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A regular fixture on the arts calendar, the Summer Shakespeare series turns 10 years old this season. EMMA GOODWIN talks to the director and Massey University artist-in-residence who has been put in charge of this year’s production.
Fresh off the plane from Los Angeles and with barely enough time to get over the jet lag, Summer Shakespeare director Amanda McRaven was running auditions for this season’s production, Much Ado About Nothing.
“There are moments that are a bit vague about the whole thing, but at the callbacks things were a lot clearer,” she says, laughing.
Luckily, McRaven has worked with most of the actors before and is impressed with how much they have matured since she last saw them perform.
McRaven has returned to Palmerston North – she was here in 2008 as a Fulbright scholar – as Massey University’s artist in residence for Angie Farrow.
“I worked with Angie last time I was here, directing her play Before the Birds and I love her work, so it’s an absolute pleasure to be back again. And people here make you so welcome.”
As well as directing Summer Shakespeare, McRaven will tutor a couple of papers at Massey for Farrow in the three months she is on New Zealand soil.
Used to the rush and pressure of LA, McRaven is delighting in the relaxed atmosphere of Manawatu.
“People have said welcome home and it does feel like that.
“I live in the mountains back home and I need grass and trees around me. I don’t do well in cities.”
Back in LA, McRaven’s schedule is phenomenal. She regularly juggles several projects at once as a freelance director and is shoulder-deep in community projects too.
“I love community theatre but it doesn’t pay the bills. It’s a good way to replenish my soul though.”
One community project dear to her heart is The Voice, a project creating a writing and performance ensemble for female inmates in a high security facility.
McRaven says the project is very rewarding as one or two of the women have released exceptional talent that would have otherwise gone unrecognised.
“One woman is serving several life sentences and she’ll never get out, but she is an amazing poet and has released two collections of poems that are beautiful.”
McRaven is a diminutive figure with boundless energy that belies her frame. Dark, tousled hair frames a heart-shaped face and she stirs her soy cappuccino topped with chocolate thoughtfully as she tells the story.
“Those women have not been raised in creative households. Poetry is a way of releasing that creativity.
“It distils the emotion down and I’ve seen some of the best performances come out of those women.”
Having grown up in a small town called Charlottesville in Virginia, McRaven understands community theatre and its importance to everyday people.
“I was very lucky as our theatre was quite edgy, whereas most small-town theatres in America put on musicals to ensure they get people going along.
“In Charlottesville they take a few risks but over the years it has made a name for itself for putting on plays that are a little different.”
It was those differences that let the artistic director of the town’s theatre allow a 20-year-old unproven McRaven put on a play.
Since then she has been in hot demand and has an enviable background including strong experience in Shakespeare with credits of Macbeth, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, Antony and Cleopatra and Romeo and Juliet.
Known for her direction of energetic performances, McRaven works on performance that is physical and her intended treatment of Much Ado About Nothing is going to be no different.
“I was in the rose gardens yesterday looking at the space and how I was going to use it and I got really excited about what I could do.
“I was there for about two hours when I suddenly thought, `I have the best job’.”
Without giving too much away, McRaven’s ideas will involve the actors using their bodies to make the most of the space to get the story across.
“You can’t stylise outdoor Shakespeare too much or you lose it.
“The voices need to be strong so the language is heard. There will be a lot of dance in the piece, too.”
This is the 10th season of Summer Shakespeare and McRaven knows that its popularity locally will have to be maintained with this season’s performance.
Much Ado About Nothing, the chosen Shakespearean comedy, is a perfect production choice in McRaven’s eyes.
“With one of Shakespeare’s best female leading women, fantastic wordplay, sexual tension, and nasty tricks, it’s a perfect summer blockbuster,” she says.
With David Collins in the role of Benedick, Marie Gibson as Beatrice, Matt Waldon as Claudio and Hannah Pratt and Mark Kilsby bouncing off each other as a side-splitting comic duo, the cast is impressive and promises a thespian feast.
Away from home for Christmas, McRaven says that she will miss her family but it wasn’t feasible to come over for auditions and then go home for the holidays only to return for rehearsals a a few weeks later.
However, she won’t be holed up in her Square Edge apartment on her own for Christmas.
“I’ll be at Angie’s for Christmas Day and I have a lot of work to do getting the play sorted in my head.”
Performance dates of the 2012 Summer Shakespeare instalment will be the second and third weekends in March at the rose gardens in the Esplanade.
– © Fairfax NZ News
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