{"id":56082,"date":"2017-06-18T09:30:25","date_gmt":"2017-06-18T13:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/?p=56082"},"modified":"2022-08-02T14:05:48","modified_gmt":"2022-08-02T18:05:48","slug":"jim-petosa-commentary-on-the-artery-revisiting-julius-caesar-theater-in-the-age-of-trump","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/news\/articles\/2017\/jim-petosa-commentary-on-the-artery-revisiting-julius-caesar-theater-in-the-age-of-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim Petosa commentary on the ARTery: Revisiting \u2018Julius Caesar\u2019 \u2014 Theater In The Age Of Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"Tina<\/a>
Tina Benko, left, portrays Melania Trump in the role of Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia, and Gregg Henry, center left, portrays President Trump in the role of Julius Caesar during a dress rehearsal in May of The Public Theater’s production of “Julius Caesar” in New York. (Joan Marcus\/The Public Theater via AP)<\/p>\n

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June 16, 2017 \u00a0(originally published by The ARTery<\/a>)<\/p>\n

By Jim Petosa<\/p>\n

\u201cAmbition\u2019s debt is paid!\u201d<\/p>\n

So cries one of the conspirators moments after the death of Julius Caesar in Shakespeare\u2019s play. It is uttered as a slogan, a moral summation to an act of violence that the speaker believes is as inevitable as it is just.<\/p>\n

The line in performance is most likely shouted with assurance and conviction by the actor. And, most importantly, it must illuminate a moment that depicts moral certainty when such certainty is far from universally accepted.<\/p>\n

Great tragedy is born from such a moment of conflict and chaos. A tragic fall, while a clear diminution of a character\u2019s moral status, is still a fall \u2014 something that throws us off-balance, experienced as a surprise, even though we are forewarned (in this case, repeatedly, by a soothsayer). And yet, it hangs in the air with the starkness of its own inevitability.<\/p>\n

In “Julius Caesar,” Shakespeare uses the Roman republic’s deified emperor to explore the tragedy of those who used villainous means to exert their justified ends \u2014 only to be enmired in\u00a0the\u00a0destructive chaos they created, which\u00a0does little to resurrect\u00a0their beloved republic.<\/p>\n

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Like all great plays, “Julius Caesar” finds its potency in its time of revival. All productions intersect in at least three\u00a0points: the time of their writing, the time they are depicting and the time of the production at hand. In my lifetime, I have seen or read about interpretations of the play that make potent use of this temporal tension. I\u2019ve seen a Washington, D.C.-based version of the play that cast the morally conflicted and debased former \u201cmayor for life\u201d Marion Barry in the title role. We\u2019ve read about the 2012\u00a0<\/span>Guthrie Theater<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>production that featured an Obama-esque actor. We\u2019ve seen fascist, socialist and corporate Caesars. There\u2019s really no end to how the character of Caesar can be used to create a sociological mirror that reflects and refracts the play and its historic moment as a means to understanding some present time.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare\u2019s plays provide ripe opportunities for such interpretive musings. Consider Barbara Garson\u2019s “MacBird!” Written in 1967, the satire revisited Shakespeare\u2019s “Macbeth” in the post-JFK assassination era that skewered LBJ by imagining him as the conniving title character. In performance, Ian McKellen\u2019s Richard III exuded a spidery Nazi creepiness to memorable effect. The mirrors of interpretation collude with the mirrors of history and\/or current events in ways that theater artists and audiences have been evoking for years.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, a Donald Trump-inspired Julius Caesar might have been the stuff of farce, owing more to Aristophanes and Moli\u00e8re. Somewhere down the road, such farcical treatment may be where the current saga finds its resolution. But, now, five months\u00a0into this young, unpredictable presidency, we don\u2019t seem to be farcing around. This is serious.<\/p>\n

Full article<\/a><\/p>\n

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June 16, 2017 \u00a0(originally published by The ARTery) By Jim Petosa \u201cAmbition\u2019s debt is paid!\u201d So cries one of the conspirators moments after the death of Julius Caesar in Shakespeare\u2019s play. It is uttered as a slogan, a moral summation to an act of violence that the speaker believes is as inevitable as it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6143,"featured_media":56083,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[],"bu-publication":[192],"magazine-article-category":[],"magazine-topic":[],"news-article-category":[329],"news-topic":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/56082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/56082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89122,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/56082\/revisions\/89122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56082"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=56082"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-article-category?post=56082"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/magazine-topic?post=56082"},{"taxonomy":"news-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-article-category?post=56082"},{"taxonomy":"news-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-topic?post=56082"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=56082"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=56082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}