This Q&A was conducted by UNLV’s Stefano 'Stebos' Boselli, assistant professor of theatre history and dramaturgy in the College of Fine Arts
Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor offers a vivid snapshot of a middle-class social assemblage in Elizabethan England. I had only watched this play in video but was curious to finally see it realized on a physical stage. I met with the director Sean Boyd after a run-through rehearsal and asked for his views on his creative process.
Stebos: Since your arrival at UNLV in 2021, you’ve been involved in several productions at the Nevada Conservatory Theatre as stage combat and movement specialist, but this is the first time you direct the whole show and a complex play to boot: how was your experience working with such a large cast of both graduate and undergraduate students? How was working in the round?
Boyd: I loved having the big cast. Particularly one that – as you say – runs the gamut of our acting cohort from undergrad all the way up to grad students. This is an ensemble show, and so I wanted to cast the show fully. Twenty-two total actors! Having that many at one time might seem chaotic… but my experience is it brings a healthier atmosphere. Everyone feels like they are contributing. At least that’s my hope. And this ensemble supported each other all the way through: many stayed after they were released from rehearsal to watch their fellow actors do their work, supporting them as an audience. It was an absolute gift to have that environment and commitment.
Working in the round was going to be a challenge, but I really wanted to do it for a couple of reasons. One is pedagogical: actors have to figure out how to work in so many different types of spaces both on stage and on screen, and giving them the chance to work in the round helps them learn that skill. On the other side of that was the audience’s relationship to the show. I’m not a big believer in the separation of audience and performers: walling off the performance with a proscenium space just didn’t feel like the right move. I want the audience to know that we’ve been waiting for them to come in not just to view but to add to the show. I feel that way in particular about works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The use of asides isn’t just a functional way to convey information, it’s a means for the actor to connect to the audience and vice versa. It’s been hugely rewarding, and I think it brings an overall vibrancy to the production and the performances.
Stebos: The Merry Wives depicts such an intricate social network, with multiple families, locations, friendly and less friendly relationships, masters and servants, and conflicting strategies to either lead to new marriages or disrupt existing ones. Shakespeare doesn’t exactly help the audience understand what’s going on for quite a while. How did you and the performers work to clarify all these storylines for the audience?
Boyd: In practical terms, we put those who are most closely connected in similarly colored costumes. All of the Page family in a certain color, all of the Ford family in a certain color, Falstaff and his crew in another color, and so on. We also played with status: not social status, but the shifting status within the context of a scene. There are many times when a so-called “low” character has prominence or status over a “high” character. This is particularly so with someone like Mistress Quickly, who is said to be a maid and general worker for Dr. Caius, but pretty much runs his show as well as everyone else’s – save the pair of Mistress Page and Mistress Ford. It’s a fun dynamic to play with.
Stebos: Also, Shakespeare’s language may often sound obscure to the audience because of the passage of time and the evolution of English across centuries (and you cannot count on footnotes!). Were there cases when you had to either cut or modify the text or maybe translate it into more contemporary English to aid comprehension?
Boyd: Tons of cuts. I cut entire subplots that have no relevance to a contemporary audience. Did some word changing as well: turning Pumpion into Pumpkin, for instance. Shakespeare didn’t care about doing that to bring stories into his time, he gave no thought to anachronisms, so I haven’t either.
Stebos: The Merry Wives is an unashamedly comical play with farcical and slapstick moments. How did you highlight the comedy?
Boyd: Some of the comedy is just inherent in the actual text. Two characters in particular have very distinct dialects. And they are written in such a way that they are exaggerated, especially the French Doctor, Dr. Caius. I also constantly encouraged the actors to make the broadest choices when they could and then refine their offers. That way the play can feel real, but also slightly exaggerated to help the rhythm of the comedy.
We also have a slew of gifted physical actors in this show. Their commitment to safe but slightly exaggerated movements, gestures, and acting choices, helps to bring the characters to life in a way that is on the fringe of exaggeration but still real, still human, not caricatures, in the same way that many contemporary sitcoms do. Peccadillos are gold for characters like these, and this ensemble invented some great ones for their characters.
Stebos: The play offers a few episodes that draw on your skills with stage combat and movement in general, such as the beating of Falstaff, a broomstick battle, or a fall into a laundry basket. Can you speak of them in more detail?
Boyd: I did a lot of work on individual physical comedy bits, but I yielded all the responsibility for the combat to our fight director Drew Callahan and his assistant Skylar Doran. It’s essential when you have fights in a comedy that they tell the story of the physical altercations while not changing the tone of the play. And I think Drew and Skylar did a great job with it.
Stebos: It is said that the play was a special request by Queen Elizabeth I to have the character of Falstaff back, after seeing him in the historical plays Henry IV, Part 1 and 2. There, Falstaff had a more marginal role as a bad influence on Prince Hal, the future king Henry V, but in The Merry Wives the play hinges more pointedly on demonstrating over and over how he becomes the butt of the merry wives’ practical jokes and eventually the town’s scapegoat. Although a “Sir,” his behavior and ethical lapses makes him one of the “lowest” characters in the play. How did you ask Taylor Hanes, our guest artist, to approach the role or what conversations between you addressed this crucial character?
Boyd: A good question. It’s a tricky thing. You need to make him enough of a rogue in the early scenes that the wives’ revenge strategy has meaning. But if you don’t make him salvageable by the end of the play, then you’ve only shown a target of social satire, not a person capable of growth. I asked Taylor to look at him as a bit of a blend of someone we could know, and an allegorical character of the time – the weakening of England’s old hierarchy to one with a rising middle class. Falstaff sort of embodies that shift. As a character though, he’s well past his prime, desperately trading on what he’s had for most of his life (reputation and status) to get food, money, and the “conquests” afforded him in the new society – in this case sex with two married women of the rising landed gentry. His tools are rusty and blunt though, and his tactics tired. He only has the same old stories, the same old habits, like the high school quarterback who still recounts the clutch touchdown pass to anyone who’ll listen, but thirty years after graduation.
It’s a lot to balance. Falstaff needs to be convinced (in his own mind) that he’s still as alluring as ever, that his mojo still works – whether in the bedroom or the town square. He also needs to shed it all at the end and accept his fate and wrongs in the final scenes or we don’t have a person, but only the allegory.
Stebos: When I watched the run-through tonight, the performers didn’t have their costumes yet, but I understand these will be a huge part of the show’s visual appeal. Can you say something about your initial ideas of what kind of costumes to use for the show and how these ideas matured in conversation with the costume designer?
Boyd: Initially, I came up with some general ideas, a color palette that I was interested in, and introduced them to both the scene and costume designer in the early production meetings. And then it was a matter of a number of conversations to refine my very broad ideas, then further refine them once the actors began their fittings and we could see how ideas “played out” in reality. Critical to all of this process was to make sure that the actors could move freely and safely, as this is a very physical play.
Now, the costumes do a lot of heavy work on this show. As I mentioned earlier, they identify the groups of characters who are somehow tied together directly. They set the time and place of the play, in this case, the contemporary United States. Many of them heighten the characters beyond just contemporary realism into a slightly exaggerated version of it. There is one moment that is very heightened, almost a play within the play, where the townspeople pull a huge fast-one on Falstaff. They dress up in costumes… And it’s been up to the costume designer to create those costumes in such a way that both heighten that scene and remain rooted in the actual text. Without giving anything away, it’s almost like introducing an episode from A Midsummer Night’s Dream – another Shakespearean piece – into this play.
Stebos: After spending so much time with the text in rehearsal, which of the play’s themes speak to you more? How did your initial concept evolve through rehearsal? Or, what should the audience take away from this production?
Boyd: Redefinition, and upending expectations is a big undercurrent to the show. I saw this early, but didn’t fully feel how deep it ran until rehearsals.
I don’t think it’s any mistake that the most powerful characters in this play are women – Mistress Ford, Mistress Page, and Mistress Quickly. It’s in the title. The use of the word “merry” during this time, didn’t just mean happy… But also meant someone willing to “explore” outside their marriage. So, there is a connotation here that is upended by how Mistresses Page and Ford work out their revenge on Falstaff for propositioning them, redefining the expectation. Mistress Page has a line “Wives may be merry, and yet honest too” (Act 4, Scene 2). It’s at the heart of the redefinition of the word and expectations of what it means. The wives are steeped in this, but so is Quickly. Her “low” status doesn’t dictate how she interacts with anyone.
So, too, with Anne Page, Mistress Page’s daughter, who redefines her parents’ expectation by not marrying the man her father has chosen for her, Abraham Slender, or the man her mother has chosen, Dr. Caius, but instead Fenton. By independently choosing her own path she redefines herself to herself as well as to her family. In turn, Master Ford goes through a massive redefinition of his character, seeing the folly of his jealousy. Falstaff, does as well. In sum, the play is rife with folks redefining themselves or working against expectations to do so.
Stebos: Thanks for letting me and our audience peek into your and the creative team’s process, Sean. Looking forward to a truly merry evening at the Nevada Conservatory Theatre!
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