By staging the very first musical in Glimmerglass Opera’s history, director Diane Paulus was given a very unique challenge. Below are her thoughts on Kiss Me, Kate and her concept for the production.
As a director I’m always interested in the larger context of a performance. What I found really exciting about this Kiss Me, Kate was that we were not doing it “on Broadway,” we’re doing it at Glimmerglass. I thought it would be a big mistake, as did Michael MacLeod [General & Artistic Director], to try to compete with a Broadway revival of the musical instead we embraced the fact that this is the Glimmerglass Opera Festival staging the work.
The show Kiss Me, Kate is a play within a play. We see the backstage lives and bickering of these characters as well as the musical version of Taming of the Shrew that they are producing. I thought that it would be interesting to say that the offstage life is actually the Glimmerglass Opera Theater in 2008. Instead of seeing backstage at a Broadway house the audience will see the backstage of the festival. This includes every aspect of Glimmerglass: the Young Artists preparing for other shows, the fantastic crew, the setting of Cooperstown, and all of the other energy and excitement that comes along with creating a summer opera festival.
This idea works brilliantly with John’s set, which is a beautiful evocation of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. I loved the idea that all of the shows this season would be connected by sharing this one set. This shared space added another level to the concept that our Kiss Me, Kate is being done at Glimmerglass. The fact that the set is an evocation of a theater also helped us create the contrast between the backstage world and the play-within-the-play. I think the result is a very compelling way of addressing the challenge of what it means to do a musical at an opera festival.
photo credit:
1. Diane Paulus (center) speaking about her concept at the Production Seminar for Kiss Me, Kate. photo credit: Michael Manning.
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