Dennis Krausnick is in Louisville as a visiting professor in the Fine Arts Department of the University of Louisville . He is a fine actor and an imaginative director in additon to being the Director of Training at Shakespeare & Company, Lennox MA. In 2006, he was a Bingham Professor at U of L and stayed at our house. Then, he directed a student production of Winter's Tale. This time, he is directing one of Shakespeare's earliest tragedies, Titus Andronicus. It is seldom produced, primarily because it is a bloody, horrific revenge play. He was asked why he chose the play, and he said that it was relevant to today.
We thought you might be interested in the program note he wrote for the playbill:
"Titus Andronicus is compelling at this moment in our history because it addresses a culture of War, a culture we now seem to be mired in and seem, as a nation, to have embraced since the events of 9/11. It also speaks from a situation which involves the clash of radically different cultures (Roman and Goth for the play; Western ( USA , European Judeo/Christian) vs. Fundamentalist Islam).We now live in a culture in which the original source of mistrust is no longer remembered: both sides now want to redress or revenge events in recent memory (attack of 9/11; invasion of Iraq , etc.) For some decades in the 20th century, the actions of Titus (rape, mutilation and violent murder) seemed "over the top." Recently, we have seen people beheaded on television and hear repeatedly about Sharia Law meting out punishments of stoning or lopping of bodily parts; we also have radically different systems of Law (or redress) in which the reactions of one side to the actions of another seem incomprehensible to the opposed side (i.e. the trial and sentencing of a teacher who allowed her students to name a teddy bear Mohammed). Since the early to mid-nineties, rape has become a staple in the weapons of war used in Eastern Europe ( Serbia , Bosnia , Croatia ), in Africa (the Congo , Darfur , Rwanda and several other sites of violent civil reprisal throughout the continent) as well as in the gang wars of our own streets. It continues now in the mid-eastern Arab cultures as well.And finally, I wanted to put this play on right now because I think we've lost the consciousness that we are in fact in a war. The economy has now replaced the war as the primary concern of voters in the current primaries and next year's federal presidential election. And no one alludes to the possibility that our current economic status might be related to the fact that we have spent nearly half a trillion dollars on this war we are no longer focused on and have never accounted for it budgetarily.In the opening scene of the play, Titus' twenty-one sons are honored with burial because they have given their lives for Rome . Rome then proceeds to ignore the sacrifice of these lives and free the prisoners of war. Our own "free press" is not allowed to photograph even the flag-covered caskets of the returning dead. Just as the real reasons for the ten-year war against the Goths (the pillage and plunder brought home to fill Rome's coffers) are ignored within the text of the play, the fact that the US has signed contracts with international oil companies giving them 83 percent of all future oil revenues and leaving only 17 percent for the Iraqi people is never mentioned in the American press (although it does appear in the European press, further reducing the integrity of US actions in the eyes of the rest of the world).The resonances within the play for our contemporary culture are, in my view, nearly unending. I want to produce this statement because I want to be less silent in the face of actions that make me feel helpless and that my voice is unheard.”
-- Dennis Krausnick
We thought you might be interested in the program note he wrote for the playbill:
"Titus Andronicus is compelling at this moment in our history because it addresses a culture of War, a culture we now seem to be mired in and seem, as a nation, to have embraced since the events of 9/11. It also speaks from a situation which involves the clash of radically different cultures (Roman and Goth for the play; Western ( USA , European Judeo/Christian) vs. Fundamentalist Islam).We now live in a culture in which the original source of mistrust is no longer remembered: both sides now want to redress or revenge events in recent memory (attack of 9/11; invasion of Iraq , etc.) For some decades in the 20th century, the actions of Titus (rape, mutilation and violent murder) seemed "over the top." Recently, we have seen people beheaded on television and hear repeatedly about Sharia Law meting out punishments of stoning or lopping of bodily parts; we also have radically different systems of Law (or redress) in which the reactions of one side to the actions of another seem incomprehensible to the opposed side (i.e. the trial and sentencing of a teacher who allowed her students to name a teddy bear Mohammed). Since the early to mid-nineties, rape has become a staple in the weapons of war used in Eastern Europe ( Serbia , Bosnia , Croatia ), in Africa (the Congo , Darfur , Rwanda and several other sites of violent civil reprisal throughout the continent) as well as in the gang wars of our own streets. It continues now in the mid-eastern Arab cultures as well.And finally, I wanted to put this play on right now because I think we've lost the consciousness that we are in fact in a war. The economy has now replaced the war as the primary concern of voters in the current primaries and next year's federal presidential election. And no one alludes to the possibility that our current economic status might be related to the fact that we have spent nearly half a trillion dollars on this war we are no longer focused on and have never accounted for it budgetarily.In the opening scene of the play, Titus' twenty-one sons are honored with burial because they have given their lives for Rome . Rome then proceeds to ignore the sacrifice of these lives and free the prisoners of war. Our own "free press" is not allowed to photograph even the flag-covered caskets of the returning dead. Just as the real reasons for the ten-year war against the Goths (the pillage and plunder brought home to fill Rome's coffers) are ignored within the text of the play, the fact that the US has signed contracts with international oil companies giving them 83 percent of all future oil revenues and leaving only 17 percent for the Iraqi people is never mentioned in the American press (although it does appear in the European press, further reducing the integrity of US actions in the eyes of the rest of the world).The resonances within the play for our contemporary culture are, in my view, nearly unending. I want to produce this statement because I want to be less silent in the face of actions that make me feel helpless and that my voice is unheard.”
-- Dennis Krausnick
posted by Interfaith Paths to Peace at 3:52 PM
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