From Salt-N-Pepa to Shakespeare
Sam White, who is directing ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Stratford, has rap music to thank for her introduction to the Bard
Sam White was eight when she was introduced to Shakespeare. And it was thanks to some rap music.
The stage director, a rising star in the theatre scene, was in her bedroom listening to “Push It,” the enduringly popular single by the American group Salt-N-Pepa. Her door was firmly shut. And her boombox, at its lowest volume, was held right up to her ear.
There was a reason for White’s ways. Her mother, a voracious reader, forbade any of her children listening to rap music. So, for White, sneaking in a hip-hop song was always a clandestine affair. “I thought I was being cool and I thought she couldn’t hear me,” she said, recalling that listening session. “But mothers are like bats.”
Alas, the rap music induced a rapping on White’s door. It was her mother, who strode in with a large book: the complete works of Shakespeare. “She handed it to me and said that if I like lyrics so much I have to read this book,” said White.
At first, she barely understood its contents. But she would return to the Bard’s anthology throughout her youth, slowly falling in love with his tragedies, comedies and romances. That book — “it smelled like an old library,” she said — would serve as a recurring guide throughout White’s life. And it’s led her to where she is now, directing “Romeo and Juliet” on the Stratford Festival’s biggest stage.
“I have to thank my mom and Salt-N-Pepa for making it possible,” she said, a wry smile creeping onto her face.
We spoke backstage in a sunny room at the Festival Theatre in mid-April. Sporting a mustard yellow trench coat and a matching yellow cap, White had just finished a rehearsal with Vanessa Sears, the Stratford and Broadway vet who is playing Juliet opposite Jonathan Mason’s star-crossed Montague.
Though this “Romeo and Juliet” marks White’s first time helming a show at the 1,800-seat Festival Theatre, she is no stranger to the festival. Last season at the Tom Patterson Theatre, she drew critical acclaim for her revelatory production of “Wedding Band,” Alice Childress’s 1965 play about an interracial couple in the segregated American South.
That came after White joined the festival in 2018 as an assistant director to Antoni Cimolino on his production of “The Tempest,” anchored by the late Martha Henry who, like White, was born and raised in Detroit.
“That process changed the way I thought about myself as a director,” said White. “Martha was someone whom I looked up to and I can still feel her blessing in the room as we work on ‘Romeo and Juliet.’”
That White is now directing her own Shakespeare just six years after her Stratford debut signifies a remarkable ascent through the ranks.
Cimolino, artistic director of the
Stratford Festival, whom White considers a close mentor, said he came to know White through her work in Detroit, as a champion for theatre and Shakespeare.
“I find her so refreshingly passionate and mature,” Cimolino said in a phone interview. “And it’s an odd combination: to find somebody who is so in love with the work and has that sense of joy and discovery.”
White’s career — like her introduction to Shakespeare — has been unorthodox. Yet she makes no effort to hide that she’s a multi-hyphenate artist, not merely a director but an actor, teacher and journalist, too.
She also spent time as a standup comedian, living and writing jokes out of a motel in old Las Vegas. “I don’t even know if people really know that part of my story,” she said.
But it was during that gig that White envisioned the idea that would ultimately become Shakespeare in Detroit or SID, her classical company that has become one of the most important theatre organizations in her hometown.
Establishing SID in 2012 was a radical, if not crazy, dream, coming as the Motor City was in a financial tailspin. The company’s first major production in the summer of 2013, with a shoestring budget of $3,000, was mounted just three weeks after Detroit declared bankruptcy. But 500 people showed up to that inaugural performance.
Today, SID’s budget is nearly half a million dollars, and its outdoor, site-specific programming has played a key role in reanimating the city, offering an affordable and accessible way for Detroiters to experience live theatre. “It’s important for me that Shakespeare be available to everyone because I think that’s what the playwright wanted,” White said.
She dismisses the notion that Shakespeare can only be interpreted in one way: “I always have to re-emphasize this to people: Shakespeare is totally dead,” she said. “There are Shakespeare experts and there are people who’ve been working with Shakespeare for a really long time but, at the end of the day, I always like to keep us all humble by saying none of us knew him. He’s dead.”
This production of “Romeo and Juliet” marks the fifth time that White has directed the play. But it’s
the first — for both White and the Stratford Festival — being staged in the Renaissance period of the 14th century.
White believes hers will be different from other productions seen at the festival: “I want to make every single moment either hyperromantic or hyperviolent. Because love and fear are constantly juxtaposed from the very first moment of the play to the very end, this primal beauty and primal violence.”
That aspect of violence is personal to White. “At the time when I was growing up in Detroit, it was a pretty lawless place, so my references for violence are very potent,” she said. “I think people will feel that in the play. It’s less pretty than maybe some of the other productions that people have seen.”
In many respects, White’s childhood is refracted through Shakespeare and the productions she directs. Her mother, in particular, remains a constant presence, even though she died two years ago. “I hear Shakespeare in my mother’s voice,” White said.
Some things have remained unchanged. White still feels that love for Shakespeare she did all those years ago. She is still a go-getter with the tenacious attitude that led her to start her own company. And she still listens to “Push It.”
“My mom would be so disappointed,” she said of the latter.
On balance, White hopes her mother would be proud: that her rap-loving daughter is now directing Shakespeare on one of theatre’s most important stages.
“I could always tell my mom was proud of me when she would say just three words: ‘Go, baby, go.’” “ROMEO AND JULIET” RUNS UNTIL OCT. 26 AT THE STRATFORD FESTIVAL THEATRE, 55 QUEEN ST., STRATFORD. VISIT STRATFORDFESTIVAL.CA FOR TICKETS AND MORE INFORMATION.