"I used to wake up with sweats and had nightmares about performing Shakespear - you need training, and you don't mess with the god." 'Kate Buckley, director

Like the Bard himself, Kate Buckley embarked on her 'seven years' of self-examination and filling her creative coffers with life experiences. Now one of the most sought-after directors of Shakespeare'and of fierce, contemporary, ensemble-driven dramas rooted in ethical struggles'Buckley has found a provocative forum (directing) for her technically adept but honest gut approach to theatre.

It's hard to imagine that one of the founding members of Chicago Shakespeare Theater'and CST's ongoing resident text coach'was once 'terrified' of the Elizabethan scribe.

'I used to wake up with sweats and had nightmares about performing Shakespeare,' admits Buckley, who initially experienced Shakespeare as an actor.

Her fear arose from a belief that 'you need training, and you don't mess with the god.'

So, after she decided to stay in Chicago in 1981 following Great Lakes Shakespeare Theatre's touring production of Nicholas Nickleby (in which she played multiple roles) at the Blackstone Theatre, Buckley took classes with CST's founder-artistic director Barbara Gaines in the basement of the old Organic Theatre.

'Barb said something I will never forget,' she relates. 'I was doing a Viola speech, and she felt I was terrified. So Barb told me, 'Never forget, the playwright needs you.' I overcame my fear of the playwright, thanks to Barb.'

As she eventually gravitated to directing over acting, Buckley became known as a definitive interpreter of Shakespeare'an artist who could elicit from her actors the ability to speak iambic pentameter with natural grace and believability. Without drowning the plays in concept, she pulled the script's contemporary resonance directly from the language.

'My approach to Shakespeare'my teaching and directing,' explains Buckley, 'is the practical application. I personally wasn't taught from an intellectual or academic point of view. I was taught the common sense of it all. But I'm also well read in the matter.'

She cites actor-director Bob Scogin as one of her great mentors of the classics.

A proponent of Shakespeare's First Folio'a technique she teaches'Buckley refers to it as 'an actor's manual.' She points out that, when people started reading Shakespeare (as part of the school curriculum), the notations changed from dramatic to literary.

'I always go back to Shakespeare's actors,' the director continues. 'They had two to three days, at the most, to rehearse a play. So there wasn't a lot of time to develop a back story. It's what's immediately on the page that will get you there. The clues in the text include: punctuation, antithesis, alliteration, spelling and repetition.'

She acknowledges that it's a rare actor who can make Shakespeare's language sound natural. To further impart a sense of realness to these scripts, Buckley is 'not interested in actors who 'act.'' She says, 'I'm interested in actors who have great voices, presence and confidence'without being arrogant.'

She is so committed to the Bard that she regularly lectures on Shakespeare at universities and arts organizations nationally and abroad. When we spoke, Buckley had just returned from directing Much Ado About Nothing for Utah Shakespeare Theatre and finished teaching a class on using Shakespeare as a directing model for Roosevelt University's 'Fast Track' program.

Buckley was also the assistant director for Romeo and Juliet at the National Theatre of Slovakia. For CST's Short Shakespeare and educational outreach programs, she has directed Shakespeare's Greatest Hits, Willpower on Tour, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth.

She served as artistic director of Evanston's Next Theatre from 1998-2002. Her productions have won four consecutive Jeff Awards for Best Ensemble.

Directing credits include: A Christmas Carol (Goodman); A Few Good Men (Theatre at the Center); The Last Night of Ballyhoo (Peninsula Players); Talley's Folly (Northlight); Among The Thugs (Goodman and Next); Cherry Docs, The Laramie Project, The Incident, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?,  Stonewall Jackson's House, Cardenio, Macbeth and, co-directed with Steve Pickering, Henry V (Next); Butley, Dear Master, Niedecker, Dear Liar  The Beats (Writers' Theatre).

Quite a list for someone who never took a theatre class in high school or college. Buckley, who hails from Aurora, Ill., got a taste of the limelight in the second grade as the narrator of a Christmas pageant. She performed in a few high school productions as an extracurricular activity but didn't think she would pursue a theatre career. Buckley also played various instruments, like the piano, cello, guitar and bass fiddle.

In the early 1970s, her school counselors and parents recommended she become a teacher'a secure job for a woman at that time. So she enrolled at Illinois State University on a teacher's scholarship. But during her freshman year, she wanted to open herself up to the 'possibilities in the world.'

'It was the 1970s,' she recounts. 'I'm protesting and marching against the war. I stopped going to classes and started doing a lot of reading'Buddha'peaceful resistance. [Later] I took junior college classes in black history, women's studies'It was kind of like my year abroad. I just studied on my own and read about philosophy and history and worked in a flower shop. I was seeing what the world had to offer.'

Her journey through ideologies, history, art, literature, etc., later filtered into her directing. For instance, she could present a balanced political point of view in Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?, based on Senator Joseph McCarthy's Hollywood blacklisting campaign; for Cherry Docs, she could collaborate with the sound designer about the irony of using a Hindu flute juxtaposed against the violence; her interest in sports complemented the British soccer-themed Among the Thugs.

Yet, although she says she 'always had a hankering about theatre,' Buckley finished her undergraduate degree in 1978 in elementary education at Aurora University. She landed a full-time teaching job in Aurora and, during her summer off, decided to apply for work at the town's Paramount Performing Arts Center (in its pre-casino days of major Broadway touring shows). The Acting Company brought its production of Romeo and Juliet to Paramount, and they hired Buckley as a production assistant. Her duties included receptionist, subscriptions, gopher, crew, dresser and the one who shuttled actors in and out of Chicago for interviews.

'I learned how an organization works from all different aspects,' she says with visible understatement.

Buckley later went on tour with The Acting Company and worked at their New York office. While there, she sat in on rehearsals with directors Jack O'Brien and Daniel Sullivan. At the same time, she was temping for People and Sports Illustrated magazines.

'The Acting Company was my grad school,' says Buckley. 'But I had to get out of New York. I didn't see myself working in an office in Manhattan.'

So, now sufficiently bitten by the acting bug, she applied for and received an internship to Great Lakes Shakespeare Theatre'the troupe that led her to Chicago. Once here, Buckley immediately got an agent and made the rounds of commercials and industrials. During acting downtime, she temped at an agency'where she learned about casting and what directors look for.

Now involved with Gaines' then-fledgling CST (formerly Shakespeare Repertory), Buckley performed in a Shakespeare showcase at the Body Politic and another sold-out one at The Second City e.t.c. It was Buckley who found the rooftop space at Lincoln Park's Red Lion Pub, where CST's first historic production, Henry V, was staged in 1986. She also co-produced it. Shortly after, Gaines asked her to be the company's casting director. 'That experience,' says Buckley, 'put me in a director's sensibility.'

She got her start directing an abridged version of Macbeth for CSTs young audiences.

'When I got to that rehearsal process,' shares Buckley, 'I felt like I had come home. It took me 15 years to realize this. When I was acting, I was fearful all the time. I never felt comfortable in an actor's skin. The administrative jobs didn't feel right either.

'With directing, I had a language with the actors. I could teach them a technique. I liked the bigger puzzle of all the elements; I adored the collaborative aspects.'

Buckley got involved with Next Theatre through former artistic director Steve Pickering. They co-directed, what remains for me, a definitive staging of Henry V'whose dark minimalist palette brought out the striking complexities of the words. Here, Buckley perfected her skills at ensemble directing.

'In terms of ensemble directing,' she comments, 'I think the best work that comes out of Chicago is when the actors are allowed to take ownership of their performances. During rehearsals, I'll get questions from the actors, like 'Gee, Kate, what do you want me to do?'

'But I ask the actors to make the choices. And we work together to see what works best for the individual artists and the production as a whole. I want people to take responsibility for their art and not hand it over to somebody else. Those ideas inform an ensemble without my working toward it.'

As Next's artistic director for four years, Buckley had the opportunity to grow as a director and administrator. But, ultimately, her directing won out. Last year, she left her post to become a freelance director. And she is booked with projects a year to two in advance. Independent directing demands a firm sense of priorities. How does she choose projects?

According to Buckley, there are a number of things that happen when she reads a play for the first time: 'I need to visualize a portion of the play or a color or the set'the visual elements become palpable. I must understand the characters' struggles. There has to be some lyricism in the writing. That's my Shakespeare coming out to bite me. Dialogue should be very speakable. I also look at the reputation of the theatre itself and the fee'I have to be practical about it.'

Upcoming directing commitments include The Credeaux Canvas at Madison Rep; Goodman's A Christmas Carol; productions at Writers' Theatre and American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis; and directing CST's Tim Gregory in a one-man show, Bonhoeffer: The Cost.

Buckley glows when she says, 'My greatest joy is in the rehearsal room.' And she refers to dramaturg Sarah Gubbins' remark that Buckley 'gives good room.' That enthusiasm can then transfer to theatregoers.

'The greatest joy I get in theatre is the ability to affect an audience,' she stresses. 'when we make a decision in rehearsal and the audience responds to it and is talking about it at intermission. I've gotten love letters and hate mail from patrons'I love that! I love engaging an audience.'

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