The adaptable Ross McGregor
Arrows and Traps founder Ross McGregor spoke with The Pickwyck about his new adaption of Taming of the Shrew, which will be opening May 27th at the New Wimbledon Studio Theatre. Ross talks about this new production and how he adapts works in his own way in this new interview!
How did you first become involved in theater? Was there a specific playwright or piece of theater that inspired you?
"Like most people who enter this as a career, I would imagine, I got the bug quite young. Writing seems quite a solitary process, and film-making seems more like a relay race. With theatre, everyone is in the same room as you, working side by side, even the audience. It's always felt like a community to me, and that's the biggest attraction for me. In terms of inspiring performances, I think the first time I saw Oliver Ford Davies play King Lear at the Almeida, it was one of those watershed moments - that a 450-year-old dead guy could write like that, or that a group of actors could bring about such emotion coupled with such intelligent verbal clarity, always changing, testing the language, challenging it, keeping you on the edge of your seat just by talking."
You founded the Arrows and Traps theater company. Can you tell us a little background information about how you got started? What made you want to start your own theater company?
"I've been working in theatre for around ten years now, mainly on touring productions. I had been commissioned to direct the inaugural Shakespeare productions for Okai Collier, a production company that at the time was working at the Lion & Unicorn Theatre. We established a repertory style of working, in terms of our cast and creatives, building up a short-hand as a group. I really wanted to take this team and its work further and develop what we were doing on a larger scale. I think it's quite common, due to a lack of good middle-management in the Off West End / Fringe Theatre world, that theatre directors end up becoming company owners so that they can put on their own work. And whilst this gives you a freedom to do the shows you want, budget-permitting, there's an irony that creative people, who have chosen to not pursue a career in business, often have no other choice than to become a business owner in order to keep being creative. I've spent my entire life trying to run from spreadsheets, and now that I'm a theatre director, I'm surrounded by them."
In this particular production of The Taming of the Shrew, the story has been re-imagined and the roles have been reversed. Along with Much Ado About Nothing and The Winter's Tale; these adaptions are witty and daring. What inspires you to take these classic Shakespearean plays and adapt them in such a clever and intriguing fashion?
"I think the 1800's drained the life out of Shakespeare, and somewhat skewed the way he's perceived, particularly for young people. The Victorians made him austere and classical, heightened and poetic, and whilst, yes, he was a poet first and a playwright second, I think Shakespeare would have hated to be seen as austere. He wasn't trying to write dusty prosaic verse, he was trying to capture the human spirit, the human voice, the human heart. He was cheeky, a plot thief, an adapter, he took old tales and made them his own, he subverted the expectations and sneaked in his own, very modern, ironies and contradictions. So, what inspires me to adapt and re-invent Shakespeare for our audience? Shakespeare does. Because it's exactly what he did to the classics of his own time."
Can you tell us a little more about your adaption The Taming of the Shrew? Is the storyline essentially the same or has it been "changed" a great deal?
"It's still certainly Taming Of The Shrew. It's Shakespeare's text, if you can forgive the changing of the pronouns. It's a film-noir, monochromatic, fast-paced urban tale of lust, power, greed and the fight for independence from these things. It's a play filled with threats and violence, both emotional or physical, but it's also filled with clowns, lovers, fools and foolery, and I think, as with all Shakespeare, it's about learning to find the balance of the two.
For those that are unfamiliar with the plot, it's a story of man, Kajetano (the male form of the name Katherine) who is screaming at the world. He lives with a mother who ignores him; his younger brother has surpassed him, and he is, underneath all his anger, incredibly lonely. It's also the story of a woman, Petruchia, that runs away from her own problems and seeks to "tame" her own faults in the reflection of another person. It's a rebel romance, a loud, thrilling roller-coaster of a love story that subverts conventions and questions whether you can find love on your own terms when you are part of a world that is obsessed with value, status and wealth. Those things are all Shakespeare. What we've done is invert the genders completely so that we can bring the comedy, vitality and thrill of the chase back into a play that might struggle to be anything more than a dark misogynistic tale of abuse when staged the traditional way."
Did you run into any challenges when putting together this specific adaption?
There have been a few. We've changed the gender of almost every single character in the show, starting from scratch. We're also tackling one of the comedies (along with perhaps Merchant) that is incredibly difficult to be considered amusing to a 21st Century audience with regards its depiction of society. These are things we really need to get right. There's also the challenge of concept and originality. When you direct Shakespeare, you're coming into the room with a lot of ghosts, which is another way of saying that everything you can think of doing with a Shakespeare play has probably already been done. So it's a balancing act between finding an interesting new way to tell an old story, and staying true to the heart of what Shakespeare intended. It may seem like we've taken Shrew so far from the original that it's unrecognizable, but I think our modern values and social sensibilities as such that to bring the life, laughter and empathy back into the text, you've got to navigate the gender politics carefully, whilst shaking it up so much that people can view it like new writing again, and form new opinions, unshackled from the production's long controversial history.
The team behind the show is absolutely fantastic, they're a truly committed bunch and each very talented in their own way, so really the biggest challenge so far has been making sure we simply offer the production to the audience as a situation upon which they can draw their own conclusions, rather than trying to shoe-horn them into our own opinions. Because gender is something personal to everyone, and who are we to making sweeping statements about it? I think, by staging the Shrew story as a play-within-a-play, Shakespeare himself was careful to NOT state that this was in any way an effective method to deal with an unruly spouse, so I think it's vitally important to honor that."
What has been your experience so far in the production working on bringing this show to the stage?
"We've just finished the first week of rehearsals so a lot of the groundwork has now been done. The rehearsals are split into 3 distinct areas, movement, music and text work. The actors do have very long days, but I continue to be encouraged and humbled by their level of dedication, enthusiasm and invention. We have a way to go obviously, but so far it's shaping up to be a really interesting project."
What can audiences expect from this particular production?
"Our company ethos, in terms of how we approach our productions, is to make classical works (of which Shakespeare is for now the main focus) for a modern audience that are intelligent popular entertainment. They can expect a vibrant, furious and unrelenting piece of theatre, with live music, dance, physical theatre and a clear, honest approach to the text. It really is shaping up to be quite the event, and the style and look of the piece is so captivating. There's not much room to breathe in this show, for audience or the cast. I hope that Shakespeare fans might get something new from the show, in that we're bringing them a Shrew that quite possibly has never been done in this way before, and opens up so many news questions. For casual theatre-goers, this is a fun, exuberant and reverent take on an old tale, which both completely works in the inversion, but also stands on its own feet without the viewer needing to know the original. It's been an utter honor to be part of, if I'm honest."
What do you feel is the most important message that audiences should take away after seeing your adaption of The Taming of the Shrew?
"Well, selfishly, I'd really like them to walk out of the theatre thinking: "that company was brilliant, I simply MUST book up for their next two productions later in the year (All's Well That Ends Well & Titus Andronicus)". After that however, what I'd really like people to come away with is that it is possible to Shakespeare as something more than a bunch of plays that we were all forced to read at school, filled with dead words and incomprehensible dialogue, but they're perhaps more timely now than ever, and we still have so much to discover in them. More than any other playwright, Shakespeare can be re-invented, transitioned, adapted, inverted, tweaked, plucked and puffed in any direction you want to go, because his genius was that he absolutely nailed the universal human condition. His characters are instantly relatable, his language rich and almost primal in its rhythms.
It would also be incredibly satisfying for people to take away that in a time when the West End is stymied in the type of "safe" work that it was doing twenty years ago, filling its stages with jukebox musicals and Hollywood actors seeking validation, the most place where most of the most interesting, unique and brave theatre is happening is in the Fringe, and there has never been a better time than now to start seeing more of it, because there is so many brilliant productions happening right now in the side streets of our cities, above pubs, below ground, in black boxes, warehouses, basements and attics, with no money, driven purely by love and dedication of the text and the craft. I dislike the term "Fringe" because it trivializes a large portion of all work occurring in the industry, and makes it sound secondary or irrelevant, whereas really it's where true theatrical invention takes place, out of necessity."
In terms of this production, what are you most proud of and why?
"The cast. They are an ensemble of 14 actors and actresses who have risen admirably to this considerable challenge, and are absolutely smashing it day after day in rehearsal. They're taking on multiple theatrical disciplines, sometimes simultaneously, and never missing a beat. It's still early days, and we have a lot more work ahead of us, but at this point I cannot wait to see them take this beautiful monster to performance."
Aside from the productions that you and Arrows and Traps have put on, what is your favorite Shakespeare play/work?
"I keep returning to King Lear, it's always a hard watch, but so worthwhile. Nothing can compete with Shakespeare at the height of his powers, and I think this is his zenith. But outside of Lear, I have a lot of time for All's Well That Ends Well (which we're tackling this Summer) and Measure for Measure, two plays that are often overlooked in favor of the more well-known tragedies. Shakespeare wrote for everyone, people from every walk of life, and caters for all tastes, all humors. I know lots of people have such an issue with his tragicomedies, to the extreme that they're now called his "Problem Plays" (since when was the fact that a piece of art didn't fit neatly into a little tiny box a "problem?"), but I think this is where Shakespeare was at his best, a mixture of light and dark, joy and pain, misery and laughter. Regardless of how it breaks conventions, isn't that quite an accurate and modern portrayal of real life?"
Who are you inspired by?
"I don't think you can direct Shakespeare and not acknowledge the huge shadows cast by people like Peter Brook, Trevor Nunn, John Barton & Peter Hall. Those guys defined how Shakespeare has been handled in the latter half of the 20th Century. There's so much wisdom there. But time moves on, and it's sometimes disorientating to realize that the techniques that they crafted, ones still very much taught in drama schools and used in performances, are over 40 years old. So perhaps inspiration should also be found in more current practitioners. I have always been in awe of Katie Mitchell's attention to detail and almost scientific approach to her productions, and I think Rupert Goold is one of the most exciting and imaginative directors working in theatre. Adrian Noble should also be mentioned, as his approach to text in his Shakespeare productions is second to none, and his knowledge of how to approach it in performance is flawless."
"Not wasting time. If you want to be something, or do something, then go out there and get cracking. Save, work, obsess, plan, work, work, work. The biggest regret of my life is wasting time I could have spent doing more of the things that I cared about, and less time worrying about what would happen if it went wrong. In terms of interests outside of theatre, I absolutely love narratives, stories, in a variety of mediums, they're why God invented long train journeys."
If you could "gender-bend" (or put your own creative spin on) any other play or musical, what would it be and why?
"I don't think anyone should mess around with gender lightly. Only do it if you've got a really good reason (and no, making it easier to cast isn't one). I think it almost has to improve on or equal the original, otherwise what's the point? A female Iago has always interested me though, because the role is so complex and difficult to pin down that it's really a blank canvas. In terms of my dream wish list, I would adore to be unleashed on The Tempest - what director in their right mind wouldn't want to work on that play, and I've always wanted to tackle the Henry IV 1&2 double-bill epic, if only because it's the greatest father/son dynamic in literature, and the scale of the piece terrifies me. I think a little terror is a good thing."