Shakespeare, Shamans, and Show Biz: An Impolite Guide to Theater History

In twenty-four chapters David Kaplan offers ideas, opinions, theories, and facts for someone who wants to be a theater artist today in hopes of creating their own vision of theater-making, one informed by, and in the context of, theater history. This book explores what theater artists have done before and what they, inspired by history, might do next.

A non-lineal theater history, Shakespeare Shamans, and Show Biz explores theater as a shaman’s vision, as a storyteller’s heritage, as religious propaganda, as a mirror of life, as a critique of society, as a prompt for hard laughter, as fantasy, and as national epic, with plays as different (and the same) as the writings of August Wilson, Gertrude Stein, Shakespeare, and people who never made it into history.

Each chapter explores a particular theme: “The Middle Ages as a State of Mind,” “Commedia dell’arte and Molière,” “Shakespeare―To Begin,” “Euripides―Forever Modern,” “Aeschylus―Writing in an Age of Certainty,” “Sophocles and Aristotle―Defining Tragedy,” “Greek Comedy,” “Roman Theater,” “Asian Classics and Rules” (Bunrakuken, Chikamatsu, Zeami), China―The Pear Garden and the Red Pear Garden,” “Neoclassic Theater and Why There is Such a Thing,” “Shakespeare’s Classic,” “Bad Boys Breaking the Rules” (Brecht, Ibsen, and Jarry), “Inside Outside” (Ibsen, Strindberg, Turgenev, Stanislavsky, Chekhov, Antoine), “Beyond Illusion” (Appia, Craig, Poel), “Melodrama and Popular Theater in America” (Aiken, Brice, Cohan, Stone, Tyler, Bert Williams), “American Classic: Eugene O’Neill and Martha Graham,” “Expressionism to Epic” (Brecht, Meyerhold, O’Neill, Piscator, Treadwell), “American Agitprop: Overt and Disguised” (Adler, Clurman, Flanagan, Kazan, Le Gallienne, Miller, Odets, Robeson, Strasberg, Wilder), “Poetry of the Theater” (Artaud, Breton, Cocteau, Ionesco, Kharms, Stein), “Personal Mythology” (Genet, Lorca, Mishima, Strindberg), “Two Masters: Samuel Becket and Tennessee Williams,” “Theater of Identity” (Baraka, Ensler, Kramer, Wilson), and “Missing from History” (Bonner, Fornés, Kennedy, Maeterlinck).

David Kaplan is the author of Five Approaches to Acting(2001, 2007) which describes the provenance and practice of onstage performance. In his own practice, he directs plays and teaches classes around the world. He pursues projects over decades. In 1997 he began research on what would become, in 2016, a concert-party version in Ghana of Tennessee Williams’ <i>Ten Blocks on the Camino Real. As part of the process in 2012, he staged a marketplace version in Paysandu, Uruguay in Rioplatanese Spanish.

Other texts directed by David Kaplan putting theory into practice that refines theory include a Sufi King Lear in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, performed in the Uzbek language Genet’s The Maids in Ulaan Baator, Mongolia, performed in Mongolian. A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Buryatia, performed in the Buryat language with shamans. In Russia, Mr. Kaplan staged the first Russian-language productions of Auntie Mame&g and Tennessee Williams. Suddenly Last Summer. Also in Russia, in Russian Macbeth and Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness At the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre he has staged Tennessee Williams’. The Eccentricities of a Nightingale and Edward Albee’s.Three Tall Women, both in Cantonese. He has directed performances seen in forty of the fifty United States.

In September 2015 a collection of his essays written over a decade was published under the title Tenn Years: Tennessee Williams On Stage. He is also the author of the biography Tennessee Williams in Provincetown and the photo essay Lorca in Lubbock, accompanying photographer Ride Hamilton’s documentation of Kaplan’s production of Lorca’s Doña Rosita performed in a backyard in Texas by children and adults.

He has taught at Clark, Hofstra, NYU, Columbia, Rutgers, The University of New Mexico, The University of the South, Mississippi State University, The Siberian Academy of Fine Arts (in Russian), the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, Bilkent University in Ankara Turkey, Actuando sin Actuar in Mexico, the Metodi Festival in Italy, the William Esper Studio and the Lee Strasberg Institute.</p>