Juliet is played by a short, blonde actress. Nothing unusual in that. But her father is black and her mother, Hispanic. Friar Laurence is an Asian-American. The literal minded may wince, but the "Romeo and Juliet" which opened April 15 in the New York Shakespeare Festival's Anspacher Theater has more surprises packed in it than a grab bag. A multi-ethnic repertory company playing only Shakespeare is one of the less startling aspects of this unusual project--the brainchild of producer Joseph Papp and Academy Award winner, Estelle Parsons, now turned director.
Ethnically mixed actors playing Shakespeare hardly ruffle the aplomb of New York audiences, which can view similar assortments of people any crowded subway car during rush hour. Papp has featured such mixed casts from the earliest years of the Shakespeare Festival. In 1978, Papp mounted a black and Hispanic Shakespearean company which played Coriolanus and Julius Caesar. Though it featured some outstanding actors, it received decidedly mixed notices from New York's hard-eyed critics.
The present company, according to Papp, "is an entirely new company." There are no holdovers from the previous company. "This is a young company of four black, six Hispanic, five Asian, and two white actors; (one WASP and one of Jewish origin.)" He explained, "We very calculatedly created a company that would be recognizable in the school system; a company that would have their own language resources."
I wanted actors with varying levels of experience," Parsons added, "So they could learn. They're all between twenty and forty years old." Some, she explained, had a few Broadway credits. Most had previously worked off-Off-Broadway for such groups as the Pan Asian Repertory. "We didn't make a big effort to go after people who had commercial careers. They wouldn't want the long-term commitment of a company," Parsons pointed out.
The New York Shakespeare Festival's casting department, which maintains voluminous files on the available actor pool, "had been looking for quite a long time," according to Parsons. "I guess we worked about six weeks and they brought in everybody they thought was qualified." Parsons estimates she auditioned over 100 actors, each of whom had to present not only a Shakespearean scene, but a three-minute movement piece as well--yet another unusual feature of this company. Out of the thirty actors called back, Parsons chose sixteen and a stage manager. "I didn't want to cast to type. I wasn't even sure what plays we would do at that point." She smiled. "We have five women, which is already more than I planned."
Parsons designed a rigorous training program for her fledgling company. For six weeks, from 11 A.M. until 7 P.M., the actors had an hour of physical workout and dance, an hour of vocal workout, and an hour of free-from workout involving improvisations. This was in addition to rehearsals on both Romeo an Juliet and As You Like it, which are going forward simultaneously--another startling aspect of this project.
"You realize the problem when you take people who haven't worked on the classics, whose eyes essentially are on mainstream commercial careers. You have to make them flexible. It's very hard. You cant be a ballet dancer without training," she declared. "But I'm always amazed at how wonderful they
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