Written 2,700 years ago, Homer's epic poem "The Odyssey" remains arguably the greatest most fantastical tale of all time for the armchair adventurer. Adapter-director Mary Zimmerman agrees. And that is why she has taken the 12,000 lines of verse, which would take 12 to 13 hours to read in one sitting, and put the romance, sea voyage, ship-wreck, seduction, and supernatural doings into one theatrical package lasting a little more than three hours. Zimmerman has made it easier for us to envision the wonders of this great oral tale with her dramatization, The Odyssey, now having its East Coast premiere at the McCarter Theater.
A theater artist of growing renown and an assistant Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University, Zimmerman has made a name for herself adapting and directing some rather daunting classic literature, including The Arabian Nights, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, the Chinese Buddhist epic Journey To The West, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. The Odyssey would appear ready-made as an attractive subject for her. What, in fact, is the most singular element about "The Odyssey," that first attracted Zimmerman? "Quality," she answers with a giggle and with the glibness of someone who is forthcoming about being "attracted to old works."
"There's a lot of imbedded theatricality in them that isn't released unless they are staged," she explains, referring to her growing dramatized canon of classic, oft- times monumental, works of literature. She makes no apology for being "attracted to works that seem impossible to stage." She feels The Odyssey translates really well into a theatrical context. That the theater is bound by very material considerations only seems to inspire Zimmerman to "find ways to do things in what is essentially a box." In many ways, Zimmerman shares a kinship with director-choreographer Martha Clarke and director-adapter Peter Brook, each noted for bringing new theatrical dimensions to classic literature and opera.
The Odyssey, in fact, has been gestating for a really long time. The story that tells of Odysseus, the hero of the Trojan War, his wife, the patient and wise Penelope, and their son, Telemachus, was the second thing that Zimmerman had ever directed, and that was back when she was in graduate school twelve years ago. Zimmerman subsequently directed it for The Lookingglass Theater Company in Chicago, where she is an ensemble member. A highly-praised production of Odyssey last year at the more institutional Goodman Theater in Chicago, where she is an Artistic Associate, leaves no doubt that Zimmerman, who has been heretofore adamant about directing her own works, has been with it for a long time. Well aware of the positive response to Princeton University professor Robert Fagles' new translation, Zimmerman extols the translation by Robert Fitzgerald as the "King James" version, or more specifically the version that Zimmerman says she "grew up with: the version, she recalls, as having "those evocative pen and ink drawings."
"In a way this production is a translation in itself. It certainly takes license with the Fitzgerald translation, says Zimmerman, also mentioning that her version has gotten the approval of the Fitzgerald estate. In no way, does Zimmerman consider hers as the definitive version, just another version. Because of the fame and familiarity of this poem that has inspired so many works of art, Zimmerman feels the artist can riff on it, make puns on the basic adventures of Odysseus. That this hero's perilous 10-year journey from the wars in Troy to the comfort of his island home on Ithaca can now be experienced in a little more than three hours should be an inducement to those who remember it only as a freshman high school assignment.
Like Fagle, who recently remarked that "these poems weren't meant as literature or words on a page to be read, but as a song in the air," Zimmerman concurs on how inherently visual the poem is. Talking about how closely she works with the designers, the same ones over and over again, to address the visual aspects of the production, Zimmerman says that because she usually begins work before there is a finished script, she often lets the designer's imagination come first. She then fits the action to suit the visual, the reverse of the generally accepted way of having the setting fulfill the demands of the script. This, of course, is less the case with Odyssey since the script is already extant. "My version tells the story as much through visual signifiers as much as it does through language. On the other hand, it maintains the narrative of the Odyssey by putting it in the mouth of Odysseus or Athena," says Zimmerman, who refers to the "interview" scene between Odysseus and Penelope, in which she thinks he is an old beggar and she asks about her husband. "It is written so much like a play scene that you can't believe it isn't a classic acting scene that actors use to perform in class." Her intention to bring every element of dramatic shape and character, intense intimacy and suspense to it is enhanced by the "tons and tons" of original musical underscoring of the dramatic action by Michael Bodeen and Willie Schwarz. However, she says there are only two fragments of actual songs, and they're in context when a singer sings. They are enhanced by the use of unusual non-western instruments. Although most music is recorded, there is a little bit of live percussion.
If there is only one big adventure that she has chosen to cut entirely, she does admit that a few others "are given glancing treatment." However, the incredible Homeric metaphors, she says "are present and simply spoken." Reminding me that she doesn't write the script first but rather decides how all this is going to happen physically, Zimmerman laughs she talks about the most "radical moments" of the production -- but she's not willing to give away the surprises. She does say that they have found a unique way to deal with the song of the sirens, which men are willing to kill themselves for, as well as the "primitive shadow play" adventure with Cyclops. These she describes, without false modesty, as being "ingenious, as well as being able to delight the audience." She has created special effects in very simple ways. The main props of the play are fourteen chairs. And while film also plays a part in the underworld, its really "let's pretend" with the help of her designers Daniel Ostling (sets), T.J. Gerckens (lighting) and Mara Blumenfeld (costumes).
If Zimmerman views adapting and staging as an inseparable part of her creative process, she also has directed other people's plays, citing Shakespeare (Henry VIII at New York Shakespeare Festival in the Park) and Stoppard as favorites. Although a favorite at the Berkeley and Seattle Reps, Zimmerman says "It's really only the theaters in Chicago that give me the trust that I need in order to work the way I do. All my original work originates in Chicago," where Zimmerman has won 10 Joseph Jefferson Awards. And while waiting for New York, which has seen Arabian Nights (Manhattan Theater Club) and da Vinci (Lincoln Center "Serious Fun" Festival), to fully appreciate the artist who received the "genius grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, it is up to the McCarter Theater to provide the current platform for Zimmerman's creative expression.
She remembers that her least successful production of her own work was when the theater demanded a finished script before beginning rehearsals. It is even stranger to hear Zimmerman say that she doesn't allow theaters to produce her plays without her as director. "Someday I have to let go," she says, "however, my plays are too personal, and without my staging make no sense at all." She concedes that she allows colleges stage Arabian Nights. I am startled to learn that none of Zimmerman's scripts have been published. "They tend to be expensive to produce and they generally have large casts," says Zimmerman talking about the 21 actors in Odyssey, many of whom have worked with her time and time again. "Christopher Donahue, who plays Odysseus, has done fifteen productions with me over the past fifteen years, including the very first school production of Odyssey, in which he played Zeus and Cyclops. When I asked Zimmerman if she had any interest in writing plays other than adaptations, she is forthright in saying "I don't know if I have any imagination for that." As a compulsive reader since she was very young, Zimmerman says "I have lived in these books my whole life, and doing these plays is an extension of that and a real challenge."
I asked her how much knowledge of the poem one needs to bring to enjoy the play. "None," she answers, making sure that I know that she highly recommends the show for children from the ages of ten and up. Speaking of age, Zimmerman's tenure at Northwestern began when she was 18. A daughter of academia -- her father, a physicist and her mother, an English professor, both at the University of Nebraska -- Zimmerman has both her MA and PHD in Performance Studies from Northwestern, where she is currently teaching. Having recently directed a Phillip Glass opera that she says was a great experience, and with a future collaboration pending, Zimmerman expects to see her adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphosis, produced by the Second Stage in New York next season.
Eight opening nights in one year aren't bad, but, as Zimmerman says, "I have to slow down because I'm also very devoted to teaching. It seems every time I do a play I get into these long tedious meetings with Disney and other producers that I know are a waste of time, and then (she laughs heartily) I don't return their calls." For Zimmerman, who has been described by critics "creative, innovative and a risk-taker," it's all just part of the odyssey.
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