ARTicles vol.4 i.3: What’s in a Name?

Gideon Lester: Romeo and Julietis such a well-known play that many directors shy away from it, for fear that they have nothing new to say. Your staging for the A.R.T. will be your second production of with the play. Why are you drawn to it?

Gadi Roll: I think it’s Shakespeare’s most perfect play. It’s so well-constructed, it’s almost mathematically composed. Most of Shakespeare’s plays contain inconsistencies – elements of plot and character that don’t quite match up. He seems generally to have written very quickly, creating lines and situations for his actors in rehearsal that made sense at the moment of creation, but are contradicted by another idea ten pages later. Romeo and Julietis quite different. Its story is told with incredible economy and precision; there’s a reason for every moment, every line, which makes the text very hard to cut. It’s not for nothing that this is Shakespeare’s best-loved play.

G.L.: Given its popularity, it’s surprising how seldom the play is staged.

G.R.: It tends to be dismissed as a familiar love story, but there’s so much more to be discovered.

G.L.: Can you give an example?

G.R.: Some plays tell of individuals, others of societies. Romeo and Julietdoes both; it explores the shape of a society, then weaves a particular story of two individuals in that society. It is almost two plays in one.

G.L.: So in a sense you view the play as political?

G.R.: In so far as it is a critique of human society, yes. The world is a chaotic, complex place, and mankind responds to that chaos by creating rules and societies, to give order and meaning to life, to shield ourselves from our fear of the void. But the play shows that the societies we create to protect ourselves can, ironically, be life-preventing instead of life-affirming. We construct systems to defend ourselves, but end up destroying ourselves instead. Romeo and Julietare too great a threat to the rules of society, and they therefore have to die.

G.L.: What kind of threat do they pose to their society?

G.R.: Despite their young age, they are very mature; they have an accurate perception of the world. They understand that our life in this universe is more complex and larger than we can ever comprehend, that it is literally “wonderful” – full of wonder. But the society they live in runs itself without humility. It governs by demanding adherence to a lie – that the world is easily codified, that there are no grey areas, that there is no room for wonder. Society is arranged according to laws, and if the law says “Montague must not speak to Capulet,” then that is how it must be, no questions asked. Coming from Israel, I understand the dangers of a dichotomous, black-and-white system. I’ve had friends who spent five years in prison, effectively for shaking a Palestinian’s hand. Others who did it won the Nobel Prize – on the ground it can seem as arbitrary as that. Romeo and Julietunderstand that the law dividing them is a nonsense. “What’s in a name?” asks Juliet. She understands that the system must be absurd if it forbids their love and therefore renders their lives meaningless.

G.L.: Why do they have to die?

G.R.: Because society requires their lives become a living death. Juliet must marry Paris, but she doesn’t love him, she loves Romeo. The lovers don’t crave death – they don’t have a “death wish” – but it becomes their default choice. They walk towards it sober, open-eyed, and without hesitation. They know from the start what the end must be; Juliet knows that Romeo is a Montague, Romeo that Juliet is a Capulet. They know that their love is impossible and yet they go for it. There is a great cry at the heart of the play; these young people, full of life’s potential, would rather die than live unfulfilled. Shakespeare’s statement is terrifyingly strong.

G.L.: Does it matter why the Montagues and Capulets are at war?

G.R.: We deliberately aren’t told – in fact I’m not sure that the families can remember. It’s another of Shakespeare’s insights in the play; each family, each of the two societies, defines itself in terms of its enemy. Again I think about my own country, Israel, which has always identified itself in opposition to others, from Biblical times to the present. It’s a terrible thing to say, but I’m afraid that the Palestinian “problem” is very convenient for Israel, because it provides a distraction from the major social and political problems within our society. The Montagues and Capulets, like so many contemporary societies, are nationalistic; first I take care of myself, then my family, my tribe, my nation. If we were true humanists, I would take care of your family, you of mine, and so on. There’s something corrupt and decadent in the world of the play. Tybalt and Mercutio are wealthy, they want for nothing, so why do they fight? Because the circumstances of their lives require them to find an enemy, someone to blame for their own problems, and as a result they become violent and dagger-happy.

G.L.: One recent production of Romeo and Julietin Israel made the political context explicit, and cast one family from Israeli actors, the other from Palestinians.

G.R.: I saw it, and didn’t think it was successful, because it over-simplified the play. The story is archetypal – it resonates for many ages and situations. I prefer not to fix a specific time and place in my productions of classical plays. I hope that our Romeo and Julietwill feel modern, and yet will remain anchored in the classical Europe where Shakespeare set the story. After all, our present consists of our past.

Gideon Lester is the A.R.T.’s Associate Artistic Director.

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