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Director's Q&A

Man of La Mancha

What is your experience in directing musicals?

I've directed many musicals -- from large-scale to more medium-sized to small cast revues.  In many ways, directing a musical is not that different from directing a play by Shakespeare. . .  it's all about clear story-telling, moving large numbers of bodies around the stage, and always asking the question: "what is so important that a character's only choice is to sing or dance?" (or, in the case of Shakespearean scripts, to speak in verse).  Usually, at a moment when a character breaks into song, it's because the stakes are so high that that's their only choice.  They need to find a heightened form in which to express their need or their passion.

I grew up in a household that had a long-standing, familial appreciation for music and theatre; I studied piano and took ballroom dance lessons as a child, and my parents took me to theatre, opera, and classical music concerts whenever they could.  I got my start as a performer doing high school musicals, and as my directing career has evolved, have ended up directing a large number of them:  "West Side Story," "Camelot," "The Music Man," "Guys and Dolls," "1776," "Big River," "Little Shop of Horrors," "Forever Plaid," and one of the first regional theatre productions of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast," shortly after the Broadway rights were released.  I've had a great time with all of them, and always look forward to getting to work on them whenever they may be offered.  This will be my first "Man of La Mancha," but I'm familiar with the piece, having seen or helping produce other productions of the play.  It's a great and inspiring piece of theatre.

How will this production be different than other staging of the show?

I'm not sure how -- or if -- this production will be different from other staging of the play, except that we've got a very large cast (it's one of the luxuries of getting to work on the play at a professional company that's based at a university), and I'm hoping that we'll reduce the more commercial/Broadway-like elements of the material, and get back to "La Mancha's" more simple roots, in spite of the size of the ensemble.

Other productions I've seen have some times confused me because of the play-within-a-play element; in other words, when are the actors prisoners awaiting trial and when (and why) do they become characters in Cervantes story?  The Cervantes character himself can be a little hard to track some times, for he not only portrays Alonzo Quihana in the story of "Don Quixote", Quihana assumes the identity of Don Quixote -- so in many ways, David Kortemeier (who plays Cervantes/Quixote) has three identities to assume.  A lot of my job is keeping identities clear and making sure the audience can follow the story.  So I need to track carefully the moments in which prisoners become involved in the story and make sure those transformations don't just come out of nowhere.

We're performing "La Mancha" without intermission and much of the cast will be on stage throughout.  And from the beginning, I talked with the design team for the production about keeping values simple.  There's much about the play that would work in a bare-bones, studio theatre kind of setting with actors creating the story out of minimal props and costume pieces.  I think that's one of the things that is so inspiring about the play.  "Man of La Mancha" reminds us of the power of the imagination in the way in which the story is told, and in Cervantes' message of hope, daring, and optimism: that even in the most dangerous, confined, and hopeless-seeming circumstances, we still have the power of our imagination to help us cope with and overcome whatever obstacles with which we are faced.

Tell us about the design concept.

The play takes place in the holding cell of a prison or penitentary somewhere in the Castillian area of Spain during the time of the Inquisition.  Because the Clarence Brown Theatre stage is pretty large, it's a big-seeming holding cell, but the entire story takes place within the confines of the cell.  No moving pieces except for a gate and a bit of a drawbridge near the single exterior entrance to the cell; no revolves, no walls that move in and out or disappear. . .  little to distract us from the telling of the story. Therefore, the design is essentially a platform or place for storytelling, which is exactly what's called for in the material itself: a place in which Cervantes can spin out his story to his (quite literally) captive prison audience before being summoned by the judges of the Inquisition.  Costume pieces will come and go so that we can suggest a character through simple additions to what they're wearing as prisoners; we'll be employing what we call a lot of "found objects" on the set to help us change scene and locale.  A bench, a bucket, a door that's been cast aside. . .  that sort of thing.  It's a setting in which the prisoners' sense of time of day is very uncertain. . .  there are only a few small windows, set very high up on the prison wall, so lighting will be key to mood and locale.  Our lighting designer is working on creating a palette that will be able to transition from prison interior to the play-within-the play, which will help us track the story as it unfolds.  I'm hoping to keep things simple, imaginative, and free-flowing -- much as I would were I directing a play by Shakespeare.

 

 

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