Julius Caesar

Directed by: Edward Payson Call

Guthrie Theater

Minneapolis, MN

 

 

Julius Caesar (1969)

 

In 1969, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis staged a production of Julius Caesar. It was director Edward Payson Call’s final play for the Guthrie, following his critically-successful 1965 production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle for the Guthrie’s third season, [1] and his 1966 production of As You Like It, set in the South during the post-Civil War era.[2]

 

This production of Julius Caesar is the first Latinx or Latin American-themed Shakespeare production post-West Side Story (1957 Broadway, 1961 film) that I have tracked. In John Ripley’s analysis of Julius Caesar productions, he writes that the production “as the very antithesis of the RSC mood.”[3] Call incorporated Brechtian devices, saying “‘I tried to talk about political assassination using Roman costumes and Brechtian subtitles.’”[4]

 

The production was set in an unspecified Latin American country. Horst Zander writes, “it included contemporary military uniforms and guns, but also a Caesar as an Aztec-like sun-god. Although it did not concentrate on a particular period, the version nevertheless emphasized parallels between Caesar and modern dictators.[5] Indigeneity was further invoked through the soundscape when Caesar as sun-god “ascended a great Mayan pyramid to the strains of indigenous flute music.”[6]

 

 

CARLA DELLA GATTA

OCTOBER 2022

 

​

[1] William L. Prosser, “American Directorial Approaches to Shakespeare, 1960-1976,” Dissertation, City University of New York, 1977. 223.

[2] According to Call, “‘Jaques was a kind of disillusioned Robert E. Lee. Adam was a black slave. The men in the forest were like Confederate soldiers who refused to go back to a Yankee-controlled South. Duke Frederick was a carpetbeggar. The girls wore pretty crinolines until they changed into men's clothes. . . we made [Touchstone] an Irishman. An Irish entrepreneur-entertainer.’” As quoted in Prosser, 225.

[3] John Ripley, ‘Julius Caesar’ on Stage in England and America, 1599-1973, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980, 268.

[4] Prosser, 225-26.

[5] Horst Zander, “Introduction: Julius Caesar and the Critical Legacy,” Julius Caesar: New Critical Essays, Ed. Horst Zander, New York: Routledge, 2005, 3-58. 39.

[6] Michael L. Greenwald, “Multicultural and Regendered Romans: Julius Caesar in North America, 1969-2000,” Julius Caesar: New Critical Essays, Ed. Horst Zander, New York: Routledge, 2005, 319-332. 321.