INTERVIEW: Only a few days left to catch TheaterWorks Hartford’s ‘Queen of Basel’
Photo: Queen of Basel stars, from left, Kelvin Grullon, Silvia Dionicio and Christine Spang. Photo courtesy of Mike Marques / Provided by Everyman Agency with permission.
For the next few days, TheaterWorks Hartford will be home to Queen of Basel, the new play inspired by August Strindberg’s classic, Miss Julie. This 90-minute drama, which continues in person and with a streaming option through Sunday, Feb. 26, is written by Hilary Bettis and directed by Cristina Angeles. The production represents the play’s New England premiere.
The show takes place at the time of Miami’s Art Basel festival, and there’s a bash being thrown at a South Beach hotel owned by the family of Julie (Christine Spang). The soirée doesn’t go as planned, especially when Julie meets Christine (Silvia Dionicio), a server who recently fled violence in Venezuela, and her fiancé, John (Kelvin Grullon), a local Uber driver, according to press notes.
Queen of Basel features a cast and crew of Latinx artists, with performances continuing at TheaterWorks’ historic home in Hartford, Connecticut. Angeles is an Afrolatina director, writer and theater maker who develops new plays, musicals and socially conscious adaptations of classics that place women of color at the forefront, according to her biography. She is an associate artist at the Roundabout Theatre Company and founding artistic director of Checkmark Productions, which centers artists of color and their stories.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Angeles about Queen of Basel. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
When you first read Hilary Bettis’ play, what did you like about it?
My favorite plays are very language based and character driven, and Queen of Basel is just that. Not only does Hilary Bettis provide us with smart, three-dimensional characters, verbally sparring within heated circumstances, it also showcases the diversity within the Latine community. It’s incredibly rare for Latine characters to be seen on stage and even rarer to see us represented outside of being viewed as a monolith. So, the most exciting part to me was being able to show three people existing across wildly different parts of the spectrum that is Latinidad.
Were you familiar with Miss Julie? Did you have to revisit this classic?
We viewed Queen of Basel more so as a play inspired by the Strindberg classic, versus a retelling. As a result, we never spent too much time with the original text and, instead, focused on how to tell these characters’ stories in the most authentic way possible.
When a playwright modernizes a classic story, do you find that there’s commentary on current times? What does this play say about 2023?
To me, modernizing any classic comes from finding a connection between the story and the present day, otherwise why decide to tell it again? In Queen of Basel, we see Latine characters of different economic classes and races clash over differing value systems, while also learning they have more in common than they initially expected. As a result, Queen of Basel feels very closely related to our present day. By the end of the play, it becomes clear that, in a capitalistic society, there are always larger forces looming over underrepresented communities that do more harm than we are capable of doing to one another, and fighting to break through those systems and seek upward mobility is easier said than done.
What’s it like working with this three-person cast?
I couldn’t have picked a better cast to work on this play with. Not only did we assemble an entirely Latine cast, but we also worked with a 100% Latine design team that allowed us to tell the story as truly and authentically as humanly possible. The play is only 90 minutes long, but the actors go on such a journey from top to bottom and constantly find new discoveries. With a cast this small, we were able to dive deep into the specificity of the characters very quickly, and, knowing each of them brought their all to rehearsal everyday, it was so much easier and so much more fun to build this world throughout our rehearsal process. The entire team has brought their absolute best work to this project, and you can tell.
Do you believe this production has helped with your mission to adapt classic works and “place women of color at the forefront,” as your biography states?
Absolutely. Creating work that allows other women of color to see themselves, their friends, their flaws and their strengths is all I strive to do as an artist, and this play not only puts women of color at its center but allows them to be as messy, disgusting and inappropriate as we are intelligent, strong and beautiful. Women of color on stage and screen are so often relegated to simplistic character arcs that play into stereotypes and rarely dig deep into our humanity. While it’s so exciting to see those tides shift on screen, there are still miles and miles to go on stage. As a result, working on this piece, not only as a woman of color, but as someone hungry to see more stories told about her people, has been one of the highlights of my career.
What’s next for you after this production?
After we open, I’ll be workshopping two new plays at MCC Theater and Ars Nova respectively, while directing a production of Antigone at Pace University, while overseeing the national tour of Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play!
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Queen of Basel, written by Hilary Bettis and directed by Cristina Angeles, continues through Sunday, Feb. 26, both in person and via streaming, at TheaterWorks Hartford in Hartford, Connecticut. Click here for more information and tickets.
