Cover Story

‘Julius Caesar’ will reign outside at Worcester Common Oval in August

Richard Duckett Worcester Magazine | USA TODAY NETWORK

WORCESTER – William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” is a play with resonances that echoes through the centuries to audiences from the first times it was staged at the Globe Theatre in London probably in 1599 over 420 years ago. h Putting on “Julius Caesar” outside at the Worcester Common Oval this August, “I thought that the play is so hyper relevant right now I didn’t need to layer a big concept on to it. It’s relevant on its own, without putting too fine a point on it,” said director Livy Scanlon. h The Hanover Theatre Repertory will perform a free production of “Julius Caesar” on the steps of City Hall and the Worcester Common Oval through a partnership with the City of Worcester and support from the Downtown Worcester Business Improvement District and many sponsors and donors. “William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar” will run Aug. 4 to Aug. 22 with previews Aug. 4 to 6 and the official opening night Aug. 7. Performance times are 8 p.m. The shows are free, but people can reserve seats at tables at Worcester Common Oval by going to www.thehanovertheatre.org. Reserved seats must be claimed by 7:30 p.m. to be guaranteed. At 7:30 p.m., unclaimed seats will be released to walk-up audience members. There is flexibility for rain dates and additional performances.

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Joshua Wolf Coleman, playing Marcus Brutus in the upcoming production of “Julius Caesar,” walks to rehearsals on the Worcester Common Oval.

ASHLEY GREEN/TELEGRAM & GAZETTE

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“Julius Caesar” is not stamped with an unalterable date and time in terms of spirit and feeling. The title character has seemingly done much good for Rome as its leader, but certain members of the Roman Republic fear he has become a tyrant. Caesar increasingly speaks of himself in the third person, and says he is as constant at the Northern Star. But what will happen to the firmament if it is disrupted, even for the best of intentions? To put it another way, the play is a timely tragedy that chronicles the battle for the soul of arepublic andwarns of what befalls when civil strife erupts in civil war.

“It is a pretty modern play, meaning that audiences 300 to 400 years ago to now, they all understand,” said Joshua Wolf Coleman, who will be playing Brutus, the earnest senator who becomes convinced that assassinating Caesar is the morally right course of action. “Does might make right? Or does right make right? What is right?” Coleman said.

The cast will be in costumes of Ancient Rome. But while the text is Shakespearean and the costumes Roman, the THT Rep production will also have a look and aspect to it that is modern American.

“We wanted to make sure our Ancient Rome also looked like modern-day America, at least in its casting if not in its costumes,” Scanlon said.

Scanlon is artistic director of THT Rep, managing director of the BrickBox Theater, director of “Julius Caesar,” and is also in

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the cast as Antonia, more traditionally known as the male character Mark Antony, Caesar’s unswerving loyalist who stirs up people against his assassins.

“Mark Antony is named Antonia so it fits Shakespearean scansion,” Scanlon said, referring to the rhythm of a line or verse in poetry.

Other nontraditional casting includes Cassia (played by Meri Stypinski), aka Cassius, the senator who convinces Brutus, who is also her brother-in-law, to join in the plot against Caesar.

“We don’t have women playing men, we have women playing characters who are usually male that we’ve reimagined as women,” Scanlon said.

“I’ve given Julius Caesar (Dale Place) a husband (Calpernius, played by John Morello) instead of a wife, and changed the gender of a couple of minor characters to have more women in the play.”

The Soothsayer who famously declares, “Beware the Ides of March,” is played by a female woman actor (the part is traditionally a male), and the role has been expanded so that she’s almost like “a supernatural presence watching over the events,” Scanlon said.

“It certainly brings American politics and cultural resonances into the play. However … other than changing the ending of the names to be ‘a’ for the feminine or ‘us’ for the masculine and changing the pronouns, I haven’t changed anything else (in the text),” Scanlon said.

“So there’s nothing in the play (that’s been changed). They don’t talk about Cassia being a woman. They don’t talk about Caesar being gay. It’s just there. It’s part of the world, so whatever the audience brings to it, will be their own. There’s nothing in the text to guide them about how they feel about Caesar having a husband instead of a wife. They’ll have to have their own thoughts on that. Same with the women playing male roles,” Scanlon said.

“It also makes the play more representative of the human race,” she said. In “Julius Caesar,” there are something like 50 roles written for men and two for women, Scanlon noted. “As you know, that ratio isn’t necessarily accurate,” she said.

“And also because this is modern-day America and not ancient Rome, we have actors of all different skin color because that’s what America is, a country with all sorts of different people living in it.”

Coleman said he has gained a much better understanding of Brutus living the character and playing him for the first time. His preconception was that Brutus is, “like Hamlet and Macbeth Jr. Turns out he’s a different man altogether. Shakespeare understands the human condition and doesn’t make copy-cat characters. Brutus is Brutus.” And rather than being too earnest or too egotistical, as Coleman had initially thought, “his intentions are actually good,” he said.

Similarly, Stypinski, as Cassia, said, “The thing I want to honor is this sense of patriotism and the world being on our shoulder to fix … I love her. If I may, she’s a bit of a bad ass. And she’s smart.”

As Cassia tries to win Brutus over to the cause of protecting the Republic by drastic means, Stypinski said, “We’ve done a lot of work to guarantee as best we can to avoid any romantic currents between Cassia and Brutus. The focus is on her own ideas.”

Dale Place as Caesar said his character has come to believe in his omnipotence.

“I think he goes almost completely into the third person, and I think it cleverly builds that way. I think it really gets out of control at the senate at the end,” Place said.

Meri Stypinski, playing Cassia in the upcoming production of “Julius Caesar” on the Worcester Common Oval, is photographed by Mike Hendrickson during a rehearsal.

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Director Livy Scanlon chats with Meri Stypinski, playing Cassia, and Joshua Wolf Coleman, playing Marcus Brutus, during rehearsals on Wednesday, July 21.

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This is the second time Place has played Caesar, the first occasion being about 20 years ago.

“I have to think I understand a great deal more about the piece and the subtleties of the political doings of the time,” he said.

As for Caesar having a husband, Place said that at auditions conducted by Zoom he shared dialogue with both a male and female actor as Calpurnius/Calpurnia.

In “Julius Caesar,” Calpurnius/Calpurnia dreams that Caesar is murdered and begs him not to go to the senate, as planned, where his soon-to-be murderers will be waiting. Caesar dismisses the entreaty.

“I think it’s so easy if it’s a a man and a woman, it’s so easy to come out in an expected way, a chauvinist way,” Place said of the scene and the Caesar-Calpurnia interaction. “When it’s a man, it became a bit more understanding (on Caesar’s behalf ). I don’t know what that says about me, but for me it was more intimate.”

Scanlon, as Antonia, gets to deliver one of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches after Caesar’s murder.

“It’s a really big, magnificent scene. I do think it’s one of the best scenes of all of dramatic literature,” she said.

Scanlon’s own view is there’s also “quite a lot of comedy and almost satire in it. Then it gets unfunny. But I think Shakespeare is using ‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen’ to make a commentary, a

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satirical commentary, on political theater.”

But as Scanlon intimated, the conclusion of “Julius Caesar” can be seen as quite chilling. What have Cassius and Brutus wrought? Antony’s ally, Octavius, has plans of his own, as history will show.

“I think it’s devastating,” Stypinski said of the play’s ending. “I think from the moment we kill Caesar, its all downhill from there.”

“It is an entertaining show, an exciting show, it’s a suspenseful show, a fun show,” Scanlon said. “And then it’s also a very dark show. In the end everything just unravels. The characters unravel. The world itself unravels.”

Of all Shakespeare’s plays, “Julius Caesar” seems to have had the most done to it in terms of adaptation. In a 2017 Shakespeare in the Park production at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, the title character had a modern-day suit and a big red tie. Orson Welles put on a production of “Julius Caesar” with the protagonists wearing the brown shirts of Mussolini’s fascists. A production in England in the 1960s had Brutus and Marc Antony orating like slick, suited, Harold Wilson-style politicians giving party political broadcasts on television. A few years ago the Vokes Theatre of Wayland staged a production by Craig A. Foley with both Caesar and Brutus played by women, with the characters each having wives.

Purists might still raise eyebrows, although perhaps not so much now as they would have done a decade or so ago.

“I don’t think it’s so much the case now and even if it is I’m not bothered,” Scanlon said about her production.

“The point is to normalize women in positions of power, and Black people in positions of power, and gay people in positions of power, and to expand peoples’ notions of who they can be and who other people can be,” she said.

The production itself is very much modern Worcester in terms of the support in bringing a major event to life.

The total cost is $200,000, Scanlon said, and the cast consists of 20 actors.

“It’s actually very, very lean for something of this scope,” Scanlon said of the $200,000 budget.

Nevertheless, “Its a big undertaking. A lot of people have to come on board,” she said.

“Julius Caesar” won’t be the first Shakespeare under the stars production in Worcester.

The former Forum Theatre, and later the Redfeather Theatre Company which became The Worcester Shakespeare Company, staged Shakespeare plays outside at Green Hill Park off and on for several years. In 2012 the Worcester Shakespeare Company moved to what is now the Open Sky Community Services complex in Whitinsville. WSC made a couple of trips back to perform on Worcester Common for one or two nights each time before going on hiatus in 2019. There has been no word on any return.

Scanlon said she started talking with Troy Siebels, president and CEO of The Hanover Theatre and Conservatory for the Performing Arts, about possibly staging “Julius Caesar” when they were both working on last December’s THT Rep’s production of “A Christmas Carol Reimagined” at the BrickBox Theater.

The Hanover Theatre has said that “William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is our gift to the community, subsidized by our generous sponsors. Together, we want to recognize the extraordinary support we’ve received throughout the pandemic while offering a safe way for people to connect through the experience of the performing arts.”

The “Julius Caesar” project

Dale Place plays Julius Caesar in the upcoming production of “Julius Caesar” on the Worcester

Common Oval. ASHLEY GREEN / TELEGRAM & GAZETTE

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started to come together early this year, Scanlon said. The City of Worcester came on board, saying it would cover the city’s costs. THT Rep launched an “Ides of March” matching gift campaign, with supporters Veronica and Howard Wiseman matching contributions, dollar for dollar, up to $30,000. The fundraiser reached its $60,000 goal.

“It’s truly a community effort, from small $5 donations to the city (of Worcester) covering its costs,” Scanlon said. Assumption University is providing housing for out-of-town actors, while Lundgren Honda of Auburn is providing them with transportation. The Downtown Business Improvement District received a grant form the Mass Office of Tourism, which is helping to advertise “Julius

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WM-SPAD0625114016 Caesar.” Scanlon has an extensive background in theater as an award-winning producer, director, actor and teaching artist. She has worked with Nora Theatre Co., New Rep, Commonwealth Shakespeare, Playhouse Creatures, Trinity Rep, Asolo Rep, Hartford Stage, and Bridge Rep, which she founded and helmed for five years. The cast of “Julius Caesar” includes professional, Equity actors in principal leading roles, as well as community actors such as recent participants in THT Rep’s new no cost Worc at Play training program for actors. “I’m very proud of them and proud of the program,” Scanlon said. Scanlon has never played the role of Antonia before in its entirety and while she directed a small studio production of “Julius Caesar” indoors, she has never directed any kind of show outside. “I certainly have not. It’s a whole other ball game,” she said laughing at the scope of the project. The audience will sit at the heavy tables and chairs that are already on the Worcester Common Oval supplemented by some rented tables and chairs for a maximum of about 250 people.

The action will take place on the steps behind City Hall as well as the the stone slabs on either side of the steps. An aisle will run through the Oval and there will also be some action in it, as well as “a few moments” by the fountain, Scanlon said.

Four actors will play Commoners, as Shakespeare called them, located at four locations around the Worcester Common Oval to try to stir the audience to cheer, boo or hiss at key moments, most likely including Antonia’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech. Crowd participation (and togas) will be encouraged. “It should be fun,” Scanlon said.

Actors will be wearing microphones, and there is no face mask requirement for the audience.

Because “Julius Caesar” is a free public performance, “there’s nothing to stop people walking by. You could sit on a bench. You could watch for a little while. You could leave,” Scanlon said. Still, “The show is staged to be best viewed from the Oval.” There will be “some security in place to make sure people don’t wander on to the stage.”

Wolf thinks that the production of “Julius Caesar” is going to put Worcester on the map this summer. Originally from New York City, he now lives in Boston after spending some time on the West Coast. This is his first time here, but he knows Scanlon’s work.

“Liv Scanlon is really a highlevel artist,” Wolf said. “Central

Massachusetts — this should be the place that people find.” Continued from Page 17 “It is an entertaining show, an exciting show, it’s a Besides playing Julius Caesar before, Place has also portrayed a well-known charactersuspenseful show, a fun show,” Scanlon said. “And then it’s that Worcester audiences will be familiar with — he was the also a very dark show. In the end everything just unravels. first Ebenezer Scrooge in The Hanover Theatre’s annual proThe characters unravel. The world itself unravels.” duction of “A Christmas Carol.” Place also lives in the Boston area. “What a space,” Place said of The Hanover Theatre. Looking around the Worcester Common one recent late afternoon just before a rehearsal of “Julius Caesar,” he said, “This going to be very interesting.” Stypinski, who has also been seen in “A Christmas Carol,” said she moved to Worcester recently. After she and Scanlon were cast as Roman senators, the show’s costume department had to create a Roman costume for women senators, since there were no female senators in ancient Rome, Scanlon noted. Rehearsals outside have seen Scanlon and crew donning more modern attire, including belt packs with head sets, to direct and oversee rehearsal facets such as blocking. “It’s funny. We all look like we’re gonna give a tour of downtown Worcester, but it works well enough. It’s been fun working outside,” Scanlon said. “Folks come up to us and ask how we’re doing. It’s just fun to have something wholesome and exciting happening downtown.” Asked if such an event could be an annual summer happening, Scanlon said “probably not ‘Julius Caesar,’ but something.” But first … The Soothsayer will be watching. “I think everyone is waiting with baited breath to see how it goes,” Scanlon said.

William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Previews 8 p.m. Aug. 4, 6 and 6. Regular performances 8 p.m. Aug. 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19 and 22. www.thehanovertheatre.org.