Julius Caesar • 2013 - Chicago Shakespeare Theater

to be much more sensitive to killing someone
with guns as opposed to swords and daggers.
We don’t see people on television or in
the news getting killed in the real world with
blades, we see guns. And in 2013, with guns
killing people, we have a much more immediate
emotional response. When we stage one
of these classic plays in period costume, like
we’re doing Romeo and Juliet, the most dangerous
weapon in that world is a dagger. In
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a knife or
sword was obviously endowed with as much
violence and destruction as an automatic rifle
is for us today.
Q As someone who spends much of his
work life focused on stage combat,
what is your understanding of what,
at its core, triggers violence?
For me, it’s about fear. I can’t speak for
A anybody else, right? But we’ve all had
those feelings. We’ve all wanted to do something, but then
it’s that next beat. There’s nothing wrong with being angry—that’s
a real thing. It’s what do we now do with that,
right? And that’s where we get in trouble, where we get
out of control. When I’ve gotten to the point that I’ve felt
compelled to act on anger, it’s normally ’cause I’m afraid.
I’m afraid the other person is going to make me look stupid,
or the other person is going to make me feel insecure, or
they’ve hurt my ego or what I think is my masculinity, and I’m
afraid of feeling small.
I’m afraid of feeling not
as good as they are. Or
if I’m physically threatened.
So I think fear has
a lot to do with it.
Do you ever have second thoughts
Q about staging violence?
AI change my mind almost every day. Something happened
a couple years ago here we did Edward II, and
I choreographed the stage violence. Edward is assassinated,
in the most violent, grotesque way imaginable. And I remember
one night seeing an audience member bolting from the
room. The young Matt Hawkins would have been thinking:
’Yeah! We’re creating a visceral experience.’ But it didn’t
seem like a cathartic experience for that woman. It seemed
that there was some history that it conjured up in her. That
A PLAY COMES TO LIFE
From leFT: sCoTT parkinson as BruTus anD Jay WhiTTaker as CasCa
in CsT’s 2003 proDuCTion oF Julius Caesar, DireCTeD By BarBara Gaines.
We don’t see people on television or
in the news getting killed in the real
world with blades, we see guns.
moment was the first time that I started questioning my profession
and my specialty skill of violence. It’s a very violent,
aggressive world that I inhabit in my work.
How did you get into theater—and this particular
Q aspect of it—in the first place?
I’m from Texas, so it was football, football, football. I
A grew up playing football, and then I ended up hurting
my back. What else was I
going to do with my life? A
football buddy of mine was
in a show and I went and
saw it, and thought, ’Oh, I
can do that better than he
can.’ So this competitive
side is actually how I got into it. Then I started to go to the theater
and I started acting. I wasn’t very good and I couldn’t find
my bearings. Then when I was an undergrad at SMU, Southern
Methodist University in Dallas, I did Henry IV Part 1, and
I played Prince Hal and got to use a broadsword and shield.
And I thought, ’Oh, theater can be athletic? Oh. That’s new.’ I
had never seen that before and I never felt that before. I was
really blessed because there was an individual on faculty there,
a mime and a boxer, and he taught me everything he knew. ✪
photo by Liz Lauren
www chicagoshakespeare com 41