In Conversation with Joseph Haj

We sat down with the Guthrie’s Artistic Director to discuss his upcoming production of ’A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

Our Aesthetic and Lifestyle Editor Jerrod Sumner caught up with Joseph Haj, the Guthrie’s artistic director and the director of the upcoming production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Haj shared his interpretation of the play as explicitly about love in its various forms and stages. He emphasizes how the play examines aspects of love relationships, from young lovers’ passion to long-term partnership challenges. This production promises magic, music, and love stories as only the Guthrie can deliver.

Pictured (L to R): Ari Derambakhsh, Joseph Haj, and Jonathan Luke Stevens

Photo by Joshua Cummins

I was really taken at the first rehearsal preview when you said that ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ or your version of it, is explicitly about love.
I think anytime any director starts on a play, there’s a lot of reading around the play itself. Obviously, one reads and studies the play, but then what’s around it. What’s the shape? You know, Midsummer’s been in the world for 400 years.

I stumbled on a bit of research that indicates that most Shakespeare scholars agree that this play was written for a wedding, for a couple getting married, though that couple is lost to history. And I was like, wow, we’re going back and rereading the play. Knowing that little bit of research just broke the thing wide open for me. It was so clearly an examination of chapters of love, possibilities, and challenges within a partnered relationship.

I just got so excited about that. Young lovers, young people being young people, and, you know the heat and the appetite and all of what surges in young love. And then on the other extreme, there’s Shakespeare with Titania and an Oberon who have been together literally forever and are in a really tough patch in their relationship; they’re there, the things are going so badly that the seasons are upside down in the human world, there’s drought, and there’s flood because this immortal fairy couple king and queen aren’t quite getting along. So, it looks at the challenges and experience and heartbreak and opportunity and young love; it looks at the challenges that exist in long-term relationships.

I agree there are so many versions of love in the play, even beyond the big couples romping in the wood.
And then you have these smaller stories that also examine the partnered relationships, Hippolyta and Theseus, in a kind of arranged marriage that is a circumstance in the play. You have Titania waking and falling in love with Bottom through the magic of the play. So you have this relationship that is outside of Titania’s wedlock. I just think the play is looking at love in so many directions, and I think examining all that’s good and beautiful about love and not being shy about the attendant challenges that come with being in love.

And I think that’s a beautiful way to frame the play for me and the room. Again, it’s funny and silly. It touches a lot of the bases, and we intend to touch every one of them.

Is there one relationship that holds significance to you personally?
I love the young lovers in the play and that quartet; they fight so hard for what they want.

Let’s pretend that none of us know how Midsummer will go. We don’t know it. We’ve never seen it. And I think, if you read that first scene, that could be the beginning of a tragedy. Egeus comes with his daughter, Hermia, and says she either marries the man I’ve chosen for her or she dies. Hermia is there hoping that Theseus, the king, will have sympathy. And the king basically says you have three options: you can marry the guy your dad wants for you, you can go to a nunnery, or you can die the death as per the law of the law of Athens.

And so, Hermia runs off to the forest with Lysander. It’s not some romantic romp. She’s going to save her life. And because she will not, she will not shrug off her love for Lysander, because of her dad’s edict and what her dad is requiring.

You’re right, it could be such a different outcome for them all.
I’ve been encouraging folks in the rehearsal room that we don’t get ahead of the storytelling. We let that first scene be just what it is. And then we find out in pieces and in parts, the thing swells and grows into a kind of magic in the woods and the whole romp of what that thing is.

But that’s no reason to work backward and make that first scene a romp. It’s not. So,  it’s fun for us actually to move through the piece. Oh, my gosh, that’s a tremendous threat to this young woman who has the courage to run away to the forest and try to do something for herself. And then there’s Helena, who’s so in love that she will find her way out there, too.

What am I saying with all that? That’s the danger of the play, which is that it could just be a confection, just a sort of gossamer confection. And while we will get after all of the funny in that play, and there’s plenty of it, I think a strong production of that play wants to hold the bottom of that play as well, which is, what’s at risk, what’s at stake, what happens if this thing doesn’t go well, and making sure we’re anchoring those things.

How do you want audiences to approach this production, especially those who might dismiss it as another Shakespeare at the Guthrie?
Look, there’s a reason this play has never been out of rotation. It’s one of the great, great plays. It’s immensely enjoyable. What’s the word I want? It’s immensely approachable.

It’s not unlike how we think about Hamlet. Every 10 or 12 years, the Guthrie needs to make another Hamlet, given where we are in the world and a new generation of theatergoers coming to know that play.

I would put Midsummer in that group, this small group of plays that a theater that is committed to the classics and committed to Shakespeare is periodically returning to. And, you know, it will be 10 years since our last production of it.

There are challenges in every chapter of a partnered relationship or a love relationship, and Shakespeare is doing a very good job across the spectrum examining all that is beautiful about that.

There is a renewed push to get a younger audience interested in or reinvested in Shakespeare. Is this production for all ages?
I think for young people, of course, they tune to that quartet of young lovers. But it is also a beautiful play for mature audiences because there’s an equal examination and interrogation of mature love and what that means.

I mean, the kids are all besotted with one another, and they fear they’re eager to have a perfect life together. And then there are Titania and Oberon, who’ve been together forever and are arguing about how to unload the dishwasher.

There are challenges in every chapter of a partnered relationship or a love relationship, and Shakespeare is doing a very good job across the spectrum examining all that is beautiful about that.

It’s not a musical, but it is a play with a lot of music. There are many songs in the production, as well as incidental music. There are actors who play instruments in the production. We’re having a lot of fun creating the world of the play. And the music is an additional sort of powerful entry point into the play for folks.

Do you have a favorite passage from the play?
No, I love all of it. I think the thesis of the play… Lysander tells us early, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

And so, what we get isn’t any sort of, it all goes perfectly. Everything is rocky; everything that is hard has to be fought for.

Last question. Minnesota Monthly is dedicated to the spirit of Minnesota. What does that mean to you?
There’s something about Minnesotans’ generosity of spirit and curiosity. I love how Minnesotans are joiners. They come to things and go to things. I love how curious the community always seems to be. We see it in the theater world in the Twin Cities, not just at the Guthrie but all around town.

It’s a citizenry that is interested in its growth through the participation of life from the arts, and it’s thrilling to me how much Minnesotans care about the arts. So, I think there’s something in that that is a spirit of Minnesota to me.