[music]

Alison Stewart: The Wife of Bath is one of the juiciest characters in Geoffrey Chaucer's rollicking and often Body Canterbury Tales. In Zadie Smith's reimagining of her, she loses none of her sass, and yes, the couplets are there, called The Wife of Willesden. We meet Alvida, a fearless and funny British Jamaican woman who walks into a pub in Northwest London and begins to tell her story to the regulars, plus, of course, a tale. The story is one of, let's say, different experiences with her five husbands. Alvita has thoughts on sex, marriage, love, and being a modern woman, and she can shake a tail feather. Alvita and her mates often break out into dance.

The show has a booming soundtrack that includes Chaka Khan and Earth, Wind & Fire, sometimes breaking the fourth wall with some of the audience on stage. Smith, along with Director Indhu Rubasingham, invite us all to hear a good story. The Wife of Willesden is running at Bams Harvey Theater through April 16th. With me now is playwright Zadie Smith. Zadie, welcome back to the show.

Zadie Smith: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Alison Stewart: Director Indhu Rubasingham. I hope I got that correctly.

Indhu Rubasingham: Yes, you did. It's lovely to be here.

Alison Stewart: As well as lead actor who plays Alvita, Clare Perkins. Hi, Clare.

Clare Perkins: Hello, everybody. Good morning.

Alison Stewart: Zadie, what was it about Chaucer that you, as your point of view as a professional writer, a professional storyteller, what did you see in the Wife of Bath that you thought this would be suited to a modern retelling?

Zadie Smith: Even when I first read him in college, I felt an affinity. A lot of the stuff we were given to read in college was by almost aristocratic writers. If you're reading Byron, Byron was such an aristocratic. He had a bear in his college room in Cambridge, but Chaucer was among the people and with the people and wrote about the people in their voice, which was the radical thing about him. I was always interested in him. There aren't that many British writers going back in history who come from that place. It was just an opportunity to come back to an old friend.

Alison Stewart: I was always amused by the Alison of it all as an Alison in a literature major. [chuckles] Indhu, what opportunities did you see as a director in a modern reimagining?

Indhu Rubasingham: What's brilliant is that the theater is in Brent in Wilston. To have this incredible classic piece of work, but located in the area, formed in the area where it's located was really exciting. Again, just to expand on Zadie's point, you're then doing a play that's speaking to the people of that location and they're hearing their voices. The challenge of theatricalizing it, making it come to life, bringing the audience and placing them in the path, the challenge was very exciting. It's scary, but was also thrilling. It's lovely to be pushed as a director.

Alison Stewart: What would be scary about it?

Zadie Smith: It's not a play. It's a 600-year-old rhyming verse. It's a difficult one to do.

Indhu Rubasingham: It breaks all contemporary norms of theater. It's like, "How do you stay truthful and faithful to what it is, but make it accessible to a modern-day audience?" That was a real challenge.

Alison Stewart: Clare, let's get you in on the conversation. What is something that you get to do in this role of Alvita that you haven't done before?

Clare Perkins: I get to be quite rude. One of the joys of playing Alvita is that she's very truthful, but she's also an unreliable narrator. That's a great character asset that you can draw the audience in, you can make the belief that your story is the truth, and then you can flip that story. When she comes on, I think she's quite engaging and you like her. Then there's a point where she says things that I know I can feel people in the audience going, "What? What did you just say?" It's great to be able to voice those lines that are shocking, that are funny, that are boardy. It's just a joy to play her. She's an amazing character.

Alison Stewart: Clare, can you actually feel the audience changed? How can you tell? Is it a feeling? Is it a sound?

Clare Perkins: By looking in their faces because a lot of the time, I'm breaking the fourth wall, so I'm talking directly at them. There are a few things I say when I can definitely feel a lot of men in the audience starting to hate on me. [laughter] Or just looking at me with importunity. Sometimes because the play's a bit rude, I can just see shock in people's faces. There's a couple of times where I've just thought, "Oh, someone's walking out," which I always think it's usually the sign of a good play, you know what I mean? If you offend one or two people, you're probably pressing the right buttons.

Indhu Rubasingham: Right.

Alison Stewart: Zadie, how did you know how much you wanted to stay faithful and when did you know you wanted to deviate from the original?

Zadie Smith: It's really important to me to recognize that the past is the past. It's not the present. That seems to me politically important, historically important, and just important for your sanity. I do like adaptations, but to me, if you're going to bother to go back 600 years, you are going back to find something. You're not going back to edit out or remove all the bits that aren't relevant anymore or don't interest you. I really wanted to find something, so I tried to keep as absolutely faithful as possible. Sometimes the names, characters in it are changed, figures are changed, references because some references are truly dead to a contemporary ears. They just wouldn't know what I was talking about.

When we're looking for symbols of goodness, people like Bob Marley turn up, for example, or Nelson Mandela, who have that same kind of reach for a contemporary audience. Then in other times, there's a long run through the ancient Greek stories. To me, ancient Greek stories are parentally interesting, so I didn't change those, I left them as they were.

Alison Stewart: How today do you feel about couplets?

Zadie Smith: I have a newfound respect for my brothers who were both rappers for a long time. I knew it was hard, but I didn't know it was that hard. [laughter] It was a struggle sometimes. Also, I love the rhythm of the original choice and the music of it. Hip-hop is a perfect example of working class speech made music, and so it was a great opportunity to pay respect to that idea again.

Alison Stewart: I thought at the end, I thought this woman loves couplets right now or she's had enough.

[laughter]

Zadie Smith: I've definitely had enough of them. I leave it to my brother.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about the Wife of Willesden, which is at Bams Harvey Theater through April 16th. My guests are playwright and authors, Zadie Smith, actor, Clare Perkins, and director, Indhu Rubasingham. Indhu, so this was originally staged in London and I'm going to try to paint a picture for people. When you walk into Bam, it's a pub on stage, people are milling about, there are audience members who are seated on stage at pub tables and also just right on the stage actually. Other cast members are milling about and talking. When did you know it was going to be staged this way? With the audience being, they're like pubgoers, they're here to hear the story.

Indhu Rubasingham: I think that goes back to when we were trying to, when we were thinking about how to work on this piece. In a way, having Zadie's first play is an event, and in a way, that helped us thinking of like, how do we make the whole thing event? It was done at the Kiln Theater in Northwest London. The pub that it's set in is across the road from the theater. The Colin Campbell is set in. One of the ways, because otherwise, if you're just sitting in the audience and just someone's speaking to you, it can be passive. That relationship between Alvita, particularly, and the rest of the company and the audience was so vital and the idea of it being in a pub.

We transformed the space into a pub. At the Kiln, the whole theater was the pub. It's lovely to be at Bam. The kiln is a 300-seat theater. We're in Bam, which is about, I think, 700, 800-seat theater. We've got some of the essence of the pub and the audience being in the pub which is vital for that relationship.

Alison Stewart: What adjustments did you and your actors have to make, Indhu, in the change of scene? I had a friend who saw it in London and said we was like right in it. I think it really was. For those of us who aren't on the stage, there is some distance. We are watching something.

Indhu Rubasingham: Yes, and you're also watching something in this country culturally different because in London, they were seeing London on stage, whereas here Americans are seeing a slice of London, which some of them maybe understand references and many won't. It's been a double-fold adjustment. It's slower. It's slightly slower than when we did it in London so that people can get into the dialect, the accents, and the language. There's some reference changed, but also it's had to grow. Sorry, I'm making physical actions, then I realized I'm on radio. Just the performances I've had to slightly expand to fill the space, to reach to the back.

The Harvey Theater is, me and Clare were talking about as we were walking, the furthest audience are really high up, so for Clare to have to engage all that audience, it's a lot of work. I think the energy and we've done a lot of work because we were in Boston first, then came to Bam, so we've been feeling the audience and working out how to adjust to the audience. It's really interesting here because it's a different observation of the piece than when you are recognizing it more in London.

Alison Stewart: Clare, you are on stage the entire time. It is you. It's a monologue, it's somewhat like a monologue. Of course, we talk about how the other characters and the other people in the company are really important and assist in your monologue, but how did you begin to get all that language down?

Clare Perkins: I always find, as an actor, a freelance worker, you're going up for lots of jobs, and a lot of the time, I just say yes, but lately, I've had scripts where as soon as I read the script, I was like, "I need this job, this job is mine. It's mine, it's mine." If you love something that much, it just helps because from the first time you read it, some of it's in your head. I find a lot of the characters that I've really enjoyed playing in my life, I read the script and something is already taking shape because the language, it's like it meets my brain and something happens.

From the very first time I read it, I could hear her, I wanted to voice her, and that makes everything so much easier when you're learning lines because as soon as you finish washing up in your house, you're like, "Ooh, my script." You get on a bus, you're like, "Ooh, my script." You always want to be looking at that script and learning that script. It's like eating food, you want that script inside you. You want the word. It just makes it so much easier when it's brilliant writing.

Indhu Rubasingham: Can I just add something? It's just also, Clare's a workhorse. We're very lucky to have her on the show. We've been doing this, we've done two runs of it in London, we're now in America, and she still keeps trying to find new things. She literally texted me last night going, "I just want to talk about this line and should it be like this or should we do like," and you go-- I'm like going, "I need a night off." It is that quality as well. She's not going to say that, so I just wanted to say.

Zadie Smith: No, that's true. As a tribute to the creativity of actors and creativity of Clare, that the part is so far beyond anything I wrote. All the words are there, but it's just a larger imagining and almost word by word for one actor, I think it's as long as Hamlet. To memorize it is no joke.

Alison Stewart: Clare, how do you take care of yourself?

Clare Perkins: I nap a lot. [chuckles] I love to take little naps. I usually do at least 10 minutes of yoga every morning. I just try to just chill out. I am quite a laid back person [crosstalk].

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Wait, they're just laughing at you now, Clare.

Clare Perkins: Do you know? I do. I pamper myself. I was just like, "Yes, sir, I went and had a facial." I love being pampered, but I like working at the same time. I take care of myself, but I feel like if I wasn't doing the work, then I wouldn't be taking care of myself because I would be stressing. I enjoy it, so it's a form of relaxation in a way.

Indhu Rubasingham: It's a real pleasure and an honor to be here in New York. It's really exciting for all of us. I have to keep reminding myself like, "Oh my God, we're here in New York, enjoy."

Alison Stewart: Zadie the character who kicks off the show and ends the show, could you pronounce the name for me? I want to make sure it's right.

Zadie Smith: The author begins it, so the author, I guess, is me. [laughter] I suppose it's me beginning and ending it.

Alison Stewart: The actor looks quite a bit like you as well for people who are Zadie Smith fans.

Indhu Rubasingham: She does, yes, Jessica. We look a little alike. It's in the original at the end of The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer apologizes for every book he's ever written, every poem. That made me laugh too and reminded me how close we are in sensibility, s I kept it in. You have the author apologizing for various things towards the end.

Alison Stewart: We have Alvita Clare at the center of it all, but there are so many moving parts. There's a terrific company. They almost move in concert. It's almost like a troupe in a way. Like circus performers in the best way in that they're required to do a lot. They're required to change costumes, they're required to take a pan, and make it look like a halo of Jesus over their head. When you were thinking about the movement on stage, because there's just a lot, there's a lot that is moving, could you describe for us the thought process behind the movement on stage, what you wanted to accomplish, how you accomplished it, with whom you worked?

Indhu Rubasingham: Thank you. It's really funny, I got asked this question of like, "Oh, did you plan everything in your head before you started rehearsals?" and it's like, "No." Everyone has to know what they're doing at any given moment on the stage. We had to do a lot of work of like, what was everyone thinking? Where were they? Part of the joy of the process is that if you have the right people with you, the right company of actors and the right creatives, you are all doing it together.

Yes, I'm bottom line going, yes, no, yes, no, but actually, a lot of that was created by-- Sam Paul has one line, suddenly Jesus has a line, Nelson Mandela and in your head, it's like, "Oh my God, how are we going to present this on stage also with just one line in, out?" I couldn't cast 25 actors, so finding that language, we thought about it before rehearsal started, but actually, the actors helped find that language, so between us all. It is how you cast. You try and cast an ensemble. Like you said, you need an ensemble, you need a troop that's going to be game for it. We've had great, and then also worked with lovely movement director for all the dance stuff, imaging, night.

There's a lot of people that work to contribute. That's the brilliance of theater, it's not one person, it's the collective. When it works, it's better than any one individual. It's the sum of a lot of people's parts. We were lucky on this one, we had a lot of good people pushing their energy to be really precise.

Clare Perkins: There's lot of magic, isn't there?

Indhu Rubasingham: Yes.

Clare Perkins: There's a lot of magic that happens in rehearsal rooms when you're there on the first day and you've just got all of these people and words on paper. It's always amazing to me the miraculous thing that happens four weeks later. You've got this fully fleshed out standup thing and you haven't really seen it happen, it's just happened in all the little tiny bits of things that we do every day. It's magic.

Indhu Rubasingham: I think it's always the hardest to make a chaos look like it's just happening. That it's happening in the moment and it's just happening because every moment is choreographed really tightly, but to make it look like it's just happening in a relaxed pub I think it's part of it.

Zadie Smith: That's what I thought about it. To me, it feels like pure theater. When I was a kid, my dream of theater was a New York dream where it all goes wrong, the chorus girls get ill, and then there's the idea, "Let's put the show on right here." This was a line which went through my head through childhood. Let's put the show on right here. Something about this show is like that; like a traveling troupe, like a Shakespearean troupe, or like Charles' pilgrims walking down the road that you stop somewhere and you put the show on right there in the pub or wherever you are using whatever you have, this kind of homemade aesthetic.

I just got lucky with Indhu that she had the same vision. I don't remember ever speaking about it, but instead of it being this artificial structure of a three-act play, it's like a rag bag. People just using everything they have, but it is all very carefully choreographed, but it has the feeling of spontaneity.

Indhu Rubasingham: The rest of the company are amazing because when you are on set, we were all mostly on stage all the time and you have to have a lot of focus and attention to always be there. There's never a missed cue or a dropped line. Well, obviously, there are little things, but that nobody would notice. The fact that they come like this symphony of shapes and vistas and people and create all of these different little scenarios on time every night with energy and verve and piste, it's great. They're a fantastic ensemble.

Alison Stewart: Clare. How are New York audiences behaving?

Clare Perkins: They're terrific so far.

Indhu Rubasingham: Yes, they've loved it. There are lovely reactions. Really nice reactions. It's great.

Zadie Smith: They're so funny. They know the music, they know the references.

Indhu Rubasingham: They don't get the Stevie Wonder joke. That's the only one that does my head in.

Clare Perkins: No, that's Landange. You went there last night. [laughter] They got a laugh, yes. I was like, "Oh my God." I think it was, I don't know, maybe I've changed the way I say it. It's my timing.

Zadie Smith: Ye, they're just amazing actually. It's really fun to do it here.

Alison Stewart: Zadie, what is it like for you as a novelist to hear somebody saying your words? We get to read them at home and imagine the voices in our heads as your readers.

Zadie Smith: It's just completely surreal. Because my husband tells me that I do the voices all the time when I'm writing. Even when I'm not conscious of it, I'm doing all the voices.

Alison Stewart: Really?

Zadie Smith: When I used to do more public readings and stuff, I always used to love to do all the voices. In certain writers, there is a actor [unintelligible 00:20:46]. That happens a lot. I think I thought I could do all the voices, but when I saw this show, you see the great chasm between a writer and an actor. Writers imitate voices, actors embody them, and it's a really big difference. Learning that has been great actually. It's a delight.

Alison Stewart: Why do you think Chaucer still lands in 2023?

Indhu Rubasingham: I think like any incredible artists, they get into something. They get into the humanity. They reveal the humanity of something that seems so obvious and it transcends time. That's why we still study him. He's put a woman. He's put a working-class woman, given them a voice, given them incredible sexuality and ownership of their sexuality in the 1300s.

Zadie Smith: I think it means he noticed. He looked around him and he saw women as they were. Many women in the 1300s with their own little businesses, with their own lives, marrying multiply. He saw it, he noticed something, and then he gave an added gift. He gave her no children, so a possibility of a different kind of life and a different kind of story. He was just noticing something and that's still relevant.

Indhu Rubasingham: That's still relevant. The fact, how Zadie has transposed it, that it's still shocking is fascinating.

Zadie Smith: yes it's been a joy.

Alison Stewart: The Wife of Willesden open is at Bams Harvey Theater. It runs through April 16th. I've been speaking with playwright, Zadie Smith, actor, Clare Perkins, and director, Indhu Rubasingham. Thank you so much for being with us.

Zadie Smith: Thank you.

Clare Perkins: Thanks for having us.

Indhu Rubasingham: Thank you for having us.

Clare Perkins: Bye.

 

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