Doug Paulson & Malika Samuel
Since 2019, TISCH DRAMA STAGE’s All Department Festival has brought together faculty and student performers from across the Drama Department to collaborate on productions that highlight the array of techniques and creative projects taught and developed across the department’s 10 professional training studios.
This year’s festival is no different—from today’s social climate, COVID-19, the anxiety of young-adulthood, the rise in popularity of social media apps and much more—the exploration of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream directed by Assistant Arts Professor Doug Paulson and its response production, in lucem directed by Tisch Drama alumna Malika Samuel, gives students the much needed creative outlet to explore the very topics affecting them the most today.
The two works run in repertory Nov. 17-20, in the Abe Burrows Theater.
Doug and Malika --- together, your two productions make up TISCH DRAMA STAGE's All Department Festival. What is your vision for your individual production? And how do you hope your production informs the other?
Doug: With Midsummer, we’re exploring the play and the characters’ journeys through the lens of anxiety and panic dreams, asking the questions, “How do these characters approach and respond to their circumstances if literally nothing makes sense and everything happening feels like their worst nightmare,” and “What happens to the story if we play it that way?”.
I had fun with this adaptation, focusing on the doubling of roles as a way for each actor to explore two dueling sides of an individual’s psyche and inner conflict. Additionally, because Shakespeare has already given us a play within the play, we’re taking creative license by adding an additional meta layer; imagining a world wherein this entire production is merely one of our own actor’s “actor nightmare.” As such, the audience will see and hear things throughout the show which may not make immediate sense—as the chaos of an overactive subconscious imagination spirals out from the musicality, rhythm and images in Shakespeare’s words to create the movement, stage pictures and interactions that support and deepen the story, even as we turn it upside down and inside out.
During early conversations with Malika, we quickly found an exciting crossover in our impulses—both interested in anxiety and in the surreal nature of dreams, resulting in that uneasy feeling of not knowing what’s real and what’s not (“Did that really happen?”, “Don’t I feel like it really did either way?”), as well as what it means to live between realms of consciousness and clarity around our experiences and relationships. What is lying dormant in our unconscious mind that the dreamworld reveals and can allow access to?
In today’s societal climate, when cultural tensions have been high, people are exhausted from adjusting to a variety of new normals; from navigating closeness and isolation, authority, progressiveness and political partisanship, everyone needs a good laugh and a little bit of release. Midsummer (after 400 years, give or take a few) still serves as a crystal-clear mirror reflecting the undeniable humanness of our times and the deeply relatable nature of human experience.
Malika: For in lucem, we anchored our collaborative investigations in–shocker– the dreamworld! We became fascinated by the transformative potential stored in the sliver between consciousness and unconsciousness. We proposed that in the dream state, a veil is thinned and we are offered access to our ancestors through whom we can achieve deep revelation and enlightenment. Midsummer has fairies influencing dreamers and we have phantom grandpas and grandmas. We pondered on the familial dynamics in Midsummer (*cough* Hermia & Egeus) and the ways familial love provides a framework for future relationships. Defining the veil as inherited behaviors and traits in response to traumas, in lucem seeks to explore the neuroscience and psychology of feeling safe and its essentiality to emotional connection through an intergenerational/transgenerational transmission lens.
Doug and Malika -- what has been your favorite part of collaborating with Tisch Drama students? What have they brought to the project?
Doug: Collaborating with students is always a thrilling adventure. Like a roller coaster. The enthusiasm they bring to the process and the fullness of heart they pour into their preparation is inspiring. Their perspective on the characters and their emotional arcs is so uniquely shaped by the past two decades of social media, dating apps and texting—not to mention spending formative years in quarantine staring at a computer screen. To address the very body-driven work Shakespeare requires is a brand new experience with this particular age group. They continue to elucidate the text in surprising and exciting ways. Unpredictable and impactful.
More than anything I appreciate their willingness to learn and their drive to improve skills, hone impulses and sharpen critical lenses. Gratefully, this is a learning experience for everyone involved—myself included. I learn as much from my students and actors as I hope to pass on to them. There’s nothing more gratifying than putting some wild ideas to work and attempting to solve the puzzle of a production. Whether or not each aspect succeeds, the knowledge and confidence gained through the exploration is invaluable every time. Students somehow relish this playfulness in ways professionals don’t always let themselves.
I also enjoy the personal freedom directing in educational environments allows for, as far as trying things out. When directing students, I want to encourage them to swing for the fences and work to manifest a vision no matter how grand. So, I find myself trying to lead by example, saying yes to their impulses at every turn, and making even riskier choices myself. It is the most fulfilling for all when they bring their full selves to the work—their questions, flaws, assets, talents, even tensions and resistance. These production opportunities provide the best kind of scaffolding for student actors, designers and stage managers to take the lessons they’re learning in the classroom and apply them in a controlled environment and supportive atmosphere. What better way to improve at doing something you love?
Malika: I couldn’t agree more! Particularly with a devised piece, it has been so incredibly rewarding to collaborate in such a naturally dizzying process with individuals who are just game—to do, to try—and have such generous open hearts. The capacity for empathy and care placed on interpersonal communications skills has been really beautiful to witness. They have sincerely brought themselves to the project and I couldn’t have asked for more.
Doug, you've shared that your work focuses on empowering and enabling students to connect their voice to their experience or intention - can you tell us how this is presented in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
When I refer to experience and intention, I’m talking about the students’ own awareness of how they “mean to be” in the world and how honestly or objectively they’re in touch with what they want and how they go about pursuing it. Shakespeare gives us the highest stakes we can imagine (ie: marry this guy or you’ll literally be killed by the government) and our goal is to reach deep into our own life experience in order to access the motivation or drive to make choices and take appropriate action in response to those circumstances.
Oftentimes people are intimidated by how big or powerful they may become when they stop holding themselves back from going after what they want full-force. This trepidation can keep the voice small. Vocally, size and power translate into how loud they are, how full the tone of the voice is, how revealing it is of an emotional truth, how commanding, how strongly they connect to the words they’re choosing and how little they apologize for taking up that time and space and demanding to be heard. Actors get to use the structure of the play, the characters and their circumstances, and the life-or-death stakes as a container inside of which they are free to explore, experiment and go big. In performance they’re empowered to explore the fullness of their potential.
I believe developing a familiarity with this kind of deep connection inevitably begins to seep into daily life and we become braver and more daring in how we allow ourselves to “be” and “be heard” in the world.
Malika, as a Tisch Drama alumna, what do you hope students take away from this experience?
One of my pedagogical goals for the project was an intention to empower the individual artistic voice through exposure to a variety of methods of crafting, the deepening of investigatory tools, and the strengthening of collaborative communication while encouraging an embracing of risk-taking and a trust in processes.
At the end of it all, I hope the students come to find joy in the challenge of a struggle and confidence when faced with a blank page or just the tip of an iceberg. I hope they continue to trust themselves. More than anything, I hope they walk away with community.