6 minute read
What Uncle Vanya is giving us now
Berkeley Rep artistic director Johanna Pfaelzer and Shakespeare Theatre Company artistic director Simon Godwin gathered with Berkeley Rep’s associate artistic director and director of In Dialogue David Mendizábal to discuss the impetus for their collaboration on Simon’s production of Uncle Vanya. Below are highlights from their conversation.
DAVID MENDIZÁBAL: What drew you to each other as artistic leaders and brought about this collaboration between Berkeley Rep and Shakespeare Theatre Company?
JOHANNA PFAELZER: What I remember is an afternoon in San Francisco where there was a screening of the beautiful Romeo and Juliet that Simon directed for the National Theatre, and I was so moved by what he had made. When the screening ended, we were both meant to be chatting with other guests, but we found ourselves together in a corner in a really fun and lively discussion of what Simon had made, and a bit of commiserating over the challenges of leading theatres in that moment. What I remember from that conversation was some electricity and an appetite for making something together.
SIMON GODWIN: Yes, it was so kind of you to come on that day because we were just emerging out of the pandemic. So, it was a very tentative moment culturally for us all. Your enthusiasm for the work really boded well for a shared quest and the fact that we were both new to running theatres also was bonding. We took over our respective organizations at a similar time, and there was a similar hunger to take these classic texts and find something that was both loyal to their core, but also adventurous about their form.
JP: This question of what the classics would be under my leadership at Berkeley Rep had been ongoing because I’m such a new play person. Berkeley Rep has always had a place for the classics, especially for classics as imagined through the vision of an exciting contemporary artist. So, I thought here was a way that Simon could really help answer a need for Berkeley Rep. And you said, “Well, what do you love?” And I said, “Chekhov.” And I think you very quickly said, “Well, Uncle Vanya.”
SG: I was hungry to do a Chekhov play after a long time of not doing one, and Shakespeare Theatre Company has never produced a Chekhov play before. So, for us, it almost has the status of new work. There’s a phrase that Ian Rickson, who used to run the Royal Court, coined: approach a new play like a classic; and approach a classic like a new play. And that’s something I try to do. Joyfully confront the classic and not live in the classic’s past but live in its present opportunities. Not to feel reverential about a classic, but to really ask bold urgent questions about what it’s doing now.
DM: Why Uncle Vanya? And how did Hugh Bonneville come to the project?
SG: I think all great works of art change as we change. And I think masterpieces are, in a way, not instructions for living, but a sort of guide to how we might survive.
JP: Somewhere between instructions and cautionary tales.
SG: Yes, I think, somewhere between instruction and prayer.
JP: Better.
SG: Hugh was similarly entranced by the play. After doing such wonderful work on screen, I think he found himself suddenly hungry to be back on stage.
DM: There are many translations of Uncle Vanya. How did you both arrive at Conor McPherson’s?
SG: I was looking for a version that was colloquial but that didn’t sacrifice the grand and intense poetry of the play. I’ve loved Conor’s writing ever since I saw his play The Weir at the Royal Court. His Irish sensibility has a sort of earthy quality that doesn’t feel dissimilar to Chekhov. His translation is a gritty version of the play that still looks after the mystery of the original.
JP: It was a fun process where Simon, Hugh, and I read a pile of different translations, and it was interesting to see where things are core to the piece, and where different writers took certain liberties. And what moved me about Conor’s version is it felt very true, or as true as we know how to be in English, to Chekhov’s text. And what you say about that kind of contemporary sense of it, his version didn’t feel like a dumbing-down. It has an urgency and a muscularity that feels so playable, without being reductive.
SG: And it feels high-stakes and rather exciting.
DM: Can you share a bit about what you’re hoping to unlock with this specific production of Uncle Vanya?
SG: Peter Brook has this nice phrase: the journey of rehearsal is to discover the secret play that lies under the play. The secret play is the story you all make as a company at this very moment in time. Together, I want to interrogate the idea of Chekhov being a steadfastly naturalistic writer; he was always pushing against Stanislavski’s description of him as being that. For example, we’re searching for a way of bringing the audience with us on a journey. Is there a first gesture which allows those watching into our process as we build our story?
DM: In act four of the play, when faced with a bleak future, Sonya offers Vanya a message of hope. For both of you as artistic leaders, what gives you hope for the future?
JP: The gathering of people together still gives me hope. To see people come together around an idea, a dream, a possibility, gives me hope, and that is what making a production is. The idea that we’re going to gather all these people from multiple cities and countries and ask them to carve out time in their schedule, but more importantly in their heads and their hearts, feels like nothing but an exercise in hope.
SG: Yes, that’s brilliant, Johanna. This sense of investing so deeply. I think of Astrov talking so passionately in the play about the threat to the environment. It’s just one example of characters striving to find agency. Indeed, balancing living in the present with a responsibility to the future is a central theme of the play.
JP: I love the fact that Chekhov then becomes this call to action. Uncle Vanya is often thought of as a set of passive people who lounge on sofas and wish for their lives to be different in some way, and I think that’s the watercolor cliche of Chekhov. As you said, this play is full of people with enormous yearning, passion, disappointments, and appetites. There’s a real sense that if action is not taken, there is an inevitable decline. So, who amongst them is going to rise to that challenge?
