After touring prisons, rehab centers, and other non-traditional spaces where people don’t usually get to see Shakespeare, the Public Theater’s Mobile Unit returns to the stage with a production of the Bard’s crowd-pleasing comedy “Much Ado About Nothing,” which runs through December 15. Directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah, the knotty tale involves two couples — Beatrice and Benedick, Hero and Claudio — one tricked into being together, the other fooled into being apart. ARTINFO spoke separately with Michael Braun and Samantha Soule, who play Benedick and Beatrice, the heart of the play, about their attraction to these characters, working with the Mobile Unit, and why audiences continuously return to “Much Ado.”
As actors, what draws you to the characters of Benedick and Beatrice?
Samantha: I think what draws me to her is that she’s a real balance of joy and smarts. She’s unique in that whatever she’s been through she’s turning it upside down, she’s someone who’s incredibly good at taking difficulty, or pain, or whatever may have happened in her life, and not dwelling on it. She finds joy in even the mundane of interactions. She kind of reminds me of one of those kids who is an only child, you know? She has no parents herself; she’s a ward of an uncle, she’s a solo entity. She self entertains and each conversation is a puzzle of wit for her, like one of those kids who really used to play by themselves [laughs].
Michael: Benedick is one of the most fun parts I’ve ever played. I read Harold Bloom’s article on the play a couple days ago, and he describes Beatrice and Benedick as nihilists, which sounds very dramatic and extreme. But he has an interesting point. They kind of don’t believe in the rules everyone else believes in — and what a fun place to be.
Can you talk a little about your experience with the Mobile Shakespeare Unit so far?
Samantha: I have reticence about ever going back to normal theater [laughs].
Michael: The program is linked to what Joe Papp was doing when he founded the Public Theater, which is loading people into a truck and bringing Shakespeare out of the city. The first two years of the mobile unit they did really heavy material, part of the reason they went with a comedy to bring to prisons and homeless shelters and everything. But as the tour approached, I have to say, I was like: “We’re bringing ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ to prisons?” We’re going to get eaten alive [laughs].
Samantha: I think there’s something really wonderful that can happen when you break the conventions. When you turn that on its end, you can sort of go back to what it was in the beginning: story and humanity. It was unbelievable to me just how hungry and vibrant and interactive and present these audiences were. They are not people who bought a ticket. We have shown up in their house. We could have been met with real resistance, and they were some of the best audiences playing Shakespeare that I’ve ever had.
“Much Ado,” like everything Shakespeare has written, has such a deep history. These roles have been played by so many actors over the years. Are you thinking about this history, trying to capture an essence of all these different performers, or are you trying to distance yourself?
Michael: That’s a good question. It is tricky. The interesting thing about Benedick is that I get the sense that he’s a very well known character, but then you start to think about it. He doesn’t have a “to be or not to be” moment that people can recite. There’s something liberating about that. People know that they love the guy. They’re not mouthing the words along with you, which is quite comforting as an actor [laughs].
Samantha: Honestly, the other times I’ve played Shakespeare heroines in a traditional production that has been more present in my mind. In this, I don’t know. The very nature of what it was we were doing removed that from me. It got moved to a back burner, then up on the shelf. I sort of forgot around the way. I didn’t watch the Joss Whedon film because I knew I was going to be doing this. Sometimes, when you can hear another actor speaking it, it distances you from your own instincts. I love the Emma Thompson-Kenneth Branagh film, so I did have to work a little bit to not mimic Emma Thompson.
Michael: It’s something you come up against a lot in Shakespeare. The big challenge is to dig in and find your own personal connection to the character, which is different than Joss Whedon’s or Kenneth Branagh’s or any number of recent versions of the play.
Why do you think people come back to “Much Ado?”
Samantha: It’s funny to think about it because I actually gravitate toward the tragedies [laughs]. I love them. Give me “Lear” any day.
Michael: There are general themes that speak to everyone in this play. You sort of lose track of it as an educated theatergoer. It is about love, it is about trust, it is about being betrayed by someone, people turning out not to be who you thought they were. These are clearly issues that we can all relate to, and in particular some of our underserved communities, can relate to on a very deep level.
Samantha: It’s been interesting spending time with “Much Ado,” and I think what seems to be present every time we perform this is: He sets you up on the heels of a war. Some of the very first lines of the play are, “How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?” You’re stepping off the gangplank having survived something bad. There is something universal for all of us in those moments of hiatus after tragedy, or after difficulty, or strain, where just for a moment you want to revel in the fact that we made it, we’re all here, how lucky are we. Let’s focus on something lighter, something more joyful, something more life affirming.
