Vance Roi Reyes
“The idea for Julius Caesar being an all-female production itself came about because one of our members [Jenn Scuderi, playing Marc Antony] was speaking to a student of hers about how the conversations seem so feminine. It sounds like conversations women would have and so the idea was planted in her head,” says Vance Roi Reyes, former ensemble member at Theatre Unleashed and director of its upcoming all-female production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Couple that with its last show (The Birthday Boys by Aaron Kozak) hosting an all-male cast and Theatre Unleashed (sometimes abbreviated to TU) decided to explore the feminine side of Shakespeare’s classic history. Managing director Gregory Crafts reveals why Theatre Unleashed is excited about this next production: “I think this is going to be a very strong follow-up to The Birthday Boys, which was a huge hit, and Caesar will show we’re not a fluke.
“We’re looking forward to showing we can consistently put up great shows and we’re not just a one-hit wonder company. Granted, we’ve still got a lot to learn and a lot of growth ahead of us but one of the most important things I think any company needs to do if they want to be successful is focus on consistently mounting the absolute best shows they can.”
Rather than beginning from the inside out, Reyes and Theatre Unleashed’s female ensemble members start with a frame story and allow the relevance to these women’s lives to inform their approach to the characters. A group grappling with new responsibilities and very few men during World War II presents the play Julius Caesar to perhaps understand what their husbands, brothers and fathers are experiencing and grow closer as a community. As the play progresses, so do their real-life relationships.
Gregory Crafts
No stranger to Shakespeare, director Reyes has spent 10 years performing with Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, setting what he feels is a strong foundation for interpreting Shakespeare classically. A big fan of watching high-concept Shakespeare, he doesn’t miss a beat when asked, what is your favorite experience? His reply is Titus Andronicus, the film by Julie Taymor. He’s a little wary about her latest Shakespeare film, The Tempest, even though Reyes’ first experience with her was Behind the Scenes With Julie Taymor — The Magic and Mystery of Artistic Creation, a 1992 PBS documentary on her stage production of Tempest which left him “fascinated with her work.”
Local actress Dana DeRuyck, performing with Reyes in a drag disco Romeo & Juliet, specifically remembers that “Lady Capulet never got so many laughs. Smart, funny, sweet, focused when needed, incredibly silly and hilarious when not. And he’s not much of a dancer in heels!”
Mark Petrie from Knightsbridge Theatre jumped at the chance to describe working with Reyes, specifically on Macbeezy: The MacBeth Hip Hopera. As Duncan, Reyes brought “an incredible amount of creativity to his process and never ceased to amaze me with his hilarious new ideas.”
Reyes does not believe in concept for concept’s sake, however, and he elaborates: “I love watching Shakespeare in different contexts. I love in particular when Shakespeare is in a context that really feeds the story. So setting Julius Caesar in an all-female cast, I asked myself why would it be all women in the first place? I thought of time periods and of reasons why men would be gone. I landed on World War II in the 1940s, which not only was a time when men were mostly gone but it was also a time of women’s social revolution. So women were coming into power, discovering their abilities outside of their relationship to men, and I thought this was a great time to feed both the story of Julius Caesar and the story of these women in the play.”
Theatre Unleashed's Julius Caesar
It was this vision that attracted the ensemble of Theatre Unleashed to choose Reyes to direct. He directed TU’s hit at the Hollywood Fringe Festival (and later the New York Fringe), Friends Like These, and has been an ensemble member until recent months. Crafts recalls that Reyes’ proposal “had a strong vision and knew exactly what he wanted to do with the show, especially with the idea that we wanted an all-female cast. We had several excellent candidates to consider but knowing how familiar we are with each other, we felt like he was a natural fit.”
Reyes and his cast created a highly visual frame story as well as “collaboratively created a prologue and an epilogue that demonstrates the relationships between these women and shows you the community, how they chose these roles for themselves and how their roles mirror their position in this society as well as in the play. Surprisingly the frame story really was the most challenging. The text itself is just written so well. I have a great cast and they’re very intelligent.”
Since their frame story really builds on the home front of World War II, and what happened to the people left back home, the ensemble’s research involved newspaper articles, letters and the ensemble digging into their own family histories. The family stories brought into rehearsal and shared from generation to generation about World War II “and how they affected the progression of women in American society and how it has affected these cast members directly from their mothers and their grandmothers and their aunts,” Reyes believes to be a great storytelling bond in the piece. “One of the cast member’s mothers was a WAAC [Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps] and [the actress] was so surprised to find her mother’s pilot’s license randomly in a trunk one day. They had never had a discussion about it so it was just this thing she had done in her past that they were now able to have this conversation about because she’s having this experience.”
What of the actual female characters in the play? This production is all-female and that includes two characters typically reserved for women, Calpurnia and Portia, played by Michelle Hasson and Courtney Sara Bell, respectively. Reyes admits that Hasson and Bell may have felt a little hesitant at first to play the actual female roles within this new interpretation but he knew they would bring something unique and strong to these characters.
He says, “I managed to find brilliant actresses who brought amazing aspects to both those women, who are so tragic because they speak so little in the play and then disappear. Portia in particular is this brilliantly powerful woman who fascinates me in her relationship to Brutus because she is every bit his equal. Seeing this production with a female Brutus alongside a female Portia really demonstrates a balance to their relationship. And with Calpurnia, it highlights the tragedy. She’s really made inconsequential by Caesar, by someone who really should value her opinion. There’s a huge back and forth and it’s really hypocritical how he’ll cater to her whims and then blame her for her stupidity.”Masson also doubles as Lucius and Bell as Octavius, giving them even more of a challenge within the context of the play and frame story.
Theatre Unleashed's Julius Caesar
The community bonds addressed in this piece also reflect Theatre Unleashed’s philosophy, Reyes explains. “I think the greatest thing about TU at the moment is their desire to build community in theater because small theaters in LA particularly really need each other to survive. The great thing about this show is it really is an exploration of community: the community of women who’ve been left behind and how they have to band together to deal with the issues that are happening with all their loved ones. So I feel it really parallels TU’s desire to come together with other theater companies and build community in theater so that it’s more appealing to a larger audience and bring more people in and share resources.”
Crafts elaborates on TU’s community involvement which includes sharing resources and connecting with other LA theaters (Knightsbridge, Celebration, Company of Strangers and Coeurage Theatre companies) in very tangible ways. “Since the Hollywood Fringe last year, we’ve been reaching out and getting to know other companies in LA and it’s been incredibly helpful for us. They supported us by putting us in touch with their designers, loaning us props, costumes and weapons and in one case, helping me personally with producing advice when I needed it.
“This show represents a true collaborative effort, not only between our actors and director but between several of LA’s companies. I think we’re all going to have something to be proud of when this show opens. We want to get to the point where we’re not solely asking for help but able to pay our friends back and pay it forward to other growing companies. We want to be a contributing member of the LA theater family.”
Julius Caesar, presented by Theatre Unleashed, opens May 13; plays Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; through June 8. Tickets: $15. Studio/Stage, 520 N. Western Ave., Los Angeles; 818-849-4039 or reservations@theatreunleashed.com.
