Coriolanus

I’m thrilled to be sharing Coriolanus as my first production in my new role as OSF’s Associate Artistic Director.

I had always thought of Coriolanus as a very male-driven play about war and revenge—a great showcase for a brilliant, highly physical male actor. But digging into the play, I began to see a story that had a much more political foundation, that was about injustice and a crisis of democratic rule. I connected to a story of a downtrodden populace manipulated by ambitious, duplicitous politicians who themselves are threatened by a formidable, uncompromising war hero. This vision was aided by Sean San José’s modern verse translation, which honors the poetry of Shakespeare while elevating the contemporary political resonances of the play in a way that makes the story feel more immediate and charged.

What upstart crow collective always strives to brings to the classics is a physically driven world that prizes the poetry and clarity of the spoken word alongside bold, theatrical ensemble storytelling. To Coriolanus, particularly, we bring a new way of experiencing masculinity and the warrior ideal. And I hope we also bring the excitement of watching an ensemble of seven brilliant female and non-binary actors grapple with this epic tale, taking on all the characters: citizens and senators, soldiers and civilians, mothers and sons, enemies and allies. The ensemble approach helps us expand the focus from a singular person, telescoping our vision out to see society itself as the central character: Rome, the birthplace of western democracy, becomes a proxy for our own troubled democracy.

As with all the work I do with Shakespeare, I’m hopeful that this play will help those who have felt excluded or marginalized by the classics to see themselves in these stories—and for all of us in general to see how truly expansive the stories can be in reflecting who we are as a society and the world we live in today.