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November 21, 2009

Buzz Podewell

A founder of the Shakespeare Festival at Tulane, Buzz Podewell has taught theater history, directing and Shakespeare at the university for more than 30 years. He has directed some 200 professional and university plays, including Tulane’s recent production of “Soul of the City” by Jim Fitzmorris and John D. Fitzmorris Jr. Podewell is the author of a two-volume study of time and place in Shakespeare entitled “A Clock in the Forest.”


Q: How have you changed as a director during your career?

A. I think I used to be a lot more fearless. When we started the old Tulane Center Stage, we were doing three plays in full rotating repetition — no one in the community had a clue that you weren’t going to do the same play tonight that you were doing last night. It was fun. I directed all of them, and it was madness. When you’re younger you can do things like that.

I’ve become more conservative in my work. I think I used to go with impulses a good deal more and I planned a lot less. I think my work is still good, I just go about it differently.


Q. Shakespeare left us a finite number of plays, and some directors have tried to be freshen them up with new  interpretations or by staging them in contemporary settings. What’s your feeling on this?

A. Some people direct based on “concepts,” but I believe you just do the play. I have no patience with concepts. I don’t know what the hell a concept it. Just do the play. I think too much of directing today is “Look at me, look at how clever I am.” That doesn’t do a play justice. I think when you do Shakespeare in a different period, it tells you more about the period you choose than it does about Shakespeare.

I’m a classical director. I have less tolerance of new plays, though I just did one. And I don’t like to do things twice. I’ve not done a lot a plays twice, it kind of scares me to do that. For instance, I’d hate to do “Hamlet” again because I thought my “Hamlet” was pretty good, and I’d hate to think I haven’t grown.

I don’t think it’s the job of directors — I changed my mind about this a couple of years ago — I don’t think it’s a director’s job to help a new playwright. I don’t think it’s the director’s role to improve a play. I think you just put it out there and do it, warts and all.

You know, you get to the point where you think you’ve not got a lot of them left in you, and you kind of want to make them count. That’s what’s good about working on Shakespeare.


Q. Was Shakespeare always your greatest love? 

A. Sure, though it took me a long time. I was afraid of him, and even more afraid of Chekov. Then I finally did them and realized, “It’s just a play, they’re just saying words.”

I think, in totally selfish terms, you get more back doing Shakespeare. It’s changed my life, it could have saved my marriage. It changed the way I look at life.

The first one I did was “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which everyone thinks is a play for high school children, but I think it’s about the hardest play. It’s a play about marriage that says, marriage is really a crock but it may be the best thing we’ve got. I think Shakespeare really comes to some sophisticated conclusions about marriage. It kind of made me re-look at marriage.

Then I did “Henry V.” I was one of those ’60s hippies who despised the military — I mean I never spit at soldiers or anything like that — but doing that play and dealing with what Henry goes through and finally learns in the end, I think it’s really kind of important, and it settled a lot of my guilt. You just get back when you work on Shakespeare. When you’re directing Shakespeare — where you have to do three or four months of preparation before you step into the rehearsal hall — working that long on something, you get a lot out of it. It’s the same with doing Chekov.


Q. What play would you like to do that you haven’t done yet?

A. “Timon of Athens,” a play Shakespeare wrote in his darkest period. It makes “King Lear” look like Walt Disney. It’s just about as grim as you can get. It’s a two-and-a-half-hour rail against acquisitive societies and greed, which kind of sounds familiar. The Shakespeare Festival would be the place to do it. 


 

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