Dramaturgy Note

The Company We Keep.

Richard III has taken on many different shapes over the years, much like the character of Richard himself. Every theatre company has their own take, and for our production we have a new medium—Zoom—as well as the need for social distancing. Conceptually, we have adapted Richard III to a cutting-edge corporate setting. We haven’t changed Shakespeare’s text much, but rather brought out the parallels between the court of England’s historic rulers and today’s high-power boardroom meetings. History’s Dukes are today’s majority shareholders and CEOs. The quality of power hasn’t changed over the ages, but has merely taken on new ways of presenting itself. Rather than direct rule, power manifests itself through wealth and indirect control. Being able to buy your way through your problems is liable to work when everything has a price and loyalty is just another currency. Rulers at the top, King or Chairman, exert influence by parceling out power and maintaining the relationships around them. The ruler has to maintain a balance with leadership or investors who hold comparable, if lesser, types of power, or they risk losing control over the greater whole. Even if the power-hungry aren’t positioned at the very top, maneuvering to gain a majority can entirely circumvent those in leadership. It all comes down to the company that they keep. But when these relationships and imposed responsibilities break, things start to fall apart. Richard’s difficulty in maintaining that balance is part of what ultimately destabilizes his power base. Richard III is in many ways a story of Good vs. Evil, and there is no doubt that Richard is in many ways evil. But he doesn’t lose merely because he is evil, but because he faltered in his relationships when his enemy did not. Shakespeare and history might not align perfectly, but this scenario has certainly played itself out many times across the ages.

Samuel Langellier: Dramaturg