Karin Coonrod, director of Theatre Y’s new production of Juliet, closing Sunday, Oct 3 at the Royal George Theatre in Chicago, interviewed by Kevin V. Smith

Karin, your new staging of András Visky’s play Juliet is extremely emotionally evocative.  Can you talk about your personal pathway into the piece?

Well it starts with knowing the artists involved and the reading of the text.  I had met the artist and seen it first, so I knew there was a history.  I felt very strongly having seen it several times in Eastern Europe and America that it would benefit from my part in the conversation.  And after directing I Killed My Mother, both [Theatre Y Artistic Director and star of Juliet] Melissa [Hawkins] and András urged me to take on the text and to do with it what I would.

What was compelling to me was Juliet’s three nights in morgue, her dialogue with God and the extremities of that psychological terrain.  She is a woman who’s strong, clearly, who has faith, and is being tested almost beyond her limits.  I am interested in that: a recognition of this woman’s direct line to God.  It’s called a dialogue about love.  I think that it’s a dialogue with God, first and foremost.  Every conversation is directed to Him.  To God.

In an extreme situation, one learns fast.  The theatre can access this because theatre has only a short space of time.  Something very powerful has to happen in a short space of time.  Personally, I know the extremities very well.   That’s the gift of theatre. That’s what no one can take away from you.   The theatre is about going to those places. And you have to tap that in your own soul and bring it.  That’s what it’s about.

This woman is on the edge.  This is something that’s definitive for her.  When the stakes are high, the audience is on the edge of their seats.  And that matters and that counts.  I don’t shy away from that, because I know that the theatre is holy.  And we have to tap everything that we know about ourselves and bring it to the theatre.  All of the secrets are on the stage. 

Juliet does a gorgeous dance duet—with a coat.  Can you describe how that idea was generated?

I was thinking about the absence and presence of Juliet’s husband.  I felt that he should always be there.  I experienced my father’s death this year, and another one just this week of a dear friend.  I think that the absence that is carved out of the space is as the result of a very huge presence—and so absence and presence become almost simultaneous.  When someone is absent, it’s a new relationship.  I can’t call on the phone and say I want to talk to you; I can’t do that.

I wanted the husband’s coat present in the space, hovering.  She’s thinking of him a great deal and this is the land of her imagination and her obsessions.  The moment when she takes the coat was a decision— I listened to the music we were using for the production and I knew I wanted to do a dance with her and the coat.

When my mother died I took her clothes and I wore them.  I wanted to smell her clothes, I wanted to be inside her clothes.  Even if I get a whiff of her clothes or my father’s clothes…it’s extraordinary. That moment of life that we shared.  What we do now counts.  Everything we do counts.  This coat: she smells it, she wants to be with it, she wants to retrieve him in it, and then she gets angry because it’s just a coat.  It’s just a stupid coat and it’s just an object.  It just disintegrates.  After this dance, she then wears the coat through several of the actions of the play until the moment when she hears that he’s alive, and then she hangs it up again.  She’s ready to go on.  She’s at peace. 

This show is very much about that peace which we all struggle for.  So many people appear to have all the answers in public, but in private they’re a volatile mess.  So, peace is much deeper than what’s presented in public.  And in the theatre we have to be as honest as we can about it.  Because if it’s not honest, then what the hell are we doing?

What’s important to me is to go to the depths and the heights.  In the theatre, that’s our task.  That’s our responsibility, our holy responsibility.  And this coat dance brings everything out of her.  It’s her beloved.

The directorial aesthetic of Juliet is very visceral, physical, athletic, even.  It’s relatively uncommon to see stagings like this here in Chicago.  Who were you influenced by artistically?  What about this kind of staging appeals to you?

You know, there are many people that I admire and cherish.  Liviu Ciulei is one who I admire and cherish very much.  Peter Brook, Giorgio Strehler.  But in the end, it’s a long, slow growth of listening to what’s inside oneself.  Taking things from what’s in life, from everything.  People will tell you, “No, this is wrong.”  You sometimes listen, and you sometimes disagree and say, “No,” and you go on.  That’s what thrilling, because you have to bring the next thing to life.

The landscape of one’s experience is what one brings into the theatre and it’s not confined.  You have to confine yourself in civil behavior but you can’t confine it in the theatre.  Sadly, sometimes that’s what goes on.

What was the first full-length play you directed, professionally or non-professionally?

When I was 8 years old, I had a County Fair in our backyard and gave all the proceeds to an orphanage.  Not a full length play, but a full length production.  And in France we did little vignettes and I was writing and in charge.  My dad would say, “I remember Karin, when she was 8 and 9 years old, had her whole County Fair and it was in the backyard. “ And we did the Beatles, and we did piano and we did acrobatics.  So then in France, when I was there in the summer, we did puppet shows and stuff and I was in charge of that.

You have quite a repertoire of classical work under your belt.  Visky is contemporary, but are there any other contemporary playwrights that you’re particularly interested in?  Are there any new playwrights that you think we should be aware of?

Charles Mee.  Nilo Cruz—we were arists in residence at the Public together, and I directed many of his readings.  And I’m interested in Carl Hancock Rux, whose opera I did at Bard, and we have yet to finish it.

Who’s your favorite film director?

There are a few.  Fellini.  Pasolini.  Gus Van Sant.  John Huston.  And David Lynch.  And I’m sure I’m forgetting somebody critical.

Can you give us a glimpse into how you approach a text before you enter into rehearsals—just between you and the words?

The alone time is very important to me, with my journal and my colored pencils and the text.  I mark up the text; I’m very messy with the text.  I get strength from the solitude.  Words have so many resonances.  So I write all that stuff down.  I spend that time, and then more things come up in the rehearsal hall.  Crazy kind of leaps happen.  Aloud.

The first part is the solitude.  The second part is the riffing that happens in the room.  Sometimes I wish I had someone who wrote everything down, because the stuff that happens in the room is just crazy.   It’s very, very exciting to me.

You’ve directed two Visky pieces now for Theatre Y, the first being their critically acclaimed Chicago debut, I Killed My Mother.  How did you come to be associated with the company?

I saw a performance of [Christopher Markle’s production of] Juliet in Chicago, spoke with Melissa afterwards and said I could contribute to the conversation.  I told her that Liviu Ciulei was my mentor.  And she said, “Oh! He was mentor to Chris Markle,” who had passed away.  A few months later she asked me to go to Romania to meet András and then to direct I Killed My Mother.  I thought it was a good idea to meet András before committing to direct the play.  And we just got along like a brother and sister.

When he happened to be in America the following year, and was present for some of the rehearsals toward the end of I Killed My Mother, we really had a dialogue.  We had a conversation.  It was great.  And Melissa and I, too, all of us.  And I had something to contribute, and there we are: conversation.

As a spectator, what do you admire the most in a theatre piece?

Full aliveness.  When the vision is huge.  And if the vision’s not alive, then the aliveness of the actors.  Because I’m a director, I really look for those experiences when the vision of the director and the aliveness of the actors can take me to a place of catharsis, and I think, “Wow, I’ll never forget this.”  A lot of things are smart and clever, but they don’t have that wisdom.  We are the poets of the culture, and we look for the wisdom in our fellow poets.  When they fall short, it’s upsetting.  Poets are our teachers.

What’s the best production you’ve seen recently?

I really enjoyed Merchant of Venice in Central Park.  It was pretty darn good.  It was elegant and strong.   I took András to see it. 

And the Mark Morris Dance Group’s L’Allegro.  It was extraordinary.  It took my breath away.  I was so excited.  The precision of the timing.  It was gorgeous, fun, beautiful.  Just stunning.  It was a gift.  And we were just beside ourselves to be there in its presence.

I heard you say once that theatre has the ability to change the world—to keep children from killing children.  Can you talk about that?

Yeah, I believe that.  I believe that if we bring ourselves fully to the theater, that an audience will greet that presence, and then there’s a change, there’s something that happens.  It goes back to Artaud’s idea of infecting an audience.  The heart of the infection is bringing your full self to the piece and trusting that.  It’s not about reverence, but it’s a very holy thing.  If you bring yourself fully, it will make it a difference, that’s just the way it is.  I know it.

I had seen Mark Lamos’s production of [Alban Berg’s] Wozzeck at the Metropolitan Opera, and it was a week after the shootings at Columbine happened, and I thought to myself, “If those kids from Columbine had seen this play, that would never have happened.  If those two boys had seen it.  If they had been present at that vision.”

And I do believe that culture can make a change.  I believe that more resources should be poured into our culture.  When the artists are live and doing things, you’ve got to trust that.  That is the most important thing for change.  I really believe it.  How we think, how we imagine; it’s about presence.  It’s about being together, touching each other.  Expressing.  So many things.  It’s about being true.

Karin Coonrod is a nationally and internationally acclaimed theater artist whose work has been seen at the Joseph Papp Public Theater (where she was Artist-in-Residence), Arden Party Theatre Company in New York and Compagnia de’ Colombari in Orvieto, Italy (both of which she founded), as well as Theatre for a New Audience, American Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage, Moscow Art Theater, Yale University, and Columbia University. Currently a lecturer in directing at the Yale School of Drama, she has taught and/or been a guest artist at Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, New York University, the University of Iowa, Fordham and California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been hailed by The New York Times as “prodigiously inventive” and “galvanic” and by The New York Observer for its “clear-eyed imaginative intelligence.”

Kevin V. Smith is a Jeff-nominated theater actor, playwright and director, based in Chicago.  He interviewed Karin Coonrod by phone on 29 Sep 2010.