10-12-07
Recreating Shakespeare in Novel Form
David Blixt
David Blixt recently cut off his long hair and started auditioning for drawing room comedies in an effort to break out of the “fight guy mold.”
In Chicago, if a play needs someone killed and brutally beaten Blixt often gets called in. The 34-year-old was on stage raping and killing Cordelia in King Lear at the Goodman last fall.
Penning a historical novel set in 14th century Italy is just one more way for Blixt to differentiate himself. “The Master of Verona,” a sweeping tale of family rivalry, blood feuds and internecine battles, was released in July 2007 by St. Martin’s Press.
What does it have to do with the theatre? The book was born nine years ago when Blixt was preparing to direct a Michigan production of Romeo and Juliet.
“It was my first time directing Shakespeare and I was taking it very seriously,” he said. Parsing the script line by line looking for cuts, he was struck by Lord Montague’s remark in the final scene that his wife had died.
Why, Blixt wondered, was such a minor character given the play’s final death? “It bothered me,” he said. He decided the only way it made sense was if Lady Montague was the cause of the feud and her death represented the definitive end to the family rivalry.
In the fall of 2000 Blixt moved to Chicago and began writing and researching a book imagining Lords Montague and Capulet as young friends who fall in love with the same woman. Blixt would audition around town, take roles at First Folio or Chicago Shakespeare, and between shows toil away on his first book.
“It was going to be a short book,” Blixt says of the novel, which at the end of the first draft was 250,000 words—30,000 words more than it’s current 569-page incarnation. But along the way the Romeo and Juliet back-story became a mere subplot. Blixt became intrigued with the battles for power going on in Italy at the time and was particularly taken with the legendary charisma of real-life ruler Francesco “Canagrande” della Scala. Blixt even ended up weaving infamous poet Dante into his tale.
His “short book” is now envisioned as part one of a multi-book series that will ultimately center on the life of Mercutio (whom Blixt has cast as Canagrande’s illegitimate son). St. Martin’s plans to publish the second book next year. The author is devoting this fall to writing and researching book three.
Blixt plans to alternate seasonally between writing and the stage. Asked if he has a preference, he said, “Oh god. Whatever I’m not doing at the moment. If I’m acting I want to be writing, If I’m writing I want to be acting.”
Yet acting and directing help him get ideas. The second book, for example, took a “huge left turn” while Blixt was in Chicago Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. He realized he could incorporate some of that story and its characters into his next novel, just as he’d done with Romeo and Juliet and “Master of Verona.”
One difficult thing to get used to about writing is the waiting, Blixt said. While in theatre “you’re right there” as the audience responds, he’s finding it “truly bizarre” to wait for reviews to come out, or for people to finish the novel. “Theatre has spoiled me in terms of audience response,” Blixt said. “I am very impatient to know what people think of this book.”
He’s less impatient to see the book adapted for the stage. “If anybody does an adaptation, it won’t be me.”
To learn more about the book visit www.themasterofverona.com.