Elegy for Emma Rice

Last week on News and Notes, we took a melancholy spin through our season of change. I think we all agreed that we can mourn the past and still embrace a future that is new and different.

This week, we shall set our sights upon a story that, at its surface, seems to be an extension of that: the impending loss a major voice in theater at a major theater landmark. However, when we get the metaphorical spade out and dig down into the dirt a little ways, we will find that this story is actually the antithesis of every emotion we bravely squared off with last time. Instead of the theater world bravely soldiering into the new unknown, we have here an example of the theater world angrily retreating back to the past.

First, let me introduce you to Emma Rice. (Emma, this is everyone; everyone, this is Emma.) Rice is the former Artistic Director of Kneehigh Theatre, a UK company based in Cornwall that that has been quietly revolutionizing modern theater for the past three decades. (My Minnesotan audience might remember the Guthrie bringing in Kneehigh's wildly creative reimagining of Noel Coward's Brief Encounter in 2010 and their physically and visually stunning adaptation of the Cornish legend of Tristan and Yseult in 2014.) Her work at Kneehigh brought her heaps of of acclaim; but, even so, when Shakespeare's Globe in London announced a few years ago that Rice would become their new Artistic Director everyone was a little surprised. The Globe was purposely built to recreate as perfectly as possible the "authentic" Shakespeare experience, aiming to present Shakespeare in the same method and with the same technology as it was performed in his time. Rice was well known for adapting and updating old stories and welding them with modern technology. Was this a sign that the Globe was looking to shake up its Ye Olde Times image and step one foot into the modern era?

In her inaugural season this year, Rice proved that she was willing to do more than take one dainty step. Her kaleidoscopic, candy-colored A Midsummer Night's Dream was a huge hit. So was her production of Imogen, a "new" work that took apart Cymbeline and put it back together with a focus on the woman who should have been the title character of Shakespeare's play. So, too, was the Globe's recent rendition of The Taming of the Shrew, which updated the piece to the Easter Rising in 1916 Ireland and confronted head-on the mysogyny baked into Shakespeare's writing. Rice hauled in modern lights, put actors in modern dress, dropped plastic items on the faux-ancient stage and brought wild, new design sensibilities to the enterprise. Her tenure so far has brought sweeping change and along with it new, growing and energized audiences. Very few theaters can say that truthfully.

Predictably, the classist old fogeys of the world hated her freaking guts. "She's wrecking the place!" they cried from their dusty libraries, shielding their eyes from the LED lighting rigs with huge leather-bound volumes and wishing they had boiling oil to pour down on the unwashed rabble that Rice was attracting to their sacred reconstructed temple. Rice never minced words with her critics, though, and she didn't shy away from stating the ultimate Shakespeare blasphemy: that Billy's 400-year-old English can be hard to understand and a barrier to getting new audiences in. She was never ashamed of being a populist, and her entire raison d'être at the Globe was to do exactly what Shakespeare did in his own day: reach the people where they're at. After all, why do you think this vaunted genius had so many dick jokes in his writing? Seriously, guys, THERE ARE SO MANY DICK JOKES (and you can't blame them all on Marlowe).

Rice's reign at the Globe could have been a great story about the past and the present meeting in glorious technicolor to lead the way to the future. Alas, the old fogeys have won again. The board of the Globe decided to cut Rice's run short. In a statement on their website, they gave the flaccid reason that Rice's use of modern lighting and sound was just a bridge too far. And the stodgy academics cheered, desperately trying to pump up this limp argument with all the vigor they could muster. (See, I can do dick jokes, too)

No one in the wider world is buying this explanation, though. Susannah Clapp at the Guardian writes, "What is peculiar is that a theatre that was routinely reviled as ersatz is now regarded as in dire need of protection from innovation." As Lyn Gardner, also at the Guardian, writes, "The message is clear: the Globe is not really a theatre but part of the heritage industry and a plaything for academic researchers."

Call it "snobbery"; call it an impotent paean to an imagined past; one thing is clear: the Globe's board had a chance to see theater live in the modern world, and they decided they would rather have it stuffed and mounted in a curio cabinet. Unfortunately, that's a mindset that has plagued the culture of greater Britain (and us over here in the ol' US of A as well) in recent years. Scottish playwright David Greig, writing in the New Statesman, said that the Globe's ousting of Rice "feels a bit Brexity". It's a rejection of the modern world and a failure to see the very real advantages that the modern world brings. It's like going to a Renaissance Faire and being asked to conduct all business in King's silver and contract authentic cholera before you are allowed in.

Matt Truman, writing in the London theater magazine What's On Stage, expertly summed up the divide in thinking over the Globe this way:

"[T]here are two ways to think about the Globe and its conditions – as architecture and as space. The first dictates an aesthetic: codpieces to go with the thatched roof and so on. The second dictates a relationship with the audience – and Shakespeare's audience weren't there for a history lesson. They went to be entertained, to see their lives reflected onstage. Rice is true to that. Not original practices, but original spirit."

Unfortunately, the old fuddy-duddies have won this one. The Globe gets to be a museum piece that they can stroke their beards approvingly at. I'm sure they're savoring this victory, even as funders of the Globe start to drop out. In the meantime, Emma Rice will still be at the helm through 2017. She will only get half of the four years of programming that she already had planned, but something tells me that she will go right on doing what she's been doing up until the day they kick her to the curb in early 2018. After that, she'll have no trouble landing a gig with more forward thinking companies at home and abroad. The Globe, on the other hand, will be stuck in the corner its board painted themselves into. In the meantime, will those increased audiences that Rice brought to the table stick around?

It would be great if this was just a fight happening over in Merry Olde England. It would be wonderful if we could just roll this all up with the backward, fearful attitude that gave us the clown show called Brexit and act like it's just a problem for them over there. But it's just not. It's been happening to us, too, and it sure didn't end with the culture wars. We love to sit around and talk about what we might be doing in the future, but our performing arts can be remarkably conservative when it comes to the present, rejecting out of hand trends and developments that have been revolutionizing other forms of far more popular entertainment. (Why do you think there is still such a dearth of hip-hop in our institutions?)

It's all well and good to respect the past and learn from it, but if we can't grab hold of the people living in the present, then we won't get to the future. Emma Rice understood that. Shakespeare understood that. As the Guardian's editorial board said:

"One of the ironies of this affair is that a playwright who delighted in picking and stealing material from any available source, and cheerfully remaking it to suit his purposes, has been turned by the Globe’s board into a plaster saint recoiling in horror from 'neon lighting'."

I hope the rest of us can look at this whole affair and learn the right lessons. The future is waiting.