Comment on this story What: To Kill a Mockingbird When: April 16 thru May 1, 8 p.m. Tues. – Sat., 2 p.m. Sunday. Where: Clarence Brown Theatre Cost: $35 opening night, $22 general, $19 seniors, $15 students, $5 UT students. Call 974-5161 for tickets.

Director Ted Shaffner puts new feathers on the old ’Bird

by Paige M. Travis

To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic. That much is certain. Both Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel published in 1960 and the following year’s film starring Gregory Peck are cultural icons. Some people who haven’t read the book (and are quite ashamed of the oversight) are still familiar with the story and its place in our collective consciousness. This foreknowledge of the text will influence the audience of the upcoming stage production of Christopher Sergel’s adaptation at the Clarence Brown Theatre.

Ted Shaffner, resident director at PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, N.C., has come across the mountain to direct the show. Shaffner is familiar with the act of adaptation—having worked some short stories, including “The Gift of the Magi,” into stage productions—but not using something with the historic reputation of To Kill a Mockingbird.

“That has its own iconic weight to it,” he admits, even more so because Shaffner’s first acting teacher was Collin Wilcox-Paxton, the actress who played Mayella Ewell in the film. “I grew up hearing stories about how that movie was filmed and who the people where. That presents its own pressure.”

But the play isn’t the novel or the film; it’s another entity altogether that will be endowed with the traits bestowed it by its own creators.

The production began auspiciously with a rare occurrence: all the show’s designers were together in the same room from the start, Shaffner says. Their lengthy inaugural conversation about the set was based on a quote from the book. Scout describes Maycomb, Ala., as “a warm cocoon slowly unraveling.” “That was our jumping off point,” he says.

Shaffner compliments his design team, second-year MFA students Clinton O’Dell, Weston Wilkerson and Amanda Jenkins, with whom he has worked closely on the entire look and feel of the play. He’s nicknamed them the “Sense Police” for their ability to connect the dots between the script, the actors and the set—and be willing to say, “That doesn’t make sense.”

The designers’ overlapping skills and experiences have contributed to multiple elements of the show. Shaffner says that set designer O’Dell has previous costume experience, and costume designer Jenkins has “had a huge influence in the set.”

Although the cast won’t experience the full effect of Wilkerson’s lighting magic until the preview performance, Shaffner already suspects the results will be impressive. The set’s buildings are wooden frames covered with screens; some are painted, some are left semi-transparent. Depending on the direction of the lighting, the structures—house, jail, courtroom—will either hide or reveal their interiors.

While viewers will be tempted to compare this stage version with its written and film counterparts, Shaffner hopes they will find a new slot, a fresh designation, for this unique production.

“I can’t match the movie, and I can’t do better,” he says. “What I can do is bring my personality to it and ask the designers to bring theirs.” The director’s own research has led him to rediscover the beauty of Harper Lee’s work.

“This is a really terrific book,” he says in earnest. “We sort of know that, but...when you work on the play you study it in much more detail.” He’s been surprised anew at how “complex and deep the issues become.”

In our memory, the story is simply of good and bad, enlightenment versus ignorance. The noble lawyer Atticus Finch (played by Terry Weber) tries to give a falsely accused black man named Tom Robinson (Forrest D. Martin) a fair trial in 1930s Alabama. We watch these events through the eyes of his daughter Scout (Mary Alice Skalko), a preternaturally wise and observant 8-year-old. The story holds moments of simplicity, like a summer day in childhood, while simultaneously tackling some very complicated issues of prejudice against race and class. The subtleties that can be expressed in words on a page are less easily communicated via speech and action on the stage. Shaffner intends to reveal the underlying depth of emotion through the play’s moments of discovery, surprise and, most of all, change.

“That’s what the whole play is about: the moments of change that you know when you’re going through them they are irredeemable. You’ll never go back to what you were.” For Scout and America in the ‘30s, Shaffner says, that kind of change is very much at hand.

Many fans of To Kill a Mockingbird haven’t put as much time and effort into analyzing the story as has Shaffner, who, as a visiting director, has a schedule suited to daily research. Rehearsals are from 6-11 p.m., giving him daytime hours to hike, practice tai chi and spend two or three hours on the play.

“This is a terrific time to catch up on reading,” he adds. If Shaffner’s research pays off, this To Kill a Mockingbird will be a whole other animal than anyone’s ever seen or read, conveying Harper Lee’s timeless story for a 21st century audience. Even if we know the ending, there are smaller moments, special surprises, to appreciate.

“It’s those moments of being able to wake up a little bit and think, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’ It’s often very subtle. They are moments that go unnoticed.”

April 15, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 16 © 2004 Metro Pulse