1 A Conversation with Michele Osherow, Resident Dramaturg at the Folger Theatre By Julia Chinnock Howze If one thing is clear about Michele Osherow, resident dramaturg at the Folger Theatre at the Folger Shakespeare Library, it is her passion for the playwright and his work. The excitement rings in her voice when she describes begging her father to take her to her first Shakespeare play, The Tempest, when she was eleven. I completely loved it! And no, I didn t understand every word but I got that great stuff was going on, she said. She was hooked, and ever since has been interested in the plays from both a literary and a theatrical point of view. Shakespeare writes great, engaging theatre, she said. Osherow earned her PhD in English Literature from the University of Maryland, College Park, and though her scholarship is literature-based, she firmly believes Shakespeare s plays are great to read but were written to be performed. In addition to teaching English at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Osherow has an extensive theatrical resume. Her career as a dramaturg began in the marketing department of the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, reading scripts for the literary department on the side. Through her position at the theatre, she began to meet and get involved with many other companies in many different arenas. As time passed, she found her contributions to these companies becoming more and more dramaturgical in nature. It wasn t official but they would invite me to run-throughs and we would talk about it and it was really fun, she said. When she entered graduate school, she was told it was time to stop practicing theatre and get serious about Shakespeare scholarship. But I couldn t stop doing theatre, she
2 explained It didn t feel right to me to be talking about Shakespeare outside of a theatrical context. So Osherow continued to be involved with theatre production while studying. As some of her Philadelphia contacts began working and directing in Washington, D.C., they invited her to work with them as a dramaturg. These opportunities led her to the Folger Theatre. Through her friend, director Aaron Posner, Osherow started at the Folger on a production of Othello in 2002. She recalled her contribution as fairly minimal and confessed, laughing, Afterwards, I realized everything I should have done differently. But, she said, they kept inviting me back. Her big break came when Aaron Posner was asked to direct a show for the Folger's 2005-2006 season. Osherow had been prodding Posner for years to direct Measure for Measure and he thought it might be a good choice, as long as she would work with him as dramaturg. Posner and Osherow made what she calls bold choices, including using puppets to underscore the play s theme of manipulation, and the production was a tremendous success; it broke box office records and the run was extended twice. After the production, Osherow reported, Janet Griffin [Artistic Producer at the Folger] said she really valued my contribution on this play and she wanted us to work together more. She began working on one show a year with the Folger and in a few years was asked to be the company s resident dramaturg. Osherow sees the production of Measure for Measure as a defining moment in her career as a dramaturg, remembering how it felt seeing the audience embrace the complicated play, that was complete and utter joy, she recalled. The production was pivotal for another reason too. If that play hadn t happened, I wouldn t be dramaturging as much as I am and certainly not at the Folger, Osherow said.
3 Since then, Osherow has worked on many shows with the Folger including Much Ado About Nothing, A Winter s Tale and, most recently, Henry VIII. She calls the latter a particularly challenging but rewarding experience, though she initially did not want to do it. Nobody stages this play for a reason, she noted. The idea for the production began with an exhibit the Folger Library put together on the ascension of Henry VIII. Osherow and the director, Robert Richmond, were concerned that the play was much too long and that the history would be hard for the audience to wade through. One of the biggest challenges they faced was the contrast between what the modern audience knows (or thinks they know) about the story and characters and the way that the play presents it. We didn t want to pretend that wasn t there surely Shakespeare s audiences would have been aware of some discrepancies. So we decided there had to be a lot of wink-wink-nudge-nudge moments his audience got that our audience wouldn t necessarily get, she explained. Keeping this in mind, Osherow and Richmond developed an additional character: Will Summers, Henry s jester, who became a narrator of sorts. The character was featured in a pre-show act and stepped into a number of chorus-type roles throughout the play, so that it was very clear to the audience that, as Osherow explained, this history play is a story that s being created for us, and by a fool no less. She found the experience thrilling because I really got to see these theatrical methods put in place and make a huge different in the way the story was told. The other major difficulty with Henry VIII was its length. We cut probably 40 percent, Osherow marveled. It can be difficult to cut up the work of one of the greatest writers in the English language but Osherow was not intimidated. I m not one of those people who worships Shakespeare, she said. You ve got to edit these plays. She went on to explain, I think Shakespeare is tremendous, and it makes my life better, and I love Shakespeare but to think
4 every word is golden and holy is sort of silly. It does not take three hours to present these stories so the excess should be trimmed. In addition to the total run time, Osherow keeps a few things in mind when cutting a Shakespearian script clarity, speed, humor, and moving the action forward. She tries to eliminate redundancy, especially within a single scene, and reads to ensure that the action is clear. Sometimes the descriptive language can get in the way of a clear statement or argument, she noted, so it is necessary to cut lines for clarity. In comedies, she also reads for social context. Some of Shakespeare s jokes are very specific to the time and context in which they were written. In those situations, Osherow looks for ways to alter the text, physicalize the joke or remove it altogether. Osherow works on productions by other playwrights at the Folger as well and notes some variances in her role. The biggest differences are the removal of the barrier created by the Renaissance language and a change in the way the rest of the team sees the dramaturg and utilizes her work. She clarified, A lot of times I will work with actors [in a Shakespearian production] on what does this text mean or what are the possibilities of the meaning here and that doesn t really come into play in a contemporary work. Her focus instead can be on other areas that inform the world of the play. For Arcadia, in 2009, this meant explaining the mathematical concepts the characters discuss. I m not a math person but I wasn t going to say Oh it s not important, Osherow said. It is important, as a dramaturg, to know one s strengths and to be willing to bring in experts to help with areas of weakness, so she invited a mathematics professor from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, to work with her and the actors on the unfamiliar concepts. The cross-disciplinary collaboration paid off: the theater hosted public programs about math and meaning in Arcadia and listed their mathematical consultant in the program. Osherow and the rest of the production team felt the show was a great success. We
5 read a review in The Washington Post [ ] and the reviewer noticed there was a mathematics consultant on the production and he wrote something like Don t worry. Even if the actors thought they needed help with the math, you won t, she said. And we knew it was because the actors were so confident in terms of the mathematical phenomena they were describing that the audiences bought in to their love and appreciation of the mystery. Osherow also works with new plays and adaptations at the Folger Theatre. It is very different working with a living playwright, she said, because they can sometimes be skeptical about the dramaturg's involvement. Osherow works with new plays when they are ready to go into the rehearsal room, rather than working with the playwright in the development process. Recently, she worked on a new trans-adaptation (both a translation and an adaptation of the original) of Orestes, subtitled A Tragic Romp, by Ann Washburn. This was her first experience working on an ancient Greek play. I was kind of afraid of it because I don t read Attic Greek, Osherow admitted, but I when started doing work on Euripides I thought Oh here s a cynic! I can absolutely embrace this. She did lots of research, looking into what Euripides was doing, politically, at the time he was writing the play and how those issues might adapt to modern concerns. In her work with new texts, Osherow s approach is similar to working with Shakespeare the emphasis is on audience understanding and what they take away from the production. It all has to make sense, she explained. Though it was daunting at first, Osherow enjoyed working with the Greek texts and said, I wouldn t mind doing more Euripides because his sort of cynicism is really healthy. Osherow s experience as an actor has certainly influenced her work as a dramaturg. When I first started, I would bring in a lot of scholarly research and have a lot to say, she recalled. A lot of times I meet actors who say, Yeah, dramaturg, that s the person who gives us
6 stuff we don t read, she joked. Now, when I do bring scholarship to a director or actors, I have to be able to say why this is playable. There has to be something in the idea that is easily translated into a verb on stage, she said. Her work as an actor has made it easier to present research in terms of action. I don t bring it in unless I feel like it will influence a choice being made right now, she continued. Because she was an actor, I think actors get that I know how hard what they do is, they trust me more, she said. Without trust, nothing really happens. It s all talk. In addition to her position as resident dramaturg at the Folger, Osherow is also an Associate Professor of English. She has found her work as a professor aids her work as a dramaturg. Through teaching, she has learned patience and discovered what questions to ask to help actors or students to come to answers on their own. Telling someone what to do or what to think doesn t work. As Craig Wright writes, You can t tell anyone anything. And I ve kind of made that my mantra, she said. But if you can help people see subtleties and differences, then that goes a long way. However, Osherow feels her work in theatre has influenced her teaching far more than the other way around. Her theatre experience has reinforced her belief that Shakespeare s plays were written to be performed. She requires students in her classes to perform scenes. Once you start putting these plays on their feet, the whole world changes. I know they re not actors but I want them to have the words in their mouths and to think about different choices, she explained. She also requires students to attend performances or play readings outside of class anything from a high school reading to a fully-staged production at the Folger. I think learning happens more outside a classroom than in it, she asserted. These outside experiences also allow students
7 to see how modern staging affects the texts and to think about why these texts keep speaking to us. Modern staging in modern dress absolutely works Shakespeare can take it, she said. Though Osherow has had many great experiences, being a dramaturg is not without its challenges. Sometimes the work is really hard, she admitted. The relationship between the dramaturg and the director can sometimes be problematic to negotiate. There s this interesting dance that happens at the beginning of the process when you re trying to figure each other out, she said. This challenge is compounded for her because as resident dramaturg, she is sometimes forced on directors. Sometimes they want you around, sometimes they don t know what to do with you, she said. Some members of the team think I m going to be the defender of the texts, but Shakespeare doesn t need my defending, she remarked. I m just there to make the story clear, and accessible, and fun. This perception can make the beginning stages of work on a play complicated, but Osherow likes to cut to the chase. I always tell directors, Don t be gentle with me. You need to be really clear so that we don t waste time, she said. Another complication the dramaturg faces, with any production, is working within the vision of the director or playwright. I try very hard to get my mind around the play and also embrace the vision that the director or the playwright is bringing to it, Osherow explained. I have to make sense of it for myself and if I can t make sense of it for myself, I will back off of the project. She has never felt she needed to back out of a production at the Folger, but she has had some difficulty working within a director s vision. While working on A Winter s Tale, Osherow did not quite agree with some of the director s cuts. The production focused on the magical feel of the story the director felt Hermione s statue literally and miraculously came to life at the end of the production. I totally got that, but he had edited out all references that suggested that perhaps Hermione was hanging out with Paulina all this time, she said. I
8 thought it was important that Shakespeare gives us the option of either reading. The script lets us think there might be another option. I think we have to trust the audience to make the choice and even if they do choose to believe that Hermione s been alive all this time, there is still a miracle going on. This change was so important to Osherow that she continued talking with the director about the choices and he ended up adding a few lines back in. I was really proud of that success but it was a painful journey but that was really important to me, she said. There can sometimes be a tenuous truce between the dramaturg and members of the design team, but Osherow has not found this to be the case at the Folger Theatre. One of my favorite things is sitting around with the design team at production meetings and hearing all of the different ways into the text. I just feel like the more we re talking each other s language, the more work gets done, she said, delightedly. I spend a lot of time listening to them. Her work with designers varies depending on the needs of the production but she is available to the designers at any time. I know that their work is great and if I can inform it in any way then that makes me feel happy, she said. The last big challenge Osherow sees in her position is communicating with the audience. It is important to engage audiences with Shakespeare s words. The first three to five minutes of the production are absolutely crucial, she explained. That s when people are deciding if they are going on this ride or not. She loves the words and the stories and wants to convey that passion to the viewers. I want the audiences to love it too, especially the ones being dragged there by parents or husbands or wives, who would rather be listening on their headsets to the game and checking their watches, she said. I want them to be so completely surprised by how quickly they are swept up into the story. For Osherow, a production is most successful when audience members leave affected in some way feeling good about love or horrified by abuse of
9 power or whatever the play inspires. Some might think at the Folger Theatre the emphasis would be on a scholarly audience, but Osherow explained, The people who run the theatre are not themselves scholars and because the theatre is connected to the library, they can find a scholar at any time. Her role there is to be somebody who can walk between worlds, who can give a talk to people in the library about a production in terms they might find engaging but also talk to people who volunteer at the Folger about the more scholarly ideas without having their eyes glaze over, she said. The scholars are going to come and get something out of it but what about the fifteen year old high school kid who s here because he wants extra credit; if we can affect him, we ve done something tremendous. When asked what advice Osherow might have for dramaturgs getting started in the field, she thought for a long moment before she spoke. Keep an open mind at every turn. Realize there are a thousand different rights that are possible. Read everything! she said. You have to love the plays but you can t love your own vision of the play. You have to be prepared to be invisible. The production is never going to be about you. People see the actors and they see the director. They re not going to see you but they re going to see your contributions up there and that needs to be enough and that needs to bring you joy. So if there s a little moment informed by something you said and that moment works, either because it gets a laugh or you see that the actors are really responding, that has to be why you re doing this. Listening to the passion and excitement in Michele Osherow s voice as she talks about Shakespeare, theatre and her work as a dramaturg, it is clear all those little moments bring her a great deal of joy.