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November 2005: Timothy McDonough

Tim McDonough Directs and Stars in Shakespeare’s King Lear

Tim McDonough’s performance as the lead in Theater Emory’s upcoming production of Shakespeare’s King Lear is not his first time as Lear—it is at least his fourth, he says—but it is his first time directing himself in that role. And as director and lead, McDonough is so immersed in the play that he complains about becoming like Lear: “I’m aging fast and going mad,” he laughs.

McDonough explains how he became both director and lead in this production, and answers other questions.

Q: How did you step into the dual roles of director and lead actor of the play?

A: People were aware that I’d played Lear before, but I said that this time I wanted to direct. I was interested in the whole tapestry of the play, in a particular approach to its themes, rather than just one character’s point of view. And with my own very specific ideas of shaping the production of the play—a method called “process-to-play” [see below]— it seemed to me that the most time-effective thing to do would be to step in and play the role of King Lear myself. I had a particular take on the character and on the universe of the character, and a particular way of reading what goes on in the play. This way I would not have to deal with some distinguished older actor with his own interpretation. For example, I insist that the relationships at the beginning of the play are all sham, that we shouldn’t be mistaken that these relationship are genuine.

Q: How difficult is it to direct yourself?

A: It’s such a huge play that being inside some of the scenes at times means that it’s not always easy to keep my eye on what’s going on. Fortunately, I have the eyes of others, including those of Alice Benston [associate professor, Department of Theater Studies] of several colleagues who coach student actors, and of Danielle Mindess, an alumna who is my assistant. Altogether there are nineteen performers, so there is a large cast with lots of different entrances and exits. Due to the piecemeal nature of rehearsals and trying to accommodate everyone’s schedules, it’s sometimes difficult to straighten out the traffic patterns. There is a train of energy involved with staging productions, and with intermittently performing and then stepping out to direct I run the danger of running out of steam.

But it is helpful for me to go onstage in my role and then to drive the scene in character — in other words, to set the energy, face-to-face with the students and other professionals in the play. How I physically position myself in relation to the other actors, and in the way that I set the tone, I do a lot of indirect directing and don’t have to step out of role.

Q: Why did you choose the “process-to-play” style for this production?

A: When we decided to do King Lear, it put me in mind of an old idea that I’d had for producing a play, which is to do it as if it were in rehearsal, with the first scene staged as if it were the first meeting, with all the actors sitting together reading to each other. Then eventually we’d be getting together on our feet, in a bare space, with very simple properties. Eventually, folded bits of paper would become scrolls; costumes would come in piece by piece—women are at first corseted because they have to get used to moving and breathing, then hats come in. That partial look—partly modern, partly old—appealed to me.

Q: As director, what do you see as the overarching theme of the play?

A: I think the universe Shakespeare set up is a universe in which very little love exists. It’s a universe in which the relationships between husbands and wives, fathers and children, are a matter of appearances rather than reality. Relationships are sham. For Shakespeare, it’s all about the tension between appearance and reality. Shakespeare understood that theme well, because theater itself is appearance pretending to be reality.

In the world of Lear, the king has doted on his daughter Cordelia. Then in the first scene, when she refuses to make a forced speech of love for him, he disinherits her very cruelly. She discovers his love for her has been sham. In a parallel subplot, a father instantly believes in a conspiracy that his son has been plotting against him, and he puts a sentence of death on the son’s head. In both instances, the father and child eventually come to find real love.

Q: Are there other themes in the play you think are important?

A: I am also interested in the question of social class. Being from a working class background myself, I have a bit of class sensitivity. Class is generally a topic that we’d rather avoid dealing with, which is also true in Shakespeare’s world. One of the characters in King Lear, the young aristocrat whose father condemns him to death, disguises himself as a beggar and calls himself Poor Tom, which is a typical name for a homeless beggar who has been a patient at Bedlam. King Lear encounters Poor Tom when he himself has in a way become homeless, in a scene that is one of the turning points of the play. Lear’s response to meeting Poor Tom as one of the “poor, naked wretches” makes him want to tear off his clothes to uncover who he really is. In the world of King Lear, Robes and furred gowns hide all” [Act 4, Scene 6].

A few weeks ago, I wrote an essay for the Emory Report about Hurricane Katrina and King Lear. Here I am, thinking about the poor wretches in the play, casting them and going into workshops trying to define them. Then along comes Katrina, and it seems to me that suddenly the nation is aware of tens of thousands of people that had been below the radar. We reacted with a certain shame and a coming into consciousness about all those people who do not have cars and credit cards, who could not drive out of New Orleans and get a hotel room. I thought to myself, it is so easy not to be mindful of a whole group of people like that.

Q: As an actor, how are you approaching the role of Lear?

A: Lear is one of those roles that if I were a nineteenth-century actor or manager who chooses a half dozen roles to concentrate on for the bulk of my career, then that would be one of the roles to choose. It is such a huge play and such a huge role that there is room for many different interpretations.

Generally, Lear, as autocratic king, is fixed in infantile development and expects his will to be law. He becomes a metaphor for the modern individual and how preoccupied we are with ourselves. Lear expects people to say “yes” to whatever he says, and then later he accuses people of lying to him: “They flattered me like a dog and told me I had the white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there. To say ‘ay’ and ‘no’ to everything that I said was no good divinity.... They are not men o’ their words; they told me I was everything. ’Tis a lie” [Act 4, Scene 6]. Of course, Lear is impossible to refuse. Refused, he would send the individual into exile.

Q: How does your approach to Lear now contrast with your approach to the role twenty or twenty-five years ago, when you first had the role?

A: I think one aspect of it is that I’m more willing to allow the character’s flaws and his unlikable characteristics to be present for the audience. I was less brave as a younger actor about being unlikable for so long. Shakespeare’s plan for his characters was that there be a late turn in the play, a big change in the character. I understand now that King Lear is the journey of an 80-some-year-old man who never grew up. He abdicated the throne and was forced to live as other men live. In that way he discovered that the role he had been playing had been covering up his own personal development. I understand this better than I did twenty-five years ago, both from personal experience with what is genuine and real, and from professional experience. As co-teacher with Alice Benston of a course on Shakespeare, I have read a lot of production histories and accounts of performances over the years.

Q: What got you into theater in the first place?

A: Actually doing theater was quite accidental. I was sitting reading a Newsweek in my college dorm, in what we called a recreation room, when someone ran in and grabbed me and said they needed someone big for a play. It was for Anthony and Cleopatra. So I got dragged in to audition, and tried out and got cast.

I started acting off and on intensely during college, but at that time it was just an extracurricular activity. My academic concentrations were elsewhere, in philosophy, and I had no idea what to make of doing all this theater. Later on, I went to see a production in Boston during a period when I was treading water. I liked the production so much that I wrote a fan letter to the director to tell her how much I admired her work. Then a week or so later, I dropped into the play. Now I realize that psychologically I have elements in my own life that predisposed me to being an actor.

Q: How and when did you come to Theater Studies at Emory?

A: I came here, indirectly, from California. I was in the theater in Boston, where I knew Vinnie Murphy [artistic producing director of Theater Emory]. After 16 years, I left Boston and traveled some, then went to California, acting at the Sacramento Theater Company. During that period, Vinnie arrived at Emory [in 1989], then I arrived here in 1990.

Q: What do you do when you’re not acting or directing?

A: I like to travel. My wife, Janice Akers—who is also an actor and teaches in Theater Studies—she and I have been traveling a lot. Last year, for example, we had the Italian Studies program, and taught a theater course as part of the program.

Q: Any last words about King Lear?

A: It is very humbling to come to this play, which is generally acknowledged in theater circles—certainly in Shakespearean circles—as a genuine monument. With experience, one realizes what a great script and broad canvas it is so one can almost relax with it. Maybe it takes a few tries to get there, to get past the despair that you’re never going to do justice to it, but then you get to relax and say, “I’ll do the best that I can with the parts of the play that I’m interested in now, and I hope that the rest of the play comes through okay.” As a great monument of literature in the West, this play is really a place for audiences to meet with actors in a kind of collective experience, to answer the kinds of questions Shakespeare raises because he writes in oppositions without coming down on either side. The play really starts when the curtain falls; the play is what the audience discusses afterwards.

More About Theater Emory’s King Lear

The cast of King Lear also includes Emory faculty member John Ammerman, Tess Malis Kincaid, Marshall Marden, and a host of Emory students. Set and costume design for the production is by Leslie Taylor, lighting design is by H. Bart McGeehon and sound design is by Judy Zanotti.

King Lear is being performed at the Mary Gray Munroe Theater, Dobbs University Center, 605 Asbury Circle, Emory University, at 7 p.m. November 10–12 and 17–19, and at 2 p.m. on Nov. 13, 19, and 20. For tickets and information, call 404-727-5050 or visit www.arts.emory.edu. For Theater Emory information, visit www.theater.emory.edu.

Edited by Nancy Condon
Communications Coordinator
Arts at Emory

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