Notes from Director Charles Newell

The Cycle of Violence

Synopsis

Titus's Dubious Reputation

Interview with Actor Timothy Edward Kane

Like every English speaker who received an education in the last 400 years, I have a relationship with Shakespeare that goes back to my school days. I have also had the opportunity to deepen that relationship through my work as a director, having worked on 21 of his 37 plays during my career. From my early mentors Michael Kahn (Artistic Director, The Shakespeare Theatre), Mark Lamos (Former Artistic Director, Hartford Stage), and the late Garland Wright (Artistic Director, Guthrie Theatre), I learned how to unlock Shakespeare’s text for actors. Every word in Shakespeare contains notes of meanings and implications that reverberate if struck right by a gifted performer. My reputation as a director of Shakespeare defined my early career, and it was my productions of Cymbeline and The History Plays (Guthrie Theatre), that first brought me to the attention of Court Theatre 15 years ago.

In all that time, though, I had never seen Titus Andronicus onstage. It has a reputation as an immature play, due to its relationship to the popular revenge tragedies of the 1580s and a plot consisting of a series of increasingly preposterous acts of violence. Great productions have emerged over the years and incited brief periods of critical reexamination, but even today the play is often seen as a bit of an embarrassment next to the rest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, as the work of an overreaching, impulsive youngster fueled by intemperance and a desire to be shocking and popular. In reading the play again, I was intrigued by the potential that lies in its impetuousness. But where is the human element, the resonant emotional journey?

Titus Andronicus is about people trapped, by their own decision, in a cycle of violence—revenge upon revenge. Shakepeare’s characters are permitted to act without consequence; how might we reveal the human cost of their actions? By reframing the play, might the horrific acts of the play become frighteningly relevant to today’s world events? The human cost of this cycle of violence is what we’re exploring, and ultimately what makes this play powerful classic theatre.

-Charles Newell, Adaptor and Director

Following is a plot synopsis of Titus Andronicus as Shakespeare penned it. We hope this will be helpful background information for Court’s production.

Titus Andronicus, Roman general, returns from ten years of war with only four of his twenty-five sons surviving. He has captured Tamora, Queen of the Goths, her three sons, and Aaron the Moor. In obedience to Roman rituals, he sacrifices her eldest son to his own dead sons, which earns him Tamora’s unending hatred and her promise of revenge.

Tamora is made empress by the new emperor Saturninus. In vengeance against Titus, she schemes with her lover, Aaron, to have Titus’s two sons framed for the murder of Bassianus, the emperor’s brother. She succeeds and Titus’s sons are beheaded. She also urges her sons Chiron and Demetrius to rape Titus’s daughter Lavinia, after which they cut off her hands and tongue so she cannot reveal their crime. Finally, Titus’s last surviving son Lucius is banished from Rome, where he seeks alliance with the enemy Goths.

Tamora tries to capitalize on Titus’s seeming madness by pretending to be the figure of Revenge, come to offer him justice if Titus will only convince Lucius to cease attacking Rome. Titus tricks her, captures her sons, kills them, and bakes them into a pie. He feeds this pie to their mother in the final scene, after which he kills both Tamora and Lavinia, his own daughter. A rash of killings ensue including Saturninus and Titus himself; the only people left alive are Marcus, Lucius, Young Lucius, and Aaron. Lucius becomes the new emperor of Rome and has the unrepentant Aaron buried alive, and Tamora’s corpse thrown to the beasts.

"The barbarity of the spectacles, and the general massacre which are here exhibited, can scarcely be conceived tolerable to any audience." —Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"Our loss is great indeed if an impertinent solicitude for Shakespeare’s morals, an officious care for his reputation as a creator of character, lead us to pass over Titus Andronicus." —George Wyndham (1863-1913)

"Titus Andronicus is ghastly bad. I can concede no intrinsic value to Titus Andronicus." —Harold Bloom (1998)

"It’s the most powerful play Shakespeare ever wrote, and I think that people don’t know this Shakespeare... When I read it I thought, “This is today.” There is no difference. This is completely comprehensible in our culture now." —Julie Taymor (2000)

"Why does Titus Andronicus have such a bad reputation? T. S. Eliot once called it “one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written.” Now, there’s a challenge! Well, it is a very early work. Parts of it may have been written by George Peele. It is imitatively close to Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy. The history it tells of ancient Rome is bogus history. And it has to compete with Hamlet as a revenge play. Who would want to do that? Even so, it is actually quite wonderful as theater. Julie Taymor’s splendid film version demonstrates that. Aaron the Moor is an unforgettable villain. And then there’s his lover, Tamora, Queen of the Goths and newly married to the depraved Emperor Saturninus. She and Aaron conceive a black son. Don’t forget Tamora’s two bloodthirsty and lecherous sons . . ." —David Bevington (2007)

What’s your favorite play?
I’m not sure that I have a favorite, though there have been several that have struck me deeply. Shakespeare’s “Scottish play,”* or anything by Chekhov or Tom Stoppard.

What was your first introduction to theatre?
Theatre wasn’t really a part of my life until I did a few plays in high school, and subsequently majored in it in college. The first professional play I remember attending was a production of Julius Caesar starring Michael Gross from TV’s “Family Ties.”

If you couldn’t work in the theatre, what profession would you choose?
Does this mean I’m fired?

Do you have any brothers, sisters, or pets?
Yes, two sisters, one older and one younger … are they trying to get me fired?
 
What do you admire most in a person?
Altruism, honesty, and a sense of humor.

What special ability would you like to have?
Either the ability to fly or a greater aptitude for mathematics … both equally improbable.

What is the best advice you ever received?
Tell the truth.

Which actors have influenced you the most?
Paul Newman, Cary Grant, Simon Russell Beale, Kate Fry, Mike Nussbaum … how much space do I have?

What are your opinions about Chicago as a theatre town?
I love it. It’s the best in the world; risks are taken, creative and constructive theatre is made, and audiences are challenged by and rewarded with consistently impressive work that grows in this unique and fertile environment. I wish that the “second city” mentality would die; Chicago and its artists shouldn’t continually need to prove their worth to its commercial cousin to the east.

Is there anything you find particularly unique about working at Court Theatre?
At Court, there is never any fear of confronting expectations with an immediate contemporary approach that forces an audience, and each production’s artists, to rethink the masterworks and why they remain relevant.

What advice would you give to an actor working with Charlie Newell for the first time?
Trust yourself. What Charlie has taught me is that the risk is there to be taken; challenge yourself in the moment to pursue what’s most important. He’s helped to liberate my performances by assuring me that whatever choices I make, he’s ultimately responsible for how they work in the play or how the audience will interpret their cumulative effects. Charlie is a director who inspires mutual trust.

What do you find to be most challenging about Titus?
Today? The density of emotional events and their continual resonance throughout the play. There is a horrifyingly violent series of events that perpetuate a cycle. The challenge is in investing deeply enough in the circumstances that going forward, ratcheting up the violence, makes sense and, however terrifying, remains genuinely human and doesn’t become a laughable cartoon. Ask me again tomorrow.