This week, we bring you a special double interview with none other than Mercutio and his Brother Valentine!

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Q: Who are you, and how did you get into theatre?

Graham: Graham Banville, a fourth year drama student at Queen’s. I’m from Barrie, Ontario. I did community theatre back home – I got into it seriously around age 13 when I was in the ensemble of a professional production of Oliver. I’ve been aspiring to do a Shakespeare show for a long time – I had to pass on the role of Bottom [in A Midsummer Nights’ Dream] when I was in Oliver – and I’ve done a lot of musicals and a couple dramas, but it was only this year that I got my first taste of Shakespeare with Vagabond’s Macbeth. I played Ross – a supporting role – and now I’ve jumped into a much bigger role with RJMV.

Rob: Rob Elliott, a former Queen’s drama major, from Vancouver. I was always into music when I was younger – classical, instrumental, and composition – and on a whim someone suggested I try drama, I guess because I was a very dramatic person! I gave it a shot in the last two years of high school; I had a wonderful, encouraging teacher, and I realized there was nothing else I wanted to do, so I came to Queen’s, which has a small enough department that you can consistently get parts –

Graham: As a guy!

Rob: – and that’s how you learn. It’s been a really powerful experience, and I’ve gone to school with a lot of very talented students who’ve brought me in on some amazing projects. I did a bunch of Shakespeare earlier on, but I’ves started moving into more contemporary things – two years ago, I was in the Laramie Project. It’s made me want to focus more on relatable aspects of human nature, which is something I’ve always struggled with. In Shakespeare, it’s not the biggest focus, so it’s interesting for me to be able to play a character [in Mercutio and His Brother Valentine] who’s very much of the world and themes of Shakespeare, but more relatable for the average audience in terms of language and mannerisms because the playwright has written it as a modern play.

Q: How do your characters fit into the shows?

Graham: Mercutio is the linkage between these two plays. He has a large role in Romeo and Juliet, but he’s there to serve as a commentator on Romeo, and on Renaissance Verona life. You don’t really get to know much about him as a person, or what his struggle is. It’s known through that play that he’s the prince’s cousin, so he doesn’t have a technical allegiance with the Montagues or Capulets, even though he’s friends with Romeo Montague. Mercutio and his Brother Valentine takes Mercutio’s character and explores what his story is, how he deals with his position as the prince’s cousin, and why he’s such a huge clown in Romeo and Juliet. And then, as a contrast to him, you have his brother, who comes from a similar position but yet has a very different journey. In the play, that leads to a lot of conflict and exposes Mercutio’s character a little bit more.

Rob: Valentine exists almost exclusively in Mercutio and his Brother Valentine – he’s only mentioned by name in Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo is reading off an invitation to the Capulets’ party. In the world of Mercutio and his Brother Valentine, Valentine is a recluse. He’s spent a lengthy period of time locking himself away in his study, studying alchemy, which is why (according to MV) you never see him in Romeo and Juliet. He and his brother Mercutio lost their parents at young age, and were taken in by the prince. They used to have a very close relationship, but since Valentine has had his own life-changing issues, he’s become almost narrowly self-centered and focused on his own problems to the point that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with anybody else. So his relationship with Mercutio at the time of the play is fairly tense. Valentine is also much more subtle; if Mercutio is clownish and larger than life, Valentine is very muted. He picks his words and comments; he’s almost the perfect antithesis to Mercutio, so you get to learn a lot about both characters through their relationship. They come from a very similar place, but they’ve branched out into opposite ways of dealing with their issues, which creates a very interesting relationship for the audience to see.

Q: How and why did you get involved with Impromptu Productions?

Rob: I met [director] Matt [Davis] on a previous project, The Library Chronicles. He asked me to come audition, I did, and… that’s about it!

Graham: I met Matt last year through the King’s Town Players – he’s a community member, so I hadn’t met him through student theatre – and the three of us were in The Library Chronicles together, which was a very big project – 4 shows, 5 companies, and a month-long run, so it was a unique experience and a bonding experience. Matt, knowing he had to cast [RJMV], had his eyes peeled for potential actors, so I signed up to audition. I did an ill-suited monologue – a speech from Coriolanus that’s quite angry – but reading Mercutio and his Brother Valentine after I’d been cast, I understood better why Matt might have cast me as Mercutio based on my audition. I also met [playwright] Clayton Garrett through the King’s Town Players – I was in the a Shakespearean comedy satire he directed – and knew he had a good handle on Shakespeare and Shakespearean conventions, so when I found out he’d written a companion piece to Romeo and Juliet, I was pleased and confident in what he would bring to that world.

Q: What has been the best part of RJMV process for you so far?

Rob: More so than with a lot of plays I’ve done, things come naturally to me for this character. I really understand a lot of where he’s coming from and a lot of his intent and intonation to the point where I’m not struggling with any of it – it just clicks. I’m amazed that Matt knew me this well – I have a lot in common with my character. When the first step is so easy, during rehearsal you just get to play, go off, try things with each other, and never lose the moment, even in the initial rehearsals. You have the chance to dive right in because you already know where you’re coming from. It’s not simple but it’s very understandable, my character – and it’s nice being able to do something very personal, to show things I don’t usually show on stage.

Graham: In contrast to Rob, I am nothing like my character. Mercutio is such a foreign person to me that the best part of the process so far has been getting to do some of the outlandish and crass things that he does, and having the witty banter and speech to back it up. He’s one of the most fun characters to play in the Shakespearean canon – he’s known as the character that steals the show, that has to be killed off in order for the play to be about Romeo – and the escape of getting into this character is very freeing cause he’s very unrestrained. But you do bring part of yourself into it – Mercutio’s somewhere in me, and I get to bring him out at full volume rather than tucking him away. He’s all id.

Q: What is the best idea you’ve had for your character so far? Has there been an ‘aha!’ moment?

Rob: The realization that more than anything, Valentine is young, emotionally. He’s almost too intelligent, and he’s smart enough that he thinks he doesn’t have things to learn, which is one of the things I struggled with when I was younger. As a result, he’s almost refused to grow in a lot of aspects. He has a lot of character elements that might seem black and white, but it all stems back to the fact that he’s young and inexperienced in things in which Mercutio is not inexperienced, which is part of the friction between them. The process for Valentine is discovery – he starts the play having made an important decision, and over the course of the play he discovers that he doesn’t know nearly as much about himself as he thought. He’s changing and exploring. He’s so articulate, intelligent, and deliberate that you don’t see the inexperience initially, so it’s a very interesting process.

Graham: Navigating Mercutio’s relationship with Rosaline in the two plays. In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio never meets her, but he makes a lot of crude references to her when mocking Romeo’s lovesickness. Taking into account the events of Mercutio and his Brother Valentine, Mercutio has met Rosaline, and yet he still has the same lines to deliver in Romeo and Juliet, calling her a black-hearted wench and such. So my aha moment has been reconciling the Mercutio that Shakespeare wrote with the Mercutio that Clayton Garrett has written.

Q: What is something that most people don’t know about you?

Rob: With the drama department, you have so few secrets that everybody already knows them…

Graham: I like to thrift shop – which is really good for someone who will be a penniless actor! It’s a great place to find costumes and character shoes, and even my nicer clothes sometimes come from thrift stores. I also like to keep costume pieces from shows – sometimes they even make their way into the regular attire…

Rob: I know what it’s like to recognize the cultural things about our style of acting and do them in another culture because I’ve acted in Japan. You look at Japanese acting and say, that’s so unrealistic, demonstrative, absurd – but acting styles are culturally specific. A lot of things about acting aren’t set in stone – it’s really just cultural preference, and you learn where and when to bend rules. It’s such a fascinating experience to act in a completely foreign culture. You start to recognize elements of your culture that make you’re a better actor.

Q: If you could meet anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?

Graham: Eugene O’Neill, author of Long Day’s Journey Into Night and other plays. I’ve just started to discover his work – he was a 20th-century American dramatist, like Arthur Miller – and his influence and perspective on theatre is really something that I’m looking to explore in order to inform my theatrical ideas.

Rob: I have these little fantasies about sitting in a coffee shop with James Clavell – a writer of historical fiction. He was my favourite growing up, and he has a quality to his writing – he will write for thirty characters in a single novel, but go into each with depth, absolute empathy, incredible detail, and end up with gigantic grand narrative that’s intensely personal. I’ve never seen this level of complexity and depth in other novels – it informs me not just as a reader and writer but as an artist. I’m a big-picture guy – he’s probably the master of the big picture. I would love to pick his brain.

Graham: … I just want to get drunk with Eugene O’Neill.

Q: What’s your favourite Shakespearean play?

Graham: I’ve just discovered the Ralph Fiennes-directed version of Coriolanus, and I find it fascinating. It’s the butt of many jokes, it’s labeled as the most difficult and boring play in the Shakespeare canon, and it is a pretty dry drama, but Shakespeare says a lot of interesting things about Roman society. The Comedy of Errors is my other favorite – it’s the epitome of mistaken identity.

Rob: Hamlet, just because it’s the closest Shakespeare gets to modern existentialism, and that just fascinates me. I’m also going to have to say Titus Andronicus because it’s so obviously broken – for Shakespeare, it’s very rough around the edges, incomplete. So much of Shakespeare’s work treated as sacrosanct, but so much in Titus doesn’t work that it’s almost liberating. You really get to get into it and have more creative freedom to make something work. Titus is a problem and that makes it fun to do.

Q: What does your future hold?

Rob: Hopefully, the ability to do what I find fulfilling, if I’m lucky enough. Making some money so I can eat would be good too.

Graham: The lights of the big city – and many auditions! Barrie has produced a number of young artists who are producing some great stuff in GTA – some of them are even Queen’s Drama grads – so I’m interested in connecting with that community, and beyond.

Q: Why should people come and see RJMV?

Rob: It’s something new and exciting. I think there are going to be some people who are very protective of the original Shakespeare and will see anything new as blasphemy, but if you come in with an open mind, Mercutio and his Brother Valentine brings a lot of depth and complexity and an interesting perspective to Romeo and Juliet. Kingston audiences will have the chance to see one of the most produced Shakespearean plays – if not plays of all time – with a fresh perspective. Everybody’s seen Romeo and Juliet, but nobody’s seen it like this!

Graham: Even though the creative vision behind both shows is the traditional Renaissance setting, the characters explored in Mercutio and his Brother Valentine are thoroughly modern reinventions.

Rob: But there are also aspects of the world of Mercutio and his Brother Valentine that almost make it necessary to set it in the Renaissance period – it’s got alchemy, religious brotherhoods…

Graham: And sword fights!

Rob: Come watch – we have sword fights!

Graham: And dancing!