BY LUCIA MAURO
Michael Bogdanov’s resume just may be as voluminous–and humanistic–as the collected works of William Shakespeare. In town to stage The Winter’s Tale (see p. 1) for Chicago Shakespeare Theater (Mar. 30-Jun. 1), the Welsh-Russian director has worked in theatre, TV, film and academia across the British Isles and beyond. He has received countless awards, written several books, is multilingual, and harbors a passion for music, sports, wine, cricket and Celtic history.
It appears he would be a formidable person to interview. But during his lunch break at CST, Bogdanov emits an easy warmth. He is quick to laugh and praise Chicago as he nibbles on a pear–a typical lunch for him. "I’ve had a relationship with this city for about 20 years," enthuses the director. "At its heart, it’s a very real and urban community with a remarkable history. But it’s also got terrific style."
The director last staged an explosive production of Timon of Athens when CST was performing as Shakespeare Rep at the Ruth Page Center in 1997. A biting media-circus first act gave way to a detritus-strewn stage, with Larry Yando in the title lead living in a broken-down heap of an automobile. Bogdanov cut to the quick of the play’s emphasis on money and misguided power. And he achieved an engrossing immersion in the less-than-ideal Ruth Page space.
Although he recalls Timon with fondness, Bogdanov understandably finds that the Navy Pier facility "makes everything so much easier." He continues, "Barbara [Gaines] has managed to build a state-of-the-art theatre while maintaining the integrity and intimacy of the space. It’s modeled after England’s Swan Theatre–but I believe this theatre has more advantages than the Swan."
Throughout our conversation, the director expresses his interest in staging intimate, human stories that reflect issues common to people from all walks of life. When asked to comment on his attraction to the Chicago theatre community and, more specifically to CST, he immediately cites "the strength and depth and quality of the acting." He calls CST "a tremendous company with a large number of actors–a lot of them middle aged and older."
For The Winter’s Tale–a later Shakespeare romance that explores the tragic consequences of a king’s rash suspicions of his wife’s adultery and a near-supernatural act of redemption in the end–the director plans to make great use of a separation of the up- and downstage.
"In this space," explains Bogdanov, 64, "it’s easy to stage big scenes out of which you need to achieve intimate conversations. There are scenes taking place in public places that have a private quality."
Yet despite his love of unearthing a play’s minimalist core, he notes that the sheer scale of Shakespeare’s works makes them difficult to produce in the U.K. In fact, he says that there are more Shakespearean plays being done in Chicago than throughout Great Britain. He recently caught Defiant Theatre’s production of Titus Andronicus and called it "very virile, clear and reasonably acted in a small theatre [The Viaduct]."
Bogdanov laments how it would be "pretty impossible" to stage a production like The Winter’s Tale in England because of the high cost involved. He points out that a project of such magnitude would be undertaken by the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (for which he served as an assistant director from 1969-71); or the Royal National Theatre (where he was associate director from 1980-88).
"In Britain," he reiterates, "it’s always an economic thing. British theatre is horrendously under-funded, and not a lot comes in the way of sponsorships. Whatever money comes in is typically given to the big theatres. So the small theatres forever need to figure out how to be creative with five actors and a handkerchief."
Bogdanov made an epic early impression on Chicago audiences when he toured his heart-pounding production of the seven-play history cycle, The Wars of the Roses, with his and co-founder Michael Pennington’s English Shakespeare Company as part of the International Theatre Festival in 1987. His directing career has encompassed grand classics, as well as contemporary comedies and new works. He began writing and performing in revues and cabarets in college and claims that "directing drifted to me."
His education stretched from the University of Dublin Trinity College to Munich and the Sorbonne. Following his studies in 1963, Bogdanov formed his own company at the Gas Co. Theatre, Dun Laoghaire. He directed, produced and wrote for television in England and Ireland, where he was a producer/director for "Radio Telefis Eireann" from 1966-69, and where he directed "Newsbeat," "The Late Late Show" and "One Night Stand" (a live Show Band series). In England, he created a satirical TV series, "Broad and Narrow," for ATV.
The credits abound. Bogdanov directed some 20 productions in the 1970s as associate director of the Tyneside Theatre Company at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In 1977, as artistic director of the Phoenix Theatre, he directed the premiere of The Who’s Tommy and devised a circus musical from the Beatles’ "Lucy in the Sky."
He has directed all over the world, including Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, Imperial Theatre Tokyo, Hamburg’s Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Milan’s La Scala Opera House and a number of theatres in Wales. Bogdanov directed a trilogy of BBC Wales feature films–A Light in the Valley, A Light on the Hill and A Light in the City–chronicling Wales in the 20th century; and "Shakespeare Lives," a 12-part series for the BBC exploring the Bard in workshop form and debate with a live audience of academics, teachers, critics, directors, actors and students.
The director is deeply committed to education in the community and established outreach programs for the Phoenix Theatre Leicester, the Young Vic Theatre, the Royal National Theatre and the English Shakespeare Company. Upcoming projects include a documentary for the BBC marking the 50th anniversary of Dylan Thomas’ death, titled "The Milkwood Effect," and a musical version of The Thornbirds for Theater des Westens of Berlin, scheduled to open in 2004. He currently lives in Cardiff, Wales.
Bogdanov’s attraction to Shakespeare lay in the timelessness of the playwright’s politics, and the director says he approaches these plays from a very political point of view. How does he define Shakespeare’s politics?
"The politics are always the same," Bogdanov responds. "Shakespeare was a feminist, a humanist, an egalitarian. He understood people from all walks of life. I did a documentary, "The Welsh in Shakespeare," for the BBC. Shakespeare deals with Wales in a particular way –he has a very humanitarian view of the Welsh, who had been an oppressed people but don’t wear their nationality on their sleeves."
Like the consistency of Shakespeare’s politics, Bogdanov’s directing process for these classic plays remains the same: "I have a view on stage borne out by analysis of the text. I spend a lot of time talking to the cast and improvising scenes on their feet until everyone is telling the same story. And I don’t care how long that takes. There’s a luxurious side to working here [at CST]. You get on stage quite early; there’s a long tech week and previews."
But there is also a good amount of time set aside for concentrating on the text in the rehearsal room–a neutral place where he believes the actors’ imaginations are not constricted by the details of stage entrances and exits. When we spoke, Bogdanov’s concept for The Winter’s Tale was still taking shape and evolving. But he only reveals that it moves from the Victorian era ("to give us the sense of a romantic Christmas and storytelling around the fire") to modern day. The director agrees that conceptual stagings are delicate and risky things.
"A concept gets in the way of the story if it doesn’t spring from the story," asserts Bogdanov. "Even when I’m working with the designers, we make sure those images support the story–not fight it. The problem with highly conceptual or updated stagings is that you’re asking an audience to make several leaps. You’ve got the era the play is set in, then, if you’re adding the Napoleonic Wars or a Pre-Nazi Germany concept, the audience has to make three or four jumps in terms of historic understanding and significance.
"The resonances must be quite clear. There’s really no point to update unless it’s modern. Shakespeare used the dress of his period."
Bogdanov also follows "a kind of shorthand" and looks for clues in the text for thematic guidance. He acutely argues against the idea of supernatural events occurring in Shakespeare’s plays. "For example," he explains. "there’s a logic to what the witches say [in Macbeth]; in Winter’s Tale, Hermione is not brought back to life–she’s been hidden. It’s a trick; it’s not a miracle. In Shakespeare, something that appears unnatural is explicable. It’s right there in the text."
He finds inevitable reversal to be another given when interpreting the Bard: "You wait for what is set up to be knocked down. If the words say two people will be together, you can guarantee they will be parted at some point in the story."
Bogdanov is struck by the clarity with which American actors tackle Shakespeare through their delivery. He has found the American approach to these plays radically altered in a more positive, natural-sounding way over the years.
"American actors," he observes, "are more comfortable with not aping the British pronunciation. And they unite the emotional and physical side. Britain tends to be bogged down in the rhetorical, lofty style of Shakespeare–especially in the larger houses. In Shakespeare’s time, it must have been a rich panoply of accents."
This idea of celebrating the diversity of accents and characters is tied directly to the director’s egalitarian view of theatre in general: "In order for theatre to still speak to us, it must reflect the community it comes from–as opposed to what I call a horizontal or obscure approach (like what Robert LePage does). You don’t want to alienate your audience."
And Bogdanov promotes the politicized energy of live performance: "Theatre must challenge preconceptions. It packs an insurrection punch and seems to thwart the conservative core of the status quo. And, because it has the impertinence of being real, politicians often confuse reality and fantasy and are threatened by it.
"Anytime theatre tries to ape TV, that is the moment it has lost its contact with live, instant storytelling."
Before he grabs another pear and heads back to rehearsal, Bodganov announces with a cheery grin, "Theatre must have an umbilical cord to the street."
And he means it. When I glance back at his long and impressive resume, I notice that Bogdanov is researching a book on sheep shearing. The umbilical cord stretches across humanity and into the lifeblood of nature itself.