Liev Notes

Liev Schreiber talks to The Onion's A.V. Club about his directorial debut (the film adaptation of Everything is Illuminated) and performing Shakespeare.

AVC: But your approach to Shakespeare is based in the humanity of the character rather than the more educated aspects. You don't seem to approach the plays from a classical perspective.

LS: I think education gets a bad rap. I think when you're looking at the educated aspects of Shakespeare, you'd be surprised how much goes into understanding and analyzing those plays. You have to know what you're saying, and to know what you're saying, you have to have a foundation in an arcane language, and that takes reading. And familiarizing yourself with other poetry of that period, and iambic pentameter, and verse structure. It's about music too, someone who studied music has an inlet into those plays. Plus knowing little bits of history. I mean, even understanding that people were smaller back then, and their lives were shorter, and how that affected the way they behave—their attitudes and emotions were in many ways profoundly affected by the way in which they were forced to live their lives. To understand the range of emotional behavior, you have to understand the society and the culture at least a little bit before you can present it to a contemporary audience in a clear way. Even if you're not doing a period production, you have to understand what was intended when it was written, and you have to find a way to translate that so it's conveyed when it's performed now.

Also, if you haven't seen Spring Forward, you should.