In the beginning, there was Paul Rudd. Summer 1998. I am 8 years old and Paul Rudd is lying shirtless next to a pool on stage at Lincoln Center. He speaks. “If music be the food of love, play on”. I fell in love.
Twelfth Night was not the first play I saw, it was likely not even the first Shakespeare play I saw, but I can still picture that moment. According to my mother, I spent the remainder of the play complaining any time the fools were on stage. I wanted the lovers back. I wanted Paul Rudd.
As much as I have always loved Paul Rudd, what was really born that night was my everlasting love for William Shakespeare. Unlike my other passions which come and go, Shakespeare has been a constant in my life for as long as I can remember. My family took a yearly trip to Lenox, Massachusetts pretty much for the sole purpose of seeing Shakespeare & Company’s newest production. One of the earliest I saw, and most memorable, the 2001 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Mount (Edith Wharton’s home), which took place in the woods. Fairies were hanging from trees and the mechanicals were truly a traveling troupe of misfits through the forest. It was pure magic. That’s what theater is (when it works), magic.
I have seen almost all of Shakespeare’s plays. I think I’m missing King John, Timon of Athens and Troilus and Cressida? Again, you’d have to ask my mother. Something I ask myself every time I walk into a Shakespeare play, why is it still so meaningful to me after all this time? Why is it still so meaningful to all of us? While I don’t feel qualified to tackle the question on a broader scale, I’m going to go ahead and try to tackle it on a personal one.
My most recent brush with Shakespeare was Richard II at The Bridge Theater in London about a month ago. I was in London to run the marathon (maybe I’ll get to running in a post down the line), but of course I could not miss the chance to see some theater. Jonathan Bailey of Bridgerton and Wicked fame was starring as Richard II and I am woman enough to admit that he was enough to convince me to buy tickets.
I was anxious about the marathon, jet lagged having just arrived in London the day before, and convinced I wouldn’t make it through the roughly three hour production. I loved it. It was cinematic and strange and big and loud, and Jonathan Bailey was mesmerizing. Richard II is not a great play in my opinion. It’s basically a prequel to the much more well known and more frequently produced Henry trilogy, but despite being mostly a preamble, I was hooked. The language in Richard II is beautiful and Jonathan’s performance was heart wrenching. For three hours I forgot about running and my nerves and just basked in the everlasting beauty of Shakespeare.
Shakespeare to me is akin to a comfort blanket. I have been reading, watching, and performing Shakespeare my entire life. I have flashes of productions I saw when I was a child playing across my mind when I see a new interpretation of the same play. To be honest, my memory is not the greatest. My memories manifest themselves in feelings or scents or dreams.
I think I was 14 when my mom, my sister and I performed in a production of Macbeth on the beach in Staten Island. I remember Macduff and Macbeth showed up on motorcycles riding through the sand dunes. My sister played Macduff’s son and was murdered by a young man covered in tattoos. We would hang out on the beach at night and the actors would teach my sister and I swordplay with small daggers. I still have mine. We slept in tents on the beach one night and gathered around a fire. It lives in my memory as a dream. It doesn’t seem real as I write it down, but it was.
In high school I was cast as the gravedigger in Hamlet. In college I joined an all female Shakespeare Troupe and played the Porter in Macbeth and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. The math department at Bryn Mawr hosted monthly Shakespeare readings where we would sit together and read through an entire play noting and giggling at various mentions of math throughout. No matter how many new shows I see, I will always gravitate to whatever current Shakespeare production is coming up. When I graduated from Bryn Mawr and moved back to New York, I found yet another way for Shakespeare to take its hold on me in the form of Sleep No More.
I was in my 20s in New York. These were my Sarah Jessica Parker years. I was “supposed” to be partying and dancing and making bad decisions. I did all of those things inside the McKittrick Hotel.
I have never been to a nightclub in NYC or an underground rave, but I didn’t need any of that, because I had the McKittrick. The McKittrick was a safe haven. I couldn’t really put a finger on what initially made me feel so safe in that space of dark mystery. I went to those early parties on my own in 2012 as a 22 year old very short (naive) woman. I would never have gone to a club or even a bar by myself, but at the McKittrick I always felt a sense of safety and comfort. Now, half a year after its closing, I think the answer was always Shakespeare. Sleep No More was a new way to experience something I already deeply loved.
If you’ve been paying attention thus far you’ll note that Sleep No More wasn’t my first foray into site specific work. I’d seen A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the woods. I’d been in Macbeth and The Tempest on the beach. Yes, the audience was seated during those performances, but this productions were a hint at what I was chasing. I wanted to jump into the dreamworld of Shakespeare. I wanted to go back to that feeling of playing with my sister on the beach as Macduff and Macbeth arrived on motorcycles. I found that feeling in a converted club in Chelsea and I felt immediately at home. The dream was real within those walls.
With its doors now closed I no longer have the safe haven of the McKittrick, but my love for Shakespeare lives on. I will continue to seek out new and interesting ways to revisit his work, and fall back on my old favorites as well. I started watching Station Eleven recently (I’m two episodes in so no spoilers in the comments please) at the recommendation of a good friend and knew immediately why she recommended it. Part of the premise of the show, in a post apocalyptic world with very few human survivors, Shakespeare remains. Theater lives on.
There are many pieces of theater that have brought me magic over the years, but none have been such a constant as the words of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare was an integral part of my childhood. Shakespeare’s words remind me that there are beautiful things in the world. Shakespeare’s longevity and reach show us the power of art and community. His words have been spoken, sung, danced so many times and yet we keep coming back to them. We keep chasing the dream he weaves.
It is wonderful to get insight into your passions and experiences. You are a captivating writer.