INTERVIEW: For Lauren Karaman, it’s been a summer of Romeo, Juliet, and Mr. Burns
Photo: From left, Emily Ota, Lauren Karaman, Luis Quintero, Britney Nicole Simpson, Zack Fine, Sean McNall and Meritt Janson star in Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. Photo courtesy of T. Charles Erickson / Provided by Matt Ross PR with permission.
The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is winding down its summer season, with the final performance under the big top taking place Sunday, Sept. 18. Audience members have one week left to check out the acclaimed productions of Romeo & Juliet and Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play at the outdoor theater. It has been a long journey for actor Lauren Karaman, who plays the Nurse in Shakespeare’s play and multiple roles in Mr. Burns.
Karaman’s credits are numerous and various, including off-Broadway’s The Belle’s Stratagem and the movies Release and Duvar. Summer 2022 served as her debut at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, which is located 60-90 minutes north of New York City in Garrison, New York. When Karaman is not acting, she’s serving as founder and director of The 36-24-36 Project, a body-positive photo series, according to her official biography.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Karaman about her time in the Hudson Valley and what she thinks of performing both Shakespeare and Anne Washburn under the stars.
What’s it like to perform in two plays in repertory? It seems like it would be difficult.
It’s a very exciting challenge! It takes a deeper sense of mental and emotional rigor to move so quickly between two worlds, but there is freedom in that agility. There’s less time to overthink. I’ve found that for me it requires quick, full-bodied/full-hearted commitment, which has given me a greater sense of bravery and openness this summer. I’m incredibly grateful for that. It’s been deeply satisfying to work within these two worlds because both plays are so beautifully complex and alive.
What take do you have on the iconic role of the Nurse in Romeo & Juliet?
Because the Nurse is such a source of comedic relief in this heartbreaking story, it can be easy to veer into the realm of one-note clown with her. But it was important to me to make her a real person — with the complexities of someone who has already experienced an enormous about of grief, joy and loss, and yet still chooses to live her life fully with a capital L. Any time I started to feel the fear and internal pressure that comes with wanting to do justice to such an iconic role, I reminded myself to sink back into the truth of each moment for her.
There is a boldness to the Nurse that I love. She is unabashedly herself and is unafraid of letting life move through her. If grief is the price of love, the Nurse understands that cost and leads with love anyway. It was also fun in the process to find the places where the Nurse and Lauren meet. I, too, am a good-time girl with a huge laugh who tries not to take herself seriously while also taking the things she holds sacred very seriously. The Nurse feels like a kindred spirit to me in many ways. It was a huge gift to find that I needed to dive more deeply into who I am in order to find her.
Do you like the choices director Gaye Taylor Upchurch has made with the production?
GT Upchurch is brilliant and has one of the biggest, most genuine hearts of anyone I’ve ever known or worked with. She leads with that huge heart and depth of wisdom in her direction. I love the way she found the authentic heartbeat of this story — focusing on the truth of the storytelling and marrying the ways in which we the storytellers and our characters meet. We were encouraged to bring ourselves to our roles. In the way GT has directed it, we were able to really focus on our characters’ deeply layered and complex relationships with each other and how that impacts each present moment. Relationship work with GT is like peeling to the core of a juicy onion. She led us to find complex, layered, grounded, earnest and deeply relatable human beings. The heartbeat of both plays we are working on this season lies in the way love rises above all and the ways we navigate hope and resilience in the face of tragedy. GT led us through that beautifully.
Were you a big fan of Romeo & Juliet before joining this production?
The Nurse has always been a dream role for me, but to be honest, in the past I’ve often found myself skeptical of the love between Romeo and Juliet. As even Juliet herself says, I found their love to be “too rash, too unadvised, too sudden.” This skepticism was completely blown away for me, however, the second I heard Kurt [Rhoads] and Nance [Williamson] in the roles. The depth, experience and authenticity they bring to their detailed and fully inhabited moment-to-moment work brought the characters into a completely new light for me. Their mastery of the language led me to see the intricate and quite magical ways these two characters not only immediately connect physically and emotionally, but also intellectually and spiritually. I now hold a deep reverence for Romeo and Juliet’s truly star-crossed connection because of the way I’ve witnessed Kurt and Nance bring themselves and their stunning craftsmanship to the roles. I completely trust and sink into Romeo and Juliet’s love when Kurt and Nance are the storytellers.
What do you think Mr. Burns says about society today?
Having just shared in the experience of global trauma these past few years, the kind of societal collapse and unthinkable loss explored in Mr. Burns no longer feels like an unimaginable circumstance. What Mr. Burns does so profoundly is grapple with the essential questions of what truly matters to us in the face of loss. How do we grasp resilience, hope and love if everything we’ve loved is now gone? How do we move in hope in times when hope feels senseless? How do we rediscover and dig into what is truly important, redefine how we relate to and care for each other, and revive ourselves through a legacy of meaning and love as our stories live on? In the face of great tragedy, this piece is incredibly palpable and alive. It encourages me to step into humanity’s resilience and navigate from a place of love while there is still time to reconstruct the ways in which we care for each other and this earth we share.
What’s it like working for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival? What’s it like working outside?
It is an absolute joy! This is an incredible company complied of incredibly kind, generous, open-hearted (and fun!) people. It is a truly special, life-affirming and richly artistically satisfying experience working in communion with this group of people and in communion with nature. There is a special kind of magic that comes with working outside. There have been many serendipitous times in which the elements have perfectly aligned with the action of the shows. It makes you feel alive in such an exciting way both as a performer and audience member. It’s a sacred kind of communion working in nature this way. I feel the camaraderie in the way we are both supporting each other.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Romeo & Juliet and Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, featuring Lauren Karaman, run in repertory at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. Click here for more information and tickets.
