Interview with Daniel Kramer
Heather Neill talks to the director Daniel Kramer about young love in an age of greed, rage and violence.
Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare’s most frequently produced plays. You say that you always want to give audiences a totally new experience. Is that a challenge in this case?
I enjoy that challenge: how do I help myself and others hear and see the play anew – new ideas and colours and reflections in the mirror? I haven’t rewritten the text but I’ve ‘layered’ some events. I’ve always loved split scenes, where two or more things are happening at once. It reflects the modern mind to me – a multitasking desktop, islands of activity, multiple streams of consciousness all operating at once, forming a larger constellation of identity and meaning only in their togetherness. Much inspired by Tony Kushner and television programmes such as Six Feet Under where we follow six stories at once, we cut from one thread to another, and each fragment resonates and deepens with and against the other. And form must reflect content: violence and hate and love are lightening emotions. They snap, they pop, they devour in a moment. I hope the production does so with this adaptation. But even with the trims and juxtapositions, it’s still the iconic story of Romeo and Juliet.
The Globe stage is particularly suitable for that kind of interaction, isn’t it?
Emma Rice’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream here taught me a great deal about the kinetic energy that the space and text can unleash in the audience. She created a joy and hysteria that I’ve never seen in live theatre. I think this is related to her use of the yard and audience as part of the actual world of the play. Romeo and Juliet is a different play with different goals to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but I am trying to tap into that same kinetic power that the space and Bard offer as fuel for fire.
How have you reacted to the repetition of ‘fate’ and ‘fortune’ in the text?
I connected very early with Romeo’s line ‘Oh I am Fortune’s fool’, the idea that we are all little clowns trying to survive a world of fear and hate, trying to love, to have children, to make our school systems better, to pay less taxes, to get the shopping done, to love, to party, to protect, to win… as we fight against the big bad wolf in whatever form he takes or we give him.
Are Romeo and Juliet at the mercy of destiny? Is what happens to them inevitable?
I believe in choice. Like everyone in real life, they make poor (rash) choices from positive intentions. They are children responding to a world of grotesque greed, capitalism, war and terrorism. Violence becomes a means of action, a voice, a protest to them, as it is to so many youths and even adults in American, British and Islamic culture.
Examples
of this violence, both towards others and the self, can be seen in the news
every day in the UK as well as the US. I see the parallels in our cultures. I think the only destiny in the piece is that death will teach us if we choose to remain blind.
So we get a sense of the violence of the state from the very beginning.
The trigger point of the whole piece is violence: do you bite your thumb at us sir? This violence is maintained by the two fathers and mothers: two rich white men and their unlucky wives – all with no time for their children. The patriarch breeds and nurtures and eroticizes violence. It’s a high, an addiction: the glamorisation of violence and wealth and power and rage. I think rage is one of our most undiscussed modern addictions – not to mention the shame that then follows. How long will we choose to carry these things? How long before we decide to process all the trauma and grief and … choose the other side of the coin?
Are the Nurse and the Friar any more benign in their treatment of the young people?
They are more nurturing. And yet they also make a rash decision to support the children in their rapid-fire love story, in the hope it will lead to ‘world peace’. But it is a rash decision, not wisely considered and helps lead to the lovers’ double self-slaughter.
You have cast a woman to play Mercutio. What effect does this have?
I am interested in the relationship between Mercutio, Romeo and Tybalt, and the sexuality between the three of them. Her love for Romeo becomes more complex because she is female and I think she is absolutely in love, in a young, teenage, sexual way with Tybalt. When she gets between Romeo and Tybalt in the fight she wants both to make love to and to punish / injure Tybalt as she was injured. I also think a female is able to extract more interesting modern colours from the Queen Mab speech with its references to soldiers and rape, her body to be used and abused by men.
Juliet seems to take the lead. Is she stronger than Romeo?
They’re both strong but as a female she’s more trapped, whereas as a male he is more free. Her story becomes one of breaking free at all costs. Neither is stronger or weaker to me. They are different. Some say opposites attract. But both are fiercely strong: they dare to choose love – and then death. I am not convinced the choice of suicide is strong. But it speaks volumes for many contemporary youth who feel suicide (and these days murdering many others before they self-slaughter) is the best solution.
Music is always very important in your productions isn’t it?
I’m always interested in the collision of music, movement, text and imagery. With a play, I begin reading the text to hear what music arises in my mind. And from the music and text, the dance arises. Music is the universal language for me: from mother’s heartbeat in the womb to birds to traffic to our incessant monkey chatter to our funeral hymn. We are vibrating and enchanting as a planet. I think as a solar system. Nada Brahma: the world is sound. And hence this alchemist, Shakespeare, is one of the most famous artists of all time. He captured the vibration of life in each syllable of his scripts. Our shared task is to release the electricity within. Deep inhale. Here we go!
(Image credit: Robert Workman)
Heather Neill is a freelance theatre writer and journalist.
Romeo and Juliet runs in the Globe Theatre from Saturday 22 April – Sunday 9 July. Book tickets.