Interview: Artistic Director Jordan Reeves Discusses Guerrilla Shakespeare Project's AND TO THE REPUBLIC

Jordan Reeves, the artistic director and co-founder of the Guerrilla Shakespeare Project, is currently in previews for the company's most recent production: AND TO THE REPUBLIC. This play is a collaboration and modern reimagining of Shakespeare's tragedies Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra. All performances are being held at the Workshop Main Stage (for tickets, click here).

Reeves took the time to chat with us this weekend, in anticipation of the production's official opening night this Thursday, May 29th. He gave us insight on the creation and collaboration of the play, as well as background on the Guerrilla Shakespeare Project.

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Can you tell me a little bit about AND TO THE REPUBLIC and the process of creating it?

It started a year ago when we did a workshop. We found the chaos of the government and people's voices not being heard fascinating. We looked back into Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra and wondered if we could put those two plays together. In the long run, we started working on it, and Antony and Cleopatra was three and a half hours long. Although we loved to adapt and cut it, it was quite a piece. What ended up happening was that we got a space grant in the fall. We started with the idea that we wanted to talk about American politics through Shakespeare, so we decided to focus on the Roman plays. The play we wanted to work on was putting all of these things together.

We all, without using any actors outside of the core company members, sat in a little room together and read the plays. We talked about what would happen today if the vice-president and the leader of the opposite party were to decide that the president, any president, had too much power. What would happen if they decided to get together and kill him? So we got really excited about the craziness of the 24 hours news cycle, which is a big part of the show as well. That being, the voice of the people is easily swayed. That was already happening in the plays that Shakespeare had been writing about Rome.

So we started exploring that, and what we found was the parallels were unbelievable and crazy. It sort of developed and we realized that what we had to do with the company was focus on the heart and soul of a few characters. There are thirty or forty characters in some of these plays and we found it was hard for an audience to really invest in the minor characters. So we started looking at the major characters of Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra. We used a lot of political elements and a lot of the famous speeches to help reinforce a completely new story. Although it's similar to Julius Caesar in that the president is assassinated, that's about all the parallels at that point. So whether characters survive or die or what happens to them is completely re-envisioned.

So we spent about a hundred hours in the fall, and at the end of the process, we had the beginnings of a play with six main characters with Caesar never appearing onstage. It's just Brutus, Antony, Cleopatra, Octavia, Cassius, and Portia. We got to expand on the Portia character, and we get to see certain moments. Like, if Brutus had done this he wouldn't have had an army and there wouldn't have been a civil war...he would have been put in prison immediately, and it would have been on YouTube. So we have these beautiful scenes with Portia and Brutus in the jail cell. There are a lot of beautiful human moments that have come out of that.

So then we had a working script, though a lot changed after that, and we did some casting. Then the company worked along with the director, and we tweaked and edited. Then we started our actual rehearsal process about a month and half ago. Between that we knew we wanted to have a lot of the outside world through projections. We have an amazing projection designer team, so we have this whole outside world that you can really feel. Every word of it is Shakespeare's language.

We had our first two previews this weekend. The audience, whether they're Shakespeare lovers or not, they're all fascinated by the parallels between this country and these plays. A lot of things you think you know about these characters are put in a different situation or put in another character's mouth, so I think it's really exciting to experience Shakespeare fresh and new with no expectations.

What are some of the challenges that come with trying to make Shakespeare more accessible and relatable to modern audiences?

A lot of times people come in with preconceived notions. That's why this company was established. They think it's supposed to be so sophisticated that they aren't supposed to understand it but they're supposed to say they understand it. Or they have a strict idea that it's only meant to be one way. We're huge lovers of the Bard. We always think as though he's in the room with us and writing a new play with us. That prevents us from putting him on a pedestal and thinking of him as more of a peer, and we want our audiences to feel that way too. He's a guy of our time saying unbelievably amazing, in depth, beautiful, and funny things about the human spirit and the human experience. The biggest thing for us trying to help the audience see that there's not a distance between this writer and us.

It was a lot of work to try and craft these particular scenes. There was a lot of going back to the plays and reimagining what would happen if we took these two lines and put them like this? Our director helped us to play with that. It was challenging, but it was really fun, too.

You founded the Guerrilla Shakespeare Project back in 2004. How has the company changed in the past ten years?

This company came out of three founders. We all went to Brown grad school together. We were crazy and we wanted to do more Shakespeare. So one of the guys put up a poster that said "Guerrilla Shakespeare Project," and we did our first production after hours. We had classes all day, then shows until ten, and we would rehearse in our lunch breaks. When we graduated and moved to New York, though we were pretty successful as actors, we realized that we missed doing Shakespeare the way we used to be able to. So it's been about seven years now.

The company has changed in a lot of ways. We learned how to produce and run things. It's been a lesson for most of the artists. We didn't start out as businessmen. Artistically, what we were passionate about was looking at Shakespeare. We didn't really have a method yet, but we knew we like cutting down Shakespeare and targeting new audiences. Since then, we've developed the understanding that we look at those plays as new plays. What if no one had ever seen Julius Caesar? That developed our method of imagining if we'd never heard of this play. So we start from there, and we learn the plays inside and out. And from there, we're ready to cut out the material. We want to make sure we're telling his story today, in modern circumstances. That's developed even further now because this is our largest reconstruction yet. It's been fascinating and exciting, and the audience so far has really gotten into it. So I think this is something we're going to explore again after this project.

How does playing a Shakespearean character in this original interpretation compare to portraying a Shakespeare character in a more classic production?

I think it's really terrific and rewarding. I'm playing Antony in the play, and I've seen a number of other Mark Antonys, as well as productions of Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. And what I can say about this production is his soul is still there. He's still the same guy, and he has all the same great qualities and flaws. But I get to be free of some of the restraints of some of the choices he makes because this play is about real people. It really opens things up. But the famous lines that Antony says are the moments that I really get to live with Antony. A lot of things are very much intact; it's just a different trajectory in our play. What's wonderful for us is that the audience doesn't know where it's going. That really lets me live it fully with them, so that when my end comes, however it does, it surprises both of us. That's really exciting.

Several actors in this production have performed with Guerrilla Shakespeare before. What is it like being able to work with them again?

It's terrific. Having a small core company of artists makes us work fast. We're all on stage together a lot. We know each other's tricks. That's nice. We can't really fake it with each other. What's also really nice is that we really believe that we're all creating this together. We all follow our director, but we all have a voice in it. We have no problem about voicing our opinions about scene work or the arch of the play or about scenic design. I always trust that when our plays go up they're exactly what we want them to be or what we think we should be. Everyone's really analyzed everything. So it's really helpful to have four or five minds in the room at all times. Everyone feels confident to say what we think or to drop an idea. We drop good ideas all the time. That makes us a little different as an acting company.

What are some of the advantages of having cast members who have never worked with the company before participate in the production?

We always want to have at least one or two new people. We hold auditions and we cast off of talent, but we also want people who we'd like to sit down and have a cup of coffee with. Ultimately, we need that breath of fresh air. Sometimes we won't see the thing that's missing. Our Cleopatra is our newest actor, and though we've known of her in the community, we've never worked with her before. It's wonderful to be with someone who's never acted with us before. It brings this joy and fire to it, which helps us who've been doing it forever get excited about it.

What would you like to see happen in the future for the Guerrilla Shakespeare Project?

We've found over the last seven years that we look for the next thing that really excites us and we go for that. We don't have typical seasons. We may go in a very different direction. One idea on the table right now is a one-man Richard III that's set in a morgue and he's surrounded by a bunch of body bags. The shows tend to go in really different directions artistically, with the core being that Shakespeare is in the room with us writing a story.

As far as larger visions for the company, we want to be known and think of ourselves as one of the voices in New York for Shakespeare. For everybody, not just people who love Shakespeare. It's an exciting way to understand our country and ourselves. So we're really grinding away, but that's what we're here for. There's a lot of theatre in the city, and sometimes the quality isn't always that high, and I think that's what turns people off to Shakespeare. So we really want people to come back to Shakespeare. It's not about famous people being in the show. It's really about his stories and his language told so that we can all hear the same amazing thoughts. That's what I think Off-Off-Broadway is supposed to be doing. I meet so many people now who don't appreciate Shakespeare or who have seen a couple of productions but nothing that's made them want to jump out of their seats and clap. So we're trying to make something that's alive from something that was formed years ago.

What would you ideally like audiences to take away from this production?

American is a beautiful and great country, but we have to take responsibility for it. That's our duty as citizens, whether we're politicians or just citizens that get to vote. We love America, but we also believe there is a great responsibility that comes with that love. There are dangers if you don't think things through, and when you stop asking and let other people do everything for you, the world can really become a dangerous, upside-down place. We want to empower people to realize that it's our country and we can do things about it. You can get really lost in the chaos of news media and how much we all get our stomachs turned by politicians on TV. But that doesn't really let us off the hook. Getting fed up is not the answer to making our world a better place.

We're based off the idea of looking at Shakespeare as a modern playwright. We're really excited to focus on responsibility and passion and the American government. People can have the best intentions in the world and things can still go awry. We should wake up and pay attention and not let other people make choices for us.

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AND TO THE REPUBLIC begins performances on Saturday, May 24, 2014 and officially opens on Thursday, May 29, 2014 at the WorkShop's Main Stage (312 West 36th Street, 4th Floor) and runs through Saturday, June 7, 2014. Tickets are available at www.guerrillashakespeare.org.

Photo Credit: Debby Goldman

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