Why here? Why now? These are the first two questions a director must ask herself when deciding on a play to direct. I asked Emily Mann, the artistic director of the McCarter Theater, these questions about her most recent directing work, on Arthur Kopit's "BecauseHeCan."
"I think that our audience can relate to the characters. They are a sophisticated, smart, well-established couple," she said. "Identity theft, privacy, trying to find out what's real and what's not are all big issues that we are all starting to face."
Mann, who is a celebrated playwright herself and has been at McCarter for the past 11 years, was also drawn to the play because of the theatrical excitement of the youth culture that is strongly present in the work.
"The play is very surreal," she said. "It gave me a lot of visual license, a great group of actors to work with and was just a hip, fun thing to do."
"BecauseHeCan," formerly titled "Y2K," is the story of a well-to-do couple whose marriage and lives fall apart when a hacker invades their privacy. He taps into their lives and creates new, incriminating records for their identities.
The play is only the latest in Mann's impressive directorial oeuvre that also includes several Edward Albee plays, last year's "The Cherry Orchard" and next year's production of "Romeo and Juliet."
Mann's version of "Romeo and Juliet" promises to be fast paced and very exciting. She has taken Shakespeare's pledge of 'two hours traffic' very literally and has made many cuts to the play and modernized some of the language.
With the play, Mann hopes to portray "a very carefully framed, passionate love story within a frame of tremendous hate and violence."
"It will show the enormous power that the older generation has to pervert the younger," she said. "We need only look to the children in Palestine throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers or at the ethnic cleansing still underway in Bosnia."
The play will center around the acting and the essentials of the characters, producing what Mann calls "modernity of situation, but not of setting."
The production will mix period costumes with an abstract set to reveal the fundamental themes of the play.
Princeton is lucky to have a theater like McCarter right across the street from campus, and Mann is very interested in the educational possibilities of running the theater in our college town.
"I really want to make a bridge to the University theater community," said Mann, a Harvard graduate.
"I have taught courses at the Program [in Theater and Dance], taught some master classes, had students come in and observe rehearsals and hold post-show discussions for students," she said.
Mann said she was impressed at the complexity of thought involved in campus productions that she has seen.
This semester, Mann has come to Professor Michael Cadden's THR 330 class, "Directors on Directing," to talk to the students about her career and the work she did on "BecauseHeCan."
"I love talking with the kids and hearing what they have to say about what we did with the show," she said.
She has also led discussion and answered questions during several of the class' seminars about her own theater experiences and the process of directing.
Emily Mann is a valuable artistic resource to have around campus, and her work with the McCarter and the University helps foster an educational and vibrant arts community in Princeton.
"BecauseHeCan" runs at McCarter until April 15. Students can get tickets with the passport to the arts or purchase them by calling 8-ARTS.
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