What attracts you to wanting to play this role?
What is it in the play that gnaws at you, or amazes you?
What is your personal connection to what you love or want to explore?

“Julius Caesar” was the first of Shakespeare plays aside from “Hamlet,” with which I became emotionally bonded. My 10th grade high school teacher allowed us extra credit for memorizing and reciting from the Shakespeare plays we were studying. As a teenager this was a godsend, because my written assignments were almost never submitted on time, and my test scores usually hovered disastrously between C- and D+. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy being in school, it’s just that I was possessed by a boundless and joyful chaotic energy that probably would have been defined as “attention deficit disorder,” had that term been coined back in the 1950s.

Anyhow, when the class was assigned “Julius Caesar,” and the memorization and recitation of Brutus’s and Antony’s funeral orations dangled as bait for extra credit, I leapt at the chance and was hooked forever by the play. In those days Antony was the hero of the play, and Brutus and Cassius were the villains. Somehow, I was oblivious of Antony’s doings in the first scene of Act 4 – harsh, unfeeling, and self serving.

But all it takes to get a different perspective on one of Shakespeare’s works is to play a different role in a different production. In my early 20’s while a student at the University of Colorado, I was cast as Cassius: I dyed my hair black, created a Roman nose out of mortician’s wax, and became the hero of the play. Caesar and Antony were the villains, Brutus was my best friend (despite a certain tardiness of comprehension), and Caesar’s assassination was totally justified.

In my mid 30’s, I once more had occasion to revisit the play when as drama instructor for Town School in San Francisco, I directed a student production. The 8th graders played the leads, the 7th graders the supporting roles, and the 6th graders were the Roman plebs. Finally, in my role as director (and with advancing maturity and experience), I began to discern that Shakespeare didn’t stock “Julius Caesar” with heroes and villains, but rather with flawed human beings best characterized by one of Shakespeare’s own insights (though coming from another play) – “The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipt them not, and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.”

In my late 30’s I was able to realize my youthful dream of playing Mark Antony when I was cast in that role for Jerry Turner’s production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF). And this Antony incorporated all of those dark shades I blithely ignored in my teens.

In my mid 40’s I again obtained a fresh perspective on the play when I essayed Brutus in Michael Edwards’ production at Shakespeare Santa Cruz.

Then in my late 50’s I had the riveting experience of gaining yet deeper insights into “Julius Caesar” when I dramaturged the play for Laird Williamson’s dark production at OSF. When Laird asked me to assemble brief historical biographies of all the characters in the play, little did I know that a new hobby (obsession?) was about to be born – the study of 1st Century B.C. Roman History.

One goal remained, that of playing the title role itself: one of the most enigmatic characters Shakespeare ever wrote – a man at once powerful and weak, wise and foolish, egotistical and selfless – whose spirit dominates the play. After our successful collaboration on “King Lear” in 2006, when Bob and Lesley asked me if there was anything I’d like to do with MSC in the future, I blurted out “I’d very much like to play the role of Julius Caesar!” And the rest will be history.

Is there a moment or two in this play you find particularly moving or fascinating?

Midway through the play Caesar’s assassins stand over his corpse and bathe their hands in his blood. One of them asks,

“How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents unknown?”

This question was first spoken 410 years ago by an actor on the platform stage of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. I find it moving that the baton of that question has been relayed down through the centuries and will be picked up this summer by another actor upon another platform stage in the first performance ever of “Julius Caesar” in the Forest Meadows Theatre.

What would you like the audience to get out of the experience of seeing it?

Ideally this will depend, of course, on the shape our particular production takes. However, I personally would like them to leave pondering this thought: do evil so that good will result, and see what happens.