Intensity of olde English plays appeals to Brazilian expat
Credit to Author: Shawn Conner| Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2020 19:07:41 +0000
The Changeling
When: Jan. 16 to Feb. 1
Where: Telus Studio Theatre, Chan Centre
Tickets: $24.50, $16.50 (seniors), $11.50 (students), $5 (youth) at box.office@ubc.ca, ubctheatretickets.com and 604-822-2678
Leave it to a Brazilian expat to try to revive interest in the glory days of 17th century Jacobean and Elizabethan drama. For her first public theatre project in Vancouver, UBC grad school student Luciana Silvestre Fernandes is directing The Changeling. A tragedy by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, the 1622 play centres around a love triangle that leads to murder. We talked to Fernandes about her love of old English tragedies and what to expect from The Changeling.
Q: How did you first become interested in this period and style of play?
A: I’m kind of weird. I had read Marlowe’s complete works in English at 16 when I was still in Brazil. And I completely fell in love with it. Edward II (1594, by Marlowe) was my first large-scale production. It was a play I had wanted to do since I was a teenager. Ever since I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the plays of the period.
Q: What is it about this kind of play that attracts you?
A: There’s so much. They are visceral, and the stakes are always high. The form matches the content very well. The language itself inspires the conflict. It’s in the form. As a theatre artist, I love it too because those are scripts that understand their role as a script. They are inspiring, not limiting. They leave themselves open to staging and other elements of performance to be added on. And I think they ask difficult questions. And they introduce us to a wide range of characters. And the struggle is very human.
Q: So why The Changeling?
A: It’s haunted me for a decade. I read this play three times during my undergrad and it gave me nightmares. And I think anything that moves you that much needs to be done. But it had to be at the right time with the right people and the right resources to bring it to life. I think it’s the play that’s been with me the longest before tackling it.
Q: With Shakespeare, whose plays have been performed so much, there is the urge to do something different. Do you feel that way about these plays?
A: I have mixed feelings about this urge to do something different or not different — and what does that mean anyway? Does putting someone in ruffles make it Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but if I don’t it’s Luciana’s Hamlet? I don’t know how much I buy into this murky territory of what was locked in the playwright’s mind and what is and isn’t a truthful experience. I think you need to wrestle with that in any text. What about it moves you, and makes you want to do it?
Q: That said, have you updated The Changeling?
A: I’m drawn to anything but kitchen-sink realism, whether it’s set in 1675 or 2019. I’m embracing the perspective of the lead character, Beatrice-Joanna. It’s very much done as her nightmare rather more so than any specific time and place. We’re taking an expressionistic approach. It’s a realm of entrapment, a world of high fashion, but it’s a nightmarish world, where the Jacobean and the contemporary collide. And it is about the embodiment of trauma, and distinguishing from within those roles what the walls of that world are that close in on you and consume everyone within them.
Q: There’s a BBC stage version on YouTube with Helen Mirren that is three hours long. Did you do any editing for your version?
A: Yes, partially because some jokes don’t make sense anymore, and also to keep it tight and focussed. It runs an hour-and-a-half. But I kept the subplot (which takes place in an asylum) because I think it’s important in establishing the world. What is the world beyond Beatrice-Joanna’s household? What does the world do to people who don’t fit in? The story runs very much in parallel and intertwines with the main plot — the habit of institutionalization of anything that is not what is deemed acceptable and perfect.