James Parenti
PART 1:
Actor, Playwright, Adapter Extraordinaire
http://www.jparenti.com/
https://jamesparenti.bandcamp.com/
Let’s begin with the obvious place to start, tell us a little about yourself.
I’m an actor, writer, songwriter, and occasional producer. I’m originally from Florida, but I’ve been living in New York City since 2005. My wife and I just celebrated our second wedding anniversary, but we’ve been a couple since 2001. We live in Queens with our guitars and imaginary cats.
A few years ago, you wrote a play called May Violets Spring, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet told from Ophelia’s perspective. This is such a creative idea, what was the inspiration behind it?
This is a bit of a long story. In 2010, I was in talks to do a small production of Hamlet. While I was going over the script, I became really invested in Ophelia’s story. She has so much going on in her life, and then she gets cast aside by the script. It seemed like Shakespeare wanted to get her out of the way to get back to Hamlet’s story in Act V.
At first, I thought it might be a good idea to have her onstage during Hamlet’s soliloquies. That way, rather than solely confiding in the audience, he could also be confiding in her. It would have more impact, I thought, for him to lose such a close friend, lover, and confidant. But then it seemed insulting to have her onstage while Hamlet talks at her, and not allow her to engage.
So, then I attempted to cut the soliloquies into conversations. This way, I thought, she could engage with Hamlet’s inner life more deeply. An example might look something like this:
Hamlet: How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable/Seem to me all the uses of this world./ Fie on’t! Ah fie!
Ophelia: Tis an unweeded garden/That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature/Possess it merely.
Hamlet: That it should come to this,/ But two months dead-
Ophelia: Nay, not so much. Not two.
When I presented this idea to my director, the extremely talented Katherine M. Carter, she encouraged me to dig more deeply into this idea, and pursue it as a new piece: a fully-fledged adaptation, rather than just an unusual cutting.
“What a great idea,” I thought. “Give me a month and I’ll finish the first draft.” The play would get its first production about four years later.
Shakespeare is often criticized for being lean in terms of fully developed or realized female characters. What was it about Ophelia specifically that inspired you to adapt Hamlet from her perspective as opposed to another classical heroine?
There’s a staggering number of female characters from literature, and Shakespeare in particular, that are underdeveloped. And so many of them hint at a woman with a rich inner life, but they’re still undeserved by the playwright.
There was something about Ophelia that really fascinated me. She has such an upsetting family life: she’s grown up without a mother, and I’d argue that the men in her life are abusive in a number of ways. Her father seems to think that censoring her behavior is the same thing as fathering her, and has no qualms about using force. Her brother is almost disturbingly invested in her virginity. Though the text doesn’t give us an abundance of specifics about her relationship with Hamlet, it’s clear that there’s some degree of intimacy and trust between them, which is absolutely crushed in the ‘nunnery’ scene.
The way she’s used as a tool by the men in her life is part of the plot of Hamlet, but it also is reflective of the way men treated women in Elizabethan England, and in America in 2010 when I started writing it, and now in America in 2018, and, and, and.
What was your process for crafting the play together? Most importantly, how in the heck did you tackle writing in verse?
I thought I could basically re-edit Hamlet to bring out the threads that were pertinent to the story I wanted to tell. At first, I had no intention of writing any significant amount of verse, and was just plugging in a line here or there as connective tissue between bits of extant text. Things like “Ay, my lord,” which seemed pretty innocuous at first. As I learned more and more about Ophelia and what was going on in her head, I tried to pull from other Shakespearean sources to use. Because I have a pretty decent working knowledge of a handful of plays (mostly from doing productions of them throughout the years) I was able to ‘quilt’ certain sections of other plays and speeches and sonnets where I needed them. Because of that, there’s a good amount of other plays throughout Violets: Cymbeline, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Tempest, Twelfth Night, and Richard II.
But as we’ve already discussed, there’s not an abundance of great material for women in Elizabethan plays. That was part of the problem in the first place! So, I attempted to write a few extra lines here and there. But then a few lines turned into a few speeches, which turned into soliloquies and scenes, and on and on. And I was learning as I went! Some of the earlier material I came up with had to be discarded or thoroughly re-worked as I learned more about the process of writing verse.
Also, there’s something wonderfully musical about blank verse. It’s easier for me to hear the rhythm, melody, and onomatopoeia than in prose, especially if you start to think about each line as a measure of music. So, when I start to get stuck, I can sometimes even just hum the melody of a character’s argument and work from there. I don’t know if this would work for everyone, but I found it very helpful!
Was this a lone venture or did you work with a team?
The actual act of writing was solitary, just me in front of my computer trying to hammer lines out. But I was extremely blessed to have a number of incredible collaborators at different stages of the process.
First, there was my friend Katherine Carter, who was the first person to see the idea’s potential as a fully-formed adaptation rather than just a new edit of Hamlet. Her theater company, The Other Mirror, generously agreed to do a development process and reading of the play in its early stages. Katherine and that development cast were extremely helpful - not to mention incredibly patient with me while I learned how to write verse and figured out what this play wanted to be.
Then there was Reesa Graham, who was the director of the play’s first production, and ultimately my primary collaborator on the play. She read innumerable drafts of the script, and served as something of a dramaturge as we worked together to shape it. She also worked closely with me as I learned to embrace the music of blank verse.
Under Reesa’s guidance, we did a private reading of the play with an all-female cast, which was hugely beneficial. Being a man, I was aware that trying to write from a young woman’s point of view could lead to stilted or condescending work, or that I could just be completely off the mark. So, I wanted to hear feedback from as many women as possible, and incorporate their points of view into the play.
And when the play finally went into its first production in 2014, we were fortunate enough to have a lengthy development process where we built the play’s final shape on our feet. I can’t say enough about how helpful it was to have such a generous, creative cast in Monique St. Cyr, Sarah Eismann, Mat Leonard, Michael Griffin, David Bodenschatz, and especially Gwen Sisco as Ophelia.
Finally, my incredible wife, who taught me everything I know about writing, storytelling, and empathy.
Let’s switch gears and talk business for just a second. As many of us know, producing your own work takes not only time, but money. Did you do any fundraising or put up the funds yourself? What kind of marketing or advertising did you do to help get the word out?
We did a small campaign on IndieGoGo, where I think we made around an eighth of the full budget. I ponied up the rest on my own! I was working fifty-plus hours a week as a waiter at the time, and squirreled away every penny I could for months. It was a really big investment on the front end for the theater and rehearsal space, but we were really fortunate because we ended up making most of it back! I think we actually broke even, which is a small miracle for off-off-Broadway.
As for marketing, we had posts in Broadway World, and a handful of theater blogs agreed to post interviews or features about the play, which was super helpful. And we saw a significant increase in attendance after the first few nights we were open, which I think is due to some of the reviews and word of mouth. We were lucky to have a few people who were very vocal about enjoying the play!
My advice about producing is the same as it is for pretty much anything else. Just do it! No one’s coming to help you and make your dreams come true, so if you want it, you have to be the one to make it happen. And building an amazing community that believes in what you’re doing makes all the difference in the world.
Excellent advice. Ok, back to creative. How did you land on the title? Can you elaborate on the significance?
It’s a line that Laertes says in Hamlet, over Ophelia’s grave. Since so much of the play is about her taking agency of her own story, it felt potent to have her take ownership of a phrase that her brother uses to tell her story for her. It’s also about planting the seeds of hope in her own life and future.
Was there anything new you learned, or other realizations, about Ophelia, Hamlet, or the world they lived in in doing this project?
I learned that a slight change in your perspective on the characters can have a huge impact on the story. If, like Shakespeare, you’re essentially living in Hamlet’s head, he’s the hero: noble, conflicted, sympathetic. But if you live in Ophelia’s head, Hamlet becomes selfish, unpredictable, dangerous. He’s one more man in a long line of men who would use her for his own purposes.
I’ve tried to tease out these threads throughout Violets. There are a few scenes where Hamlet performs kindness or sweetness for Ophelia, but never takes her actual best interests to heart. For her part, Ophelia chooses to see the performance as truth for the first half of the play, and then only sees the red flags of his behavior in hindsight. A discerning audience would hopefully see both Hamlets simultaneously: the guy who seems nice, and is acting like a caring partner, but he’s also hugely manipulative and could be having this same conversation with almost anyone.
Working on this play forced me to examine my own life and relationships as well. Do I ever feel entitled to a certain kind of treatment, just because I’ve been ‘nice?’ Do I assume my interactions are transactional? Do my male friends? How do I hold myself accountable when I exhibit toxic behaviors, so I don’t become like Hamlet?
These questions felt particularly pertinent earlier in this decade, when a good deal of the misogyny I observed lived in the world of microaggressions and toxic entitlement. (I’m aware that as a cis white man I have an extremely limited perspective on this.) But in our current political climate, the misogynists (and racists, and homophobes, and, and, and) don’t seem to think they need to hide or change. If I were writing a play like this today, it would have to grapple with the more blatant misogyny currently on display, as well as the complacency of self-proclaimed allies. The play I’m working on now attempts to do just that. More on that later.
We’ve talked a lot about Ophelia’s interactions with men. Given that female relationships can be just as complex, or even more so, I’m curious to know how Violets approaches this aspect of Ophelia’s story. How does your version explore Ophelia’s relationship or interaction with, say, Gertrude (Hamlet’s mother)?
That’s an excellent question, and I did attempt to explore her relationship with Gertrude throughout. In this version, Gertrude sees the world as a zero-sum game. Rather than recognizing how difficult it must be for Ophelia to navigate this world, she primarily sees her as a threat to her own power. So as Ophelia’s life starts to fall apart and she begins to act outside of the society’s expectations, Gertrude attempts to get her out of the picture entirely.
We also explored her relationship with Horatio, who’s a female in Violets. Horatio’s worldview is the opposite of Gertrude’s: she believes that a rising tide lifts all boats, and that the best way to help herself is to help her friends, Hamlet and Ophelia.
I don’t mean to imply that these are the only kinds of relationships that exist between women. Rather, I wanted to show the extremes of selfish and selfless behavior among disenfranchised people.
In the traditional Hamlet, Ophelia's death can be considered a pivotal moment, she's no longer mentioned after this point, and there is some debate within the play about whether it was an accident or a suicide. Perhaps we're giving something away here, but, how does your adaptation handle Ophelia's death? Do we get more insight since we’re able to hear from Ophelia directly?
It does definitely give something away. Here be spoilers!
In Violets, the action completely separates from Hamlet about three-quarters of the way through the play. After Ophelia’s ‘mad scene,’ which she’s deliberately faking in an echo of Hamlet’s earlier feigned madness, Gertrude literally hands Ophelia a blade and tells her to kill herself. Believing she’s done so, Gertrude then goes to Laertes and Claudius and gives her famous ‘willow’ speech, which we know in this context to be completely fabricated for Laertes’ benefit. From that point on, Horatio helps Ophelia fake her own death so that she can escape Denmark and start over somewhere new. She meets Hamlet one last time over her own grave and entreats him to join her, but he insists on returning to Elsinore for the final showdown he believes is inevitable.
This isn’t meant to be an interpretation of her death in Hamlet, but rather a reaction to it.
In true Renaissance man fashion, not only did you write the piece, you also had a role in the production as Hamlet. Was the acting process different seeing as you were performing in a piece you wrote? How was playing Hamlet different in this version versus the traditional version?
This sounds laughable now, but I thought that playing Hamlet in Violets would be easy. Ha! I’d spent so much time with the script, years in fact, that I assumed I knew exactly how every scene and every line should be performed. But it’s a completely different process to get inside a character’s head and work out these scenes on your feet. I had to un-learn a lot of what I thought I knew about performing this character.
It’s hard to say exactly how playing the role differs between Hamlet and Violets, since I’ve never actually played Hamlet in the original! I’ve done a few readings, and I think I’d be well-suited for the role (put me in, coach!) but I don’t have a full production as a reference. I know that playing this version of the character isn’t a marathon the way it would be in a production of the original. That dubious distinction goes to Ophelia (and again: Gwen Sisco, who originated the role, is a champion).
But I will say that there’s a difference of intention. Hamlet in Hamlet, I think, is meant to be sympathetic. Hamlet in Violets is essentially the primary antagonist. Though he’s not a monster, I’ve tried to bring out the more selfish aspects of his character on the page. So, it’s incumbent upon the actor playing him to embrace his egotism while also being a more generous and supportive scene partner than might be necessary in Hamlet.
Was there something you wish you knew before you got started?
It took me a while before I realized that Ophelia was the protagonist, not just a more fully-fleshed supporting character. I spent a lot of time working on things in Hamlet’s point of view before I made that discovery, and most of that ended up being cut!
I also wish I had a better idea of the scope of putting together a project like this. Earlier I mentioned that I thought I could knock out a draft in a few weeks, and then it took a few years before the play took on its final shape. Although maybe that green overconfidence and excitement helped see me through to the end!
How was May Violets Spring received when it went up? No doubt there was a lot of excitement surrounding the concept.
Thank you for saying so! It’s a bit difficult for me to answer objectively. I think people liked it! But I’ll just stick to facts: we sold out most of our performances, and all of our final week. I remember we had to add seats and, sadly, turn people away at the door due to the fire codes. And there were enough people that still wanted to see it after we closed that we actually extended the run! We moved to a bigger theater for an additional week to meet demand. I definitely felt proud of that, and glad that we were able to find a theater that could accommodate us.
The production also received some love from critics. I remember that any waking second which wasn’t already taken up with performances or work went to interviews for a while, which was a totally new experience for me. Among others, we got mentioned in the Wall Street Journal which was cool, and the excellent theater blog A Work Unfinishing named us one of their top picks for the year.
Congrats, that’s awesome! It seems like there might have been enough steam to keep going with the run. Did you consider this or were you ready to move on and do something else?
By the time the first extension was over, I think we were all ready for a break. The development process and performances had already been such a marathon, and then we pushed closing back an extra week! When we were loading into the new theater, I was so impatient and tired that I actually slipped a disc in my back...and then played Hamlet that night. I learned a lot about self-care that week!
I wonder what it would have been like to take some time off after the initial closing, and then re-group and extend the run in a more focused, thoughtful way. But sometimes, when the train’s moving, you just have to keep riding.
But enough people had been invested in the play that it was produced again a few years later, in the autumn of 2016. It was really gratifying to know that the piece had taken hold of people’s imaginations enough that they were interested in mounting it again. It was an entirely different experience for me to solely be the playwright, and not be responsible for acting or producing. I learned a lot about how a play can change from one production to the next.
I do hope that the play’s life will continue. I’d love to see it be produced again elsewhere. I also think it’d work well at colleges, as a supplement to a curriculum on Shakespeare and Hamlet in particular. If any budding producers are reading this, I can tell you that it’s designed to be done with pretty minimal overhead!
Totally understandable. Have you done other adaptations or tackled other stories from a different or underrepresented point of view?
Well, I’m working on another play now, which I’m currently calling Our Hanging-Ropes. It was inspired by the fact that at the top of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Antony’s wife Fulvia dies, and the other characters seem to celebrate. That’s an even worse fate than Ophelia dying offstage - Fulvia doesn’t even get to speak! And Antony and Cleopatra are so happy that she’s out of the way! I needed to know more about her. And historically she’s a super interesting personality.
But rather than specifically focusing on her inner life, à la Violets, I’m interested in the way these two women interact who never meet. The play is far from finished at the moment, but it’s about identity, and trust, and what we owe to the people we love.
Another fascinating idea. I can't wait to read/see it when it's finished. Who or what inspires your writing?
I come to writing as an actor, by which I mean I’m primarily interested in existent stories. But I also don’t want to be that guy who only writes new verse adaptations on Shakespeare. I’d like to do something completely new in the future.
What have been some of your favorite roles, or experiences, as an actor? Or, if it’s more interesting to answer, what is a role you’d like to take on or a production you’d like to be in that you haven’t had the chance to do yet?
A few years ago, I had the very good fortune of playing Prior in a production of Angels in America at the Connecticut regional theater Playhouse on Park. There’s a reason Angels is one of the most important American plays of the past hundred years: it’s incredible. An actor could work on that play for years and still find things to unpack. And I loved working with director Sean Harris, who put together a uniformly excellent cast.
I also loved working on POPTART! Though I sing often, it’s been quite a while since I’ve done a musical, so it was a welcomed challenge. And that play is just so well-constructed and the actress playing Monique (Monique St. Cyr) was such a powerhouse that by the time we were opening, it felt like my only job was to step onstage and survive the next ninety minutes.
One of my favorite plays is The Credeaux Canvas by Keith Bunin, and it’d be incredible to tackle the role of Winston. If anybody’s doing a production, hit me up. And I’m sure it goes without saying, but I’d love to take a crack at playing Hamlet proper.
Who or what inspires you generally?
People who are really good at what they do. Painters, writers, filmmakers, dancers, woodworkers, anything. Excellence in any form is inspiring.
What scares you?
People who don’t know how to behave in restaurants. “Good guys with guns.”
What motivates you?
An exciting idea tends to make me feel an urgency to work. I never feel like there’s enough time to get something done, so if I want to work on it, I want to work on it now! Also, there’s an extremely satisfying feeling as a project becomes realized where you look over all the things you’ve accomplished that once seemed completely impossible. I’m chasing that feeling, but first you have to do all the impossible things to get there!
What brings you the greatest joy?
Spending time with Krystle. (Do I sound like a broken record? I really like my wife!) Also, making cool stuff. Taking an idea and making it into a reality. Helping my friends do the same. Finding ways to surprise myself.
Also, the adventure of a badass dinner at a beautiful restaurant with a little wine and good company.
What brings you the greatest satisfaction?
As I mentioned above, that feeling of accomplishment when all the overwhelming tasks are done, and a big project starts to take shape.
Have you ever taken a risk, and have it work out great?
Well, the original production of Violets was risky. As I mentioned, there was a huge financial investment at the beginning of the process: for the theater rental, rehearsal space, people’s paychecks. But there was also a huge possibility that the play itself would fail, or be misunderstood. At first, there was a good number of people who did not understand the general conceit. I thought I might be crazy. But ultimately, it’s one of the things I’m most proud of.
Have you ever straight up failed? What did you learn and how did you come back from it?
I had a really bad show a few years back. It was my first time playing at a venue I was really excited about, and my first time playing with a particular keyboard player. The keyboard that we brought to the show wasn’t the same one we’d been using at practice, and the two weren’t tuned to the same specifications. (I think the practice one was tuned to 440Hz, and the one at the show was 432Hz). It took a few songs to figure out what the problem was, then I had to stand there tuning by ear onstage, which always happens in super slow motion. The whole experience really shook my confidence, and the show did not get better from there. It took a while before that venue was willing to have me back.
So, what I learned in that case was, for concerts: as much as possible, practice with the equipment you’ll be using at the show!
But more importantly, I learned that it was okay to have a rough show. I renewed my focus on the fundamentals, upped my game and my confidence by playing lower-stakes places for a while, and eventually came back to that venue with confidence. It’s one of my favorite places to play now.
What is an experience that you would want to experience again?
For one thing, I could relive my wedding every day.
I’d also love to try another production of Angels in America. It’s such an amazing experience to live through that show, especially when there are still people in the audience who’ve never seen it. (Put me in, coach!)
What would you like to do that you haven’t done yet?
Play Hamlet in Hamlet. Play my music at Carnegie Hall. Have one of my plays produced Off-Broadway.
Oh, and I want to make music videos for my songs! But I have no ideas for music videos. Video directors, come at me!
Ok, let’s end this part with some advice to your younger self?
I’d advise my younger self to be more honest and stop waiting for permission.
Read PART 2 of this interview.
