Hark! NM Shakespeare Festival presents 'Much Ado About Nothing,' 'Othello'

Summer is almost here, so gather up your snacks and picnic blankets, and get ready for the 15th annual New Mexico Shakespeare Festival.

The festival opens on Friday, June 6, with a new production of “Much Ado About Nothing,” directed by Zoe Burke. “Othello,” directed by Stephanie Grilo, opens the following Friday, June 13, and the two shows will run on alternating weeks through July 12.

‘Much Ado About Nothing’

Burke puts a new spin on one of William Shakespeare’s most popular comedies, “Much Ado About Nothing,” incorporating elements of modern New Mexican history.

“We’re setting it in the late 1940s in New Mexico, so post-World War II,” Burke said. “The very first scene in the show references a war ending and one that was relatively successful, and that (WWII) is kind of the last time in American history that that’s happened — a relatively popular war where everyone’s patriotic.”

Burke’s “Much Ado” reflects New Mexico’s ethnic and cultural diversity, too.

“One of the key things that’s really unique about this production is that we have a lot of Indigenous actors in it, so we’re incorporating some elements of Indigeneity,” Burke said.

A Diné actor lights sage at a key moment in the play, and another Indigenous actor plays the flute.

“We are really wanting to be as culturally responsive as we can, making sure that we have authentic representation of our Native characters,” Burke said. “It’s really fascinating to explore Shakespeare through an Indigenous lens.”

Throughout the rehearsal process, the actors experimented with different ways of bringing their own cultural traditions and life experiences to bear on their characters.

“This has been very collaborative, where the actors were really able to bring ideas and create this together, which is something I absolutely love doing in theater,” she said.

Although Burke kept Shakespeare’s original language, she said she incorporated a lot of movement, including physical comedy, to keep the play “accessible and understandable” for contemporary audiences.

“We’re not trying to play the jokes the way they would have landed in 1597,” she said.

Instead, she encouraged her actors to ask themselves, “What’s the most extreme thing your character would do in this moment?” and then look for ways to incorporate some of those exaggerated gestures and actions.

“If they think it’s funny, that also helps the audience enjoy it, as well,” Burke said.

‘Othello’

Grilo acted in a performance of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” at the N.M. Shakespeare Festival six years ago, but this is her first time directing at the festival.

“It’s super exciting,” she said.

Grilo’s “Othello” will pay particular attention to the women in the play, whose parts, she said, sometimes get whittled down by directors who choose to focus on the drama between Othello and Iago, the two principal male characters.

Grilo acknowledged that cutting is necessary, since a full, uncut version of “Othello” would run approximately four hours, which an outdoor audience on a hot summer night might find uncomfortable. As much as possible, though, Grilo said she tried to keep lines that spoke to women’s experiences in 15th century Venice, Italy, when the play is set.

“I’m really looking at gender dynamics and the sort of patrilineal decline from the very outset of the play between Desdemona and her father,” Grilo said. “Then, I’m seeing how these themes of femicide and female rights continue, and how female characters are absolutely being controlled to the point of violence.”

Grilo said “Othello” wouldn’t pass the Bechdel Test — the contemporary measure of women’s representation in fiction, which asks whether a work features at least two women who have a conversation about something other than a man.

“But I think specifically the reason why it doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test is because, in these interactions between Emilia and Desdemona — Emilia has these beautiful speeches that she gives to Desdemona when they’re in private about the differences between women in society and men in society, and she talks a lot about equality,” Grilo said. “So they’re talking about men, but they’re talking about men in terms of, like, ‘Hey, this is unfair and unjust treatment.’”

So, Grilo sees Emilia as a proto-feminist character whose ideas were hundreds of years ahead of their time.

“In the early 1600s (when Shakespeare wrote ‘Othello’), there was no such thing as ‘women’s equality,’” Grilo said. “The suffragette movement didn’t happen until 300 years later.”

Grilo wanted to present Desdemona as a strong character, too.

“Desdemona, typically, is cast as a naive, very young, sprightly, kind of mousy character, and I have always rejected that,” she said. “I think the text itself supports (the idea) that Desdemona is actually quite roguish. I mean, she goes against her father’s wishes immediately at the top of the play, then continues throughout to defend her rights.”

Grilo said the festival is a “really fun celebration of Shakespeare,” as well as a celebration of “New Mexico theater makers.”

“Pretty much every single person I love working with outside of the festival, at other theaters, works on this festival,” Grilo said. “So, it’s a really cool thing.”

NM Shakespeare Festival presents 'Much Ado About Nothing' and 'Othello'