UFV students, Makailla Palliyaguru (theatre diploma) and Joshua Balzer (BA in History and English) share their experiences acting and preparing for the upcoming play, ***Richard III by William Shakespeare, as adapted and directed by Anna Griffith.
What drew you to audition for this play?
Palliyaguru: I really like the director, Anna, and had always wanted to work with her. I’ve taken several classes with her and think she’s an amazing person.
Balzer: I’ve had some experience with Shakespeare in the past, and as a theatre person, whenever you hear Shakespeare you want to get involved with it. I was in Anna’s Performance History course last semester, and through the course I had learned that she was holding auditions for the play. As soon as I heard she was directing it I wanted to be involved.
Palliyaguru: I also like how she teaches us to find the character; it’s really interesting.
Balzer: A lot of directors I’ve worked with in the past have a very clear vision on who they want the characters to be, but working with Anna, she’s very kind and passionate, and really leaves room for the actors to find the characters on their own. So a lot of what we’ve been doing is discovering the characters for ourselves. It’s been a very personal journey for all of us.
What elements of the original play have been adapted to fit this production at UFV?
Palliyaguru: There’s a lot of line cuts.
Balzer: As I understand it, the original play is about four hours in length. So Anna has taken out all of the unnecessary bits and left just the core elements. There are three characters that have been turned into one, and some characters have been cut altogether if they’re not serving the narrative that we’re trying to push.
Palliyaguru: Since there’s been so many line cuts, Anna has written in lines to make sure the storyline is still told well and the audience understands more about what’s happening.
What elements of this play can be connected to our current society?
Balzer: The character of Richard goes against our perceptions of what a leader should be, like someone who’s charming, good-looking, and really takes the forefront, but Richard is described as everything but that. Yet he’s still able to come to a position of power without ever doing anything physical. He’s very persuasive in the way that he acts to different people. If you look at politics today, most politicians won’t go and stab someone in the back, which was common in Shakespeare’s time, but they pull strings behind the scenes and make all of these other things happen.
Palliyaguru: You can tell that Richard really knows how to act with people. He acts differently to every single person. He really plays on being an invalid to seem weak, and then people don’t really see him coming at all.
What are your roles in the play?
Palliyaguru: I’m Richard.
Balzer: And I’m playing the Duchess of York, Richard’s mother, and her son, King Edward the IV. There are several actors playing maybe three or four roles. There’s over 20 characters, but there’s only eight of us in the cast.
Palliyaguru: Our location is really small, so having 20 different cast members would be a lot. We don’t really have a backstage, and our cast of eight is already the biggest cast a play has had since moving to Abbotsford from Chilliwack. I’m interested in how it’s all going to go at the performance.
What have you found most challenging when preparing for this play?
Palliyaguru: I have a really bad memory and am dyslexic. And Shakespeare is sort of another language, so memorizing all of Richard’s lines has been my biggest challenge. But I’m off-book now, so that’s really good!
Balzer: I have struggled because I’m playing a woman and I’ve never played a character of the opposite sex before onstage. So to completely change my physicality — like, I never realized how subtle it is, and how you hold yourself and move and gesture is so tied to each side. So making these quick changes from male to female has been a very conscious decision.
Richard III will be playing at UFV Abbotsford in room D105 from March 11 to 21. For more information and showtimes go to https://www.ufv.ca/plays/.
This interview has been cut and edited for clarity.
Image: UFV SOCA
