I'm excited to introduce Gareth Saxe, who is currently playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Excited to be here. Thanks for being here. Indeed. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself as an actor? Yes, I can. I grew up here. My folks made a deal in theater school, my dad was getting a doctorate, my mom a masters, and so I had virtually no chance of doing anything else in my life. Yeah. Although, they did encourage that. But my dad's and my mom's love was Shakespeare. They took me to anything and everything they could, Shakespeare in otherwise. Flash forward to Colorado College where I try to do a myriad of other things, but just couldn't get away from theater. So I ended up becoming theater major. Then moving to New York, and eventually going to NYU to grad school there. Then starting a working life in New York, and having the great joy of getting to do an inordinate amount of Shakespeare I think. Awesome. Paying some bills along the way, and having a great time so. Excellent. Did I hear or read somewhere that you cut your teeth here at the Colorado Shakespeare? I saw you were here in the 90s. I did. Yes actually. Yes. When I was in graduate school, I did two summers here, '97 and '98 I believe, and played Friar Lawrence in one summer, and Costard for I think that was the second time, but I've played Costard three or four times which is. That's a good role. Yeah, it is. That's fine. I love that play. To me, it has similarities to the Twelfth Night, which we can get into later. But then did Troilus and Cressida the next year I believe, and Richard II. Awesome. Yeah. That was where I was standing. We're glad to have you back. I'm so glad to be back. So this is your first time playing Malvolio? It is. It's kind of surprising me, it's a terrific performance. Well, thank you. I'm enjoying it immensely. I got to say, I came into it with a great deal of trepidation. I guess because it's an iconic role or? Yeah, absolutely. I was also like, "Oh, am I? I'm at Malvolio stage." Yeah. There's that. I'm still thinking of myself as like, "Wait a second, Romeo's not that far [inaudible] " Yeah. But I think no. I'm glad to be doing it and I'm glad to have the chance to do it. As I think, we were talking about a little bit before, I knew the play and I'd seen the play and read the play. But as you know, the intimacy that you begin to have with the characters and ideas and themes really starts to blossom when you work on it and you hear it out loud. That is obviously the way it was intended and it leaves that way. Yeah. That's been a team which was really gifted in setting up a great room for us to go at it. Well, what have you learned? What do you think Malvolio's worldview is? Who is this guy and how does he get behind his eyes? Right. As I think I also alluded to, a friend of mine gave me a beautiful book that Michael Pennington, who had spent many years at the RSC and famously played hamlets and many other roles, but became a director later on in his life, wrote a book about Twelfth Night and his company's journey over several years and the very successful production. One of the things that I was scared about the role is that I think he can very easily just swing into cloud territory and it can live there and I have seen productions where it lived in that place and it was enjoyable. But there is something in that play, and I think it's Shakespeare not being able to help himself in the same regard that when he writes, The Merchant of Venice. He sets about to write Shylock as a bogey man because Jew of Malta has come around and the Jews are being demonized and so on. He can't help himself but write a motivated, full human being, I think he gets too excited and too interested, I don't know, to imbue thoughts and feelings on him, but that's what it reads to me from the text and for Malvolio, and due in large part to Michael Pennington's ideas about it, but also then my reading of it and seeing it like, "Oh, there's this much more intricate tapestry that's happening in this comedy." Deliciously how to even encapsulated words that the inextricable illness of sorrow and happiness that just human condition is in the play and whether overtly intended or not. I think it's in to go back to forgive me, my mind is pretty associative. So to go back to Love's Labour's Lost, you have this boolean crazy rollicking thing of people trying not to be in love, and then being like ridiculously in love to the point where they put on disguises, Russian hats, and whatnot. Yeah. Then all of a sudden everything's about to be resolved and Marcade comes in, and says, "Your father has died." What could be the purpose of that except I feel now, later in my life, like Twelfth Night, it's that these two things are inextricable and that Shakespeare can't help himself. But see both sides of the coin. Yes, to make to actually even heighten the joy because there's this depth of sorrow that's there as well. So I feel like that's in Malvolio, and in Twelfth Night, in spades, in the many of the other characters and of course, you'll talk to Renjian (phon). He has hopefully many things to say about that, which he will. About fascinate, right? Yeah. So what I'm hearing you say, which I really like, is that you think that maybe Shakespeare's audiences might have recognized this character as a two-dimensional buffoon character. What character, what butler could actually fall for this rules? You're saying that you have found Shakespeare's warm country heart, that he has given him reasons or given him agency and has created a sympathetic character. I think so, he's the majordomo. I think you can look at it if completely self-involved, narcissistic way. I think that I'm not trying to sanitize Malvolio. I think that's there too. But I do think there's an incredible amount of sympathy for people who are not of the upper echelon. It's like Heartbreak House that the sharp play where Shaw talks about we're the only people who can truly afford to be Bohemians are the ridiculously rich people because they have time to entertain these notions. So Olivia and Orsino can put on these affectations of love and grief. For check off too. Yes, exactly. These beautiful, useless people. There you go. You have the time to ponder. Exactly. Right. Like existential dilemmas,. All the estate, I'm not quite sure. I don't have to get dinner right now because there are staff and people serving. But in Twelfth Night, you also have the households. Malvolio is the major agent of that house functioning, and that job is not inconsiderable at all. I was always taught to go back and find the motivations for your character and be the advocate for the character. So that's what I did, and then I went back and tried to do the research on what a majordomo of a house that would have to do, and it's enormous. You take care of absolutely everything. You are in charge of the money, you're in charge of when someone goes to market and what they buy, and then how that gets on the table and how it's presented. You're basically running the show. You're managing a large estate. So it seemed it starts to build a picture for me of a guy who was like, I don't have any room to mess this up because I don't have any agency. So this has to go exactly like I say it has to go, and for good reason. Was also on taking care of these people and she's in grief. Here she's lost her brother and her father, for God sake's within the year. So what is all of this nonsense? Then he's confronted with the fact that Toby is of a different class than he is, and so can behave as he pleases. But it is also disrupting the house and disrupting like he's having to send people to the market constantly because Toby is eating him out of house and home, and drinking him out of house and home and he's also trying to be a buffer. So I think there's huge amount of stakes for Malvolio about like this has to go right, and because there is nothing else for me and then all of a sudden. There's this letter. There's a letter and there's an insinuation that he might be able to aspire to something further or might be lifted. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them. Yeah, and all of a sudden, that's wish-fulfillment of a kind that people of Olivia stature, of Toby stature. Orsino stature can't I think even begin to understand of what that is. What that would be to be Count Malvolio having come from nothing. In terms of what, this question of what is Malvolio's weakness or his vulnerability on this kryptonite. I think if you asked Toby and Mariah, it's his pride. It's that he deserves more than he's allowed to have based on societal constraints, right? Right. But you're also saying, ''Yeah, he's trapped where he is, and he's worked hard and he deserves to ascend.'' Right. I do think again not to sanitize him. Yeah. I do think his sometimes in self-important. But in the way that one who's not been gifted those things from birth can be in terms of, what is it there was some documentary several years ago about the heir to the Johnson and Johnson for whatever to all state. Estate. Estate yeah. That he did about he and his friends, and it was called rich kids, and it was essentially a look into these kids who are generationally entitled and the degree he tried to have a conversation with his father who was fifth in line or what have you about money and the physical pain that it engendered on his father. These base things that you just take for granted. Yeah. Malvolio like that's life or death. I mean, there's a reading of the play that you can do where if the fool does not do his job well, the fool can be killed or the fool basically will be kicked out of the house. Feste will be kicked out of the house and then he will have nothing. Yeah. So perhaps expire. There's a dire goal there I think. But also the idea too, I think it's complex, and I think again Shakespeare has put all of that in there, and this amazing mixture. I think implicit in Malvolio wanting to ascend is also like, I could be loved in that way. Yeah. Do you think he loved her already? I mean, there are several characters in the play. Whoever thing for Olivia or do they have a thing for all the thing that they come with? I don't think he's been able to entertain that. Right. In my reading of him, I don't think he's that. I think he cares for her and she is basically all of his life lies in that house. But I don't think he's because of his strictures and how he thinks things should go in right way. He's not allowed himself to think that, and then all of a sudden, there's commission. Yeah. Yeah, and all of a sudden, the floodgates I think open for somebody who has been so trapped. All right. In a way, and that's my reading of it. Then hence forth the madness that comes from that. Well, okay, that's a great segue because the other big question I wanted to ask you about is the escalation of these practical jokes? Right. Malvolio becomes the target. Right. Of Toby and friends, and then just these things just escalated. Thank you so much. Cruelty, I mean is the word. Yeah. What does Shakespeare up to there? I actually love that you brought up Love's Labours Lost, and this idea of how Shakespeare as he continues to write comedies starts to put pressure on the form of a comedy by saying it's not going to end the way that you expect a comedy to end. Right. This is one of the later comedies. There's a lot of darkness in this comedy. Yeah. I think he's doing the same thing where he's pushing things. But I'd love to hear you talk about that. Why this cruelty and where is Shakespeare taking us? Well, I wonder if there's not a reading of it where Toby's a plague on my knees to take sorrow this way. I have totally misquoted it, but essentially, he starts the play with, ''Why it can't we just get really drunk and have a great time.'' Yeah. But there's so much tension in that. I mean, well imbue it with that at least, and so I think there's a reading of it that Toby is overwhelmed with grief and cannot deal with grief. Great. Is then driven to anger as sometimes the only the only case or thing that one container that one can put grief into for some people who don't have access to sorrow. That's a really. I wonder. Did that conversation come up in the room? No. But I feel it's implicit in some of the things that Robert's doing. I'm talking to him too. Yeah. I feel like that's there, and it is a possible reading of why that cruelty comes. It also is and maybe also in a comment of somebody who's a keen observer of the social structure, who's like, ''You don't get to move. You don't move. Could you do what I say?'' If you step out of line, then we draw and quarter you. Yeah, straight jackets in a prison. We preserve the order. It's the argument that Richard the second makes and such [inaudible] like,"whoa, wait a second." Yeah. I'm next in line to God. Yeah. You don't get to tell me. Yeah. Anything I tell you. Yeah, that's grace. I wonder if it's not a keen observation of that played out in a household in a much more familial way. In this production, we see on stage the mistreatment that is in other productions just described. Right. Then your final line, it's really, the delivery of that line, "I'll be revenged upon you all." To the audience. Yeah. That's a really interesting choice. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. I think Tim and I, we did discuss it in the room a bit about opening it up to implicate. Yeah. The other people there. Yeah. I don't know how kind that is really. Yeah, but we as the audience become complacent. Yeah, in a way. But it is maybe another way to convey the levels that aren't there. Yeah. Then landed as it always is our job, and as Shakespeare always wanted us to, to land it over there in the audience. The experiences shouldn't be a discrete thing that I get to have. It's me conveying it for you to have. Either a catharsis or a problem with. I think with a lot of the later plays it's a problem. Yeah. Like how about that? Why don't you wrestle with that? Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I'm not entirely sure. I can't. Yes please. Nor have I tried to tell you what it is, but there is something to be investigated. I was planning on asking you about your delivery of that line, but thought to ask it right then on the heels of this conversation about recognizing, it almost seems like Malvolio is defeated in that moment and recognizes, is there humility or shame in trying to rise above the structures that are in place? I feel like he doesn't have that self-knowledge yet. I don't know if that mortification has happened yet for him. To be honest, it feels there's a part of it that how these things happen often. There are iterations of what we do on stage. There's the reality of literally you and your partner or your friends on stage and then maybe the intention of the author that's being conveyed, and then also how it resonates with the audience. Yeah. Among many levels that I've not talked about. But for me it also lives in a place of like, I can't really look at them anymore. I don't know how. But I don't think it's going, he's not going to become Friar Lawrence. I think it's gonna go south, and I don't know how it's going to go south. But I think it's not going to go well and that's something to meditate on too. Yeah. Well, like,"Oh, so you've had this". Yes, these people have behaved abominably and you have been misused horribly. But is there something in that mortification that could be edifying, that could leaven your spirit that could change and ripen you as a human being? Some characters in Shakespeare are able to take that experience, I think, and move with it and be transformed by it, and some are not. That's part of his genius, is that it doesn't make everything turn out, like you said, and like we see. Many of the characters in this play do not have the happy ending that a comedy promises. Right. Truly. Do you think Toby and Mariah, you can ask Robert this, Toby and Mariah can be happy? What does that marriage is going to look like? I don't know, maybe they are? Yeah. Who? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Well, because what you're getting me to think about, which is really interesting, is just this idea that he, a character who really comes into the play honoring boundaries and kind of a black and white thinker, this is right and this is wrong, then steps outside of those bounds because he's given a way out. But then what are the consequences of having done that? Well, and then of course, it just occurred to me again, there's obviously the illusion to puritanism in the play, and I don't know that Malvolio, you can play him as a puritan, which I think is interesting, if he is. To my mind, at my present understanding of him, it would be, he is a puritan because of his expedient, be so, or needful to be so. But there's a reading and the way that we're talking about it, I feel like that's present there where this whole situation has solidified. Maybe his movement towards that and then of course, with the Puritans you get the closing of the theaters, you get the clamping down of the society, you get the revenge basically, that doesn't end until Charles comes back in and the restoration happens. So they get theirs, they come for everybody and they get it. They get it for perhaps. Yes. For how many years though? They get it for a while. Right. Yeah, that's a stark, strange, sad thing, I think. That to me seems that's one of those things Shakespeare's making fun of peevishness and of people who are so tight and so want to shut down this crazy, rollicking, unwieldy, sorrowful, happy thing that's happening, that want to contain it. I think part of the play is you can't. But then you do have that thing at the end and then the Puritans come in later and take over. Well, I love that he's put a Puritan or someone who would, or a Puritan sympathizer. Right, a Brownist. In the play, because especially in a play about identity, in a play about where these characters are. Shape shifting and code-switching and Twelfth Night being an allusion to the one day that all rules are off. Because the perspective as I understand them, the Puritans, it's an abomination in the eyes of God to pretend to be anybody other than who God made you to be. Exactly. Yeah. But Malvolio does that in a way. Exactly. When given the, when the carrot is dangled. But we see this over and again, don't we? When somebody ascribes to something and then falls like Icarus and maybe doesn't die. But then it's like, "Oh no, that's not happening again on my watch." Now, I'm going to shut it down for everybody else or all the people that I can. That's great. Because maybe that's a direct, Malvolio you could read that, read this also, rather than what I was suggesting as a modification of a ripening. He could view it as a justification for like, "oh, you got outside of the bounds." You left your connection with yourself and God and the austerness of that and look what happens. So let's go to work. Disguise that part as wickedness. Yes, there it is. Let's shut everything down here and then let's go to the new world, and make a continent ours. Yeah, lets. Where you're supposed to be an individual and yourself. That's kind of the DNA of this country in some ways. Right, man, good stuff. Yeah, one of the many things, but that's a whole other conversation. If we imagine a spectrum with Malvolio on one side, in this play, who's on the other side of it to you? On the one hand you've got Toby, you've got sort of Puritanism and Hedonism. Sure. You've also got Feste, that relationship is really interesting to me. I love Feste and I aspire to be Feste someday. Why? Well, because I feel like, he's to me like the Zen monk who comes up and taps you on the forehead and says, "wake up, wake up, wake up." Shades of gray. It's already broken. The cup's already broken. Yeah. So why you're twisting yourself into knots over there? Come away death, inside Cyprus, let's weep and laugh at the same time. That is something I find so profoundly moving in him as he's written and the songs. To me he is the sort of counterweight to level. As with any Zen monk, or any person who's highly evolved, maybe spiritually or in their worldview, they're still human. So of course, still flawed, always. He has his flaws but I think it's that evolution of being able to be like, yes, that is, this is me. I wear it this way. I'm the Lord of Misrule, we are, yeah. My last question then, is having gotten be inside of this play for a while. Yeah. Why today? Why this play today? Why do it today? What has it taught you? What do you take away from the play? I mean, you've already sort of talked a lot about some of those things already, but why 12th night in 2019? Well, that's a very good question and I think it's something we always need to ask ourselves. I think you have to have multiple reasons. I think you have to have reasons for why you want to do the play, that specific play in that way and we always want to have it motivated that way, but again, I feel like these plays are Rorschach tests for the people who are viewing them and they are so finally wrote with enough space in them that people will find what they need to find and so if one can present it in clear enough fashion and not over-determined it, I've come down on that side. I used to be very much like, you have to make it absolutely so specific to the time of place. Sometimes that can unlock it too but sometimes, it has to have enough breath in it so that it can work that way, I think for the audience because obviously there's an actor, as a writer, as a director, you have to have an opinion, you have to come from a point of view, but then you do have to leave enough space for it to be interpreted on the other side. I think because to do so is mean-spirited and controlling and also doesn't work because people read that model. Don't do my job for me. Yes, don't. Let it live up there for me to make of it what I'm, well, what I need to. That's exciting and that's been exciting in talk backs to see how people read it because people at the same show can read it in such disparate ways as an argument for puritanism, why that is a good thing? Why, perhaps on others, what do they call it? Rinpoche at Naropa used to call it crazy wisdom. Which I think is one of the embodiments of fasting, the wise fool. So why now though? I think it has a locked for me personally, which I want to overshare necessarily about grief, about the dangers of not attending to it or over attending to it. That is good. About love. I mean, it's an exploration of what we wish love to be and at one it might be if we're open to it. Again, it doesn't come down on that side. It doesn't tell us how it goes between Toby and Mariah. Maybe they are going to be exquisitely happy. That would be amazing. I don't know. Anyway, I think is a generous thing that Tim War, I think is similar to me in that he's moved away from these strict constructionists ideas like, well, we're going to set it in Antebellum South and because the signs and signifiers will then telegraph or give people a way into the play. There's almost something more, I think, useful in the strangeness of it. In the distance I think. I completely agree. Don't you, I think it's like poetry I mean, in the space between the metaphor. Shakespeare didn't set any of his plays in contemporary England. There you go. Exactly. I mean, we have that example. He recognizes that. Right and that distance gives you The space to make connections. Yeah to make allegorical connections yourself. Which is obviously, I think much more enjoyable and profound thing and more useful than anything we could do. So I think our job is to continue to present these plays in a way that they can be that for people and that continues to evolve. It's great. I guess that's some reasons why besides I mean, who gets to say those words often anymore. I mean that's another thing my parents gave to me was a love of language and the capability and space that language can have when you are at once trying to be so particular and specific about it. But then poetry and super colliding of two different ideas or words, creating a third that you have almost no governments over but perhaps tried to engineer or made the situation whereby that can happen and to be able to articulate and say those things and be filled by them, is a great joy. So I would probably do it if nobody was watching. Right. Don't tell anyone because I want to get paid. But I mean, it's such a joy that I will do it that way. Well, how many performances do you have left couple of weeks now, right? We do, we go until August 11th, I believe is the last show. Well, have fun. Thanks for coming in. Yeah, my pleasure. It's been a pleasure Yes, same to you. Thank you.
