonate with younger audience members.

"Bogdanov is a master of updating and changing," the UNC scholar said. "In this production, Romeo injected poison instead of drinking it. I saw it at a matinee and that moment electrified younger theatergoers. But that choice blurred a major motif in the script where Juliet talks about any empty cup, kisses Romeo to get any remaining poison and exclaims, ‘Thy lips are warm.’ All that is irrelevant if Romeo injects the poison."

Dessen found that many changes happen in the last scenes when directors feel the "clock ticking and want to finish the play off." Often, they cut or streamline lengthy closing speeches to prevent audience impatience.

The financial bottom line, an important reality of life and theater, is often behind cuts and changes, he said. "Most companies have to stay within limited budgets. This means that while in the original production one actor may have played several roles, today directors are forced to simply cut minor figures."

That’s fine in most cases, Dessen said, but where it starts to matter, for example, is in a new production of "Julius Caesar" where plebeians are cut completely, and the famous funeral oration is delivered with no onstage audience. "There’s something important lost there."

Other challenges face contemporary directors, he said. "Shakespeare, in putting quill to paper, was writing for playgoers, actors and playhouses that no longer exist. There’s a lost theatrical language even at the London Globe Theater where one would think a production would be as close to authentic as it gets." On the other hand, directors have to bring plays alive for modern audiences.

Directors of Stratford-upon-Avon productions also know many playgoers’ first language is not English, and deciding how to handle verbal nuances is especially tough."

Heavy rescripting or "rewrighting" of Shakespeare's works is seen more often with longer, weightier plays and less with the shorter comedies often taught or staged in school --works such as "Twelfth Night," "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" and "As You Like It."

But in theater, as in life, "nothing is sacrosanct," he said -- not even Shakespeare. "Some scholars argue that the plays we have in our anthologies are longer than those played originally. We don’t know how much of a script was necessarily used. This is especially difficult to tell with ‘Hamlet,’ which survives in three early printed versions. It’s ironic that one of the things missing from the First Folio of ‘Hamlet’ -- the famous soliloquy in Act 4 --is always used in modern productions."

Dessen still finds teaching Shakespeare invigorating, but he cautions against force-feeding the Bard to disinterested youths. "A friend of mine says that Shakespeare has bored more people than any other writer who ever lived," he said, "but that's because so many have been forced to read his work and memorize bits in high school. Once they see a good production, however, that feeling can disappear."

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Note: Dessen can be reached at (919) 962-4028.

Contact: David Williamson, (919) 962-8596