BWW Interviews: Joseph Graves Talks REVEL'S WORLD OF SHAKESPEARE, AVENUE Q and More

Joseph Graves is a western theatre actor and director who has been living in China since 2002. He is the Artistic Director of PKU Institute of World Theatre and Film, playwright and actor of RAVEL'S WORLD OF SHAKESPEARE, and director of the upcoming musical AVENUE Q.

BroadwayWorld China recently chatted with Joe about his plays and his stories in China.

We know Revel's World of Shakespeare was brought to stage in 2005. It has been 8 years now and we can see you're still very passionate about it. What's so special about this show?

I wrote it here when I was living in China, and I first performed it at People's Artist Theatre in Capital Theatre. Since then, I probably performed it for 250, 300 times in different cities all around China, Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. But never in the West, I'm hoping next year (we can bring it to the West).

The play is autobiographical, so it's based on my first introduction to Shakespeare when I was 9, living in London. It's just a story I want to tell, mainly about how mentors affect our lives. So even though it's a particular story about a young boy in a private boy school in London in 1960s, it has a universal residence of stories that all of us have been affected by some person, for better or worse. And because I'm inextricably fond of Shakespeare, my life has pretty much spent on Shakespeare since that time, and a lot people in China seem to be really interested in hearing that, I wrote this play.

You've been in China for over 10 years now. I think most of our readers are curious about what made you come here in the first place and what made you stay?

I came here to direct a Shakespeare play, then I met Professor Cheng Zhaoxiang, who is the Dean of School of Foreign Language in Peking University, and also a Shakespearean. He has been teaching Shakespeare for many years, but never felt he can teach Shakespeare completely because he didn't know much about theatre. He asked me to come to do a workshop for students. We decided to do The Tempest. We posted an audition notice on the website and 4000 kids came to audition. It took me a week to interview 800 of them and then I put 80 of them in The Tempest. It was just the kind of life changing experience for me because all of them were passionate, intelligent and some of them were really gifted. Then I discovered when talking with Professor Cheng that there weren't any theatre department in higher education in China. There were art departments, but they were mainly academic, so there weren't many opportunities for talented, creative young students to experience the creative side of them. So (I stayed to change that).

Now when I go back to the West, I get home sick for China. I'm just a Beijing boy who speaks Chinese really bad.

Most actors are always dreaming about performing on big stage, in big theatres. But most of your plays in China now are on small theatres like Penghao and Donggong. Do you miss performing in theatres like Heymarket Theatre in West end?

No. There were actually some gigantic theatres in China where I've performed. The idea behind play which is so different from TV and film is that it's a much more intimate experience, so the size of the theatre and audience are not so important, but the communication is. Sometimes for more intimate plays it's much better when there're fewer people, so you can have much more direct and intense contact with audience. The theatre (Dong Gong Theatre) I'm gonna doing Revel in now can seats about 500 people, which is really about as big as I ever want for this play.

It has been announced lately that another musical directed by you, Avenue Q, will open in Shanghai later this year. I think it's a rather interesting production choice for Chinese theatre, considering the amount of adult content it contains. Could you tell us something about this production and why chose this show.

It's a show I think will be popular with young people. In America, it was so popular mainly because of a child show that's still on called Sesame Street. All of us grow up with Sesame Street, and these little puppet people would say if you work really hard, if you do your homework, and if you're a very good person, then when you grow up will be very successful. Avenue Q was written to say, well, that's not necessarily true. So when American went into the theatre, saw the puppet talking, saw how the puppets were doing, they immediately identify the Sesame Street show. It will be a little bit difficult for Chinese audience, but the story about young twenty years old people searching for meaning of life, love and success, so it's very easy to be related to. And we're setting it, rather than in New York City, in Shanghai, so our set design is very Shanghainese and Beijingnese .

In order to get the show approved, there is one particular scene we had to cut out. But The Internet Is for Porn and most stuff are still there.

The show is all cast now; we had the first read through yesterday, so we'll start rehearsing on Monday. Hopefully it will all come together by the end of September. It will run 3 months in Shanghai, and come to Beijing next spring.

You've directed a few plays and now a musical that are performed in Chinese, and you don't speak this language. So are there any difficulties directing a play in a language you don't know?

I never direct a play unless I know the play very very well. If you know a play really well, and if you're working with really talented actors, there's usually a communication of the hearts as well as of the language. It does have certain challenges, but it's not impossible.

This also brings me back to Revel's World of Shakespeare. 99% of audiences who have seen this show in China don't speak English, but they follow it because of the physical way and emotional way I perform the show. So when you work as a director, this is the same way how you should approach it.

Do you have any new projects coming up?

I'm doing Revel's World of Shakespeare and directing Avenue Q, and I'm also directing an Australia Play with Chinese actors in English called Cosi. It's based on a true story about a young idealistic man who worked in a mental institution and believed that he can cure the people by teaching them the Opera Cosi fan tutte. It's a very intimate study of human beings communicating with each other across a big barrier. It's very funny and very moving.

And then I have a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which would be a mixture of 8 Chinese actors and 14 actors from New Zealand. That will be first in New Zealand for 4 weeks, and then move back to China for 2 weeks.

From your experiences, what's the major difference between theatres in China and in Western countries? And what do you think we should do to get more people to know and fall in love with theatre?

I think the biggest difference right now is the lacking of young playwrights in China who get very passionate about the power of theatre in communicating our spirits to each other. I've been working very hard to develop young writers, but that's certainly not something I can do alone.

Also, in the major cities, there're a group of people who know about theatre. But when you start get out of these cities, a lot people in China have no idea what theatre even is. So until there are performing art departments in universities all over China, so the young college students are exposed to theatre and see the value of it, the theatre won't grow. There will be big shows make a lot of money very quickly, but in terms of being a continuing part of culture, there really need to be a concerted effort to educate everyone in China.

Could you tell us one of your favorite stories or the most memorable thing during your stay in China?

There were so many! I'll tell you one. When I was working on the very first play with students, most students hadn't even seen a play, let alone a Shakespeare play. We did it in English, so they did it in second language and Shakespeare is really a third language. Because they had to work so hard to understand the language, they became to connect with it in a way that a lot professional actors I worked with don't. One student came to me one day and said, "in the speech I'm giving in the play, if I take the vowel sound and the constant sound out, and if I don't say the words, just make these noises, there is a music created under the speech. It's a joyful music." In Shakespeare's works, sometimes the music is created by the variant and constant will be in counterpoint, like there will be a sad music and a very happy speech, usually when that's happening, the next thing goes on stage will be very tragic. But she discovered it on her own, about 85% of all professional actors I worked with never found that. That was one of the reasons I wanted to stay here.

Tickets Info

Revel's World of Shakespeare, 8/27-9/01, Dong Gong Theatre, Beijing, http://www.damai.cn/ticket_52164.html;

Avenue Q, 10/16-12/22, Baiyulan Theatre, Shanghai, http://www.gewara.com/drama/129758875

(Photo Credit: Zhao Pu)