New adaptation of classic 'Tamburlaine' brings sublime to suburbia

Light reflects eerily off the transparent walls of chain link wire that enclose the stark stage of the Wilson Black Box while a row of televisions emits a blank blue stare out into the audience. Students wander about the stage in ripped shirts held together by duct tape, safety pins and saran wrap, and music from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Oklahoma" blasts from the sound system.

This potpourri of elements is Christopher Marlowe's 16th century masterpiece "Tamburlaine," the latest production of the Princeton Shakespeare Company.

While this production, which runs Dec. 5 - 8 at the Wilson Black Box, may at first appear to be a rather traditional choice for the company, it soon becomes apparent that this is Marlowe as you have never seen him before.

"Tamburlaine" is the story of the title character, a lowly Scythian shepherd (played by Ben Beckley '03), who sets out to conquer the eastern world and win the love of Zenocrate, the daughter of the Sultan of Egypt (played by Joe Cermatori '05).

Director Gerard Passannante, a graduate student in the English department, has updated this piece by moving the setting to a basement in Princeton in the year 2000 and by introducing a play-within-a-play structure. In Passannante's version, a group of teenagers is putting on a production of "Tamburlaine" as a way of exploring the issues of power and violence inherent within both the text and contemporary media.

"We were very interested in 'Tamburlaine's' expansiveness played against the claustrophobia of a basement," said Passannante. "We wanted to see 'Tamburlaine's' fiction-making rip at the seams. Also, I was interested in the way the sublime took place in suburbia. I wanted to explore the limits of the fiction, how someone could take over the world in their parents' basement."

Within the play, a delicate balance exists between the technology of the media and the "technology" of Marlowe's text, or dramaturgy, explained Passannante.

"The technology we have used in our production is a 'surrogate' for Marlowe's own multimedia, which was rhetoric," Passannate said. "The Elizabethan stage was very rhetorical, but to the ears of the audience, language itself was a profoundly visual medium. Here we are trying to use the pictures to dramatize and realize the slippery relation between speaking and experience."

While television and 16th century drama may not seem compatible, Passannante hopes to demonstrate that they are very much related. Working with Ena Jung, the digital media director for the show and a graduate student in the architecture department, as well as a cast of dedicated undergraduate students, Passannante wants to explore contemporary issues of media, representation, violence and sexuality by using the text of this classic play.

This relationship between speech, action, power, and experience is apparent in both the manipulation of the other characters by Tamburlaine and the manipulation of the media by a character named Josiah (played by Josiah Pearsall '03).

Josiah, a character that exists solely within the metatextual world of the teenagers in the basement, works the various forms of media used in the play and takes on the roles of several different characters throughout the production. While Tamburlaine controls the other characters with his rhetoric and forceful gestures, Josiah is able to break away from this aura and gain the ultimate power through his manipulation of the televisions, video cameras, and the surveillance system.

The line between language, reality and the starkness of modern violence are also important issues that drive Passannante's interpretation of the play. In fact, the metatext of the teenagers putting on the production relates to Passannante's interest in the Columbine shootings, particularly the confession tape that was supposedly created by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold before the actual shootings occurred.

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"For Tamburlaine, speaking is doing," Passannante said. "In his world, words are equivalent to action. In relation to Columbine, I was interested in the way technology – in this instance the technology of the confession tape — structures belief and what video has to do with confessing what in fact you have yet to do. Does the anticipatory confession make the action real? What makes the world concrete?"

Passannante also takes this production in a new direction by introducing a soundtrack composed of pieces from "Oklahoma," songs with a sense of gaiety that contrasts greatly with the somberness of the play itself.

" 'Oklahoma' is the found text, or counter-text, to Marlowe,' Passannante said. "The music of 'Oklahoma' is as mesmerizing as the iambic pentameter used by Marlowe, and it contrasts with the text in that it is easy to listen to while Marlowe is not. The music also serves to release the audience from the heaviness of the play. You need to go light first to bring the audience into the depths of tragedy."

The play also features a stark, prison like set designed by Lisa Cerami, a graduate student in the German department, as well as dark, eclectic costumes designed by Nick Barberio, a costume historian.

"The costumes are mainly composed of unique materials such as saran wrap, toilet paper, duct tape and the like," Barberio said. "We wanted to experiment with how we can reveal a character through the layers of their costumes. The materials and props such as the Burger King crowns also serve to represent the exploitation of commercialism in modern society."

Passannante is greatly influenced by such experimental directors as Richard Foreman and Robert Wilson, Beckley said, and this sense of exploration and adventure clearly shines through in this production — an especially impressive feat considering that the cast and crew are working with a 16th century text.

Ultimately the experimental elements only demonstrate the universal nature of "Tamburlaine." Beckley points out that, even though it was written five centuries ago, "Tamburlaine" still has the ability to speak to the modern audience.

"Despite our attempts to modernize the play, there's not a word spoken that isn't in Marlowe's text," Beckley said. "There's no need to modernize the text. Marlowe speaks directly to our contemporary preoccupation with war and politics — the two great universal blood sports."