Theater of the Imagination

Thoughts on Cyrano with Director David Schweizer
By Ken Greller, Dramaturgy Apprentice

“My favorite kind of theater is the kind that makes you aware of how it achieves its illusions.” says David Schweizer, director of Jo Roets’ Cyrano, a new, slimmed down adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Roets’ version takes the classic story of love and sacrifice and pares it down to the essentials. Not only does Cyrano run about an hour in length, but all of the (many) characters are portrayed by only three actors. It’s a twist that excites Schweizer, who eagerly embraced working on this brief, flexible, and imaginative re-working of the original. “You’re sort of obliged to challenge the reality of the situation,” says Schweizer of this lean and nimble project.

Cyrano was originally commissioned by Belgian theater company Der Blauw Vier, an experimental troupe specializing in innovative adaptations And while Cyrano is most definitely a classic in its themes and its scope, Roets’ adaptation, and Schweizer's concept, invite a playfulness, a fresh quality, something imaginative and far less traditional: the audience is asked to imagine, to engage, and be enchanted by three actors who do not change costume or make-up, but simply alter their voices and bodies to create a myriad of characters. In creating this world, Schweizer takes full advantage of the newly reconfigured Head Theater, acknowledging the theatrical space (including the brand new bar) as well as establishing settings through “Foley sound”—in which the three actors use their bodies and props to create sound effects—in order to establish various settings throughout the play.

Schweizer has set up plenty of obstacles for himself (and not to mention the cast) with Cyrano, but it’s by inviting the audience to imagine that they truly become involved. The Foley sounds, the simple and flexible costumes, the actors embodying multiple characters (and sometimes dropping character entirely) with simple vocal and gestural changes—these are all clues that the team behind Cyrano has laid out in an attempt to bring the audience on the journey of the play. They are both an invitation and a reminder of the simple, affecting beauty of Cyrano’s story, because the audience becomes an integral part of its creation. The show cannot exist without an audience to receive it. If no one’s there to see it, it doesn’t make a sound.

All theater, ultimately, is Theater of the Imagination. “Theater is the most transparent live art form,” says Schweizer “It’s basically a really unlikely thing to believe in.” We’re never really seeing a kitchen on stage; we’re only being asked to accept the suggestion of a kitchen, no matter how realistic or deconstructed it may be. In that same respect, we never really see Comte de Guiche, Roxane, or Cyrano, for that matter—we are simply invited to accept suggestions of them. And it’s by accepting these suggestions that we, the audience, become part of the theatrical experience. The transformation happens not because of a magic on stage so much as a magic worked on, and by, us as audience. Indeed, Cyrano is the kind of theater that not only acknowledges its own illusion, but, as Schweizer puts it, “goes one step further and says, ‘We know it’s all an illusion, but watch: right in front of your eyes, we’re going to turn it into something else.'"

Please check out our videos in the side bar revealing a little more of the "magic" of how we create theater.