"Julius Caesar" |
Julius Caesar, the FST mainstage production for 2003, grew out of director Graham Watts’s notion that the only right way to stage Shakespeare is to “make it not boring.” As the program warned, the production was marked by gunshots and “staged images of graphic violence”, including looting in downtown Rome and the mob lynching of Cinna the Poet. Caesar, which ran from July 8 through July 27 at the Alaska Dog Mushers Field, was set in mid-twentieth century America. The near-contemporary setting stressed the modern relevance of contrasting characters’ political cynicism and idealism. As Watts observed, Julius Caesar has intimate connections with American history, most famously in the mind of the actor John Wilkes Booth, who shot Abraham Lincoln. The all-white set, by Kit Meyer, recalled the futuristic architectural designs of the 1950’s.
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Lee Salisbury—Julius Caesar |
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JULIUS CAESAR notes from director Graham Watts
If there is one play that is personal to America, maybe even instrumental in the very shaping of America, it is “Julius Caesar”.
Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John during the Revolutionary Wars quoting a passage from the play (“There is a time in the affairs of men…”) and signed herself ‘Portia’. Thomas Jefferson’s book of his favourite verses began with six passages from “Caesar”. Some even go as far as to say that the idea of a State as a “Commonwealth”, as in Virginia, home of Jefferson and Washington, is inspired by ideas found in the play.
The character of Caesar fascinated Shakespeare. There are more references to him in Shakespeare’s plays than any other person. Writing the play directly after “Hamlet”, also performing this year at FST, it was natural that Shakespeare would turn to this subject for the opening performance at the new Globe Theatre in 1599. I wonder if he realised Cassius’ famous lines:
“How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn, and accents yet unknown”
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