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New Clark play explores Shakespeare the man

What was Shakespeare like as a person? Who was he? Who were his friends? His enemies? What kind of family life did he have? These are some of the questions playwright and WSU professor Leroy Clark explores in his historical drama “Shakespeare’s Journey.”

The play is being staged by Mainstage Theatre tonight through Dec. 6 in Wilner Auditorium. Clark will give a pre-performance talk at 6:30 p.m. tonight (Friday, Dec. 4) at the Ulrich Museum.

Directed by J. David Blatt, the play explores the age-old conflict between family and career. It centers on a love triangle with Shakespeare torn between his love for his wife Anne and his love for the theater, epitomized by the great actor Richard Burbage.

“I began working on the play on Aug. 1, 1996, at the beginning of my sabbatical,” says Clark. “What inspired me was that here is a man considered to be the greatest playwright in the English language, a man about whom thousands of books and articles have been written, and yet there is no play that portrays the great writer at the height of his career. There is no play about Shakespeare the actor, Shakespeare the writer, Shakespeare the man.”

Clark says that he wanted to write an epic, a play on the large scale of a Shakespearean drama with five acts, many scenes and locales, and many characters. He wanted to capture the flavor of the period by recreating the structure and atmosphere of plays from that period. He also wanted to be historically accurate.

“I have followed the events of his life as they are known, fleshing them out and giving them life through my imagination. I think every writer uses his own experience as well as ideas gained through observation and research. I believe Shakespeare used many of his own experiences to flesh out his own plays, and I used incidents and lines from some of his plays to capture that spirit.”

The play begins in 1587 the day Shakespeare leaves his wife Anne in Stratford-upon-Avon to go to London with the Players. It ends in 1610 the day he retires from the stage after the opening of “The Tempest” and goes home. The 23 years in between tell the story of his struggle as an actor and playwright to carve out a living and how he uses his astute business sense to become a theater owner, a landowner, a landlord, a gentleman and one of the richest men in Stratford. It also explores his personal relationship with his wife, his mistress, his children and his friends.

“I did not set out to write a comedy or a tragedy,” says Clark. “I was after something more like Ibsen’s ‘Peer Gynt.’ I wanted to write a play that captures the kind of life I imagine Shakespeare lived. It is a romantic drama with people falling in and out of love, struggling to find happiness and fulfillment and seeking to better themselves. There are comic scenes, sad and tragic scenes, bawdy drinking scenes, sword fights, the constant battle of the sexes and the exchange of wit, moments of questioning existence and moments of exhilarating fun.”

DeAnna Winkler and Kenneth Mitchell rehearse
for “Shakespeare’s Journey,” which can be seen this weekend.

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