Interview with Director Eleanor Holdridge

Shakespeare’s Richard II tackles themes of authoritarianism, greed, and the implications one person’s actions can have on an entire country. Director Eleanor Holdridge’s contemporary approach aims to be one audiences can relate to and, most importantly, be able to make connections with in our modern day and age. With a background in classic Shakespearean poetry and verse, Director Eleanor Holdridge tells us about her unique and modern take for Richard II.

Orlando Shakes: Tell us about your background and career history.

Eleanor Holdridge: With a spoken-word record producer for a mother, I grew up listening to recordings of Shakespeare plays. I would imagine in intricate detail the worlds around those voices in the dark, swirling colors and shapes and bold bits of action. In college I wanted to first be a modern dance choreographer and then a lighting designer when my knee went bad. But I went to plays all the time on Broadway and the West End, Off-Broadway and the Fringe. After a few brief jobs in theatre development for Jerome Robbins and The New York Shakespeare Festival, I realized no one was doing the plays I wanted to see, and so co-founded a company to produce little known classical plays by Marlowe, Webster, Aphra Behn and the like. We couldn’t afford directors, so I stepped up and began to direct those plays and fell in love with the process. Finally, a few years later, I realized I wanted a more codified approach. I wanted to learn what I was trying to teach myself. And so I went to the Yale School of Drama where I expanded my idea of what a director is and what is possible in the theatre. Since I’ve graduated, I’ve enjoyed a freelance career in which I’ve directed 23 of Shakespeare’s plays, many of them multiple times, and developed new work with contemporary playwrights. Ten years ago, wanting more of a home, I became a professor at Catholic University of America, running the Directing Program, and most recently I have become Chair. It is an absolute joy to both try to develop programs within my University and continue to direct compelling and challenging work.

Orlando Shakes: What is it about Richard II that you find enticing for audiences?

Director Eleanor Holdridge rehearses with the cast of Richard II. Photo by Lexie Hoag.

Eleanor Holdridge: It is a play filled with stunning poetry, rich with image and metaphor and it gets at some pretty deep existential questions about what makes us human and how we think of our own identity. Although the narrative of the original is challenging, in this streamlined cutting of the play, I think it is a roller-coaster ride as Richard and Bolingbroke strive for England. We get to see the fall of a quixotic and capricious ruler and the rise of a steadfast person of honor. We experience the cost of our actions and the rush of political action.

Orlando Shakes: How does this production bring something unique to the classic script?

Eleanor Holdridge: I want to take the idea of the ‘Divine Right of Kings’ that runs throughout the play as a simile for ‘Unconscious Male Bias.’ Bolingbroke, Richard’s challenger and cousin, is played by a woman and Richard’s assumption of kingly destiny has parallels, I hope, in our contemporary history. The story will be told by a troupe of eight story-teller actors who will navigate us through the text of the play—hopefully making it strongly contemporary. Men will be played by women and the actors play many parts.

Orlando Shakes: What are some key themes you hope the audience will identify in your rendition of Richard II?

I hope the audience will see themselves in the characters and our state as a nation.

Eleanor Holdridge

Actor Ryan Farley examines his reflection and self. Photo by Tony Firriolo.

Eleanor Holdridge: I hope the audience will see themselves in the characters and our state as a nation. Our striving to make things better and to experience the cost of our actions. I want to reflect on the relationship between warring parts of our families, and what our role is when we love them both. I am particularly thinking of the character of York, an honorable man whose duty to both his nephews is in conflict. I want us to think about the land in which we live in and what makes it ours.

Orlando Shakes: Any current events influence your portrayal of Richard II?

Eleanor Holdridge: Our president and GOP-led senate seems to come to mind. What is it to be a fit leader and how much experience and training does such a leader need? When is rebellion appropriate? Does resistance threaten the future foundation of the nation or should we trust the system in place. In a land divided so strongly, what are the qualities in a leader that can bring it together?

Orlando Shakes: What modern influences, such as style and setting, should we expect in this production?

Eleanor Holdridge: Shakespeare’s own troop presented his plays in the ‘present day.’ No matter when they were set—ancient Athens, medieval England, war-torn Cyprus—the actors wore the costumes of his own day. To me, the most natural way to do his plays is to do them the way he did: in the dress of the present day. Shakespeare’s language is at the core and heart of our language today and it is how we define ourselves and our humanity. And so, my go-to is almost always contemporary clothing—his words are the words of who we are today.

Orlando Shakes: How did you select which themes would be included in your design?

Eleanor Holdridge: By mining the images of the play itself. Shakespeare has images of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man running throughout the play. The parallel to the fall of the King is very strong, as is the idea that the King’s body is in a way the body of his land. Gaunt, one of Richard’s uncles, speaks of England as “this other Eden, demi-paradise.” And so the brilliant Ruthmarie Tenorio, the set designer, and I looked at pictures of English gardens and of representations of the garden of Eden.

Also,  there is the image of the mirror and its way of reflecting back the exterior of who we are but not the interior. The question of what makes us individual or what forms our identity become huge as Richard, once abdicated, questions who he is if he is not the King he was born to be. His identity is swept away and annihilated. He calls for a mirror in which to see himself and cracks it on stage to view the shattering of self. When he asks Bolingbroke to behold his broken self, she replies, “the shadow of your sorrow is the shadow of your face.” An allusion, I think, to Plato’s idea of the shadows on the wall. But Richard can only, in that moment, see that he looks the same yet everything is different.

And so, we’ve attempted to bring in the garden and the mirror and the stones of the English castles into a setting for our actor-storytellers and this amazingly beautiful and human tale.

Orlando Shakes: What do you hope audiences will take away from Richard II?

Eleanor Holdridge: A sense of excitement when they think of history and how it can reverberate today. That it can be fun and humorous and gutsy. I want them to want to come back to the Henry IV, Part 1 to see what the hell happens next. And I want them to think about women in leadership and the power of stories.