An interview with the director

One of the wonderful things about a play is that no two readers will see it exactly alike in their mind’s eye. Different themes in the text hold more or less weight for different people, and the way each one pictures the world and people of the play will differ, too. In this piece, dramaturg Anna Norcross talks with Aaron Schmookler, the director of the UMass Amherst Department of Theater production of The Importance of Being Earnest, about how he sees the world of the play.

Anna Norcross: What first drew you to The Importance of Being Earnest?
Aaron Schmookler: I just love anything with kind of heightened language. I really enjoy having language that crackles. I also just find the whole play to be lighthearted and fun in a way that I enjoy. In our society fun is almost like a guilty pleasure. It’s like there’s work and there’s fun and you’ve got to get your work done before you can have the fun. I don’t agree with that. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is definitely true and, you know, it’s no small part of why my work is theater because I find it fun and I can do both at once. I really appreciate about these characters that they are, many of them, in it for fun. If there is anything that I admire in these characters, it’s that they are unabashed about wanting to have fun, about wanting life to be that.

AN: The Importance of Being Earnest has a very specific time and place, the 1890s in Victorian England. Could you talk about the triviality in this world and what the world of these characters is?
AS: There is this really minute focus on appearance that is a big part of at least the upper orders, as they’re called in this play, in Victorian England where really what’s happening in any kind of profound, true way for somebody in their life is not nearly as important as what they are able to present. I know in literature and film and plays about the era you have these very high class, very well-to-do in some fashion, very well-regarded socialites who are penniless and somehow just get by, by dodging their creditors and relying on their friends. But because they are able to present this perfect demeanor, the perfect dress, their address is still in the fashionable parts of London, they’re still highly regarded.

AN: The Importance of Being Earnest was first performed in 1895, but you have a 2007 audience coming to see it. How has the 21st century perspective of your audience influenced your telling of this tale?
AS: Many of the productions that I’ve seen of this are a bunch of people standing around and talking to each other. It’s a living room drama where people spend a lot of time in chairs or stand still. And I don’t think we’ve got a whole lot of patience for that as a modern, 21st century audience, so we’re moving around more. Particularly in this country, comedy tends not to be very witty. It tends to be a lot more situational and a lot more slapstick and a lot more potty. I’ve introduced some of the slapstick, some of the more physical comedy, both to augment the wit and in some cases to point it up and kind of make it a little bit more obvious. And whether we were successful or not we’ll find out when we get an audience that either laughs or doesn’t. But it’s definitely been on my mind that wit is not something that we’re trained to as an audience. And it’s also something that I’m finding with my actors that it’s not something that we’re trained to much as performers, either. Being in the same sort of media milieu, wit doesn’t come as easily as some of the brasher kinds of comedy.

AN: There’s an artist’s image of Alfred Hitchcock that largely influenced the design of the production. What drew you to this image and how has it shaped the world of the play?
AS: It’s interesting, I can’t tell you what drew me to it because I just sat down one day and I had been thinking about the play and somehow that image just came into my mind. It just rose. And I was like, yeah, alright, Hitchcock. And then the drawing that you’re talking about is these kind of very spare outlines that kind of present, when taken in combination, the faintest glimmer of Alfred Hitchcock’s profile. But it’s unmistakably Alfred Hitchcock’s profile. I tried to shove it aside because it had nothing to do with my play. And I still kept trying to think of what was going to be the physical world of this play and I kept just picturing this very elaborate Victorian world and it just left me flat and so I kept asking myself, okay, well if it’s not that then what is it?

And Alfred Hitchcock kept coming into my head and finally I decided to stop trying to shove him aside. If my artistic impulse is this persistent about this, then there must be something there. Having accepted it, then it started to give up its secrets. One of which is on the most surface level, this veneer that I was talking about earlier, this sense of artifice. It doesn’t matter what really is behind a thing. What matters is that propriety, elegance, wit are suggested. And if they’re suggested, then maybe we’ll buy it and we won’t dig in any further. In the way that Alfred Hitchcock’s profile is suggested, maybe we just then suggest the set, suggest the setting of this Victorian space. Then, we’re on to something and we’re also saying something about this sense of veneer, and certainly a hint is different from a veneer but they’re related somehow.

Also, I’ve had all along the notion, going along with this veneer, the notion that reality is malleable. In the world of this play, as long as you can prove — or even not prove, but demonstrate — that something is so then it is, it is beyond question and there is nothing to argue about. If Cecily says to the man she’s just met today “we’ve been engaged for three months,” he is certainly taken aback and wonders how it is possible but as soon as she demonstrates it by showing the entry in her diary, then it’s so, it is beyond question. There is a way in which these characters create reality by their own will and by being able to demonstrate what they want to prove. We’ve extrapolated that to include this notion that they generate reality by force of will entirely.

And then finally, when I read the wit and find it funny, I feel smart. I know what he’s doing. I can see all of the little layers of meaning behind what he’s saying. And I can tell little manipulations that he is intending which is very exiting to me because I feel there is a lot of art these days that is about making people feel stupid. I’m excited to tell an audience to feel smart. And similarly to reading the script, when I look at this sketch of Hitchcock that is so minimal and so suggestive an image, I feel smart when I see Hitchcock. Oh, I can see Hitchcock, aren’t I smart? Oh, I can see this Victorian flat even though there is only a door and a hint of a ceiling, I feel smart.

Fun is a really necessary part of life and it’s as important as food, which is also important in this play. Algernon, one of the main characters, is constantly eating and I would be too if I could; I love food. So, food and fun, man. Good stuff.