challenging Titus Andronicus on stage at Bard on the Beach

Kim Collier, Artistic Producer of Vancouver’s edgy and innovative Electric Company Theatre Company, has been given the challenge of directing Shakespeare’s bloody revenge drama Titus Andronicus for this summer’s Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival. It is a brutal story, where a merciless, ritual sacrifice triggers a mother’s vengeance, leading to a spiral of bloody deeds - the ravaging and mutilation of Titus’s daughter, the murder of Titus’ sons, and the self-amputation of his own hand.

When asked about his decision to include Titus in the 2008 season, Artistic Director Christopher Gaze responded, “A savage and doom-filled tale, Titus Andronicus was the sort of work that was popular with audiences when Shakespeare was beginning his play writing career and it was a nod to his contemporaries. However, with its vile savagery, the play is extremely relevant to our times and today’s reality, echoing man’s continued inhumanity to man around the world.”

Director Kim Collier also felt the contemporary pull of this early Shakespeare tragedy. “When I first read the play, I was surprised how completely modern it felt to me in its content and how the themes of revenge were reflected in current global events – from the ethnic violence that has shaken our view of humanity, the rise of suicide bombings, and, more locally, the deaths caused by gang violence, school shootings and fractured families. We live on the periphery of violence and Titus Andronicus shows us the almost unthinkable alternative to our own tenuously civilized society. “

After the shock of the material had settled, Kim saw how the truth expressed in this script provides an incredible challenge to explore the darker side of humanity. “While the material is sometimes disturbing, it is also painfully relevant.”

“For me, this play offers us the chance to examine the environmental, social, national or personal structures that help or hinder an individual’s ability to act with either mercy or revenge. What happens within a person that makes it possible to initiate brutality or murder or rape? Do we all have within us the potential to participate in these dread deeds and, if we do, what does it take to trigger these forces?”

Kim believes that in the play it all begins with the individual’s loss of power and identity when one country dominates another, and with the humiliation that follows for the dominated people. “The revenge is driven initially by Tamora – a mother’s primal response to the loss of her daughter in a ritual sacrifice. Her deep-rooted love for her child propels a relentless need to revenge. Titus, although a great leader experienced in war, death and tragedy, is eventually pushed so far that his morality breaks and he too takes revenge to the limit.”

“Brilliantly, Shakespeare lets us view revenge across generations,” Kim continues. “Titus’s grandson, Young Lucius, begins as an onlooker with a naive view of heroism and war, is then thrown into the centre of the action participating with his grandfather trying to navigate the enemy through threats, and finally is shocked and disillusioned as he witnesses the murders committed by his father and grandfather. Eventually he withdraws, relying only on his own moral compass for guidance. This moral centre allows him the simple heroic act of symbolically moving away from punishment and violence, to move away from the cycle of vengeance. There is hope that he will be different!”

“This investigation, of course, has me wondering if it is possible to break the endless cycle of revenge that has existed throughout history, or, more provocatively, to consider if there is in fact a place for revenge in society?” Kim concludes. “I hope the audience will leave the theatre asking themselves those moral questions, and will be meditating on our current global events.”

Titus Andronicus runs July 9 to September 19 under the tents in Vanier Park. Also on stage this summer at Bard on the Beach are the comedy Twelfth Night, the sweeping tragedy King Lear, and the magical romance The Tempest. For tickets and information check www.bardonthebeach.org or call 604-739-0559.