Rebecca Olson on Playing Celia in “As You Like It”

In As You Like It, Shakespeare created one of the great female friendships in theatre: Rosalind and Celia. There’s no other relationship like it in the canon. And for the game of romance in the woods, Celia is kind of Rosalind’s wingman. In Seattle Shakespeare Company’s actress Rebecca Olson plays Celia and shares her thoughts about the character and the challenges of playing the role.

Rebecca:

“Oh, I love Celia! I love Celia because she’s an optimist, but she’s also very pragmatic. Especially in this production, I really like what George has done. The world that she starts out in is not a happy place, but she has obviously made a choice to be optimistic and think that things are going to work out. She’s very loyal. She’s very funny. She’s just got all these lovers running around her, completely acting like morons. She’s almost the voice of the audience, pointing out to Rosalind (played by Hana Lass) saying, “You do realize you’re dressed like a boy?” (Laughs). Saying all the things you would say if your best friend was acting foolish. I love that her wit is really, really funny. And then at the end she gets smacked in the face with love, too, and it’s really unexpected and it comes out of nowhere.

“One of the challenges of playing the role is that she’s on stage a lot and not saying anything. George (the director) and I made a choice that we’re not just going to have Celia falling asleep in the background. If she’s on stage, there’s a reason she’s on stage, even if she’s not speaking. So finding what that is, activating that, and figuring out what I’m to be doing when I’m not speaking is tough. I spend a lot of time observing, and I think that helps in that journey, so when the one-liner’s come out. They’re real zingers. At least I hope that’s how it comes out.

“Celia’s got a pretty big arc. If you’ve never seen the play before, the first third at least, could be Celia’s play. It could be a story about a girl who gives up her kingdom to follow her best friend into the forest. And then all of a sudden Orlando shows up, and the things take a turn. The challenge is to keep Celia moving forward and not allow her to sit back in cynicism while her friend Rosalind falls in love. It’s hard to walk that line of telling her friend to come back down to earth and not make Celia sound like she’s jealous and mean. This is the only relationship like this in Shakespeare where there are two women who are equals and have equal stage time and are not villainesses and are not just ingénues. Orlando is the ingénue in this play. He’s the one being courted! Rosalind and Celia are the two best friends who are orchestrating this entire plot. It’s important to keep the affection between the two women because it’s such an important part of the story. I don’t want there ever to be a moment when the audience thinks that their friendship is over. You watch them go through the really natural ups and downs that happen when you have a best friend, regardless of what age you are. And then that person meets someone, and suddenly they’re not available to you as much. And then you have to renegotiate what the relationship is going to be. It’s a really fantastic relationship that they have. And it helps that I’m really good friends with Hana, she’s one of my closest friends.

Seattle Actor Profile – Mark Anders

Mark is making his Seattle Shakespeare Company debut playing the role of Henry Higgins in Pygmalion. Recently he’s become very passionate about making sure that some of the great plays from the past (that frequently have large casts and are challenging to produce) still stay in the public consciousness. To that end he and several other local theatre artists created the Endangered Species Project (www.endangeredspeciesproject.org) to produce staged readings of the great plays from the past. Check them out and make sure to see Mark as Shaw’s irascible Henry Higgins in Pygmalion.

Reading

“I always have like five books going. I am reading a book about the Wobblies called We Shall be Free. I’m reading a book about starting a theatre that Jeff Steitzer gave me because we are doing the Endangered Species Project. I am reading John Sayles new book. And a book of ghost stories that I’ve been going through, and I don’t know why.”

Listening

“I listen to the radio, only in the car. I listen to music at home a lot. A lot of classical. I’m kind of a film score nut. At least the early ones. I’m not so crazy about them nowadays. I like really bold and accessible music.”

Watching

“I go to the movies, but I recently saw this documentary called the Renaissance Revolution. And in it this guy is talking about this amazing painting behind him. And he said, ‘What’s amazing about this painting is that everything you need is there. You can see it. It’s there. The difference between this painting and a modern painting is that the modern painting is all about what has been left out.’ And that idea has been burning in my mind ever since I saw it. And it has affected why we are doing the Endangered Species Project, because there are plays that have everything in them, not alluding to them. And Shaw is the same way. Everything is in it. It’s all there. If you want to find it, it’s there. He talks about it. It’s there.”

Looking forward to this theatre season

“I haven’t thought much more beyond Pygmalion. It’s going to be very interesting to see what ACT does with the Ramayana. I don’t know how that’s going to come across. It’s going to be very interesting to see. But I don’t know what that’s going to be like.”

Seattle Actor Profile – Mike Dooly

When Mike Dooly takes on a role, he immerses himself in it, almost to the exclusivity of anything else.  He wasn’t always so diligent.  In fact, Mike was on the verge of dropping out of high school when his grandmother signed him up for acting classes at the Northwest Actor’s Studio.  It was after an experience with a monologue class that things shifted for him. “I realized right then and there I knew what I wanted to do.  I remember getting out of that class and running downstairs, finding a pay phone and calling my girlfriend at the time.  We were kind of dropping out of high school together, and I called her and said ‘I know what I want to do!  I know what I wanna do this!’  She didn’t have anything like that, and so she was just, “Oh.  Yeah. Okay. Great…’  And I was like, ‘No, you don’t understand!  I figured it out!’  And it’s true, ‘cause that was 23 years ago.”  Mike plays Tullus Aufidius in Coriolanus. 

Reading

“My research has me reading these really depressing books about the ethics of warriors and what it’s like for soldiers in peace time. Things like that are really taxing after a long day of rehearsal, so I chip away at those. Just to unwind, while I was working on Midsummer I started reading the Sandman comic books. Those are good. I’m hung up on those now. I only have so much room in my head, you know. And it’s probably not as much as most people have! When I’m working on a show, the best I can do is a magazine article. Like something out of Wired or The Source, because I need that space in my head for the show.”

Listening

“I listen to hip-hop and 60s or 70s soul. Hip-hop’s great. If you’re into Shakespeare, there’s no reason to listen hip-hop and not be fully in awe of it. It’s the same thing. It really bugs me when I hear people say, especially people in a Shakespeare play say, ‘Oh I listen to everything except hip-hop and country.’ It’s language! It’s everything we work on. It’s also great, especially playing a character like Aufidius, because it pumps you up. There is an element to hip-hop that is all boasting, but it can get you feeling good about yourself. Make you feel like you can get done what you NEED to get DONE. And nobody’s going to stand in your way. It’s also really great if you’re trying to work out. And podcasts… of course the best podcast ever is The Ricky Gervais Show or This American Life.”

Watching

(Laughs) “I’m watching HBO’s Rome, which I’ve never seen, but a couple weeks ago I was like ‘I might as well…’ It’s a few hundred years after our play. It’s been very helpful because I now understand what tribunes and patricians and consuls and all that stuff are…plus it’s a really fun show. And I’m watching I Claudius (laughs). Those shows feed the play, but I can’t get too involved with anything else because I don’t want it to pull me away from my job.”

Looking Forward to this Season

“There’s something that’s happening at Balagan, that’s cool. It’s called Theater Anonymous. It’s the first time they’ve ever done it. I think they’re doing It’s A Wonderful Life, but none of the actors know who any of the other actors are. They all rehearse with the director one-on-one. So the actors are just going to sit down in the audience with the audience and when their scene comes up, they’re just going to get up and start to act in the scene. Nobody’s going to know who’s playing what. I’m really looking forward to that. It’s the same folks behind 14/48. You can only do it one night. I’m also looking forward to Pygmalion, which I’ve never seen before. I’ve never seen a Shaw play, ever.”

Shakespeare Character That You Identify With

“More than any of the others? When I first came back to Seattle, I played Iago. And I loved that guy! I think he’s a great guy. Had things gone differently for him I think he could have been this really cool old man. I do know how it feels to be over looked and passed over. I think everybody knows that. And you wish you were somewhere else in life professionally or emotionally or whatever. I didn’t think I was going to identify with Horatio as much as I did. Terry Weagant just played Helena. Helena’s fucking fantastic! I relate to all the outsiders: Iago, Aufidius, Helena…that feeling of ‘Why not me?’ That’s something I like to exploit in myself because it’s a part of yourself you can share, that people don’t share. But everybody feels that way. So I like those guys. Edmund…Edmund the Bastard! All those guys, they’re all alright in my book. They’re cool.”

Seattle Actor Profile – Therese Diekhans

The last time Seattle Shakespeare Company audiences saw Therese, she was the sly Mistress Quickly in our production of The Merry Wives of Windsor (and you may have seen her brief cameo as Queen Elizabeth).  In Coriolanus, she’s playing a character three times as cunning, Volumnia, the mother of Coriolanus.

Reading

“I was reading Tree of Smoke which is a novel about Vietnam.  Really difficult.  I got about half way through it and then said I have to stop now.  So I’m going to have to pick it back up and read it again. The other thing I’m reading is a series by Ursula Le Guin: The Earthsea Cycle, which is now five or six books.  I like her.  She was raised as a Taoist and so her books are filled with that kind of philosophy which I find interesting…and I love sci-fi or rather science fantasy.  So I like those two things: the philosophical and the fantasy at the same time.”

Listening

“I really only listen to the radio in the car.  It’s usually NPR or Democracy Now.  For music, it’s funny, I was just thinking about that today. I don’t generally turn on music when I’m at home.  It’s really odd.  My family, when I was growing up, we didn’t listen to a lot of music, so I’m in silence a lot.  But when I do listen to music, I like Pink Martini; I love any of the classics: Beethoven, of course, Mozart, opera.”

Watching

“I haven’t seen a film in a while.  Television I don’t really watch much, but I have been watching on Netflix and Hulu.  I really love the series Bones, so I’ve been watching that.  I’m also watching Once, which is that fairytale series. It’s kind of fun.”

Looking Forward to This Season

“I’m looking forward to getting out and seeing as much as I can.  I’m looking forward to this show.  I’m looking forward to the Book-It shows.  I adore the Book-It style and the way they do that.  Anything at Seattle Public Theatre and Theater Schmeater.  And anything at Strawberry Workshop…I love Strawberry Workshop.”

Shakespeare Character That You Identify With

“I just played Paulina in The Winter’s Tale.  She is very much a truth-teller and a plain speaker, and righteous.  She is not going to let the king get away with lying to himself; creating a truth that is not real. She’s very firm and knows right from wrong, and will not allow anybody else to get away with it.  I kind of do that in my own life.  I sometimes get in trouble with people because when I do see something, I usually can’t control my tongue and I usually end up getting in trouble for it (laughs).”

Amy Thone on Performing Shakespeare

Actress Amy Thone on why she loves performing Shakespeare

Seattle Actor Profile – Christine Marie Brown

Christine Marie Brown’s big news is that she just got married to Andrew McGinn (he played the title role in Julius Caesar for Seattle Shakespeare Company in 2008). Shakespeare brought the couple together while performing at Seattle Rep. Although she’s played the part of Hermia for another theatre company, for our production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Christine plays Lysandra, a part that requires her to be the pursuer rather than the one pursued.

READING: I am reading “Two Part Invention” by Madeleine L’Engle, which is about her marriage. She was married for a long time to a soap opera actor. She wrote many other things besides the “Wrinkle in Time” series. They lived in Manhattan and a friend of mine gave it to me right before I got married. I’m also re-reading “The Artist’s Way” with a group of friends.

LISTENING: I am listening, almost exclusively, to NPR right now while on my drives. I recently heard a talk with Marshall Rosenberg about non-violent communication and became extremely interested in that. So that’s something I think I’m going to look into.

WATCHING: Fringe. The Good Wife. Glee. And 30 Rock when it premieres. And I just finished watching the entire Firefly series and then Serendipity the movie.

LOOKING FORWARD THIS THEATRE SEASON: I’m definitely looking forward to seeing Humor Abuse. I plan to be there for opening. I’m looking forward to Circle Mirror Transformation, for sure. A Christmas Carol! I want to see that because I haven’t seen it in many, many years and I missed it last season. I want to see Robin Hood. Those are the things that are coming immediately to my mind, but I know there is a lot more in the season. Oh, and Cybourne Park, I know it doesn’t happen until the spring, but I’m interested in that.

SHAKESPEARE CHARACTER SHE IDENTIFIES WITH: My gosh. I really don’t know. For every one that comes to mind, there are circumstances in their lives, and I have no idea what that’s like. Probably Celia from As You Like It. I think because, at least in the realm of romance for most of my life, I felt like I was on the sidelines. That I was watching a lot of friends have that experience before my own experience happened. And it’s a role I’ve always wanted to play. I’ve played Phebe and Rosalind, so that’s the next one.

An interview with Actor Chris Ensweiler

Download: chris_e_interview

Chris Ensweiler Interview

Actor Chris Ensweiler (far left), who plays Puck in our production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, sat down to talk about his views on that mischief making sprite, and what he enjoys about performing Shakespeare.

Seattle Actor Profile – Todd Jefferson Moore

It’s hard to believe, but Todd Jefferson Moore got his start performing in Shakespeare on our stage playing Jacques in As You Like It.  He’s gone on to appear with Seattle Shakespeare Company almost once a season since, playing roles in Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing, Pericles, The Miser, and Electra. Now he’s back playing Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

READING: I have this little book that Amy Thone gave me about a production of Midsummer in New York. So I’m reading that.

LISTENING:  I’ve been listening to a lot of books on tape this summer because I’ve been working on adding apartments to my house.  It’s been a raft of mysteries.  There’s this one character that I love that’s an Italian police lieutenant – Aurelio Zen. It’s written by a Brit.  It’s so funny and so tongue in cheek.  He’s a terrible detective.  And it’s in Italy, so everyone is going out for wine all the time while the murders are happening.  It’s very delightful.  There are also a couple of Swedes and Norwegian mystery writers that I’ve been listening to this summer.

WATCHING: The PBS version of the Aurelio Zen stories had a wonderful actor doing it.  That was fun.  I love documentaries and I really wish I could see the one on prohibition by Ken Burns.  I watched part of it, but I was so tired and I had to get up so early to teach, that I was falling asleep.  I love the one about the bayou vampire series – True Blood, cause I know those books from reading them. There’s another death one – with the guy from Six Feet Under… uh, Dexter.  Very, very funny.  He’s very good.

LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS THEATRE SEASON:  I’m really enjoying Midsummer, but the other main project that I’m involved with is at ACT.  A year from November they’re going to be putting on the famous epic Indian poem The Ramayana.  And I guess I’ve kind of been put in charge of the puppets and masks.  There’s a steering committee that includes two playwrights and two directors, Sheila being one of them, and then there’s me. There are a lot of battles, so the big question is how to do all these big battles the other stories without spending our whole dramatic wad too early.  So puppets and masks seem to be a possible solution. So I’m excited about that.

SHAKESPEARE CHARACTER HE IDENTIFIES WITH: That is a good question.  Oh, it’s too pompous, but I was going to say King Lear and I don’t know why, other than I’m getting old.  And experiencing that sense of things failing or things not remaining the same and trying to grasp and claw the meaning of your life as you wane into old age.  A lot of the parents of my friends are dying and some of my friends as well.  Trying to figure it all out.  Jacques from As You Like It was a very sweet role to do.  A very mixed up person, which I can relate to very well.  He jumps into things with both feet and makes an ass of himself.  Probably those two.

Seattle Actor Profile – Chris Ensweiler

Chris Ensweiler is a Seattle actor and fight choreographer, and he plays the role of Puck in Seattle Shakespeare Company’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Reading: While performing with Allan Armstrong this summer in The Comedy of Errors, he got me interested in the whole Shakespeare authorship question… you know how some folks feel that Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford wrote the plays. So I’m now reading a book that takes the timeline of De Vere’s life and compares it to the plays. It’s called “Shakespeare” by Another Name by Mark Anderson So I’m interested into delving into that. I have several things on my nightstand. For my birthday John Bradshaw gave me the graphic novel “Kill Shakespeare” …which is fantastic! So I’m working on the first volume of that. I’m also reading “The Tao of Pooh.” I also borrowed from Kelly Kitchens “The Brothers Karamozov” based on a recommendation of our piano player this summer for The Comedy of Errors, Ray Allen. We were talking about Russian literature and Shakespeare and wanting to help each other learn about the other, so we’re trading off great literary works. So I’ve got a lot of stacks of things on the nightstand that I thumb through.

Listening: I have very eclectic love of music…but I really dig the 70s. It’s the music that reminds of driving in the car with my folks when I was younger. So I have a collection of the top ten songs of each year of the 70s that I listen to. My new favorite is Anthony Hamilton, who I learned about from David Hogan this summer. He’s a great modern R&B singer.

Watching: I just saw Up in the Air with George Clooney. Fantastic. I also saw Broken Flowers, the Jim Jarmusch film with Bill Murray. We have a huge DVD collection with everything that I would watch if it were on TV. There’s a couple of Bond films that I love to watch. I’ll watch Ferris Bueller any time. No Country for Old Men, the Bourne trilogy, Breakfast Club…it’s very eclectic! I also just watched The Philadelphia Story because I did a reading for the Endangered Species Project of Stalag 17. My character does imitations of Humphrey Bogart, Clark Cable, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, and Cary Grant. So I was doing my classic film research.

Looking Forward to This Season: I do want to go see the new musical at Village Theatre, Take Me America. It’s funny when I first started doing theatre, I was doing a lot of musicals, but I haven’t done them in years. I’m always interested in new works. I’m excited for my friend Connor Toms to be in Red with Denny Arndt at the Rep. I’m really excited about Midsummer and this opportunity to be at Intiman. And I have the good fortune at the beginning of 2012 to be in The Odd Couple at Village. I finally get to work with Chuck Leggett which is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I’ve been kind of remiss in seeing fringe theatre so I want to check out Theatre Schmeater and Balagan, and other small companies. I want to make it a goal to see their work this year.

Which Shakespeare character do you most identify with?: Wow. It’s scary because I have two different sides of that. I think there’s a lot of Andrew Aguecheek in me. But, unfortunately, there is a lot of Iago in me on those bad days.