Photography by Lia Chang
André De Shields
For theater nerds, it’s unclear which is the bigger news: that St. Louis Shakespeare Festival is returning to Forest Park, or that the inimitable André De Shields is in the starring role of King Lear. The production runs June 2–27, with strictly limited crowds seated in pre-reserved pods to comply with pandemic protocols. (Starting May 31, the festival will release free tickets for pods weekly.)
De Shields is a Tony, Emmy, and Grammy winner whose Broadway credits include Hadestown, The Wiz, and Ain’t Misbehavin’. Carl Cofield, associate artistic director of the Classical Theatre of Harlem, directs the all-BIPOC cast. St. Louis Magazine caught up with De Shields, deep in the text and the task of inhabiting Lear.
(Spoiler-laden Cliffs notes: Old King Lear demands his daughters flatter him so he can decide how to divide up his kingdom and retire from kinging. Shifty sisters Goneril and Regan blow a bunch of smoke, much to Lear’s delight. Earnest Cordelia doesn’t get into the flattery game, so he cuts her out entirely. Goneril and Regan, kingdom in hand, proceed to toss Papa Lear aside and he temporarily goes insane. Lear reunites with Cordelia and his sanity just in time for them both to die. Love triangles, war, death, deception, etc. It’s not one of the funny ones, but it’s widely considered among the Bard’s best.)
What’s it like to be returning to live theater with Lear? It’s such a unique moment with such particular energy.
That energy is definitely what I’m using, not only to clarify this most difficult text but also to use it as a way to stress the redemptive quality that I am discovering in King Lear. It has a lot to do with the 18-month pandemic that we have all experienced. How many times have we said, "Oh, if only the playing field were leveled"? Well, the pandemic leveled the playing field in the sense that nobody knew anything and everybody knew nothing. It was as if it was one of those California forest fires that burned everything. New green buds announced that the old word is eager to die—we should allow it to do exactly that, we should be doulas, we should be midwives.
Now, what does this have to do with King Lear? Well, King Lear, if you put it in the scales, it balances out between the old guy and his passing culture, and the young ones and the new legacy that they’re going to create and how it necessarily means you have to let go of your traditional expectations. This is the lens through which King Lear is being refracted for me: There is no such thing as sovereignty. How can you own something in a global world where all of us are interdependent? So—everybody, raise your hand. What play should we do now that the pandemic is wearing itself out? Well, my hand goes up for King Lear.
Madness is a theme in Lear. How does it relate to the discomfort we’ve all been feeling in pandemic life?
What has happened in King Lear just happened to all of us. How many times have people said "I’m so frustrated, I’m so confused. O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!" When Shakespeare wrote this—and, by the way, Shakespeare wrote this during a pandemic—mad was the only term we had to express being beside ourselves, being outside one’s natural mind. Research says that Shakespeare invented the human psyche—that’s certainly where Freud and Jung went. So during this pandemic, guess what, people? You’re going to have to deal with your ego, your alter ego, and your id, and it ain’t gonna be cute, so get ready.
If you don’t declare that sanity is yours and everybody else around you is insane then you’ll be able to, instead of avoiding the problem, you’ll be able to approach the problem, and then before you know it you’ll be on the other side of the problem.
What is it like producing Lear with an all-BIPOC cast?
The scholarship has been exclusively the domain of imperial Europe and white supremacist America. I’m not European, I’m not white, so I bring to it a different perspective. I bring to it a different lens. Indeed, it’s Black pain that is the formula I am using to get through this particular wilderness that we call King Lear. You want to understand America? You have to put on Black eyes. You want to understand King Lear after the epidemic? You have to put on the eyes of those who have been marginalized, those who have been disproportionally harmed by white privilege. Lear is the epitome of white male privilege. So now we have an actor in the role who is seeing it from the polar opposite of the spectrum.
Now, it’s also the shoe being put on the other foot. This is a teaching moment, this is not a moment of revenge. I’m sure the audience is going to be a white majority—that’s fine. But they’re going to have to experience the world of Lear under the rule of a Black male despot, and maybe a few people will go so far to realize, "Ohhh, this is what they’re talking about when they go out into the street and shout 'Black Lives Matter.'" This is what we who have chosen the profession of the arts have been saying for centuries—theater is transformational. We are healers. The paradigm has to change before everyone has the opportunity to see it.
