One Director, Three Very Different Plays
By • September 5, 2024 0 556
Now playing at the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia: Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.”
Could two plays be less compatible? Take the subject of eyes. When a bloody dagger seems to appear before Macbeth, the guilt-ridden regicide wonders if his vision is distorted or extrasensory: “Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses, or else worth all the rest.”
Put that next to this bit of repartee by Gwendolen, newly engaged to Jack (who has told her his name is Ernest): “What wonderfully blue eyes you have, Ernest! They are quite, quite blue. I hope you will always look at me just like that, especially when there are other people present.”
In fact, the pairing of a tragedy with a comedy goes way back — to ancient Greek drama. Theater’s universal symbol of two masks, one weeping, one laughing, represents Melpomene, the tragic muse, and Thalia, the comic one.
What’s unusual is that both of these shows have the same director.
Growing up in the Caribbean — Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the Virgin Islands — José Zayas didn’t have much exposure to professional theater. But he began to write plays, finding inspiration in the ones he was reading in school by … William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde. (What goes around, comes around.)
In New York, however, Zayas is known as “a new-play guy” (his words) for the many premieres he has staged, working closely with the playwrights.
“Macbeth” and “Earnest” are his fourth and fifth directing gigs in Staunton. Earlier, Zayas directed “The Taming of the Shrew” (Summer 2023), “Romeo and Juliet” (Spring 2022) and a national tour — cut short by the pandemic, then streamed — of Frank Galati’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” (2019-20 Season).
“I found an artistic home at ASC,” says Zayas, whose Facebook profile picture shows him wearing a shirt with the ASC motto: “We Do It With The Lights On.” The company’s Blackfriars Playhouse, billed as “the world’s only recreation of Shakespeare’s indoor theatre” — as opposed to the Globe, which was exposed to the elements — opened in 2001.
Led since January by Executive Director Vanessa Morosco (Artistic Director Brandon Carter stepped down in March), ASC is committed to a modernized version of performance practices from Shakespeare’s time. Music is sung and played by the cast before, during and after each performance; shows are cast across ages, genders and races; and actors appear in multiple roles.
When, later this fall, “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors” (neither directed by Zayas) join “Macbeth” and “Earnest” in repertory, the same eight actors will play all the parts in all four shows.
Director José Zayas.
And, as advertised, the lights don’t go down during a performance. “There’s an amazing immediacy that that creates,” remarks Zayas, effecting “a complicity between actors and audience.” With regard to “Earnest,” a classic of Wildean wit that can be tricky to pull off, the bright, intimate space of Blackfriars makes it “so easy for everybody to talk to the audience.” The production runs through Oct. 20.
“I went absolutely traditional with it,” Zayas says, with period (1890s) costumes “a little heightened.” Taking a cue from Shakespeare, ASC’s costuming runs the gamut. Since sets and props are minimal, the way the actors dress takes on added importance. Zayas notes that the “Macbeth” production called for some relatively elaborate custom scenery: “two moving mounds of dirt and detritus.”
Music — which Zayas refers to as “underscoring” — is very much integral to the current “Macbeth,” which continues through Nov. 23. “The backstage is always busy,” he says, describing how an actor about to enter a scene may hand off a musical instrument to an actor that has just left one.
Is there a link between the two shows, besides “Earnest” providing comic relief for “Macbeth” (which lacks the sardonic humor of “Hamlet,” for instance)? “Both plays are about appearances in many ways,” says Zayas.
It helps that Zayas, a Harvard grad who earned an MFA at Carnegie Mellon, has “very eclectic tastes.” A movie buff, he says he is as comfortable in the Marvel Universe as in an art-house cinema.
Zaya’s bilingual background has made him a natural for Spanish-language productions and English productions of plays written in Spanish. He has directed 17 plays at New York’s Repertorio Español, where he served as resident director for years.
Which brings us to yet a third play that Zayas is directing in the DMV: the world premiere in Spanish (with English surtitles) of “Las 22+ Bodas de Hugo – The 22+ Weddings of Hugo” at GALA Hispanic Theatre. Playwright Gustavo Ott became GALA’s artistic director following the death in May of 2023 of co-founder Hugo Medrano. The show opens tonight, Sept. 5, and runs through Sept. 29 at GALA’s home base, the Tivoli Theatre in Columbia Heights. The “Noche de GALA” performance is this Saturday, Sept. 7.
The Hugo of the play is not Hugo Medrano (though Ott borrowed his name). Based on a true story of what the précis calls “a beautiful crime,” the play depicts three of the roughly two dozen spouses — a Dominican woman, a Syrian woman and a (gay) Mexican man — of the main character, a postal clerk who is a U.S. citizen. Ott directed the world premiere, in English, at Teatro Dallas.
Zayas, who has been associated with GALA in the past and refers to Medrano as a mentor, categorizes “22+ Weddings” as a “philosophical comedy” that touches on magic realism while addressing a timely issue (namely immigration). Seeking a comparison, it’s “closer to a [Pedro] Almodóvar movie,” he says.
“Macbeth 2024”
Through Nov. 23
“The Importance of Being Earnest 2024”
Through Oct. 20
American Shakespeare Center
10 S. Market St.
Staunton, Virginia
“Las 22+ Bodas de Hugo – The 22+ Weddings of Hugo”
Through Sept. 29
GALA Hispanic Theatre
3333 14th St. NW
Washington, D.C.
