Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season September-October 2015 | Page 11

You enjoy a first class

music experience.

Will there be a narrator to move
the plot along?
There’s a relatively small group of actors
playing all the roles. Romeo and Juliet
is written with a chorus; it already has
a narrative voice. In our production, the
choruses will be spoken by different
actors. It’s a little bit like they are telling
their own stories.
Tell me about the cast.
It’s a deliberately multi-racial cast. I think
one of the things the piece is about is
disagreements between families in the
modern world. I felt having a multi-racial
cast is important.
Is there any connection to events
last spring in Baltimore?
The piece is about how society can break
down over issues between people. That
can be as simple as “you planted a tree
too close to my yard.” What causes these
conflicts is not necessarily something
huge. One of the lessons in R & J is a
need for generosity in people towards
each other in order for society to survive.
When a passionate love is found, what
interferes is that society itself has become
so rigid in its attitudes that it can’t see
the beauty.
I’ve always considered Romeo and
Juliet a play about young and heightened passion. Maybe it’s really about
the parents. When they’re looking at
their two dead children and saying,
“Holy (expletive), what did we do?”
It’s a very big moment. It’s actually one of
the places where the score is very powerful. It deals with what do you do after
two children kill themselves. What does
society do when they watch people in
love commit suicide?
People say it’s a play about fate, but it
seems to me, it’s very clear the role of the
parents and the way they’re feuding make
it almost impossible for the children to be
together. In the end, the parents have to
face the role they had in causing these two
people to kill themselves.

Do the Montagues
and Capulets learn?
I think they do. If we’re only fated to
constantly repeat the mistakes, we’re always
in a cycle of destruction. It’s up to everyone
to struggle to get past that. In the end when
they talk about the families doing something together, it’s exciting—though they
are in sadness; they’re struggling to find a
way past the children’s death.
Maybe we should talk about
something happier.
I’ll tell you something happy. I’m very excited about our team for Romeo and Juliet.
We have very strong actors for both these
roles. Romeo is a young actor, Sebastian
Stimman, making a name for himself
mostly in New York and film work; Juliet
is Christina Sajous, who is spectacular,
and whose previous Shakespeare includes
a terrific performance as Cordelia with the
Folger. Both Sebastian and Christina are
definitely actors on the way up.
What about the production?
It’s going to be very simple. I believe pretty
firmly that with the orchestra on stage,
you try to create an atmosphere that is
suggestive, but not done as if it’s an opera or a ballet. The orchestra should be at
the center of the event. It’ll be a couple
of platforms, some fabric that can take
light, so we can suggest time of day as
well as the fragility of the two as a couple.
I believe that something like this, with a
substantial musical score, the music itself
is important to telling the story. The orchestra and conductor are a big part of
the drama of the event.
Do you think this production will shift
the way we look at Romeo and Juliet?
Having the Prokofiev score is huge. It’s a
very romantic score, with very nasty moments. It’s that mix that make the score so
exciting. It’s incredibly hopeful, balanced
with some harsh ideas musically. It’s a
chance to look starkly at ourselves. What
does the world learn from this? What do
we become because of this?

Shoul dn’t you
also enjoy a first class
real estate experience?
CONTACT

DONNA BROWN
Long & Foster Real Estate

REALTOR/RELOCATION SPECIALIST

410-804-3400

EMAIL: do