There is much anew in ‘Much Ado.’
Theatre Department Technical Director David Griffiths has chosen to take Shakespeare’s comedic play “Much Ado About Nothing” in a new direction. He cut Shakespeare’s original text, transposed the play into the 1940s, and changed the traditionally male Don John into “Countess Joanna.”
“Part of the reason we changed the gender of some of the roles was practical,” Griffiths said. “We always have more women audition. But I thought it would be interesting to make Don John a woman – especially since we were updating the play to the 20th century.”
Sophomore Catherine Coffey is the woman responsible for bringing Countess Joanna, Don John’s female counterpart, to life.
“A female Don John opens the character to a lot of new interpretation,” Coffey said. “It gives her new motives, if you are willing to use them. Jealousy of Hero’s relationship, for example. The position of a woman in public office during the 1940’s is also a new element.”
Character alterations aside, with the simple change of time and scene come attendant implications. Some of the humor in “Much Ado” loses potency before modern audiences and seem odd spoken by 1940s Americans.
“A large chunk of what was funny to Shakespeare’s audience was wordplay,” Griffiths said. “He had a commonality with his audience, a shared culture. We no longer have that common cultural background. Shakespeare frequently starts a joke, makes a joke, and riffs off of that, but we can’t see all of that anymore.”
While Shakespeare’s culture and language may have been vastly different from those of the 1940s and today, the themes within the play are timeless. The play can –– and does –– transcend the conventions of the time in which it was written.
“Shakespeare wrote for his time and for his people,” Coffey said, “but ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ also touches upon the themes of power and inter-gender conflict. Shakespeare was meant to be played with. Keeping his work absolutely pure would not be in keeping with Shakespeare’s intentions. The best way to revere Shakespeare is to love him. Putting his work away in a glass case just isn’t doing it justice.”
Though preservation of Shakespeare’s language is crucial to preserving the meaning of the play, Coffey sees his work as dynamic. It engages its audience anew each time. Experimentation, at its best, emphasizes and examines motifs already present in his writing.
Even this moderately experimental approach was initially met with trepidation from some members of the cast. Junior Victoria Zajac, cast as Beatrice, performed in many productions of Shakespeare before she came to Hillsdale.
“I started out doing Shakespeare,” Zajac said. “It was all that I did until I got to high school. At first I was nervous [about the changes], because I’m such a purist. But they add such a thick layer of meaning that I’m getting more comfortable with them.”
Senior Peter Kistler, cast as Benedick, also expressed loyalty to the Bard’s original phrasing.
“It wouldn’t be Shakespeare if you changed the language,” Kistler said. “Even Baz Luhrmann doesn’t do that!”
However, Kistler brought attention to the tension between maintaining the integrity of the text and effectively communicating the themes within the play to contemporary audience members.
“I don’t want to deliver jokes nobody gets,” Kistler said. “There are elements that just aren’t applicable to modern audiences.”
For many of the cast members, the key to bringing Shakespeare to a modern audience is simply making a personal connection. The rest will follow.
“If you know what you’re saying –– if you’re comfortable with what you’re saying –– you shouldn’t need to change the language,” Zajac said. “Read it over and over. Read it slowly.”
salbers@hillsdale.edu
