Robert Blacker, Interviewed by Jacob Gallagher-Ross This interview was originally published in 2014 in The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy (ed. Magda Romanska). TheTheatreTimes.com is reposting it here with permission to celebrate the life and work of Robert Blacker who died recently. Robert Blacker worked as a dramaturg for forty years at New York’s Public Theatre, …
“With Shakespeare, we encouraged everyone to dig into the texts and find what is really there. Very often what we see in productions of Shakespeare are sentimental notions that come from false traditions which have evolved over the centuries. Tradition in theatre, Des would say, is often the last five productions you’ve seen of a play. And what we most often see are productions that are overcut and so have diminished the magnificence of the wide canvas that Shakespeare is presenting.”
“I was shocked to see that in the seven productions of Henry V produced at Stratford in its first 50 years, all but two had cut the most onerous action Henry takes in the play. At the battle of Agincourt, when he is badly outnumbered by the French, he orders the execution of his prisoners so he can use the soldiers guarding them on the battlefield. How can a King who is the presumed model of a good leader do this? Well, Shakespeare is more complex than usually presented. In Henry V he actually makes an implicit comparison between Henry and Machiavelli by paraphrasing one of The Prince’s most famous lines. My job as an institutional Dramaturg was to fight for the complexity in Shakespeare’s writing and promote the excavation of the text.”
