The Cenci 2019
This summer marks the bicentenary of Percy Bysshe Shelley's drama, The Cenci, written between May and August 1819 and printed by late September that year. The play was not staged during Shelley's lifetime, but, since its first performance by the Shelley Society in 1886, it has been staged in a variety of adaptations across the world. We are pleased to present an interview with Dr. Monika Lee (Brescia University College) and Dr. Joanna Devereux (Western University) on their upcoming production of The Cenci. The theatre program at Western University will be staging their production from December 4-7 2019 at TAPS: The Arts Project Centre for Creativity in London, Ontario, Canada.
Q. Your decision to stage a production of The Cenci resulted from the success of your Frankenreads event at Western University in 2018. Could you tell us a bit more about your Frankenreads event, and how its success prompted your decision to stage The Cenci?
Monika: The Western and Brescia communities came together wonderfully to read the 1818 edition of Frankenstein aloud in front of a live audience – a reading which was recorded, and live-streamed. We had collaboration from faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students in addition to members of the wider London community. The students especially expressed their enthusiasm for having participated. Students in the third- and fourth-year seminar in Frankenstein 1818 achieved some course credit for their contributions. A doctoral student in the Ph.D. in music composition, Aaron Lee, aired a recording of a song from his new opera, The Maker, the story inspired by Frankenstein. When Frankenreads was over, those keen students asked me what we would be doing next year. When I mentioned a production of The Cenci, they were enthusiastic. So I approached Western’s resident drama professor and director Dr. Joanna Devereux with the idea. Jo was very receptive. The production will be part of an undergraduate course (English 2041F) that has been offered since 2007 in the English department at Western University’s main campus and that is open to all students in second year and above in any program, faculty, or affiliated college at Western University. The course culminates in the production of the play being studied.
Q. Frankenstein’s continued popularity owes in part to its topicality, particularly in drawing attention to contemporary issues of xenophobia, technological advances such as artificial intelligence, and identity. Do you think The Cenci similarly speaks to contemporary topical issues?
Monika: Absolutely, it does. The Cenci considers sexual violence, domestic abuse, the nature of consent, whether or not victims of sexual violence are believed, a justice system protecting the powerful but prejudiced against the powerless, and women’s rights more generally. These are critical and current issues crucial for our time, and Shelley handled them honestly and sensitively in 1819.
Q. Although The Cenci was not staged in Mary and Percy Shelley’s lifetime, both had high hopes for the drama’s widespread reception and popularity, with Percy commenting that the work was ‘expressly written for theatrical exhibition’ and was ‘for the multitude’. Do you think the time has arrived for The Cenci to receive the widespread reception that the Shelleys thought it deserved?
Monika: Yes, I think that this play, more than any other written in English during the Romantic period, deserves widespread public recognition. Some have said it is the greatest tragedy of nineteenth-century England, and I concur. Whenever I teach it, this text resonates with my students, who tend to like it enormously. For that reason, it is the easiest of Shelley’s long works to teach. The culture at large, between the “me too” movement and the routine silencing of voices and rights of many victims of sexual violence or domestic abuse, also urgently needs this play. It is beautiful but accessible. It is artistically masterful yet politically pertinent. Though imitative of Greek drama, its concerns are astonishingly resonant.
Q. Since its first theatrical production in 1886, The Cenci has been brought to life on stage in theatres across North America, and abroad in the UK, Russia, France, Australia, and most recently, China. Have any prior productions influenced your production?
Monika: I saw the 1984-85 production of The Cenci by the Bristol Old Vic Company in London, England at the Almeida Theatre. Prior to then I didn’t realize how well the play would work theatrically. Leonie Mellinger gave a brilliant interpretation of Beatrice Cenci, and my English cousin (not an academic) also loved both the production and the play. I knew then that the Shelleys were right that the play, if and when it was staged, had the potential to be popular and to reach a wide audience.
Q. Percy Shelley famously intended for Eliza O’Neill to play the part of Beatrice Cenci in the production he hoped would be staged at Covent Garden. Did you have any specific actors in mind when you began casting? How important is it that Beatrice Cenci comes across as a sympathetic character?
Joanna: I did not have any specific actors in mind, since this is a course in which we invite students from across all disciplines at Western to audition and to enrol in the course for credit. This production I have double cast, so we have two Beatrices, and each actor (both young women) showed a clear understanding of the text and sympathy for the character she was reading during auditions. I do think that the actor playing Beatrice should elicit sympathy from the audience, but also reveal the complexity of the character’s motivations.
Q. What challenges, if any, do you anticipate in bringing The Cenci to the stage?
Joanna: The main challenge will be to keep the show in motion, avoiding prolonged static periods when we might lose the audience. Students often have to struggle with blank verse, but by the time we stage the show, they are usually comfortable with it. Shelley’s vocabulary is more accessible than many of the early modern blank verse tragedies I have directed, so I hope that the actors will master the verse quickly this time.
Q. Will there be any other events accompanying your staging of The Cenci?
Monika: The experiential course on which the play is taught, studied, and staged, English 2041F, is the main concurrent event. During it there will be lectures, discussion, practicum, and written assignments on The Cenci. Also, there will be other undergraduate courses which will feature the play as a required text (so far, we are counting four additional course sections which will teach The Cenci that would not otherwise have done so. Most of the students enrolled in those courses will attend the production). There will also be a public lecture prior to one of the performances. We hope to video-record the production and post it on the internet.
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