The King Stag reigns again

State of the Art

by Iris Fanger

For those in the audience at the American Repertory Theatre's premiere of The King Stag, in 1984, the enchantment of the evening served as an introduction to a brilliant young artist: Julie Taymor, who had designed the masks, puppets, costumes, and, with director Andrei Serban, the movement style. The images blazed in memory came from 18th-century Italian playwright Carlo Gozzi's fairy tale, as translated by Albert Bermel, but also from the way the characters ranged from shadow puppets to actors in masks and fantastic make-up to a giant floating bear looming overhead. Serban and Taymor had dreamed up a production style that drew from stage traditions as diverse as kabuki theater, Balinese rituals, and the Italian commedia dell'arte.

The King Stag became a signature production for the ART, revived often in the years that followed and toured worldwide to locales as diverse as Venice, Madrid, Tokyo, Taipei, and Moscow. The piece returns to the ART next Thursday for a two-week run before taking off on a 66-city tour of the United States and Europe that includes a three-week sitdown at London's Barbican Center. Abbie Katz, who stage-managed the original production, will mount the work, assisted by Thomas Derrah, who created the title role of King Deramo. Derrah, who is relinquishing the part to ART Institute graduate Jay Boyer, will work with the cast on mask technique and movement. "The mask is an obstacle, having that thing on your face," he explains. "It's a technical challenge to make it communicate."

The Equity cast for the tour has been drawn from actors who've worked at the ART and graduates of its Institute for Advanced Theatre Training. According to ART managing director Rob Orchard, "It's hard to get older actors to go out on a tour like this, with some one-night stands, by bus. You need a combination of youth and people with extraordinary interest in the work and an appetite for traveling around the country. You also need people who enjoy each other's company on an extended tour."

Derrah, for his part, is glad to pass the torch. "It completes the cycle of our training, to trust our graduates and send them out with a production. It's been [ART artistic director] Bob Brustein's dream: to train actors, watch them reach maturity, and then hire them back."

As for Taymor, her career took off: the widespread acclaim for the Broadway production of The Lion King won her a Tony Award for direction. "Certain elements from 1984 have become part of Julie's work," says Orchard of revisiting The King Stag. "It's been fascinating to see what she could accomplish on a relatively modest budget and how that blossomed into the extravaganza called The Lion King. But much of the charm and the visual subtlety of The Lion King is present in The King Stag."

Taymor's décor remains central to the production. The puppets travel in specially constructed cases, and a new set of costumes has been built at a cost of almost $100,000. Orchard hopes this extensive road trip will lead to others for ART shows. "It's always been my dream to have a second company on the road doing work that is generated in Cambridge and has an opportunity to be seen elsewhere. This tour is perhaps a beginning of that. Who knows?"

The King Stag plays at the Loeb Drama Center September 14 through 28. Call 547-8300 for tickets.