By SUSAN REITER

Harris Yulin (above) and Jesse Berger will direct the third-year productions of A Winter’s Tale and Twelfth Night, respectively. (Photo of Jesse Berger by Samantha Moranville )

“There’s nothing like complete immersion to reveal the genius of Shakespeare,” asserts James Houghton, and the third-year Drama Division students have been diving into the Bard’s work this spring with a singular focus and commitment that culminate in performances this month of Twelfth Night and A Winter’s Tale in alternating repertory.

Now completing his first year as Richard Rodgers Director of the Drama Division, Houghton has instituted a new approach to the Shakespeare performance that has long been the cap of the students’ third year. “I feel strongly that this is the only way to fully benefit from Shakespeare—especially as a young person. I hope they’ll fall in love with Shakespeare and his language, and I hope that Shakespeare’s genius is revealed to them—and that they have a lifelong passion for the work.”

One big change is that the students have been rehearsing two plays at once, whereas in past years the entire focus was on a single Shakespeare production. As the students have been simultaneously rehearsing Twelfth Night under the direction of Harris Yulin and A Winter’s Tale with Jesse Berger directing, the dual process has been allowing them to “learn not only about the individual play, but also Shakespeare himself: his techniques and his work with language; how the plays are similar, and how they’re not,” Houghton explains. “It’s twice as much work—that’s what it’s about. It’s a good kind of challenge—the kind they’re going to miss in a few years,” he notes with a good-natured chuckle.

During the same period, the students have been doing scene work in their acting classes with Michael Kahn, the esteemed longtime Drama Division faculty member—and Houghton’s predecessor as the division’s director—who is also artistic director of Washington’s Shakespeare Theater. So for the final months of this academic year, Houghton notes, “literally every waking hour is spent working on scenes, working in a class, or literally being in rehearsal working on the plays themselves. It’s not unlike what you might find at any Shakespeare festival in the country, or any repertory company. But it really helps train them, and helps them define their own process within a very intensive study.”

Rehearsing two plays, third-year actors experience total immersion in Shakespeare.

Explains Houghton, “Once you completely immerse yourself in the work, any apprehensions or fears you might have of diving into the language of Shakespeare go away, because you simply don’t have the time to worry about it. You have to just get on with the business at hand.”

Houghton’s younger years as a stage actor included performances with the Acting Company. “I was in several Shakespeare festivals,” he says, “and had experiences where I was doing multiple plays. Suddenly the work revealed itself in a whole new way. When you focus on a single role in a single play, you learn a great deal—but not as much as you learn from having multiple experiences all at once. It liberates you. That’s what I’m looking to do—to liberate them from their own fear of the complexity of Shakespeare.”

The students in the School’s actor training program get their initial experience with the Bard as soon as they begin their studies at Juilliard. The first year’s Discovery Project launches them into work on Shakespeare with faculty member Richard Feldman. Roles are shared, and the process focuses on discussion and improvisation. “It’s a major Shakespeare project that they work on for several months and then present within a rehearsal setting,” explains Houghton.

“In the second year, they do a similar thing with Ralph Zito, who is the head of the [Drama Division’s] voice training program. He uses the work he’s doing and integrates it into a Shakespeare project.” Houghton’s new approach for the third-year students is intended as “a way to integrate the work that’s been going on for the entire three years.”

The two plays being presented this month were chosen primarily with casting concerns in mind, as well as for the contrast between them. Each of the 18 students performs a leading role in one and a supporting role in the other. “I think the experience of having to carry a play, and having to support, are both equally valuable,” Houghton notes.

Selecting the right directors was essential. Neither has directed a Juilliard production before. “Harris Yulin is a seasoned actor, and somebody I think has tremendous authority—and a love of Shakespeare,” says Houghton. “He really knows the work from the inside out. I thought he would bring his passion for the language and relate to the actors. Jesse Berger is a younger director who’s got his own company [Red Bull Theater] here in town—a very passionate and smart young director.”
Speaking about the productions a couple of weeks into the rehearsal process, the directors were clearly enjoying the energy and enthusiasm of their young actors. “It’s very much a collaboration,” said Berger. “They clearly have a lot of skills, and a lot of learning that they’re applying to it. They’re working very hard on their own as well as in rehearsal. They’re certainly bringing as much to it as I am.” Added Berger, whose Red Bull Theater explores the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, “It’s also exciting to see their creativity in such a raw state.”

Yulin, a veteran and acclaimed actor with extensive credits in theater, film, and television, said of his young cast, “They’re all professionals at this point, and they’re all enthusiastic and talented. Without exception, they’re just diving into the play to the best of everybody’s abilities, and have made great strides.

“With Shakespeare’s plays, there’s a certain world that you enter, and you can usually feel confident that you’re going to run into some very remarkable material—deep and resonant,” he continued. Yulin had not performed in A Winter’s Tale—one of Shakespeare’s late plays that is generally categorized among his “romances”—but as he delved into it, he found “it’s been assuming its very powerful identity. I’m constantly surprised by how wonderful it is. It’s a fairy tale, it has mythic elements, and it goes back and forth between two different worlds.”

Yulin has chosen to set A Winter’s Tale in the early 20th century, shortly before World War I. Berger’s production of Twelfth Night has a more contemporary setting and draws inspiration from the films of Pedro Almodóvar.

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Jesse Berger, Director Drama Theater Wed., May 9; Sat., May 12; Sun., May 13; Sat., May 19 Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale Harris Yulin, Director Drama Theater Fri., May 11; Sat., May 12; Sat., May 19; Sun., May 20

“The play has a lot to do with young, passionate, crazy love and sexual ambiguity—as well as a sense of displacement, and longing for your other half,” observed Berger. “It begins with shipwreck and the two twins losing each other, and all the characters in the play are in love with the wrong people. I just saw an analogy between that and the films of Almodóvar. They deal with a lot of the same themes I saw in Twelfth Night. It’s yielded some interesting results. It’s a wonderful play in that it takes all sorts of different interpretations. It’s often done in a very melancholy way. I’m choosing to do it in a more passionate, youthful way. It’ll be a lot of fun—and maybe even heartbreaking in places.”

Audiences coming to these two productions will find the 200-seat Drama Theater transformed into a modern-day version of Shakespeare’s original Globe Theater. An elegant, versatile, two-tiered wooden structure has been fitted into the thrust space. Working with designer Christine Jones, Houghton says he wanted “to create a modern Globe Theater within the Drama Theater at Juilliard—a theater that could come back year after year, and become a real staple for the third-year productions. It has all the elements that Shakespeare was working with: traps, a lower level, an upper level, and multiple entry points into the space. It can serve any Shakespeare play. It can go from a classic sort of setting to a contemporary setting.”

So this flexible, intimate space, with its nod to the era when the plays were originally done, will provide continuity for the performances by future actors at Juilliard. Through their work within this intensely focused and newly challenging approach, drama students will have ample opportunity to discover for themselves the riches and possibilities within Shakespeare’s canon.

Susan Reiter is a freelance journalist who covers dance for New York Press, Danceviewtimes.com, and other publications.