By Oscar Williams
Pippa Nixon and Alex Waldmann discuss Shakespeare in the 21st Century.
York St. John recently hosted an intimate discussion on Shakespeare with leading Shakespearean actors, and York St John Cultural Fellows, Pippa Nixon and Alex Waldmann. Pippa and Alex have been involved in polarising, contemporary productions of As You Like It, King John and Hamlet. Pippa talked about how she wants her interpretations to transcend the Elizabethan language of the text to present the “human experience, human thought, human emotion and dilemma”, of the characters in a context that evokes a reaction from a modern audience. Both stressed how important the collaboration and guidance of their RSC director Maria Aberg has been in their challenging of Shakespeare’s texts. In Aberg’s 2012 adaptation of King John Pippa played the traditionally aggressively-male Bastard as a woman and sections of the original text were cut from the production. Traditionalists were critical of the lack of apparent respect to Shakespearean legacy in the production. Defending her interpretation, in a 2013 interview Aberg told the Independent that “Reverence is very difficult in a creative production. I’m not sure it has a place. Being faithful to theatrical tradition is not the same as being faithful to the text…”
Alex lamented the “notion now in British theatre that the accepted norm is kind of slightly traditional dress, with some nice lights, with everyone talking with quite posh accents, that’s the way they like their Shakespeare and that’s the way it should be done somehow […] We have the wrong kind of reverence to Shakespeare in our country, he is so revered for these amazing plays and everyone thinks they know how they should be done but actually he is just a brilliant playwright who writes great characters and great stories and they are so up for interpretation.” He continued to argue that the over-sincerity and declamatory pronunciation of the conservative Shakespearean actors alienates the audience from empathising with the characters. Pippa discussed the importance of creating subtext for the characters, to give them tangible emotional depth. Alex described their interpretations as “all subtext” and “trying to get underneath, right underneath, it, to think what is actually going on for the human beings” contrasting it with “Shakespeare that is dead and you don’t care, and you’re not interested because people stop acting like human beings”.
Their commitment to character and subtext was evident when the conversation turned to their production of As You Like It. As You Like It is often dismissed by purists as one of Shakespeare’s “crowd-pleasers” and described as an “insubstantial” comedy. But Pippa and Alex explored how misconceptions on the text disguise a profound investigation of gender, sexuality and love. Pippa described the difficulties of “trans-gendering” herself for her character, of how she had to crop her hair short, wear a binder and a prosthetic penis. She explained how Rosalind’s transformation is not a jape and that her discomfort was a way of getting through the common pantomimical interpretation of Rosalind’s situation to convey the seriousness of the trans-gendering to the audience; who now had to believe Rosalind was a man. Alex further explored the gender expectations of the characters in their production and the internal conflict of Orlando. How does he now perceive his sexuality and his perception of romance and masculinity? Both believed that is only when they drop their gender roles that they can become equals in love. Aberg has described their production of As You Like It as being about “the courage it takes to fall in love and to allow yourself to be loved.”
Through the exploration of gender expectations and roles, Pippa and Alex have both been at the forefront of breaking open the canon to women. Pippa spoke on how it was an exciting time to be a Shakespearean actress because of the increasing prevalence of cross-gender acting in contemporary productions, balancing out the traditional male-bias of Shakespeare. Their enthusiasm and passion for contemporary analysis of Shakespeare was inspiring and evidence of the bard’s enduring appeal.