Interview with Shakespeare in Clark Park Artistic Director Kittson O’Neill
I got to interview Shakespeare in Clark Park Artistic Director Kittson O’Neill from Philadelphia. We spoke about their concept of radical community engagement and their creative use of a modern pageant wagon to take theatre to West Philly neighborhoods during covid. Fantastic! (More interviews here.)
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If you’d rather read the interview, a rough transcript is below.
Interview with Shakespeare in Clark Park
Michael Van Osch: Hey, this is Michael Van Osch. Welcome again to the Hark Journal and we have another great interview for you today. We’re going up to Philadelphia and I’m a proud to introduce Kittson O’Neill artistic director of Shakespeare in Clark Park. Hi Kittson, how are you?
Kittson O’Neill: I’m very well. Thanks. How are you?
Michael Van Osch: I’m not too bad. Not too bad. Thanks for joining us. I appreciate it.
Kittson O’Neill: Sure. My pleasure, November 2nd, who knows?
Michael Van Osch: That’s right. That’s right. Tomorrow could be a whole different world. So, but yeah. Thanks for joining us. I really want to find out about what you’re doing up there. Cause you, you know, you’ve been affected obviously like every other theater company, but you’ve got some stuff going on that’s really neat, I think. But let’s start off with, tell us a little bit about Shakespeare in Clark Park, please.
History
Kittson O’Neill: Sure. So, Shakespeare in Clark Park is about 16 years old and, it’s primary purpose is just to put on a big free production of a Shakespeare play in Clark Park, which is in West Philadelphia.
So Philly is a pretty. Pretty geographically, large city, and Clark Park is kind of the social heart of West Philly. It’s a very heavily used part. It’s much beloved. and it sits in the locus of like a very diverse neighborhood. The university of Pennsylvania is very close by so it’s, it’s a, it’s a really in the university.
It’s an interesting spot, demographically. And so we’ve put on a play there for many, many years. And I took over the company about five years ago and. The company had been drifting in this direction, but I really solidly put us in the direction of something I call radical community engagement, which means we don’t just put on the play in the park.
We also do outreach to the community and we involve members of the community in the making of the play. Each summer it’s different. It’s dramaturgically like it’s. Basically catered towards this text. So we don’t just always have people in the show in one way or another. It’s, it’s very particular to the play and the needs of the play.
And that’s been, so that’s been really fun and exciting, and I think the neighborhood really likes that. It’s we certainly enjoy it. So that’s, that’s our normal activity is putting on a really, really big, you know, we have a thousand people a night and the seating is unlimited. So there’s a lot of people in the park pressed close together, obviously we didn’t do that this summer.
Michael Van Osch: Right. And how many nights would you typically do it in a normal summer?
Kittson O’Neill: It’s just, we just run for a week. Yep. Cause the show is totally free. And also because we use community members, it’s, it’s challenging to ask them to commit for a really long period of time. Actually this summer, we were working on a really big expansion project, which hopefully we will do in 2021 if everyone behaves.
And that was, we were doing our play in Clark Park, but then we had also, we were creating two other plays. Which were community written, devised created along with professional artists. And those plays were, were a response to the Shakespeare play. So, so we’re doing Pericles, but we had two other plays in the works.
One was called Perils Island and it had already written it and it was in early stages of production, so that it was really - the idea was to take a Shakespeare play and really give it to the community and say like, take total ownership of this play. And what would you write? What would, how does this speak to your experience?
So we were doing that in two other neighborhoods. So we hopefully next summer we’ll actually have three plays, in three different neighborhoods.
Michael Van Osch: What a great concept.
Kittson O’Neill: Thanks. Yeah, it was really fun to do so hopefully we’ll, we’ll get to complete it.
Michael Van Osch: Absolutely. Yeah, we’ll be looking for that. So tell us a little bit more before I can’t move on.
Tell us a little bit about, more about radical community engagement, because that obviously is something that is very interesting. And I know I just love the sound of it. And you’ve told us a little bit about that, how you involve people, but is that right? Something that, that you brought as an artistic director to the company and what does it mean?
Radical Community Engagement
Kittson O’Neill: Sort of, I mean, there, so there had been a production in 2014 of Henry, Henry was kind of a, an edited version of, of Henry four and. That in that production, the director was like, I want, because we perform on a very large bowl, we call it. It’s basically an old mill pond that’s been filled in.
So it’s, it’s, it’s an unusual space in that it has a slope all around it in a circle and then we perform in different parts of that. Circle. Okay. but it means you have this like huge expanse of lawn available to you as a director to play with, or you have a huge expanse of lawn that you’re wrestling with as director, because it’s very distracting and there’s children on it and dogs and people playing Frisbee.
So in 2014, the director was like, I want a huge army of people to literally like walk, like come down that bowl for the final battle of the play. And I wasn’t involved with the company then, but I saw the show and there were literally like a hundred people. Most of them, just regular folks from Philadelphia who had signed up to make this battle.
And it was a lot of stylized fighting. It was really, really fun. And the people who took part in it really loved the experience. Like they created a Facebook group and they all kept in touch with each other for years still they’ll get together or not right now, but they got together, and they would go to plays together because they were like, well, the army is going to a play who wants to come with, so it really was this like galvanizing experience for the community.
And the following year, I directed a play for them. And I was like, I want to do that again, but we’re directing The Winter’s Tale. I was like, so I want a chorus of children because the play is to me about a terrible divorce. And no one suffers a divorce more than the kids. So we literally had this like chorus of children who, who could have ran around the court, in Sicilia and then, but they also did puppetry, and they created an ocean, and they did all this sort of fun.
I think they’re hilarious. And they were also a nightmare because they were children, but they were great. And they added this like whimsical element to the play that was very painful to watch when it all kind of fell apart and got ugly. And so then when I took over the company, I was like, let’s just keep doing this.
Let’s make this part of our mission. Like the neighborhood loves it. We like doing it. So each year we, we reach out and we have really been trying to. Reach out to people who wouldn’t traditionally be involved in a Shakespeare play or be interested. So not this summer, but the summer before we did King Lear.
And we invited a few people who had been in community choruses before to play small roles in the play. But then what we did is our really radical engagement was we worked with Impact Services, which has a home for veterans who are in/have housing insecurity and are also struggling with addiction.
So we did a playwriting workshop and, and kind of were invested in this Impact Services based for veterans. And then we invited some of those guys to come and be in the show and they played Lear’s knights. And then it was so wonderful, and it was a very small engagement cause we, we really had to like it, it was complicated, you know, we ended up like not, they didn’t have transportation.
So we ended up having to Uber them to every show and, and they had health issues. So it was more, you know, it’s more complicated when you reach out to a population that is disenfranchised, but also so worthwhile, so worthwhile and they, they rewrote there’s a little scene that the Knights have in Lear.
When they talk about kind of what’s happening and their fear, you know, about what’s happening. They’re like out in the woods. And we had them rewrite that scene in their own language. and it was really magical, it was really magical.
Michael Van Osch: Wow. I just got to like a shiver. Yeah, I mean, anyone that ever says, what good is art and what good is arts in the community?
Wow. I mean, I, that, what a phenomenal story. Thank you for doing that.
Kittson O’Neill: Yes. I want people to be able to say, you want to know what the arts does for our community here. Look at this, here’s this, here’s a concrete example of how we build community. We build empathy, we build connection. You know, these guys are people who would never have come to our show.
And who would never have met the artists or, you know, or each other. There were other veterans who weren’t in, in the homeless center who were also in the group. So we had a mixture of veterans from different conflicts. You know, there were guys who had been in the Bosnian conflict and guys who were Vietnam vets, and we had an Iraq war vet.
So it was really like, and they just, and it was also an environment where they didn’t have to talk about their trauma. They didn’t have to dig into like, what they were wrestling with. Their primary concern was like, where am I supposed to stand again? What is my line? And it was fun,
Michael Van Osch: But I bet they will never forget that experience either.
Nor will those people all coming down the hill as the army. Right.
Obviously they didn’t,
Kittson O’Neill: You know what, one of the people who was in that army is now the president of my board. Like they’re like I’m invested in this company.
Michael Van Osch: I love it. That’s great. Well, let me, let me read a little bit about who you are.
So the folks that are listening can then know a little bit more about you, but obviously you said you’ve been the artistic director there since 2015 and your commitment to radical community engagement is really at the center of everything, which I really love. And you also talked about challenging assumptions about classical work and the hierarchies of artistic excellence.
And I think he really brought that to the fore already, too. And you’re also a classical trained dancer, trained classical dancer, and briefly worked at The Onion as a writer as well. So that’s a, I like that,
right?
Yeah. You’re obviously a director, you know, directed a lot. And some of the reason things are some of the highlights here are.
You directed The Wolves at Boise Contemporary Theatre, Copenhagen at The Lantern theatre, King Lear. And Coriolanus at your place Shakespeare in Clark Park, Moby Dick, which you got a nomination for best director and more and more. And then also from an acting perspective, Sweat at the Philadelphia Theatre Company, Hand to God at Boise Contemporary.
Again, Informed Consent at The Lantern. And, from a camera perspective, you’ve obviously got a lot going on there to, Law and Order SUV, Outsiders, Mayor of East Town with Kate Winslet. Is that still in production or is that come out yet?
Kittson O’Neill: It is. We, you know, fingers crossed. We are only a few weeks from ending filming and so, It’s been really crazy to be completing a TV show in a pandemic.
But I have to say the team at HBO is amazing and they are, they’re really kind, they’re super thoughtful. They’re so thorough. Like the safety on set is, it’s amazing. It’s very thorough and I feel very secure. We just hope that we can finish. We’re very close to the end of this year. I mean, my role is extremely small, but it’s really been an honor to work on that.
Michael Van Osch: Fantastic. And it says you’re also we’re on The Upside with Bryan Cranston. Yeah. That’s the one where he plays the quadriplegic. I can’t remember what a phenomenal film. I love that film,
Kittson O’Neill: lovely film. Isn’t it. I really I’m proud to be in that. I mean, I have a tiny part, but I’m proud to be in that film.
It’s really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And everyone, everyone on that cast was lovely.
Michael Van Osch: Just like you hope they would be.
Kittson O’Neill: Right. I know, I know it is nice to like work with famous people and be like, Oh, they’re so nice and professional. And like, there’s not a diva among us. That’s pretty great.
Michael Van Osch: That’s awesome. That’s awesome.
Tell us a little bit now about what you got going on now, because I know that you’re out in the community and there’s two things we want to, I want to know about here first, Every Every Man, you got to explain that to the folks because there’s a twist there and also. What is a pageant wagon?
Kittson O’Neill: Okay. So the, just as a caveat, I, I have, I was a history and art history major in college, and my focus was on medieval art and medieval history. So a pageant wagon. And if anyone’s watched Game of Thrones, do you remember in game of Thrones where she’s supposed to assassinate the actress? Okay. If you’ve seen Game of Thrones, the thing that those actors perform on is a pageant wagon.
It’s basically a big truck. I mean, obviously it wasn’t a truck, but it was a big wagon that had a set kind of already built on it. And, and you would, the company of actors would pull it into a city, set it up in the town square. And like perform their stuff I’m it was how many able players brought their toward their play around, And I thought, okay, well, we’re, we’re in the middle of a plague, so let’s let the middle ages like inspire us. and, and one of the things that would sometimes happen with a pageant wagon is if there was a town that was closed because of plague, the wagon would come outside the walls.
And like the people would, would gather on the walls of the city and watch the show from a distance. And I was like, all right, well, we can do that is a real porch culture. Especially West Philly. We have a lot of. Streets were all the houses have porches. It’s very block by block culture. People closed their blocks down and have parties.
It’s very like people are really invested in the, in the micro-community of their block in many parts of West Philly. So we were like, we’re going to build a trailer. That can open up and we’ll have a little stage on it, and we’ll drag it around to the different blocks and perform for people live in their homes.
Cause I think, I mean, I love how much everyone’s been like pivoting to try and figure out ways to keep, keep producing. But for me, the theater is it has to be in person. Otherwise it just does it loses a magic, not only for us as actors, but I think more importantly for the audience. They want to gather.
And obviously we can’t gather in the same way right now, but I thought this is a way we can, we can bring live performance. But then of course I had to find a play that I could do safely with the actors, because that, that was a real hurdle is how do you safely rehearse a play? You know, when you, I couldn’t afford to like put them all in a, in a hotel and quarantine them for a month.
So. I picked partly I picked Every Man because it’s a play about people, you know, about humans, wrestling with death. And I thought we were all wrestling with that. But also because there’s no kissing or fighting, it was like play that narratively. I looked at a bunch of Shakespeare plays. I thought I could just do a short version of Midsummer or something.
Super fun. I didn’t know how to stage that play honestly, without having my actors talk to each other. Yeah. I just couldn’t figure out how to do it. and we were all doing this very quickly, so we thought, well, hell, let’s do Every Man. But then, and then George Floyd was killed. And like a lot of companies, we really…
..We’re still in the middle of like, re-evaluating, how are we really working to dismantle systemic racism, especially as a Shakespeare company. And that’s certainly been part of my mission from the get-go is to, is to, to make our company inclusive. But I felt here I have this show it’s already kind of in the hopper.
What can I do to really make it an active tool. So I thought, all right, I’m not going to adapt it. I’m going to just step back. And I hired a bunch of amazing actors from our city and, and it was really led by a couple of African American artists. And I said, you guys adapt to the play. You devise it, you adapt it.
And like, take this, take this structure and make it your own. So that’s how we ended up with Every Every Man, because it was really led by the artists who were making the show. They. They did the adapting and they amended it to have it speak to our city and to our moment, you know?
Michael Van Osch: Yeah.
Kittson O’Neill: That’s, that’s where we’re at,
Michael Van Osch: Doing it right now, or is it gone, gone?
Kittson O’Neill: We finished that tour. So we’ve, we did, we basically did like a fall tour and that’s closed and now the wagon is like in a parking lot with the tarp over it. It’s getting a little cold to do the outdoor performances at this point. So we did it in early October, also just with the election where like there’s so much going on.
We didn’t want to be distracting, but we did toy with the idea of bringing it around to polling places. But, so, you know, we only have so much funding, so, so now we are now we’ve done that and we’ve, you know, we’d never done anything like this before, like, a mobile show, creating new work, all this stuff is new to us.
So we’re now taking a moment to like, look at how we made the show, look at the different blocks and how successful, how it went everywhere. And we’re looking to the spring to see like, is there a way for us to use this tool that we’ve created now to, to bring, to continue to bring it live theater, to companies to people, in the spring. So.
Michael Van Osch: Obviously you feel like it was successful. I mean, how many things did you end up doing?
Kittson O’Neill: We had nine scheduled. We ended up doing seven. Yeah, because rain it’s still outdoor theater. So,
Michael Van Osch: Well, and I like the trailer too on your website that people can go see by the way. And what, what is your website?
I’ll put it in the notes as well, but what is it?
Kittson O’Neill: www.shakespeareinclarkpark.org.
Michael Van Osch: Dot org. You guys are a 501 C3? I’m taking it.
Kittson O’Neill: We sure are, yes, we take any and all donations every time.
Michael Van Osch: Yeah, exactly. Donation donation, donation. And what kind of staff do you have from a full-time perspective?
Kittson O’Neill: Basically, I and my assistant are the only full-time staff members because we only do a show in the summertime. I mean, full-time, I also, obviously I work as an actor and as a. director at other theaters. So I’m really, full-time only like in the months before production, but year round, it’s myself and Paige Zubel who’s my associate artistic director.
And like everyone else has brought on seasonally. So it’s a small shop.
Michael Van Osch: Yeah. Like most like most places you have the work that, you know, you and other theater companies put on is so massive people can’t believe that it’s done by, you know, such small staffs.
Kittson O’Neill: I know, I know it’s artists are, I think we are all more resourceful than anybody knows.
Michael Van Osch: Absolutely. Yeah. I had something else I wanted to ask you about now. Now it just left me.
Kittson O’Neill: I did want to say something that was really about making the pageant wagon, which I think, I feel like in the pandemic has been really helpful. Like we, and I I’d be so curious to know if other theater producers have had this experience.
You know, our city has a lot of priorities, right? We’ve had a lot of issues in Philadelphia. So city government, it’s interested in the arts, but for us, we’re so much smaller fish. You know, there’s big, big companies here that they’re really invested in, but when, when the pandemic hit and the arts really took a hit both financially and also just in terms of our emotions, the city government worked so proactively with us to help make this project happen in a way that they never had before.
You know, previously when I was applying for permits or trying to ask for help with things, there was a sort of indifference sometimes from people because we were like small potatoes, not that important, but in a funny way, I feel like when all the arts disappeared, the city was suddenly like, Oh, people really need this, and we don’t want this to die.
So I don’t know. So. I thought that was fascinating that like, even though this has been really hard and really ugly for a lot of us. Yeah. I do think there was just, it was just refreshing to have an interaction with the city government that was so proactive on their part. Like they really helped us figure out how to do this safely.
I mean, the city health office, like the, you know, the COVID compliance officer and I were on the phone, like throughout the process, figuring out how to do this in a way that we keep people safe, which is, I just can’t imagine I would have had that access in a different time. So that’s, I don’t feel like there’s been a change in the way our city works with us and that’s been awesome.
Michael Van Osch: That’s a great thing, too, that they got mobilized around you and, and, realized what the value was there. Because I think in sometimes I know you feel this way too, in that we’re all in the arts. And sometimes we feel like we can be second fiddle. And yet what we, the value we bring is, is certainly not second fiddle.So yeah, absolutely.
Kittson O’Neill: Yeah. And not just us, there’s other companies in Philly that are doing, have making similar work and we kind of worked together as a little coalition. It was just, I don’t know, there’s been a lot of unity and like lifting each other up in this time that, that has really been beautiful.
Michael Van Osch: Wow. That’s wonderful. Just curious. It’s Philly your home originally? Where are you from?
Kittson O’Neill: I’m actually originally from, Australia. Yeah. I moved here as a child and then I, so I basically grew up in Connecticut. I moved to Philly 12 years ago now, 11, 12, 11 years ago. And I really love it.
Michael Van Osch: Yeah. I like the sound of the other neighborhoods and the blocks and how everybody is, is proactive about their neighborhoods.
That’s really neat.
Kittson O’Neill: It is, it’s a, it’s a real, yeah, there’s real community here.
Michael Van Osch: Fantastic. Well, I won’t keep you much longer. thank you so much for letting us know about everything you’re doing there at Shakespeare in Clark Park. And it’s been a real pleasure talking to you. I have a final question that I ask everybody and that is if Shakespeare was on this zoom call with us and you got to ask him one question, what would you ask him?
Kittson O’Neill: Ooh. Huh? I would ask him, which of your plays have we gotten totally wrong?. Yeah. Which one are we doing totally wrong?
Michael Van Osch: Yeah.
Kittson O’Neill: Cause I sometimes wonder, like, what did he really, like I think about Taming of the Shrew, which I think about, and I’m like, what did he intend? How did he want that to end? I know what I think, because I’ve played Kate, but like, what did you think?
Like what are we screwing it up? I like have questions about a couple of his plays. I just sometimes want to be like, it’s Titus Andronicus a comedy. That’s what I would want to know.
Michael Van Osch: Excellent. I love it. Thanks so much. Well, Kittson O’Neill, up there in Philadelphia with Shakespeare in Clark Park. Thanks so much.
It’s been a real pleasure and, we’ll promote you as much as we can. Good luck with the next period through COVID and, we’ll be watching. So thanks so much.
Kittson O’Neill: Thank you. You too. Thank you friend. Nice to meet you.
Michael Van Osch: Take care.
Kittson O’Neill: Bye now.
