In the long, annoying history of filmed sausage-fests, two stand out.
The first is Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film “Lincoln” where a dozen enormously fuzzy prop-shop beards crowd petite Sally Field right off the testosterone-charged screen.
The other is Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar,” with the titled shortened to “Julius Caesar” for the iconic 1953 film adaptation. In that one, the basically Brit, classically trained male cast is neatly clean-shaven. Even the young and delectably moody Marlon Brando is freshly groomed for his role as Marc Antony.
Let’s remember that originally, men played every Shakespearean role on the British stage. Beardless young boys were cast in the dewiest female leads. It wasn’t until 1662 that King Charles II issued a royal warrant stating that women should play female roles.
Thankfully, the Monty Pythons and generations of English schoolboys prior didn’t get the memo, ushering in a separate and hilarious high-camp tradition.
And now actor / filmmaker / stage director Madeleine Woolner has whirled this play through the gender kaleidoscope once again with a predominantly female cast (there’s one dude) in her daring new production of “Julius Caesar,” running April 3rd through April 13th at Heritage Square Museum.
The production’s cheeky subtitle: “Women Save Democracy Through Shakespeare.” And a cryptic caveat to theater-goers: “Audiences should be prepared to get their hands dirty.”
We’re unsure of the meaning, except perhaps that no one’s hands are clean when democracy dies an ugly death.
The show debuts under the umbrella of Woolner’s Row Boat production company. The production is further brought to life by the Light Bringer Project, with choreography support from Camille Imperial, as well as the donation of rehearsal space from Parson’s Nose Theater, Stephanie Feury Studio Theatre, The Pico, and Youth Academy of Dramatic Arts (YADA).
We caught up with Woolner by phone last week, who says “Many companies shy away from doing this play, because they think it’s just a history. It’s usually identified that way. But there’s so much more here that speaks to us today.”
“This is the biggest creative swing I’ve ever taken,” said Woolner. But she’s not simply talking about the casting. This production has been simmering for nine months – Woolner refers to it mirthfully as a pregnancy. She’s added music and dance to what typically is a rather stolid evening at the theater.
Although preparation for the production began in August 2024, long before the latest election, it’s impossible not to recognize a similarity in the rhetoric, to say the very least.
Retelling the story of the man who in 44 BCE declared himself “dictator of Rome for life,” understanding the rhetoric of a democracy in peril is indeed a crucial part of understanding this play, then and now. The script is filled with high-minded, high-handed, high-falutin’ talk about honor and virtue. There’s also a lot of long-winded discussion of fate and free will. Note that our word “virtue” springs from “vir,” meaning man, as in a cis-masculine person.
What’s at stake on the stage is at least in part the essence of manliness itself, which seems to always be under attack and in need of assertion, at least according to the patriarchy.
This all smacks of tomorrow’s headlines, leading Woolner to suggest that this is why experiencing “Julius Caesar” in our times feels like history repeating itself. Aligning with recent high-profile assassination attempts as well as at least one completed assassination of a corporate executive, Shakespeare’s conspirators Cassius and Brutus justify their killing of Caesar as warranted for the greater good of Rome.
Of course, Shakespeare had his own problems, comparing Rome with the politics of his own scepter’d isle, where Monarchy and Republicanism were bitterly at odds.
Woolner describes her specific focus as “…adapting classics for modern audiences.” She says she has condensed the script while retaining its essence, and “combed out some extraneous characters.”
A central challenge: how to portray the violence that is central to the play. “Women do violence differently than men,” says Woolner, who also faces this challenge in her work as a filmmaker. “When women want to kill someone, women usually use poison. Men usually use weapons and blunt-force trauma.”
Current study of recent sociopolitical changes in women’s status suggests that even gaining more societal power and currency does not make women kill in the same ways that men kill. This is, of course, why we find rare instances of man-matching murders – the tragedy of Aileen Wuornos, for instance – so titillating.
Woolner solves the problem with her introduction of the Rumors, seven young women functioning as a Greek chorus who show the violence through dance, and gestures and movement of their hands. By definition, that must be some fancy footwork indeed, since the eyewitness Roman record reveals that in fact as many as 60 conspirators may have stormed the Senate floor, stabbing Caesar a total of 23 times.
And while it may be easy to dismiss Shakespeare himself as a master wienermeister, Woolner’s playful re-imagining of “Julius Caesar” may give us cause to reconsider. Could this Roman chestnut in fact be a cloaked girlpower manifesto?
At first blush, hail to the no. The original toga-party contains a mere two speaking roles for women, those being for Calpurnia, wife of Caesar, and for Portia, wife of Brutus.
The two wives perhaps deserve a play of their own. Calpurnia uses dreams and omens to try to spook Caesar into seeing things her way. Rational Portia, on the other hand, argues with a lawyer’s pristine logic. Note that this is not the same Portia who dresses in male disguise for her court appearance (that’s the one from “The Merchant of Venice”), nor the wholesome and noble Portia (that’s the one from “King Lear”), but she could be either in many foundational ways.
This Portia has a total of 16 lines in the original script. But does hubby Brutus listen? Sired by beloved Cato, she dares to question and challenge her big-talkin’ man, saying “Think you I am no stronger than my sex, Being so father’d and so husbanded?”
Brutus refuses to confide in her, believing that women can’t keep a secret and that his wife would cave under torture. Portia notices that her husband’s agitated mental state has prevented him from sleeping, eating and even speaking, so she kneels before him, not in submission but in supplication, begging for his trust.
He continues to withhold, and Portia sinks a knife into her thigh to demonstrate her toughness. In desperation, she soon takes her own life by swallowing hot coals, a dramatic way of illustrating how her voice has been silenced.
Her husband’s oddly bloodless response upon learning of his wife’s death from Messala: “Why, farewell, Portia. We must die, Messala…Speak no more of her — Give me a bowl of wine — In this I bury all unkindness.”
Of course this is a snapshot from a troubled marriage, but the dynamic also invites a broader interpretation.
Shakespeare constructs this particular Portia as a kind of Cassandra, a truth-teller whose wisdom is dismissed and ignored by men stupefied by greed, ambition and pride.
Feminists might say that this demonstrates the error of not listening to women and women’s point of view. Although Caesar claims himself to be a guiding “north star,” Jungians might add that the true blindness of this literary bromance is that the men involved are deaf to their own inner Portia as a moral compass, their own innate intuition that knows no gender specificity.
Woolner’s production, she says, takes place at night, adding to the veil of crepuscular mystery and ambiguity.
All roads lead to Rome, but the path to bringing this production to the boards has not been a smooth one.
Woolner has a passion for “site specific” theater and had planned to present the play at Altadena’s Mountain View Mausoleum, until the stately venue was char-broiled and left without electricity by the Eaton Fire. Then two of her chosen rehearsal spaces burned down.
“There have been so many times when I wanted to throw in the towel,” admits Woolner, explaining that the production relies entirely upon ticket sales for funding.
“Even if I die, this play still better happen,” she says with an honest guffaw. “Our play is so crazy that it’s hard to envision onstage. But we’ve been absolutely showered with generosity and goodwill from the theater community.”
“In this case, everything that goes wrong makes it better,” said Woolner.
DEETS
- “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare
- Directed by Madeleine Woolner, Produced by Emma Toureau
- April 3rd through April 13th
- Heritage Square Museum, 3800 Homer Street, Los Angeles 90032
- 8 pm performances preceded by cocktail hour at 7 pm
- Tickets: $38.62 to $85.42
