Though some in the New Mexico theater world might primarily know theatrical mainstay Zoe Burke as an actor or an intimacy coordinator, Burke has also sat in the director’s chair numerous times throughout her career. This week, in Albuquerque, Burke does just that with a production of Much Ado About Nothing presented as part of the New Mexico Shakespeare Festival (6:30 pm Friday, June 6. Free. New Mexico Veterans Memorial Park, 1100 Louisiana Blvd. SE, ABQ, nmshakes.org). This production marks Burke’s fifth time being part of the play in one position or another, and it also represents a collaborative effort during which cast and crew stood on equal ground to execute the vision. We spoke with Burke to learn a little more about her role, her thoughts on Shakespeare and the ways in which the Bard’s work can still be reinterpreted. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
I admit that when I think of your work, I tend to think of intimacy coordination and choreography—and also acting, to be fair. When it comes to directing directing, what has that experience been like?
This is something I’ve actually been doing for over a decade, really. But it was kind of an interesting journey. I started as an actor, as so many do, then decided on a whim to stage manage a show one summer that didn’t have a role for me to play. Luckily, the director was a lovely human and would talk to me about his decisions or why he was doing certain things certain ways, and I realized it was something I wanted to try. Then, in college, I had a similar experience and was able to assistant direct a production in my undergrad, and I found it so validating and exciting to shape a show in that way. More opportunities came up over the years, and having been a high school drama teacher, there’s a lot of directing in that. I’m at Kearney Elementary now, too, in the process of developing a drama program there.
Tell us about your production of Much Ado. Obviously we can do Shakespeare in so many ways and in so many settings. Can you talk about your setting and why you choose it?
We’re setting it in the 1940s, post-World War II, in Albuquerque. And this was a really early choice we made…as the play opens with a bunch of soldiers returning from war in a way that’s very exciting and in a triumphant context, so if you’re setting the play in an American context that is also triumphant, you can’t really do anything after WWII. Also, the play has always had an adventurous feel to me, so there’s the alignment with Route 66 and the impacts it’s had on the region, both positive and negative; and that connects to another huge part of our context, which is that we have Indigenized parts in the play. That was something that came from the diversity we had in auditions, and something I’m always interested in with Shakespeare is whose voices aren’t being represented and why? Like, when I work with the Incite Shakespeare Company, we’re always looking at queering Shakespeare, and that’s something I feel is so important. The amount of audience members who have said they feel reflected is so cool. When we talk Shakespeare, it has been a tool of colonization, and used in—big-time-quotes—“residential” schools as this pinnacle of Western literature, but it’s also something that’s incredibly accessible and free to use and cut and modify. You can do anything you want with it…so when we had Native actors audition, we were able to have one of the key families in the show played entirely by Native actors.
As someone who has done a lot of Shakespeare and likely knows a ton about it, does altering a show you know well and adding elements like that shake it up or make it feel new for you?
It does alter the dialogue a bit. One of those things we’ve done a lot is that there are a lot of characters saying ‘God,’ or ‘oh, God.’ Like, there’s that famous Much Ado line by Beatrice that’s, ‘Oh, God, that I were a man.’ But pretty early on in the process, someone said, ‘y’know, we’d probably say Creator, so can I say, oh, Creator, that I were a man.?’ We ended up doing that. And obviously Indigeneity is not a monolith, so it’s not a one-size-fits-fits all thing, but more about how can we make this more authentic? I do think there’s absolute validity in doing traditional Shakespeare in a set period, but I also think that because it’s something that can be perceived as being creaky and old, why do we care about that and need it? Being able to put it in different settings is powerful. It’s something that can bring more people into caring about Shakespeare, too.
