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BY LUCIA MAURO
For many years, James Bohnen taught social sciences and upper-level English as part of a special program for high school dropouts in Colorado Springs. His style of teaching was highly individualized, and he found his 16 to 21-year-old students making the most progress when his approach involved "listening, carefully nudging, encouraging, cajoling and helping them to be brave." So it comes as little surprise that, when Bohnen poured his energy into directing, he would gently but decisively guide his actors toward a similar process of self-discovery.
"I care that actors care about the play and that they’re brave enough to throw out ideas," says Bohnen, co-founder and artistic director of Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, now in its fifth season at Victory Gardens Theater. "It starts with the text and living with the text and finding, not THE truth, but A truth."
Originally from Chicago, Bohnen lived all over the country—including Colorado, San Francisco and Boston—before returning to his hometown in the late 1980s to be closer to his aging parents. Attracted to the "clean, unencumbered energy of Chicago theatre productions" and to the affordability of producing shows here, he decided to stay. And, although he continued to direct regional productions, Bohnen started Remy Bumppo in 1996 with the goal of presenting works of great dramatic literature.
He directed Remy Bumppo’ season opener, Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land—running through Nov. 11—and will direct its second offering, Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, Nov. 21-Dec. 30. Past directing credits include The Road to Mecca, Waiting for Godot, Heartbreak House, Night and Day, The Seagull, Man and Superman and Hapgood. The latter production recently prompted much critical acclaim and recognition for his company. Yet Remy Bumppo, which attracts some of the finest actors in the city and crafts consistently high-quality productions, has often struggled with attracting large audiences.
But Bohnen—who also has directed She Stoops to Conquer at Court Theatre and Diesel Moon at Victory Gardens—remains undaunted. He believes that these multi-layered classics are well worth presenting for any number of audience members. And he thinks actors need to be regularly challenged by these scripts.
Bohnen received his undergraduate degree in history from Wisconsin’s Ripon College before earning his masters in history and education from the University of Chicago and, later, his MFA in directing from Boston University.
"I was in my early 20s during the height of Vietnam," recounts Bohnen, 53. "At that time, you wanted to do something that affected the state of the country."
So he decided to be a teacher and landed a position with the special program in Colorado Springs. He thought that would be his life’s work until a fellow teacher invited him to try out for a production of The Crucible. Admitting that he "had done a tiny bit of acting in college" and appropriately winged it during a brief stint as an improv teacher at U of C, Bohnen did not think he had enough experience. Then he decided to buy a copy of the Arthur Miller drama and read it three times in one sitting.
"The third time, I read it out loud," he says. "I found myself focusing on the character of John Proctor and, as I read his lines, a voice came out of me."
That indescribable "voice" never left him, and he went to the audition, ultimately getting cast as John Proctor and performing the play in a Methodist Church. He struck up invigorating friendships with the other cast members, many of whom also were teachers. This small group eventually started a theatre company in Colorado Springs and performed everything from the ancient Greeks to Shakespeare and Moliere in a parish hall.
Now more than intrigued by acting, Bohnen took a leave of absence from his teaching position—and from the theatre company—to formally study theatre. He moved to San Francisco with hopes of attending American Conservatory Theatres, only to embark on a different theatre path. He attended scores of theatre productions and studied the actors’ bios to determine the best place to take classes.
"I noticed that the most real actors had studied with Jean Shelton," he says.
In 1976, Bohnen enrolled for one year in Shelton’s Berkeley, California-based school and made some pivotal discoveries.
"It opened me up; it split me open," he continues. "Jean Shelton just made you throw your ego away."
Yet he stresses that Shelton was a devotee of the text and of eliciting multiple meanings from the text. She did not put a personal stamp on her style of teaching. This appealed to Bohnen, who bluntly states how much he hates "all that guru crap" prevalent in the actors training world.
He began to try his hand at directing after returning to Colorado Springs and found his true calling.
"I was drawn to the challenge of developing characters within all these disparate performances and shaping them into a coherent whole," says Bohnen. "The soup got so much richer because so many people were part of the process.
"I also realized that what I loved most about acting was rehearsing and developing characters more than performing. I was interested in solving problems and that seemed so directorial. I guess I just like figuring out stories. I like bossing people around and telling stories that provoke people. Nothing turns me on more than 25 people in a rehearsal room."
He went on to pursue a masters in directing at Boston University. And he even owned a movie theatre, and wrote film reviews, in Connecticut for six years.
While Bohnen has directed original works, he is fascinated with the language-rich plays of, say, Shakespeare and Stoppard. He is eternally intrigued with "this infinite puzzle with those particular words in a particular order."
The classic dramatic canon appeals to him because, as Bohnen ponders, "I’m at a stage in my life [whereby] the river of [these playwrights’] language is the same river I live by. I hear the same kind of music. They tell stories that are demanding in the right ways. I choose these plays because they are significant and have so much to say to keep springing open your heart."
He describes Pinter’s No Man’s Land as a play "about aging, fame and giving up"—and to quote the Bard—"as deep as the Bay of Portugal."
Bohnen’s directing career proves his endless mining of great plays. At American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis., he has directed The Misanthrope, Comedy of Errors, The Importance of Being Earnest, Richard II, Much Ado About Nothing and The Winter’s Tale. Next summer he will direct Loves Labours Lost there. For Alabama Shakespeare Festival, his credits include As You Like It and the world premiere of The Coming of Rain. He also has directed The Real Thing and Loves Labours Lost for the Young Globe Company at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre. For six seasons, he was artistic advisor to Aspen’s Theatre in the Park, and he has worked at TheatreWorks in Hartford; Huntington Theatre in Boston; and Seattle Repertory Theatre.
One of his most crucial theories as a director is to impart on actors the need to rigorously examine the text. He states, "There are no non-sequiturs. I don’t allow actors to have non-sequiturs. If you haven’t examined the text, why are you doing it?
"I love digging into a text—finding the surface truth, what it might mean, what it really means. The job of the director is to inspire actors to pick up every stone [of the text], smell it and taste it and really understand it."
Describing himself as "kind of a merry prankster boss," Bohnen does not hide from his actors the passion and care he brings to each project. He admits to being obsessed with time and issues of power, powerlessness, compassion and imagination. "I can take my compassionate compulsions and help actors feel that," he notes.
As a director, he distinguishes between the "big clock" of the whole production and the "day clock" rooted in the rehearsal process.
"A lot of actors think they have to be perfect in rehearsal," says Bohnen. "But you don’t have to accomplish everything in one day. I believe rehearsal is rehearsal. Go out and play, muck around, take the wrong path. You never know—you might plant a seed that blooms three weeks later.
"I encourage actors to make their own discoveries. And I’m always steering, but I like to steer with a really light hand."
Bohnen also does not like to "staple on" a concept that takes the focus away from the text. That’s not to say he hasn’t updated classic works, but he believes any concept must be staunchly tested.
"I do an exercise," he explains. "When I get a conceptual idea about, for example, a Shakespeare play, I work through that idea scene by scene. If one scene doesn’t work, I scrap the concept. That kind of rigor is necessary. You can’t just haphazardly break the rules. If we as artists have a work ethic and stay true to it, we can be brave within that work ethic. We shouldn’t be saying, 'Isn’t that a great idea.’ We should be saying, 'Can’t you see the play more clearly through this idea.’"
While it’s hard to imagine Bohnen in a non-theatrical occupation, he does admit that, "If I could do it over again, I would love to be a neurologist and a food critic." He already is a gourmet cook known to throw intimate dinner parties that spark stimulating conversations.
But, in a sense, Bohnen does probe the brain through his deep-thinking directing style and offers his balanced commentary on the all-encompassing feast of life.
So has he really thought about changing professions?
"I guess there’s a part of me that wants to keep doing this," responds Bohnen. "Theatre reminds us what a gossamer thread we’re connected by. I don’t believe art can change the world. But it’s important that artists respond to the world and make a different kind of sense of it."