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Cardenio (U.S.), Interview with Stephen Greenblatt |
Sally Ollove talks to co-author Stephen Greenblatt about the play.
SO: What made you want to work with Chuck Mee on a play?
SG: I met Chuck at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Italy, and I admired his work greatly on that occasion. Working on a play with Chuck was perfect for me because I am interested in cultural mobility. I am interested in what happens when materials get recycled – what happens when things are moved from one place to another, from one culture to another, or from one mind to another. Chuck happens to be a genius at that kind of recycling.
SO: What about the idea of cultural mobility fascinates you?
SG: It interests me because of its deep links to my pursuits not just as an academic but particularly as a Shakespearean. Shakespeare was perfectly capable of inventing stories. As far as we know he did it in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and in The Tempest. But most of the time he liked to rip somebody else off. Whether he was working from an ancient source or a contemporary source, he clearly loved moving texts into his own sphere and seeing what he could do with them. I’m a Renaissance scholar, and the very word itself means rebirth. It’s another way of saying cultural mobility.
SO: Did anything surprise you in the playwriting process?
SG: I would say there were two things. I’m not sure this was a surprise exactly, but one thing was that there’s this delicious sense of freedom in playwriting that you don’t have in studying plays. You’re making it up. And you can have it come out the way you want. If the story that you’ve received has a miserably unhappy ending, as indeed the story we borrowed does, you can give it a happy ending if you want. So one thing was the pleasure or difference in the actual agency that you have over the act of making. And the other is exactly the opposite – that there are certain things you can’t make happen even if you want to make them happen. We tried at various moments in our play to push things in a slightly different direction, but the source materials wouldn’t always allow that. So as a playwright you’re free but not completely free.
SO: Has the creative process changed the way that you teach Shakespeare or the kinds of assignments that you give?
SG: This project changed my teaching before the play was actually written. It was a precondition for writing the play. When Chuck and I began talking about this project I decided to teach an undergraduate course here at Harvard called Shakespearean Playwriting in which we tried to think about what it was like to be a working playwright and what it was like to write these plays. We asked the students to write Shakespearean scenes, and Chuck and I began to play the game ourselves. And we told the students that we were free to rip them off and they were free to rip us off.
SO: What’s been your favorite part of this process so far?
SG: The sheer joy of knowing and working with my collaborator, Chuck, who is a remarkably interesting and engaging and joyous human being with an extraordinary set of talents. It’s been a revelation and a huge pleasure for me to watch and join in the writing of this play with such a person.
Sally Ollove is a dramaturgy student at the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theatre Training. For the full video interview with Stephen Greenblatt visit the A.R.T.’s website: www.amrep.org
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