Dean Paul Gibson Dreams of Faeries and Shakespeare

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 20:21:55 -0500

INTERVIEW WITH DEAN PAUL GIBSON
Director, A Midsummer Night�s Dream for Bard on the Beach 2006.

EntVan Editor: Dean, the first I saw you was in George Walker�s Problem Child at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. So, are you now a problem adult?

Gibson: Am I problem adult? Theoretically, probably. But actually for this production I have relied heavily on my inner child without sounding all �New Age� about it. It�s been great to be a kid again.

EntVan: Were you visiting the faeries at the bottom of your garden?

Gibson: Visiting the faeries. Because it isn�t easy being a faerie.

EntVan: But this is such a magical production. Patsy Cline meets Mendelssohn. The musical is phenomenal. How did you come up with that?

Gibson: I am lucky enough that I have sound designers, Meg Roe and Alessandro Juliana, have the same sensibility and sense of humour that I have. We love beautiful music. We have eclectic tastes in music and when I told them that this was going to be an eclectic �mixed bag� for this show. That gave them license to take all kinds of liberty and drawing from centuries of music � both 21st century and the past centuries.

EntVan: Any Philip Glass in there?

Gibson: It sounds like it. There is something like it there. Certainly a nod to Philip Glass.

EntVan: Last year at Bard on the Beach you had a theme on shoes � big, colourful shoes for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in particular. Where did you start on this one?

Gibson: Where did I start? I started with seeing an interesting fashion spread. I think it was in Vanity Fair magazine. I saw some really interesting pictures of these women and men that looked quasi-Victorian. And then there was another photograph of somebody in a circus, and I just love that. I love that world. It�s haunting, it�s troubled, it�s mischievous and somehow these worlds represent or come together with the fairy world that Shakespeare had created. And the ideas, of course, are centuries old.

EntVan: And is still valid today.

Gibson: We borrow, of course. Well we talk about that all the time. Every culture has their own idea of what fairies or elves are. As I say, my mother used to always, �Oh, such and such is away with the faeries.� And whatever that meant. I kind of know what it meant in my family and within that context. But everybody can say something different. �It was the elves.� Or �It was the gremlins that made it happen.� And they�ll blame it on all kinds of other things. It�s the idea that there are things out that are unexplained, or are inexplicable. So we can blame it on the fairies. And we know that they are well intended, not malevolent � mischievous perhaps.

EntVan: You�ve got a multi-layered story � a play-within-a-play � how do you all of that straight keep it clear for the audience, even though it�s been told so many times?

Gibson: I think it�s continuity. What�s important for me is that I try to establish a world right at the beginning. I like to be able to go �Boom � this is where you are.� I like to tell the audience, �This is where you are. This is what is going to happen.� So that they can go, �Okay, this is a blended world. This is a fantasy.� Right away that is what they can click into.

Then, within those parameters � in fantasy and dreams � anything is possible. I have, therefore, given myself license, as well as the company to say, �We�re going to take all kind of chances here and we�re going to do something different. And we�re going to do the unexpected.�

And how do I corral all of that and make that a story? I don�t have to. Shakespeare did that. He wrote the play. You listen to the words, you make a few judicious cuts and keep the story moving, but we get the gist, we get the idea. Even if you don�t understand every word.

I always say to my actors, �intention survives any kind of language barrier.� That�s a really big thing. What do you need? And we are willing to go through all kinds of things to get what we need; whether we are hungry, whether we need money . . . you can smell it on people, so you don�t need any kind of language, because body language and need survives any kind of barrier.

Bard on the Beach continues through September 24 with >i>A Midsummer Night�s Dream, Measure for Measure, The Winter�s Tale and Troilus and Cressida.

Call 604739.0559 for tickets/info or visit The Bard on the Beach website at:

EntertainmentVancouver.com - Directors

Dean Paul Gibson Dreams of Faeries and Shakespeare