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Hi, I'm Michael Goodfriend, and I'm the executive producer of the Play On podcast series, As You Like It. Today, I have with me the one and only David Ivers. David assumed the role of the artistic director at South Coast Repertory after...
two years as artistic director at Arizona Theatre Company. Previous to that, he served almost seven seasons as artistic director of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, where he also acted and directed over 50 productions in a relationship with that company that spanned over 20 seasons.
As artistic director, he helped usher in a $40 million expansion of facilities, including two new theaters, a new rehearsal hall, costume shop, administrative offices. His tenure is marked by a significant rebrand of that organization and several key initiatives, including the launch of Words, Cubed, the new play program.
which featured world premieres by neil labute and others and in addition he spent 10 years as a resident artist building over 40 productions as an actor and director with the acclaimed denver center theater company in his earlier career he was the associate artistic director of portland repertory theater
and appeared in productions at some of this country's top regional theaters, including Portland Center Stage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Alabama and Idaho Shakespeare Festival, and many others. It's a long list. Lots of seasons directing and working at places like the Guthrie, Berkeley Rep. I could go on and on, but I won't because he's here with me and I don't want to put him to sleep talking about himself.
I don't even know who that guy is, actually. It just makes me feel as old as I am. How was my monologue? Am I good? Did I get the job? You're asking me? Totally got the job. You should cut it, actually. You like the material. I like the material. It needs a good cutting, though. Well, you should have done less in your career, and then it would have been a breeze. I don't know about that. Probably.
David, let's start with what we're working on now, the podcast series As You Like It. How did that land in your lap? Yeah, thanks for the question. And thanks for having me. It's great. I'm a big fan of yours, Michael, and what you do. And the Play On initiative, which was launched by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, kind of launched at a time where I was intersecting.
for the second or third time with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. And Louis Douthat, who's now the executive director of PlayOn, I hope I have that title right. Louis became a friend because we were working on a production I was directing of Taming of the Shoe at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. And over time, we realized that we kind of started to see it the same way, the way the structure and language and meaning in Shakespeare.
um is actually totally accessible uh in my opinion as it's written without any modification it just requires i think you know some time uh and out of that i don't know it was probably a couple years later louis said we're doing this thing uh and i thought of you would you be interested in writing this do no harm kind of adaptation or translation of
a Shakespeare play and I said what does that mean and she said well basically we're trying to make find a way to make these plays more accessible without really harming the language without really harming meaning but hopefully clarifying and I said that's insane no my first response was I don't understand that and it wasn't until I started to realize that I was resistant for reasons that really are about ego I think
And what I started to realize is, wait, you're going to do this anyway. Every time I look at a Shakespeare text, I'm trying to figure out what it means, you know, today. And so I said, this is work I would do anyway if I was studying any of these plays, which at the time I was doing a ton because I was helping to run Utah Shakespeare. So I thought, well, if I get paid to do it, even better. And then I found out that it turned to be a labor of love and a very intense, long, very arduous, and I think ultimately rewarding labor of love.
Do you agree with the use of the word translation as opposed to adaptation? By the way, I forgot to mention in the intro that you are the translator of the script that we used for the podcast series, and you also play the role of Jaques, brilliantly, I might say. Thank you. But I want to just home in on that translation versus adaptation. I think, you know,
I'm not sure, to be honest, what the best word is. I don't, I don't, I don't quite, I don't think it's quite adaptation. And I'm not entirely sure it's translation, but maybe translation moves closer, you know? For me, I do like the do no harm sentence that Louis, I remember, repeated for me, which ultimately for me ended up feeling like, how do I honor every I am?
You know, almost every comma, rhythmically, what the muscle of the language is doing in terms of cadence, where it's driving to the end of a thought, where the meaning finally lands at the end of a big phrase or sentence. And so I think that the initiative was aimed at driving clarity for a modern ear. And so...
Maybe translation helps that. Maybe adaptation helps that. But I know I kept thinking about clarity. Clarity. You know, would a high school student find this useful sitting adjacent to the actual text? Do any passages come to mind for you that were particularly challenging to translate, to make sense of for modern audience? Touchstone.
Oh, yes. The clown. The clown, the pancakes and the mustard and the, you know, there's really archaic, you know, it reminded me of like the Witch of Brainford and Merry Wives of Windsor, which was like known to all these Elizabethan audiences of, you know, it'd be like you mentioned, I don't know, some pop culture reference almost today. And we wouldn't have a frame of reference for it.
at these these bunumpums these one-liners right which is like you know for i could say to you why the chicken crossed the road and you would know every possible sort of response that we could come up with and we just didn't have an equivalent so it became about clarity again becoming like either creating creating finding out what the meaning was and then creating a path for it to live now those sections i found to be really
but also fun because it was a bit like a jigsaw puzzle, you know. It's such a convoluted, impossible to understand little passage, what you're talking about, Touchstone the Clown. It happens, listeners, in episode one of the series. And I just want to ask you, David, can you lay the groundwork? What's happening in this scene that triggers this speech from Touchstone? Well, we learn quickly, and it's very interesting.
interesting introduction shakespeare does this a lot to a truth teller which are the clowns you know in shakespeare's plays typically they tell the truth they serve they serve as a kind of uh guide for the audience in a way about what might be happening somewhere else or with someone else and in this case you know touchstone um he he serves
as the court jester to Duke Frederick, right? Who's back in the sort of court land of the city before we leave to the Forest of Arden, right? And so our introduction to him is basically him saying, him coming to Rosalind saying, your father wants you, right? And in a sort of, I guess,
I guess the contemporary version would be sort of like an ADD sort of way. He manages in what is a simple message that he is to deliver to have an entire commentary about what it was to be sent for and who sent for him and what that person is like, right? And uses very archaic metaphor and very archaic... like pieces of information that are, I think, fun and visual. And I hope we've clarified his commentary, right? So it's a construct. We see it in, I think it's...
like Biandello and Shrew, you know, like we see it in other of his plays where it's like, what can you get to the meat of the message, right? And inside of it, there's a giant commentary that's both archaic and the payoff is sort of somewhere in the middle of it or toward the end. It also serves functionally for us to know that there's a go between and that there's a hierarchy early in the play, like a very clear construction of court, you know, these young women.
jester, clown, and then the baseness of Touchstone, it's great the way Shakespeare writes his stuff, finds a match later only in the free forest or as he sort of woos Audrey later. So we have already established Rosalind and Celia. And just tell us quickly a little bit about Rosalind and Celia.
who exactly they are in the hierarchy. You're throwing me the hard questions here. This is so ridiculous that I don't have immediate answers after writing it. Duke Senior's daughter is Rosalind and Duke Frederick's daughter, yes, Duke Frederick's daughter is Celia. Duke Senior is in control of the court.
is that right yeah yeah i get them mixed up i know me too that's why so so don't um yeah it's duke no celia's father duke frederick duke senior leaves right to go build a life in the forest like it's a very emerson thoreau like you know existence and these these two rosalyn celia
who call each other cousins, basically, are central figures in an adventure about finding themselves and restoring what Shakespeare does a lot, a kind of order by using the natural world, natural relationships, you know, men, women, gender swapping, all this kind of stuff to sort of through love and through adventure, restore what ultimately becomes order in the court. and order in family right and so Rosalind and Sia are end up kind of being in some ways
by being the offspring of these two Dukes who sort of control everything. One has free will and exercises at Duke Senior. Duke Frederick has free will and exercises that through control, right? And by leaving to the forest, these two through an adventure with Orlando and everyone else sort of find a way to restore with a little bit of denouement with Hyman at the end, restore order. That's a Cliff Notes version of it all.
That's that's great. And so when we meet Touchstone, Celia and Rosalind, things are still basically in the order that they were, you know, not not not a good order. Right. We've got the controlling Duke who's becoming more and more forceful and controlling and angry and and the more free spirited one. But, you know.
The proverbial shit has not hit the fan quite yet. Yeah, the proverbial shit hasn't hit the fan. Really, the catalyst for that is going to, in part, be Orlando, you know, who they are about to watch wrestle soon. And Rosalind, I think, gets Cupid's arrow in the heart, you know. All right. All right. So I'm going to read in Celia and Rosalind, and you're going to do Touchstone.
We'll do a little side-by-side here. Okay. So Celia says, How now, wit? Whither wander you? Mistress, you must come away to your father. Were you made the messenger? No, by mine honor. But I was bid to come for you. Where learned you that oath, fool? Of a certain knight that swore by his honor they were good pancakes, and swore by his honor the mustard was not. Now, I'll stand to it. The pancakes were not, and the mustard was good, and yet was not the knight foresworn.
I'll prove you that in the great heap of your knowledge. I, Mary, now unmuzzle your wisdom. Stand you both forth now, stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave. I are beards. If we had them, thou art. By my knavery, if I had it, then I were. But if you swear by that is not, you are not forsworn. No more was the knight swearing by his honor, for he never had any. Or if he had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard.
Who is that thou meanst? One that old Frederick your father loves. My father's love is enough to honor him. Enough. Speak no more of him. You'll be whipped for taxation one of these days. More pity that fools may not speak wisely that wise men do foolishly. By my truth, thou sayest true. And then we have the entrance of Monsieur Lebeau. So your job was to make that make sense to us.
So let's listen to Andy Grotlishan's rendering with Megan Kreidler as Rosalind and Addie Phelps as Celia. Mistress, your dad wants you. Over here. Over here, ladies. Yes. Oh, that's fantastic. Did he send you to tell me? No, by my honor. But I was told to come for you.
Where did you learn to swear by any honor? From a certain gentleman who swore by his honor that they were good pancakes and swore by his honor that the mustard was crap. Wasn't good. Now, I'll be firm to say that the pancakes sucked and the mustard rocked, and yet the man of honor was not oath false. Can you prove it with your heaping mounds of knowledge? Yes! Yes, un-muzzle your mouth and unleash your wisdom.
Okay. Lean forward. Stroke your chins. And swear by your beards that I am a knave. By our beards, if we had one. You are. Well, by my knavery, if I had it, then I was a knave. But if you swear by something that you don't have, you are not falsely false. No more was the man of honor swearing by his honor. You see? He never had honor.
Or if he had it, he swore it gone before he ever saw those shitty pancakes or that mustard. Who are you talking about? The man. A man. Old Frederick. Your dada loves him. My father's love makes him honorable. Shut up of him. You'll be beat for slander someday. Well, sad. So sad that me, the fool, cannot speak with smarts what smart men do unsmartly. Truthfully, you're right.
True. Since your small fool smartness is smarter when silent, the little smarts that wise men say make a greater sound. It's still complex. It is still complex, but that immediacy of things like, you know, the mustard was crap. I mean, we get it so much better. And yet you still had to stay in the...
The sort of, as you said, the I am's. That's a good example of what I feel about do no harm, right? Like I did not want to, I don't want to say this, but I didn't want to dumb down Shakespeare at all. I felt like part of the art and the challenge and why it took me painstaking amount of time that I didn't anticipate. I mean, a year, you know, three pages at a time. Sometimes that was like six hours from three pages. That's not.
stroking myself that's just because I became very obsessed with with how to understand the rhythm and also true to the voice of each character a little baser for touchstone but still super witty I don't know if I achieved that or not but well I think it it works great especially you know just I've said this many times in in these interviews
Like you, I was not a fan of this whole project when I first encountered it, when Louis, you know, asked me as an actor to do readings of these. And I felt like, you know, you can't improve on Shakespeare. It's sacrilegious to even try. And yet, if you do it, you know, with a medium like this, which is all audio, right, we don't have any kind of visual reference or anything. We get the sense of it.
So much more clearly than a lot of these kind of other, I guess, audio Shakespeare interpretations, which feels so kind of mothballed and sweater vesty. Well said. Now you've listened to it. You've listened to the series. Yeah, I love it. Have there been any points where you're like, oh God, I hate what I did there. Or have you felt like it plays to the medium?
Only when I'm speaking do I feel like you. So you don't like your performance? No, I mean, it's always hard to listen. I sort of instantly regretted, you know, that choice. But I, you know, mostly I was surprised that I was able to enjoy it. And part of it is your work and Lindsay Jones' work and Kim Martin Cotton's work who directed it. And just that it...
you know it doesn't exist just as a like you say like just as a recording it's filled out and it's given a life beyond uh Shakespeare's text and my text you know so that I really appreciate about it it feels like an event you know um and yeah there's some things here and there that I think with time I would probably clarify and if it had you know interestingly it had a production this last summer in England and if it had another production I think I'd want to
I think I'd want to be around to sort of, you know, clarify a few things here and there. But I think that's good. I think it's good that I wasn't totally feeling like I had got all of it, you know. But I'm proud of it. And there's a lot of it that surprised me in a good way, you know. Well, you've done a ton of Shakespeare. I mean, it's been the backbone of your career, it seems, at least on paper. Totally.
So when were you, do you have a recollection of your first introduction or your entry point into the world of Shakespeare? For me, the entry point was like the entry point of a lot of kids. I read, read, you know, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar required reading in high school and the Scottish play. And I was interested in theater at that point. And I, I remember.
feeling secretly compelled by Romeo and Juliet but not wanting to say anything about it because I was also an athlete so those two things felt like they were uh soccer baseball you know like pretty much everything um so I I had this that high school thing right just feeling like maybe I'd be othered um and then when I
Told my parents I really wanted to go to university to study classical acting, specifically with those kinds of texts at the center. Shaw, Ibsen, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare. They were sort of like, wow. So my mother, my English mother, talked to a counselor somewhere and put me in the car and said, we're going on a road trip. And I loved seeing theater with my parents.
You know, as a high school student. She put me in a car and we drove from the San Fernando Valley 13 hours to Ashland. Neither of us had been. And she got tickets for Brendan Bean's The Hostage, which was playing in the Bowmer Theater at the time. And I think it was, I can't actually remember oddly the Shakespeare that we saw.
I'd never seen anything like it in my life. I'd never had an experience like that in my life. Then we went toward the university, which at the time was Southern Oregon State College. This is the other meaningful thing about Louis and being a part of this was literally returning to so many of my roots, you know, and that was it. And I went and I just, we got back in the car to drive home. I was like, I'm going to college there. That's where I'm going to college. I want to be surrounded by Shakespeare. So, you know. And did you, in fact, go there?
I went to college there. I graduated. Right after I graduated, I went and worked as an actor at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, kind of in the background of Henry VI, and ironically went on and understudied in Taming of the Shrew 20 years to the date after I went to direct Taming of the Shrew to the date after I did it as an actor there.
I went on to direct the coconuts and, and I've been back and forth a bit. And I had seasons in and out where, you know, we were, I was in conversation of being back in the acting company and I just couldn't make it work because I was part of the resident acting company at the Denver center or whatever else was going on. But it's still, still a ballast for me in my career. Still the most, you know, inspiring time. And, and I still think of that company with the most reference. I just.
groundbreaking for me and so is shakespeare everything i understand about structure everything i understand about commas big sentences you know parts of speech uh delivery mechanisms of thought all through the study of the work with those texts did working with as you like it and in in translating it how did it change your or or enhance your understanding of
how shakespeare works i just could not believe you know you learn in grad school or undergrad you know the i mean a lot of it just doesn't fully apply because a lot of as you like it is in verse you know i mean it's in prose you know but but there's enough verse where you learn these things in grad school about you know iambic pentameter is the is the human heartbeat you know
unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed. And then, you know, it changes. We want to have a trochee, which is stressed, unstressed, unstressed, stressed, you know, all those parts of speech. And I remember being in the, literally in the basement of our home in Cedar City after my beautiful tiny boys were asleep, going down there to write and recognizing the science.
of his work meeting the art just like like the the physiognomy of the writing you know and how I don't think maybe he was aware of it maybe he wasn't it just might have been this gift but that component of I just kept coming up against like
This is a fucking genius beyond what I think I knew before. Because you have to get intimate with the text in a different way than when you're delivering it as an actor or a director, thinking about what you want to say as a writer to make it make sense and to make sure that you're not mucking with it in a way that we shouldn't be mucking with it. Right. Yeah. Really interesting process.
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Are you, do you ever find your, well, of course, I'm sure you do. I guess my question is, what is your take on who this person was? There are people who say it was many people. It was a writer's room that Shakespeare ran. There are people that say it wasn't a man, it was a woman. It was the dark lady. There are people that say he never existed or he was royalty. What's your take on who this person was?
well if you'd asked me like even 10 years ago there's a stubborn part of me that isn't doesn't that i hope is like melting away a little bit through life that would have been like that was him you know what i mean it's like it's uh and i think part of me in the core still believes that but i'll instead of having a
an emotional reaction that i think is bound together by how much work i've done on the shakespeare plays and how much i love him and how much i love the writing which at times now feels shameful in some ways in some arenas to say you know um i will tell you that i don't know enough about those controversies to be an expert to give you an opinion about if it's and i'm i'm i don't know that i'm really interested in that controversy
I don't know that I'm really interested, honestly. I think I used to just be like, no, it was him. It's got to be him, you know, without really taking a deep dive. And I think I've never taken a deep dive because part of me doesn't care. Part of me just thinks these texts are absolutely astonishing. If he were alive and other people were getting, and he was, you know, not, and other people were involved and he was assuming all sorts of credit for that.
it's worthy of investigation. I've had words to say about it, but what's the thing I've been living by is like no amount of worry is going to fix the past and no amount of anxiety is going to change the future. And so, so that's my, those are my words to live by, but it is, it is what it is. And it's our, it's just a gift to us to be able to experience it for whatever it is. Yeah. I mean, there's, yeah. Yeah. I mean,
There's something beautiful, I think, about believing in the miracle of the story. Those miracles aren't miracles. There's geniuses all around us that have a Hamlet that are never going to see the light of day, ever. Are there any particular books or films that... you like best like will in the world or 1599 will in the world yeah great yeah yeah yeah my my personal favorite as well i have yeah it's really really great you know and i'm a fan of uh
I like watching, you know, I like finding old like productions, you know, which is sometimes I'll haul out like some of the Jacoby stuff when he, you know what I mean? From like the RSC, like I actually like experiencing or hearing and sometimes I'll.
I'll find those and put them on and not watch them and just listen. Because I then can hear the language in a different way than I experience it visually and wonder if it's making sense, what's happening visually, if it helps to make sense or not. But like you, I probably hear Shakespeare's language. I mean, we all hear it differently. But part of me hears it with course correction, which is terrible.
instinct. I was just talking about this in rehearsal yesterday for a world premiere, a new play. I hear it sometimes for course correction, meaning I'll hear like, that's not the right word. You're stressing the wrong word to illuminate meaning, you know? And those are little
pockets that are with me all the time about language um and uh so when i read or when i read things like will in the world or i or i experience the plays again uh that's what i love about that's what i love about the stuff that surrounds the actual places it it kind of triggers all that like oh it's such a specific and beautiful use of language that he he what he invented like thousands of words you know
I'm rambling a bit now, but yeah. I find the inspiration to be the plays themselves, ultimately. Are there any actors that you feel like you would move heaven and earth to go and see in a Shakespeare play? Yeah, Brian Vaughn. Brian Vaughn, who's one of my closest friends.
You know, there are people living that Larry Bull, who's in our As You Like It, you know, who I've seen do just amazing roles. All I think about is regional theater actors, the lifeblood of this country, you know, who are, I think, brilliant. You and I know a lot of them, right? Who I just hope these people understand.
you know like i mean in my own experience just uh uh uh people that work in in theaters that are not big stars but that are stars in their their universe right right did you say lee ernst i did i did yeah totally when i was a kid i would go i would like go see lee
play Hamlet, like I watched him play it 10 times or something, you know, like I wanted to memorize everything he did. Susanna Shulman, you know, like extraordinary, like Tesso Bergenois, Marco Bericelli, you know, these are actors that I just think, you know, we have several of them in this podcast, you know, Kim Martin Cotton who's directing it. I'm interested in Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal as Othello.
I think I'm interested. I don't know that for me, it will be delivered in the way that I, that, that it would be delivered through the hands of a salty regional theater production where people have spent their lives around the material, you know, the, and bring something to it. I'm sure it'll be, be great, but, and this is not a slight against Broadway. It's just that, you know, you and I and Larry Bull and.
and susanna like may not have you know the the marquee pole to be in those in those roles in in that in that uh environment but i'm really glad a fellow is going to be done on broadway you know i'm really glad for that you've done a ton of directing was it an organic kind of a a journey from acting to directing or was there a point at which you just said i can't
stand being the smartest person in the room anymore. I've got to direct this. There wasn't that point. I still feel like the least smart person in the room.
i think what i think i did direct sort of all along the way i tried to make room for directing when my acting career was like solid and i had consistent work and i was in a resident company it was harder um but i think somewhere along the line what really happened and i'm still acting but very occasionally because it's hard with the with the job as artistic director um i think what actually happened is i i realized
that I was much more, and this changes, I was much more passionate about process. And a director, I believe, you know, spends life in process. And I really loved to use a sort of like musical, you know. I loved jamming in the key of C, then jamming in the key of A, which is rehearsal, you know what I mean? And then once we sort of set the key and it was the delivery mechanism was sort of moving from process to product as an actor, I found, I didn't find it less fulfilling.
I still love the process of acting. I just hungered for the exploration, you know? And there may have been some times where I was like, okay, you know, yeah, there may have been some times that truthfully where I was like, I don't feel like I'm in great hands. So I'm interested in what that means as a director, if I might be able to provide some support in a way, particularly for Shakespeare, you know, that...
is born out of my experience with it you know and I don't know if those things are true or not I've learned a lot uh over the years about what it means to be in the in the chair as a director from a lot of angles you know but do you find the same satisfaction in working on contemporary plays or do you feel like you have to dig harder to find that you know between directing Shakespeare and directing
some of the great contemporary writers i mean i'm always looking at them the same way which is like kind of from structure dramaturgy you know um and and i'm i've always been really interested in scale i like it's exhausting but i like a lot of bodies and a lot of people you know uh and right now i'm directing a four-hander and i'm sort of like wow we got so much done in six hours you know which uh i i didn't feel you know
it might take us six hours to get like 10 pages and here we're getting 20, 22 pages in a day, you know, with four people. I like to think I approach it all in the same way. But I will also say, you know, I feel so blessed and privileged to be...
able to do the work and maybe more importantly to provide the work for other people and i'm starting to feel more and more like that that's really the gift of of my job is to like put put as you as you get to do michael's like put money and work in other people's pockets and and i wouldn't say i'm tiring of directing i do have an itch to act again actually a really strong itch that's starting to present itself which is exciting and it ebbs and flows and i i think that directing
The directing piece of it is evolving because the field's evolving and the challenges and also the opportunities in the field's evolving and building a play from the ground up is arguably different, not worse, not better. It's just different than it has been before. So I'm learning what that means. And all those things I think are helpful to kind of understand.
what the top is for these plays but i think i think in terms of contemporary versus shakespeare classical uh i think my brain looks at it the same way which would sound familiar probably which is like what are you doing and why are you doing it you know so it's not like they're not separate skills i mean you you have to obviously with shakespeare you have to do the work of really understanding what it is that's being said literally
so there's this line i'm actually not going to say that the final word of it but but i'll replace it but there's this line that's like those fucking you know those fucking bastards right and i can't say it the way the english language like i can only say what i believe is is what is what our english language tells us is carries meaning and this is not a judgment on on any actor that's in the show but but
you know the parts of speech is if we go those fucking bastards right or you're a fucking bastard right i don't get you're a fucking bastard you are this thing right and that for me that for me is clarity that that for me is i understand
Totally. I'm not hunting what I call for any translation. I'm not translating in my brain that vamos a la playa means let's go to the beach in Spanish. I just know what it means, right? I'm explicitly hearing, you're a fucking bastard. That's what you are, right? You're a fucking bastard. I go, that means you're a bastard who fucks people? And so that is a little...
also part of some of my neurodiversity where i'm like ah like i have some of that where the order of things and and the way that the meaning is illuminated through a path is kind of in the disruption and flow of my whole being which is why sometimes going to see bad stuff that isn't presented well or clear makes me very anxious
i hope this is making sense and there's no judgment attached to it it's my stuff right it's nobody else's stuff but but i also think part of my job is to be is to be explicit i often say when i when i'm directing i'll say all right we're at perrier with lime in this uh and what i want is full seven up i need the sugar
for meaning i need the fully diabetic like satisfying sugar i don't want to be hunting for the lime taste i don't want to hint it at unless we're making that's very specific choice to hint at it you know i hope that makes sense maybe it's crazy yeah no absolutely uh uh and and you know what's what's obvious in listening to you is that the classics taught you
Just how to approach text in general. Shakespeare gave you the tools. Totally. I mean, it is the thing about lovingly being just so honored to be part of the leadership at South Kostra. Touchstone of what we do as new plays. And that became very important to me, the latter part of my career as a leader and as an artist. And fundamentally, I feel like, you know, that.
There may have been some head scratched about my appointment, which I totally allow that to be. But fundamentally, I believe that applying what I know and what I've learned and what I continue to learn about structure and about those commas and about character-driven work, which is what Shakespeare did, character-driven narrative and language-driven narrative, it is the greatest.
gift approaching structure and dramaturgy new plays it sounds i don't know what it sounds like but i've my son who's a pianist you know i've said listen i of course support you and want you to do what you love my humble request and my humble thought is if you can play
Shostakovich, if you can play Mozart, you're not going to have a lot of trouble composing a jingle for an Abisko commercial. Because fundamentally, there's an understanding of composition and structure, right? That's just my belief. It's also based only on my experience. Are there people that, you know, have a different experience and yield and have the same yield, same success? Of course.
Do you remember, obviously you remember your first time directing. Did you throw your hat in the ring and say, I want to direct this? Or did somebody come to you and say, hey, David, I want you to direct this? I created my own theater company in college for the summer. Innovative Artist Theater Company in Ashland, where we rented the second floor of an existing theater.
was this tiny space and I directed and I directed a bit of student projects you know I actually directed a Scottish play project in college you know um in undergrad and uh but when I moved out into after grad school and into the world um my acting career just regionally uh
I did well, you know, like I, one thing led to another and I, I was able to have consistent work. And so I, when I had some visibility in Portland and Pacific Northwest, and I was going to Utah every summer, you know, I had enough time in those theaters where finally I asked smaller theaters, hey, you know,
you've asked me to come act here or whatever. And I'd be interested in that, but would you consider me directing? Right. So I just started to ask, you know, based on what I had been able to do as an actor. And then that, that led to some opportunity. And for our listeners here that are interested in like that path, the big one for me.
I think everyone, if you find yourself in this situation, and now I'm opening myself up, this happened to me. But, you know, I spent a lot of time, I logged a lot of hours at the Denver Center. And it wasn't until I logged those hours as an actor. And it wasn't until I had been hired as a director at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, which is also a Lord B theater, that I approached the artistic director of the Denver Center, which I was a resident member of the acting company and said, what do you think?
Will you help me? This is really what I want to do in the next place of my life, you know? And I basically said to him, to Ken Thompson, you wouldn't be sitting in that chair if somewhere along the way someone hadn't said yes. And he was like, you're hired. And I directed Mary Wives there. And that was really a turning point, you know? So I'm waiting for the emails.
but I mean, you know, I think, I think that's part of the strategy of the work. Like you want to be doing the work, you got to do the work, but also you look, Tony to Kony, who I love and is the mentor of mine. I'll never forget. He said this to me, like, like 10 years ago, he said, you cannot skip steps. You want to think you can, you want to believe you can, but you can't skip steps.
People can see that you're trying to skip steps. You can't. It's additive. You have to gather experience and time. You've got to, as Shakespeare says, hew your way out with a bloody axe. You've got to fight and crawl and find your way to the other side of experience so that you have something at each ask. You have something to offer. You have an experience to back it up. And that's really hard.
you know and it's particularly hard for um frankly in our p in our field for for diverse and amazing communities of extraordinarily talented artists who haven't had access the way you and i have had access you know so part of our jobs is to is to sort of you know offer that i think sage wisdom but also offer where we can experience that's mell
That's met with experience, right? And I think Tony's point I've always thought of because it doesn't do anyone good for you to skip a step and fail. You've accomplished all these things as a writer, as an actor, director. I don't know that I have, but... Do you have a bucket list project? Like, I've got to do this before I...
you know what's so weird michael is i do and i i'm facing this storm like this stark reality of like oh i'm too old for that now and what is it it's so weird no like i was like i i want to do
Virginia Woolf, and it's like, oh, you know, am I too old? I played too young. I played Cyrano, and I'm desperate to play Cyrano. You know, I want another crack, which I played. I kind of want another crack at Salieri, you know, and I would say the one that I'm probably okay to do if my, you know, tall frame holds out is I really...
here's my pitch to you i don't know if you've done this yet but i'm really want to do prospero uh which which i think i am i think i'm okay still for that one you know maybe a little old i don't know i hate to say it but uh we've already done the tempest but that doesn't mean you won't be in the film great perfect you know i'll just read it and
uh that that fills me with joy so i don't you know there's a there's a few there's a couple of new plays too that that are interesting to me right now um but yeah and i'm also i'm also i would say i'm kind of dying to do pirandello's enrico for some of these are just holdovers from things that when i was a student that i experienced you know um i'm sure that
Some, if not all of that, can happen. It's interesting to hear you say that your bucket list is not anything you want to direct. It's not anything you want to write. These are all roles you want to play. So you are returning to as an actor. It's bizarre. I think there's some things in my life, you know, you and I have talked about this offline. It's like, you know, being a dad, the triumphs of...
like love and the tragedies of mortality, you know, like as we confront them and just things that intersect with my personal life in deep and shocking ways in some way have like prompted me to feel like there's a...
I'm not going to say a new person, but an evolving person in there. And it's really made me curious about leaving it on the stage again, you know what I mean, in some ways. So that's interesting to me that it's happening, you know, it's been kind of sneaking in. Well, I'm so glad that we got to experience your talent as a writer through the translation of As You Like It and...
As an actor, and I know you're your own harshest critic, but your rendering of Jaquies is just sublime. Oh, thanks. It's a joy to get to hear you perform that role. I think you're doing just beautiful and extraordinary work in your job and also in all facets of how you interface with this work. You're extraordinarily talented yourself in this role as an actor and as an artist.
it's great it's been a great process from start to finish and i i'm here in any way i can help support and thank you for the kind words and for all the support along the way
It's been an honor, a privilege. Thank you so much. And I hope we get to get out there and see what you're working on as a director at South Coast Rep and wherever you happen to be. David Ivers. You've been listening to the Play On Podcast bonus content series. You can learn more about the Play On Podcast at Next Chapter Podcast website, nextchapterpodcasts.com. That's with an S at the end of podcasts.com.
where you can find other play on podcast series and interviews, along with talk podcasts like The 500, Indecent with Kiki Anderson, Beef with Bridget Todd, and a whole lot more. I'd like to thank Jeremiah Tittle, the founder of Next Chapter Podcast, and my producer, Pete Musto. Our audio engineer, editor, and sound designer is Justin Cortese. Be sure to subscribe to Next Chapter Podcast for updates on all the latest content, and don't forget to rate and review our shows. That really, really helps. I'm Michael.
good friend and i look forward to sharing more incredible works in the play on podcast series with you along with lots of enlightening bonus content at next chapter podcast
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