ARTicles vol. 3 i.3b: Father and Sons in No Man’s Land

RM: This is the third A.R.T. production you’ve worked on with the set designer Riccardo Hernandez. What do you appreciate about him as a designer and what were some of your goals with set for Desire Under the Elms? JS: Riccardo understands how to use space in a non-realistic way, which is very important to me as a director. I think he’s a kind of poet, and his designs are visual poetry. When we began working on the Desire set, we spent a long time talking about the landscape and the earth. I wanted to work in a big, empty, exposed space that didn’t give the actors a place to hide – a space that would demand a great deal from them in terms of emotional intensity. I also wanted to create a kind of rocky no-man’s-land that would give the audience the feeling of stepping into a landscape from a play by Samuel Beckett – a harsh world that’s devoid of almost all hope. Riccardo and I also talked at length about the importance of the earth. I wanted the audience to step into the dirt and stones when they entered the theatre. RM: Why? JS: Because I hate barricades between the stage and the audience, and I’m always experimenting with how to break down the barriers between the audience and the playing space. RM: How has the production evolved over rehearsals? JS: I actually began staging the play in a realistic style. But I quickly realized that this style didn’t honor the scope of Desire Under the Elms. The play has an epic quality. It reminds me of Ancient Greek poetry and drama. And to stage an epic piece in a realistic style seemed wrong to me. I knew I needed to find something much more balletic and poetic. And I knew that the rocks and the vast, open space would be important in helping us find that other style. We’ve worked a lot with the rocks: building walls, building graves. The whole spirit of the play comes from those stones. Everybody in the play is trying to break through the stone walls they’ve built around themselves and each other. In the production I’m using music that reminds me of rocks and earth. Nothing sensual or erotic. Dry music – music that sounds like ghosts trying to speak through the earth. RM: This is your first production of a play by O’Neill. What drew you to the piece? JS: Robert Woodruff suggested it to me and I immediately liked the idea because generational conflict is a very important subject in my work. I had a great relationship with my father, whom I lost many years ago, and my memories of that relationship pushed me to grapple with this play. The tension between parents and children is an important topic for me as the father of a twelve-year-old daughter and a two-month-old son. We need to examine parents’ responsibilities to their children and vice versa. We need to think about when we as parents make mistakes, when we lead our children down the wrong path. Ephraim has missed the opportunity to be a good father to his three boys. He believes in God, and the rocks, and the farm. But he doesn’t think about the three human beings who have a lot of questions for their father. And I think that somewhere inside he regrets not being a good father. RM: Does the generational conflict between Ephraim and his sons leave any room for hope? JS: I think there might be hope at the very end. Perhaps the hope is that we realize how many moments in our own lives we’ve screwed up with our parents. Moments when we could have shaken hands. Or not have been so selfish. Moments when we could have communicated with each other but missed the opportunity. RM: During rehearsals, you said that O’Neill reminded you of Chekhov. What did you mean? JS: Desire Under the Elms has a musicality that reminds me of the lyricism of Chekhov’s dialogue, and the characters aren’t ashamed to expose what’s happening inside of them. I also think that O’Neill, like Chekhov, explores male depression. That’s a very important subject in all my work. Platanov is my favorite play by Chekhov because it allows the audience to follow the arc of deep male depression. RM: And, like Chekhov, O’Neill doesn’t judge his characters in this play. JS: I don’t think he does, and I don’t want to judge these characters either. But it is easy to find a way to judge them. It would be easy to show Abbie as a monster, devouring the farm. But she’s had a very hard life. She’s desperate when she arrives, and she wants to find some kind of peace. During rehearsals we were like doctors with stethoscopes, trying to understand what’s happening inside these characters. I’ve really appreciated working with this cast. I’m always interested in what part of themselves actors give to their characters, which part of their souls and minds and sexualities do they open up for their characters. Good actors give everything, and we’ve been working with a great cast. RM: What is Eben struggling with inside himself? JS: Eben is fighting shadows throughout the whole play. He’s fighting the shadow of his mother and struggling with living in the shadow of his father. But he comes to realize that he’s fighting these shadows. And he understands that he has to grow up and become an adult, which is a kind of revolution for him. He’s beginning to find a way to put his mother to rest and to understand his father. Ryan McKittrick is the A.R.T.’s Associate Dramaturg.