Interview: UMass' Alison Bowie Chats Dramaturgy & Production of CASANOVA

By Natalie Grillo

"The University of Massachusetts-Amherst Department of Theater is fortunate to count renowned playwright Constance Congdon among its alumnae. We are pleased to end our celebrating of women playwrights with one of her favorite works, Casanova. This play nimbly examines the story of the famous Italian seducer and across time and space, weaving memory with fantasy and prompting intriguing questions about the nature of love and remembrance. Sensual and rich, elements that include touches of Restoration comedy, hints of Commedia dell'Arte and allusions to the lavish and bawdy European capitals of the 18th century come together to create a delightful and insightful whole."

The day before the opening of Casanova, I had the chance to sit down with Alison Bowie, who is the dramaturg for the show. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with Alison and learned a lot, not just about the show but more about theatre, specifically dramaturgy. Alison was so passionate and educated about the show and the department and it was a joy listening to her talk about it. I first asked Alison about her background in theatre and I was surprised to learn that her road to theatre was not a direct one. Originally from Canada, her undergraduate degree is from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Her major was not dramaturgy, nor theatre, but was rather in history and statistics. When I asked her how she ended up in theatre, Alison told me how she has been involved with theatre her entire life. After receiving her undergraduate degree, she worked for a summer theatre company called Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque before moving to Mississauga, Ontario. There she started working for a theatre company and even started a French program for the schools. Alison and I then talked a little bit more about her background and she gave me some wonderful insight about Casanova.

Natalie: Why dramaturgy?

Alison: There was a point where I was looking for other work and trying to figure out what I want to do and realized what I really wanted to do was dramaturgy. I like it because it's so holistic and I get to communicate with everyone from actors and designers all the way to the audience and I like that, that's really what I like about theatre, being able to take a script and see it as a whole experience and how do you actually put something on stage in that respect so I'm just finishing up my second year of the three year MFA program, specifically in dramaturgy and after that I'm trying to figure out where I'm going but I'm looking to do a PhD program in performance studies. I want to teach.

What are the key essentials for a good working relationship since you work with so many different departments?

The ability to communicate effectively and clearly in a variety of manners, and understanding the language with which each party you are talking to uses. So understanding how a lighting designer thinks about a piece or what their process is, is really important for a dramaturg because I'm going to communicate with them in a specific way using that type of terminology, same with sound design. With a director it's a little bit different- our relationship is a lot closer than it is with a lot of the other parties because I'm doing what I can to support their vision so it's most important for me to understand what the essential story is that they're trying to tell, and then with an audience member you're really trying to think about what they need to know without swaying their point of view. That's sort of the key thing when dealing with an audience is you want to make sure you're not influencing their perspective on the show but giving them the key information going in. So that's what I've been working on with Casanova specifically.

How would you define dramaturgy?

That's a mammoth question. It really depends on what you're doing. A production dramaturg's role is to be the advocate for the playwright and the script in the rehearsal room and at the same time helping the director communicate their vision within the story. So it's this balance between keeping the original intention of the script in the production and being true to that story, but also working to create the vision the director has. That comes in the form of doing creative research, putting a production book together. We create actor packets that ties together what they need to know about the world of the play and what the director feels is important to the story. I do a dramaturgical presentation and a post show discussion on Friday as well as a pre-show talk and a whole lobby display. Program notes are something a dramaturg would put together. Literary management is a completely different thing and research dramaturgy is also different.

Can you tell me a little bit more about Casanova?

The play was originally written in the early 90s and was published in 94. Constance Congdon is the playwright; she is actually local to Amherst. She had this idea that she wanted to write a play about Casanova, she is really interested in that strong male character. She read through all of his memoirs, a 12-volume memoir of his life, from the beginning of his life in 1725 up until 1774. He stops at a certain point, he died in 1778 , but made a conscious choice not to go to the end of his life because those were years that he wasn't happy, so he chose to not touch upon them. Casanova's memoirs are a very vivid retelling of his life, his escapades, being put in jail, his affairs with various women, both in and outside of the clergy, his time in seminary, the fact that his parents were actors, they're very, very detailed. Connie's Casanova as a play really looks at memory itself and how we remember our own lives. It's also a play about the sort of fractured nature, decadence, that existed in Louis XIV time and the old world of France and what happened in the French Revolution, to come into this new world and the dissonance of these two worlds. The play Casanova goes across 75 years of his life, and weaves in moments from different points of his life, in memory sequences. There is a distinct difference between Casanova in 1798, which is the present day of the play, and the old world. Bobo is another character that exists that is really holding on to that old world. So what does it mean to have a complete change in your entire understanding of the world? What does it do to a person to live through something like that, where you wake up after the French Revolution and every single thing you knew is changed. So those are the two big things within this play. It is also funny. There are a lot of funny moments in this play but there are also a lot of heavy moments. Connie has really played with the narrative of the story, to be able to create those moments. Having this lightness to it allows us to have those heavier moments and brings the audience along with the story. I don't want to give away too many specifics because saying too much will influence what a person thinks of the show.

I've really enjoyed all of the theatre shows I have seen this year.

This has been quite a year for the theatre department in terms of what we have been doing. I mean, it's the 40^th anniversary season for the department and this is the last show. It has been a tribute to Doris Abramson who was a phenomenal woman in her own right. I had the opportunity to go through her memoirs to create the permanent lobby display in the Rand theatre. But this whole year has been about female empowerment and that's something that is really in this play, turning it around and giving agency to the women that are in this life, or acknowledging whether or not they have agency at all and really looking at that, that's something Connie is very interested in. She is a very strong woman herself and I think all of the plays this semester particularly show this.

Why should people see Casanova?

The show itself is spectacular; it is epic in some nature not in the theatre way, from every standpoint, lights, sound, costume- this show is mammoth. There are so many characters. There are people who are triple and quadruple cast. The costume design is phenomenal. Elizabeth Pangburn has done a phenomenal job with the costumes and really brought out that idea of decadence- meaning elaborate on the verge of decay. She's brought that out in the costumes by having these period shapes, but with modern elements. There's a contemporary nature of all of the elements of the show. Even the set is very fluid and there's an element of decay within the set but there's also a small element of modernity in a way. The show is period with a hint of modernity- and recognizing that sort of eternal presence of the past- which is a line Casanova says in the play. It draws us in. People are interested in their pasts, their memories; they're interested in their own identity and how they see the world. This is looking at that from a different perspective, it's an outside view on how someone looks back on his or her own life. And that's a very interesting thing- it's very introspective, and speaks to a larger context or idea rather than just being about Casanova. The play is just fun. It's a relatively long play but there's a lot in it, you really go on a journey and I think people really enjoy that with theatre and this play definitely takes you on a journey to another place, the elaborate nature of the 18^th century in Europe is really stunning. I think that the world that Brianna has created is really exciting. Brianna Sloane is the director. She has really found a way to take the script and enhance it and it's almost like going on a roller coaster where you're not really sure where it's going to turn next and Brianna has been able to create a world where you can relax into it and you want to know what's coming next.

Is there anything else you want people to know about the show?

The importance is stressing that this is not just a play about a man's life; it's about women too. This play is seductive, that's what it is. As director Brianna Sloane described it, "it is the art of seduction."

Casanova is running April 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27 at the University of Massachusetts' Rand Theater.

For tickets and more information, click here.