//

Joy in the Park: A Conversation with Director Saheem Ali About Merry Wives

The Public Theater’s associate artistic director discusses the genesis of his ebullient production of Shakespeare’s play.

Saheem Ali on Merry Wives at Shakespeare in the Park
Photo: Joan Marcus

Judging by the energized crowd at a recent production of Merry Wives at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, New York City has reawakened after the ravages of a pandemic. Shakespeare in the Park was cancelled for the first time in its 59-year history last year due to Covid-19, and not even a thunderstorm, which delayed the performance I attended by two hours, could dampen the joy of celebrating the return of a beloved summer rite.

This version of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor has been skillfully adapted by Jocelyn Bioh, a New York playwright of Ghanian descent. She stays fairly close to the original, which follows the shenanigans employed by the resourceful Madam Page and Madame Ford to foil the lecherous advances of lovable scoundrel Falstaff, only transposing the action to present-day Harlem within the neighborhood’s West African immigrant community.

This ebullient production features an all-black cast, who speak in a euphony of West African dialects, and is directed by Saheem Ali, a Swahili immigrant from Kenya. I recently chatted with Ali, appointed last year as Associate Artistic Director and Resident Director at the Public Theater, about the genesis of the production, now playing through September 18.

You were set to make your directorial debut at the Delacorte Theater last year before the pandemic changed everything. What happened next?

Yes, it was going to be Richard II last summer and then we had to cancel. That was a huge disappointment, but I got to do a couple of Shakespeare radio plays. Then, as we were putting together our season thinking about this summer, I thought I really wanted to have a comedy. It felt that after the year and half that everyone had been through, if they wanted to come to the Delacorte, they’d want something light, that had joy and vitality and humor. So, I chose Merry Wives because it’s a raucous comedy that I thought would be really enjoyable.

What’s your take on Merry Wives and Jocelyn Bioh’s adaptation?

I’m always looking for ways in Shakespeare to find my particular way in that’s really subjective and personal. As I was reading the script, I thought I could hear a West African dialect with some of the scenes. I’m from East Africa and I’m familiar with the West African culture and entertainment and I thought it could be really exciting to bring in this community and dialect, and also make it a New York story. I’m an immigrant and I’ve spent some time up in Harlem with friends who were of West African origin. It felt like really a beautiful way to celebrate one of the things that was really special about New York, which is the immigrant community, and to bring a humor that would really heighten Shakespeare’s text. So, I asked Jocelyn to come on board because she’s a comedic writer who I have collaborated with a lot, and her heritage is West African. It just really fit with her aesthetic sensibilities and with her personal identity.

How important is it for you to have people of color in your productions?

It’s actually crucial for me that there’s a person of color at the center of the work that I do. It always felt that in a lot of the theater that I went to people of color were relegated to the margins. So whenever I work on new plays, and with classics as well, I really like to make deliberate choices about how a person of color is fundamental to the story. And in this production, the entire community that’s going to be on stage consists of people of color. It’s been a really hard year for the African American community in this country in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. So I really thought about ways to highlight black stories and black vitality, and give a new dimension to the black experience in America, not only in terms of highlighting immigrants but also allowing black people to be joyful and vibrant and have vitality and humor in their lives in a way that’s unapologetic and deliberate. It felt subversive to do the play this way and also make a statement in a progressive way.

Advertisement

Then why do Shakespeare at all? What is it that keeps you interested in his plays?

My deep love and appreciation of Shakespeare, and what speaks to me in his plays, is the human condition and the human experiences. I see the characters and the relationships and the struggle that they’re going through and for me that could relate to anyone. That’s the reason why Shakespeare has lasted for centuries and why he’s done all over the world, because at its essence there’s something about the human condition that he’s tapped into.

My first Shakespeare was in Kenya. I was in a production of Romeo and Juliet when I was a teenager. It was an all-black company, so it wasn’t imbued with a sense of elitism or colonialism or [being] white. I entered Shakespeare with a company of people of color, and now that just goes hand in hand. So, whatever the connotations are, I strongly believe in dismantling the barriers for people having an appreciation for Shakespeare, whether it’s because they feel they aren’t smart enough or haven’t studied him or because they aren’t white. All these barriers are manufactured, so I made it part of my mission, whenever I work with Shakespeare, to show that it doesn’t matter who’s embodying the characters. Because, at its essence, what they’re going through, we all go through as human beings.

I know what you mean. I grew up in Sri Lanka, and when we did Shakespeare there, everyone—whether they were playing royals or commoners—looked just like me.

Yes, that’s a perspective that’s unique to us because we grew up outside the country. And one of the things that I can do in my work is to show that. It doesn’t happen enough here.

What are the dialects that we hear on stage in this production? Was it difficult to infuse them into the text of Shakespeare’s play?

We hear Nigerian, Ghanian, Sierra Leonian, and Liberian. And African American, of course. I needed to find a very specific group of actors in order to create a community that was going to inhabit these roles. I knew it was going to be an all-black cast, but I needed actors who had an affinity with Shakespeare texts, who were able to work with dialect and who had comedic chops. And, you know, you hear something in your head and you imagine that it works and then the first time I got a group of actors to read the text out loud in these dialects, it was really a beautiful affirmation of the concept. Even when they’re speaking Shakespeare text with these rhythms, it still has a truth and a vitality to it. Then Jocelyn and I worked on the text for different West African identities and made decisions about whether this family is Ghanian or that family is Nigerian, and also, because it was set in Harlem, which roles are African American, as opposed to African immigrant. So, our entry point was broad strokes, and then as we continued to work and develop the piece, we made decisions and just understood the implications of each of the decisions. In America, immigrants are the outsiders, because they aren’t born here, but in our particular community on the stage, Falstaff, who’s African American, ends up being the outsider instead of being a member of the majority community.

The Merry Wives of Windsor is not considered high on the list of Shakespeare plays.

No, it’s not. The play has a very xenophobic, nationalistic bent. In the original text, the characters make fun of those who don’t have English accents or have outside identities. They’re the butt of the jokes. We completely subverted that by having the sense of otherness being not only taken for granted, but also welcomed and celebrated. The beautiful thing about Shakespeare’s plays is that they survive such interrogation and reconfiguration. People can give them all sorts of different settings and they all survive.

Advertisement

What was it like preparing for this production during the pandemic?

It was a real challenge because we didn’t know what the Covid restrictions would be like. My philosophy was to take it each day as it comes. We just completely set out to do something working from the most restrictive of conditions, where actors had to be masked and be six feet apart and the audience consisted of a few hundred people. As things have loosened up, it has been really great to have more audience members and fewer restrictions for the actors to perform together. It has been really glorious to feel as if we’re coming out of this pandemic by being in live theater again—to share space and be in community with other human beings.

How do you feel now with Merry Wives playing to live audiences every night?

Nothing will ever substitute that special thing that theater does. And the thing that I had missed the most was sitting in the audience and hearing people laughing. The sounds of rows of people laughing together in unison is something which we had just had not heard during the pandemic. We set out to create something joyful and we definitely achieved it.

Gerard Raymond

Gerard Raymond is a travel and arts writer based in New York City. His writing has appeared in Broadway Direct, TDF Stages, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and other publications.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.