21st Century Epic

Fiona Kyle: What drew you to the story of Beowulf?

Jason Craig: Beowulf—A Thousand Years of Baggage started as a commission by The Shotgun Players in Berkeley, California. They pretty much opened the doors to any subject matter we wanted; it could be a completely brand-new story made up by us, or it could be an adaptation. Because it was a relatively big commission with a company that I’d never worked with before, I kind of wanted to play it safe. So I picked Beowulf, having never read it, which I guess is not all that safe. The adaptation we ended up creating is informed by the way that Beowulf was first told. Originally it was not written down. It was told in mead halls by different storytellers and bards who enhanced the story as they saw fit. We wanted to do a similar thing. And in our version, there are three academics giving their discourse on the original story.

FK: There are many different musical styles included in Beowulf—A Thousand Years of Baggage: could you talk about how they help tell the story?

Dave Malloy: I write pretty instinctually. Jason writes the script first and then I look at that script. Then I take each individual scene and moment and go through how I want to set it musically. It’s not like I decide that the whole score has to be jazz, or techno, I just start writing and something comes out, and that stems a lot from how I listen to music. I listen to things on shuffle, and I listen to lots and lots of different genres of music all at once. When Beowulf makes his grand entrance, the writing for that moment is very bombastic, so it felt like it needed a big, driving techno beat.

FK: As an epic poem, Beowulf is very long and includes a vast amount of characters. What was your process for conflating and condensing the story into one act?

JC: The way I write is based on economy. We run a theater company, and I’m always thinking about our actors playing multiple characters. Less people on stage will probably make it easier in the long run, especially when we go on tour. Then Dave writes a score for seven people… so that kind of screws that idea up! But, our adaptation is boiled down to the necessary components—Beowulf, Grendel, Grendel’s mother, the dragon, and the king, who represents the people—and has simplified the story so that it’s more approachable for an audience to sink their teeth into.

FK: Your adaptation juxtaposes the violence and gore of Beowulf’s world with a wicked sense of humor. How did that come about?

JC: I think that humor comes from wanting the audience to participate. Laughing is an easy way to participate in and relate to the play. Plus, it’s just fun to laugh. Also, when I read Beowulf I realized it was about a cocky hero. It’s comic book stuff, completely not my aesthetic at all. I didn’t grow up playing Dungeons and Dragons; I never read the superhero comic books, so my response was to laugh at the original story. That was one of the ways I could get involved with it; to have a sense of humor about it. We’re being reverent with Beowulf, but having fun with it, too.

FK: In adapting a thousand-year-old epic, did you find it necessary to reevaluate some of its characters, or approach them from a contemporary perspective?

JC: I don’t think it was necessary to re-evaluate Beowulf, but I thought it was necessary to do it with Grendel. We’re currently in a time where people are labeled as villains. “What is evil?” is a question that’s been on people’s tongues in the past ten or twelve years. I think that taking a different look at Grendel, the “villain” of Beowulf, is quite important.

DM: Grendel’s mother, even more so than Grendel, is justified in her desire for vengeance. Her son has been killed just for being who he is. Beowulf’s slaying of Grendel and its aftermath is one of the moral ambiguities of Beowulf.

FK: What has been the reaction to Beowulf—A Thousand Years of Baggage?

Jessica Jelliffe: When Jason first started talking to people about Beowulf, they told their versions of it and their feelings about learning it in school. Most people seemed to have a frustrating relationship with the poem and often had not even read the last part of the story. It seems to me that a large part of what our Beowulf is about is rediscovering and embracing the story. A lot of people who didn’t necessarily love the poem see the play and have a change of heart about Beowulf. They realize that they didn’t get to appreciate it when they were forced to read it in Old English.

FK: Beowulf played at OBERON three years ago, and again in the spring of 2011. What are your thoughts on returning to Cambridge/Boston?

JC: We’re looking forward to getting back to that space and performing it for three weeks. It’s really exciting that the A.R.T. is bringing us up here for such a long run. We’ve been doing these little blips, one night here and one week there, and it’s great to have time to dig our teeth in. Boston and Cambridge are huge academic towns and we have had great response from students and professors here. They liked how open we were to having fun with Beowulf.

Fiona Kyle is a first-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./Moscow Art Theater School Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University