The Cat Ate My Dramaturgy

SORRY MISS, THE CAT ATE MY DRAMATURGY Looking back at the several dozen Shakespeare productions I have seen in New York in the last few years, I am struck that almost all of them share something in common—a lack of dramaturgy. Yet if there is one playwright where an investment in dramaturgy makes a critical difference it is Shakespeare. Translating hundreds of years of scholarship into something that is performable and which reveals the underlying meanings of a play is no easy matter. It requires many months of dramaturgical work. It means having people who are trained in understanding the multiple dimensions of these highly complex allegorical plays and who can bring out the underlying levels of meaning. Without that you simply get beautifully recited verse and no clue about what it means. Elizabethan theater, such as the work of Lyly, was allegorical. So is Shakespeareʼs. It was also highly meta-theatrical, and you are supposed to look through the surface to the underlying levels. It is not a realistic theater. Characters are literary figures--they are not real people. They are invented literary figures, created to communicate literary typologies.

I wrote my thesis on allegorical dramaturgy in Shakespeare at the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford Upon Avon. But New York productions of Shakespeare seem actor-centric and star-struck, concerned entirely about the surface and not about meaning. This treats an audience like dummies, who will be entranced by the beauty of the verse like the most uneducated members of an Elizabethan theater, and who will look no further. Take for instance As You Like It. I have seen no productions, other than my own, which show it to be a Biblical allegory from Paradise to the Flood, covering in the process two characters called ʻJakesʼ (the Elizabethan for toilet) and another who is an allegory for its inventor. I have seen several Hamlets, but none of them showed that Ophelia is an allegory for the Virgin Mary, and that the sewing scene and nunnery scenes are re-writings of the Annunciation--our demonstration on 5 September at Manhattan Theatre Source and in Washington Square Park will be the first. I have seen many Romeo and Juliets, but never a one that showed the Nurse Angelica as the Angel Gabriel who mentions Susan because this is from the Hebrew word for lily, the symbol that the Angel gives to Mary at the Annunciation. I have seen many Midsummer Nightʼs Dreams, but not one of them revealed the allegorical nature of the characters even though over the last decade Professor Parker at Stanford has written several major articles setting out their identities very clearly. Again it was left to the Dark Lady Players to put on the worldʼs first production that showed this level of meaning. And next year, we will go to a college in Massachusetts to find a receptive audience to show why in Twelfth Night Orsino is melancholy and why Viola is called Viola, and what exactly happens to everyone when Malvolio runs off at the end. This Fall we go to Connecticut to give university workshops on AYLI. But why is there not a demand here for intelligent Shakespeare of the kind that a university audience in Europe would appreciate? Why is it that almost none of the directors directing Shakespeare in Manhattan have graduate degrees in Shakespeare? Why are they such amateurs? Why as Mike Daisey asks, are they intent upon “mashing up Shakespeare until it is a thin lifeless paste that any reasonable person would reject as disgusting?” I find it puzzling and can only conclude that New Yorkers do not have sufficient attention spans. So long as it is pretty and passes a couple of hours, who cares what it means? It is just like television. And by treating theater just like television New Yorkers are doing a disservice to the plays and to themselves. So be warned. Once Shakespeare goes, everything else will follow.

JOHN HUDSON is dramaturge to the Dark Lady Players, an experimental Shakespeare company. He can be reached at [email protected]