Not long ago, Mary Zimmerman found herself standing in the middle of a cirle of whooping, hollering, stark naked young men.
Typical. Not that Zimmerman is a wild, crazy, Dionysian type-far from it. She is slightly bookish, serious, but an easy mark for the jokes of others-good sport and kid sister to the world. That includes the intrepid and unpredictable male contingent of Lookingglass Theatre, which recently initiated her as an artistic associate in the aforementioned manner.
Zimmerman also happens to be very bright, with a scholarly patina that is anything but dull, an erudition that somehow sparkles as radiantly as her sunny, frequent laugh. Laughter is a theme of hers at the moment: She is in the process of staging her own original adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov`s
”Laughter in the Dark,” not for Lookingglass, but for the more established Remains Theatre, which unveils the project March 1.
It`s a big step for the 31-year-old Northwestern University doctoral student, an arriviste director if there ever was one.
”This is one of the cruelest novels ever written,” she says of the project. ”Sometimes, when I watch rehearsals, I can`t believe what we`re doing. I have a fear that it`s almost un-American in its unhappy ending, almost unpatriotic somehow. But it`s really very funny. The title is exactly correct. It is both funny and dark.”
The novel, published in 1932 by Russian emigre Nabokov, before he moved to America and long before ”Lolita,” tells of a relationship reminiscent of that much better known work. ”Laughter” is the tale of a middleaged, well-to-do art critic who destroys his family when he falls for a conniving 18-year-old moviehouse usherette and part-time prostitute. ”It`s about obsessive love, Nabokov`s specialty, but it`s very different in tone from
`Lolita.` The young girl is manipulative and scheming, in this case, and the story is told partly from her point of view.”
Zimmerman`s adaptation so charmed Dmitri Nabokov, the author`s son, that he gave Remains permission for the production almost overnight, a year earlier than expected, according to Remains. It features onstage narration and liberal use of film strips, inspired by the novel`s storyline. In a twist recalling
”Citizen Kane,” the art critic finances a film for his girlfriend, who proves to be an abominably bad actress. Zimmerman made about four minutes of the deliberately bad movie for the production, helped by cinematographer John Jopson, who has worked with John Hughes.
Film and other visual novelties are a Zimmerman trademark. For her epic, two-part adaptation of ”The Odyssey” for Northwestern and later Lookingglass a few years back, she blended film with live action. Her recent assignment from Center Theater, Tom Stoppard`s ”Hapgood,” came with optical illusion, including a pair of now-you-see-them, now-you-don`t identical twins, visual components in Stoppard`s tricky spy fantasia on particle physics.
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Physics and literary classics literally sum up Zimmerman`s upbringing. She wasn`t so much born to do what she does as reared to it. The daughter of two Nebraska college professors, her mother in comparative literature and her father a physicist, Zimmerman was weaned on weekly staged readings of plays in her parents` home and frequent sojourns to Europe, including four complete summers spent there in her mid-teens.
”I`ve always had a dual interest in literature and theater,” she says.
”I came to Northwestern to major in comparative literature, but I switched after one quarter to theater.”
Northwestern and literary adaptation naturally call to mind Frank Galati, a great influence and an advisor when Zimmerman earned a master`s degree from the Department of Performance Studies, where he`s a faculty member. But her academic and literary roots go way back and have a decidedly individualist stamp. Her master`s degree project, for instance, was a one-woman show about Celeste Albaret, Marcel Proust`s housekeeper. ”You have to warm up before you tackle Proust as a reader,” Zimmerman suggests. ”Henry James, Thomas Mann and Joyce, of course,” to give some idea of what conversation with her can be like. And she came to Northwestern, not for Galati, but, ironically, for Nabokov.
”I actually picked Northwestern because Alfred Appel, one of the country`s leading Nabokov scholars, teaches there. I read Nabokov as a teenager, so directing him now is coming full circle.”
But in addition to literary richness, there`s a visual consistency to Zimmerman`s productions, a simplicity that takes ordinary objects and makes them beautiful, haunting, memorable. A gnarled cluster of dead branches, for example, or a lone chair sitting atop a flowing floor of sky-blue cloth-these tend to characterize the look of her shows, whether the ancient ”Odyssey” or the relatively contemporary European fairy tale, ”Secret of the Wings,” is the target.
”I think `The Odyssey` was spartan because our budget was nothing. But I`ve also spent a lot of time in Europe, and I saw works by (German dance experimentalist) Pina Bausch, Peter Brook (`The Cherry Orchard`) and the Theatre du Soleil.”
An adaptation of Leonardo da Vinci`s notebooks-a unique undertaking, to say the least-combined Zimmerman`s fatherly scientific influences, her scholarly acumen and her instinctual love of beauty. It was her first project outside Northwestern and remains her favorite. ”Da Vinci`s not known for his prose, but all his life he tried to chase down the smallest thing within the smallest thing within the smallest thing. You can never reach it, of course. But in the piece, we had a scene in which a girl`s body undergoes an autopsy, and, at one point, the scientist reaches into her mouth and extracts a purple flower. It was all about the sadness and romance of da Vinci`s pursuit. After complete destruction, even of the human body, there`s mystery.”
On the other hand, practical experience is starting to expunge her academic predisposition. Her doctoral dissertation topic is film actress Judy Holliday, and that`s on hold, at the moment, thanks to all of Zimmerman`s stage work.