Published Spring 2024

No record of Shakespeare directing his own plays exists, but he clearly understood the deep importance of the role to a successful production. The actors in the play within the play of A Midsummer Night's Dream would clearly be lost without their director Peter Quince, and Shakespeare has Hamlet mouth advice he probably passed on to the actors in his own company: "Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines."

Speech, music, staging, choreography, lighting, sets—with so many elements and artists at work in every performance, the director's importance cannot be understated. Tyrone Guthrie, the Stratford Festival's founding artistic director and the visionary behind its inaugural production of Richard III in 1953, described his role as a kind of "chairman of the proceedings." Like Shakespeare (by way of Hamlet), Guthrie was not above criticizing his actors in rehearsal; even still, he believed a director's key attribute was flexibility: "All the collaborators in a production must feel that they are partners and not servants. Everything hangs on everybody. Hence the need for a flexible attitude."

Stratford's current crop of inspired directors embody Guthrie's spirit of leadership, passion for collaboration and devotion to the craft. Here, they share their insights on the role of a director as they have experienced and envision it.

Seana McKenna, Director of Twelfth Night

Over four decades in theatre, as a celebrated actor and director, have taught Seana McKenna that it really does take a village to raise a curtain. "A play comes off the page into its true form—a production—with the collaboration of many players, designers, stage managers, crew and, finally, the audience. Which is why I am somewhat skeptical of the word 'vision': it is not mine alone, and it will shift." That sense of communal experience extends, for McKenna, to audiences across the ages, to anyone who has ever sat down—or stood, in Shakespeare's time—for a performance of Twelfth Night. That is the power of great theatre. "For me," she says, "good plays of any age are contemporary—and that annoying word 'relevant'&mdsah;because they are just that: plays. They are being performed live by and for people living right now, who have entered the same theatre, read the same headlines that day, endured or enjoyed the same weather. There are many stories being revisited in the theatre: the stories of the play, and all the stories that come in with each audience member. They connect in the theatre."

Donna Feore, Director of Something Rotten!

Donna Feore's decision to direct the Broadway hit Something Rotten! at Stratford just might be the perfect marriage of artist and material. Feore has choreographed, directed, acted and danced in dozens of musicals and plays at the Festival: what better use of her multiple talents than a song-and-dance satire of all things Shakespeare and musical theatre? Mounting the production on the Festival Theatre's thrust stage, which faces the audience on three sides, is especially intriguing to Feore. "Whenever I direct/choreograph a show for the Festival stage, I always have to reimagine the work. The unique qualities of the thrust stage demand it and offers the audience exceptional intimacy. Something Rotten! will have all new staging and choreography, and we have an incredible cast, creative team and orchestra to bring it to life." She assures audiences that the show is as in love with Shakespeare and musical theatre as they are. "I see this show as an affectionate take on musicals and Shakespeare and the collision of the two. The writers aren't afraid to have fun and irreverently send up both!"
 

Antoni Cimolino, Director of London Assurance

Antoni Cimolino's 36-year association with the Stratford Festival—including 13 as artistic director—have trained his eye and ear for the nuances of language, movement, choreography and comedy. Who better than him to helm a revival of London Assurance, a blistering, boisterous comedy of manners? "The play has a wonderful sense of movement," Cimolino enthuses, "including the potential for dance. The lyricism of the language is mirrored in the body language and in the line of the costumes." Cimolino notes that, although the best comedy is specific to its time and place, particularly to a society's laws at the time of writing, the genre remains "the most enduring art form of all. Fashions and laws change over time but human folly endures, and character-based comedy has been popular since the dawn of human consciousness. So long as we focus on the behaviours of these amazing characters, laughter will follow."

Sam White, Director of Romeo and Juliet

As a veteran director and the founding artistic director of the Shakespeare in Detroit theatre, Sam White has helmed many an innovative Shakespeare interpretation, including a version of Twelfth Night set in 1920s Harlem. For Romeo and Juliet, her first Shakespeare production at Stratford, White is going in a different direction: "Hyper classical Italian Renaissance. Folks may be surprised to see actors in tights!" White knows she is bucking the trend to recast Shakespeare's works in innovative times and settings, but she is up to the challenge. "I haven't seen a hyper classical play in a long time and, I'm really looking forward to creating a story—with my collaborators—that feels resonant today but looks like candy with beautiful textures, colours and silhouettes and movement. The discord, violence and death in the play only matters if it is juxtaposed with art and beauty and music and life." The heart of the play is its brief and tragic love affair, which unfolds in less than a week. "Life comes at you fast," White says. "I know from personal experience that tragedy doesn't forewarn you and life can be altered in the blink of an eye. I show up for the work, the artists and the characters with compassion because I know Shakespeare understood life and how quickly it can change."

Thom Allison, Director of La Cage aux Folles

The enduring appeal of La Cage aux Folles is easy to sum up for director Thom Allison: "It's a gloriously funny and entertaining show, with composer Jerry Herman, of Hello, Dolly! fame, at his very best. Hit song after hit song." After bringing Rent, also a Broadway smash, to Stratford in 2023, Allison feels ready to meet the challenges of mounting another complex work of musical theatre. "It's always a juggling act," he says. "I think if you strive to keep your attention on telling the story, you'll be closer to success than not." For his latest production, the story is anchored in familial love and the need for forgiveness. "It's important to me that the audience understands the true nature of what it means to forgive when we are deeply hurt by one who is deeply hurting. And how, when we can understand and forgive, the love that's left is clearer."

Thomas Morgan Jones, Director of Wendy and Peter Pan

Every play, every production, every performance presents a bevy of challenges to the director. Family-oriented theatre is no exception. Wendy and Peter Pan director Thomas Morgan Jones knows he has his work cut out for him. "Making plays for children is an act of honouring their many capacities: emotional, intellectual, imaginative," he says. "This type of playmaking demands that we as artists create the most joyful and also the most sophisticated theatre we possibly can. Full of heart, intelligence and wonder. The greatest invitation is to wonder." That invitation is especially important in an age in which children's imaginations are so thoroughly captured by digital screens. Live theatre, Jones insists, "is unlike anything children can experience through a screen. That liveness is, I think, both inspiring and empowering to children. It shows them that this play, this experience, was made and is being made only for them in real time. Because they are special."

Esther Jun, Director of Cymbeline

For all of its pageantry, fantasy and romance, Cymbeline stands out as one of Shakespeare's most complex character studies. Director Esther Jun is especially fascinated by Posthumus and Imogen, the young lovers who are swept up in the court intrigue and war unleashed by Cymbeline's actions. "Imogen is a complex character who makes her own choices. But the play is not so much about whether these people make the right choices, it's about how they navigate the choices they make." It would be easy, Jun notes, to label Posthumus as a villain, considering his treatment of Imogen. Not so, says Jun. "With Posthumus, Shakespeare has created a compelling male character, full of contradictions, but entirely human and a product of this society and upbringing. Posthumus is one of the only male characters in the canon who regrets his decisions before he finds out that he was wrong. I find that fascinating and somewhat the crux of the play."

Jovanni Sy, Director of Salesman in China

Jovanni Sy, the director and co-author of Salesman in China, is up front about the challenges of producing a bilingual play. "They could fill a book," he admits. "I'll share just one example that often comes as a surprise to non-Chinese speakers: the huge degree of variability in spoken Mandarin." The Mandarin spoken in Beijing in 1983, the setting of the play, required actors to speak the language with authentic Northern Chinese accents. Most of the company, however, do not naturally speak with that accent. "So our company members needed the same kind of support to master their Beijing accents," Sy says, "that an American actor would to master a Mississippi Delta accent if they were acting in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." This is more than just a technical problem. "Because there are close to a million people of Chinese descent who live within 200 kilometres of Stratford (and because we are hoping many of them will come to see our play), it's important that we get a detail like this right." Issues of negotiating language and culture are nothing new to Sy, though. "I know the feeling of living between worlds and serving as a bridge between cultures. In the play, Ying (the actor cast as Miller's Willy Loman) talks about the impossible task of being all things to all people. I certainly can relate to that as an Asian Canadian theatre artist in an industry that has historically centred on white stories."

Molly Atkinson, Director of Hedda Gabler!

"I am so thrilled to dive into the madness of Hedda's brain, moving a mile a minute. How does this woman grapple with the relationships around her in the last 36 hours of her life? Is her destruction the bravest and most courageous thing she could do in her circumstances?" These and other perplexing questions began "swimming around" Molly Atkinson's brain when she learned that she'd be directing Hedda Gabler, one of the most analyzed, misunderstood and beloved works of European theatre. For Atkinson, questions about Hedda and the play's other conflicted, complex characters largely get hammered out in rehearsals. "That's the exciting part of the rehearsal process: answering these questions," she says. "Approaching the play in rehearsals is an extraordinary collaboration of everyone's thoughts and ideas of the characters and the story. We get to compile all of the amazing information and sift through it to get to the heart of the story and hopefully entertain the audiences."

Krista Jackson and Geneviève Pelletier, Co-Directors of The Diviners

The Diviners' fluid, almost impressionistic time structure and staging, which reflects the ebb and flow of its protagonist Morag's memories, is key for co-directors Krista Jackson and Geneviève Pelletier. "Time is not linear in one's memory, and it is not linear in this adaptation [of Margaret Laurence's novel]," Jackson notes. "The company of actors carry Morag on the river of her past and present. They are the currents that move her where she needs to go as she divines the story of her life." This non-linear approach is also reflected in the centrality of Manitoba's Red River to Morag's story and the history it encompasses. "We are most linked to the image of the Red River, its flows, its ebbs," Pelletier says. "It can be quite tumultuous and at the same time the river is life. The actors will be just as fluid in how they move across time and space."

Dean Gabourie, Director of The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?

Before the play has been cast or the sets and costumes designed, Dean Gabourie puts himself through a rigorous, exacting and inspiring process that he calls "filling the well." How does it begin? "You read the play a million times," Gabourie says. "This gives you a million other things to research and themes to dive into. Then you find out everything you can about the playwright—I always try to read the playwright's canon, so that you know where the writer was in the arc of his or her work for that particular play. You have to fill the well so that you know everything about the work." The process continues throughout the production, with collaborators—actors, designers, voice coaches—casting their own ideas and knowledge into the well." Gabourie can't imagine directing a play any other way. "You never know when or what you're going to have to draw from the well. You can use what you've learned at every stage of the production. You can answer the actors' and designers' questions when they come up, and you can give them direction. It also shows the actors that you've done your work on your end."

André Sills, Director of Get That Hope

André Sills is known to theatre devotees as one of the country's most dynamic, versatile actors. Get That Hope marks his directorial debut for the Festival. Primed for a challenge, he gives credit to his support system. "I know that I have a lot to prove by stepping into the director's chair," he says. "But going into this process, I know that it will be a full team effort to make it a magical experience for our audiences." Sills, who considered a career in professional rugby in high school, likes to stress the physicality of live theatre. "Live theatre is about a full body experience. Will it be laughter or tears, a sensory feeling?" He also stresses the difference in responsibilities between an actor and a director. "As a director I have to keep track of the whole tapestry, as Philip Akin likes to put it, following all of the threads of each character of each storytelling beat from beginning to end. It is very consuming because the brain is always thinking of possibilities and ways to solve problems and use those problems as opportunities."