For years, Writers Theatre co-founder and artistic director Michael Halberstam had wanted to tackle Shakespeare's Roman history play Julius Caesar.
So when it came time to pick out the first play in the company's 25th-anniversary season ( and its first full one in the new multimillion-dollar Studio Gang Architects-designed performance venue ), Halberstam turned to a veteran of many previous Caesar productions to co-adapt and co-direct the production.
"I've known Scott for twentysomething years," said Halberstam of his Caesar collaborator Scott Parkinson.
Saying that Parkinson did the bulk of the heavy lifting on the adaptation, Halberstam added, "He's my best friend and in many ways I say he's my muse because how much I love his acting and how much his acting inspires me."
Halberstam told Parkinson that he was interested in creating an intermission-less Caesar production that felt both timely and timeless. Hence the production's then-now hybrid look via power ties beneath togas and by the notion of how social media might have swayed the public in ancient Rome.
"We were struck by the amount in the play about the supernatural and about omens and portents and signs of impending doom that are happening in Rome," Parkinson said. "At first we were thinking about getting rid of those things as part of our streamlining process, but because things started feeling very resonant with everything that is happening in the world right now in the news, I did feel like there was some kind of 'end of the world happening' is occurring somewhere. So I decided to take that idea and make it the central theme of the adaptation."
Another interpretation that Halberstam and Parkinson explored a little more deeply is an ambiguous and ultimately unrequited homosexual longing between assassination conspirators Cassius ( played by Parkinson ) and Brutus ( Kareem Bandealy ).
"There's nothing overt in the way that we portray it—not because we're afraid of the subject matter—we're both gay," Halberstam said. "We wanted to keep the palate open so the audience could bring their own interpretation or desire to experience."
Halberstam and Parkinson also made a very conscious choice to specifically seek a diverse ensemble for the production.
"We didn't set out with specific racial quotas or 'this role should be played by such-and-such ethnicity,' we wanted to have a very open casting call," Halberstam said. "The really exciting result was we saw a lot of fantastic actors that we maybe had to work a little bit harder to bring into our process because they hadn't necessarily been seen for Shakespeare or they didn't have it on their resume."
For example, Parkinson and Halberstam cite the inclusion of transgender performer Sydney Germaine, who doubles in the roles of Cinna and Octavius Caesar, the adopted protégé of Julius Caesar.
"We were thinking what if one actor were able to play Calpurnia and also Octavius—Calpurnia being a woman and Octavius being a man," Halberstam said. "They might be able to straddle both worlds, and when Sydney came in we, we realized we were having too much of a binary conversation and then actually, wouldn't it be interesting if we made Octavius trans? In real life, Octavius and Mark Antony ended up being quite the rivals, which you see continued in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. So we thought perhaps nothing could confuse Antony more than if we were to go gender-bending and cast a woman to make Octavius 'Octavia,' but how much more interesting if we were to cast a trans actor and allow gender fluidity to inform the relationship. I think it's a successful evocation."
Halberstam and Parkinson both feel that the new space for Writers Theatre has expanded the scope of what the two can tackle theatrically, especially with their streamlined take on Julius Caesar. They're also somewhat alarmed at how timely the play feels now.
"We couldn't have known back in November/December back when we were talking about programming Julius Caesar that the election was going to be quite the one it is," Halberstam said. "It certainly has been, alas, a prescient choice because its proximity to the current political situation is closer than one would have liked it to have been."
Halberstam added that he is also looking forward to the rest of the season, which includes racially charged revivals like Eugene Lee's East Texas Hot Links and the musical Parade by songwriter Jason Robert Brown and playwright Alfred Uhry. There's another puppet-filled collaboration with PigPen Theatre Company called The Hunter and the Bear: A Musical Folktale, plus prominent productions of Theresa Rebeck's dark comedy The Scene and Bathsheba Doran's modern romance The Mystery of Love & Sex.
"One of the things about putting together a season is I look for passion projects with the artists I most care about and most want to collaborate with, and most passion projects tend to emerge out of the zeitgeist," Halberstam said. "In this season, there is a fair amount to do with social justice, [and] racism certainly forms a centerpiece of several of the plays. Plus political conversation and gender identity are always going to be issues."
Julius Caesar continues through Sunday, Oct. 16, at Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe. Tickets are $35-$80. Call 847-242-6000 or visit WritersTheatre.org for more information .
