THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 10, 1994 TAG: 9411100032
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KEITH MONROE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
FOR GILLETTE ELVGREN, the look's the thing. And when he's directing Shakespeare, the head of performing arts at Regent University takes the production design very seriously.
He's set ``Twelfth Night'' on a Virginia Beach-style boardwalk and mounted ``A Midsummer Night's Dream'' complete with television monitors and break dancers. Now, his ``Taming of the Shrew'' places its emphasis on costuming.
Most of the minor characters are stock types, so each has been dressed in an appropriate style - a fop in full Restoration regalia, a buffoonish figure as a clown from Italian commedia, a man of substance as a 1920s wheeler-dealer.
In the play, only Kate the shrew and Petruchio, the suitor who tries to tame her, actually change. Elvgren says an important aspect of their volatile relationship is role playing. So he decided that as their relationship evolved, so should their clothes - from modern dress to full Renaissance style.
Something in Elvgren's genes may make him especially attuned to the visual side of theater. He grew up in suburban Winnetka, Ill., where his father was a famous commercial artist whose wholesome girls drinking Coke were familiar icons of the '40s and '50s.
Elvgren also says the only math he ever succeeded at was geometry, so it may be no accident that he likes the three-dimensional aspects of mounting a play that some directors find tedious. To him, the physical aspects of theater are challenging - where actors enter and how they move, what they do with props and stage business and the pictures they make with sets and costumes.
Elvgren came to Regent from many years at the University of Pittsburgh; he frequently directed at that city's Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival. He has a special affinity for Shakespearean comedy, and believes Shakespeare in America is too often looked on as a study of literature.
That's one reason he's anxious to get ``the noses out of the book'' and the attention of students and audience directed toward the dramatic experience. ``I like to find a physical look for a production,'' he says. ``I try to find a central image for each play.''
In addition to directing plays and teaching theater at Regent, Elvgren is a playwright whose interest is the place where our everyday reality and a spiritual dimension to our lives intersect.
He's written plays about contemporary social problems, others for children and a musical about women in the Bible. He's working on an adaptation of ``The Canterbury Tales'' and would like to do a modern version of the medieval mystery plays that stand at the beginning of drama in English. In the spring, Regent will present a drama concerning the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who entered into a plot to assassinate Hitler.
But for the moment, Elvgren has no attention to spare for anything but ``The Taming of the Shrew.'' Not only is he directing the production, but he plays a small part.
Elvgren says that's the only sort he can manage anymore since the older he's gotten, the worse he's become at remembering his lines. Perhaps because he's got too many other projects on his mind. ILLUSTRATION: THEATER FACTS
What: ``The Taming of the Shrew''
Where: Regent University Theater, Regent University Drive and
Indian River Road, Virginia Beach
When: Tonight through Sunday and next Thursday through Nov. 20 at
8 p.m.
How much: $6; seniors, students and groups of 10 or more, $5
Information: 579-4245
by CNB