'The White Snake' Conjures Up Some Magic At The Old Globe

This is trend -- Midday Edition three ________________________________________ The White Snake is based on an ancient tale about I snake spirit learn how to transform into beautiful women and live on earth. The arts reporter says it provides the perfect foundation for playwright and director Mary Zimmerman who sees neither is a playground for the imagination. Zimmerman has previously adapted the Odyssey, metamorphosis and Arabian nights and will be tackling treasure Island next. Here's the interview. ________________________________________ What attracted you to The White Snake. I came to this at the Shakespeare Festival and he suggested it. It's rare that I take something that somebody suggested. But it was right up my alley. It's an ancient tale. It is humorous and really profound and it has staging difficulties or challenges that are the kind of thing that attract me. Another with, how to do things -- flying to the air -- transformations -- magical acts tax battle. All that kind of thing. I love the challenge of how to make it happen inside the four walls of the theater. ________________________________________ Believe me -- once long ago in the middle of a bit country -- or toward the southwest there arose from the planes and reach into the clouds a single lonely Mountain. In this mountain to the top of was a cave and in the cave there was coiled a white snake. ________________________________________ You seem to have an attraction if not fairytales -- an attraction to things that have mythical qualities. ________________________________________ Like things with an ethical quality. The contrast this with the idea of domestic polity or realism or naturalism. I like the challenges of a staging things that have a large scope. Things that were written for the theater initially and therefore weren't conceived with the bounds of what the theater is supposed to do or can do easily. Rather, what literature can do which is anything. Try to figure out how to do that on stage. I love these eternal tales because I feel like but the very fact that they stuck around so long they've proven that they always have something to say. They aren't just around through a conspiracy of literary teachers or English teachers but because they earn their keep by continually being meaningful and having something to say about the human condition and what it's like to be a person. They aren't so contemporary or of the moment. They have an internal quality to them. White snake has a lot to say about the ideas which exist across culture about not being pulled by the appearance of things. Understanding the true nature of things. ________________________________________ Instead of falling in love with an ugly creature, you discover has a beautiful inner nature he is falling in love with a beautiful young woman whose true for is a reptile. Particular form is a very beautiful enlightened being -- a generous, kind, maternal loving caring being. The resolution to that is moving in the play, I think. ________________________________________ It satisfies something and it reassures us. ________________________________________ We can be seen for who we truly are and treated still loved. That's the gem of the play. ________________________________________ Like these old ideas. The old thoughts. Thoughts which address large questions. Yet, to it in a witty way and a deceptively beguiling and charming way. ________________________________________ You mentioned a sense of a lack of division. I found in a lot of Asian films there's a lack of division between the real and fantasy. It seems like they are always learn and moving back and forth. ________________________________________ And a lot of different cultures -- living with we call the supernatural as an everyday occurrence. But, one thing I find beguiling about the story is that it's based on the idea of I snakes -- snake spirit who practice the Tao and studied it and they can transform themselves into the shape of young maidens. Come down to the real world and see what it's like. The everyday world. Then they end up opening a pharmacy. That conjunction of the banality of a pharmacy or drugstore with something highly supernatural as the snake spirit is charming. ________________________________________ Dear friend, where shall be go? Oliver lies before us. How should we choose? We might go anywhere. Once I overheard a woodcutter who ventured up the mountain and I remember he's saying over and over -- in the sky we have heaven and on earth we have [indiscernible] three ________________________________________ In the sky we have heaven and on earth we have [indiscernible] Talk about the way you stage it. You want to trying to do cinematic effects -- there up in some Broadway place where they try to imitate Hollywood and big fancy effects. Yours seems to be a much more engaging way of -- simple but magical. ________________________________________ I think of my work on stage as playing in the backyard. I'm the Brascan. I admire will encounter and she said I will never be the artist I wasn't a child. I take that as a mantra. I tend to want to solve things inefficient imaginative and original ways that are also visually spectacular but theatrical. That would be done on film in that way. That would be done in any other form in that way. Have to do a rainstorm without actually importing rain. Or how to make a house seem to transform from a tumbledown shack into a palatial nobleman's house. With the simplest gesture. Making do with what we have or what is possible to make the impossible seem apparent. I feel that does engage the audience because they have to pull on their own resources of images within themselves that we all share in common and ears and intimacy created when everyone understands what this means. We have learned what it has meant over the course of the evening. I love that. ________________________________________ It seems you also keep the stories in their cultural of origin. You can temporize them or translate them to the United States or anything like that. ________________________________________ I feel I owe the audience a straight telling of the tale. That's not to say -- I think all my shows Pro in a kind of contemporary voice. They mix and match from the original language and in an offhand contemporary voice. I feel that I am due to the spirit of the moment of the scene, not making fun of something. I'm just -- that is where my voice is taking me with it. ________________________________________ Sometimes I don't care about meditation. Or transcendence. Of becoming any mortal at all. I just want to give it up and get away from her. Abandon my social world the pleasures. You shouldn't. ________________________________________ I'm Beth Accomando speaking with Mary Zimmerman playwright and director of The White Snake pay ________________________________________ To get involved with production and costume design? I don't write any script in advance. We design before I've written the script. I'm extremely involved in the vision of the design. The design must be what I call an open field of play because I don't exactly know what's going to happen on it. The set has to be full of potential though I'm not exact sure how I will use it. ________________________________________ Costume design is tricky. I've cast without necessarily knowing who is playing what were the character that will appear. The White Snake is easier than the way I work than the Odyssey because it take single narrative with it getting middle and end. When I do Arabian nights or fairytales I'm also having to structure the evening. I don't even know what stories I'm going to include. Of the 384 stories I don't know -- or all the fairytales -- I don't know which six or seven will make it in. So, the design for a show is tricky and not like -- the rehearsal process is different from any other. In the process I write in the hours before rehearsal and I bring in new pages every day. I'm a step ahead of the cast. Every day. The exact same process as playwriting or adapting which is what I do. Superimposed on the timeframe of rehearsal -- we only reverse 4 weeks which is the time even to the play that exists. I'm always moved to toward is the set pushing me toward and the cast pushing me toward -- if someone can saying -- if someone can't sing, there will be no songs. Trying to exploit what I have on hand. ________________________________________ It seems like you need a particular kind of crew and cast. ________________________________________ Yes, I need a cast that is very open and has no ego at all. Interested in telling the story. They know they might play a huge part or the guy in the corner -- the main parts are generally cast. The name main parts but everything else is up for grabs. Then, the designers and I -- I've worked with the exact team that did The White Snake did Metamorphoses and the identical team -- like, sets, custom, sound. ________________________________________ What do you to Peter? ________________________________________ I don't know, but it started early. H5 to be precise. My mother took me to shows. She was a culture vulture she said herself. She took us to everything. I remember vividly early images of things that I saw on stage but we lived in London house bordered on a words which in a very English way was called the toward. Down the street was the big ones. I would play in the little ones every day after school. That is occurring in the woods where unbeknownst to me every year was staged a Midsummer night's dream and I came across the rehearsal as a child. In no way did I think I was seeing actual series. I understood what was going on. They were rehearsing a play. I came across them as they were doing the [indiscernible]. I remember that they parted and overrun to the child and they started to run in circles. After a few circles the actors started to laugh and everyone started to laugh. How many do we do? They all laughed. That was so compelling to me. Seeing adults playing like that. I had not seen that in my life. My family was not like that. I was so taken by it. Then I was taken by various images on stage that I remember seeing as a child. I started forcing my little friends to do plays. Before first grade I was writing little place. I was shoving people into place. Have you read Atonement? The first chapter is an autobiography -- how she is trying to get the play organized in the cousins are cooperating. She is assuming that she plays the lead and when she doesn't play the lead is a big blow. Her obsessive trying to get the place to happen that afternoon. It's exactly who I was as a child. ________________________________________ When I discovered staging things as more of an adult when I discovered staging or we discovered it from childhood, it was like discovering another dimension of reality. It was so interesting. I realized how much more interesting it was for me than being on stage. It was so multidimensional. So visual. So engaging. Such a great challenge and puzzling and provocative. It just was so clear when I figured it out. This was relatively late. Now people understand the role of a director what a director is and they are role models for female directors and there are directors everywhere. That wasn't how it felt as a kid. I didn't even know there was a director. Now I feel like children grow up knowing there is a director. I didn't. I say that because of my students -- they all know they want to be a director and they know what they want to do in the theater. So, I think people are aware of it -- the possibility. And to design and stage management -- all the ways to be in the theater without having to be on stage. Yet what I love when I look at the stage -- I feel like there I am -- that's what I look like. That's it right there. I feel it strongly. Without having to be there physically. I feel I am everywhere on the stage and now were all at the same time. ________________________________________ I like that. ________________________________________ I want to thank you very much. ________________________________________ Thank you. ________________________________________ I'm trying to and I've been speaking with Mary Zimmerman playwright and director of The White Snake ________________________________________ ________________________________________ The White Snake continues through April 26 of the old Globe Theatre. Be sure to watch at five and cold 6:30 tonight. Jonas tomorrow for a discussion on Midday Edition right here on KPBS . I'm Maureen Cavanaugh. Thank you for listening. This is trend -- Midday Edition three ________________________________________ The White Snake is based on an ancient tale about I snake spirit learn how to transform into beautiful women and live on earth. The arts reporter says it provides the perfect foundation for playwright and director Mary Zimmerman who sees neither is a playground for the imagination. Zimmerman has previously adapted the Odyssey, metamorphosis and Arabian nights and will be tackling treasure Island next. Here's the interview. ________________________________________ What attracted you to The White Snake. I came to this at the Shakespeare Festival and he suggested it. It's rare that I take something that somebody suggested. But it was right up my alley. It's an ancient tale. It is humorous and really profound and it has staging difficulties or challenges that are the kind of thing that attract me. Another with, how to do things -- flying to the air -- transformations -- magical acts tax battle. All that kind of thing. I love the challenge of how to make it happen inside the four walls of the theater. ________________________________________ Believe me -- once long ago in the middle of a bit country -- or toward the southwest there arose from the planes and reach into the clouds a single lonely Mountain. In this mountain to the top of was a cave and in the cave there was coiled a white snake. ________________________________________ You seem to have an attraction if not fairytales -- an attraction to things that have mythical qualities. ________________________________________ Like things with an ethical quality. The contrast this with the idea of domestic polity or realism or naturalism. I like the challenges of a staging things that have a large scope. Things that were written for the theater initially and therefore weren't conceived with the bounds of what the theater is supposed to do or can do easily. Rather, what literature can do which is anything. Try to figure out how to do that on stage. I love these eternal tales because I feel like but the very fact that they stuck around so long they've proven that they always have something to say. They aren't just around through a conspiracy of literary teachers or English teachers but because they earn their keep by continually being meaningful and having something to say about the human condition and what it's like to be a person. They aren't so contemporary or of the moment. They have an internal quality to them. White snake has a lot to say about the ideas which exist across culture about not being pulled by the appearance of things. Understanding the true nature of things. ________________________________________ Instead of falling in love with an ugly creature, you discover has a beautiful inner nature he is falling in love with a beautiful young woman whose true for is a reptile. Particular form is a very beautiful enlightened being -- a generous, kind, maternal loving caring being. The resolution to that is moving in the play, I think. ________________________________________ It satisfies something and it reassures us. ________________________________________ We can be seen for who we truly are and treated still loved. That's the gem of the play. ________________________________________ Like these old ideas. The old thoughts. Thoughts which address large questions. Yet, to it in a witty way and a deceptively beguiling and charming way. ________________________________________ You mentioned a sense of a lack of division. I found in a lot of Asian films there's a lack of division between the real and fantasy. It seems like they are always learn and moving back and forth. ________________________________________ And a lot of different cultures -- living with we call the supernatural as an everyday occurrence. But, one thing I find beguiling about the story is that it's based on the idea of I snakes -- snake spirit who practice the Tao and studied it and they can transform themselves into the shape of young maidens. Come down to the real world and see what it's like. The everyday world. Then they end up opening a pharmacy. That conjunction of the banality of a pharmacy or drugstore with something highly supernatural as the snake spirit is charming. ________________________________________ Dear friend, where shall be go? Oliver lies before us. How should we choose? We might go anywhere. Once I overheard a woodcutter who ventured up the mountain and I remember he's saying over and over -- in the sky we have heaven and on earth we have [indiscernible] three ________________________________________ In the sky we have heaven and on earth we have [indiscernible] Talk about the way you stage it. You want to trying to do cinematic effects -- there up in some Broadway place where they try to imitate Hollywood and big fancy effects. Yours seems to be a much more engaging way of -- simple but magical. ________________________________________ I think of my work on stage as playing in the backyard. I'm the Brascan. I admire will encounter and she said I will never be the artist I wasn't a child. I take that as a mantra. I tend to want to solve things inefficient imaginative and original ways that are also visually spectacular but theatrical. That would be done on film in that way. That would be done in any other form in that way. Have to do a rainstorm without actually importing rain. Or how to make a house seem to transform from a tumbledown shack into a palatial nobleman's house. With the simplest gesture. Making do with what we have or what is possible to make the impossible seem apparent. I feel that does engage the audience because they have to pull on their own resources of images within themselves that we all share in common and ears and intimacy created when everyone understands what this means. We have learned what it has meant over the course of the evening. I love that. ________________________________________ It seems you also keep the stories in their cultural of origin. You can temporize them or translate them to the United States or anything like that. ________________________________________ I feel I owe the audience a straight telling of the tale. That's not to say -- I think all my shows Pro in a kind of contemporary voice. They mix and match from the original language and in an offhand contemporary voice. I feel that I am due to the spirit of the moment of the scene, not making fun of something. I'm just -- that is where my voice is taking me with it. ________________________________________ Sometimes I don't care about meditation. Or transcendence. Of becoming any mortal at all. I just want to give it up and get away from her. Abandon my social world the pleasures. You shouldn't. ________________________________________ I'm Beth Accomando speaking with Mary Zimmerman playwright and director of The White Snake pay ________________________________________ To get involved with production and costume design? I don't write any script in advance. We design before I've written the script. I'm extremely involved in the vision of the design. The design must be what I call an open field of play because I don't exactly know what's going to happen on it. The set has to be full of potential though I'm not exact sure how I will use it. ________________________________________ Costume design is tricky. I've cast without necessarily knowing who is playing what were the character that will appear. The White Snake is easier than the way I work than the Odyssey because it take single narrative with it getting middle and end. When I do Arabian nights or fairytales I'm also having to structure the evening. I don't even know what stories I'm going to include. Of the 384 stories I don't know -- or all the fairytales -- I don't know which six or seven will make it in. So, the design for a show is tricky and not like -- the rehearsal process is different from any other. In the process I write in the hours before rehearsal and I bring in new pages every day. I'm a step ahead of the cast. Every day. The exact same process as playwriting or adapting which is what I do. Superimposed on the timeframe of rehearsal -- we only reverse 4 weeks which is the time even to the play that exists. I'm always moved to toward is the set pushing me toward and the cast pushing me toward -- if someone can saying -- if someone can't sing, there will be no songs. Trying to exploit what I have on hand. ________________________________________ It seems like you need a particular kind of crew and cast. ________________________________________ Yes, I need a cast that is very open and has no ego at all. Interested in telling the story. They know they might play a huge part or the guy in the corner -- the main parts are generally cast. The name main parts but everything else is up for grabs. Then, the designers and I -- I've worked with the exact team that did The White Snake did Metamorphoses and the identical team -- like, sets, custom, sound. ________________________________________ What do you to Peter? ________________________________________ I don't know, but it started early. H5 to be precise. My mother took me to shows. She was a culture vulture she said herself. She took us to everything. I remember vividly early images of things that I saw on stage but we lived in London house bordered on a words which in a very English way was called the toward. Down the street was the big ones. I would play in the little ones every day after school. That is occurring in the woods where unbeknownst to me every year was staged a Midsummer night's dream and I came across the rehearsal as a child. In no way did I think I was seeing actual series. I understood what was going on. They were rehearsing a play. I came across them as they were doing the [indiscernible]. I remember that they parted and overrun to the child and they started to run in circles. After a few circles the actors started to laugh and everyone started to laugh. How many do we do? They all laughed. That was so compelling to me. Seeing adults playing like that. I had not seen that in my life. My family was not like that. I was so taken by it. Then I was taken by various images on stage that I remember seeing as a child. I started forcing my little friends to do plays. Before first grade I was writing little place. I was shoving people into place. Have you read Atonement? The first chapter is an autobiography -- how she is trying to get the play organized in the cousins are cooperating. She is assuming that she plays the lead and when she doesn't play the lead is a big blow. Her obsessive trying to get the place to happen that afternoon. It's exactly who I was as a child. ________________________________________ When I discovered staging things as more of an adult when I discovered staging or we discovered it from childhood, it was like discovering another dimension of reality. It was so interesting. I realized how much more interesting it was for me than being on stage. It was so multidimensional. So visual. So engaging. Such a great challenge and puzzling and provocative. It just was so clear when I figured it out. This was relatively late. Now people understand the role of a director what a director is and they are role models for female directors and there are directors everywhere. That wasn't how it felt as a kid. I didn't even know there was a director. Now I feel like children grow up knowing there is a director. I didn't. I say that because of my students -- they all know they want to be a director and they know what they want to do in the theater. So, I think people are aware of it -- the possibility. And to design and stage management -- all the ways to be in the theater without having to be on stage. Yet what I love when I look at the stage -- I feel like there I am -- that's what I look like. That's it right there. I feel it strongly. Without having to be there physically. I feel I am everywhere on the stage and now were all at the same time. ________________________________________ I like that. ________________________________________ I want to thank you very much. ________________________________________ Thank you. ________________________________________ I'm trying to and I've been speaking with Mary Zimmerman playwright and director of The White Snake ________________________________________ ________________________________________ The White Snake continues through April 26 of the old Globe Theatre. Be sure to watch at five and cold 6:30 tonight. Jonas tomorrow for a discussion on Midday Edition right here on KPBS . I'm Maureen Cavanaugh. Thank you for listening.