Posted 7 October Unofficial Transcript (edited) Part 1 of 2

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1 Presentation of The Merchant of Venice at New York University Hosted by Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo (NYU) and the Bogliasco Foundation Speaker: Karin Coonrod, Director, The Merchant in Venice Posted 7 October Unofficial Transcript (edited) Part 1 of 2 ALBERTINI: Buona sera... welcome to New York University. We are delighted to host our traditional partner for several events during the year, the Bogliasco Foundation, and we are particularly pleased that for this first event of the academic year, they have chosen this presentation on a very special edition of The Merchant of Venice that was set in Venice, in the Ghetto of Venice, for the first time ever, I understand. So we re going to have the fortune of [hearing] the director, who is also the person that conceived the project, and three actors that were in Venice for this adventure. Before I ask the President of the Bogliasco Foundation to address you, I would like to remind people that are following us in live streaming that they can ask questions, for the director or for the actors, either through our Facebook page or Twitter and hashtags we are using are #Shakespeares and #themerchantofvenice: either one of those things. If you have questions and you re not physically present here in the auditorium, you can ask them in that way. (If you re here, just, obviously, raise your hand and open your mouth, the old fashioned way.) And without further ado, I would like to ask you to please welcome the President of the Bogliasco Foundation, Laura Harrison. Thank you. [1'51"] HARRISON: So, good evening, everyone. Welcome, once again, and on behalf of the Bogliasco Foundation, I want to thank, first of all, Stefano Albertini, Kostja, [and] all of the Casa Italiana crew. We are immensely grateful to be able to come to the Casa Italiana every year: this is in fact our sixth presentation here in four years. It s an organization that has values and a mission that are closely aligned with our own. It s a joy to be here, so our sincere thanks to all of you. [2'30"] Before introducing tonight s main speaker, I wanted to just say a few words about the Bogliasco Foundation for those of you who might not know about us. The Foundation is an American nonprofit operating in Italy. Our mission is to support the arts and humanities and international cultural exchange by providing residential fellowships for international artists and scholars at our residency program in Bogliasco, which is near the city of Genoa. Taking inspiration from that great ancient port city, which has brought global travelers together throughout the

2 ages, the program provides ideal work conditions and encourages cross-pollination in a diverse community comprised of some of the world s most innovative minds. In 20 years of operation this being our 20 th anniversary year we have hosted well over 850 fellows from 55 countries, and each year, we tack on an additional 50 to that number. Our program celebrates creativity, diversity, collaboration, and encourages meaningful conversation not only at our study center, but also via our outreach program, by sharing work that was produced at our study center with audiences worldwide. [3'50"] Such is the case tonight. And we could not be more delighted to have Karin Coonrod with us tonight. She was a theater fellow in the spring of 2015 I believe she was probably putting the finishing touches on this extraordinary production while she was in residence, but we ll hear more about that, I m sure and I know that we re all looking forward to hearing more about this incredible production, which happened just this summer. Just a few words about Karin: apparently, although she was born in Chicago, her earliest memories are of a small beautiful Ligurian town named Noli, which happens to be just a few miles north of Bogliasco, in the same region of Italy. She is a theater director whose work has been called prodigiously inventive by The New York Times; she s been on the faculty of the Yale School of Drama since 2002 and has founded not one, but two theater companies over the years. In particular, her current company, which is the Compagnia de Colombari, is based here in New York, but they perform, I understand, worldwide. Some of those recent productions include Monteverdi s Orfeo, in Orvieto, Italy, in 2014, Gertrude Stein s The World Is Round Is Round Is Round in 2013 in Albany, and Karin s own texts and beheadings/elizabethr at the Folger Theater in Washington and also at the BAM Next Wave Festival in She is best known perhaps for her Shakespeare productions, and some of those highlights include, in addition to Merchant of Venice, The Tempest at La MaMa Theatre in 2014, Love s Labour s Lost at the Public in 2011, King John, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus, all with Theatre for a New Audience, between 2000 and [5'46"] So, just one last word: this is one of a series of events in celebration of the Bogliasco Foundation s 20 th anniversary year, and I m so deeply grateful to Karin for being here with us tonight and for being a part of that celebration. [6'04"] So don t forget to save your questions for the Q&A. We have a reception upstairs afterward which everyone is invited to, and please join me in welcoming Karin Coonrod. [6'15"] COONROD: Thank you, Laura, so much, and the Bogliasco Foundation, because really, the residency that I had there in 2015 was very, very precious time, and I did develop many, many ideas there when I wasn t staring out the window at the seascapes. (That is... extraordinary.) And thank you, Casa Italiana, and Stefano, for the hosting this lovely event really great and thank you all,

3 for coming, and for your interest in this really thrilling and beautiful project that we were able to generate. I also want to introduce very quickly, although we ll talk and answer questions together a little bit later: Ned Eisenberg, over here, who played Shylock (one of the Shylocks), and Linda Powell, who played Portia, and Mika Uranowitz, who played Jessica, and Walter Valeri, who was my dramaturg. I m delighted that some of the people involved may be watching right now, which is pretty exciting, but it s wonderful that those on the East Coast, you could be here. [7'50"] So: buona sera, and grazie a tutti thank you, thank you so much for being here. How did this project come to be, a lot of people ask: what was the beginning of all this? I just want to take us back a little bit and go through a couple of ideas of this play, then show some pictures, and a few film clips, and then we ll ask, and answer, and entertain some questions together. [8'19"] But first of all: in early January 2014, on a wintry, cold day in the Ghetto of Venice, two professors were walking together. One was David Scott Kastan, who s the Shakespearean from Yale, and the other is Shaul Bassi, who is a professor from Ca Foscari, and also, sort of, informal mayor of the Ghetto, in some ways: a remarkable spirit. The two of them were talking about what to do to celebrate the commemoration of the 500 years of the founding of the Ghetto and the 400 years of Shakespeare s death: this intersection of commemorations was something that was on their mind, though coming up in about two and half years. So they thought: you know, we should bring The Merchant of Venice to Venice, to the Ghetto, to be played right here. Very provocative idea but they thought of that, and they also did not want to do a ready-made production. It was pretty clear in their minds they didn t want a big-name company, nor something that was made outside of Venice, but rather something that was made in Venice which, as you know, those of you who ve been to Venice: you find less and less things made there, but a lot of people coming there. It was something that they definitely wanted to see done. [9'53"] So they came to me, because I am the artistic director of a company, Compagnia de Colombari, that has worked in Italy for twelve years, and also because I have quite a history of doing Shakespeare, the two seemed to match. And they came to me and invited me to come to Venice. (When I got that that was pretty exciting, needless to say!) And then, you know, this whole business of the play and the Ghetto: because, really, there s no mention of the Ghetto in the play a lot of people have hastened to tell me this, but, you know, I did know this. Still, it s known for its Venetian local color, and, What news on the Rialto? and the decrees of Venice (which, in Italy, we turned to Venezia ), and so forth: all these things, of course, make for something that is certainly set and played there. [10'55"] But what to do about this business of the Ghetto? Especially with a play that had so much baggage, that is known for being anti-semitic some people now say it absolutely is anti-semitic, and there were people (we can address that, too) that were opposed to it but I think most people were really

4 surprised by the thing. I feel that, in fact: to place this play right on the stones of the Ghetto, in the middle, was kind of an extraordinary thing to do a lot of chutzpah! and a way in which we could confront and address what has happened, and also be there, in a time when, in this 501st year, the Ghetto and the culture of the Ghetto wanted to move forward, and have a huge embrace, not unlike what it was in the 1500s. [12'00"] So: with this 400 years, and 500 years, and across the centuries, we re saying: how do we bridge all these centuries to play the now of the play, in this time and in this place? And that was our exhilaration, actually: to work on that, to figure that out, to consider the place that we would be (and we can also talk about that), and then to be there, and to see what would come out of it. You may ask, too, was there ever another production in Venice of this play? And in fact there was, but not in the Ghetto. The very famous and great German director Max Reinhardt did The Merchant in Venice in 1934, in Campo San Trovaso and, of course, he had 400 people involved; we only had about 40 still, it was a play that had never been done in the Ghetto, so this was our charge and our joy. [13'27"] My feeling as I listened and listened to the play, and working on it was that it s not in fact anti-semitic, but frames anti-semitism, and all those anti- others and exposes, in fact, the hypocrisy of the dominant culture, and with the exposure... this, is what in fact the play is leading to, and that s what drew me, as I listened to it, as I was working on it more, and more, and more, and talking to many people... [14'22"] But let me first of all tell you a little bit about the company, a bit about how I approached it, which was different, and then we ll look at some pictures, slides (which we re very lucky to have), and little beginnings of things. The company is actually... and how we put this enterprise together, because we worked with an international company: in itself, that s why a lot of people say, no, we re going to do it ready-made: we re going to come, our group, and we understand them... No. We did it the hard way. We worked with Americans and Italians there were many nationalities, actually, involved: Australians, and Romanians, and Indians, and French, and all manner of people. We spoke many languages: mostly in English, but we did have some Veneziano (you ll hear some tonight), and some Italian, street Italian, and we did have a little bit of French, a little bit of Spanish, a little bit of Arabic, and Judeo-Venetian (Veneziano Judeo-Venetian), Ladino a little bit, and a little bit of Yiddish. So, yes: those were the languages... [15'35"] And then: to make this team, as you can imagine, was an extraordinary event, but I need to talk about a few people, in haste. Peter Ksander and I, who have worked together for many years: he was the Set and Light Designer, and with him, in November, when we went for a visitation there we knew that we didn t want to build a set, we were going to place ourselves right in the middle of the Campo Nuovo the ground zero of the place, of Jewish culture and that we would be looking at: you ll see it, the synagogue. La Scola Tedesca and

5 La Scola Italiana, the two synagogues, Italian and German, with their five windows. We would be looking at that portion of the architecture, which was the most interesting. Then, also involved was Stefano Nicolau Peter s from America, from Portland, Oregon, but Stefano Nicolau is from Venice, and he s an Oscar-nominated costume designer, and his atelier happened to be right outside the Ghetto. So you can imagine when this was brought to me: the idea of perhaps working with Stefano, and I met him... Typically, his costumes are very traditional, and he does all kinds of things: a brilliant collaborator. We were creating together a very fluid aesthetic: monochromatic, and also something that could cross back and forth: create a silhouette that was Renaissance, while with modern detail, so that we had a hybrid of these things. It demanded going into making something that was new and had not been seen before, which is always my joy to make the thing, like the Greek word for poet. [17'32"] And then, another person that was involved is Frank London, who is the leader of the Klezmatics, and founder. We were mighty lucky to have him with us playing his trumpet, and we talked together about the opening piece, which we wanted to be like Comedy Tonight: something really lively and bright, that would bring an audience into a different kind of spirit, into a comic you know, it is called a comedy, but then there are other things that happen, that develop. [18'10"] Then, of course, a piece of music from the beginning that he was setting to music was brought to me because of my conversations with Walter Valeri, my dramaturg. We had a few dramaturgs involved, [with whom] we had many conversations, but Walter and I laughed together in my living room about the commedia dell arte, and how, really, some of those scenes wanted to be in Italian, because Shakespeare was so influenced by the commedia dell arte, and we were going to be in Venice, where the commedia dell arte reigned supreme. So he brought to me a piece of text by Ruzzante (and he may mention, a little bit, something about this later) that was the prologue that I accepted. We talked about a few things, then this was the thing that was perfect, and we placed it as a prologue, then some of that was set to music. And you ll hear a little bit of that, actually, in a minute. [19'09"] And then Gigi Buffington, who did the voice and text and worked with all the company in learning the English because many of the Italians, you know, needed a lot of coaching and so forth so she was indefatigable, in terms of her work. [19'25"] So all together: the team, the whole team: we hardly had time to even see each other, because people were resting (when we weren t working like mad, they were just trying to rest), but it was an extraordinary gathering of strangers. [19'45"] * * *

6 All together, we were aiming for a production that would bridge these 500 years, and the question begins: for me, [it] was: how to present Shylock? And usually that s one of the first questions that people asked. Of course, we ve seen a lot of wonderful performances by individual actors of Shylock that are memorable, and even unforgettable in some cases. For instance, some of you may have seen Al Pacino s piece, either in theater or in the movie, or F. Murray Abraham, another favorite of many. These are extraordinary performances. But I was not interested in going that direction; I wanted to go a different way, especially as we were going to be doing something in the Jewish Ghetto and launching something that would be played in other places: so, how to mark that? I wanted to open up the complexity of the character and lift it into something both Jewish and universal, something that could attach itself to the myriad lightnings of Shylock: his rage, his grief, his wit, and one could say, yes, one could do that, but when you have five... The danger is, of course, that it could be distracting, or that this fractured portrait might be confusing or so forth, but I feel that it was very, very exciting, and I m going to explain something... [21'40"] Let me set something up for you about one of the scenes, which was, for me, the turning point as I worked and worked on the play, because as you know, it s a complex one. Some people say, everything else can be played, but not this one: it s banned in some places, or has been, and it s also played in wildly different ways. We were all aware of this: but for me, when I was working on the play: consider this: Jessica, the daughter of Shylock, leaves him and becomes a Christian; she betrays him, she steals away from him and steals his money... The Jews are marginalized: even though the word ghetto is not in the play, the Jews are certainly marginalized, and we get that right from the beginning in the first scene of Shylock, where Antonio says, to Shylock, well, Shylock, shall we be beholden to you? They want to take the money and run Bassanio and Antonio, they just want to take the money and run and he says: I will spit on you again. And it s really: when you read the scene, and you go into it, our rehearsals had, sometimes, people in tears. It s extraordinary the mercy that is not shown by the Christian, in the first scene, with the Jew... So from there we have a starting point. [23'12"] But the thing I want to set up for you, just to give you a sense (and we ll actually see a little piece of it) is the section with Shylock #3. So Jessica has just run away, and she s laughing, and the men she s with Lorenzo and the Christians, and she s escaping, in her mind. And when he finds out about this, he s filled with grief, and he knows he s been had by the community. So what I did was I felt that this was very much the turning point, and that the five Shylocks would come together. This was the middle of the play: as Peter said, it s sort of where the play comes unhinged. The five Shylocks, who played other characters, came together in a huge circle surrounding the center, the ground zero of the Campo Nuovo, and the rest of the company played the part of the Venetians, and they took the lines that were normally given to Solanio, or Salarino, and they mocked him, and taunted him, and made fun of him, and

7 used his own words, and spat at him and the five. And the five were very, very still, and just listening. Of course, I think it s a thing that we can all enter into, a moment when we ve had difficulty. (Surviving childhood is enough experience for being an artist, and that s all we need to do, to take from our own experience: surviving childhood.) And knowing what those moments are like: this is a moment where their voices, and their laughter, and their cackling, and their taunting was really huge, and then became a kind of rhythm and there was noise all over, and the Shylocks start to come together. Imagine this: the five; they re also changed into what marks the Jew, which (and you ll see a picture) is a gold sash. Instead of having a Star of David, or a circle, or an arm sash, or anything small, I wanted: this is operatic; it needed to be really huge, because we were playing in a huge space, and I kind of get exhilarated by that, actually. I love that. [25'47"] So: the sashes were placed on them, and they became Shylock: they moved towards each other, and then one of them breaks all the sound with a huge howl: a huge howl that came up from the stones, and up to the sky, and took no prisoners, let s put it that way. And one audience member, a French artist, said this was like a healing for the Ghetto this was an extraordinary moment, because when she heard it every day: this moment, every night of the performance, was like a wail that came out, and that Shylock was played by a woman. Somewhat improbable, but a little bit improbable like Venice itself. A woman in this moment: it was just one of those things. I don t strategize and then think, ah! that s going to be... it just was the right thing. We did a rehearsal (and we can even talk about that): she was remarkable, Jenni Lea-Jones from Wales played that role. To me: the woman in the center, with all the Shylocks, with their particular extraordinary gifts, playing all these five, was something that was quite extraordinary, I think. [27'23"] And also, it struck me very much coming up out of the play, was that there was a bond a call for a bond. I will have my bond : Shylock repeats that and repeats that, over and over. And for me, in a way that was a little bit like sure, it s a legal penalty, and a legal something that needs to be paid, but it s also something to do with connection, and I think that there s something calling up out of this play that wants that. [27'57"] * * *