In 2018, Oskar Eustis, who runs the Public Theater, the place I counsel Shakespeare productions, launched me to the theater director Kenny Leon. He hoped to influence Kenny to direct one thing for Shakespeare within the Park, and requested me to speak with him. I’m a professor with no appearing or directing expertise, however I’m good at chopping four-hour performs right down to measurement, can clarify to actors the distinction between thee and you, and have written extensively about Shakespeare’s world. And after a decade or so of advising Royal Shakespeare Company and Public Theater productions, I might inform fairly rapidly which administrators had been nice at staging Shakespeare; it seems surprisingly few.
Kenny was, like me, in his mid-60s. I’m a white man from Brooklyn; he’s a Black man from the South. I knew him solely by status: a Tony Award–profitable director who had acted, run a few theater corporations, and finished loads of work on tv and Broadway, a lot of it illuminating Black life in America. We talked about which of Shakespeare’s performs he would possibly discover interesting and settled on Much Ado About Nothing, a darkish comedy that might accommodate an African American solid and be set in up to date Georgia (it helped that the play’s locale, Messina, shared a reputation with a city not removed from Atlanta). After solely a few days of rehearsals, I might see that Kenny had an unmatched present for getting on the essence of Shakespeare. His manufacturing was thrilling. Most administrators don’t like having a scholar within the room, however Kenny made clear that he loved having me round. And I used to be studying quite a bit in regards to the play that might by no means be picked up from books.
After that run, I noticed every little thing Kenny directed on Broadway—A Soldier’s Play, Topdog/ Underdog, Ohio State Murders—at all times questioning if he’d return to Shakespeare. So I used to be thrilled in 2021 when he bought in contact and mentioned he was excited about directing Hamlet for a Shakespeare within the Park manufacturing. We went to work determining handle a reduce that will enable him to, as Shakespeare put it, present “the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” The problem of constructing a play first staged in Elizabethan London converse to up to date Americans was daunting. Watching Kenny direct over the previous six weeks, surmounting this problem, has been among the many most gratifying experiences in my profession as a Shakespearean. As costume rehearsal approached, I requested Kenny if we might chat whereas he grabbed a fast dinner in Manhattan’s theater district.
This interview has been condensed and edited for readability.
James Shapiro: I simply discovered an e-mail from you, from February 2021, a month after the assault on the Capitol. And you wrote, “I’m reading Hamlet over breakfast. I do want to do it with an African American cast. Does it make sense to explore this story in a return to the South?” So you’ve been interested by this play for 2 years now.
Kenny Leon: Yes. And we certainly set it in Atlanta a yr after the beginning of the pandemic, a bit bit after George Floyd’s homicide and the racial reawakening. When we spoke, I had additionally been educating lessons nearly. And I seemed into the eyes of the younger individuals, and I noticed the concern in them. I noticed disappointment in them about the place our nation was, the place it was going when it comes to politics, faith and nearly every little thing. I spotted that this is a chance to take a look at Hamlet by the lens of these college students. Can I set this play in 2020, in Atlanta, Georgia, honoring every little thing that Shakespeare has on the web page, solely utilizing his phrases, solely substituting unique songs which might be extra up to date however nothing else? And as I went by that course of, I bought increasingly more excited.
Shapiro: And that meant focusing the play on sure of its themes?
Leon: We’re specializing in the relationships. We’re specializing in the home a part of the play. We’re not specializing in the political, the army a part of the play. Because if you eliminate our establishments, our armies and navies, and also you eliminate presidents and governors, you’re left with individuals. People. People make up the army. People make up the federal government. People. So we focus it down on these individuals. Now, a few of these individuals could also be in positions of energy; some might not be not in positions of energy. But it is a Hamlet that’s, at coronary heart, about individuals.
Shapiro: There are at all times going to be those that are purists. A play referred to as Hamlet was staged when Shakespeare got here to London within the late 1580s. It wasn’t his Hamlet; it was someone else’s. I’m positive some Elizabethan purist who got here to see Shakespeare’s Hamlet in 1600 walked out of the Globe Theatre saying, “I can’t believe he messed with my favorite play. He made all these changes. How dare he tamper with it in that way?” I’m positive there are going to be individuals who say that about each Hamlet manufacturing they see, yours as nicely.
Leon: I feel Shakespeare left a fantastic street map. I haven’t betrayed his street map. So, , he says, there’s a funeral. He says Hamlet’s father is lifeless. Set it in Atlanta, Georgia, so the funeral’s in southwest Atlanta. These individuals would sing on the funeral. So as individuals are strolling into the Delacorte [the Central Park theater where Shakespeare in the Park is staged] it’s like, a funeral is in progress. I at all times needed Solea Pfeiffer to be Ophelia.
Shapiro: Because of her voice?
Leon: Because of her voice, and due to her look. It was necessary to me to have Hamlet’s facet of the household be Black and Polonius’s facet of the household be white or combined race. That was necessary, to simply get that race dynamic in there. And I knew I wanted an Ophelia who might sing, as a result of I do know she has these two or three songs in there. And in different productions, I feel individuals get bored or irritated by these songs. So I needed to ascertain that Ophelia had a fantastic voice, nearly like she’s a singer. And then you definately fall in love together with her, and you are feeling that love for her early on. So then once we lose her, it means one thing. I needed to present the ladies within the play a bit extra seen power than prior to now. So you will have Lorraine Toussaint as Gertrude, enjoying it like Michelle Obama. And you will have Solea, who has a fantastic singing voice. It provides them a bit extra power and offers them a bit chunk to push again on the lads.
Shapiro: You know, there’s someone who’s not credited within the playbill who figured in loads of moments, essential moments, in your rehearsals: Leroy. I hoped you would possibly give him some credit score right here.
Leon: Yeah, I’ve a time period, I launched it … My organic father, Leroy, died about three years in the past, and he’s a man who by no means left Tallahassee, Florida, till a yr earlier than he handed. You know, he’s an actual fundamental man. He’s the kind of man that will go right into a New York restaurant and say, “Where the food at, boy? Where’s the food?” So I launched that to the actors early on and mentioned, “I want a play that Leroy could understand. Someone who’s never been to a play, someone who is an Everyman, and they want to be fed the things that theater has to offer.” We simply must, such as you mentioned, get to Shakespeare and lose the Shakespearean. So each time I shout out the phrase Leroy! in rehearsals, which means I can’t perceive what you’re speaking about; I don’t know what you imply. So we’ve to get clear, make it clear for Leroy. So it is a Shakespeare that we’re making an attempt to clarify for Leroy, a rustic man who grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, with outside plumbing.
Shapiro: You know, at one level, I heard you ask the actors to “let the culture in.” What did you imply by that?
Leon: I’m at all times reminded of one thing August Wilson taught me: It’s that it’s a must to be particular with the story you’re telling, particularly culturally. And the extra particular you might be with the individuals within the play—who they’re, the place they arrive from, what they eat, how they do their hair, what music they hearken to—the extra particular you might be, the higher alternative you will have of claiming one thing highly effective and impactful and common for everyone that involves the Delacorte. So that’s what it’s about. To me, it’s not about reaching Black individuals or white individuals or intellectuals or nonintellectuals or theater of us. It’s about reaching human beings, reaching individuals. And I feel by making this particular to Atlanta, Georgia, with out altering the phrases—making the music particular, making the meals particular, making their hair particular—we are able to do this.
Shapiro: John Douglas Thompson, who performs Claudius, instructed me that he was actually struck by how this manufacturing is about group reasonably than Hamlet as a person. Does that resonate with you?
Leon: Well that’s additionally due to the reduce that you simply helped me with. It centered on the group, the relationships, the individuals. So when you concentrate on the individuals and also you carve round that, it actually helps—for one factor, as a result of there’s no means a contemporary viewers goes to sit down for a five-hour manufacturing.
Shapiro: Well, I hope not, though generally they’re pressured to. Now, you instructed me what you wanted, and I used to be the butcher and pleased to provide the reduce you wanted. It was simple since you determined that each one this Polish, English, Norwegian, Danish stuff—the European geopolitical components of the play—didn’t match the Atlanta story. And as soon as that was gone, we bought it down nearer to 2 and a half hours than four-hours plus. And once more, it’s all Shakespeare’s language—aside from the songs, which, as in Shakespeare’s day, together with in Macbeth and Twelfth Night, may very well be swapped out for newer ones. It appears to me that you simply’ve been ready to herald extra of a cultural story because of this. For instance, the Black group’s expertise of mourning, of burial, of responding to the lifeless, of ancestors and their presence in a single’s life is especially putting, and was a revelation for me with my Brooklyn, white, Jewish upbringing. Can you speak in regards to the Ghost a bit bit within the context of that?
Leon: The Ghost? Yeah. The Ghost is definitely very acquainted to my tradition. I grew up Black, southern, Christian, however, , my tradition has a distinct relationship with the religious world. Even when you go to see horror motion pictures we’ve bought a distinct sense of horror motion pictures. We don’t journey down, working away from the monster. Man, we hold going. Or we’re not going to depart the girl within the automotive, if we predict there’s a chance of a ghost displaying up. If you return to the Caribbean and the African traditions, yow will discover our relationship to the lifeless. When Hamlet sees the Ghost, we don’t know if he really sees it or if the ghost is in him or the ghost is a part of him. But we do know that he believes that he’s seeing a ghost. And in some unspecified time in the future, the Ghost possesses him bodily. And I feel we pull that off. I feel we did a fairly good job of that. But that’s additionally a culturally particular ingredient that we’re bringing to the present.
Shapiro: Part of that specificity comes by in your alternative of Hamlet, Ato Blankson-Wood. I’m simply curious, is Ato the Hamlet that was in your head if you solid him?
Leon: You know, after I first met Ato—I bumped into him final summer season—I used to be consulting on a challenge that he and a few younger individuals had been doing about racial awakening, and he took that “to be or not to be” speech, and he customized it and made it applicable for what younger Black males had been going by in America after George Floyd’s loss of life. And so I knew that was the proper high quality for our Hamlet. And I kind of felt he might ship that. And now, after working with him, I feel it’s a generational efficiency. No one has fairly discovered the love in that character like Ato has. No one has discovered the scary half. One of the issues we needed to discover was that concept and definition of what psychological well being is in our lives right this moment. And he’s embraced that. It’s a scary emotional journey that he’s taking us by. And I simply assume that it’s a efficiency of a lifetime. And I couldn’t ask for a greater defining second for that character.
Shapiro: You know, it’s additionally a defining second for Hamlet, all these years after its creation, that it might really feel so supposed for what he does with it, that there’s no stress between the phrases he’s saying and the character he’s bringing to the function.
Leon: There was one factor Ato requested me once we first began rehearsing: He mentioned, “Can I bring all of me into this Hamlet?” I mentioned, “Yes.” And I really feel that it’s a three-dimensional character with a soul and a spirit and a thoughts and a future. It really seems like a brand-new play. It seems like a personality I’ve by no means met earlier than.