What made you decide to produce Cyrano?

CN: I found myself moved whenever I experienced it. And no matter where I was in my life, I always had the same response: to cry. Whenever I encounter a text that provokes such a powerful emotional response that I cannot explain, I am interested.

JL: It’s a little more complicated for me. Charlie brought me the play, which I’m embarrassed to say I’d never read, and I loved it, but I needed to understand what to do with it. It would have been impossible for Court or Redmoon to do it straight—it has something like 100 characters, and we just don’t have the resources for a show like that and straight isn’t really what I do. But as soon as Charlie and I started talking, I could see what was possible, how we could make it ours and still be true to what I had initially loved about it. Then I began to get excited.

How did you decide to collaborate on this project together? Redmoon Theater and Court Theatre in some ways couldn’t be more different.

CN: I saw Jim’s outdoor production of Nina, an adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull. And I realized he understood something about spectacle and storytelling that I wanted to learn about.

JL: And to complement that, I had begun using more and more text in our productions and had begun to re-approach a perennial concern for Redmoon—marrying the virtues of spoken text and our rich visual style. I wanted to learn from Charlie, whose understanding of verse and text is so formidable.

CN: That’s when Jim introduced Mickle Maher, our translator, into the process. Jim and I were reading numerous different translations and none of them really captured the sensibility we sought. I believe we need to continually translate the classics, to resonate anew the language for a contemporary ear.

MM: Jim and I have known each other for over ten years and worked together on the Hunchback production that Redmoon did at Steppenwolf, which, like Cyrano, dealt a great deal with the theme of Image vs. Language, the tension between them, and the potential harmony. In Hunchback we had Victor Hugo as a sort of antagonist narrator who initially is appalled at Redmoon’s attempt to tell his story—his 500 pages of words—with images, with puppets and spectacle. He does, however, eventually come around to liking the idea. With Cyrano, in Rostand’s tale itself, that same tension is there, between language and visuals—most prominently between the poetry of Cyrano and the beauty of Christian, and again how these are at war with one another and how they make an alliance. I’m always interested in that, so beyond just wanting to do the project for the sake of seeing if I could make a rhymed verse translation of this old, revered play—there was my interest in continuing the discussion about tension between language and visuals.

How did you arrive at the costume design concept?

JL: At one point in the process I was very interested in birds. I just couldn’t get away from the idea that the characters were so much like birds, always primping and preening, singing, and worrying about their looks… Cyrano’s beak…the yearning to take flight and of course Cyrano’s notorious white plume. Tatjana [Radisic, Costume Designer], with endless creativity and talent, took that idea and flew. But that’s more of a design concept, something to help guide us. I’d be surprised if the audience picked up on it at all.

Why rearrange the order of the play?

JL: That happened, I think, from a conversation Charlie and I had early on. He was talking to me about a play a mentor of his had done, and we had this idea to start the play with the log hitting Cyrano on the head. And that gave way to the idea of having the first four acts all happen within Cyrano’s head, within his memory. That was, for me, the key that unlocked this particular production.

CN: Seldom do you encounter a play that’s more precise in its structure, than Rostand’s Cyrano, and so the idea of taking that apart was daunting. But for us, the play culminates in the final act. And so this refracted memory was simply another way of arriving there.

What inspired the aesthetic of the set design?

CN: Once we had decided to tell the first part of the Cyrano story through Cyrano’s memory, we wanted the scenic design to, in some way, reflect the interior of Cyrano’s mind. So the stage full of exposed ropes, pulleys and gears was one way of physically expressing the interior mind while remaining distinctly theatrical. Scenic designer, Stephanie Nelson, drew her design from the mechanisms of the early seventeenth century theaters—all the cogs, pulleys and platforms. This aesthetic is also present in the carved wood design of the puppets.

How do you view the Cyrano’s character?

CN: As a heroic, ethical, hopeless romantic whose flaw of vanity keeps him from achieving his fullest self. I certainly don’t begrudge him anything. He makes my many inadequacies a little easier to bear.

MM: I think that deep, deep down Cyrano wants to be alone. He has a number of chances to tell Roxane his feelings and even some assurance she wouldn’t reject him, but for some reason, he can’t.

JL: Funny. When Charlie talks I agree with him, and when I hear Mickle I agree with him. I don’t know what I think of Cyrano. I don’t know. It changes every day. I know this; I’m interested in his question: how does a person live according to an ethical standard, unflinchingly, even when it costs him the thing that he wants most?

Christian is often portrayed as a dumb, handsome guy and you so clearly have cast an actor who is not that type. Why?

CN: I think you have said it exactly. We cast an actor with a wickedly sharp mind and complex emotions. He’s also beautiful.

JL: And it’s been great to see how well the play stands up to that interpretation.

What are your thoughts about Roxane? In many ways, she gets the short end of the stick never knowing the truth about Cyrano’s love for her until it’s too late. Do you find her a sympathetic character?

JL: Our costume designer had a very strong response to her; she had a cynical and blatantly unromantic view. She thought Roxane was either manipulative or intentionally naïve. The debate raged for a while. Interestingly, this argument seems to break down along gender lines. The men are willing to give Roxane much greater latitude than the women. All I knew was that if Roxane wasn’t worthy of love, the play wouldn’t work.

CN: I am in love with her. She is most worthy of love. If she’s not, then my belief and compassion for Cyrano and Christian falters.

MM: I think she is smart, very well-read. She’s not a poseur—she has a genuine appreciation of what poetry is, what poetry can do, much as Cyrano does, which is why on one level they would be a good match for each other. Her standards are as high as his are when it comes to wit and expressions of beauty and so forth. She’s more than just a muse to Cyrano, she’s a critic.

What do you think playwright Edmond Rostand would think of your translation of Cyrano?

CN: He would be grateful to have his work live on. Like many writers, Rostand was very concerned with what he would leave behind and his legacy. I think he would be elated that his play lives on in 2004.