SPOTLIGHT: Robert D. Salas '08 & Winter Mead III '08

The partnership of Robert D. Salas ’08 and Winter Mead III ’08 is mostly a testament to the luck of freshman rooming assignments. The former freshman hallmates are currently co-directing their second play in two years, a production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in the Loeb Ex.

Salas: Sophomore fall, we co-directed “The White Rose” by Lillian Garrett-Groag—about German youth in Nazi Germany—and we’ve been working together artistically since.

Mead: We share a similar artistic vision. With directing, there can’t be two different directions, but we do have two different perspectives, and that’s helpful, because whatever Rob doesn’t pick up, I can pick up, and whatever I don’t pick up, Rob can pick up.

Orchestrating a production of Shakespeare is a feat for any director, but the limitations of the college stage present unique challenges, leaving room for creative solutions.

Salas: If you’re going to do Shakespeare for a college audience in the Ex, you can’t do a three hour behemoth of a play. If you’re going to do this show full-on, it’s going to be three hours, it’s going to have 20 people in it, and it’s going to have effects and general badassness. Because of the way the budget works here, the size of the talent pool, and the attention span of the college audience, we made it so it’s 10 characters, cut down the play so it’s about two hours, and renewed some things that would have been budget problems. So we’re adapting, yeah, but rewording Shakespeare? No, all it is is trying to take this enormous, fantastic play and fit it into our purposes.

Mead: We’re not losing anything from the storyline, and, with 10 characters, I think it makes it more intimate. The focal points are the characters, and everything else acts as a funnel to center that focus on the characters. We’re not professionally trained, and a lot of people have packed schedules, so having 10 characters gives us more time to help people develop their language and also develop their characters.

The music of the show was important to both directors, and they used their personal experience and expertise to create an original soundtrack that would enhance the production without drawing attention away from the action or the character development.

Salas: I feel like a lot of people do “cool” stuff rather than well-chosen stuff. I feel that that does not lend itself to be kind of obscure aesthetically, which I think music should be in a play—stripped down and open for interpretation. We have some original Flamenco music that I composed with my dad, and that’s going to be the kind of narrator of the show. All of the transitions are going to be a single guitar playing.

In line with the subtlety of the music, the technical aspects of the show cater to the directors’ minimalist philosophy.

Salas: Our style for the show, which is also our credo, is to give more agency to the actors than the director. Everything is stripped down, the timing is neutral, the set is minimal, the costumes are softly suggesting a militaristic setting, but are still abstract.

Salas and Mead chose “Julius Caesar” because they believe it’s the best of Shakespeare’s plays to put on.

Mead: It’s almost like two plays within one. The first act is amazing, because there’s all this build up and then there’s an assassination. The second act, though, is just action-packed, and there’s so much irony within it. It’s weird because—not to play on words or anything—but there’s a lot of backstabbing going on in the first act and then a lot of front-stabbing going on in the second act.

“Julius Caesar” runs from March 22-24 at the Loeb Experimental Theatre.