A humorous moment in rehearsal finds director Richard Wattenberg (left) laughing with the cast and crew of "A Dream Play." Center: Abby Fox (Assistant Stage Manager). Right: Madilyn Dyche (Assistant Director). Photo by Dominic Mallari.
The PSU Theater program will present Caryl Churchill’s adaptation of Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s “A Dream Play” from May 25 to June 3, 2023 in the Lincoln Hall Boiler Room Theater. Richard Wattenberg, Professor of Theater Arts, directs this final production of the year, but it is also his final play at Portland State University before his retirement in June.
Professor Wattenberg received his Ph.D. in Theater and Drama from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and came to PSU’s Theater program from the University of California Riverside in 1990. During his 33 years at PSU, he has remained firm in his belief in the importance of theater in a thoughtful, compassionate society, and he has continually created opportunities for students to experience its power to change minds and hearts.
In “A Dream Play,” Agnes, the daughter of Hindu god Indra, descends to Earth seeking to understand human suffering by becoming human herself. Her time on Earth moves like a dream with characters who split, double, evaporate and reappear as she and they move forward and back through time and space. The play offers a reflection on the spiritual freedom that comes from acknowledging and accepting hardship as a part of life.
“A Dream Play” was groundbreaking in challenging the dominance of realism in European stages in the nineteenth century, Wattenberg said. However, “Strindberg is a problematic character because he was a bit of a misogynist.” This issue provided rich material for Wattenberg and the students to work through and creatively decide what role it would play in this production. Wattenberg shared that he also chose Caryl Churchill’s adaptation because she is one of the most significant contemporary playwrights of our time, and because the dream elements of the play would give the PSU set and lighting design team a real opportunity to show their craft. Wattenberg appreciated the message that he saw in the play, that “life is suffering, but when we can embrace that truth, those hard things stop holding us back and we can experience more enlightenment or at least greater peace.”
Early in his career at PSU, Wattenberg wrote extensively about theater, working as a freelance reviewer for The Oregonian, publishing pieces in academic journals and eventually writing his own book, “Early-Twentieth-Century Frontier Drama on Broadway: Situating the Western Experience in Performing Arts” (Palgrave, Macmillan, 2011). He also served as a committee member for Portland’s Drammy Awards, which recognized Portland’s theater artists. “The Drammys were originally a big party for theater folks to get drunk together,” he joked. “It was an excuse to bring people together to talk so they could develop projects together.”
Wattenberg directed his first Portland State University play, “The Lower Depths,” in 1993, and when “A Dream Play” closes on June 3, he will have directed a total of 10 plays at PSU.
PSU’s Theater program is important to the university, he said. “It is a truly liberal arts program that bridges various disciplines: literature, art and craft, history, sociology, psychology, etc. Theater plays a unique role in closing the gap between people of different backgrounds and perspectives, especially in a society like ours where we are so siloed.”
“When I am directing, I am trying to show people how other people are, not just by telling them and hitting them over the head with facts or arguments, but by allowing them to watch (and in many ways experience) the life of the characters portrayed in the play there in front of them. Reading and watching film is similar, but theater is a community art where you’re sitting in a room surrounded by a group of other humans watching live actors and sharing your reaction with others. This reinforces the feelings and changes the experience of what you take away.”
The Theater program offers students the opportunity to stretch their beliefs and understanding of the world by encountering texts they wouldn’t ordinarily select–and sometimes this includes the classics, Wattenberg said. They learn about the playwright and the time in which they were writing. With a more holistic understanding of the history surrounding the play, students can more insightfully discuss the value and shortcomings of the work and how modern audiences might benefit from experiencing it. Wattenberg concluded that, when done well, “theater is a place where social issues and moral concerns are aired and students and audience members explore those issues through participation.”
Despite his appreciation of the classics, Wattenberg is excited that his retirement will open the door for new PSU Theater faculty who may bring a wider repertoire of plays from modern playwrights as well as from other cultures.
When asked what he’d miss most when retired, Wattenberg replied, “I love teaching. I get to read plays, ponder how they connect to life, discuss this with students and we learn from each other’s perspectives. Exploring a text together, facing upsetting material, talking about things that matter – this develops community and then we can re-create a play together with a sensibility that is important for this time and place. It allows us to explore how to become bigger and better people.”
So what does retirement look like for Wattenberg? He plans to write, and possibly return to volunteer teaching and directing at a nearby correctional facility, where he previously staged productions with inmates. He was impressed with how much the inmates participated in the plays with open hearts and minds.
“Rich Wattenberg is an extraordinary colleague,” says Karin Magaldi, head of the Theater Program and longtime colleague. “From his rigorous scholarship, to his classroom seminar sophistry, from years of being our graduate advisor to his decades of community outreach, he’s the best of the best. We will dearly miss his dry wit, sage wisdom and fortitude.”
Please join us for this final production of Richard Wattenberg’s PSU career, “A Dream Play,” opens May 25.
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