“Shane” was published as a novel in 1949 by Jack Schaefer, then it was made into a movie starring Alan Ladd in 1953. For those who aren't familiar, what's the basic premise and setting of the source material?
Karen Zacarías: The book, which I read as a sixth-grader after moving to the United States, is one of the few domestic Westerns. It's a family that has moved to Wyoming. They’re homesteaders, and they’re being threatened by a rancher named Fletcher. And a dark stranger comes into town who nobody knows where he's from and where he's going, and he becomes a part of the family and eventually helps change the outcome of this uneven fight that's going on with the ranchers.
What made you want to adapt this into a play?
Zacarías: Well, that's a longer story, but "Shane" was one of the first books, and I didn't know it as a movie first, I knew it as the original source material as one of the first books I read in the United States. And I loved it. I really identified with it, as a girl who's moving from Mexico to the United States. This was a family that was also moving up north to find prosperity and better land. And "Shane" reminded me so much of my hero, Roberto Clemente. So I just fell in love with the book.
Then, when I did my book report, my teacher thought that I had not captured the truth of the book, because he said, “Well, all the characters in the book are white. I don't know why you assume "Shane" is black, and why you assume the family is Mexican.” And that just kind of stayed in the back of my mind for the last many years. And I'll let Blake tell you how he got involved, because he's always loved Westerns and always wanted me to write a Western.
Blake, as a lover of the western genre, what can you tell us about how you bring this to life?
Blake Robison: Well, I've had the good fortune of working with Karen for over 20 years, and we've done a wide variety of material together, but I always thought she might have a unique perspective on the western, being a Mexican American woman. So after many years of sort of cajoling and teasing and bringing it up, Karen finally called me and said, "I want to do 'Shane,' but I want to do it the way I always imagined it as a young girl,’ as she just told you.
The trick for us is to tell the story in a uniquely theatrical way. We're not trying to put the movie on stage. I don't think we can win. We want to turn to theatrical tools, theatrical storytelling, to find a way to deliver the “Shane” that everybody knows and loves, but with the depth of character and the specificity of background that Karen's version brings to it.
I would argue that this is a truly authentic Western because the backstories that Karen has given all the characters reflect what the West looked like at the time. We now know historically that a quarter of all cowboys were black cowboys, and just as many, if not more, were Mexicans who became Mexican Americans eventually. And so this is what the West actually looked like.
The goal of our production is to both interrogate and celebrate the genre at the same time. So you're going to get a slightly new twist or new view of that story, but it's still the “Shane” that you know and you love. If you're just a person who loves Westerns like I do, it has all the elements. It has a moral homesteader and a greedy villain and a bar fight and a big shootout at the end. All those things have been theatricalized and put on stage in a very exciting way.
So is it tricky to toe that line between celebrating a genre you both love and sort of overcoming the traditional whitewashing of it? We get so much of our movies and things, our sense of history, is a little colored by that, if you will, and you're updating it to reflect more of the truth as we know it, the populations involved. What are the challenges there?
Robison: I think it's tricky, and yet, once the actors step in and they have their own backgrounds and their own life stories to bring to the role, it starts to feel very, very natural. The play feels lived in by these actors, and they're bringing it to life in that culturally specific way. Wouldn't you say, Karen?
"I would argue that this is a truly authentic Western, because the back stories that Karen has given all the characters reflect what the West looked like at the time. "Blake Robison
Zacarías: Yes, I mean, we did this play not too long ago in Dallas, where the cowboy culture is very alive and well, and we were wondering how people would take to it. And there was a big embracing of it! And people came wearing cowboy hats, etc., and cowboys of all sizes and colors.
And so I think people are a little bit like, “Oh, why are we doing 'Shane' and why are we changing it?” And it's like, we're not really changing it, we're just amplifying it so that it reflects the America that was true at that time, and makes more people feel excited about the Western that they see themselves on stage. And it's really a human story. It's a story about people trying to survive and needing community in order to do that. And at the end, I think that's something everyone can relate to.
And maybe that's why this story has such persistent appeal. So this is one of several premieres of yours, Karen, that Blake has been involved in. How did you two become acquainted professionally in the first place? Either of you can jump in on this.
Zacarías: Yes, it was in Washington, DC. Blake was the artistic producing director of Roundhouse Theater, which is a very renowned theater here in Washington. And I was running an education theater called Young Playwrights Theater, and I invited Blake to come and direct a play written by an eight-year-old. And it was so wonderful.
It involved a tree, and he made the actors do these wonderful things, and we started getting along very well. And that's when he discovered I was a playwright as well, and I passed him a play called “The Book Club Play.” I'll let you take over from there, Blake.
Robison: “The Book Club Play” is a wonderful comedy that has sort of taken the country by storm. It's been done all over, and we did that original version together, and a creative relationship was born. Since then, I've commissioned and directed a number of Karen's plays. I've also just produced some that other people have directed. And of all the playwrights and all the directors and designers I work with, I think my creative relationship with Karen is by far the longest and most profound.
And what do you attribute that to? What do you see in her work?
Robison: Well, I'd like to think that I just know her voice. I can hear Karen's plays sort of inside my head when I read the dialogue. It’s heightened in a certain way, which makes sense for a Western, right? There’s a sort of a historical element to it, and Karen captures that in her language and in her dialogue. And I feel like there's a buoyancy and a rhythm and a zest for life in all of Karen's work, whether it's a comedy or a more dramatic work that I key into, and I'm thrilled and privileged that she trusts me with her work.
And Karen, same question to you, why do you keep trusting Blake with your work?
Zacarías: We're just very simpático, and he's always believed in me, even when I didn't believe in myself. Case in point: When I wrote “Native Gardens,” the first draft — my first drafts are just terrible, I have to tell you, not very good. You have to definitely separate the wheat from the chaff. And I sent him the first version of “Native Gardens,” which is a story about two neighbors and a fence that's in the wrong place. It's a comedy, and I just thought that maybe he'd pass on it or put it in his smallest theater, but he could see through the thorns.
He’d prefer to say less than that and say, “Oh no, this is a play about real estate. We need to give it the big stage.” And it's gone on to become incredibly successful, one of the most produced plays in the country, several years in a row. So he was able to see that, and he understands my sense of humor. He also believes in me. He's like, “We're going to produce this, even if you're not done.” So that definitely puts the fire underneath my feet, and same with "Shane."
Your listeners may know me also because I wrote “Destiny of Desire,” which was at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2018, and he brought that production to Cincinnati. So he's always understood my quirky sense of humor and and he's just a really good friend. We both have kids the same age. I love his wife. He loves my husband. We get along.
Robison: Our kids even go to college together! You know, I want to just piggyback on that and say that OSF has certainly embraced Karen's work over the years, and Tim Bond is continuing in that support of Karen's work. When I sent a version of this script after we did the first production to Tim and said, “I know you've been a big supporter of Karen's work. You need to take a look at 'Shane,' because I think it's a great fit for this company of actors.”
One thing I've learned in just a few weeks here is people love this company. Walk around town, and they have their favorite actors, and Tim is embracing that. You come and see "Shane," and you're going to see many, many of your favorites. We've got a bunch of a-list OSF actors who are bringing it to life.
It's really a human story. It's a story about people trying to survive and needing community in order to do that. And at the end, I think that's something everyone can relate to.Karen Zacarías
And we'll get into that in just a minute. I just want to remind our local audiences that another previous work of Karen's that was staged at OSF was “The Copper Children" in 2020. So let's get into this production a little bit more. Tell us about the cast and maybe the specific challenge of putting a Western, which we associate with wide open spaces, on the stage.
Robison: That is the tricky thing. Of course, no horses. Our first rule was no horses on stage. Maybe if we do the opera version one day, we can have horses. But again, we refer to this as a domestic Western. It's not the shootout at the OK Corral. There's not a stagecoach — you know, stagecoach trains going through and giant casts.
It's about this small family and the stranger who comes into their lives to befriend and protect them, and about the coming of age story of the young boy, the eight-year-old Bobby, who sees these two role models — both his father and Shane — and tries to grapple with what it means to be a young man, what it means to be a good man. I think that's one of the primary themes running through.
So what Karen did is went through and focused primarily on that story. And I was focusing on the stagecraft behind that. How do we go to multiple locations and yet maintain a sense of Western expanse? How do we do a shootout on stage? How do we have a big bar brawl and be able to have that disappear in a matter of moments and be back at the Starrett household?
Those sorts of scene changes and theatrical devices are my bread and butter. And I think between those two things — with Karen focusing on the characters and the story, and the wonderful creative team coming to see it — it comes to life in an interesting way. I would even say that it's very colorful. It's very spare, it's very vibrant. It almost feels like a graphic novel on stage, if you can imagine: a really cool graphic novel of “Shane” with this sort of cultural authenticity. That's what you're going to see.
And sort of larger than life.
Robison: Absolutely.
Wonderful. And just in the last 20 seconds or so, any last word from you, Karen?
Zacarías: No, I'm just so excited to be back at OSF. I think this is a play where people are going to be at the edge of their seats, cheering for the good guys and booing bad guys and watching fabulous actors from OSF. And really watching a 90-minute play that covers an expanse of what the American West was in 1880. So I'm very excited to share this — my and Blake's visions of this world — and the movement and fight choreography that's involved that is really, really just top-of-the-line.
